And on the Eighth Day ... They Wrote it Down

A subject for a great poet would be God's boredom after the seventh day of creation.

Friedrich Nietzsche (1844 – 1900)

Creation destroys as it goes, throws down one tree for the rise of another. But ideal mankind would abolish death, multiply itself million upon million, rear up city upon city, save every parasite alive, until the accumulation of mere existence is swollen to a horror.
D. H. Lawrence (1885 – 1930)

ULTIMATE TRUTHS are those that we reject first of all. It is the Great Lies that one draws to one’s bosom and allows to burn there, a cold confusion, a universal counterfeit currency. I have seen young mothers whispering poisoned verses to their tiny, scarcely-formed children, held up to the crowd: “Tell them you know this [or that] is true.” Sometimes the little boy or little girl struggles and weeps, and refuses to speak, and must be put down to toddle back to its seat. There is wisdom. One hopes that the day or night will come when the child runs outside, stands below the sky, beneath creation, and listens not to its mother, but to all that it observes by eye, ear, taste or touch.

This week it has been reported that the Hubble Space Telescope is studying an enormous green blob in distant outer space. The news reports use words like “mysterious”, “bizarre”, “gigantic” and “strangely alive”, the panic headlines of a 1950s science fiction B-Movie.

The great green blob has a name: Hanny’s Voorwerp. The blob is the size of the Milky Way Galaxy, 650 million light years (each light year is six trillion miles, if you care) away from us, and it is giving birth to new stars as parts of the blob collapse and result in pressure enough to create stars. It’s mostly hydrogen gas swirling about from a close encounter with two galaxies, and is illuminated by a quasar, a bright object full of energy supplied by a black hole.

Ms Hanny van Arkel, a Dutch elementary school teacher, first spotted the phenomenon in 2007 while studying archived photographs. She says that the blob originally appeared to be a blue smudge; now it seems more like a vast green (wait for it!) dancing frog. If that worries you, take a deep breath, Ms Arkel has discovered that the frog not only has limbs, but eyes.

And there it is, creation observed over the past three or four years: A gaseous frog god named Hanny’s Voorwerp spewing stars, lit by a quasar powered by a black hole. If it had not been on the morning and evening news, one might have missed it. Worlds without end (or beginning). Amen.

Let’s talk about sexual creation. Hanny’s Voorwerp is a tale waiting to be told: grand green sex, but it is the business of the religious amongst us to sort that out; I just scribble on Post-it Notes and write a thousand or so words from time to time on what I might have seen or heard in the light or dark. I struggle free from my parent, and run outside in tears having not said: “I know this [or that] is true.”

The Ancient Egyptians were creative and inventive, and wrote things down. Their histories on the walls of their tombs and temples, and on papyrus scrolls that have survived the souvenir-hunting tourists and the uncomfortable, yet looting Victorian explorers, give varying versions of the creation of the Universe.

According to Egyptian tradition, the god Amun [also spelled Amen, Amon and Ammon] existed alone, all alone, in an aqueous sort of world before there were time and times. This First Being was described as an attractively-built, human-like male wearing a crown depicting a goat’s head. Amun’s symbol was the always randy, sexually insatiable ram. The eminent Victorian explorers, scientists and Egyptologists destroyed, damaged and hid references to the Amun creation cult. Here’s why.

Lonesome Amun created the universe sexually. He masturbated and ejaculated into his hand, drank his own semen and so impregnated himself. Following this monotheistic sexual act, Amun spat out Geb, the (male) Earth-God and Nut, the (female) Sky-Goddess, who then copulated heterosexually and produced the rest of the gods and their mortal offspring. That’s the way they saw it.

The Egyptian Pharaohs with their royal wives would re-enact Amun’s creation, the Pharaoh of the day would get inside a hollowed-out statue of Amun, including a hollow penis, and go to it.

You might find, in your research, that the First God was called Atum rather than Amun, and after ejaculating directly into his own mouth he spewed out Shu (male) and Tefnut (female), the rest of the story is the same.

The Egyptian priestly class was not the only one to act out the Creation Story. I myself have attended a session in a Mormon temple [in St George, Utah, if you care] which featured snakes and altars; Adamic-language chants; really strange, mysterious, bizarre clothing; signs and symbols (Mormon temples have been called the International House of Handshakes); lights and mirrors, washings and anointings. There are suns, moons and stars and many gods. This is called “Temple Work” and is considered to be surrogacy. One of the Mormon Holy Scriptures, The Book of Abraham from The Pearl of Great Price, was [Joseph Smith said] a translation from an Egyptian papyrus retrieved from the wrapping around a mummy in a travelling road-show. The Mormon Temple Ceremony is not quite as interesting as the Amun offerings would have been, but you are just as knackered after two hours of it.

We have scientists that postulate a creation from a Big Bang. From nothing to everything in almost no time at all (there being no time). This is akin to Amun, is it not? There are many religious folks who consider any form of science to be sinful. In fact, they consider anything outside the Christian Bible to be the work of the Devil. Never mind the Bible is convoluted, confused, contradictory and badly constructed. The latest translations have even destroyed the glorious language of the King James Version. Christian sects are at war with one another. A preacher threatens: “Tell them you know this [or that] is true. Or it’s hell for you!”

Run outside, boys and girls, and take your parents and grandparents. There are tadpoles falling from the heavens, and the sap is rising.

Double Feature

ANOTHER ELECTION DAY, and another miserable showing for Prime Minister Gordon Brown's Labour Party. Truth be told, I imagine most of the Prime Minister's parliamentary and party colleagues might just be thinking they'd rather not be associated with him and want to claim the Labour Party back for themselves.

Gordon Brown was not elected Prime Minister by the British people, he had been promised the post by outgoing Prime Minister Tony Blair who had realised, after ten years, and feeling the points of the knives in his back, that his time was up.

I'd supported the first Blair Government, elected back in 1997. We needed something really different after all those years of Thatcher and Major, and Blair was not so much Old Labour as Moderate Conservative with a heart. Unfortunately, Tony Blair took us into Iraq after sexing up reports of weapons of mass destruction. At times he was not so much George Bush's poodle as his guide-dog, getting the clumsy President through sticky situations. It paid the Press to leave a mike on near the President. Watch his choice of words though, the Christian President could curse. The Christian Prime Minister Blair could cover for him.

Thus ended any admiration and hope I had for Tony Blair and his New Labour. Suddenly we had someone to hate in unison, much as we'd all despised Mrs Thatcher. Perhaps that is a good thing, bringing the country together like that. Try and get Blair out, though. The Conservatives had no viable alternative Prime Ministerial candidate for a start.

And Gordon Brown claimed the throne in 2007, and downhill we've gone. Brown says that he was not responsible for our problems (the Recession and the Members of Parliament Expenses Scandal). However, Brown was Blair's Chancellor for the ten years and seems to have failed to anticipate or hedge against anything like what we are going through. He'd promised, back in the day, the end of boom and bust economies, and then completely failed to even take the edge off the big bust of 2008-2009. Brown seems to say: "Not my fault!" so easily. He always claims to be candid and honest, but will not own up to anything or answer any question directly (and honestly). He will say, over and over, "I'm not arrogant." He's also saying, now, "I won't quit." Any CEO with his company so unprepared and so unsuccessful would have been removed by his Board and his Shareholders. Not our Gordon.

On Thursday morning this past week I popped into the Polling Station, conveniently located next door to my flat, even before I had breakfast. I was the second person to cast a vote in this district. I've voted wherever I could, when I could, since 1968, in both local and national elections. I believe that if one does not vote, one cannot complain about what one doesn't like about a government.

This week, in Northumberland, we only voted for the European Parliament. Don't get me started. I despise the EU and support the work of parties like the United Kingdom Independence Party (UKIP) to get us the heck out of Europe.

There was quite a long ballot with choices by party. One cannot choose a particular candidate by name. One "X" in a box next to the party you want to send its nominees to Brussels. Our big three parties (Labour, Conservative and Liberal-Democrat) were listed, and UKIP, and the British National Party which is anathema to most of us being racist and more. Then the Green Party, which most of us have heard of: I suppose they hug trees and save the whales, but do their leaders and supporters walk or pedal to their rallies, or drive? There were more parties and one had a rather long name that went something like this: "The Christian Party Proclaiming Christ's Lordship". And I wondered if that was some sort of Christian Taliban. I did not see "The United Party of Satanists", but I think one would know better what to expect from such a group. There's a good line in the film Chariots of Fire, spoken by a Scottish minister's character: "The Kingdom of God is not a democracy!" That's worth considering before you give Jesus a seat in Brussels.

The sign outside the Polling Station, with those two words on it, was on a piece of stiff cardboard tied with string into a prickly hedge. Arrows on pages, printed on somebody's computer, were stuck on the side of the building indicating that one must go around into the church hall to vote. The church's rather large (very nearly life-size) figure of Christ on his Cross loomed over the driveway. Vote for me!

By Friday night the county council election results were in, and Labour, our Government, had only 23% of the total vote, in third place after the Conservatives and Liberal-Democrats. Gordon Brown's Cabinet was breaking up, big names quit. He patched together a new one with unelected peers from the House of Lords (no Labour MPs seemed willing to join a Brown government) and gave a most irritating press conference on Friday evening. He said, I don't know how many times, "I'm not arrogant!" and stressed that he was the only person who could lead the country at this time.

A reporter asked Gordon Brown what he felt made him qualified to be our Prime Minister. You're thinking he's not arrogant. What Brown did not say speaks volumes. He did NOT say he loves this country, that he loves the people and represents them as a person, and that he is like them. He did not say he loves our parliamentary democracy. No affection was confessed for England's mountains green (of course, he is Scottish). Brown did not say that he wants to serve the nation so long as it wants him. No hand on heart for Queen and Country. No, no, no.

Tomorrow the European Election results will be published and estimates are that Gordon Brown's Labour Party will have done even worse in those than in the English county elections. I'm wondering if UKIP will bump Labour into fourth place. I'm hoping that the Labour Party finally faces up to what this country needs: an elected Prime Minister. I'm hoping they'll somehow get rid of Gordon Brown.

The Conservatives are better at ousting their unpopular or no longer capable leaders: think Churchill in the 1950s and Margaret Thatcher. Mrs Thatcher fought it for a couple of days, but then off she went into the wilderness in tears. Gordon Brown, however, has chained himself to this rock he won't confess to loving. It may take more than long knives; it may take sledge hammers and chisels.

I voted, so I'm complaining about Gordon Brown. He may not think to say he loves Britain, but I love it.

THIS AFTERNOON AFTER CAILEAN'S WALK, which a friend joined me on, the three of us came back and watched a 1979 movie on the telly called The Black Hole. This was not the Disney film of that name, which I've not seen (were there cute animals in that one? I have seen The Cat from Outer Space). The Black Hole on Channel Five this afternoon stars a number of now-dead or decrepit actors. The blurb in the Radio Times guide says: "Intriguing if rather unwieldy sci-fi epic in which the crew of a space ship encounter a disturbed scientist." Maximillian Schell plays the nutter on a large platform floating in space near a black hole. He's turned all his human crew into robots. Robert Forster leads a small crew studying the black hole from what looks like a cannibal's cooking pot without the broth. The crew float around suspended by wires, and the harnesses show. The strings holding the spaceship together start breaking, steam pipes burst, and they have to look around for a place to land. And Schell's space platform happens to be just around the next star.

Turns out that Schell and his crew (now humanoid robots) were supposed to have returned to Earth twenty years before, but Schell refused to leave his spot on the edge of the black hole. He's gone quite mad, and wants to fly right through it, never mind it will almost certainly destroy him and all those with him. A bit of a Gordon Brown.

Highlights of the film are the lame special effects and the incredibly clumsy floating in space. Ernest Borgnine is in the film and has a moustache. Yvette Mimieux looks like an American housewife. Anthony Perkins is attacked by a large red-eyed robot called Max that is more Waring Blender than humanoid … and it literally makes mincemeat of him.

My friend had to leave before the film ended, but I settled down to watch it till the bitter end. However, Cailean next to me, I fell fast asleep.

So I cannot tell you how The Black Hole ended, or, at this moment, whether Gordon Brown is still our unelected Prime Minister representing a party less than a quarter of Brits support.