Noble gases

I heard a good song lately, the album hasn't been released but I have found the song on a Brazilian radio show - it starts at 1:26. A nice summer song. There's a cool 20 minute sufi song which I might listen too after it. I heard it on Damon Albarn's XFM show back in 2005. I was driving home from my friend's house late at night, and I switched on the radio and heard it. A good song. I have no idea what they're talking about, but the music is nice. It reminds me of Christmas. Which I guess it interesting since Christmas is a Christian affair but the song is about Islam. They're both Abrahamic religions, so I guess it's still appropriate. I couldn't care less about the religious aspect of Christmas. I guess that's why I don't really care about getting presents or getting caught up in the season. Christmas normally works out with my family texting each other about what presents each of us want. My mum is kind of religious, but not in a 'in your face' way, more of a 'I was brought up Christian and the thought of death scars me' kind of way. She goes to church most weekends and goes to a bible study group. I sense that she's disappointed that all three of her children are either agnostic or atheists. I guess I'm an atheist, though the word is a bit weird, I'm more apathetic when it comes to religion - it all seems a bit silly, like unicorns and fairies. I was brought up a Christian, and I was sent to Christian camp until the age of 13, and I went to Sunday school etc. I was never particularly interested in it. I remember praying before I went to bed when I was young and that I had trouble grasping how the praying process works - did I have to say (or think) 'amen' after the prayer as a equivalent to 'over and out' on two way radios. It all seemed a bit silly to me. I think I stopped praying when I was 11/12, though I can't be sure. Then I had an existential crisis at 7, when I realised that someday my parents would die and so would I. Christian camp was a funny place. The first few camps were quite a laugh, because we were young and the leaders didn't force God stuff down our throats. But it got a bit weirder in the later years. Once, they got everyone in the main hall, and played us a video of Jesus getting executed in rather gory detail. The nails going in etc. And they played heartfelt music in the background. By the end, you could hear people sobbing, they were saying 'Oh, the suffering, how could they (the Romans) do that? It's awful' etc. I was thinking 'Well, the Romans did that to a lot of people, and they had other methods of execution which were much worse'. We then walked out and everyone went back to their rooms. I was sitting in my room when a leader knocked on the door and asked to speak to me. We sat on the stairs and he asked me how I felt about the video and how I was affected. I told him that I was obviously a bit sad after watching a video of someone getting executed (even though it was Willem Dafoe), but that I didn't really care about religion and that I wasn't ready to become a bible wielding Christian. It didn't help that I considered Jesus' execution a form of suicide, since he recognised that he had to die in order to achieve his goals, and did everything possible to be captured and to infuriate the Jewish council, who would invariably call for his death. I guess that's the whole sacrifice part of it though.

Another funny incident was when they led us into the main hall again and sexually abused all of us in turn, the girls first, then the boys - they played Gary Glitter's My Gang in the background. Hahahaha, that didn't happen. That would have been pretty horrific if it did, and I'd probably blank it from my memory, so perhaps it did? Haha, I'm sure it didn't. What I was going to write was: they led us in the main hall for the evening prayer and since it was one of the last days before we went home, they made it a bit more fancy. They made us stand for a while, and the camp leader said to us 'Now we're going to pray, if you don't want to be here, please don't feel like you have to'. So, everyone is there, standing still, listening to hymns, praying, crying. My brother turned around and shouted 'Screw this' and walked out. I stood still for an instance then followed. When we got outside, I turned around and saw a large number of people also leaving. We had started a walk out. My friend stayed in the hall because that they were giving out wine for people who stayed.

I can't remember if I've written about that before.