Critic Cal

Cf. Like leaven Like mildew Like wildfire Like plague Like a rash Like a rumour Like rot Like a swarm Like an army Like sickness Like termites Like lice Like a stench Like dementia Like damp Like a yawn Like a snake bite Like gangrene Like cancer Like muck Like moths Like an oil spill Like acid Like rust Like infection Like locusts Like bindweed Like mould Like decay It is coming Unstoppable: Life. Carolyn Whitnall, 2016. So, I've been reading Leviticus lately, with some help from John Goldingay [1]. In case you're unfamiliar, it's the one with all the obscure and problematic rules and rituals that Christians like to pretend don't exist and that  Richard Dawkins et al.  like to quote . The book collects together a set of sometimes seemingly-absurdly specific instructions for the Levitical priests and for Israel as a Yahweh-worshipping community. On closer inspection, it is interesting to notice the effect of the practices ...

early one morning Life surprised us, as promised; a second first day. The occurrence of the Resurrection ‘on the first day of the week’ (see, e.g., Matthew 28 ) suggests a parallel with the Genesis 1 creation account. Many Christians understand it as the beginning of New Creation, the ‘now and not yet’ fulfilment of God’s promise to deliver Israel and, ultimately, humankind. But although the promise can be traced throughout the Hebrew scriptures (which have been retrospectively interpreted with Jesus’ life and death and life in mind), that first Easter morning was not necessarily what those hoping and waiting had thought they were hoping and waiting for. Even Jesus’ disciples — whom he had explicitly prepared for the event (see, e.g.,  Mark 8:31 ) – were taken by surprise. As for me … Lent is never long enough, or I am never quite intentional enough in observing it, so that Easter always seems to come ‘too early’. Then again, I’m not sure that I ever could (or am supposed...

Just when mum and dad thought they could safely stop worrying about my little sister leading me astray, said rebellious sibling gets me into Buffy -- a program most decidedly  not featured in the authorised version of the Radio Times when we were growing up. I guess I've long-since graduated from the target demographic. Still, I can easily see why it got so successful. It has everything a high-school horror comedy romance drama series should: the jocks, the geeks, the cheerleaders, the teachers who are out to get you (slash eat you) ... undead overlords, seductive arthropods ... friendship, unrequited love, parental run-ins, the older (but only by a couple-a hundred years, though) guy ... peer pressure, bullying, internet demons ( not the 'background process' type) ... the general, over-arching challenges of trying to balance a social life around schoolwork around slaying ... Sure is a tough gig being the Chosen One: [Buffy defeats vampire/demon/human-animal hybr...

But on the first day of the week, at early dawn, they went to the tomb, taking the spices they had prepared. And they found the stone rolled away from the tomb, but when they went in they did not find the body of the Lord Jesus. While they were perplexed about this, behold, two men stood by them in dazzling apparel. And as they were frightened and bowed their faces to the ground, the men said to them, “Why do you seek the living among the dead? He is not here, but has risen. Remember how he told you, while he was still in Galilee, that the Son of Man must be delivered into the hands of sinful men and be crucified and on the third day rise.” And they remembered his words, and returning from the tomb they told all these things to the eleven and to all the rest. Now it was Mary Magdalene and Joanna and Mary the mother of James and the other women with them who told these things to the apostles, but these words seemed to them an idle tale, and they did not believe them. But Peter rose and...

[NOTE: I just stumbled on  this article  by physicist and priest  John Polkinghorne  which explains everything I'm trying to say below, but better and with all the right credentials...So go away and read that, and if you are at a loose end afterwards rejoin me for my attempts to prove that I am perfectly amenable to a spot of popular culture after all, if somewhat determined to drag it through a theological hedge backwards.] Old  Cliff 's old classic seemed creepy enough to me [1]  before I discovered (that is, was forcibly encouraged to discover) ' Dollhouse ' -- Joss Whedon's playfully poignant (prematurely cancelled) existential sci-fi about programming people to spec. The premise is pretty stirringly dark: a shady operation hiring out good-looking persons ('actives') who have been imprinted with designed-to-order psyches for all manner of purposes, ranging from romantic liaisons (of varying degrees of depravity) and complex criminal dealings ...

Wimbledon is here. Wait, now... didn't Beckett's Lucky have something to say about tennis? Ordered to 'think', and supplied with his requisite hat, he spouts... “Given the existence as uttered forth in the public works of Puncher and Wattmann of a personal God quaquaquaqua with white beard quaquaquaqua outside time without extension who from the heights of divine apathia divine athambia divine aphasia loves us dearly with some exceptions for reasons unknown but time will tell and suffers like the divine Miranda with those who for reasons unknown but time will tell are plunged in torment plunged in fire whose fire flames if that continues and who can doubt it will fire the firmament that is to say blast heaven to hell so blue still and calm so calm with a calm which even though intermittent is better than nothing but not so fast and considering what is more that as a result of the labours left unfinished crowned by the Acacacacademy of Anthropopopometry […] waste and ...

Watched ' The Life of Brian ' for the first time a few months ago. It was hanging around on iPlayer, and I thought I'd find out what all the fuss was about. Seems to be a 'marmite issue' for Christians: for some, a reason to get extremely heated, angry and offended, for others, the opportunity to show just how 'with it' and cool we can be by *gasp* actually liking it. The 'Brian' of the title is born on the same night as Jesus in a stable a few doors down, where he is accidentally visited by the 'three wise men'. Thereon in his whole life is a constant sequence of coincidence and mistaken identity as he unwittingly draws a devoted following of messiah-seekers who convince themselves that he is 'the one'. The film is very deliberate in establishing that Brian is not Jesus, who is himself represented (at a distance) in an apparently rather genuine and respectful way. Whether that was to attempt to placate the inevitable 'Chris...