My reading for my - somewhat uninspiring - systematics essay is not going well ("Is 'faith seeking understanding' a useful understanding of theology?")

Thus, I am wasting time on the internet, and courtesy of Facebook discovered this rather amusing sketch. (Disclaimer: I've never been to an Alpha course meeting, but I'm fairly sure they don't sing 'Michael Row the Boat Ashore'). Nevertheless, it made me smile.



My room is absolutely freezing. It always is when it's windy.

Double post, since I missed yesterday, and a change of pace. These comic monologues always remind me of my gradfather, who used to recite them at family parties (along with the one about Noah and the carpenter who refuses to charge less than three ha'pence a foot for birds-eye maple - 'the only dry land were at Blackpool, and that were at top of the tower'), and quite a few phases from these have become family catch-phrases....

Albert and the Lion
( And mother said, well, I am vexed )
Albert's Return

( And Father said, Aye, it would be )

While we're on the subject of snow, offensive_mango had done a very funny and highly accurate English Snow Bingo Card.

*g*

The Most Reverend and Right Honourable Phineas Angus Rody was not invited or welcomed to GAFCON as those gathered there have a watered-down version of the truth and unprepared to speak out on the full liberating biblical Anglican message of no divorce, no diaconal and lay presidency, no spousal contact during the seven days monthly impurity period, and clearly (as if it even needs mentioning) no shrimps.

Via Bishop Alan, unsurprisingly.

Fantastic error message, for use in theological colleges

The post links to an amusing error message generator, which I am trying not to go and play with...

Number 10,304,156 in a series of 'funny things which have a very limited audience, but make me choke with laughter', courtesy of 'Taking the Episcopalian's series of awful illustrations to ecclesiastical suppliers' catalogues: Fr Bilbo.

Also, I have seriously disturbed my roommate by giggling like a loon over the idiotic ecclesiastical gadgets Though I actually think the pyx with the compass in the lid is brilliant and would instantly buy one if I were actually a priest and if they actually existed, God help me, although it's probably too late...

It's been a somewhat annoying day, in various petty ways, but I console myself with the thought of (a) going off to celebrate Carneval on Sunday, (b) Doctor Who DVDs to watch this evening - The Visitation, and (c) a glass of An Cnoc.

Have a good weekend, everyone!

It's an obvious enough joke, in a Private Eye sort of way, but I can't help sniggering at Ship of Fool's service of thanksgiving for the smoking ban: http://ship-of-fools.com/Features/2007/no_smoking_service.html

Though I am grateful, actually, despite the idiocy of having to display no-smoking signs in churches (in spikey establishments, it's silly on an extra level)

In other news, I've been watching Inferno, the alternative dystopian universe Doctor Who story, in which Three discovers that actually there are worse places to be stuck than our 1970s Earth with a consultancy job at UNIT... What's striking is how different it is to the Star Trek: Mirror, Mirror, where the evil was of a cartoony. camp, over-sexed nature. Inferno is a very British fascist state, and the characters, while twisted away from their natures in 'our' universe. Mirror! Liz is even more buttoned up and proper than her original, but not a scientist and boiling with anger (probably because she's bored). In the Star Trek version, she'd have been wearing leather and carrying out dodgy experiments with unpleasant sexual undertones: this is more believable, sadder, and more frightening. The Brigade-Leader has analogous traits to the Brigadier: the 'good' Lethbridge-Stewart would never, on being informed that a prisoner can't be found in the ID databases, joke "ah well, if he doesn't exist, he won't feel the bullets", but there's something recognisable in that sense of humour. All in all, strangely convincing, despite the de-evolving wolf people, and I'm looking forward to seeing the conclusion, though I don't suppose it will be happy.