Yeah, that'll bring in The Yoot, fer sherrr...

New statue for Den Bosch cathedral:

Sculptor Ton Mooy...is a working on a statue of an angel with a cell phone.

The angel is to replace a worn out statue in the cathedral of Den Bosch.

The cell phone will have just one button: for a straight line with God.

Geddit?

...

But it could have been worse...

According to Mooy, he also wanted to give the angel jet engines, and a skirt instead of pants, but those ideas went too far for the church’s art committee...

Oh yes. It's always possible to make it worse...

One small thing about this confuses me. How does a statue in a church get 'worn out'?

What were they doing with it?

Actually, never mind. I don't want to know.


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Death, be not proud

No wonder I had such a crush on him.

This is my old friend, and briefly "boyfriend" Jon Laursen, as he was when I first knew him when we were about 17 or so. I remember Jon very fondly. It's odd, perhaps, that he was one of the very few people in my adult life (what passes for it) who met my grandparents and visited their home with me.

I had word yesterday that he died of cancer on Friday. A lot of people loved him over the course of his life, including me. It was a long, long time ago, half my lifetime, but I am not forgetful.

I know there are some people who stay put, more or less, in the place where they were born. They hang about, in general, with the same people all their lives. A lot of the people I went to school with still live in BC; most of them still live on the Island.

I left them all behind. Have, in fact, left a trail of people behind me that is now 6000 miles long. When I look back on my teens and childhood, it is almost like remembering a film or a book I read once. Like something that happened to someone else. In my mind, these old friends of mine will forever be 17, 22, 25...no matter what happens to me. No wonder I always have a strange feeling as though I am a replicant, grown in a vat and implanted with false memories.

I can say one thing for death, though, it makes you remember that you really exist.

But I have to say, I'm getting pretty sick of effing cancer. Nearly all the people who have died, whom I have loved in life, have been taken by cancer.

Judy
John Muggeridge
Joan Reid, my mother's gentle friend
my grandfather, Norman White
and now Jon.


~

Death, be not proud, though some have called thee
Mighty and dreadful, for thou are not so;
For those whom thou think'st thou dost overthrow
Die not, poor Death, nor yet canst thou kill me.
From rest and sleep, which but thy pictures be,
Much pleasure; then from thee much more must flow,
And soonest our best men with thee do go,
Rest of their bones, and soul's delivery.
Thou'art slave to fate, chance, kings, and desperate men,
And dost with poison, war, and sickness dwell,
And poppy'or charms can make us sleep as well
And better than thy stroke; why swell'st thou then?
One short sleep past, we wake eternally,
And death shall be no more; Death, thou shalt die.



~

You're letting the Belgians run Europe?

Yeah.

Old Lizard-face doesn't look too happy...

heh...



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A classy dame

Barbara Billingsley died last month.

The world will not see her like again...



My mother hated Leave it to B. but I would watch it after school before she got home and I was getting the dinner on.



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Better out than in

Someone (other than the British people, that is) is FINALLY saying it.

But did it have to be the Daily Express?

Senior MPs, peers and campaign groups acclaimed this newspaper’s stand against the sprawling Brussels super-state as a turning point in the battle to win back Britain’s independence.
And Eurosceptic critics of UK membership said the growing financial crisis among the euro nations this week – threatening to cost British taxpayers billions of pounds – has overwhelmingly confirmed the case for British withdrawal.

~

What I want to know...

is he married?

I have GOT to have one of those Simon's Cat food dishes for Winnie!



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Every time the Pope makes the sign of the Cross, an African baby dies of AIDS

On Spiked...

the relief of those with rosary beads to stroke was as nothing compared to the excitement of those with an axe to grind. ‘Pope Benedict’s XVI’s change of heart on condoms marks a significant break with the damage done by one of his predecessors’ most romantic, wicked and wrong-headed policies’, enthused Andrew Brown in the Guardian. Over at the Telegraph, another commentator saw it as an undoubted positive move: ‘Yes, we secular liberals can hope that this is the start of a greater change, and we can regret the lives lost while we waited for it. But we should also recognise that it is a great change already, and that it will start to save lives now. And, however much some people will struggle to praise the pope, we should swallow our pride, and give credit where it’s due.’

The New Humanist, a vocal opponent of Benedict’s visit to the UK in September, felt confident enough to state: ‘There does appear to have been a change in tone from an organisation that has long given the impression that it is opposed to condoms in all circumstances.’ Such has been the near tectonic shift from blaming the pope for killing Africans to praising him for rescuing them that even the continent itself piped up: ‘Africa welcomes pope’s comments on condoms’, ran a Agence France-Presse headline.

Yet just as it was absurd to blame leaders of the Catholic Church for the problem of AIDS/HIV in Africa, so it is equally ridiculous to see the pope as the continent’s redeemer. In both cases there is an idealism at work, an idealism that would embarrass the most immaterial of philosophers. For in this idealism, ideas – Catholic ideas – are all that matter. The pope articulates one idea, people die; he articulates another, people live.

'Cause he's magic...


~

Trivial pursuit

Did you know that Mark Twain invented the internet?

Me neither.

Twain dreamed up an invention called the "telelectroscope," which used the phone system to create a world wide network of information-sharing. Basically, Mark Twain invented the Internet. Keep in mind that he wrote this in 1898, when telephones were still fairly new and rare.

But Twain didn't stop there. His story describes "the daily doings of the globe made visible to everybody, and audibly discussable too, by witnesses separated by any number of leagues." Mark Twain is talking about goddamn social networking. He didn't just predict that the Internet would unite the world, but also that people would immediately clog it up with trivial bullshit.

Oh. Right.

Trivial bull....

"Day by day, and night by night, he called up one corner of the globe after another, and looked upon its life, and studied its strange sights, and spoke with its people. ... He seldom spoke, and I never interrupted him when he was absorbed in this amusement."

Sorry. I'll go do something useful now.



~

Queen of England

A friend of mine goes to the Rome Pub Quiz most weeks, and he was in a round in which the question was, "What is the most-Googled search term used this week with the words 'Kate' and 'Middleton'?"

The people in the round gave their guesses as

1) underwear

2) skank

3) tart

the correct answer was "bikini".

...

She's going to be Queen. Of. England.



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Chopin Day

I just have this weird feeling all day, from the Crazy-Brain I guess, that if I stop listening to Chopin for more than a few minutes, The Bad will come out from under the Thing and get me.

Crazy-brain - 1

Chopin - 10

Hilary - 0

Tomorrow I have to go to a press conference where I'm fairly sure they will not be playing any nocturnes and there will be a lot of shouting and awfulness.

Maybe I should buy an iPod.



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