Yes, there's a child by my door on Google. What of it?

[alexsarll]

Yes, I should be out enjoying the sun, and everyone else will be so this will go unread, but I'm waiting for the washing machine and I have a week to get down before it slips my mind. A week spent mostly in Devon, where some newly-revealed clay from about 150 million years ago had its first encounter with the mammalian age when I plunged in up to the knees while looking for ammonites, and I went to Jasper Hazelnut's cafe, and saw someone with a hare lip outside ads for Third World children for the first time I can remember, and couldn't really blog on account of a deranged cursor. The train to Devon is lovely, following a stream much of the way and passing fields with cows, and llamas, and in one case horses and chickens grazing contentedly together.

And when the nights drew in, what did I watch?
Stewart Lee's Comedy Vehicle: good, but perhaps not as good as we all expected after his long absence from our screens. An out comics fan has no place attacking adults for reading Harry Potter, but beyond that, simply filming stand-up feels weird, like watching a straight filming of a stage play.
Given Mad Men's scrupulous sixties style, what the blazes were they doing soundtracking the opening of last week's episode with the Decemberists? Yes, they sound timeless, and it wasn't as if Don Draper was getting into MIA, but it still threw me.
I only watched the first episode of Party Animals, but my mum's a fan and had missed the final episode, so I watched along - an unusual experience for me, who is never normally a casual viewer. The main interest, of course, being to see what the Eleventh Doctor's performance was like. I'm still mainly repeating 'Trust Moffat. Trust Moffat' to myself. Andrea Riseborough and Excelsor from No Heroics were good, though, if basically playing the same characters (the devious slapper and the smug git).
The Tomb of Ligeia is the last and not the best of the Roger Corman/Vincent Price/Edgar Allan Poe films, in part because one of the major roles is the possibly-possessed cat, and as anyone who's seen Breakfast at Tiffany's will know, cats can't act - they can at best be thrown onto the set by the AD. Typically, the film owes as much to Poe's 'M.Valdemar' as 'Ligeia', but more than anything else Vincent Price seems to be playing James Robinson's Shade, right down to the hat and the glasses. No bad thing, obviously.

"The Pope also warned of a threat to the Catholic Church...from the "growing influence of superstitious forms of religion". Next week; why racism threatens Nazism. Sidious' deranged ramblings about condoms in Africa are, of course, a despicable attempt to take advantage of the vulnerable, but closer to home, last night on Stroud Green Road there was a team, dressed like bouncers, of 'Street Pastors', strolling around at closing time looking for the lost and lonely like so many spiritual date-rapists.
(And with perfect timing, as I finished writing this some more of the scoundrels came to my door. Given I'd discharged my bile here, I didn't even have enough fire left for more than a curt 'No Thank You' and a slammed door)

Comments

[missfrancesca.livejournal.com]

I'm terribly disappointed that I didn't encounter them while working my pirate Abu Hamza in leopardskin look. I fear I scared a few young people on the way home with my over-enthusiastic waving of the crowbar and 'arrrrrrrrrring'. I do hope I didn't drive them into the arms of the Christians.

[barrysarll.livejournal.com]

I did wish for the crowbar when I spotted them; as was, the best I could have managed was brandishing Illuminatus! with a 'Get thee behind me!', but they had the sense to give me a wide berth anyhow.

[chris-damage.livejournal.com]

"...but closer to home, last night on Stroud Green Road there was a team, dressed like bouncers, of 'Street Pastors', strolling around at closing time looking for the lost and lonely like so many spiritual date-rapists."

While I agree that the church's stance on artifical contraception is ridiculous the chaps referred to above would presumably have been members of some sort of evangelical protestant movement and therefore the very same sorts that that the pope was on about.

With all it's obvious flaws I think that the role of established religion in actually reining in nutcases is often overlooked. The early monastic orders for example were establiched as much to stop people starving and flogging themselves to death alone in the wilderness than to impose a strict discipline on them.

Similarly it could well be argued that much of the Islamic extremism of the past 100 years can be traced back to, or has at least been exacerpated by, the abolishion of the Caliphate.

Europe after all has gotten where it is today socially under the auspices of Roman Catholicism or the various Protestant national churches, whereas in middle America, where people are free to make up thier own minds about stuff free from the yoke of the Church they burn Harry Potter books and kill doctors :/

[barrysarll.livejournal.com]

While I agree that the church's stance on artifical contraception is ridiculous the chaps referred to above would presumably have been members of some sort of evangelical protestant movement and therefore the very same sorts that that the pope was on about.

I know, but the distinction is about as useful as that between Bloods and Crips when you're trying to make a decent life for yourself in LA, or between the two termite colonies attacking your house from different sides.

With all it's obvious flaws I think that the role of established religion in actually reining in nutcases is often overlooked. The early monastic orders for example were establiched as much to stop people starving and flogging themselves to death alone in the wilderness than to impose a strict discipline on them.

Before christianity painted the Devil on the world's wall, that problem didn't seem to be particularly prevalent - unless you count some of the more impressively barking Roman Emperors, and at least they were *entertaining*.

Similarly it could well be argued that much of the Islamic extremism of the past 100 years can be traced back to, or has at least been exacerpated by, the abolishion of the Caliphate.

Yes, the fall of a comparatively civilised islam to the Mongol hordes is one of history's great tragedies (you can also argue that the Mongols are responsible for the permanent fuckedness of Russia since, and hence by extension for a lot of Western support for the Nazis in their early days, not to mention a lot of China's problems. They really were bastards). But even that world was not quite as civilised as it's now sometimes painted, and it's arguable how much of what was civilised was down to the new religion as against the old culture.

Europe after all has gotten where it is today socially under the auspices of Roman Catholicism or the various Protestant national churches, whereas in middle America, where people are free to make up thier own minds about stuff free from the yoke of the Church they burn Harry Potter books and kill doctors :/

But that's because the US, while formalised by deists and free-thinkers, was largely settled by fundamentalist nuts Europe exported. As to how well we did, I'd argue that owes more to the Roman than the Catholicism; the church corrupted the legacy of Empire, but some good still survived.