My back hurts. I was doing crunches yesterday morning. As I did them I was thinking - 'how do you do situps again? I forget'. So I did a sit up in the middle of my crunches. Not smart. Then a few minutes later I went to lift the laundry basket, and that was the straw that broke the catpewk's back. Or at least completed the muscle-pulling process. So I spent most of the day walking around with my head hunched forward and my groin sticking out like a dirty old man. Instead of a dirty middle-aged man, which is my usual demeanour.

I would have stayed home today but I have a meeting I need to be in. When R. came home last night, she rubbed some icy hot on my back, and that helped. Then again at bed time. Icy Hot is a bit like Deep Heat. I don't think you can buy Icy Hot in the U.K., maybe I'm wrong.

What's the deal with that stuff, anyway? Is it actually causing a chemical reaction and producing heat, or is it just tricking your nerve endings into thinking heat is being produced? It feels pretty friggin hot when you're laying in bed with nothing to think about except the flesh peeling off of your back.

I am curious. Is anyone going to see Mel Gibson's Passion movie? I am in a quandary over it. I'd like to see it, because I usually like the stuff that Mel directs, and also I'd like to hear how Aramaic really sounded. On the other hand, he is portraying it as a true story because the new testament chapters that its based on are said by the church to be true.

Which they're not.

Or at least, bits of them are, bits of them are just made up, and other bits have been stolen from earlier sources.

The Nativity scene for instance reads suspiciously like the birth of Buddha 500 years earlier. The dying and being reborn after three days is the death of Osiris (who's "birthday" also happens to be December 25th). The Lord's prayer is an adaption from a prayer in the Egyptian Book of the Dead. There is more, but the basic thrust of this is that whomever Jesus was (or wasn't) there can be no doubt that starting in 320 AD with the Nicean conference, his exploits were 'adapted' by the Church's spin doctors, to provide a doctrine of belief that put the church in control. Anything that went against that doctrine was labelled as heretical and destroyed. Some documents, not many, made it out of that time. The Nag Hammadi for instance, buried circa 400 AD and only discovered this century is well worth a read if you get a chance. It's on the web. Go look it up.

Alright, I guess its time I got this day started. Have a wibblingly delicious Friday.