The Fly: The Opera

David Cronenberg has successfully transposed his 1986 horror movie The Fly into an opera with music by the film's composer, Howard Shore, and a 75-piece orchestra conducted by famed tenor Placido Domingo.

The production received a standing ovation at its opening in Paris Wednesday night, according to published reports. It is due to play for two weeks in Paris before moving on to Los Angeles in September.

What Are Your Chances of Surviving a Zombie Apocalypse?

Go on, click the little picture there and find out.

I came up at 53%, which surprised me. I thought I was better prepared.

George Carlin (1937-2008)

Daft Punk

This may well be the strangest fucking thing I've ever witnessed. Ever.

Iron Maiden

Went to the Iron Maiden show in Melbourne last night, quite a trip. They even dusted off the giant Eddie and brought him along.


Serendipitous, really. This clown was ruining pictures for me all night with his "devil horns", but this time, because of the flames, my flash didn't go off, and this one came out ace.


It should be pointed out that this week marks our 6th wedding anniversary. Since we both took time off from work to make this trip, it seemed unlikely that we'd be able to do anything to celebrate on the actual day apart from the requisite "nice meal" somewhere, but neither of us is into anything so traditional. We decided to look at this concert as a gift to each other.

Now just out of curiosity, I decided to look up what the 6th anniversary is. You know; paper, cotton, gold, etc. Turns out the 6th year anniversary is Iron.

Iron.

Could that have worked out any more perfectly?

I know you are, but what am I?

Got into an argument today with Nikki's uncle. He's trying to tell me I'm not an atheist.

First let me say that I'm not ashamed or embarrassed or anything like that, but I tend not to advertise the fact. Largely because it elicits gasps of horrified disbelief, or it leads to incidents such as the one today. I've even lifted the term "radical atheist" from Douglas Adams, which he used "to signal that I really mean it, have thought about it a great deal, and that it's an opinion I hold seriously."

So we're together with Nikki's family for Christmas (I can hear you already: "What's the atheist doing celebrating Christmas?" Well, I wasn't celebrating Christmas, alright? We just get together with the family then because that's the time they choose to gather together from their various corners of Victoria), and the conversation turns, as it is wont to do on this day, to religion.

I can't even remember how it came about. Something about the South Park episode where Family Guy was going to show a picture of Muhammad. This reminded Les, Nik's Uncle, of that "Piss Christ" photograph and how it offended him. My argument was, of course, on the side of freedom of speech: If Andres Serrano wants to plunk a crucifix in a cup of his own urine and photograph it for artistic self-expression, that's one thing. Even if I don't like it, I support his right to do it. However, if he's doing it specifically to get a rise out of people and anger the church, that's another story, and it annoys me even though I'm an atheist.

"Ah, but I don't think you are," says Les.

How do you come back to that? I'm trying to imagine someone saying "I don't think you are Catholic/Muslim/Jewish" or what have you. I was thrown.

"No, I'm an atheist."

"I think you're not."

Now Les is the guy, I've learned, who will argue for the sake of argument. He may agree with you completely, but he will test you because it's fun for him. So you've got to really have your argument worked out. I reckoned I had him simply on etymology alone.

"Les: Polytheists believe in many gods, monotheists believe in one god, atheists believe in no god. I don't believe in god, therefore..."

Not a lot of wiggle room there, but Les comes back with "But where does your moral structure come from?" And he says it with a smile, like the guy, you know, you're playing Connect Four or something and he's just seen that he can win three ways with one move.

Of course by "moral structure" he's talking about you shall not kill, you shall not steal, you shall not covet they neighbour's wife, that sort of thing. But it's long been my argument that the Ten Commandments need not have come from God; they're just kind of logical rules for a civilised society, yeah?

Les is having none of this. Because I haven't killed anyone, apparently I must believe in God. Couldn't possibly be because I know it's wrong.

I had to finally admit that, yes, being brought up in a kind of passive religious household (God exists because that's what we were told, not because we believe), my morals were grounded in religion. But that did not mean that when I found atheism (is that how you say that?), that I suddenly went, "Great, now I can go out and kill and steal and covet!"

"Look, you're confusing morality with religion," I said. "Morality can exist without religion, just as religion - as it's proven so many times throughout the centuries - can exist without morality."

Oooh, that didn't go over very well. But he didn't have a comeback.

Maiden Tix

Woke up today at ten past nine and started ringing Ticketek for the Maiden tickets. Took twenty-five minutes to finally get through, meanwhile I'm on their website being told I couldn't get two tickets together. What the...?

So at 9:35 I finally got through to Ticketek and was told that all tickets were sold out.

Crushed.

But keep watching the website because they may decide to add another show.

I'm thinking later in the week, something. No.

At 10:00 tickets went on sale for a second show. I had Nikki on the phone, hitting redial, while I tried to get through on the website.

Result!

So on Thursday 7 Feb, we're off to Melbourne again to see Iron Maiden. First time in... nineteen years? That can't be right. Somewhere In Time tour... twenty-one years! That's even worse...