--< disarrange >--

thank you BBC...

2007-05-15T11:13:00.000Z

At the risk of sounding a bit sad, I like watching TV. It's the friend that's always there; company for lonely nights and lazy Sunday afternoons (and yes, I am enjoying them while I can). And although I agree that most of what's on offer is garbage, there are just a few televisual nuggets of gold which glint in the mud of the broadcasting bucket.

But what really annoys me is when you invest three months of your life in a new show, delight in its witty dialogue, empathise with its characters, cheer them on when the two leads finally get together and so on, only to discover that, after all that time and emotional energy, this truly great show has been "cancelled". Television is, after all, a business. Yes points do make prizes, but the only points most broadcasters are interested in are those of the viewing figures. Up: good. New season. Down: bad. End of show.

Recently my wife and I have been enjoying a fantastic new American show called Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip, thanks to the rather murky world of BitTorrent. It's the latest offering of Aaron Sorkin, of The West Wing fame, and is a "crackling take on the drama behind the humour of producing a popular, late-night comedy sketch show." Imagine the quality of writing of The West Wing, mix it together with a dose of intelligent humour, religious and political comment, and you have one heck of a show. Unfortunately, it seems that most Americans are too dumb to realise how good it is. As a result of poor viewing figures (only an average 8.5 million viewers per week for the first 16 episodes), and despite numerous award nominations (including a golden globe for best actress in a supporting role - Sarah Paulson - and a nomination for best new series by the Writers Guild of America) the show went the way of Britain's chances in the Eurovision Song Contest.

Why NBC why? Why America why? Now all I have to look forward to is another game of Scrabble with my wife, as the TV slowly gathers dust in the corner. And the next time I hear a BBC trailer that says, "This show was only possible because of the unique way the BBC is funded..." I'll say a quick thank you to the Big Fellow upstairs.

Funniest Simpsons dialogue ever...

2007-05-09T10:30:00.000Z

Homer: Marge? Since I'm not talking to Lisa, would you please ask her to pass me the syrup?
Marge: Dear, please pass your father the syrup, Lisa.
Lisa: Bart, tell Dad I will only pass the syrup if it won't be used on any meat product.
Bart: You dunkin' your sausages in that syrup homeboy?
Homer: Marge, tell Bart I just want to drink a nice glass of syrup like I do every morning.
Marge: Tell him yourself, you're ignoring Lisa, not Bart.
Homer: Bart, thank your mother for pointing that out.
Marge: Homer, you're not not-talking to me and secondly I heard what you said.
Homer: Lisa, tell your mother to get off my case.
Bart: Uhhh, dad, Lisa's the one you're not talking to.
Homer: Bart, go to your room.

poke the bunny...

2007-02-15T12:11:00.000Z

No, that wasn't intended as a euphemism. I really am inviting you to poke the bunny (keep poking):

Poke The Bunny

a little titillation...

2007-01-21T16:03:00.000Z

Male nipples. Why? Just came across a site called "Things Creationists Hate", which has a list of objections to a literal, God-created-the-world-in-six- days-even-though-he-didn't- create-the-sun-and-moon-until- day-four kind of way. Here's a quotation:

"My grandfather, down on the farm, used to have a quaint expression, usually levelled at some lazy individual: as useless as the tits on a boar. Creationists, think hard and send me a carefully reasoned answer explaining why God would create both boars and men (and all other male mammals) with useless nipples (which can even be dangerous - men can get breast cancer). The simple biological-evolutionary answer is that as embryos we are all structurally female first, including proto-breast tissue. Only later in foetal development do the male hormones kick in and modify the feminine genital structures into the masculine. But we men are left with useless breast tissue and nipples, which never get the hormonal signal at puberty to develop into functioning organs. The whole thing seems a messy and cobbled-up system for producing two sexes. Why in Heaven's name would a Designer worth His salt come up with so inefficient a system, with useless (and sometimes dangerous) parts left over?"

All those debates with creationists, and it never occurred to me that I had two rounds of anti-creationist ammunition right within my grasp...

to go boldly...

2007-01-13T18:45:00.001Z

Okay, let's talk sci-fi (but let's do it without splitting infinitives). More specifically, let's talk sci-fi spirituality. Does sci-fi have a spirituality? Most popular forms of sci-fi have an unambiguously humanist slant: when-we-have-the-technology-to-find- god-he-turns-out-just-to-be-an-incredibly- powerful-being-from-a-parallel-universe- type-of-thing, Star Trek being one of the worst offenders. In original Star Trek Spock the scientist is the one with all the answers (a classically Modern view). In the Next Generation the all-knowing one is Deanna Troi, the ship's counsellor (ooh, touchy-feely; a hint of Postmodernity, anyone?). But there are some spiritually challenging examples of sci-fi out there (as bsbrev has recently noted in the past few months), Firefly and the most recent incarnation of Battlestar Galactica being just two.

But if you stray off the path of mainstream sci-fi and enter the nerdy world of hardcore sci-fi writing, there are more than enough authors presenting content challenging and even uplifting for the Christian reader. I came upon just one example today. I'm currently reading Dan Simmons' The Fall of Hyperion (sequel to Hyperion, the two novels deliberately borrowing from Keats’s poems of the same names), and it's excellent, mind-bending stuff. One of the characters sent on a pilgrimage to a desert world to appease a wrathful god-like creature is a scholar called Sol Weintraub. This how Simmons describes Sol's academic work:

"For most of his life and for all of his career, Sol Weintraub the historian-cum-classicist-cum-philosopher had dealt with the ethics of human religious behaviour. Religion and ethics were not always - or even frequently - mutually compatible. The demands of religious absolutism or fundamentalism or rampaging relativism often reflected the worst aspects of contemporary culture or prejudices rather than a system which both man and God could live under with a sense of real justice. Sol's most famous book... dealt with Abraham's hard choice of obeying or disobeying God's direct command for him to sacrifice his son.

Sol had written that primitive times had required primitive obedience, that later generations evolved to the point where parents offered themselves as sacrifice - as in the dark night of the ovens which pocked Old Earth history - and that current generations had to deny any command for sacrifice. Sol had written that whatever form God now took in human consciousness - whether as a mere manifestation of the subconscious in all its revanchist needs or as a more conscious attempt at philosophical and ethical evolution - humankind could no longer agree to offer up sacrifice in God's name. Sacrifice and agreement to sacrifice had written human history in blood.

Yet hours ago, ages ago, Sol Weintraub had handed his only child to a creature of death."

Dan Simmons, The Fall of Hyperion (London: Gollancz, 1990) pp. 506-507

Simmons at no point rules out the existence of God but presents a universe in which the majority have selected a more humanistic form of 'spirituality'. The Church still exists (in the form of Roman Catholicism - hopefully not a comment on the vitality of the Anglican Communion, but then again, he is American...), but faces the challenge of being a dwindling community in a society even more pluralistic than our own. Although the future universe is one of incredible scientific advancement, it faces the same philosophical and theological challenges as our own, the morality of the application of scientific knowledge just one example.

But in the passage quoted above we are presented with a theologically nuanced argument that should challenge our own concepts of God, of the goodness of God, and leads the Christian reader to an interpretation of the Isaac story that I've never considered. Ultimately Sol comes to the conclusion that the reason Abraham agrees to go through with the sacrifice of his son is that the whole episode is as much Abraham testing God as God is testing Abraham:

"By denying the sacrifice at the last moment, by stopping the knife, God had earned the right - in Abraham's eyes and the hearts of his offspring - to become the God of Abraham."

The fact that some sci-fi author makes an unorthodox interpretation of scripture doesn't mean it's right. But the fact that it's a sci-fi author making the interpretation doesn't mean that I won't benefit from considering it, even if I do end up rejecting the conclusion. There's more to be gained from the reading of sci-fi than the loss of a social life (D&D anyone?) or fashion sense (what's wrong with black T-shirts and white trainers anyway?).

Sci-fi is here to stay, and not only do I love it, but it enriches my faith.

blog challenge...

2007-01-12T17:05:00.000Z

Okay, RevMatt, thanks for the hint. Yes, I'm suffering from blogger's block (which is certainly better than diarist's diarrhoea). So I have a proposal:

If a fellow blogger fails to submit a blog for over a week, then he or she shall be open to receive a blog challenge™, whereby the first visitor to visit said blog wishing to do so shall leave a comment entitled "blog challenge" followed by the submission of a subject which the blogger must considerately, thoughtfully and humorously attempt to blog upon within two days, or face a forfeit most horrid, namely a 3-hour session of guided liturgical dance (leotard optional).

That would certainly have got me thinking much quicker. Come on fellow bloggers, what do you think?

flipped my lid...

2006-12-21T20:03:00.000Z

Do you want the good news or the bad news?

Okay, good news: Just bought a new lid, and it's sweet (see pic).

Now for the bad news: Just after I ordered it over the 'net I got a call saying that I'd missed the deadline for delivery by about ten minutes. Now I can't have it until after the New Year.

Ten minutes. Poo! Do you know how long I sat at the computer trying to make up my mind whether I could justify spending so much on protecting my head? Ages! So long that if I halved the time, I'd have made the deadline and still spent ages contemplating my decision.

So now I'm stuck in this now-and-not-yet place of torture: I've paid for it but can't have it. Thinking about it further, my helmet is a bit like Jesus too (see last post), except for the fact that He's free and not a motorcycle helmet...

lord of the flies...

2006-12-15T19:14:00.000Z

I had a very humbling, yet enlightening experience today. While strolling through town, out of the corner of my eye, I saw a very attractive young lady sitting with a laptop in a café window. As I passed she looked up and smiled, briefly catching my eye in a moment somewhere between flirtation and embarrassment (on her part, I hasten to add – I was nothing more than an impartial observer). Nonetheless, the very fact that I had, in my own manly way, brought a smile to a stranger’s lips sent a wave of well-being flooding through my body, and the phrase ‘Ding, dong’ through my mind.

The moment passed; I walked on.

Half an hour of shopping later I was walking back along the same street, passing the same window with the same woman sat at her computer when I thought to myself, ‘Is there a chill in the air? Ah no, it’s just that my flies are undone.’ They were not only undone, they were gaping, like a rift in the fabric of space-time itself.

Then it all fell into place. And I had a great realisation.

That smile was not a smile of flirtation or appreciation of my Herculean physique. No, that darned woman was laughing at my mauve pants. The moment of realisation caused my shoulders to sag, my head to drop, and my flies to be rather quickly done up.

What a fool. What a damn fool.

But then, out of the heavens, I was given a revelation of stupefying enormity. That woman was just like Jesus, except for her gender and divinity, oh, and the lack of facial hair and disciples. Jesus too smiles upon us when we are open and vulnerable. He delights in us despite our mauve pantedness. Yet how often do we, misunderstanding the motivation behind his joy and delight, find in that blessing cause for pride. Brothers and sisters, be not proud, for you too may find a draft in your spiritual private places. Yes, our Lord rejoices over us, but not because of our achievements or stature in this life, but because his grace is sufficient.

What a fool I am, yes. But what a Lord is he!

are you a heretic?

2006-12-15T12:36:00.000Z

Think yourself a good Christian? Then take the test to discover which heresies lie beneath that "sound" facade. I was a little relieved to discover that I'm not a heretic, but am a little too Pelagian for comfort. Never mind, at least I don't have a single streak of Albigensianism in me. No I don't know what it means either.

You scored as Chalcedon compliant. You are Chalcedon compliant. Congratulations, you're not a heretic. You believe that Jesus is truly God and truly man and like us in every respect, apart from sin. Officially approved in 451.

Chalcedon compliant

100%

Pelagianism

67%

Nestorianism

33%

Monophysitism

33%

Docetism

Arianism

Apollanarian

Adoptionist

Donatism

Gnosticism

Monarchianism

Albigensianism

Modalism

Socinianism

let's kill Santa...

2006-12-14T14:53:00.000Z

Have you ever been in a situation where you realised, far too late, that what you were in the process of doing was likely to get you into trouble with either a) the wife, b) the church or c) the authorities? I had an experience like that last Sunday (on this occasion involving option 'b').

I'd been given the job of doing the 'talk' at our church's all age worship service (i.e. that service which miraculously induces boredom in both the adult and youth portion of the congregation at the same time). Having sat through far too many patronising and pointless examples of such talks I thought I'd try to produce something that was directed at the adults, but in a way still accessible to kids.

What I came up with revolved around a mildly amusing poem I found on the 'net a few years ago (apparently by Paul Gilmartin):

Eggnog, tinsel, falling snow
Buttered rum and mistletoe
Christmas trees and hanging lights
The sound of carollers fills the night

Shopping hours long and hard
Visa phones and cancels card
Unpaid bills and mounting debts
Family gathers; depression sets

Drinking starts, harsh words are said
Dysfunction rears its Yuletide head
Argument turns to shovin’
Drunken brother punches cousin

Tree tips over, popping lights
Curtains catch, house ignites
No one hears the reindeer cries
Wedged in chimney, Santa dies

Though he kicked and did perspire
His chestnuts roasted on an open fire

What I hadn't realised while I was preparing was that I was effectively killing off Santa in a church full of children (i.e. there were more than two). Oops. I could hear the parents all gasp as I got to the crunch line. 'Bugger,' they thought. 'Now we've got to try and convince little Sally that the silly man up the front didn't mean it.'

Yes I felt bad. Really bad.

But a couple of days later I heard about a local school's nativity play, which included angels, shepherds, wise men, elves and, of course, Santa. SANTA (which I'm sure you're all too well aware is an anagram of ~~Girls Aloud~~ Satan) in a nativity play? That would be like casting Capt. Mainwaring in Band of Brothers, or a raving heterosexual in Rainbow. Suddenly I didn't feel so bad about killing off Santa. If he's going to try and muscle in on the celebration of the birth of the Son of God™ then, frankly, the gloves are off.

Santa, be afraid, be very afraid. I'm comin' to getcha...

it's all about me...

2006-12-09T18:16:00.000Z

Not everyone appreciates a good blog. As my wife just commented on her first read of my fledgling steps into the world of the big B, "It's very self-indulgent, isn't it." She was only on line three of my first entry...

Needless to say she was not allowed to continue reading. I was going to make a "pearls before swine" comment, but then I'd be calling my wife a pig, which generally isn't considered the done thing. That would also make me a man married to a pig, which reminds me a little too much of a line from the South Park movie (well, at least I'm not Canadian).

But, to be honest, what she had inadvertently done was put into words a tension I had long been feeling in my own soul (well, at least since Thursday). Blogging has at its heart this requirement that you be a bit self-centred. You have to

a) think that something you have to say is of interest to other people when all too often it's just cathartic drivel which should be kept private, and

b) be a self-publicist, telling other people where to find your blog so that they can read your self-pseudo-psycho-analysis of the time you washed up without your significant other saying thank you.

Being a bit of an introvert (yes, I know I make a lot of noise, but inside I'm crying) I don't consider myself to have either of these qualities. I am, therefore, either self-deluded or internally conflicted. In either case my blogs are, therefore, clearly not worth reading.

Please desist immediately.

a blog too far...

2006-12-07T12:25:00.000Z

The second hardest thing about starting a blog is being provocative enough to be worth reading but without going over to the DARK SIDE. The DARK SIDE, in case you're not aware, is characterised by a general similarity to the DEVIL, including horns, redness of face, sulpherous emissions, complaining, expressing views not considered appropriate by the powers that be, or generally making any reference to the fact that life isn't PEACHY at all.

If you recognise any of the obove symptoms, then beware, the second death awaits. But all is not lost. The secret elixir of sumbission will heal all...

But then again, at the risk of ruining the rhetorical force of the above, because blogs are in the public domain they really can have a dark side. There's a fine line between healthy debate and disparagement or obloquy (word of the day), but the world needs people ready to find out where that line is, as long as their intention isn't deliberate mischief-making. In the words of a No Fear slogan:

if you're not living on the edge you're taking up too much room.

the worst thing...

2006-12-06T12:07:00.000Z

The worst thing about starting a blog is trying to find a name for it. What word can I think of that identifies me to those who know me, and yet is unique? What word sets me apart as special, as someone whose random thoughts might be worth reading? The truth is that the words that really do set me apart (over-educated-grumpy-old-git) aren't ones that I particularly want associated with my 'net identity. I want to be thought of as cool, handsome, special (in the good sense of the word; the other sense I already have covered), masculine yet sensitive, godly yet normal, and whatever other binary oppositions you can think of.

The truth is, I'm not special or unique, which is why it took me so long find a title for my blog. I ended up with disarrange ("put into a state of disorder"), because that's how I feel most of the time. I think this is the point where I'm supposed to say something profound, but I am dying for a wee, so for now this will have to do:

Arse.