Land of Oz

Da Vinci Code

Yep, I'm going to add to all the free hype of this movie/book. As if Dan Brown could've bought this kind of publicity if he tried. Here's some bits from a recent BBC article:

Its release in India is likely to be delayed after a furore that has seen Islamic clerics in Mumbai (Bombay) back a call by Catholics for a boycott.

South Korea's Christian Council has unsuccessfully tried to ban the film.

And [Buddhist] Thai censors want to cut the last 10 minutes, having been persuaded by critics that they are "blasphemous".

In the UK, leading Catholics also demanded a "health warning"... [about the movie].

I guess I'm one of the few remaining people in the world who hasn't read the book. I did try a couple of times, but just couldn't finish it. And it's not like I'm not a reader - I usually average a couple of novels a week along with a passle of magazines, newspapers, and backs of cereal boxes. I really didn't think it was that good.

However, I was aware that it was fiction. And unlike seemingly every religious person in the world, I happen to know that fiction means "not true." That's why books like the "Outlaw of Gor", "Pieces of Modesty", "The Saint and Mr. Teal", and "Green Eggs and Ham" are all likewise deemed fiction and carried in the fiction section of libraries and book stores. For all that, I'm not going to demand the bible be placed in the fiction section - it does have one or two inconsistencies after all. It can be kept where it is. The same as I don't demand that the Koran, Buddhist sutras or the Mormon's gold paged story be kept in the fiction center. I'm perfectly content that they - unlike "The Da Vinci Code" - are stored in the religion section of the library.

Basically, what this rambling mass of almost unconnected crap means is that I'm really sick and tired of religious people telling me what I can and can't read or see and what I can and can't believe in. The fact that you think your god is losing sleep over what some idiot is reading as opposed to what the world is doing to itself, tells me your god has way too much time on his/her hands.