Lilac Wine

People should listen to "I Know It's Over" by the Smiths. It's a very good song. Some words of description - mellow, heartbreaking, reflective, empathic. There's also a nice live version of it by Jeff Buckley on the album Mystery White Boy (thanks bro), as a medley with Cohen's Hallelujah.

Blogging thoughts all disapparated in a haze of fatigue and pensivity...

"What a pretty tale you told me / Once upon a time" - R. B.

Quacktors and Bureaucrats

What do people in power mean by freedom of speech? Especially politicians. Two recent events cause this to be one of my foremost mental preoccupations concerning culture in the past two days. The first being the suspension of Ken Livingstone from the mayorhood of London village, the second the imprisonment of neo-fascist David Irving, the self-professed 'historian', for denying the reality of the Holocaust.

Only one of these truly makes me laugh at the hypocrisy of our nation's leaders.

The incident which amazes me more is the mayor's detention. It's laughable that what he said (if you are not familiar with this - he told a Jewish reporter that he seemed more like a concentration camp guard ), while extremely foolish, should be taken so seriously that he's taken away from his work for a month.

Take for an example the affairs of John Major, David Blunkett, Robin Cook, Derry Irvine, and many other political figures whose actions have not cost them any significant loss of power, and not entailed any form of punishment other than their indiscretions being paraded in the media. And yet a man who, provoked, makes an insensitive remark receives a law-enforced reprimand.

Political Correctness is the new god of the aristocracy.

"For we do not wrestle against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the cosmic powers over this present darkness, against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly places"

- Ephesians 6v12

From Autumn to Ashes

Films

Four Brothers - 6/10. A moving picture about four brothers, who return to the ghetto in which they were raised by a loving lady who adopted them, they having been rejected by the rest of society. They return to bury her, after she is killed in a liquor-store incident, and end up seeking to avenge her death... Mark Wahlberg is the only actor I recall.

House of Wax - 3/10. If you appreciate run-of-the-mill, dumb-and-attractive-teens-got-lost-in-the-backwoods 'horror' flicks, this is the one for you. Also, if you want to see something which has no originality, acting skills (Paris Hilton is a main character... need I say more?), or surprises, this will be your temporary heaven. The only saving grace to this masterpiece of brainlessness is that for 10 minutes of the playing time, we spend time with a redneck. Now that's always hilarious.

Rocking to:

Distillers - Sing Sing Death House

Johnny Truant - Seven Days at Knife Point

J.S. Bach - Toccata and Fugue in D minor

Faith

Never Kill the Boy on the First Date

So, last night myself and my good brother Matt went to the Corporation in Sheffield. Here we saw, joy of joys, Waterdown:

This is the big fat guy who is one of the singers, although now he has a beard and looks like a German version of Santa Claus, but younger and screaming for a rock 'n' roll band. Sweet. They're the best thing to come from Germany since... umm... something good came from Germany. A nice bunch of guys.

But, even better, they were the support act, the main ear-bashers being good old homegrown Johnny Truant, delighting our senses with such classics as "I am the Primotologist, Mr. Robert Sapolsky", "The Bloodening" and my personal favourite, "I Love You Even Though You're a Zombie Now". Had a little chat with Olly, who was manning the merch stall after he came off stage, respect to him. A very pleasant man.

Here's Johnny (not in 'The Shining' sense):

And here's Olly:

Definitely £7 well spent. Also, Bring Out Your Dead (sweet vocals, and really quite good for a Brummy band with a female bassist) and Ella (morons) were livening us up for the aforementioned geniuses of musicianship.

Faith

Tom

Faded Beauty Queens

Something that's been in my thoughts recently is the way that people can (perhaps frequently) fall in love with an idea. And I don't mean that in the sense of an advertiser falling in love with a concept for a campaign, or a Boston kid falling in love with the idea of one day playing for the Red Sox. I mean real life, amorous, arrow-through-the-heart lovestruck.

It's been my misfortune to spectate at close quarters on one particularly disastrous instance of this. It's tragically amazing really. Before I proceed, let me make myself clear. I'm talking about a woman falling for a charming man who seems chivalrous, funny, faithful and dreamlike, when in reality he's a cowardly sleazebag. But only after too long a period of time does this fact hit home, usually quite suddenly and forcefully. This is the point where the illusion shatters, and her preconception of this man dies. The sad truth is that he was never the man that she saw.

It makes the saying "love is blind" understandable.

I guess the moral of the story is look before you leap, to utilise a second catchprase in two sentences.

"Stand in awe, and sin not: commune with your own heart upon your bed, and be still. Selah."

- Psalm 4v4

Pandora

The amount of things which change in a month! People say that life is short, and we compare it to withering grass, a metaphor which has never seemed more true, and yet the inverse is equally true. It doesn't seem like a month since New Year, since I started this web journal. But this, my sixteenth post, is written on the one month anniversary of blog conception. And no smart comments on how much of a life I mustn't have, please. I know already.

It's strange how time can move so slowly and yet so quickly.

Reason might suggest that it is the formulation of ideals and personality struggles which are not unknown in the years of adolescence, which renders the status quo. Not convinced though. Adults, as well as hip and trendy teens such as I, have the same issue with time, or so I am led to believe. The answer then, is not to continually blame stages of life, or the circumstances thereof; and also not to stand and wonder at the fickleness of time. This is a fact, and will remain so until, like the grass, your corporeal existence has withered away. The answer is to accept this as it is, and to get on with life, striving to do our best in each individual task set before us. Of course, as Christians, we have a higher aim, and to worship and glorify our Creator Redeemer should be our primary pursuit.

Peace

The Ballad of Michael Valentine

A book which I have recently had the pleasure of reading is The Vampire Lestat. This is the second book in the Vampire Chronicles series by Anne Rice, following on where Interview with a Vampire left off. The style is similar, but the scope much larger. We pass the limits of Louis' experiences which is all we have to go on in the inceptual novel, and this time focus on Lestat, an older and more knowledgeable creature. He relates to us his tale from the time he was 'made', through the vampire's realisation of the loneliness of his immortality, and his discovery of his roots. This takes us back to ancient Rome, the Druids of Celtic Europe, and the dark mysteries of BC Egypt, where the original two vampires were created. An epic of it's kind, and challenging to anybody who has preconceptions about the 'humanity' of these noctambulant immortals.