Some Samaritan Supplies

I know there are more important things in life to be annoyed about....all this cartoon stuff for example....but I am stuck at the new Samaritans poster. They appeared in the tube stations a few weeks ago. I see one every morning on the way down to the platform at my local station and again on my way up every evening.

It's '70s style colour graphics of rainbows, butterflies, birds and rabits and the slogan reads "if your life isn't like this, give us a call" or something like that. Whose life is like that these days? Or rather whose life has ever been like that unless they were on LSD?

I am undecided between taking it all seriously and calling them to complain that they are making me feel shit about the lack of colour and hallucination (is this how it's spelt?!) in my life and ask for help and taking the piss and calling them to ask if they could deliver the LSD to my address or if I should pick it up from theirs....

But, yes, there are more important things...I am scared of all these goings on about the cartoons. Not because of this particular incident per se but because this is another step in widening the gap between normal Muslims and the rest of the world. Cartoons were wrong: by depicting Mohammed with a bomb for a turban (that's the only one I saw), they made it look as if violence is preached by the religion itself not by some dangerous nutters. I think this was insulting to every Muslim's belief in the teachings of their religion - I don' t mean not drawing the Prophet but the peace, and doing good for others etc. all those messages that should be universal to all religions. Normal Muslims are as much (if not more) targets of extremists and the whole saga is doing more harm to normal Muslims and as we say in Turkey, buttering the bread of the extremists. What's a 'normal' Muslim?....The ones of varying frequency of daily prayer (for my sake at least 'never' included) who would not hit the streets with threatening plackarts, burn buildings and kill people. I think.

God help me...or perhaps I should call the Samaritans for that LSD...you never know.