I just love this
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I’m aware that for those of you who read Greek that the title of this post is tautologous. However, compared to Andrew Sullivan who is monomaniacal on the subject of Palin, I only mention her occasionally. The aforementioned Palin-obsessed columnist has a useful collection of Palin’s very strange lies. Read and be baffled by how she still seems to command attention, to say nothing of the hopes of the delusional right. From last night’s Children in Need: On another blog – the predecessor to this one – back in May I asked about the wisdom of panicked vaccinations. Now comes the report of Tamiflu resistant swine flu. I still remain of the opinion that this will turn out to be – epidemiologically speaking – a storm in a teacup, but it looks as though media and political panic has helped make things a bit worse. I’m pondering whether there would be any real point to getting and using a Twitter account. So, those of you who do twitter – what’s the benefit? Those of you who’ve thought of it (or even tried it), and decided not to, what turned you off it? I mean – I blog, I’m on Facebook and can do status updates there. Does Twitter give me anything else? Sam Norton has tagged me with this meme. I’ll be up front about saying I’d thought find this really difficult. I’m not that musical a person – I’m best described as “eclectic, but I know what I like”. It turned out to be easier than I expected. These are the rules:
I’m going to take up the idea that these are all songs I heard in the car (mine or anyone’s) and just had to find out who they were by – with two exceptions. These are in alphabetical order to avoid any suggestion of ranking. All the links go to YouTube videos. Blur Girls and Boys I’d already heard some Blur and quite liked it, but this was the one that made me sit up and take note. Boomtown Rats I Don’t Like Mondays. One of those sings that once I’d discovered it was great at winding my mother up, so I played it a lot. Crash Test Dummies Mmmm, mmmm, mmmm, mmmm. I’m not sure if it was the alliterating “m” in this post’s title that brought this one straight to mind. Just fascinatingly and wonderfully weird. Echo and the Bunnymen People are Strange I was too young to notice the Doors, and I’ve always thought this cover well superior. The Killers When You Were Young. I’d missed out on their first album, and this caught me like a blast. Patrick Wolf The Magic Position This is the only one that isn’t a radio moment. A short clip was played as his intro as a panellist on Buzzcocks, and I went straight to YouTube to hear the whole song and then bought the eponymous album. The Stranglers No More Heroes. From the heady days when punk was maturing into new wave. U2 Gloria From the days before they got all overwrought and messianic. And that’s my eight. I tag David Keen, Mark Goodacre, Sarah Brush and Gareth Hughes I have spent far longer than I expected preparing a presentation for churchwardens. Nearly all the worship development work I do is either geared to worshippers (qua worshippers) or leaders of worship. Churchwardens, however, have a particular responsibility for encouraging good worship that is decent and in order, without necessarily having to lead it. Indeed, in most cases they probably won’t lead it, but
All of which has presented quite a challenge. It will be interesting to see if I’ve pitched it right. It’s clearly gone viral, and yet I only discovered it today. It will be instantly recognisable to cat-lovers and cat-haters, but especially the former. Oh, and there’s a whole series to catch up on. Where Palin Fits On The Creation – Evolution Scale I was kind of hoping for a one word answer: Neanderthal. After the debacle that was the Brewer brothers’ rape and pillage of the SPCK chain of bookshops, the Wesley Owen chain now looks to be heading towards the event horizon of the recession’s black hole. Mouse has the details. He also notes Phil Groom’s optimistic hope of a buy out. It’s probably worth noting that in 2008-9 financial year, Waterstones – the only sizeable bookchain saw sales fall from £564.3 million (GBP) to £548.3 million (GBP). Operating profits fell from £16.3 million to £10 million. That is still a profit, but it indicates something both of the increasingly narrow margins, and the effects of the recession. There may be one possible future for Christian bookshops, and that is if they are truly community bookshops working as part of local churches working together and seeing a bookshop as a hopefully self-supporting but non-profit making component of their community mission and Christian education, which they are prepared to subsidise if necessary. However, should churches and booksellers be asking a different question? I can’t help but note that the Mind, Body and Spirit section of large bookshops is ever expanding. I note that in Waterstones Birmingham this has now expanded to include a whole bookcase on witchcraft. What, though, would Waterstones look like if the contents of the now (about to be) closed Wesley Owen, and the closed a while back SPCK, both of which were substantial, were decanted onto its shelves. There is a sufficient market to make a full theology and religion section viable in larger stores, and a couple of decent-sized bookcases in smaller ones. The larger stores at least might even start employing staff with specialist knowledge. As a consequence, not only would Christian writing and theology (some of it admittedly very bad and of the self-help variety) regain a public profile in the bookshops most people shop in, but they may well start to choose some of it over the other “spiritual” alternatives. Does this apparent commercial failure actually offer a challenge and opportunity to emerge from the tucked-away twilight of a sub-cultural ghetto and stake a place in the common spaces and ordinary lives of the book-buying public? |
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