Christmas 2011

What a mental Christmas break this year.

We all came up to Richmond on the 18th Dec from Derbyshire, and moved into the guest room at my parents' house. Me and Dad went to see my grandad, who is now in a nursing home and is very frail indeed. I was honestly scared to see him because he was always my favourite grandparent and to see him in a deteriorated state would be too upsetting, but he was surprisingly himself. He was very shrunken, and his responses were slower and sleepier, but that was definitely my Grandad, he was still totally himself and totally there. It was a bittersweet experience but I am glad we visited him.

Christmas Eve was an emotional rollercoaster ride; mid afternoon I was on the verge of a full-blown anxiety attack because for 6 days I had been unable to escape continual noise (house full of family), excessive heat (everyone else likes it toasty), and clutter and mess (a 2-person house is now holding 5 and one of them is a toddler). For someone who gets an enormous sense of wellbeing from a tidy, quiet and cool room, 6 days of wreckage, noise and sweltering temperature was taking its toll.

We then went to a local church (which shall remain nameless) for a Christmas Eve service, which was literally the dullest thing I have attended in my entire life. There were about 15 over 60's in attendance, and one family, and the service was 1 carol followed by a long meandering story which could be permanently filed away under the 'dreary' category. Joel went home with his grandparents, and me and Sydney went out to meet up with a bunch of friends in the Black Lion pub, where I caught up with about a dozen old school friends, some who I hadn't seen in over 10 years! It was a great time, and well worth enduring the church service for. Later we bought and ate a kebab, and made our way home. Then at 5 in the morning, delirious with tiredness me and Sydney lapsed into unstoppable, uncontrollable giggling because she said out of nowhere 'what about team sleepy?' with wide puppy-dog eyes. You had to be there for that one I think. Married couple in-joke. But wow. I laughed hard. For a long time.

Christmas morning came, and I made Christmas dinner again this year. Turkey, ham, stuffing, roast potatoes, roast parsnips, fresh vegetables, rissoles, gravy and cranberry sauce. Definitely a success on the cooking front this year - I reccommend (of all the bizarre things) using goose fat to make your roast taters and parsnips. 'Tis righteous. We opened our presents and then at 3 watched the Queens speech. She kinda preached this year, she acknowledged how much suffering the world is enduring at the moment, and then basically pointed to Jesus as the answer. The experience of sitting there hearing her say those words, and knowing that probably almost every other TV in the country was tuned in and hearing the same thing was a deeply spiritual experience. I know my faith is all topsy turvy and being worked out again from scratch at the moment, but hearing Queen Elizabeth say those things to millions of people brought tears to my eyes, it was inexplicably beautiful.

The last 2 days have contained a bigger range of emotions for me than a year usually does. Pretty wild.

Well, anyhoo, here is the rundown of this year's present haul.

An Xbox 360! (my mate Jono gave me this because my old one broke and he had a spare. Awesomeness!)
Skyrim (I expect to be posessed by this game for the next 6 months ala Oblivion GOTY version)
Michael Buble's new Christmas album! (I will also be pointing and winking at people while saying 'bada-bing')
Harry Potter 7 part 2 DVD (expelliarmus)
Avatar DVD (blue meanies)
A notebook (good for writing in)
Some hair wax type product (good for frying an egg in)
Shower gel (good for making me smell like man)
Gourmet choccys (good for making me fatter than I already am)
and generic Boots anti-perspirant (good for informing me I smell a little too much like man on occasions)

Berry Crimpmas Everyone!

Why Wikipedia Is Awful/Awesome

I printscreen captured this from wikipedia. Observe the accurate lyrics (click the pic to enlarge).

Are You A Pillar Of The British Empire?

You are a pillar of the British Empire if you have a huge bushy moustache, and wear tweed jackets.

You are a pillar of the British Empire if you smoke a pipe and reminisce about being stationed in Africa.

You are a pillar of the British Empire if you use the word 'droll' instead of 'funny'

You are a pillar of the British Empire if you drank so much rum with the brigadier during the war that your nose glows like a reindeer.

You are a pillar of the British Empire if you describe your opponents as cads, bounders, and beastly rotters.

You are a pillar of the British Empire if you demand some figgy pudding.

You are a pillar of the British Empire if you regularly shout the word 'BALDERDASH'

You are a pillar of the British Empire if you  have ever leaned over to a complete stranger and said 'boi-oi-oi-oi-oing', raising your eyebrows suggestively.

You are a pillar of the British Empire if you have ever bellowed 'Wife! Stoke the fire!'

You are a pillar of the British Empire if you have an outdated racist term for everyone outside of your English county.

You are a pillar of the British Empire if you refer to America as 'the colonies'.

You are a pillar of the British Empire if you consider trapping needlessly respectful younger people into listening to long rambling semi-incomprehensible monologues for hours at a time 'a corking good night out'.

You are a pillar of the British Empire if you think they should bring back flogging.

You are a pillar of the British Empire if you say things like 'my teacher used to beat me with the cane every twenty seconds until I was 50, and it never did me any harm'.

You are a pillar of the British Empire if you think that young people listening to their crazy jazz records will inevitably lead to widespread drunkeness and the general collapse of civilised society.

You are a pillar of the British Empire if you will only drink a cup of tea if it has been placed before you in a position which compliments the symmetry of the table.

You are a pillar of the British Empire if you regularly use the phrase 'I dare say' more than eight times in any given sentence.

You are a pillar of the British Empire if you have ever referred to the Prime Minister as an imbecile.

You are a pillar of the British Empire if you went to public school.

You are a pillar of the British Empire if you look like a morbidly obese pig forced into a five-sizes-too-small tuxedo when you go out to eat.

You are a pillar of the British Empire if you determine your bank manager's worth solely by how pompously he pronounces your name.

You are a pillar of the British Empire if you equate the word 'common' with 'bad'.

You are a pillar of the British Empire if you wear a bow-tie to work.

You are a pillar of the British Empire if it is your fondest philanthropic hope to one day civilise savages.

You are a pillar of the British Empire if you tell your children 'the Queen Mother wouldn't do that'.

You are a pillar of the British Empire if you get all hot, flustered, red in the face, stammering and awkward in the presence of an attractive younger member of the opposite sex.

You are a pillar of the British Empire if someone who beat you at a game definitely cheated.

You are a pillar of the British Empire if you wear a white judges wig to Tescos.

You are a pillar of the British Empire if you think poor people chose to be that way, and should be punished for making such an ill-advised decision.

You are a pillar of the British Empire if you fart loudly at the dinner table, don't apologise, and glare menacingly at everyone else as if daring them to mention it.

You are a pillar of the British Empire if you describe working class people as 'the criminal class'.

You are a pillar of the British Empire if you refer to the opposite sex of any age as 'strumpet'.

You are a pillar of the British Empire if you have piles.

When Apple Releases A Mac Game Console...

Apple are rapidly overtaking Microsoft in having a finger in every pie, but their games console is strikingly conspicuous by it's absence. The world runs on money, and there is no question of the money to be made in this arena, so it's not a question of whether they will release one, it's just a question of when. When they release something new, they tend to only be willing to venture into new ground if their release will blow everything else out of the water, so I think it is not too far a stretch to assume that when the MacBox 360 is released, it will be something immersive on a scale not seen before.

Total immersion MMORPGs are probably going to be their direction: you know, like a wii crossed with World of Warcraft on crack. Virtual Reality contact lenses, wired gloves, socks and other attachments, supernatural video game powers you dont just see on a screen, but experience and feel in real life. The sensation of blasting lightning from your fingertips or feeling the force actually flow through you in a Star Wars game, dizziness and vertigo as you fly through suspended islands on a dinosaur in Avatar, learning and perfecting your 'expelliarmus' in a Potter game, or being a hobbit / elf / ranger in Middle Earth and actually interacting with millions of other people all over the world in realtime. It won't just be fantasy sci-fi geeky stuff either; imagine Grand Theft Auto, or Medal of Honor! Imagine going to the movies and seeing an incredible film, and knowing that for £30 you can get the game from Tesco and actually explore and experience the world you just saw, with it's smells, smells, textures, tastes, people, customs and quests. People will not leave cinemas wishing they could live in the world they just saw, the films will serve to sell them that world, and they will go to Tesco and buy it. Incredible genius.

The thought of combining the determination of Apple to out-do every competitor, with the level of sophistication now available in the games console world, leaves me wondering how long it will be until they suddenly push the whole market ten years forward from the Wii and Kinect, and provide something which many gamers will retreat inside, rendering the real world their actual 'second life'.

Exciting and terrifying times!

The New Comedy... Parks and Recreation and The Office are not funny anymore

Anyone who has regularly followed the American version of The Office, will remember how in the second and third seasons the script drew you in and told the whole story just with glances, micro-expressions and an implicit understanding, and how totally unique that made the show. You had a banal story on the surface about something like a girl coming into the office selling handbags, while the real story in every episode was found by reading between the lines of the dialogue, catching the tiniest inflections in a character's voice, or noticing a brief moment of unspoken pain on the face of Jim. It connected with its watchers by relating to the social undercurrents we all experience everyday, and drawing us into an underdog love story without words. No other show did that, and the hilarious, tragic empathy the watcher felt with the characters back then in the invisible storyline was what made the show great and impossible to stop watching.

By Season 5 things were going downhill coherent-plot-wise, Steve Carrell left in season 7, and the current season 8 is just not great. The writers appear to have lost sight of that magic which made seasons 2 and 3 so brilliant, and lost the thread of an underground unspoken narrative, instead just constantly rambling down dead-end red-herring directions which either end abruptly or peter out into nothing. The show used to have a unique selling-point in making the main stories of the episodes meaningless everyday office busywork and the underlying implied narrative a consistent thread throughout a season. It has now reversed somewhat, and instead contains no secret script, has a very random 'going nowhere' storyline on the surface, and abandons interesting storyline ideas everytime it wanders more than 5 minutes in their direction. The show has now come to reflect the dull and random nature of everyday life with it's lack of meaning or overarching narrative, and we all have everyday lives, and so why would we want to watch more of the same? The pleasure at the heart of watching a show ultimately boils down to enjoying good storytelling - its the modern day equivalent of sitting round the campfire as an elder in the village talks about an ancient myth - it is supposed to be unreal, exciting and unexpected! If he told a long rambling tale about hunting for deer, not getting any, coming home and having a fight with his family, putting wood on the village fire, then going to bed, I expect he'd have no audience left by the end. That's what's happening with the Office.

Greg Daniels and Michael Schur from the Office writing team have also started Parks & Recreation, another awesome show which seems much more 'in its prime', but is starting to show some of the same symptoms on a smaller scale. People enjoy a clever plot! Stop randomly developing genuinely really good ideas which are just never ever picked up again. What happened to the Scranton Strangler? That plot idea could have been awesome, but it just dissolved and was never seen again. Who cares whether or not that would happen in real life? If a show becomes social observation/commentary with a side of humour and plot, people won't fall in love with the story line or characters, but if a show doesn't get too pretentious and manages to be fun and interesting, there is no limit to the social comment which can be made when plot and humour come first, and commentary second.

Hark! The Herald Angels Sing, Rock Version, Featuring Cliff Students!

On the 26-27th October 2011, I recorded this version of the famous Christmas Carol 'Hark The Herald Angels Sing', with me playing all the instruments. I then mixed it down to mp3, and on the 28th Oct 2011, myself and a bunch of the students here at Bible College with me all worked together and made this video! Which is now on youtube, and is also terribly agreeable.

Family Before Ministry

I have made a decision.
As we review 2000 years of Christian History, there is a continual theme which I have seen emerging amongst the men who changed the face of the world through missionary work, through their outstanding leadership, through their vision, passion, and ruthless unstoppable commitment to furthering their cause... Total, real, stupidity with women and with their families.

Martin Luther, began the Protestant reformation, but approved bigamy

John Wesley, spearheaded the greatest English revival of Christian faith in all of history, but sabotaged his brother Charles' marriage which resulted in an unhappy marriage to another woman, and John himself also married badly, and his marriage collapsed after a few years.

William Carey, moved to India to establish missionary outposts, plant churches and translate the Bible. He took his family with him, uprooting them from middle class Britain, and relocating to an Indian tribal jungle. His wife lost her mind completely, and he was totally neglectful of his children, who grew up wild and rebellious.

Karl Barth became the foundational theologian of modern baptist theology, but spent the majority of his working life with his much younger female secretary actually living in the same house with him, his wife and his family, much to the personal hurt of his own wife.

My personal reading and understanding of the Bible and the New Testament texts tells me that as a Christian and a husband, my first, primary, overriding, top commitment in serving God, is faithfulness and service to my wife and family. On those grounds, I will not undertake any missionary activity which uproots and damages my family. They will come first, missionary activity comes second.

Some might argue that we as Christians are called first to serve God, and our families second, but I would counter that the Bible is clear that supporting and protecting your own family is much more important and foundational to a life lived in commitment to my religion, than going to an alien culture and evangelising there. I would argue that by putting my family first, I am actually putting God first, and remember that the New Testament describes anyone who does not take care of their family as 'worse than an unbeliever'. So from a certain perspective, the rejection of your family is worse than rejecting God!

The questions and implications are huge. Would I rather; transform the country, see thousands of people come to faith in Jesus, inspire a revolution, or; take care of my family and live a quiet normal life?
My answer is simply that I can not pursue the former if it ever threatens the latter. I would rather take care of my own and not spark any revolution at all, than transform the world and have my family fall apart. I know that goes against the grain of radical Christian missionary passion, but I don't care. I'll do a smaller, less noticeable revolution - rejecting all the Christian Superstar Mega Hero stuff, saying 'thats not for me', remaining happy to not be a 'story of encouragement' from a pulpit in the future, if it means I have to mis-treat, mis-manage, or neglect my family and their needs. I would choose their financial, social and emotional stability and security ever time, over and above the passionate desire for 'souls'. That desire has a place, but that place is at all times, under my family.

Band Names

Me and my mates Su-Ling, Sterling and Swiss Simon have a band, but we haven't got a name yet. Here are some of the suggestions that made the shortlist...

Songbird
Awkward Noodle
Flooky Blooke Kookaburra From Wagga Wagga, Bruce.
Canary In A Cage
Flaming Songbird Of Death
Post-It Poets
Secret Serenades
Ebenezer and the Funky Clam
Galloping Senility
Big Pimpin' and The Hose
Pimp Stick
Blitzkreig Songbird
Electric Banana
Songbird Negotiation
Angel Armada
Songbird Cave
Cuckoo in a Blender
Aggressive Llama
Stoning Songbirds
Calypso Poltergeist
Songbirds and Tsunamis
Songbirds and Cyanide
Songbirds and Stamps
Songbirds and Samaurais
Songbirds and Soundwaves
Songbirds and Sillhouettes
Songbirds and Shadows

In the end we went with the considerably less imaginitive (but potentially less insane) 'Blackbird'. I like it.

Feminism

One of the classes I am taking in my 2nd year is Theology In The Contemporary World. One of the subjects we are studying is Feminist Theology, and this is also the subject on which I will hopefully be writing my dissertation in the third year.

I am now halfway through 'Controversies in Feminist Theology', one of the book review options which I chose, and wow, my mind is blown with the stupidity of the authors. Now obviously they are not academically stupid, but quite possibly in a similar way to the rocket scientist who cannot tie his own shoelaces. As I study and read more and more on the subject of Christian Feminism and Feminist Theology, I find I am becoming more and more anti-feminist. Some of my female friends on the course with me react to fundamental feminism with the same revulsion as many of the guys - hardcore feminism has strangely enough become the opposite equivalent of Male Chauvinism. The majority of women I know and have talked to about this stuff seem to cringe at it in the same way moderate, peaceful Muslims cringe when they hear about the latest fundamentalist nutter on the news.

Now before I go off on too much of a rant, I should make a quick distinction here; there are feminists and there are feminists. There are some feminists (sometimes called first wave and second wave) who are for equality. They are for equal rights, voting, opportunities and privileges equal to males, and if you're that kind of feminist, then so am I - equality all the way baby. However, there is also another breed of Feminist, a strange 'third wave', or 'post-feminist', who have come out with a set of troubling, non-sensical and (frankly) laughable statements concerning gender issues. Everything seems to come from the assumed position that all the world is dominated by oppressive, evil men, who intentionally keep women down, and have imprinted their poisonous opinions and perspective on everything, so that feminists become a small pocket of freedom-fighters trying to pursue liberty in a world full of monsters and bogey-men who make the world operate by such wicked tools as 'logic', 'reason', and 'objectivity'.

Crazy Statement 1 - 'Gender is a social construct'. One of the things that bowls me over about 3rd wave post-fem is this strange belief undergirding everything, that gender labels are obsolete, that they reflect only our bodies and not the inner-person, and that they are simply caused and perpetuated by society and culture. How then have different roles and behaviours become recognised between the sexes all throughout the different global cultures, all throughout history?
If gender is just an illusion, why then are human beings the only animals of which this is true? The other mammals we are aware of have no such 'social-conditioning', and yet their genders behave in different and distinctive ways from one another? You tell those swans to stop being slaves of their social conditioning. The lions of Africa are such a bunch of mindless sell-outs. The polar bears have such a sexist patristic male-dominated society - it's high time they broke free and became indistinct androgenous blobs.
Why do so many psychologists and sociologists point to the differences in our genders as being foundational to our personalities and our beings?
And how the hell can you say that there is no gender, and then base everything you do and say on the promotion of a specific gender??? It makes no objective sense at all. Which leads me nicely into the next point...


Crazy Statement 2 - 'The objective analytical reading of the Bible is a male reading and therefore sexist.' The argument that men use their minds and women use their bodies to understand Scripture is another one that has cropped up frequently. Surely we are meant to use our minds to understand, because that is the function of that organ. Even 'using the body to subjectively understand' is actually using the mind, because all those signals are sent through nerves to the mind. And to suggest that logic and objectivity are primarily male is an astoundingly sexist statement. I know plenty of women who are objective, rational and logical, and I respect them for it. There is very little explanation given to the comments about understanding truth through the body rather than the mind; so I wonder how that would work. I wonder how you would feel knowing your brain surgeon intends to be subjective and to follow the freeing impulses of her body when she decides where to stick her scalpel. How does the thought that your immigration officer is going to be subjective and impulsive instead of objective and rational when deciding your case make you feel? I would be fascinated to know how a militant hardcore ultra-feminist understands her shopping list primarily through her vagina.

OK that was a cheap shot, granted, but I think it illustrates the point - to suggest that subjectivity is more valuable than objectivity for discovering truth, is to ultimately assert that there is no solid, absolute truth, it's just what you happen to feel or decide in the moment. So really, in the eyes of a post-fem, someone could technically get a shopping list from her lesbian life partner, take it to the store, purchase whatever the hell she felt like and bring it back, and inform her partner that she interpreted the list through her subjectivity and her body, instead of her objectivity and her mind. She could claim that her interpretation of the shopping list was just as valid as a patristic, outdated colonial reading, and that the strength of their lesbian relationship was in their diversity of interpretations, feelings and opinions, and that there was beauty in the controversy. They would then embrace, and with a sense of contented sisterhood, sit down and try to figure out how they were going to eat when they had just purchased a rake, 300 rolls of toilet paper, a set of crayons, 5 copies of the Mail on Sunday, and a packet of baby wipes, when the shopping list clearly said they needed food.

Crazy Statement 3 - 'The love of Christ is primarily erotic love' - what the hell? This is straight out of one of the feminism books I have read. I don't have a great deal to say about this, other than how deeply and profoundly offensive it is to most Christians. It is on a level with releasing a live pig into a synagogue, posting a Danish cartoon of Mohammed in a mosque, or going on a shooting rampage in a Buddhist temple. Just awful. I think this one is a statement which is born out of spending too much time locked in your own head, and spending too much time ascribing scriptural authority to your own introverted feelings. Very dodgy and unpleasant ground indeed. This is an example of how elevating subjectivity and feelings to the level of 'divinely-inspired' can lead to a level of self-absorbed detatchment from reality on the level of Michael Jackson at his craziest.

Crazy Statement 4 - 'The Feminist Christian Theologian needs to expand the canon of scripture to include passages from the goddess cults and other religions'. OK, everyone is at liberty to believe whatever they want to, I concede that. However, if you reject the Biblical texts on the grounds that they are 'patristic' and corrupted by the 'male-dominated culture' in which they were written, then technically you can't really keep claiming the title Christian. This is because 'Christian' designates a person who believes in Jesus Christ as revealed in the Bible. If you reject the Bible, you cease to be a Christian, just in the same way as if you have a degree, you are a degree-holder, and if you don't, you are not. People without a degree do not have the inherent right to be called 'degree-holders' (unless they want to be sued for fraud), and people who do not accept Christian belief do not have the right to be called 'Christian'. They may, of course, believe in whatever they wish, but it is fundamentally fraud to claim the name of Christian if you are not one. The thing which scares me the most about the religious philosophy by which many of these post-fems arrive at their conclusions, is that the most important thing in their religious beliefs appears not to be the divine-revelation, it appears to be the question 'is this supportive of my feminist beliefs or not'? This leads post-fem theologians to reject scripture which clashes with their post-fem world-view, when surely, if you truly believe in the God of the scriptures, you should shange your attitude to conform to the scriptures, not reject the scriptures because they are incompatible with your attitude.

In being so exclusively female-oriented in their theology and philosophy, these post-fems have not ushered in the new age of tolerance and equality that their foremothers hoped for, they have simply become overwhelmingly exclusive in the opposite direction, with a level of bigotry and a demand that everyone agree with their point of view on a level with the most fanatical religious extremists out there. Post-feminism could be very accurately described as new-fascism.

More thoughts to come, definitely...

Early October

In the whirlwind of work, study, family, food, sleep, friends, music, rain, shorter daylight hours, lectures, laughter, and life, things feel so different.

Im sat in a classroom at 4 pm, it's early October. Over the summer, when there was very little to do, I felt very different. Pretty bored, calm, and thoughtful. Now, things never stop. I have virtually no time to quietly repair and reflect, I am just caught up in the whirlwind. My feelings have become so rich, so heady and intoxicating. Sat in a bright classroom while it grows dark outside and a light rain falls, I feel a tired excitement and joy bubbling beneath the surface, shot through with a weariness and a mild dizziness. I'm strangley aware of my sagging shoulders and the hair lying on my forehead and face. Im in a world of words, words on the projector screen, words on the whiteboard, words on my computer screen, words in the air, words from the lecturer, words from the students, words on the book on my desk, words on the cigarette packet on my mate's desk. They're all bouncing off my brain, which is choosing and absorbing them in spite of me. And still my undulating swelling and falling dizzy feelings are rolling around in my head and in my stomach. I feel like a pebble in the tide, and strangely enough, Im kind of enjoying it.

Bookmarking A Good Day

Today was a good day. Me and a load of students lay out on the grassy slope orchard that leads from the main college building down to the canteen, and we just studied for hours, hanging out and chatting. It was way hotter today that it has been for weeks, and we all sat down on the grass in the blazing sunshine for ages, about 15 of us, all barefoot, and some of us studied, some climbed the trees, others just sunbathed, and we were all hanging out, joking, laughing and having a good time. It will be a good memory. When we got hungry we just picked apples and pears right off the trees and ate them, and after a few hours we decided to go down to the river at the bottom of the hill. We crossed the road, jumped a fence, walked the field, and went down to the water, where some of us paddled, and a bunch of the lads got topless and waded into the river up to their necks, made loads of noise, wrestled, and just generally had a good time.

Later tonight me and Sydney went down to the common room where we all just hung out for hours, talking and joking with the crowd there, and batting a blue balloon around for hours. Me and Sydney came back up to the flat with an all over good-feeling from just being around a great group of friends.

Definitely a good day I want to remember.

Sydney's Childhood Life-Plan

Sydney (my wife) wrote this when she was 8.

It is extremely cute :)

To see it full size, just click the picture.

Sydney Witing.
Sundown Oct 5 1995


My Job


When I grow up I might want to be a loyer. 
To be a loyer I will need to have a jug.
I might have to sometimes wark in a cort room.
Of cors I will need a jury.
I will need clients.
Every loyer needs lots of school.
I will need a prosacuter.
When I become a loyer I will mostly just help people.
And I will help people that are geting soed.

Teacher's Notes - I hope you will become a lawyer, Sydney! I think you'd be very good at that job! :) Mrs Major.


Translation Key

loyer = Lawyer
jug = Judge
wark = Work
cort = Court
soed = Sued

The Books I've Read This Year

These are the books I've read cover to cover this year since last September...

The Booklist

The Making Of Methodism
A Preaching Workbook
Embodying The Word
Theology The Basics
Mission Shaped Evangelism
I Suffer Not A Woman
Evangelism That Really Works
Beyond Anger
Threshold Of The Future
Tend My Flock
What's The Difference
Love Wins
The Problem Of Pain
The Life And Work Of A Priest
Harry Potter And The Philosophers Stone
Harry Potter And The Chamber Of Secrets
Harry Potter And The Prisoner Of Azkaban
Harry Potter And The Goblet Of Fire
Tina Fey Bossypants

(and there's been loads of others I read chapters from, or half of).

First Week of Autumn

This is a poem I wrote in 2003 when I was 20, watching the first week of Autumn start to materialise outside my bedroom window in Richmond. It's not poet laureate material, but hey, it's a nice memory.

It's started raining hard through the tired sunshine
A few brown leaves somersault past my window
Caught up in the high winds

The trees are turning red and yellow
In retired memory of the summer
The night air is early
        and feels like Christmas is coming
The sunlight reaches the trees sideways
A small yellow leaf tumbles and blusters
Head over heels down the road
Autumn settles snug in his seat
And the sky above is blue.

Some Awesome Childhood Compositions

Rooting around in my folders, I found two ridiculous but amusing 'poems' which me and two friends wrote at school aged 14ish... These are so goofy, they still make me laugh out loud though. This is pretty much what comes of watching waaay too much Monty Python.
And here they are.

Ode to Moose

Oh ye awesome Moose

Yea, ye make stupid noisesome pestilence,

But thy majestic horns doeth get entangled in tree.

Ye art tracked down, for sooth,

And thy almighty name would be takeneth in vain,

But ye hold strong,

And ye ram thy horns into hunters rump.

Alas! Thy prey doeth need plastic surgeon,

But legendary Moose will prevail,

Faint heart never won fair Moose,

And thy noble antlers art stucketh in gorse bush,

ha ha ha ha ha.

The Pigeon Poem

O yea ye wondrous Pigeon

What feathers lie upon thy flesh?

Ye big fat piece o' lard are ye,

And coloursome are ye.

Yea, ye fly o'er abundant hills,

But yea, ye lose caliber,

Thy rhythmic flaps wit' many a coo

Ye are but yayself an handsome bird.

O'er many a mile yay're eyes doeth hast seen,

Beholding thy nest art the furrows of ye're eye lids

And ye fall off branch,

Into cow pat.

Arr.

Holmesian Deduction in Theology

Weigh the evidence in the balance of probability.

Bend theories to fit facts, not facts to fit theories.

When you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth.

Reflections on writing worship music

So much worship music that is produced today contains virtually no lyrical content. Simplicity is the name of the game now, with cliched phrases like 'I live for You', 'You are my everything', 'I worship You', 'I praise You/Your Name', 'You are (my) God' cropping up constantly, multiple times in multiple songs. It is my opinion, reflecting on the history hymns and Christian music, that these frou-frou content-less worship songs will not last, and will have a legacy as long as their cd sales are maintained, and no longer.

Many worship songs now sound like they are written to provide a catchy hook-filled 3-minute piece of contemporary indie/rock music, to which the lyrics are just incidental, where the sum message of the whole song is something like 'yeah, we're all Christians and we think God is just really great'. Many Christians who have been at it longer than 5 or 10 years get very easily exasperated at worship music which is so clearly aimed at those whose level of immaturity means they can only relate to very primitive expressions of commitment. The hymns which last are those with a real and compelling message, not just 'yeah Jesus, yeah Jesus, yeah Jesus, Jesus yeah' repeated 18 times with drums and guitar riffs. Ok, I am being facetious, but you get my point.

The hymns from this generation which will last into the next, and maybe beyond, are 'Heart of Worship' and 'Blessed be Your Name' by Matt Redman, both of which have themes of pain and repentance expressed poetically, 'Here I am to worship' by Tim Hughes, which is a simple but beautiful piece of poetic reflection of the paradoxes contained within the story of the incarnation of Christ, and a response of worship to those mysteries. Arguably, Graham Kendrick is the greatest hymn writer of our time (certainly in the english-speaking world) with 'Shine Jesus Shine', Darlene Zschech with 'My Jesus My Saviour', and there are some others, but the one thing they have in common is that they labour over their lyrics. The songwords they write are crafted, pruned ruthlessly and shaped into something which is as good as they can get it. Craftmanship is missing among many worship writers today, and we must strive to get it back.

Charles Wesley is pretty much universally acknowledged as the greatest British hymn writer of all time, and I agree. They lyrics to 'And can it be' just blow me away with their multiple levels, their evangelistic edge, and their sheer originality. Look at verse 4 -

'Long my imprisoned spirit lay
Fast bound in sin and nature's night
Thine eye diffused a quickening ray
I woke, the dungeon flamed with light!
My chains fell off, my heart was free!
I rose, went forth, and followed Thee!'

Just typing in these lyrics, my eyes are welling up with tears. The imagery is incredible; and he is not taking this from the bible directly and just reshaping a passage of scripture (that i know of), he is telling a story, painting a picture with incredible creativity, and casting that imagination and imagery into poetry and song, so that anyone able to sing can participate in the vision. Reading the above verse, I imagine Charles sat in a dark dank prison cell, a dungeon, with shackles, manacles, chains around him, in a zombie-like near-death state. Christ enters the cell in line 3, and His eyes flash rays of flaming light which illuminate everything, break the chains binding Charles, and wake him from his stupor, setting him free in every way. In line 6 Charles follows Christ out from the dungeon into the open, as His disciple. These are lyrics which have lasted for 300+ years, and I have no doubt will continue to be among the most popular hymns in the world.

In this country, some Christians (me included) often feel that we have to choose between good music or good lyrics. If we want to sing worship songs with powerful words and compelling themes, we have to sing them in a dreary stone chapel to a centuries-out-of-date musical style and a pipe organ, and if we want to experience a style of music that is accessible to us, not alien and disconnected from our time and culture, we often have to endure 3 or 4 of the latest worship songs which no-one really knows, which have lyrics that make anyone with an academic mind (or mental age over 15) cringe to sing before we get to the occasional gem which has both lyrical content and enjoyable music. Why should worshipers be encouraged and uplifted only by the music, or only by the words? Why can't we have both? Some of the writers I mentioned above have managed both. A good example is 'In Christ Alone' by Townend and Getty, which is excellent in its lyrics and theology, and also frankly anthemic in its music.

If it works out that there is a way I can run my own personal music business one day, and if I decide to do some work in Christian music, it would be awesome to write something that is widely used and popular, with both content and musical relevance, because that is what we need in British church music, desperately.

An Interesting Article on Getting Signed in the UK

taken from http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio1/onemusicdata/fameacademy/tips/noflash/deal.shtml

Getting a Record Deal

Sending demos to record companies is not a very good way of getting known. You'll end up in a huge pile of CDs on an A&R person's desk and it's very hard to stand out in those circumstances - however good your music is.

If you have a massive following, the industry will come to find out what all the fuss is about. Spend time making your music and live shows amazing rather than mucking about with demos.

Promote yourself properly. Make sure that everyone who's likely to come to a gig knows where and when you're playing, every time you play. Use mailing lists, email lists, local press, fliers and posters to promote your gigs.

A&R people don't turn up at gigs randomly, so there aren't really any places to play to be 'spotted'. Also you don't have to play London to get your name known. A&R people have contacts all over the country. If you're causing a stir, they will find out.

Don't just concentrate on record labels. There are lots of people like PR companies, lawyers, publishers and producers looking for new business. These people get a lot fewer, demos so yours will be in a much smaller pile.

Be patient - it normally take artists a couple of years at least to get to the stage where they're ready to sign. Spend some time learning to work as a group and developing your songs and performance before you divert time into trying to get signed.

Don't be too eager. The more desperate you are to get signed the more likely you are to sign a contract that's not right for you. Take your time and consider each offer carefully. Don't take something just because you haven't got anything else.

With underground styles like dance and hip-hop, labels look for tunes that are happening in the clubs. Consequently, you're better off ignoring the labels and getting your tunes straight to DJs.

A demo addressed to someone by name is much more likely to be opened quickly. Find the right labels by checking the sleeves of records you like. Call and get the name of the person who handles your kind of music.

Phone the person before you send any material. Then leave at least 10 days after sending the demo before you call again and see if they've got it. Give them some time to listen to your music and don't hassle them.

A&R people tend to hang on to promising demos and see what else is sent, so try and keep a steady flow of demos coming. A new recording every few months will keep your name up and show that you're still active on the scene.

Once you start sending out demos, make sure you keep your website up to date. If people like your demo, it's the first place they'll go to see what you're up to and maybe check when you're gigging.

Everyone at every level gets knocked back several times on the way to the top. Don't take this personally and don't be disheartened. One person's negative opinion doesn't mean that much. Keep at it!

A short but very, very funny post...

This made me laugh... had to copy and re-post it!

How to cope with Restless Legs Syndrome

This is a post I have put on the rls.org forum. Restless Legs Syndrome is where your whole body, and mind are tired and want to rest, but your legs alone are virtually shaking with adrenaline from wanting to be used. It is a widespread condition which affects hundreds of thousands of people, for which there is not a medical cure. It keeps people awake half the night when they are utterly exhausted, and so I thought I would post on their forum how I cope with it.

Hello all,

I recently joined this forum, because I have struggled with RLS for around 10 years now, and in this time have learned some coping mechanisms which actually work!

I am now 27, when i was 17 I first began getting restless legs at night occasionally. At age 22 I began putting on a little weight, and so at 23 I took up running to take control of my weight gain. Over several months I got to the stage where I was running 5 miles daily, which made me feel great and helped me lose weight, but also for the first time made my RLS into a daily ordeal.

Previously the issue only flared up now and again, but following taking up running, the issue became a nightly (and sometimes daily) problem. When I was 17-19 I would sometimes do a sprint to alleviate the irritation in my legs, or get on my family's exercise bike, put it on a very resistant setting and pedal as hard as I could until I could go no more, which would work sometimes too, but not every time.

When at 23 things became unbearable, and I was finding myself exhausted yet unable to sleep because of the problem, I decided to break down the issue into its component parts. I was tired physically and mentally, and ready to relax and sleep, but the muscles in my legs were not letting me. So what was the answer? I found that anti-histamines did not help, they made me even more groggy, but did not stop the muscles in my legs from wanting to be used constantly. Muscle relaxers just knocked me out, and that was just overwhelming drugged up sleep, not the natural rhythm of life which I want. My leg muscles were saying 'USE ME USE ME USE ME!' while nothing else in my body was. So I decided to try a few exercises which would use just those muscles so I could relax.

The most effective thing I have found for dealing with RLS is just completely burning out the muscles in my legs with very simple (and totally free!) exercises. The one I started with was as follows:-

Lock yourself in the bathroom, or somewhere you wont be looked at like a nutcase. Then, get on tiptoes, and keeping your back completely straight and upright, bend your knees a little, until you lower yourself to the point where you can feel the irritated muscles starting to burn a little. This can just be a small bend of the knees, or right down to a 90 degree angle knee-bend. Then just hold that position until your legs are totally burned out! It takes a little self-discipline, but if you do this exercise WHILE the RLS is irritating your legs, it is just so satisfying to obliterate that agitated feeling - its like scratching a really bad itch, and making it go away. I find that counting while I do it helps alot, initially I went to 30, and then after a while was up to 100. After so many years unable to defeat the irritation, this little squat exercise (if I held it for long enough) felt so satisfying. It felt like I was obliterating, annihilating the irritating monster in my legs. Often after this exercise my legs felt wobbly and light after releasing it, but it was SO SO SO worth it to have the RLS symptoms gone, and to be able to lie down with all of my body relaxed and ready to sleep, and my legs so burned out that they couldn't do anything to stop it.

This first exercise worked great for a while for me, but as it is an exercise which burns out leg muscles, it is therefore also an exercise which builds them too. So after a while you have to go lower and hold the squat for longer to get the same burn-out effect. I got to the stage with the first leg exercise where I was holding the squat very low and counting to 300, and still not being properly burned out, so I needed a new one. Also, I simply didnt have the patience to wait that long for relief.

The second exercise (which I now use exclusively) is the wall-sit. It involves holding my back against a study wall, with my upper legs horizontal infront of me, and my lower legs vertical to the floor, as if I am a human chair set against the wall. In this exercise my upper legs take the full strain of my body weight, and although it is much harder to do than the first squat exercise, it is infinitely more satisfying and destroys the RLS symptoms more effectively than anything else I have tried. To see a diagram of this exercise do a google image search for 'wall sit'.  I now count to over 100 seconds while doing this exercise, but it works, and I am very grateful.

I have also made adjustments to my lifestyle to cope with RLS. I dont run at all anymore, instead I walk 2 miles a day, and am much more focussed on diet to lose weight. I have to still take anti-histamine medication for my allergies, but have found that the wall-sit is enough to cope with any medication-provoked flare-ups. I keep a normal routine - bed at 11 and up at 8 every day, and I find that if I have excessive stress or constantly broken routines, that tends to make RLS flare up worse than usual, so taking life a bit easier than normal is also a massive help.

I would be glad to hear any thoughts or input :)

Jimmi

Is Jenna Maroney ( 30 Rock) based on Amy Poehler and Tammy Swanson (Parks and Recreation) based on Tina Fey Bossypants?

I just finished reading 'Bossypants' by Tina Fey, her 'autobiography/not really an autobiography/blandly humourous commentary on disconnected parts of her life/excessively political and feminist agenda'. It was actually quite a good, easy read, and at no point was I bored. I did also laugh out loud 2 or 3 times. She does (accidentally maybe) paint a sort-of mean spirited cut-throat picture of herself as someone who sold her soul to be a success, and also interestingly the book leaves out any detail of how she met, dated and married her husband, and almost any detail about how she transitioned from working at a reception desk at a YMCA in Chicago to being head writer at Saturday Night Live, which leaves the reader feeling slightly suspcious about these events which are so conspicuously absent from the book. The picture which the mind forms of Tina Fey from her writing is one of a very clever and funny, but ruthless and ambitous-to-a-fault lady, who you would not put it past to have committed shenanigans in attaining both hubby and job...

This highly judgemental theory I have come to, also helps with my theory that somewhere along the line, Tina Fey and Amy Poehler fell out, and that they are now maliciously parodying one another on their respective hit shows. In 30 Rock, Jenna Maroney is a blonde co-star/co-worker with Liz Lemon (Fey). In the fictional world of 30 Rock, Lemon and Maroney came up through a Chicago Improv Group (as did Fey and Poehler), before both joining the team of TGS (SNL in real life), one as a blonde star (Maroney/Poehler), and one as the writer (Lemon/Fey). At first I thought maybe this was just a coincidence, until I got caught up on Poehler's 'Parks and Recreation', which (is great and) is written and produced by the same guys who made the US version of The Office. I noticed that the demented psiren Tammy Swanson (ex-wife of the almighty moustachioed Ron) looks very like (uncannily like) Tina Fey, and is a cut-throat manipulator who will literally use anyone or anything and do anything to anyone or anything to get her way.

So are Tammi Swanson and Jenna Maroney actually malicious mockeries of one another being batted back and forth like a tennis ball by Fey and Poehler?
Are they actually a bit of best-friends-banter between two enlightened feminists who are having a laugh with one another?
Or am I just reading a whole load of nonsense into something which isnt actually there?
Probably.

Total Exhaustion Wipeout Collapse

You know when you've been working consistently under alot of pressure with very little let up? Ive been doing that since september. You know how sometimes when you've been going and going and going with work, and then you stop and start resting, you sometimes get sick? thats definitely happening to me now.

Ive gone from essay deadlines, exams, driving test, car purchase and the usual pressures and responsibilities of parenthood to the next 4 months (13 May - 13 Sept) of no deadlines, lectures or academic demands, and my body has realized this, waved a little white flag, and collapsed into repair mode. Ive spent the last few days deeling ill, dizzy, depressed and exhausted... its pretty lame. I kinda want to hibernate untill all this nasty-feeling-ness is gone.

Driving Test

Well, today is the 7th of May, and 2 days ago around this time I had just passed my driving test. It was one of the most nerve-wracking experiences of my life. I was more nervous taking the test than I was on my wedding day, than I was on the night I proposed. It was awful. I couldn't sleep the night before, I ended up taking antihistamines to knock myself out so I would actually get a few hours before my 730 pickup outside the college! I spent the entire day before (the 4th) just filling my time with as many different activities as I could come up with to distract myself from being nervous about the test. I have driven a manual car for 3 years no problems at all in the states, and so have a considerable headstart on most learners, but I knew how easy it is to make the 1 'major' fault it takes to completely disqualify myself in the test. The examiner was a small balding bearded round Sheffield-type bloke with a very strong accent who looked like a slightly squashed John Peel. He was nice enough though.

I took the test in Buxton, and passed with only 5 out of a possible 15 minor faults. After the test, Simon my BSM driving instructor dropped me off in Sheffield, where I did a little shopping, then hopped on a train to Stockport and bought a car. We got a 2002 Kia Rio Sedan (automatic - so Sydney can drive it once she passes her test), which is in great nick, has A/C, a cd player an iPod hook up, 44,000 miles on the clock, gets around 37 miles to the gallon, and is easily spacious enough for the three of us and all our stuff for when we go on holiday, or to visit the family back in the North East. All in all, an excellent deal, and a blessing I am thankful for.

Now I can start gigging again, I can get a decent part time job, we can go get groceries whenever we need them (oh luxury!) and we can actually explore the beautiful part of the country we live in. One is thoroughly pleased, what what.

Some Joel Stuff

Joel ate a 'You are what you eat' fridge magnet last weekend. Which seems an ironic and poetic sentence upon the arrogant magnet for being so cocky.

Also his list of bizarre foods has been expanded somewhat - he's eaten raw compost, blue pool cue chalk, chunks of his bath sponge, cat food, and the black cushiony felt that goes on toddler swings in the play park. Gross.

He's taken to wandering around saying 'bug-a-bug-a-bug-a-bug-a', and also said 'Billion Milligan Butt-Gun' for no good reason the other day, which has to be a name of a band in the future, or there is simply no justice in the world.

I only believe in God so I can get into Heaven

I don't want to know if people are dying
I don't want to know if hell is real
I don't want to know that my creature comforts
Could be sacrificed to save somebody's life

I only believe in God so I can get into Heaven
So my comfortable life can carry on forever

I don't want to hear that God might not want me
To always be secure or live my dreams
I don't want a God who makes me a servant
Who doesn't want to make me rich or thin

Don't tell me I'm not entitled to the things I've always wanted
I'd rather die still trying, than give them up and live

I only believe in God so I can get into Heaven
So my comfortable life can carry on forever

I don't want to give any time or money
'Cause I just want to live to please myself
I'll die for my faith so you'll think I'm a hero
But I won't do a thing unless it profits me

I'll give Him an hour on a Sunday morning
And He should be grateful for this kingly sacrifice
I only believe in God so I can get into Heaven
So my comfortable life can carry on forever

Rev 3:15-17, 20-21
I know your works; you are neither cold not hot. I wish that you were either cold or hot. So, because you are lukewarm, and neither cold nor hot, I am about to spit you out of my mouth. For you say 'I am rich, I have prospered, and I need nothing.' You do not realize that you are wretched, pitiable, poor, blind and naked.
Listen! I am standing at the door, knocking; if you hear my voice and open the door, I will come in to eat with you and you with me. To the one who conquers I will give a place on my throne, just as I myself conquered and sat down with my Father on his throne.

Funniosities from kids exam papers

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