A few months ago, I made a list of ideas for subjects that I wanted to cover in future posts and, this week, an old playground song that had become inexplicably stuck in my head reminded me of one of them. The song (well, verse) consists of the following sung to the tune of “The Battle Hymn Of The Republic”:
Jesus is the goalie of our local football team
Jesus is the goalie of our local football team
Jesus is the goalie of our local football team
Jesus saves! Jesus saves! Jesus saves!
While the joke works much better if you imagine the last line is accompanied by hands being thrust in the air, to the left then right (as if catching an imaginary football), the point is that it put me in mind of one of the ideas on my list; specifically that Jesus, rather than saving people, in fact makes them prisoners. Read more “Jesus S(l)aves”
I was a little more than a quarter of the way into writing this week’s post this morning when I received a somewhat confused call from my sister, Tam. Apparently, my mum was in a panic over having missed a couple of calls from my nan and, since the calls had come immediately after one another to both her mobile and landline, and because she was having trouble getting hold of my nan to find out what was going on, my mum was now desperately ringing round to find out if anyone else had heard from her and, if so, what it was about. Moments later my phone rang again and, with the caller ID telling me that it was my mum, I instinctively knew what she was going to tell me … my grandad had passed away in his sleep early this morning. Given the enormous influence he’d had on me growing up, I’d like, if you don’t mind, to dispense with my usual weekly bitch-fest and instead talk about my grandfather, Derek Raymond Sankey. Read more “D.R.S”
For the past few days, the news here in our rain-soaked island paradise has been dominated by one, particularly large, story. It’s not a new story, in fact it’s been around for a little while, but this week it managed to achieve a certain measure of grotesque commonality with the funeral-bound corpse of King Henry VIII. I’m thinking specifically of how, as we were all basking happily in yet another warm and sunny day, possibly commenting to one another about what a lovely day it was, it unpredictably, and unceremoniously, exploded, leaving everyone feeling very, very sick. It’s a story that we can’t even refer to as “the elephant in the room” any more because it’s now “the enormous pile of elephant shit in the room” (the elephant having fled the scene in order to calm down, re-group, and work out who best to blame for the massive, festering pile of crap it left behind). Read more “Dear Mr. Murdoch”
Recently, the American right-wing (and by that I mostly mean Fox News) went and got its knickers in a massive twist over comments made by an aide to Baroness Margaret Thatcher, the former British Prime Minister. The comments related specifically to a request made by Sarah Palin for a meeting with Thatcher, whom Palin had previously cited as a role-model, during the former Alaskan governor’s forthcoming visit to the UK. The response itself, an emphatic “no”, was not the problem; it was more that the aide called Palin “bat-shit insane” that so enraged the Republitards (yes, I know, the aide actually said she was “nuts”, but he was just being polite). What baffles me most is not the reaction to any of this (it’s pretty par for the course, really), but the fact that no-one ever mentions how the only reason Sarah Palin is where she is today, the only reason any of us have ever even heard of her, is because of her vagina. Read more “Sarah Palin’s Vagina”
A couple of weeks ago, Raves, myself, and our good friend Matt (aka, “The Fury”) were in the kitchen making some kind of an attempt at dinner (I don’t remember what, exactly, but it was probably a curry) when we found ourselves casually exploring how different the game “Prince of Persia” (the 2008 version for the PS3) would be if the main character had, like Raves, been diagnosed with Asperger Syndrome. Aside from the obvious exceptions of the Prince intently focusing on light seed collection, exploring every last crevice of the map, and being much more like a sarcastic teenager with an attitude problem (instead of just talking like one), we concluded the differences probably wouldn’t be all that great. When Raves referred to this alternate vision of the game as “Prince Asperger” he didn’t realise he’d given me both the title and topic for my next blog post; to be fair, it’s about time I addressed this subject because, if I’m honest, Raves often drives me absolutely fucking mental. Read more “Prince Asperger”
