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attend the ballad of Sweeney Todd
May. 27th, 2008 01:12 amVery windy outside today, but sunny on the whole -- which I hear is not the case down south. For once we have the better weather. Heh.
Finally sewed together a knitted top that's been sitting on the side for ages. The question of whether I actually dare wear it in public is being left for another occasion. (I'll take a photo sometime. Of it, if not necessarily of it on me.)
I was watching a DVD of Sweeney Todd: the older version of the musical with Angela Lansbury and George Hearn. While I have absolutely no objections to Johnny Depp and to Tim Burton, this version is gloriously acted, sung, and staged. George Hearn as Sweeney is . . . terrifying. (And also, they include the Ballad.)
---
…I refuse to use the word "fundamentalist," or any of its variations, for their usual shorthand meaning these interesting times. The first reason is that it is an inaccurate term; these positions do not reflect the fundaments of either Christianity or Islam. They are old emergent strains within each, but the premise that these are the root principles, and everything else, like, oh, tolerance and compassion, are poisonings of the spring, is a lie and a slander.
Indeed, where exactly is the Christianity or Islam in either of these two debased ideologies? Apart from a handful of symbols and catch phrases (along with pastiches, like "The Rapture," that baldly pretend to be authentic principles), there’s nothing of Jesus or Mohammed, or the long discussions of how we should then live that followed them.
To put it in very direct terms, what we are talking about here are psychotic death cults, of the sort we associate with horn-hatted fictional Norsemen and the Uruk-Hai, people for whom the entire material universe is a sort of sand-table exercise by the Creator, who tossed it together on a weekend to play Red Army and Blue Army for the merest blink in the eye of eternity, before putting the good pieces back in the box and tossing the bad pieces in the fireplace for not winning a rigged game. We are talking, further, about thermonuclear war as not a threat but a shining promise of victory. There are people out there who believe (that isn’t really the word I want, but it’ll have to do for now) that an entirely literal atomic conflict on the plains of Megiddo is a necessary precondition to the return of the Christ, who will come as a thief in the night with a bag of Molotov cocktails.
We know, as much as we can know any of this sort of thing, how Jesus responded to the loss of a single beloved one. John didn't need many words to describe it.
-- John M Ford
Finally sewed together a knitted top that's been sitting on the side for ages. The question of whether I actually dare wear it in public is being left for another occasion. (I'll take a photo sometime. Of it, if not necessarily of it on me.)
I was watching a DVD of Sweeney Todd: the older version of the musical with Angela Lansbury and George Hearn. While I have absolutely no objections to Johnny Depp and to Tim Burton, this version is gloriously acted, sung, and staged. George Hearn as Sweeney is . . . terrifying. (And also, they include the Ballad.)
---
…I refuse to use the word "fundamentalist," or any of its variations, for their usual shorthand meaning these interesting times. The first reason is that it is an inaccurate term; these positions do not reflect the fundaments of either Christianity or Islam. They are old emergent strains within each, but the premise that these are the root principles, and everything else, like, oh, tolerance and compassion, are poisonings of the spring, is a lie and a slander.
Indeed, where exactly is the Christianity or Islam in either of these two debased ideologies? Apart from a handful of symbols and catch phrases (along with pastiches, like "The Rapture," that baldly pretend to be authentic principles), there’s nothing of Jesus or Mohammed, or the long discussions of how we should then live that followed them.
To put it in very direct terms, what we are talking about here are psychotic death cults, of the sort we associate with horn-hatted fictional Norsemen and the Uruk-Hai, people for whom the entire material universe is a sort of sand-table exercise by the Creator, who tossed it together on a weekend to play Red Army and Blue Army for the merest blink in the eye of eternity, before putting the good pieces back in the box and tossing the bad pieces in the fireplace for not winning a rigged game. We are talking, further, about thermonuclear war as not a threat but a shining promise of victory. There are people out there who believe (that isn’t really the word I want, but it’ll have to do for now) that an entirely literal atomic conflict on the plains of Megiddo is a necessary precondition to the return of the Christ, who will come as a thief in the night with a bag of Molotov cocktails.
We know, as much as we can know any of this sort of thing, how Jesus responded to the loss of a single beloved one. John didn't need many words to describe it.
-- John M Ford
