Hi hi.
Happy Earth Day everyone. I think we are all supposed to turn our lights out or something. As an advocate of long-term solutions I recommend regularly turning your lights off when you are not using them, as well as engaging in other resource-preserving activities, such as switching off your appliances at the plug, walking or cycling wherever practical and forsaking traditional materials for those with longer lifespans, such as canvas bags.
I’m told it’s quite simple…
I’m aware that the news hasn’t been brilliantly analytical lately and hopefully this will be remedied when school’s over and I have less on my plate. In the mean time:
The BBC’s got this new interactive-education-scroll-y thing called iWonder, and this one explains the history of passion plays, which range from thanks to God for having not got the Plague to everybody’s favourite musical (I’m wearing my JCS top and cross earrings today. Part of me wants to start a fashion blog based around dressing for holidays or in the spirit of fictional characters). Fun fact: John the Evangelist wrote that Jesus died on Passover because he saw Jesus as the passover lamb for all people/believers. Cool huh? Plus the town of Oberammergau, which apparently puts on a passion play a bit like how the Scots put on New Year, has NATO School.
A school. Which teaches all things NATO. Turns out uni isn’t the only option!
The iWonder thinggy also has a piece explaining why Easter is never on the same day… basically if Church officials can argue over something then they will.
I just realised that there will always be a Six O’Clock News on Good Friday. Bugger, I’ll have to find actual Easter-related news next year. Ukraine’s not got a lot in common with the holiday and neither do east Asian vehicle disasters. Other than the weather – it’ll rain, surprise! – and TV – there will be programmes, surprise! – there aren’t many Easter-specific bulletins. Which I guess is kind of a relief given that the festival is two thousand years old?
Here is my favourite Easter art:
Here is my second-favourite piece, which was painted for a monastery hospital. Jesus has the same illness as the one the hospital treated, ergotism, to make the patients feel better:
Happy Easter!
I was going to say that this week has been pretty quiet compared to Friday but then I remembered that on Sunday I nearly set the house on fire when a nice long safety match splintered as I struck it and the lit bit flew onto a nearby patch of carpet.
But it’s okay, because my fingers didn’t get burnt.
So it’s December, which means chocolate at weird times is good and this is suitable to sing loudly. On a scale of one to Poseidon getting it on with Medusa in Athena’s temple, how inappropriate is it to play the following at inter-school parties?
And this, which for some reason won’t embed. Very tempted to make a band just to name it after a book.
We’ve started the religious experience topic in RS, and today we looked at proof. Here is an extract of my notes:
It took me a few minutes to figure out why Thank You God was playing in my head.
Speaking of characters I want to talk to, one thing lead to another yesterday. No regrets (I had just finished an essay on William Blake, okay, and football was the only thing on TV. Plus there needs to be somewhere in my imagination where di Angelo doesn’t need a hug).
Question: should I have tagged this post not safe for work? Because thinking about it, I should probably tag every Tim Minchin video or even some MCR posts NSFW, for the language and whatnot. But then, is my language crossing the line? What is or isn’t “safe for work”? Surely that depends on your job?!
I mean, I don’t much like censorship, which is one of the reasons I run this thing by myself, and it’s not like I’m one of the people Google’s blocking… I don’t want to get younger readers into trouble for having adult words or links to questionable fan art – but that’s not my fight. I just write this and it’s up to you, reading this, whether or not you read it. If you don’t want to then click exit. If you don’t want your child to read it then click exit for them but please remember that if they like this sort of site (as in, not space bar games or celebrity forums) then they’re probably going to find another way to read.
I don’t label atheism-related posts “GOD-HATING NEARBY, PIOUS PEOPLE BEWARE”, so should I label a link to a drawing of two dudes kissing “homophobes your eyes might fall out”, or “in the movies this would be a 15”? I mean, Perks wasn’t a 15 and Steve Chbosky got in about 85% of the book’s content.
Is it just enough that I say “headphones are a good idea for this song” or to clearly label links? Maybe I should do a little thing on the sidebar: “oh hey I’m a teenager and if you’ve met one of those you’ll know that they talk like sailors and launch very different types of ships”?
(You shouldn’t be reading Indifferent Ignorance at work anyway, although if you can please notify me of your occupation.)
This has been a week of mythology.
School has been hard lately and I’ve had to be careful about my arm so when Waterstones outdid themselves and delivered House of Hades a day before its official release, I spent most of the afternoon reading (it counts as independent study for Latin, yes?).
Uncle Rick, you are a genius. A trolling, cliffhanger-creating genius. Between Annabeth, Piper, Hazel, Reyna and Hermione Granger, I don’t know how young girls even consider looking up to bikini-clad airheads. I even warmed to Jason. I love Bob too – and Nico… was Nico always Nico or…?
Last night (well ‘tonight’ in terms of writing this because I’m bored on the train) I saw Jesus Christ Superstar at the O2. Before I start chatting let me get one thing clear:
I like Jesus. I am also, until further notice, an atheist (or agnostic if I’ve not watched the news). I also like politics and a good theatrical rock show.
Jesus Christ Superstar is a secular-theatrical-colourful-rock ‘n’ roll-interpretation of the Passion of the Christ and I love it. C’mon, man, there’s sparkles and dancing girls and everyone’s favourite atheist comic musician and did I mention it’s just as relevant now as it was in 1973 as it was in 90AD when John wrote his gospel?
Yep, I’m calling a trip to London Religious Studies work. Anyway. The centrum of the matter is that you don’t have to like ITV to be grateful that they found a dude who can sing like this. You don’t have to believe in the proposed divinity of a story to learn from it and if you wear your second-highest heels to London then your feet will hate you the next day.
Hallelujah!
Yesterday’s version of Gethsemane was better than that, by the way. As in, my ears hurt it was so good. Ah. I’m off to write about the downsides of globalisation. Do you think I could get this in there somewhere?
I’m pretty sure I have lots of important and fancypants things to tell everyone, but I have hayfever and my eyes are almost as itchy as my nose is snotty, so we’re going to watch a video instead.
I’m pretty sure The Fence is a bad guy in a film? I support the ideal of sitting on it though, because people who don’t run the risk of suffering from fuckin’ idiotism.
I’d like this for my birthday please. My RS class is doing atheism at the moment, and my group played a bit of Storm. Quite a few people laughed, although we did only play about three minutes’ worth… and I resisted the urge to show everyone the suggested videos…
I’m not sure which of the following I’ve already talked about, but I had to take an extended arm-break from revision this evening so I’m doing it the YouTube way:
1) “Not only is it, erm, erm, how do you say… right.” Bye bye Augustinian theodicy!
“… As a punishment for having a sort of schizophrenic discourse with a god who was created by man to explain the existence of feet in the absence of the knowledge of the existence of Tony.” Bye, er, any of my previously held religious beliefs?
2) Can I just copy and paste this into every answer ever please? (my bet is he was all for the Tory/Lib Dem coalition.)
3) “You only need to pray in a particular spot to a particular version of a particular god.” ‘Amen to that’ is the only response I can think of right now…
“He’s largely undiverted by the starving masses, or the inequality between the various classes…” Hello, problem of evil and suffering. Ah, Mackie’s Inconsistent Triad, how are you this evening?
4) This may or may not be about religion but I mostly like how it sounds.
5) “Isn’t this enough?” Hey, Richard Dawkins.
“Wow, that’s a good point, let me think for a bit. Oh wait my mistake that’s absolute bullshit.” Hey, teleological argument (it’s okay, I’m doing the cosmological argument. It’s got Ways).
6) Because it’s time to bring back the shameless MCR references (having just read the post back I think Aquinas helped jog my memory).
7) This is actually just about school in general, and the only bit that’s relevant to school is 9:30-10:30, but the rest, incidentally, is also hilarious (and quite true).
I’ve mentioned MCR, Tim Minchin and Ezra Miller in one almost-constructive post. Hallelujah.
(Okay now that’s reminded me of this and now I’ve kind of also included something about being queer… my job is done, and anyone who got through this post in less than forty minutes, videos and all, gets to guest-blog.)
I’ve been trying to work out how to wax poetic on Margaret Thatcher without doing a cheap impersonation of the rest of the British media, so instead I’d like to encourage you to buy this fortnight’s edition of Private Eye. It’s a magazine which is definitely not like the rest of the British media – it’s funny, for one thing, and reports news for another. It’s also edited by Have I Got News for You‘s Ian Hislop (whose wife Victoria, incidentally, writes excellent novels) so if you’ve ever watched that show and laughed, you should be reading Private Eye regularly.
Just noticed that ‘Tim Minchin’ is a category on here. Kind of curious as to what Mrs Thatcher would have thought of this, assuming she was never a Tim fan:
Francesca's Thoughts 