Category Archives: Pop-Culture

Breaking Bad: Romans 3:10 for today

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Before I was a Christian, it seemed to me self-evident that humankind was a morass of evil and corruption. Its members had a pathetically short, meaningless existence punctuated by episodes of vanity and despair set between the nothingness before birth and the blackness after death – yet man still had the odd talent of making the whole thing seem comical.

As a Christian, my view is not that much different: man is evil, but his evil has an explanation and a remedy; his earthly pursuits are rendered even more vain by Christian understanding, yet there is meaning to be found in life and it does not end in black nothingness. With the abundance of evidence for the existence of evil – personal evil – I’ve never been able to understand why some Christians find it so hard to believe in the devil as a person.

Unsurprisingly, my favourite book in the Bible is Ecclesiastes – and one of my favourite TV shows was The Sopranos and, now, is Breaking Bad. Some of my Christian friends don’t approve of my viewing tastes – among other things – but both seem to me to represent the human condition – sans redemption, admittedly – rather accurately.

From here:

Breaking Bad, the AMC television drama that wrapped up its fifth season this past summer, is one of the most critically-acclaimed shows of the last several years. It recently won its seventh Emmy award and has been touted by many critics as the best show on TV today.

[….]

Behind all of Breaking Bad‘s artistic and technical brilliance is a clear and consistent picture of human nature fully consistent with orthodox Christianity. Perhaps no other show has ever presented such an honest and carefully drawn picture of total depravity. This emphasis surely comes from Gilligan himself. Although he now describes himself as “pretty much agnostic,” Gilligan continues to bears the imprint of his Catholic upbringing. His show portrays moral decay as part of the natural order of things in a fallen world. “Mr. Chips becomes Scarface” is the pithy way Gilligan puts it when asked to describe Breaking Bad in a single sentence.

The mobile phone as religious experience

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Everyone needs to worship something: we were designed that way by God – to worship him.

In a secular age, what do creatures with a built-in urge to worship do with the urge?

They worship their mobile phones: the preferred altar for most worshippers is the high place of Cupertino, and the object of adoration, the iPhone.

Today, the iPhone 5 was introduced to the devout; here you can see Apple high priest, Tim Cook, in an attitude of ecstatic supplication before an icon of his god:

And below we have one of the senior monks, Jony Ive, waxing eloquent on the relationship he and his order enjoy with their iPhones.

I wonder if Richard Dawkins will buy one.

Little Mosque on the Prairie to be put out of its misery

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There is a time and a place for mercy killing and this one is long overdue:

CBC’s ground-breaking show Little Mosque on the Prairie draws to a close Monday night, remaining true to the “ordinary folks” portrayal of Muslims it has practised from the outset.

When the show debuted in 2007, it drew attention to the then-radical idea of showing Muslims living in a Western society in a TV sitcom. The show was created by a Muslim woman, Zarqa Nawaz, who spoke to the New York Times, the BBC and media outlets around the world about her concept for the show.

Little Mosque never managed to extricate itself from the mire of cringingly humourless political correctness and would not have been aired at all were not for the yearly $1.5 billion the CBC receives from taxpayers.

I understand that most of Little Mosque’s fan mail comes from Anglican clergy.

It was Curmudgeon's Day yesterday

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And I missed it. Drat.

From here:

Jan 29. An annual celebration of the crusty, yet insightful, wags who consistently apply the needle of truth to the balloons of hypocrisy and social norms. Always celebrated on Jan 29, the birthday of W.C. Fields, one of America’s most beloved curmudgeons.

 

More information than most of us want to know

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From here:

Sharing apps such as Foursquare already let us share where we eat, drink and shop.

Now ‘I Just Made Love’ lets you log and GPS-tag your private life in just the same way – and, bizarrely, some people seem to want to.

The Android app has been downloaded 10,000 times, and rated five stars by dozens of users.

‘Did you just make love? Or just want to check where people near you made love?’ says the app.

‘I just made love lets you do all that and more!’

Reminds me of a song by the incomparable Jake Thackray:

A kiss too far

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In its never ending quest to sell more sweaters, Benetton, purveyor of gaudy sartorial accessories to the masses, thinks that global love is the secret to bigger profits:

At this moment in history, so full of major upheavals and equally large hopes, we have decided, through this campaign, to give widespread visibility to an ideal notion of tolerance and invite the citizens of every country to reflect on how hatred arises particularly from fear of ‘the other’ and of what is unfamiliar to us. Ours is a universal campaign, using instruments such as the internet, the world of social media, and artistic imagination, and it is unique, in that it calls the citizens of the world to action.

This slightly modified photo of the Pope snogging an Egyptian Imam has, surprise surprise, upset the Vatican. Obviously, Benetton is not anticipating selling many sweaters to Catholics or Muslims.

 

It’s all, ostensibly, a part of promoting the Unhate Foundation which was:

founded by the Benetton Group, [and] seeks to contribute to the creation of a new culture of tolerance, to combat hatred, building on Benetton’s underpinning values. It is another important step in the group’s social responsibility strategy: not a cosmetic exercise, but a contribution that will have a real impact on the international community, especially through the vehicle of communication, which can reach social players in different areas.

As is usually the case when someone is determined to promote tolerance, the means used are seen as intolerable by the majority of those subjected to them. The difference in this case is that much reviled capitalism is acting as a corrective. Benetton’s stock is taking a nosedive:

 

 

 

Holy relics in 2011

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When I was in Italy a few years ago, I visited the Basilica of St. Anthony where, proudly exhibited, was St. Anthony’s larynx, the cartilage of which, I was assured, is still incorrupt. I came away from the viewing with the satisfaction inherent in having seen something unusual, if not macabre. Perhaps because I am not a Catholic or perhaps because I was deemed unworthy by the petrified organ, I did not find myself especially edified.

Others, more pious than I, were genuflecting and raising their eyes to heaven.

There is nothing new under the sun, so now we have a 21st century relic: John Lennon’s tooth; the sacred molar is to be placed on the altar of Ebay where it will receive contemporary homage, possibly to the tune of three figures:

One of John Lennon’s teeth is expected to make £10,000 when it is auctioned next month.

The tooth was given to the former Beatles’ house keeper Dot Jarlett when she worked for him at Kenwood mansion in Surrey in the late 1960s.

He told her to give it her daughter “as a souvenir” after he had pulled it out in the kitchen of the Weybridge property.

The tooth will be auctioned in Stockport on 5 November.

Dot’s son Barry Jarlett said: “He was in the kitchen and he had this tooth which he had wrapped in a piece of paper.

“He said: ‘Dot will you dispose of this’ and then he said: ‘Or, as your daughter’s a Beatles fan, you can give to her as a souvenir’.

 

Occupy Canada is coming, apparently

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On Saturday. The CBC tells us that it is the harbinger of an economic awakening and:

Canadian organizers are revving up their plans for the Occupy Wall Street-conceived global action day, the most adventurous idea yet for a movement that some experts say has the potential to trigger a major shift in the economic thinking of governments and big corporations.

Here we can see some of the organisers. I think I spot a couple of Macbook pros, a Macbook, a Dell and an HP laptop, all brought to the anti-big-corporation occupiers courtesy of big corporations.


I was planning on attending, but have decided instead to experience my economic awakening in the comfort of my study where I can savour the onset of a new epoch of halcyon accord without distraction.

It feels like the ’60s again.