‘I GUESS there isn’t that much to say anymore.’ he said, taking another drag of his burnt-out cigarette and leaning back. The ceiling fan spun lazily, flies buzzed around the room like souls bewildered in the day heat. ‘I guess not.’ I confessed. There just wasn’t any point to it: I knew all his arguments and he knew mine, but more importantly, we knew each other, too well. He’d made his decisions and I’d made mine.

He took one last pull from his cigarette, then idly started tracing patterns with its stub in the faded cherry-wood table. ‘Seems almost pointless, really. I mean, it hardly seems like it means anything anymore, does it?’ I shook my head, almost violently, from where I was standing. ‘No, no, it’s the only important thing there is. And that’s just where you and I don’t see eye to eye.’ He sat quietly for awhile, watching the dust motes float in the few rays of sunlight that slid through the damaged blinds, and smirked. A pause. A faint clink from the five-sided badge he wore, and a rustle, as he shifted his weight. The alarm stopped.

Go for your forty-fives or six-shooters.

this is such a brilliant shirt design.

In so many ways. Make a movie, somebody, please?

Interpol

o what an island of colour we live in! a whirling, mad, dervish-dance of kaleidoscopic visions, circling in on themselves in High-Def over-saturation. Neon burning its way through the night, isn’t it wonderful?

…

tap a finger on me, and I will resound, over and over, pealing high notes into the brilliant sky

Karen O covers Sonic Youth

thanks poon

er, okay, I promise to bring this blog back on track with its title soon? I can’t think of text until I finish these essays, aye me

julian plenti

poon points out that emily haines does a cameo in the video

65daysofstatic

on l4d poetry. i have some great friends

cheng – actually i bet there is alr

sam – l4d haikus
zombies! undead filth
i wield a mean frying pan
ka-pwang! brains scatter

cheng – whirling katana
a cranial disconnect
cherry blossoms fall

sam – very good.

I realised somewhat recently that we are running out of words, and this to me is horrible, it’s been a dim half-understood thing for a long time, but it’s always been horrible.

words are becoming, in the terms of francis schaeffer, contentless labels that people throw meaning into. I have never liked labels: ‘intellectual’, ‘artsy-type’, ‘Christian-evangelical’, ‘Christian-fundamentalist’, ‘homosexual’, ‘Scholar’, whatever. Some of you will know how much I don’t like labels, whether they’re tagged on or self-identified. I don’t like them because I’ve always been dimly aware of how they don’t MEAN anything, in and of themselves, they’re packed with ambiguous value and bias depending on who’s saying it to whom. A person is NEVER just ‘artsy-type’, or just ‘homosexual’, or just ‘Christian-fundamentalist’. A label becomes reductive, and that makes me angry.

Except I only recently realise how this is symptomatic of something deeper; a fundamental failure of language, today. 21st century, after liberal theology and relativism and the Creation of New Terms and the Co-opting of Old Terms and how the world is breaking down into a million hermeneutic cliques.

take the word ‘God’ for instance. somebody says ‘God willing’, do they mean God, a distinct being with a will separate from your own, or do they mean God, a vague sense of optimism and goodwill I feel towards myself when I am in church and JESUS LOVES ME WOO.

Lots of christians are told that the biggest threat to christianity in the 21st century is materialism, the lust for new shiny things, but materialism is nothing new. There’ve been new shiny things material things to tempt people since Cain realised Abel had more, and why should we be any different?

No, the big danger for Christians today is that few people are telling new Christians enough about who God is, and people assume we can just sell ‘God’. What kind of God? Take your pick: the God of the prosperity gospel, the God of the consumer churches, the God of the upwardly mobile, the God of Healing for Minor Ailments, the God of religious ecstasy.

Language, people, language. The words you use are dangerous. ‘I have faith that I am right; God is with me. I am sure that I am doing God’s will.’ Who is God? Do you know Him well enough to say this? Christians are taught in churches to Always Call First on the Name of the Lord, but are they learning Who He Is, or are they just calling out to a vague word, a general feeling of optimism, or self-will, or pride?

the golden filter

here is some nu-disco. or is this house? or techno? or synthpop? i get so confused but they do some good dx dx dx