Oh, it's no good!
Stewart Home once said his Art Strike was "the dumbest idea -ever", but that was (kind of) the point anyway.
I had a few folk asking me to think again, but I tried to stick to my word and not touch this blog again until January 1st 2012.
Then I wondered, is this blind adherence to an abstract principle - even if tongue in cheek and camp as a row of tents - any better than religion? But still I held out. I was hardly twiddling my thumbs either, but while I got on happily enough with other things since January 1st I also watched, with growing horror, what seemed like the total surrender of the local press to a tide of PR bilge - often temperance nazi trash and other pure faith led cretinism.
And to make it worse, it seemed like every last critical voice on the island had taken a more serious New Year resolution than me to just give up asking questions, poking fun....or anything else.
On any given day since January 1st I could have poured scorn at the new folk myths posing as 'news' and 'community action' repeated uncritically and without even a vague attempt at sub-editing or balance through what passes for the Manx media. But I kept cool and instead carried on reading my collections of satirical writings from days before churnalism was invented.
So why change my mind now?
Oh, I don't know. Maybe it was the guilt at knowing that if, say, campaigns against stoning or forced marriages had emergency appeals I couldn't pass that on. Or maybe it was just having to pick up on an event of huge Manx historical importance like
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eMiskrFz-vY from an off-island source, because it hardly got a mention in the local press. They would prefer to run tripe like
http://www.isleofman.com/News/article.aspx?article=34360 instead.
I will write off the Sodor Trust briefly and bluntly. The parent is
http://archbishopofyorkyouthtrust.co.uk/ , whose website is somewhat economical with the truth, as you'd expect from a parasitical outfit whose only raison d'etre is to milk the public purse. Look up England and Wales registered charity number 1129075 to find a little more, but you still won't get far past the public image.
Also spend a little time wondering what faith healing has to do with youth work, and if you cannot work that out see if you can explain why one of the trustees, the Reverend Beatrice Brandon, is not only a faith healer but even manages to run her own charitable trust with the help of senior Anglicans up to and including at least one bishop.
And ask yourself why Anglicans are going in for the newest evangelical scam on the rates -'street pastoring' - and if they plan to do it here. I know of at least one bunch of Manx happy clappies who have been sniffing around the Department of Home Affairs, but I didn't think even the Police Liason Committee were falling for that one, and I know officers policing Douglas's weekend club scene didn't, never mind anyone in the Manx Anglican hierarchy. Maybe innocent clubbers really do have to worry about a new threat to public order - late night scriptural muggers.
And that's just today's news.
OK, I'm going to go halfway on this. I really have too much serious stuff to do elsewhere to get back into this on more than an occasional basis. But maybe the odd item is going to come up I cannot ignore, and the odd Sunday afternoon when I can't resist giggling at it.
The miserable, doomstruck characters of Beckett are not my idea of a role model, but as one of them says somewhere (oh, I can't even be bothered to look up where): "I can't go on....I'll go on"..... or rather, as a real Irish comic creation always says: "......go on, go on, go on, go on, go on, go on......GO ON!!!!!"