On the eve of All Hallows

Given that it's Hallowe'en, it's perhaps fitting that we watched a truly frightening film in life group tonight - the documentary Jesus Camp. As an outsider, it was incredibly worrying to see full-on 'children's ministry', complete with speaking in tongues, extended prophetic prayer times and so on. Watching the children pray over a life-size cut-out of George Bush left me feeling incredibly uncomfortable. And that wasn't the only part of the film which had my skin crawling.

I guess I could sum up why it was frightening for a number of reasons.

1) Realising that, although far more extreme, there wasn't much difference between what was in the film and my own childhood experiences.
2) The stat that 75% of home-schooled children in America are Evangelical Christians, but in the film 'education' looked more like 'indoctrination'.
3) The way young children were frightened by stories of the devil and convinced they were sinners because sometimes they found it hard to believe what was in the Bible.
4) Because it left me unsure what the difference is between finding a faith and being brainwashed. (And hearing that 43% of evangelicals were 'born again' before the age of 13, doesn't help either.)
5) The absolute certainty with which highly debatable concepts were presented as fact, e.g. America is a Christian nation and should return to it's Christian roots; George Bush has been raised up by God and is surrounded by "godly" and "righteous" people.
6) The doom-laden prophecies of the semi-narrator radio host who warned of a religious take-over any time now.
7) The way it reminded me so much of the book The Handmaid's Tale, which describes what happens when the fundamentalists take over.

Jongudmund's rating on Jesus Camp: 7/10 (Be afraid. Be very afraid...)

Stardust (film review)

I've been keen to see this since seeing the trailer a few months back and then finding out it's based on a book by Neil Gaiman - a British sci-fi/fantasy/horror author with a confounding story-telling style. Years ago NG did a collaborative book with Terry Pratchett called Good Omens, which I maintain is still one of the best books about the 'end times' ever written. It's a hoot too.

So, to the film. Well, Stardust is billed as 'the fairy tale that won't behave', and that's a pretty good summary. Although after Shrek, Hoodwinked and the imminent release of Enchanted, Stardust is more like a classic fairy tale than a demythologising of the genre.

In fact, it's a beautifully filmed, acted and thought through grown up fairy tale. Michelle Pfeiffer is known in our house as 'Mmmmmm, Michelle Pfeiffer' - at least by me; the effect of her Catwoman role on an impressionable 15-year old. Here she does a sterling job as a rapidly aging villain. And as the heroine fallen star Yvaine, Clare Danes simply shines.

But most of the other characters are morally ambiguous - in other words, realistic. The only dip in acting form is one-trick pony David Brent, sorry, Ricky Gervais. But it's satisfying seeing him meet a grisly end (ooh, sorry, spoiler there).

It's a good time to be a fantasy movie fan. Before Stardust, we had a trailer for The Golden Compass, the adaptation of the first of Philip Pullman's Dark Materials trilogy. New Line, of Lord of the Rings fame, are handling it and it looks absolutely awesome.

Beowulf - the father of all fantasy stories - is on the big screen again. Enchanted is coming out soon. And even Elizabeth I is getting a Hollywood makeover into a warrior princess in an epic retelling of the Spanish Armada, which can only be classed as 'historical' in the loosest sense of the word.

Jongudmund's verdict on Stardust: 8.5/10 "Get thee to a cinema."

Lordy, I'm old

I helped out with the Sunday evening youth club last night - playing hockey and stuff. Today I've been aching in my knees, thighs, back and even my butt!

One of the kids told me not to over-exert myself, what with being old and unfit. I'd have slapped him if I'd had the strength (and the breath to get enough oxygen to my muscles).

Playability

Often when you talk to someone frequently the same topics come up again and again. With my little brother it's the subject of "playability" in computer games. As far as we're concerned you can forget your fancy graphics and whatnot, what really matters is whether the game is playable.

My proof, if proof were needed, is Zelda on the Super Nintendo versus Zelda on the N64. I loved Zelda on the SNES - except I can only play it with Oasis' Definitely Maybe on in the background (long story, but for me the two go together). But on the N64 it was a so-so rpg, with huge distances you had to cover to get anywhere. It didn't look as good either. Zelda on the SNES was cute. On the N64, it was humdrum. Basically the "better game" lacked playability and effectively killed off Zelda for me, although the screenshots on the Nintendo DS adverts have almost re-converted me.

Recently I've been playing PacMan on Facebook, which is further proof that graphics only get you so far and it's 'playability' that counts. PacMan has been around for almost three decades and yet it knocks many other games into a cocked hat. When I teamed up for a game of Halo with Irony Boy, I loved it, but Destroy All Humans 2 wasn't my bag. One had "playability", the other didn't. Wii Sports is the defining moment in Nintendo's triumph of "playability". Of course the graphics are something else too, but there's a reason Nintendo keep bagging awards for Wii Sports - it's simply great to play.

My favourite top thirteen most playable games

Arcade/Spectrum/other truly ancient consoles
PacMan
Batty
SNES
Super Mario World
The Legend of Zelda - a Link to the Past
Super Star Wars
Game Boy
Tetris
Super Mario World 2 - Six Golden Coins
N64
Mario '64
F-Zero X
X Box
Project Gotham Racing
PlayStation 2
Zoo Puzzle
Gamecube
Super Mario Sunshine
Nintendo Wii
Wii-Sports

So what games do you rates most playable?

An hour of my life I won't get back

I hate being late for things and today I managed the mother of all late arrivals, showing up late to my own house with invited guests standing shivering on the doorstep.

How did this all come about? Blame Asda. That's right. It's all their fault.

We were in Asda buying some pizzas to feed our guests, when we noticed a chap buying two Nintendo Wii consoles. It looked a bit odd, so I asked the girl on the computers and DVD desk how much the Wiis were. She said they were the amazingly low price of £99.97.

Cath and I conferred for all of a minute before deciding this was such a bargain we really had to get one. The only problem was they only had two left and they were both reserved for other customers. But the girl said if either of the other customers hadn't turned up in an hour she'd sell one to us.

There are only so many ways to kill an hour in Asda. I read a couple of magazines. Cath looked at the clothes. I found a copy of Tim Burton's Planet of the Apes in a special edition tin, and Cath said she'd give it to me for Christmas, to help me nearer my goal of owning every Tim Burton film on DVD. But still it was a drag until the hour was up.

The reservers hadn't turned up and I excitedly thought I was getting a baragin Wii. But then when they rang through the Wii, it came up at £179.97. I queried the price and the stupid shopgirl told me the price she'd originally said had been for a Nintendo DS, not a Wii.

I was tamping.

Not only had we waited a bloody age for a bargain that never was, we then had to queue up to buy all the other crap in our trolley and that made us late to get home to our waiting guests. And I hate being late, as I said. So imagine how much I hated being late for a get-together at my own house!

Maddening

The latest revelation in the Madeleine McCann saga is that "friends of the McCanns" saw a man carrying (possibly) a child, which could have been Madeleine. And the papers are full of it again - the McCanns are back on the radio - when will this ever end?

I don't know how many people I've talked to about this, but it seems most people reckon there's something fishy about the whole thing. And the verdict on the media coverage is that 'Kate and Gerry', as they're known to Daily Mail readers, benefit from being middle class and reasonably photogenic. Or at least Kate does. It was a single mother friend of mine - bizarrely also called Madeleine - who said "Now if it had been me who'd left my child alone, the papers would have had a field day and I'd be in prison right now."

As far as I can see there are four main possibilities.
1 - while 'Kate and Gerry' were out eating their meal, an unidentified intruder siezed the chance to snatch a child and either a) killed her, or b) is holding her hostage still over four months later [you decide which is the most likely scenario]
2 - while 'Kate and Gerry' eat dinner, an unidentified intruder, wrongly assuming no parent would leave their children alone for the evening, broke into the apartment to nick stuff, was surprised to find the children there and then had to do something because Madeleine woke up, and so either a) killed her, or b) is holding her hostage still over four months later [again, you decide which is the most likely scenario]
3 - 'Kate and Gerry' drugged Madeleine, even though they've now denied the accusations of sedating their kids, but cocked up the dosage, then cooked up the abduction as a way of avoiding jail, while disposing of her body themselves
4 - Madeleine is safe and sound somewhere and the McCanns know where she is, but, hey, they're famous now and got to meet the Pope etc. etc. So they keep the whole mystery going.

I honestly feel exhausted to the point of boredom with this whole case. Deep down, like most people, I think a little girl is tragically dead. We don't know what happened; we might never know. The McCanns might know, although I think they don't. What they do know is what we know - the guiltiest parties in this are the parents who abandoned their daughter so they could go out for a meal.

I don't just read junk

I've finished reading my 17th book of 2007, Wraith Squadron, a Star Wars novel in the X-Wing series - low brow tat even in the genre of science fiction, but fun to read. Now though I'm working my way through what I started reading before Wraith Squadron - a collection of sermons by CH Spurgeon. This quote stood out, especially given how it was written 150 years ago:

"But just think for a moment what this foolish sinner claims; he claims the right to live in blindness! You who can see must not tell him that he is blind; if you do so he says you are infringing on his rights. He says that he has a right to lie in prison, if he chooses to do so; and if you come and hammer at the door, or shout to him through the iron bars that there has come One who can let loose the captives, he complains that you are disturbing him. Here is a man on the verge of destruction, asleep on the edge of a precipice. If you wake him, he tells you that he has a right to sleep there if he likes, and that he does not want you to rouse him up in that rough way, and talk to him about his imminent danger. If he does get up he abuses you and says, 'Mind your own business. You go your way, and let me alone.'"

Five bands you've probably never heard of

The Tragically Hip

Their album Fully Completely is one of my all-time favourites. Killer riffs, dark snarley vocals, heavy drum lines. And they're Canadian. But I would never have got into The Hip if they hadn't collaborated on a campaign record with several other bands and I hadn't been into...

Midnight Oil

...who joined the Hip on the single 'Land'. I can't remember exactly when I started listening to Diesel and Dust repeatedly, but it was round about the time homework started getting serious and I spent a lot more time in my room with a beat-up cassette deck. (I didn't do any work, I just listened to tapes, but as long as I stayed in my room no one asked me if I'd done all my homework. And people wonder how I flunked Economics A-Level.)

I wore my tape of Diesel and Dust out in the end. Even now I know the album word for word. Their other stuff is good too. They're Australian, which is close enough to New Zealand to justify my next choice of bands you've never heard of...

The Mutton Birds

Actually only on this list because I bought a single ridiculously cheap and heard their song Dominion Road. But, man, what a song. It's amazing how hearing one song by a band can get you into them. I guess that's why bands put tracks on free tapes on the front of magazines like Vox...

Thousand Yard Stare

...what do you mean you don't remeber Vox? OK, it folded a while ago, but I still have the Vox Box free cassette which included a track from TYS. That's the original TYS, not the American band now using the name. This lot were from some incredibly dull town like Staines or somewhere, and they all had un-rock-and-roll names like Giles.

After a string of singles, they only did two full studio albums, but they're cracking. Over the years I've managed to collect just about everything they ever did in one form or another...

Dr Hook

...which would be impossible to do with Dr Hook as they've released about 25 albums over the years.

True story: we went to a signing by former Dr Hook singer Dennis Locorriere a couple of years ago and took along an old Dr Hook vinyl greatest hits album for him to sign. We got chatting to him and he put us on the guest list for his show that evening, where he was his own support act, performing an entire solo acoustic show before taking a short break, then reappearing with a full electric backing band and rocking the place out. Of all the gigs I've been to, that was probably the one which impressed me the most.

Better news on the car front

They've swapped the wheels around and decided the clanking sound was due to the badgerised front wheels being buckled, and not the drive shaft.

So, new brakes notwithstanding, the car should make it through the MOT after all, and I'll have it back as soon as they find me a new set of wheels.

Britains Space figures and an ironic bag

Popped into town yesterday and bought some Britains Space figures in a fit of nostalgia for my childhood.



The retro toy dealer gave me them in a plastic bag from a butcher's shop in Penarth. So there I am, new-found vegetarian walking round town looking like I'm carrying a couple of pork chops in a plastic bag. Fortunately I was able to go to a regular shop to buy a birthday present for Cathy and get a less embarrassing bag, which I could also stash my space figures in.

For anyone out there who's a toy geek, the Britains Space range were sold in the early to mid 80s. The yellow figure is a human Starguard. The black figure is an alien. The bizarre green creatures are alien mutants and the weird bluish figures are Cyborgs. Don't ask me how I know all these things.

The alien mutants and the cyborgs are part plastic, part rubber and the rubber is incredibly tacky after all this time. The way the rubber's started to corrode makes the Cyborgs especially fearsome-looking.

And the diagnosis gets worse...

After being told Thursday all the things which were wrong on the car and would need to be fixed for the MOT, I took the car in this morning to find out what was making the bizarre knocking noise which suddenly erupted on the way home from work last night.

Apparently the near-side drive shaft is kaput. My mechanic was very forthright and said I really needed to have a think about whether it was worth doing all the work on the car. There's no rust on it and the engine is clear as a bell, but the peripherals (brakes, the drive shaft etc.) are starting to wear out. Plus of course I've got to replace the badgerised wheels.

I reckon I've found one of the few honest mechanics around. This is the second time he's said to me, "We can fix it, but I'm not sure it's worth it. You have to decide." when he could have just told me I needed to get all the work done and then hit me with a huge bill. At least there's that silver lining on my car-shaped cloud.

Short film reviews

Last week: I Now Pronounce You Chuck and Larry
Adam Sandler and Kevin James are firemen who embark on a well-meaning scam by pretending they're married to make sure James' kids will be cared for if something happens to him. The pair have a number of surprisingly dramatic-looking fires to attend, but the real surprise is the way the film addresses homophobia.

However, Adam Sandler apparently co-wrote the script which may explain the sheer number of women he scores with. The message is 'I'm only pretending to be gay'. Given the kind of people usually classed as Adam Sandler fans such signposting is probably necessary. I do wonder how many retakes 'had' to be shot of the scene where he massages Jessica Biels' boobs.

But overall the film's watchable and has a few decent laughs in places. The only problem is, for a movie which is about acceptance, most of the genuinely gay characters are stereotypically flamboyant, but then perhaps you'd expect that in a pro-gay movie written by heterosexuals...

Jongudmund's rating: 7/10 - one to watch on DVD perhaps.


This week: Ratatouille
What do you need to know? It's by Pixar. It's another brilliant animation. It's about a rat with yearnings to be a chef and a cultured nose, who develops a symbiotic relationship with a lowly garbage boy in a restaurant kitchen and together they ascend the pinnacle of the restaurant trade. If you're not weirded out by the concept, then enjoy the cameo characters, especially Peter O'Toole as a morbidly snide food critic. Pixar rarely mess up, and although this is possibly one of their weaker films, I enjoyed it.

The trainee alien abductors in the short film which precedes it are probably worth the entrance fee alone.

Jongudmund's rating: 8/10 - go and see it, but not at a time when the cinema will be full of screaming children.

London town

Got the train up to London today for the press launch of a booklet I helped write/edit on Pester Power.

On the way I finished Velvet Elvis by Rob Bell. I liked this quote:

"Why blame the dark for being dark? It is far more helpful to ask why the light isn't as bright as it could be?"

Revenge of the kamikaze badger

A couple of weeks ago I had an incident where a badger leapt out of a hedge as I drove past, and ended up under my left front wheel with an almighty bang. Two days ago I noticed my front wheel tyre was down to the wire under the tread, so I stopped on the way into work to get it replaced.

The problem is the alloy wheel has buckled slightly, so it has one squared-off edge now. The tyre-guy asked if I'd hit anything recently. "Er... a badger," I said. "Yeah, that would do it," he said (although to be fair, he added the badger probably only dealt the "killing blow" to the wheel allignment).

So, even though I've now got new tyres on my front wheels, they're going to shred pretty quickly unless I replace the actual wheels. I could buy some more alloys, but what's the point if they're going to get bent by animals with a death wish? I'll probably swap them for steel wheels, which will a) be cheaper, and b) make my insurance cheaper too, because I'll look less like a boy racer chav.

But the problems doesn't stop with needing new wheels. While changing the tyres, said tyre-guy decided to have a poke around to see if there were any other causes of abnormal wear. He showed me how springy my front wishbones are, which probably means a more expensive MOT later this month than I had planned. In a few hours I changed from being a care-free motorist to a driver of a death-trap trying to scrape together the pennies to keep his motor road-legal.

Ah, the fun and games of car ownership.

"Luminous beings are we; not this crude matter."

I can't thank Irony Boy enough for doing me a DVD of clips from the films to illustrate key points in my talk on spirituality in Star Wars. He is a geek god and I owe him loads, especially given how rubbish the notes on timings were that I gave him to work from!

This was the conclusion of the talk.

So, what do the Star Wars films offer us in terms of understanding contemporary cultural spirituality? Certainly, as films, they were among the first popular expressions of what has become known as the post-modern world-view. The idea that, in an advanced, technological society, there is still room for mystery, the ‘spiritual’, and a morality based on good versus evil.

However, there are some caveats. Evil is represented mainly as a threat to freedom, rather than any particular action. Morality isn’t black and white – one of the main heroic characters is a smuggler with a history of narcotic trafficking. The concept of ‘god’ that is ‘The Force’ isn’t a transcendent, prescriptive god to be worshipped, but, in theological terms, an immanent, impersonal divinity to be used and shaped. Rather than ‘god’ seeking to transform humans, human beings in the Star Wars galaxy seek to alter the world around them by ‘changing god’.

Star Wars does, however, offer a challenge to us. We still live in a culture where science and technology seek to suppress, oppress and repress our innate awareness of the spiritual. And the materialistic emphasis of our culture separates us from the Judeo-Christian image of a transcendent, and holy, God, which many Christians hold. The idea that God may be found everywhere, binding all things together, is both Biblical and important.

The idea of a ‘god’ which works in partnership with us makes us responsible for moral decisions. And, crucially, the promise of redemption, from materialism, from ambivalent ‘sin’, and from moral evil that you have chosen to participate in, is one of the most important and compelling aspects of the whole Star Wars saga. I would suggest the redemption motif is the reason Star Wars retains it’s appeal after several decades; perhaps because, deep down, we are all seeking redemption.

Star Wars underlines that possibility of redemption, but it is something we have to actively choose, in a universe where ‘god’ gives us the freedom to make our own moral decisions. And lets us live with the consequences.

Does sex sell?

Adverts I’ve seen in the past 24 hours which have used sex to sell…

Tesco.com
“So what do you have planned for later?” asks Martine McCutcheon, plumbing the depths of corporate soul-selling, and visiting a random bloke in a flat to advertise Tesco. “Nothing,” says the bloke, as two guys from Tesco.com struggle to get a mattress up the stairs.

Red Bull
Two cans of red bull are investigated by a pigeon as various items of clothing rain down around him, accompanied by giggles. Just how would you have sex in mid-air anyway?

Christina Aguilera perfume
“Sometimes it’s all you need to wear,” breathes Christina. Put some clothes on love, you’ll catch your death.

Diet Coke
Three girls jam themselves in the lift so they can be rescued by the hunky maintenance man. Now, if that was me and chicks kept jamming the lift for fun, I’d leave them there.

That godawful advert for Organics shampoo
The best bit about this is the cockatoo telling the aroused woman showering on the beach to ‘keep it down, love’. Cockatoos are cute. But a woman coming in the shower because she’s rubbing glorified soap on her hair raises all kind of Freudian questions.

Random mobile phone company
(see I don’t even know who this is for)
The tagline runs “Don’t let work steal the best bits of your day” as a bloke keeps leaving the office at lunchtime and is just about to kiss his beloved when he finds himself back at his desk. It’s a nicely worked advert, but then you see the bits he’s ‘missing’, including his post-coital, doe-eyed lover lying in bed, the two of them making out in the sea etc. etc. etc.

Insightful

One of the pleasures of my job is interviewing people I’m writing articles about. The other day I spoke to a chap called Oliver Nyumbu, who’s an expert on work-life blend. One of the things he said resonated particularly with me.

He said:

“When I ask people how they’re doing in their job, they tell me they’re very busy. Somehow we’ve confused being busy with being effective.”

I see that all the time in my office, but also outside it. I think one of the reasons church attendances are always reported as declining is because churches are so busy trying to keep the church going, they never stop to ask ‘is this actually effective?’

Another aspect of my job involves me choosing to carve out head-space. I do this in a number of ways, including going for a wander round the building and chatting to people, doodling in an old diary, and writing non-work things to get the words flowing out of my brain and onto the screen.

I was asked today how I can write in a limited time; how do I manage to produce stuff on demand. I can’t really answer questions like that, but I think a lot of it is to do with being honest about needing a bit of creative space. You can’t run a machine at maximum productivity at 100% of the time. It needs downtime or the whole thing will blow up in your face. So why do we think we can operate our cranial processors at maximum, every single working minute of every single working day, without the system crashing?

I guess one reason why people in charge like to see everyone busy is it gives the (sometimes false) impression that stuff is getting done. On a personal level, make-work bores me, and when I’ve had managers who think their effectiveness is measured by how busy everyone is and so start allotting random tasks, my effectiveness tends to go out the window.

At the risk of sounding big-headed, I can write to order, and produce under pressure. And the reason I can do that is because I don’t care so much whether I look busy, but I do try to ensure I’m effective. That’s one of the reasons why ‘management-by-making-you-do-stuff’ doesn’t inspire me at all. I like to be told what’s needed, and when it’s needed by, and then sent off to do it. And then I do it.

Unintelligent design

When we went to see Dara O’Briain last year he reeled off a list of funny reasons why he didn’t believe humans were created. The only one I can remember is that if we were created, then why were we made so that occasionally we bite the insides of our cheeks and hurt ourselves? What kind of mean-spirited deity thinks ‘I know, I’ll make it so they can bite the inside of their own mouths because that’ll be good for a laugh.’?

He’s got a point, but then the reverse is true too. Why would you evolve that particular talent? What evolutionary advantage would there be in occasionally lacerating your cheek interior? Unless without the risk of cheek chompage you’d end up stuffing so much in your mouth, you’d choke on it, thereby dying earlier and reducing your chances of passing on your non-cheek chomping genes to the next generation of primitive hominids…

But, then, if there was an evolutionary advantage, you’d assume that having the ability to bite your own face from the inside meant you were superior to those luckless proto-humans who couldn’t do it. That means, if you were trying to design the best kind of human being, you’d build in potential cheek-biting anyway.

So, basically, it seems we’re stuck with it. Incidentally, I ate a pointy crisp at lunch today and now the roof of my mouth is rather sore.

Beaker sings Coldplay

If you ever thought Chris Martin was a muppet...

The other true religion*

*it's a paradoxical statement, but then I am disturbingly post-modern

A few years ago I was told to look after a work placement girl from Canada, who's dad worked for a fundamentalist Christian organisation. I was showing off how wise I was and quoted Jedi Master Yoda, "you know, from Star Wars..." "Star Wars?" she asked incredulously. "Yeah," I said. "It is the other true religion."

On Wednesday I'm going to be doing a talk on the spirituality of Star Wars. I don't want to give too much away ahead of the evening, but in terms of understanding concepts of God in a technological age, the cultural impact of the Star Wars films in my generation can't be underestimated. The conflict between materialism and spirituality predates post-Modernism as a popular movement, and certainly at the dying end of the Modern era, the films explore a definite yearning for something more than the world we can see.

So far I've got 12 clips ready from the original trilogy to illustrate my points with regards to conceiving and perceiving God; the duality of matter and force; and the mastery of evil within and the possibility of redemption.

Oh, yeah, it's going to be good.

"You can no longer post about me or my husband without prior permission!"

Apparently the Tom who posted in response to Clare and then deleted it wasn't the Tom who is married to Clare, because he can't 'work out how to do comments'... or so he claims. However, I find that a bit hard to believe, given that he has a degree in something complicated and is able to hold down a full-time job. But still, Clare insists it wasn't him, and, on pain of pain, I've agreed not to stir up any more trouble.

The clinching argument from Clare was that in the past when Tom has worked out how to leave a comment , he's signed it with a lower case 't'. So, there you go. Clearly not the same person.

Perhaps the mystery Tom would like to leave a comment this time, or at least make his blogger profile public in future so we can find out who he is.

And in eschatalogical news...

Newsbiscuit is certainly a strong contender to be my favourite website, and if you haven't visited it yet, then perhaps this post about how Coke are sponsoring the Second Coming of Christ will convert you.

As someone who writes press releases on a regular basis, I think the quotes from the company spokesperson are particularly inspired.

You might think you got away with it

Ha! When you comment I get emailed it, so even though Tom tried to cover up the fact he was mocking Clare by deleting his comment, I have the proof tucked away in an email folder.