I like plenty of things that aren't true
I got nuttin' today. Bar, that is, an endless stream of student queries, and Sid, Rampant. The sod. So I shall fall back on ranting about religion. And sex.
Nicked off BoingBoing: Philip Pullman celebrates the futility of banning books, and incidentally swipes with pinpoint accuracy at the inherent problem with religion:
Religion, uncontaminated by power, can be the source of a great deal of private solace, artistic inspiration, and moral wisdom. But when it gets its hands on the levers of political or social authority, it goes rotten very quickly indeed. The rank stench of oppression wafts from every authoritarian church, chapel, temple, mosque, or synagogue - from every place of worship where the priests have the power to meddle in the social and intellectual lives of their flocks, from every presidential palace or prime ministerial office where civil leaders have to pander to religious ones.
And, in sharp contradistinction: when fashion has reached the point where the ridiculous things it makes its models wear, also make its models fall over, surely it has logically eaten itself? The point is presumably to present clothes that only look good on anorexic catwalk strutters and thus engender hopeless desire and self-loathing in the rest of us - but if they don't even function on the models, what the hell's the point? The bit that got my goat was the comment that extreme heels are "an empowering assertion of your own femininity". Empowering bollocks. No-one's empowered who's teetering ridiculously on their pins, destroying their body and looking like some unnatural child's-toy anti-Weeble - stick-thin, wobbling and definitely falling down.
To finish up Retro Kiddielit, a return to my perennial love affair with the Victorians. George Macdonald is an unlikely figure for my literary adoration: a Scottish Calvinist minister, he writes amazing children's fantasy so steeped in fairy tale, folklore and a profound and sensitive awareness of symbol that by and large their Christian message doesn't descend to allegory. He was a huge influence on Tolkien and Lewis; his adult fairy tales, Phantastes and Lilith are compelling, mystical and frequently extremely sexy. The Princess and Curdie is a sequel to The Princess and the Goblin, which is probably better-known, the story of the princess who saves her kingdom from the threat of the grotesque goblins in the mines, with the help of her beautiful, enigmatic great-great-great grandmother and the miner's lad Curdie. The Princess and Curdie is altogether weirder and more despairing, an investigation into political morality which explores corruption through incredibly powerful animal images. I was both horrified and fascinated for many years by my childhood reading of the book, and by the shuddersome image of shaking hands with a man only to find that, instead of a hand, you are grasping the belly of a snake or the hoof of a pig. I loved the Uglies, though.
Nicked off BoingBoing: Philip Pullman celebrates the futility of banning books, and incidentally swipes with pinpoint accuracy at the inherent problem with religion:
Religion, uncontaminated by power, can be the source of a great deal of private solace, artistic inspiration, and moral wisdom. But when it gets its hands on the levers of political or social authority, it goes rotten very quickly indeed. The rank stench of oppression wafts from every authoritarian church, chapel, temple, mosque, or synagogue - from every place of worship where the priests have the power to meddle in the social and intellectual lives of their flocks, from every presidential palace or prime ministerial office where civil leaders have to pander to religious ones.
And, in sharp contradistinction: when fashion has reached the point where the ridiculous things it makes its models wear, also make its models fall over, surely it has logically eaten itself? The point is presumably to present clothes that only look good on anorexic catwalk strutters and thus engender hopeless desire and self-loathing in the rest of us - but if they don't even function on the models, what the hell's the point? The bit that got my goat was the comment that extreme heels are "an empowering assertion of your own femininity". Empowering bollocks. No-one's empowered who's teetering ridiculously on their pins, destroying their body and looking like some unnatural child's-toy anti-Weeble - stick-thin, wobbling and definitely falling down.
To finish up Retro Kiddielit, a return to my perennial love affair with the Victorians. George Macdonald is an unlikely figure for my literary adoration: a Scottish Calvinist minister, he writes amazing children's fantasy so steeped in fairy tale, folklore and a profound and sensitive awareness of symbol that by and large their Christian message doesn't descend to allegory. He was a huge influence on Tolkien and Lewis; his adult fairy tales, Phantastes and Lilith are compelling, mystical and frequently extremely sexy. The Princess and Curdie is a sequel to The Princess and the Goblin, which is probably better-known, the story of the princess who saves her kingdom from the threat of the grotesque goblins in the mines, with the help of her beautiful, enigmatic great-great-great grandmother and the miner's lad Curdie. The Princess and Curdie is altogether weirder and more despairing, an investigation into political morality which explores corruption through incredibly powerful animal images. I was both horrified and fascinated for many years by my childhood reading of the book, and by the shuddersome image of shaking hands with a man only to find that, instead of a hand, you are grasping the belly of a snake or the hoof of a pig. I loved the Uglies, though.