William Chong

Good Old Bulletin Bloopers « Worthily Magnify.

Hilarious stuff via Jamie Brown! (Sorry for the lack of updates… those of you who know me know why…!)

————–

Beautiful. (Probably unbearably loud in real life, too, but still.)

Genesis 1:20 – “… And God said, “Let the waters swarm with swarms of living creatures, and let birds fly above the earth across the expanse of the heavens.”

—————-

This is for all you Lord of the Rings fanatics out there, some brilliant work from xkcd:

http://xkcd.com/657/large/

The diagram’s scarily accurate (also includes other stories like Star Wars and Jurrasic Park) and must have taken a lot of work to draw!

Incidentally J.R.R. Tolkien was good friends with C.S. Lewis, and was an influence in his conversion to Christianity. Also, the Lord of the Rings is steeped with mythology and allegory: one could compare the struggles of the Christian life to Frodo’s journey as a ringbearer, or draw parallels to Aragorn and Jesus as returning Kings. Obviously the Christian themes and messages are much more overt in C.S. Lewis’s Chronicles of Narnia (here’s a satire that points this out).

From an interview with Colin Duriez, author of Tolkien and C.S. Lewis: The Gift of Friendship:

What Tolkien did was help Lewis see how the two sides, reason and imagination, could be integrated. During the two men’s night conversation on the Addison Walk in the grounds of Magdalen College, Tolkien showed Lewis how the two sides could be reconciled in the Gospel narratives. The Gospels had all the qualities of great human storytelling. But they portrayed a true event—God the storyteller entered his own story, in the flesh, and brought a joyous conclusion from a tragic situation. Suddenly Lewis could see that the nourishment he had always received from great myths and fantasy stories was a taste of that greatest, truest story—of the life, death, and resurrection of Christ.

So Tolkien brought the imagination right into the center of Lewis’s life. And then, through a gradual process, with the example of Tolkien’s Silmarillion tales and Lord of the Rings before him, Lewis learned how to communicate Christian faith in imaginative writing.

—————

Beware answering your mobile phone near these guys. Hilarity aside, great snippet of Le Toreador from Bizet’s “Carmen”.

via YouTube – What happens if you talk with your phone in a concert?.

This song by Damien Rice singing “Cold Water” caught my attention today for two reasons: music and spirituality (favourite topics of mine).

Firstly, you have to hand it to Rice for pulling off a unique blend of acoustic singer-songwriter and lamentations-style folk music. The passionate modernity his band puts into the performance definitely comes close to drawing out some sort of religious experience (particularly in this longer version where the band whips into glossolalia: it’s furious, almost Pentecostal). With an artist-driven song like this (i.e. radio-friendliness not considered), you’ll either listen entranced by the music, or shake your head in bewilderment/confusion.

On spirituality. When Rice is grievously singing “Lord can you hear me now? Or am I lost?”, he offers a glimpse into an oft-hinted-at, seldom-mentioned truth: that human beings all want answers to spiritual questions. The “O God wherefore art thou” theme is repeated by vocalist Lisa Hannigan, followed by a bridge where Rice sings this seeming reply from God:

“oooo, I love you
Don’t you know I love you
And I always have
Hallelujah
Will you come with me?”

Obviously each person will ascribe their varying opinions on the real meaning behind Rice’s lyrics, but I personally found there was a fair bit of insight in there by a non-Christian artist. For Rice, the answer to “Are you there God? It’s me, Damien” is essentially “I am a loving God, come with me” – a theme certainly echoed in Scripture (e.g. Isaiah 55:3).

It’s also the way Rice sings this section in a Leonard Cohenesque, basso profundo register (not sure what God’s voice sounds like, but I know he can sing – Zephaniah 3:17) that’s made me think about this song all day.

So what do you think “Cold Water” is about?

HBC goes to Impact 2009.

On the lookout for more photos to slot into the video, email me if you have some!

——————

Got a fantastic article today from my AWAD email. Motherjones.com has made a list of 20 interesting euphemisms that have been employed to describe the physical appearance of Britain’s Got Talent megastar Susan Boyle (you know the one…) – a little snapshot of the power of the English vocabulary (and the creatives that put it to good use).

A few highlights below:

… and how we wrote her off because of her not-hottitude. Right?

1. “The plain Jane superstar,” – Daily News article

2. “Like Shrek come to life,” – Rosie O’Donnell to People magazine.

4. “Plain, dowdy, unemployed,” – New York Magazine round up.

5. The Age of Melbourne let an imaginary Jane Austen do the dissing and refers to her as “ill-favoured.”

“Ill-favoured” – interesting…

6. “Stocky, beetle-browed,” is the word from The LA Times.

Do beetles have eyebrows?

9. “Hairy angel” and “unfortunate gait”Daily Mail

14. The New York Post gave us “ugly duckling” and “golden-throated spinster,” which has to be the most Brothers Grimm take.

Well her story is almost like a Brothers Grimm fairytale, no?

18. “Avatar of yearning” – Tina Brown, The Daily Beast.

LOL.

19. “Badger in a dress” – Wales on Sunday.

If you have been hiding for the past few weeks or just haven’t seen her amazing performance of Les Mis’s “I Dreamed a Dream”, you have to check it out.

——————

Who remembers this ad?

I think it was one of the first ones I watched when I moved to New Zealand. I didn’t remember it being so clever…

Since then I’ve gradually developed a preference for the Twix chocolate bar – but never say never to well-advertised chocolate!

In December 2008, the British Medical Journal (BMJ) published a literature review, by Drs Sarah Bache and Frank Edenborough, of the numerous health problems and injuries associated with making music.

Under the subhead of “Dermatological conditions”, they included references to various conditions such as guitarist’s nipple, cellist’s chest, cello knee and — get this — cello scrotum.

Every cello player is aware that even the most vigorous playing style would still never be able to cause such an awkward injury. Indeed, Elaine Murphy, the senior doctor who first posited the condition in 1974, has ‘fessed up in a subsequent letter to the editor:

Perhaps after 34 years it’s time for us to confess that we invented cello scrotum.

Reading Curtis’s 1974 letter to the BMJ on guitar nipple, we thought it highly likely to be a spoof and decided to go one further by submitting a letter pretending to have noted a similar phenomenon in cellists, signed by the non-doctor one of us (JMM). Anyone who has ever watched a cello being played would realise the physical impossibility of our claim.

I guess this guy will be less worried now!