Stone Roses Lyrics, Jesus and Satan

The Stone Roses, although they were incredibly over-hyped for what they were, recorded some really great songs. They had a ton of catchy songs, and as a teen in the 90's I listened to all of them - literally every song.

Something I noticed in their songs however is a consistent theme of Jesus-bashing... almost to the point of Jesus hating. I wonder why that is?

Here are some interesting lyrical quotes all from Stone Roses songs which wild conspiracy theorists can put together however they want...

"I am the resurrection and I am the life, I couldn't ever bring myself to hate you as I'd like" [Bible quote from the song I am the resurrection, from their self-titled first album]

"

Love spreads her arms, waits there for the nails

I forgive you, boy, I will prevail
Too much to take, some cross to bear
I'm hiding in the trees with a picnic, she's over there, yeah
Let me put you in the picture, let me show you what I mean

The messiah is my sister, ain't no king man, she's my queen

"
[Some mega-weird crucifixion lyrics from 'Love Spreads', on the Second Coming album]

"Heaven's gates won't hold me, Ill saw those suckers down, laughing loud at your locks, when they hit the ground" [From Breaking into Heaven, on Second Coming]

"You ain't too young or pretty, you sure as hell can't sing, any time you want to sell your soul, I've got a toll-free number you can ring, 0800 666 oh yeah" [Reference to the number of the beast in the song Driving South on Second Coming]

"I don't need to sell my soul, he's already in me" [from the song 'I wanna be adored' on their self-titled first album]

This is just a small sample of the lyrics; the theme of selling your soul to the devil for fame and Jesus hating etc etc etc runs through their whole catalogue. I wonder if it was an intentional plan on their part to weave this theme through their music, or if they believe they actually sold their souls for fame... Who knows.

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.

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.

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.

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.

God in the rain

It's raining hard
The sky is grey
Lights are in windows
and the puddles flicker and flow
with a hundred perfect circles
Deep red leaves are flying from the woods
Wind rushes through with a crashing hiss
I stand beneath the stone arch
Underneath the lantern light
Warm and calm
Mesmerised peace
Because somehow I can always find
God in the rain

The Approach Of Christmas

Wood panelled Methodist rooms
The sky is getting darker
There is a bite and a chill in the air
Sparkling sweet wrappers in rich colours
The strange cosiness that dazed tiredness brings
Planning and playing in services
Rooms with red carpets, red chairs, red drapes
Overcast grey clouds outside
Ticking warm radiators inside
We snuggle up on the sofa with a duvet
With low lights and a movie
And absorb the unspoken joy
Of the approach of Christmas

Wrecking Balls

We people, we're just wrecking balls
Damaging each other
It doesn't matter whether
We mean to or not

Sometimes all we can hope for 
Is that were dealing with our issues
Faster than were picking
New ones up

When did life become so conflicted?
We walk on tiptoe so we won't be rejected
There's life love and laughter that's shot underneath
With a hidden current of the bittersweet

Each time we touch each other
Unless we do it gently
We smash some kind of wound
And leave it there to heal

If you're one of those who are lucky
with people around who love you
I'm pretty sure I can tell you
Its going to be ok