Moretality

Back in the saddle, back on the wagon, back in town, back in black, back to front, back bacon, back to the future. Back.

"Back" is also the sound a liver makes when thrown against laminate flooring.

Edinburgh is now but a distant memory. Except for the people that live there, if they exist (which I doubt).

Also, this:

An Idiot Flaps Odyssey - Part 7
Remember that whole thing?

Intro

Part 1

Part 2

Part 3

Part 4

Part 5

Part 6

After a break to allow time for performing, reading comics, and writing a farce set inside a haunted lighthouse (to be filmed in 2013), I'm back on the Shelf Crusade, slaying the Muslims of ignorance in the name of Christ (learning). The offensive overtones of such a comparison are entirely coincidental and if you think otherwise, YOU'RE the racist.

In the gap since Part 6 I have read books by Dara O'Briaiaiaiaian and Stewart Lee, and a bucket-load of comics. (A bucket is the best way to store comics, so you can easily burn them in the event that one of them has endangered the space-time continuum).

Anyway: books.

***

Thomas More - Utopia

The good thing about this one is that I don't need to provide a synopsis. Y'all know about this.

Utopia. A place that is perfect and nowhere.

It was published in 1516, which is officially Ages Ago. Part admirable egalitarianism, part worrying totalitarianism.

The translation is written with modern language, including the use of the terms 'Capitalism' and 'Communism' (which weren't used in that context at the time). I'm not sure I like it - you don't have to spell it out for me. Well, given that the original was in Latin, you probably do.

Reading this confirms my belief that I probably quite like Capitalism, despite its many flaws. A Socialist utopia just can't allow for the emphasis on variety and individuality that I value so much.

Which might put my left wing credentials at risk. Luckily, I don't have any credentials. I gave them away to a charity shop.

Utopia is certainly ahead of its time. Not only in prefiguring Marxist social organisation, but in predicting the invention of the 110m hurdles and the astro-gun. (Not true) More was forward-thinking. More or less.

It's also weird that Utopia preaches ideas of religious tolerance, whereas More was pretty intolerant to heretics himself. I respect writers who can argue a different point of view to their own. Like in The Simpsons where Homer forsakes the church, and they present the religious figures as the noble ones.

I'd like to write an eloquent treatise about something I don't believe in. Maybe a few dozen pages on why Family Guy is really good.

But no. I fear such a thing would be beyond me. I'm no More of Groening. I'm just a mortal.

I wonder if people will be reading this in five hundred years' time - recognising it as an important artefact from Ages Ago.

Probably they will.

But what will the human race be like by then? It will probably involve jumping evenly-spaced obstacles, and will be initiated by a volley from an astro-starter-pistol.

I reckon.