The Adventures of Dysfunctional Dan

I’ve had to tear myself away from watching Marvel’s  Daredevil  series to write this, which is not an easy thing to do given the quality of it. But I promised to blog at least once a week and so I really must get on and right something. Today I am discussing being an atheist because it’s a subject I have meant to tackle on this blog for some time and haven’t yet. Apparently this is the symbol for atheism. I was amused by how much it resembles the Starfleet Insignia from  Star Trek Firstly, I feel I should first say that I fully respect religion. It’s great if you believe in something and I don’t think any less of people that do. I am not so keen when people try and drag me into their beliefs and dislike it when a religion says some people are not equal, like homosexuals or women, but on the whole I am happy for people to believe whatever they believe. I think there are some common misconceptions about atheists. One is perhaps that they hate religion. Perhaps in...

The nightmares are back. I used to have them as a child but all of a sudden they have returned. They always come deep in the night, late enough for there to be total silence in our little suburb but not early enough to be comforted by the rosy fingers of dawn. Sometimes it’s just an anxiety from the real world, my boss summoning me to her office to tell me how bad I am at my job or something similar. Other times it’s a proper gruesome death, like the many poisoned spears of an indigenous tribe piercing right into my chest. Or sometimes it’s just plain surreal, a figure with a plastic marionette face lurking outside an abandoned train carriage. I don’t really know why my brain is doing this to me. It tricks itself, promising each night that there will be more terrible dreams and then not delivering on its promise. It gives itself a false sense of security. And when it least expects, it conjures up another horror and I find myself waking up in great fear or anxiety. As a child, they...