Musings and Random Vitriol

Just had one of those mental “thunk!” moments. So often in evangelical circles the phrase “Born again” carries with it an arrogant swagger. As if the proponent had been born again, complete and fully formed, replete with all the answers to everything.

Perhaps we’d do well to remember that when one is born again, one starts out as a child, with a lot of learning and development on the road ahead; a lot of baggage to dump; a lot of assumptions and certainties to be challenged and discarded.

If any one thing stuck from school and university, it’s that at almost every new stage you start by learning that a lot of what you learnt previously isn’t quite true. It was just all the truth you needed, or were equipped to handle at that point. It served to teach enough to then allow it to be refined, replaced with a deeper more complex understanding. But at the time, what you knew, you knew.

Here’s to the journey, and an open mind …

Or at least in what may become an occasional series.

This one arises from being out with a local Street Pastors team last Friday.  It was one of those classic moments – a random question called out by a passing reveller, swept away by his mates before there was any chance to do anything other than shout out a cheerful quick response.  Not that we’re out and about in order to indulge in the cut and thrust of intellectual debate, but in the small hours conversations where at least one half is well lubricated tend to the banal or the philosophical …

“What do you think of gay people?”

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Excuses, excuses

So, here’s the thing.  I already have a Laney LC30-II which I’m rather fond of.  However, it has a couple of issues.  Firstly, and you don’t often hear a guitarist say this, it’s too loud.  Not too loud in an absolute sense you understand, but too loud for the vast majority of situations where I use it.  So I never really get to drive it properly.  Secondly, it has taken to hissing, popping and farting in a most distressing fashion when not under load, and has degenerated to the point where even I’ve acknowledged Something Must Be Done.

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We have a couple of cats.  One of them in particular is very much “my” cat, at least in his opinion.  He gets bothered when I don’t come home from work in time. He shouts at me until I sit down so he can sit on my lap. He sits in the window looking for me and runs to the door. At times he’s borderline dog.

So, this cat, in his weird catty way, he clearly ‘loves’ me.

And yet in the evening, when we’re tired and sitting down to eat; to enjoy something pleasant and relaxing; just then, as you start to unwind, that’s the moment he invariably goes for a deliberate, serious and olfactorily challenging poo.  Not just before the meal. Not near the start, when an interruption would be OK. Not at the end, when you’re about to get up anyway.  No, smack in the middle, when there’s no way out that’s going to work. And by a quirk of circumstance and domestic geography, the litter tray is within easy aroma reach of anywhere one might be eating.

Lest you say “Ah, it’s just his rhythm” … no, no it isn’t.  Doesn’t matter what time he gets fed, or what time we sit down to eat. How long or short the gap in between.  It’s pure sabotage.

You might love them. They might love you. Doesn’t stop the crap, though, and they’ll still stink up your life …

You may or may not be aware that we are currently in the month of Movember.  No, that’s not a typo, it’s Movember.

Movember is an annual campaign to raise awareness of men’s health, particular prostrate and testicular cancer, and also to raise funds for the same.  It does this primarily through encouraging men to grow moustaches and to gain sponsorship for doing so, just for the duration of November.

Prostate cancer has probably touched most people’s lives, either directly, or through friends and family. It certainly has mine (indirectly, so far!). So each year as Movember rolled around, I always felt disenfranchised by the fact that I’m a long-standing beardy, thus making the whole “grow a moustache” schtick a little redundant.

This year, however, the little brain worked overtime, and taking inspiration from Lemmy I decided rather than growing a mo, I could simply lose a chunk of beard.  So I have.  And my chin is cold.

Shattering the not exactly rigorous anonymity of the site, if anyone wants to donate to the cause in response to me looking like a muppet for a few weeks (Lemmy doesn’t, he’s Lemmy; I, on the other hand, do, because I’m not) then please go to my profile at Movember and do the honours.