RACE AND RELIGION

If I meditate enough to get on this boat and see you in the water struggling I will run round looking for life belts I promise.

I can't get into this big deal about Nick Griffin on Question Time. The only sane journalism I've seen about the whole thing was in The Telegraph. I don't have a TV. I'll watch it later but I'm sure it will be a total let down for all these people getting so excited about it. A new friend of mine over on Facebook who grew up in Dundee, a refugee from Chile said

“Well if the Labour party abandon the working classes what do they expect?”

Corruption has let in extremes but are they a threat or serious contenders when it comes to power? I have never seen the point of banning people. Get Mr Griffin in. Get Mr Choudharry in. What is the problem? Do you think all these power dressing chicks in the West End are going to run out and buy Burkahs? I don't think so. x amount of Muslims believe in a world wide Islamic state. They do. x amount of pasty honkies on council estates want a white Britain. They do. That's not news.

Mind you, it was news on Panorama earlier in the week. Very interesting news but I am still unsure as to the conclusion, x amount = more than Trevor Phillips can see from his ivory tower? I wouldn't be surprised. The guy is blatantly an idiot in the wrong job, but still- the undercover journalists were being constantly hassled by the same small group of people, and there were white people on the same estate who looked out for them, and really stood out as heroes in this film. Both journalists said that they hadn't experienced this sort of racism before, so that must be a good thing right? Anyway very brave journalism which made for a seriously watchable programme.

In other news, we were watching a coupla Jesus reruns the other day back to back as someone had put out dvds of Jesus Christ Superstar (The 1973 version) and The Last Temptation of Christ which I hadn't watched before. I must admit that once I had stopped laughing I thought JCSS was actually quite good musically, and the message was OK too. I didn't realise there were so many blokes in the seventies who could hit such high notes. Must have been the tight trousers. I was thinking Ian Gillan all the way through listening to the Jesus rendition but I was still surprised to find he sang the part on the original album. I think this guy does a better job though.

Both of these films rightly point to the Judas part of the story as something questionable, though The Last Temptation is rubbish. I only watched it because someone told me that the reason it was blasphemous was cos Jesus gets a blow job on the cross at the end.

What a stupid story. Jesus feels guilty because he is the only Jewish person who will make crosses for the Romans? Err... Great start! Mary Magdelene blames him for the fact that she became a prostitute after he dumped her or something? err.. OK. Where are we going with this?

Jesus, played by Danile DeFoe (who is a shite actor at the best of times) questions whether he is the messiah or not. He asks John the Baptist, a head banging cult leader who gives him a big gay kiss on the lips to make sure. After this he heads off into the desert and does some Crowley ritual, gets tempted by the devil (who appears as a snake, a lion, a tree and a flame) comes back and starts with some really bland parables. The crowd quite rightly think his parables are lame and tell him to fuck himself.

Judas is this no nonsense character who tries to keep this self doubting nutter-Jesus on the right path. He isn't into the idea of crucifixion at first, he'd rather over throw the Roman occupation, but fuck it- as its you Jesus and you asked so nicely.

Just as Jesus finally makes it up on to the cross a little girl walks through the crowd, takes his nails out and helps him down.

“Am I the messiah?” he asks.

“No. Now stop torturing yourself and try to be normal for fucks sake”.

So Jesus is normal, he has a family with a woman. He has a family with her sister too. The angelchild hangs around just in case he backslides into his previous self torturing ways. Eventually Paul turns up in his town and tells the story of Christ crucified. This obviously offends Jesus as he knows the real story. Paul, runs after him and says the crowd prefer his fiction, reality isn't important. All the time I am sitting thinking

"Why the fuck did anyone write this story? Will it have any meaning whatsoever at the end?"

Anyway, Jesus on his deathbed which coincides with the Romans burning Jerusalem gets visited by his elderly disciples who out his angel as one of the devils who tempted him earlier (The flame one). He crawls out of the house, begs God to rewind time and put him back on the cross, which God does, making Jesus happy. And this film was nominated for awards. It won awards. What a load of wank. Its not blasphemy, its bollocks- and no blow job on the cross for Jesus either.

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