It’s an odd thing isn’t it

So, the weekend was nice. We spent some time at the allotment, took the boy swimming Sunday, and for the first time, he went down the water slide by himself. He was very proud of himself. And yesterday we went out to Lechlade and took a trip on the river boat, which was fun.

Today is a bad day because I have to do all the end of month stuff at work, but I don’t want to talk about that. It’s a good day too, because the final season of Dexter has begun, and it stars Charlotte Rampling, and she can do no wrong! I saw the first episode today and I’m already excited.

A couple of things in the news caught my eye today. Apparently a group of feminists has entered a mosque in Sweden wearing burkas, and then bared their breasts. Chaos apparently ensued and a great time was had by all. The stunt was a protest by the now famous femen group against Muslim oppression of women. The ring leader was Aliaa Elmahdy, an Egyptian activist, now living in Sweden, who shot to fame fairly recently by posting naked pictures of herself on a blog. That is also apparently why she was forced to leave her native Egypt.

It’s an odd thing isn’t it, religious fanatics trying to regulate what people can do with their own bodies.

And on the subject of religious fanatics, the Westboro Baptist Church lunatics have announced yet another offensive strategy. Just when you thought they couldn’t get any weirder, they’ve now decided that the boy band One Direction, are “crotch-grabbing little perverts” and have announced that they will be picketing concerts.

It’s an odd thing isn’t it, religious fanatics trying to regulate what people can do with their own bodies.

As an aside here, the WBC are so offensive that frankly I personally would be overjoyed if I had upset them enough to picket anything of mine. It makes me wonder what they actually hope to achieve. It doesn’t seem very likely for instance that fans who have gone to see One Direction in concert are likely to listen to a church that stands outside the concert venue vomiting vitriol about their idols. One might even suggest that it could have just the opposite effect.

The church has a history of wildly offensive picketing of soldiers’ funerals, theatre productions with gay themes, and other events. They were banned from UK in 2009, which they appear to have taken personally I’m pleased to say. They also seem to have decided that Taylor Swift is a “whore”, and have scheduled a picket of her concerts in August.