Here’s one for you: what would a woo-free winter festival look like? If we take out all that mythology involving assorted supernatural happenings, what are we left with?

For starters, we get to keep the tree and the yule log. Winter feasting is deffo a keeper. You can stuff your turkey (arf)  but the rest of it is great, even the sprouts. Goose would work, a crispy something of pork maybe or some Bambi. Just something with leftovers.

I can leave the mass-TV but a good fillum uring digestion is good. A familial forced march in the locale as a morale boost before returning to attack, well, anything else really.

Presents are good, but please, just little trinkets hand-made by starving artisans. Especially photographers.

Me, I’m pissing off and spending three weeks with some Taiwanese Buddhists.

But for you, what’s a keeper for your myth-free Winterval?

If you’re a geek, you know the story. Mandelson goes on holiday with the Geffen of the record companies, comes back and proposes a law that would let him personally, on the fly, make up laws, fine people and put them in jail. Without trial. This has become the Digital Economy Bill. It actually does fuck all for those of us who work in this economy.

If you care anything about your freedoms, sign the petition.

Charlie Stross rants on his blog and boingboing have a good stab too.

SIGN THE PETITION.

Update: Those nasty people at the EU say no. Gotta have judicial process.

Given my last two cocks have been about the Catholics, this one is too good not to share. Stephen Fry and Peter Hitchens took on Doris Karloff and some Nigerian cock-hat, archbishop too busy maybe, in a debate.

Just read it in all its glory.

The standout paragraph for me though and one, if I could be arsed, to memorise is the litany of the Catholic churches evils:

The Crusades, the Inquisition, anti-semitism, treatment of women, missionaries (especially the knock-on wiping out of native American populations), slavery, the treatment of Gallileo, child abuse, collusion with the Nazis, collusion with Mussolini, collusion with the Croatian Ustasi, collusion with Franco, the sale of indulgences, the treatment of homosexuals, and, of course, the policy on the use of condoms and their “inability” to prevent the spread of HIV.

In the end, 268 voted for and 1,876 against from a starting point of 678 people for the motion (Catholic Church is a force for good) and 1,102 against it.

Utterly indefensible. Catholics: time to overthrow your masters.

Love that strapline. Shame it can exist though.

With the pope coming to the UK, it’s worth reminding ourselves of the organisation he represents.

Recently, the vatican was forced to respond to accusations of its pathetic response to the child abuse that has been endemic in the church. The gist of the rebuttal is:

• Jewish synagogues have worse record and, oh
• The assaults were by homosexuals not pedophiles

Well, that’s all right then. Some good links in that NSS story if you care to follow them including a Catholic leader writer in the Telegraph missing the point by a long way and having apoplexy along the way.

The New Humanist adds that the Vatican says: “somewhere between 1.5% and 5% of the Catholic clergy has been involved in sexual abuse cases”.

What. The. Fuck.

And that’s only the cases! Unreported incidents would push this number up, surely.

Tanya Gold in the Guardian adds a little African AIDS holcaust into the mix.

The pope and all he stands for is a load of cock.

It seems Ms. Allen is aghast with the Featured Artists Coalition, who had the nerve to speak up against the GovernmentHis Cuntness Mandelson’s plan to kick illegal file sharers off the nets, judging by her latest blog entry.

Lily has two main lines of argument: FAC is made up of “some really rich and successful artists” who “sell out arena tours and have the biggest Ferrari collections in the world”, so they can afford file sharing, and that if this state of affairs goes on, “British music will be nothing but puppets paid for by Simon Cowell”. She hammers on these quite a bit.

Well, first of all, there are a lot of people in FAC I’ve never even heard of, complete unknowns. Perhaps she only looked at the photo on the Times article and didn’t actually bother to check out their website. Being a cynical bastard, I’m inclined to think she’s just trying to manipulate people, by hiding that fact. Readers of The Cockbucket might be familiar with this technique, it’s cherry picking, pure and simple.

Second, let me bring you up to speed, Lily: British music is already nothing but puppets paid for by Simon Cowell. Have you looked at a chart in the past, oh, 30 years? Most of the independent artists have a snowball’s chance in hell of getting into the limelight, and if it wasn’t for file sharing they would probably reach a total of 3 people outside their families, not that you’d care about that, because obviously you’re the British music’s Florence Fucking Nightingale.

In the last part of that article our Lily opens her heart to us, and tells of her distress to pay the huge debt she had to her record company. I almost wept. Well, dear, perhaps you should’ve read Steve Albini or Courtney Love before signing up with the cunts, right? Or did anyone point a gun to your head and force you to sign? Or could it be that the parties with the A-Listers were more important to you than “the British music”? Not that there’s anything wrong with that, if I could I’d do nothing but snort coke off of £400 hookers’ tits, but if you chose to get in bed with the fat cats, then DON’T WHINE ABOUT IT, YOU FUCKING SPOILED BRAT.

After all her laments, she fails to mention whether she thinks it’s ok to cut someone off the Internet because they do illegal file sharing, which is the main point of the FAC/BASCA/MPG press release that she was initially very upset about. I guess you don’t actually have the cojones, do you, Lily? When you grow a pair and answer that in no uncertain terms, I’d also like to hear your view on copyright extension, I must’ve missed it at the time.

See also The Death of Oink, the Birth of Dissent, and a Brief History of Record Industry Suicide.

This was a guest Cockbucket brought to you by someone with more passion about music than I could ever summon, Spotify premium account notwithstanding.

“Creation, starring Briton Paul Bettany, details the naturalist’s “struggle between faith and reason” as he wrote On the Origin of Species.”

Apparently:

Movieguide.org, an influential site that reviews films from a Christian perspective, described Darwin as the father of eugenics and denounced him as “a racist, a bigot and an 1800s naturalist whose legacy is mass murder”. His “half-baked theory” influenced Adolf Hitler and led to “atrocities, crimes against humanity, cloning and genetic engineering”, the site stated.

Well that’s all right then.

I wouldn’t go quite as far in adding “global warming” to what the pope says like the NSS do, but still. For a church that’s done its fair share of planet raping in the past, is stitting on top of a fuckload of gold and is denying condoms to AIDS-ravaged Africa, I’d say it’s a bit rich.

Cock.

Interesting question: why do Chinese restaurants have secret menus in Chinese?

Like the article says, if any other ethnicity did this, they’d be staring at a lawsuit; in America at least. And in this day an age, many gweilo love the pukka stuff. Mmmm…chicken feet and crispy intestine.

I’m not that fussed. I usually carry a portable Taiwanese with me anyhow.

I’m finding it hard to get worked up about things recently. There’s a lot going on too. Off the top of my head I can think of:

• The Chinese shooting their own people in Xinjiang
• Ireland’s unutterably stupid new blasphemy law
• A fat white kid had his camera searched under the pretext of “terror laws”. Probable cause, what?

And I’m sure, much, much more.

I need something really bilious to get my teeth into. HALP! Send me your cock please!

This must be some kind of accident. The Daily Maik, usually dividing things into those which give us or cure cancer appear to have allowed a well-written article slip through the net. to To wit:

“Back ‘cures’, a brave scientist and an epic court battle: How Britain’s libel laws are threatening free speech”

My bullshit rader is pinging noisily. What’s the Fail’s agenda here? A nice bit of libertarian free speech? Singh is a foreign name but I suppose he’s one of those nice educated tax-paying ones. No, wait! Libel tourism!

As a result, an increasing number of foreigners have succeeded in using the English courts to launch defamation cases, even if they  -  or their claims  -  have little to do with this country.

Ah, furriners indeed. And oddly no comments. Weird. Also, check out the author’s other writings. A nice bunch of Sangatte and raping by foriegners. At least she seems to have slipped near sanity this time.