OIL RIGS

The very words 'Bono' or 'Bob Geldof' are hair-triggers for allowing my latent misanthropy to run amok and unfettered. Let the picture do all the talking - Oprah, I love you, going barefoot there was a fucking masterstroke.

AGE OF AQUARIUS 6

Test this one out on your local evangelists: 'I'm curious, what sins did Jesus commit?' 'None, of course!' 'So why, according to the Bible, did he feel the need to ask John to baptise him?!' Like a fly in a spider's web, here is one theologian's tortuously vain attempt to explain the unexplainable (notice how the simplest answer is studiously omitted: that it never happened).

CARCHARADON 2

Haven't you ever put something in your mouth and spat it out in disgust? If this great white wanted to eat Eric Nerhus, it would be as easy as biting on a rancid overripe strawberry - but no, here we have the brave story of how man fought back against the beast and survived. Bullshit.

MY LEAST FAVOURITE SOUNDS

Try this site out - I'm not sure if Professor Cox realises so many of his top 30 'worst' sounds have formed the basis of my, and of course many others', music.

CARCHARODON

Other than her obvious mystery and primeval beauty, there is a unique quality of the great white shark that particularly appeals to me: the refusal to be held alive in a zoo or sea world or aquarium environment. There have indeed been several attempts to keep them in captivity and each time the shark died, or had to be released, within a short time; and so without wishing to over-dramatise the point, I wish I could say that I'd have that same courage, that same capacity for rapid self-destruction, if ever presented with a metaphorically comparable dilemma.

SHABHU SHABHU

24 hours on 3 planes, JAL or not, and this head's spinning; don't even know what planet this is, let alone the day of the week or the time. Wonderful experience at the highly impressive CCA in Kitakyushu, with some extraordinary Japanese hospitality that could make a grown man pathetically weep with joy; Russell and Mikawa-san in top form throughout (and of course on the night of the performances); and to complete Akiko's magical alchemy, Jennifer Allora and Guillermo Calzadilla were also a total revelation.

TATIANA 2

For those that enjoyed the post about odd Soviet architecture, why not come with me on this colourful odyssey of their outlandish bus stops?

WORK-OUTS

Tracklisting for new album Racket is as follows: Bahnhof - Dumping More Fucking Rubbish - Fairground Muscle Twitcher - The Avalanche - Mouthy Battery Beast - Dyad - Bia Mintatu

ASYLUM 2

Just a couple more comments about this (would be all too easy to write a book).

1. The Alice in Wonderland of Iraq - does Bush and his 20,000+ troop 'surge' strategy remind anyone of the last days of Hitler in his bunker as he, raging against his own generals, starts pushing imaginary troops around the map?
2. I know in Britain how servile and meek and infantilised citizens are but seriously, how come millions of Americans aren't surrounding the White House and hurling rocks through the windows?
3. If only Network wasn't just a film - I'm as mad as hell, and I'm not going to take this any more! And I say this because, things being equal, I genuinely have no time for any kind of politics.

ASYLUM

The last straw - things have been bad enough for the last 12 months or so, but there is absolutely no chance of going back to the States now after this and the already mandatory 26 pieces of 'information'. I have nothing to hide but fuck it - that regime has got to go.

SHRAPNEL

1. Mike Judge's hilarious satire Idiocracy is set 500 years in a future which might as well be next week.
2. Can't wait to get to advanced in the group djembe class.
3. Time running out before the Vista nightmare is everywhere upon us.
4. Real highlight of 2006 was seeing the chimps at MonkeyWorld near Exeter.
5. Find someone who'll go with me to my dream destination: Rapa Nui.
6. Take all these new ideas and some more steps outside the musical comfort zone.
7. Is it embarrassing for a so-called asceticist to be in love with the new Vaio laptop I just saw at the Sony Centre?
8. Back to the final mixing for Racket - it's feeling like a rebirth.

YEAR 8

It doesn't matter how much of an atheist one is, we still count years like believers. 2007 years since what? Year zero? A mythical non-event?

Some creationist random has just written The Dawkins Delusion - in truth, this riposte to The God Delusion was inevitable, and you have to admit the title alone is deserving of its publication.

Once-biologist Richard Dawkins, now enjoying his new career as self-proclaimed high priest of rationalism, would indubitably make a great dinner party guest: he is witty, charming and erudite - yet I can't help thinking even he gives his targets way too much coy respect. Instead of these pointless philosophical thrusts about 'god' and 'intelligent design' and 'evolution' - just hit them where it hurts. Jesus. That's what really has rattling potential and to put the sham under an ugly scrutiny, but disappointingly, Dawkins ducks the issue and seems scared to apply a knock-out because, like so many before him, there's still fear of causing offence.

Likewise in Sam Harris' End Of Faith, much of the thrust of his argument is pointless in the sense that it is founded upon false, or at least highly questionable, historical premises about events such as 9/11. And in their discourse, both Harris and Dawkins bandy about essentially religious notions of 'evil' and 'morality' that - with great incongruence - they carelessly allow to be intertwined with their own scientific jargon.

Let's talk persuasion. This is all about belief systems, not empirical evidence. Say you don't believe in God and believers will just smugly smile back at you, condescendingly, safe in their precious faith. Go and learn The God Delusion by rote and it still won't break through. Why? Because its historical presuppositions are false and, anyway, how can you prove that what can't be seen doesn't exist? Neither of these books have the potential to change minds, only to create further resistance thereby reinforcing beliefs of the already converted.

It's so much simpler. Have you ever seen a Jehovah's Witness banging on your door trying to get out of your house?! Next time they come round, smile serenely, welcome them in, ignore all the red herring God bullshit, go for the jugular and have some fun - let's have a conversation, when did you first start thinking that Jesus Christ was a historical figure?