It is an iPhone 4, not the latest, greatest 4s, but an older model. However the one wonderful feature is t at it runs the absolute latest version of iOS. This may not seem important to anyone. But to me it is nice because it means that even though the hardware is older, the feature set and bug fixes are mostly all present. True, I do not have Siri, but the OS is up to date and all bug fixes are present.

Compare that to Android.

My previous Android phone was a Samsung Infuse 4G. When I got it it was running Android 2.2, which at the time was already outdated, with 2.3 (Gingerbread) already available. As far as I am aware, there was never an official 2.3 upgrade available. I took the ‘aftermarket ROM’ route in frustration and as such I gained many bug fixes, a performance and battery life upgrade and a much nicer phone.

At the end of last year Samsung announced that it would never see an official 4.0 release. So I gave up with it. It was a very nice piece of hardware, but the OS support was terrible. I sold it…

So I purchased a lightly used iPhone 4, which has the latest updates.

Meanwhile PJ has a Galaxy SII, which once more has no official ICS update yet. It is likely that it will get an update at some point as it is ‘one the list’. We once more gave up waiting, sick of the bugs, battery issues and flakiness issues, we hacked it and gave it an upgrade to an unofficial ROM. Which is faster, considerably more stable and has better battery life.

Meanwhile I have a Samsung Galaxy TAB 10.1.

This runs the ‘Honeycomb’ release of Android. Since I got it about a year ago it has received exactly one update. 4.0 (ICS) has been promised for a considerable time, but once more it has not yet arrived.

As a habitual early adopter I now realize that Samsung devices are not for me…..

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Virtually without fail AT&T have managed to resolve my issues, usually first time too.

I therefore often do not understand the hate that seems to be directed to them.

Last night Dom came over, in need of a loaner phone. He is on T-Mobile and he is not due for an upgrade until March. He is also a Blackberry user and for reasons that are probably more related to RIM’s declining quality, they barely last ‘five minutes’. It seems that he is constantly complaining that his phone is broken. Last night his Phone was showing a serious screen issue, only the left hand ¼ of the screen was showing anything other than something that looked like TV noise. We tried the usual BB things, swear at it, pulling the battery, slamming it against the wall and threatening it with violence – none of this worked.

So I dug through my phone drawer and found an older heavily modified HTC Aria – this is running Cyanogenmod 7 and is a great little phone. Sticking his TMO SIM card in required that we typed in the SIM unlock code. Which we did not have – so after a swift Google I called AT&T and spoke to a tech support operative. She was able to ask around and then eventually come up with an unlock code.  She was super nice through the entire 40 minute call and honestly apart from how long it took, I have nothing bad to say. Once more they came through for me.

I really do not understand the animosity towards them….

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 Let me explain.

A number of major studios have thrown their money behind a new digital content distribution system called ‘UltraViolet’, that in theory at least, allows you to rent or purchase a movie and watch it on multiple devices.

On the surface this is great.  Really, truly this is a great thing. Rather than rent a DVD or BluRay from Netflix, Blockbuster or RedBox for a couple of dollars, you can rent one directly from the studio; and you can watch the movie on any device.

Except an iPad, iPhone, Android Phone, Android Tablet, or a non-smart TV or connected device that does not support UltraViolet.

Oh and you need a fast internet connection too.

All of these are minor issues though and nothing a small investment in hardware or bandwidth cannot solve. Assuming of course the movies are available fairly quickly after they leave the cinema and that they are relatively inexpensive to rent/buy.

Sadly neither is true, a ‘High Definition’ movie is $19.99 and an ‘SD’ movie is $12.99 and the current plan appears to be to release the movies at the same time as the DVD/Blu-Ray.  Generally I can get most DVDs shipped to my door from amazon.com for about $10 or I can pay less than $20 for a BluRay, again, shipped to my door. Often Amazon will sell off movies a few months after release for $5 – $8 and there are many BluRays available for less then $10.

For example, one of the sixty movies that Paramount are launching with is ‘Rango’, their SD price is $12.99, the HD price is $19.99

• I can rent the DVD from Redbox for $1.29 or $3.99 will get me the BluRay from Blockbuster.
• I can buy the DVD that comes with a free digital copy that I can play on my tablet for $12.49
• I can buy the BluRay/DVD/Digital Copy combo for $19.49
• I can buy it on iTunes for $19.99 (HD)
• I can watch it on Cinemax as a part of my $9.99 add-on to my basic cable subscription
• I can buy it on Amazon Video On-Demand for $14.99 (HD Version)
• It will be on Basic cable soon, so I can wait.
• It is on torrentsRus with 10 million seeders for freeez !!!!1111oneoneeleven

In other words, UltraViolet, for this example movie is actually the most expensive (along with iTunes) and easily the least convenient.

UltraVoilet is a great idea, it has huge potential, but it needs to be easy to use, inexpensive and convenient. In its current iteration it is none of these things.

If I wanted to watch Rango (again), which is reasonably likely, UltraViolet is maybe not the most expensive way possible, but it is the most expensive of the methods that currently dominate our movie watching.

This brings me, neatly, around to the arguments put forwards regarding the costs of ‘piracy’.

The argument goes something like this.

If a million people download a movie, the industry has lost the ability to sell a million dvds at $12.99. Therefore the cost to the industry is right around the $13,000,000 level.

This is a flawed argument on virtually every level, the laws of supply and demand drive the sales revenue.

If a million people suddenly had no ability to download the movie illegally, they would not all rush out and buy the DVD, only a percentage of them would actually buy it, more likely they would choose the cheaper options.

• Say 50% would rent it at $1.29 or via Netflix (fixed / month)
• Maybe a further 20% would watch via Netflix on-demand
• Maybe the remaining ‘pirates’ would be split over the dvd/BluRay, various digital copies (iTunes / Amazon)purchases and watching it on TV.

The total ‘lost’ revenue for that one million pirates is probably in the hundreds of thousands of dollars, still decent money, but far from the tens of millions of dollars that are posited.

So, Hollywood, here is what you need to do:

Change your model.

Let’s assume that there are several markets for movies

• Cinema goers, the current costs of watching a movie in a local cinema is $12.50, plus popcorn and snacks, which makes it a $50 date for a couple. Or nudging $100 if you take the kids to see Cars 6 or Snow White 17…..
• Blu Ray buyers most new releases are around $15 – $20
• DVD buyers –  Unless you shop at Walmart, you are probably going to spend $12
• DVD/BluRay renters $1 – $3, RedBox, Blockbuster, Apple Movie Rental etc
• Digital content consumers  many models (Netflix / Amazon VOD)
• Cable Subscribers
• Pirates (aaaaargggghh) its free on the high seas Jim Lad…

Hollywood you need to figure out why the pirate model is as popular as it is and how to monetize it without resorting to suing people and causing more and more bad feelings towards.

So, here is my idea.

Make as many movies as possible available digitally, at a price-point that makes sense, in as compatible a format as possible.

Do not forget to cover the popular devices

• iPad
• iPhone
• Android Phones / Tablets
• Smart TV’s
• BluRay players
• Roku  etc set top boxes.
• PC
• Mac

Allow the purchaser to download the movie to their devices to watch under their own terms.

Make it affordable.

•  $20 is too much for a severely restricted usage movie in an awkward format.
•  Heck, $20 is too much for an unrestricted use format movie in an awkward format that restricts its use.
•  $20 is probably too much to play for a movie that was merely average.
• Let the market set the price maybe - In Rainbows proved that this is an be a good idea, assuming the content is good.

I would probably pay $10 to buy a digital copy of, say, ‘The Incredibles’, but ‘Cars 2’ is probably worth only $6 – $7 in my view.

Make it compatible.

MKV or MP4 formats are considerable easier to deal with than the crazy UltraViolet format. Most smart TV’s can play streamed content, as can most connected BluRay players.

Available, Affordable, Compatible.

Putting it all together

Change the format to a useful one – say MP4 and/or MKV, include high end audio streams – DFTS preferably.

Allow easy streaming – ensure that the last couple of generations of dvd/BluRay/Smart TV/Set Top boxes support the streaming service.

 Change the pricing model

• New Blockbuster movies – Buy for $12 on the DVD release date, digital download.
• New Blockbuster movies – Rent for $5 on the DVD release date – stream only.
• For ‘Straight to Video’ movies, maybe charge $5 or so.

Which brings me on to the quality / pricing argument. In order to sell more you need to set the pricing model to reflect the quality of the movie.

Base the pricing on the rating of the movie on IMBD or RottenTomatoes.com

• If the movie gets 8/10, then feel free to sell it at $9
• If the movie gets 3.4/10 then sell it at $2.50, very few people will pay full price for a crappy movie.

Employ internet savvy people in the content distribution teams, employ the hackers and the ‘pirates’ to help with the legal distribution channels.

Above all, get with the times…….

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The Aria briefly had a cousin in tow. I got a Samsung galaxy tab which I utterly adored. Unfortunately this was trashed and I replaced it with a nook color which is a hacker delight.

The Aria gave way to another HTC, this time a large screen Inspire. Which within a couple of weeks gave way to a Samsung Infuse with an even larger screen. The size of the screen matters as you get older.

All of these android devices gained custom roms. Wherever possible I use CyanogenMod ROMs as they are fast, minimalist and close to the standard Android experience than it is possible to find elsewhere.

My major gripe with Android is that the combination of carrier and manufacturer customization often make the android experience worse than the standard.

The Android OS is utterly fantastic. The standard UI is brilliant, the deep integration with google services rocks harder than Mötorhead in their prime. The variety of devices and screen sizes pander to everyone. Virtually any combination of carrier, screen size and speed is available.

But the ‘added value’ crap software that Samsung and HTC add not only detracts from the experience. It causes a degree of confusion and in the case of Sense, actually makes the OS look terrible. Sure it is great to some to get ‘media center’, because they do not realize that Google Music is there, but the reality is that the add-ons generally detract.

Take Samsung’s ‘Touchwiz’ interface. This is an entire launcher replacement that actually looks pretty neat. Until you realize that there are serious restrictions to it – there is no way to change the default messaging client from the SMS application to one you prefer – like maybe chomp, or Google Voice etc. You are also stuck with Samsung’s standard quick launch icons rather than being able to decide which ones to use.

HTC’s sense is a whole order worse, the contact screen, dialer, widgets and application integration are terrible.

With either of these devices, you almost have to change the supplied launcher with perhaps LauncherPro, just to be able to use the phone in an fashion other than the prescribed manufacturer specific way.

Which leads me question why the phone that I am typing this post on is an Apple iPhone 4.

Simply because it is better, in standard form, than virtually anything except a Google Nexus device.

Apple have got this right with iOS. They understand that if they control the user experience they can make the device incredibly easy and pleasant to use, everything works in a logical way, the applications all follow the same UI principals and they just plain work.

My objection to the walled garden though stands.

I loathe being trapped in that, admittedly beautiful walled garden. The lack if deep Google integration is off putting, I miss the auto-upload of photos to picasa, I miss google music too, but it is nice to have ooTunes back.

I am sticking with the iPhone for a while, but long term ?

I think that a Galaxy Note running ICS is the answer. But this is not even officially available in the US and imports are around the $600 mark !

So for the moment I a using a rather lovely (hardware at least) iPhone 4.

I suspect that this time next year I will have upgraded several more times……

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It is not not really that relevant.

The new 4s is an incremental upgrade that sticks rigidly to the Apple design briefs, Launch a product, refine it then redefine it. The iPhone 5 will be the redefinition, the 4s is the 3g or the 3gs for the current cycle.

The new iPod touch in white is nice, the new 64GB capacity is nice, but for $399 I will pass for a while.

There was nothing in that product launch that stood out as ‘new’. The one thing that did stand out for me is that Apple is continuing the battle for the living room. Allowing you to pair your phone with an AppleTV and effectively play a movie or other content on a big screen.

The mobile phone market is not fully saturated yet, there are two real contenders, Apple with iOS and Google with Android.

Both have their advantages, both have ecosystems behind them and both have rabid fans.

Having spent a month with an iPad2 I found that the hardware is excellent and the device is compelling to use.  However I simply cannot live within the Apple ecosystem. If I want to buy a book to read from Amazon via kindle I can purchase on my kindle or my phone and it is available to any kindle device or kindle reader I have. Not so with Apple, if I purchase a book it works on the iPad or probably an iPhone. I cannot buy a book via the kindle app on my iPad as that breaks the Apple rules.

I also spent many hours trying to rip a DVD to play on the iPad, the first several attempts failed in abject frustration, before I rented the movie, one I already owned I hasten to add, for $3, only to find that the movie was in standard definition, pan and scan. When you realize that the movie was an extreme widescreen and I have an aversion to P&S, you can imagine how happy that made me.

Now the Apple ecosystem works if everything you have is Apple, if you have a Mac for your personal computing needs and an Apple TV or two for media consumption, iPhone and iPad for portability and maybe an iPad for the gym. This is great, the integration is lovely.

But if you have DVD’s, Blu-Rays, mkv files, Vobb files or any one of a number of alien file formats, you pretty much need to re-buy your media.

Yes that is correct, there are no easy ways to consume that media in an Apple ecosystem.

It looks likely that Apple and Facebook are teaming up in many ways in an attempt to grab the sofa. This may seem like an unlikely match-up, but given the movements at the recent facebook events, this is a very, very likely match.

In the other corner we have Google and Amazon.

Amazon have video on demand and their recent kindle fire tablet looks set to be a heck of a media consumption device. Google’s TV device hooks up to the library in a few simple clicks. The Amazon widget is appearing on TV’s, Blu-ray and Roku devices.

Which leaves us with Netflix.

Netflix have the lowest budget. But the current largest subscription base. They also have a decent sized library.

This is the new battle.

Google and Apple, with Microsoft and their Windows 8 tablet OS and Windows 7 Phone OS will fight it out for sofa domination. The way to dominate is to take up partners, Amazon, Facebook and possibly Hulu and a few others will be key to this.

I wonder if Apple will price their way out of the battle, their closed ecosystem will certainly not appeal to anyone with a proliferation of non-iOS devices ?

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In the UK, belief is very much personal, foisting ones belief onto friends and colleagues is seen as ‘bad form’ and is something that is rarely done. In general this type of behavior is restricted to the more ‘extreme’ groups. Jehovah’s witnesses, Mormons and the minority but vocal ‘Born again’ folks. In general though it is considered to be ‘poor form’ to even discuss your religious stance.

Many English churches are lovely buildings, in the village that I lived in as a teenager, we had a simply beautiful church, it was the center-point of the village and a landmark in many ways. As a family we went to church on an irregular basis, but as far as I can remember, my church attendance, or otherwise in later years, was simply not a subject of any conversation with friends and colleagues.

In the many years of living in many different places in the UK I can only remember being approached by people that wanted to ‘save’ me on a couple of occasions, there was a ‘local nutter’ that would come into the pub and try to save the sinners that ‘took the demon drink’, he would usually go away after somebody bought him a pint or two though. A small number of times I would get the Jehovah’s  Witnesses knock on my front door and attempt to persuade me that I should go to church. I had a number of interesting conversations with them as you can imagine. I had friends that subscribed to other religions, my best friend was a staunch catholic and I had a couple of friends that were (are ?) Jewish and another friend that was a Mormon, but simply, religion or lack thereof, never once threatened any friendship or working relationship.

In the US however, religion dominates many aspects of society. Politicians are judged on their religiousness, the religious lobby is huge. The influence that the church has on the government is incredible.

-          The abortion ‘issue’ is fueled by the church.

-          Stem Cell research is pretty much banned as a result of the church.

-          The teaching of evolution in many states is fought by the church.

-          Gay Marriage in California was opposed hugely by the Mormon and other churches from other states.

From my point of view I believe that there are many reasons why abortion should be legal and you should be able to go to a clinic without having to run the gauntlet of protestors screaming ‘murderer’ at you and abortion doctors should not need to wear bullet proof vests in order to go about their business.

Stem Cell research hold many appeals to me, the research could lead to a restoration of my hearing which is something that I would so love.

Evolution versus intelligent design is a whole other subject to me. ID is a great idea, but in the complete absence of proof of divine intervention, (versus the fossil records that show evolution) relegates the idea to simple whimsy. Yet due to the church lobby, ID is taught over ‘straight’ evolution in many schools in the US.

Finally ‘Gay Marriage’ and the fight that the church has put up to prevent gay couples from enjoying the same privileges as straight couples. Several of my friends are gay, the impact on them of not having the legal recognition of their relationship ranges from ‘nothing’ to not being allowed to visit their partner of 15 years in a hospital when they were badly injured -  the rule was ‘family only’ and despite their relationship, they were not considered family.

All of this is despite legal, apparent and public ‘separation of church and state’ which is built into the US’s constitution.

I cannot count the amount of times that I have been invited to church by friends and colleagues. Once they realize that I am fiercely atheist things often go downhill. A large part of the problem seems to be that people simply do not understand atheism. Atheism is not Devil worship, it is not a rejection of ‘your’ god in favor of others. It is simply a complete and utter lack of belief in any god, gods or supernatural beings. It is not that I specifically do not believe in your god, I do not believe in any of them

Let me get this straight, I have what most would consider to be Christian values. I know that it is wrong to commit murder, but I do not need, for example, the threat of an afterlife spent in hell to persuade me. I do not need the threat of eternal damnation to prevent me from becoming an axe wielding homicidal maniac.  My sense of ‘wrong and right’ are basically the same as most everyone. Except I do not feel the need to go to church to affirm these values.

So, why am I bringing this up now ?

Well, it would seem that my lack of faith is having an effect on my friends and family.

When people find out that I am a ‘non believer’, some people almost flinch, they often tell me that they feel sorry for me. Oddly the word ‘Atheist’ is avoided when discussing my belief, or lack thereof. It causes huge problems because people assume that when they say grace before a meal, or maybe have an event at a church or engage in any type of religiousness, that I will take offense and perhaps embarrass them.

The subject of ‘grace’ is something else that I find amusing. I will always pause and close my eyes in respect, but frankly some of the ‘graces’ that I have heard in recent years have caused me to stifle a laugh and/or turn it into a cough. In some cases it seems that the person giving grace is actually trying to outdo all other expressions of grace that they have heard before.

Something like this however

Let us savor our days
as we savor this meal.
Let us linger to enjoy
the bounty of each season.
Let us live to declare
we find life itself delicious.

(Which was borrowed from here http://ingridgoffmaidoff.com/product.php?id=73 )

This is truly beautiful and something that I cannot imagine anyone could object to.

I have sat through many a grace that was over-the-top religious, rambling and frankly hilarious. But one stands out in my memory.

The giver of grace must have spent five minutes praying for various things and thanking their god for a multitude of things that were only vaguely connected to the contents of our dinner, he even prayed for the safety of the delivery driver. Given that the meal was Pizza and Garlic bread, I almost expected that he was going to start breaking the bread at any moment. By the time we got to eat, the food was cold and I wanted to punch the idiot in the mouth.

But then this company had a morning prayer and even had an office devoted to ‘contemplation and worship’ so I guess that this was reasonably to be expected.

I find the whole religiousness here in the US something that is tough to live with. The fact that belief, or non belief, can influence a friendship is pretty sad. So I have decided that I am going to declare that I am actually a believer, but I am aligned with an obscure religion that nobody had ever heard of and see if that makes a difference to various relationships.

-          I thought about Scientology, but it is a pretty expensive religion, demanding that a large percentage of my income should be given to the church to help the less fortunate. It is not clear who the less fortunate actually are though.

-          My next choice was ‘Thee Temple ov Psychick Youth’, but this seems a little scary and there is certainly not a local branch.

-          Third up was ‘Universe People’, this has many appeals. Just read the blurb ‘Universe people or Cosmic people of light powers is a Czech religious movement centered around Ivo A. Benda. Its belief system is based upon the existence of extraterrestrial civilizations communicating with Benda and other “contacters” since October 1997 telepathically and later even by direct personal contact. According to Benda those civilizations operate a fleet of spaceships, led by Ashtar Sheran, orbiting the Earth. They closely watch and help the good and are waiting to transport their followers into another dimension. The Universe People’s teachings incorporate various elements from ufology (some foreign “contacters” are credited, though often also renounced after a time as misguided or deceptive), Christianity (Jesus was a “fine-vibrations” being) and conspiracy theories (forces of evil are supposed to plan compulsory chipping of the population).’ This is pretty awesome, but I am not sure.

However perhaps the winner is The Church of Euthanasia (CoE).

This a non-profit educational organization started by the Reverend Chris Korda in Boston, Massachusetts. According to the church’s website, it is “a non-profit educational foundation devoted to restoring balance between Humans and the remaining species on Earth.” The CoE uses sermons, music, culture jamming, publicity stunts and direct action combined with an underlying sense of satire and black humor to highlight Earth’s unsustainable population. The CoE is notorious for its conflicts with Pro-life Christian activists. According to the church’s website, the one commandment is “Thou shalt not procreate”. The CoE further asserts four principal pillars: suicide, abortion, cannibalism (“strictly limited to consumption of the already dead”), and sodomy (“any sexual act not intended for procreation”). Slogans employed by the group include “Save the Planet, Kill Yourself”, “Six Billion Humans Can’t Be Wrong”, and “Eat a Queer Fetus for Jesus”, all of which are intended to mix inflammatory issues to unnerve those who oppose abortion and homosexuality.

To me, this sounds ideal, except it will probably further inflame relationships with those of a more religious bent.

So I am not going to bother, I will continue to declare my non-belief, if people that know me an like me have a problem because of my lack of religious faith, then, well, that is their problem.

It could be a whole lot worse, I could be a Heathen or maybe a Jehovah Witless.

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A Pontiac Vibe last Tuesday

My  MINI Cooper S has been in the bodyshop since some time before Christmas and hopefully I will be back behind the wheel later on today.

My ‘Rental Car’ this time around is a Pontiac Vibe.

The Vibe was a joint venture between Toyota and Pontiac, with Toyota selling the Matrix and Pontiac the Vibe.

A number of years ago we had a Matrix and I loved it. It was roomy, comfortable, economical, practical and it even handled fairly well. It was fast enough to earn me a speeding ticket in Arizona (96mph) and apart from an odd issue with the ignition barrel it was very reliable.  I often regret selling it.

The Pontiac Vibe was the same car. Except it was ‘adjusted’ to make it less Japanese and more appealing to mainstream America. The first version of the Vibe had truly hideous plastic cladding and a roof rack, plus gaudy chrome-look wheel trims. The suspension settings where softened and the ride height increased.

It sold pretty poorly.

The second generation Vibe was less ‘Americanized’ and was the version that I have just spent 1220 miles driving.

First impressions count for a lot.

Mine were almost entirely bad. It is not helped that the MINI is low to the ground (on coilovers), has seats that grip you and a small fat steering wheel that feels superglued to the road.

The Vibe has none of these. The ride-height is set to ‘giraffe’, the seats are flat and wide and set high and the steering is plain nasty. The wheel is thin and made from hard plastic and there is almost no association between the road and the wheel. But you have to hold it tight to make almost constant corrections. On the freeway it ‘fidgets’ and needs a firm hand, which is offensive given the design of the wheel.

The seating position is terrible too – the seat does not seem to go up and down, it sort of rocks on an axis just behind your knees, the back/forward slider seems to change the height too, but the designers assumed either really short legs or hugely long arms. Sadly my long legs and long arms are a fundamental mismatch.

The ride height and soft suspension with engineered in ‘terminal understeer’ means that the most excitement you are going to get out of the drive it of the ‘OMG we are going to die’ feelings every time a minor bend in the road appears.

The throttle is fierce, combined with a relatively low first gear and a ‘tuned for torque’ engine of indeterminate size means that leaving the lights the car fairly leaps forwards. Obviously this excitement is too much for it and the power drops off fast and the gearbox selects the next gear as soon as it can, using the ‘manual’ shift ability reveals that there is no point at all holding onto revs as there is no power beyonds 5K.

Once on the move the engine is fairly quiet. Or more accurately you can barely hear the engine over the rest of the noises, wind noise dominates, aided and abetted by tire roar and then rattles from the rear end.

Those seats are horribly uncomfortable after a few miles and no amount of adjustment seems to get them any better. Most of the interior surfaces are nasty too, everything that you interact with is hard, coarse plastic that plain feels bad to touch. I would suspect that it is all easy to wipe down though. Probably the ideal car to had a food fight in.

The coarse and gutless engine also managed to drink gas at a scary rate, returning a little under 17mpg over my average use. The MINI averages 24 and is driven with considerable enthusiasm.

The one good things about the car though is the space inside. It was cavernous with the rear seats folded down. A trip to the recyclers to drop off bottles and cans netted over $20 and a trip to the charity store to drop off old clothes etc  filled two boxes. I have no figures for the load capacity beyond ‘huge’. It was a very useful vehicle for that purpose.

Overall I am struggling to understand who would buy this car. The convenience features scream ‘family’, but a minivan is a way better choice. The Size and price scream ‘commuter’ but the seats are horrible and the gas mileage is worse than my rather thirsty MINI – which has very comfortable seats too.

Pretty much everything about it is wrong.

Fix the seats, firm up the suspension and lower it a way, re-tune the engine for a little less low-end grunt and use nicer materials inside and it would be a great car. But then I have just described the Matrix that we owned a few years ago.

Which is really strange. Pontiac took the Matrix and cheapened it, turning it into something that took away all of the best bits and then wondered why it did not sell.

No wonder the old GM is dead…..

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Saying ‘god damn‘ is, apparently, about as extreme an expletive as it is possible to use when in the company of a christian. As I recently upset someone by defending a friend that used the expression I learned a lot in a short space of time.

So I guess that it is time to temper my language somewhat and have therefore decided that rather than  yelling ‘god damn‘, I will replace the phrase with something less offensive.

Doing a little research turned up the following list of potential replacements…..

Begorrah –> By God
Bejabbers –> By Jesus
By George –> By God
By golly –> By God’s body
By gosh –> By God
By gum –> By God
By Jove –> By God
Chrissakes –> For Christ’s sake
Cor blimey –> God blind me
Crikey –> Christ
Criminy –> Christ
Cripes –> Christ
Crivvens –> Christ defend us
Dad gum –> God damn
Dagnabbit –> God damn it
Dagnammit –> God damn it
Dang –> Damn
Dangnabbit –> God damn it
Dangnation –> Damnation
Darn –> Damn
Darnation –> Damnation
Doggone –> God damn
Drat –> God rot it
Egad –> A God
For crying out loud –> For Christ’s sake
For Pete’s sake –> For St. Peter’s sake
For the love of Mike –> For St. Michael’s sake
Gadzooks –> God’s hooks
Gat Dangit –> God damn it
Gee –> Jesus
Gee whizz –> Jesus
Gee willikers –> Jesus
Godfrey Daniel –> God
Golly Gee willikers –> Jesus
Good garden party –> Good God
Good grief –> Good God
Goodness gracious –> Good God
Gorblimey –> God blind me
Gosh –> God
Gosh darned –> God damned
Heck –> Hell
Holy spit –> Holy shit
Jason Crisp –> Jesus Christ
Jebus –> Jesus
Jeepers Creepers –> Jesus Christ
Jeez –> Jesus
Jeezy Creezy –> Jesus Christ
Jehosaphat –> Jesus
Jiminy Christmas –> Jesus Christ
Jiminy Cricket –> Jesus Christ
Judas Priest –> Jesus Christ
Lawks a mercy –> Lord have mercy
My goodness –> My God
My gosh –> My God
Odds-bodkins –> God’s sweet body
Sacré bleu –> Sang de Dieu (God’s blood)
Strewth –> God’s Truth
Suffering succotash –> Suffering Saviour
Tarnation –> Damnation
Wish to goodness –> Wish to God
Zounds –> God’s wounds

Now to me, they all seem a tad silly, obviously ‘everyone’ knows the actual meaning of each one, so why disguise the word ?

Fear of a name seems irrational to me. As J.K. Rowling put it

‘Fear of a name increases fear of the thing itself.’ .

So are we scared of saying God, Jesus, Allah, Zeus etc ? Simply because we are scared of our (your) imaginary friends ?

If ‘taking the lords name in vein’ is so wrong, why does the single most religious person I know use the phrase ‘Oh my god‘ on such a regular basis ? Surely the ten commandments mention something like that ?

3. You shall not take the name of the Lord your God in vain, for the Lord will not hold him guiltless who takes His name in vain.

So if the third most important commandment is to not use ‘the name’ in vein, yet Christians use it ‘all the time’, why can I not use it ?

I see no real difference at all in saying ‘Gosh darned’ and  ’God damned’. They mean exactly the same, only one is politically correct and well, that is something I struggle with. So I need a phrase that is short, sweet and nice and easy to express a respectful level of annoyance.

I figure that the easiest thing is to fall back on the British phrases that my American friends do not understand……

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The plan was to fly out of John Wayne airport in Santa Ana, an airport that is pretty local to me. I arrived in plenty of time for my (really early) flight, grabbed my tickets and headed to security.

OK, let me rewind a tad, prior to embarking on the trip I made sure that I was ‘in compliance’ as far as I could possibly be, no liquids, beyond a couple of items in my toiletries bag, no knives, guns, rocket propelled grenade launchers or nail clippers and very little metal ‘on my persons’. Apart from a Seiko Orange Monster wrist watch.

As I prepared to go through security, I took off my shoes, and placed them in a tray, my jacket went next, then my laptop bag, carry-on luggage, them my actual laptop and finally my wallet and $0.75c in change.

I then walked through the metal detector – the security ‘guard’, actually a young woman with overly severely scraped back hair, several spare tires and serious case of ‘cop wannabe attitude’ seemed to give me the universal signal for ‘move along please’. So I moved towards the conveyor to grab my shoes and she started barking at me. Well, not so much barking, more screeching. ‘Move away from the equipment Sir.’ is what I believe she said – then told me that I needed to be re-checked, so I walked back through the detector and she started yelling at me. I honestly could not tell what she said – she had a fairly thick (Spanish) accent overlayed with wannabe cop phrases, overlayed with what sounded like 500 claws being scraped down a blackboard. I went back through the detector – she was screeching about my watch – ‘Sir, I am going to have to ask you to remove any metal sir, else I will have you arrested’.

I tried to explain that I was deaf, but it fell on, well, deaf ears I think.

I think by now it had decided that I was a terrorist, she seemed to be both furious with and also scared of, me.

‘Sir, if you are carrying weapons, I must ask you to gently remove them from your persons right now,sir.’ she screeched – bats several miles away probably crashed into things due to the sonic interference.

Another guard started to close in on me and I was certain that I was going to get the full ‘service’. By this time there was a fair queue of people making disparaging ‘tutting’ noises behind me and I think I was probably public enemy number one in the airport at that time.

Oops, I still had my watch on – so I undid it and dropped it into a dog bowl and then realized I still had my belt on – so I pulled that as well. I patted down my own pockets and realized that a pen in my shirt pocket – the pen clip was perfectly visible – I pulled it, dropped it into another dog bowl and walked cleanly through the detector – much to the security ‘operatives’ annoyance it would seem.

Seriously, the ‘lady’ was so over officious it was not funny she is the sort of security guard that gives the TSA a bad name.

I sat and watched her for a short while afterwards – it seems that this was her normal ‘manner’, she was an ill-tempered bitch to everyone that passed through ‘her’ line.

A couple of days later I arrived at Kansas City International to fly home.

What. A. Difference.

I got to Terminal A about 90 minutes before my flight, I grabbed my boarding cards (KCI and Phoenix), bought a couple of souvenirs, packed my jacket and the new purchases in my carry-on, re-organized my laptop bag and headed to security. There was no line, luckily, I loaded the conveyor with my shoes, carry-on, laptop bag, laptop and the contents of my pocket, forgetting once more to lose my belt and get my watch x-rayed.

The security lady was an older, kinder, altogether more human one.

As expected the red lights went off – she noticed my watch and said something along the lines of ‘do not worry, it was just your watch’, she then actually wished me a nice flight and then noticing that I was on the flight to Phoenix mentioned that my gate number had changed and heading to gate 6 rather than 7 would be a good idea !

Holy crap what a difference.

The lady at SNA fitted the public perception of the TSA, she was rude, nasty, ignorant and frankly aggressive. An utterly loathsome way to start your day (it was before 6AM) and an unnecessarily objectionable way to start a journey. Flying stresses most people to a degree and having an obnoxious security guard yelling at you and treating you like a terrorist or an idiot, or maybe both is not a good start and it does nothing at all to make the trip easy. …

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Driving to work this morning, channel hopping on the radio, I stumbled across the John Lennon classic ‘Imagine’.

Obviously I started to sing along to it, badly….

Then I realized that the song had been changed and I nearly drove off the road in a rage.

These are the original lyrics from the second verse, I just looked them up….

Imagine there’s no countries, it isn’t hard to do

No need to kill or die for and no religions too

Imagine all the people

Living life in peace

The end of the second line had been changed to ‘…and one religion too’

Now obviously I was on ‘God Squad FM’ or something but the bastardization of the song and the meaning behind it was a terrible insult.

What John Lennon was saying when he wrote that line was that by removing the differences, we can all work together and follow a common aim.

Just imagine a world without religion ?

No 9/11, no ‘troubles’ in Ireland, no problems in the middle east, no Palestine, no Holocaust, no holy wars.

I wonder just how many lives have been lost over arguments over who’s god is the biggest, best, strongest, fastest ?

As I type this, there is a family in Pakistan waiting to find out if their mother will be hanged over blasphemous comments. These comments were made during a heated argument after the woman dipped her cup into a water bucket and her co-workers complained that the water was contaminated as it had been touched by a non-muslim.

With no religion, her life would be safe.

It is easy to think that this is simply a case of muslim intolerance. But even with the US’s ‘freedom of speech’ there is little tolerance of anti-christian rhetoric. The average christian is anything other than tolerant of other religions. The average ‘born-again’ christian is even worse. The process of being born again, whatever that means, appears to strengthen their inability to tolerate other religions or anything that they see as non-christian. It seems to me that ‘organized religions’ teach that their beliefs alone are true. This carries the implication that all other religions are false or untrue to a greater or lessor extent. The implication is that you are either ‘with us or against us’ appears to apply. The more extreme religions appear to teach that those that do not follow their ‘true faith’ are obviously devil-worshiper or worse, out to undermine their religion.

From what I remember of religious studies and church sessions as a teenager, the message was generally that by following the teachings of the various religious writers, you could live a wholesome life and be rewarded in some kind of after-life. To me this seemed to mean that life is some kind of test and how well you do at this bit determines your position in the next stage. It was never clear if there was a stage after that, or even if there was a stage prior. Perhaps Human life is the last test, but prior tests involve working your way up the food chain.

Maybe the first test is to survive as plankton, then maybe as a fish or a crab or an ant or a bird or something.

Then maybe as you complete each test you step up the food chain. Maybe this step is where you gain your consciousness?

It all seems pretty crazy to me.

What seems even crazier is that people are killing each other over an argument that boils down to something like ‘my imaginary friend that lives in the sky is bigger/better/more powerful than your imaginary friend that you say lives in the sky.’

This is what John Lennon was saying, in a world without religion, there would be no need to kill each other just because they believe in the wrong imaginary sky dweller.

Perverting the song to promote your own beliefs is sacrilegious. It is like painting a sponsor logo on the Mona Lisa or representing your imaginary sky dweller as your race.

Thoughts ?

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