Unintelligent Design

I'm sure that some of my friends list are already well aware of this, as you're a knowledgeable bunch - but I didn't know about it until last week, and I find the concept a little bit fascinating...

The poem Der Heliand ('The Saviour'), written somewhen between 803 and 840, is a long religious epic written in Old Saxon, depicting "the history of Jesus Christ in terms that would have been familiar to its target audience, the Old Saxons, and indeed to any Anglo-Saxon expatriates still to be found in the German religious world. This Jesus is a warrior king, a ring-giver, and his disciples or 'theganos' owe him the full allegiance unto death due to a lord: in short, a Jesus from the world of Beowulf".

(Quoted from Geoffrey Hindley's A Brief History of the Anglo-Saxons)

It's an interesting mental image, isn't it? I wonder if anyone's ever considered adapting it into a film...

So, who's going to Whitby in April?

Less stressed now.

But I think I should spend the rest of the evening tidying up the disaster area. :)

Have I mentioned the new Ellis/Duffield weekly webcomic FreakAngels yet?

If not, I'm sure that others have. Only one five page strip up so far, but it's looking interesting...

If you phone me in the next hour or so, I'm not going to be answering. :)

January has, on the whole, been a bit grim.

The weather's been unpredictable, cold and nasty, but then I expect that. Work has been stupidly busy and stupidly stressful. I've mostly just been stupid and stressed. Work may have been a major contributing factor but, as ever, it was mostly self-inflicted.

Good things that happened in January? Well, some people had birthdays, and much fun was had. I disposed of the kitchen carpet - and anyone who ever saw my kitchen carpet will happily confirm that this was long overdue. I've started seriously clearing Stuff out of the house. The bathroom ceiling tiles are being slowly (and painfully) removed, revealing a relatively intact ceiling. And there have been a few genuinely lovely moments, hidden away in there somewhere.

The rest of it wasn't so good.

Just three and a half hours to February.

Torchwood 2.1

"Torchwood? Oh dear."

Actually... really rather good. Pacing, action, humour, a decent antagonist... and a better soundtrack, for that matter.

...and, yes, ok, those people who thought that season one was sometimes a little too close to slash fiction are probably going to dislike this episode for the same reasons. There's smut and suggestive dialogue. There's hot man-on-man action. Oh yes indeed.  And there's a moment with Ianto and his stopwatch...

...and it all holds together rather well. Now, let's see them do just as well next week. But this time, without James Marsters and half of Adam Ant's wardrobe...

Books read this year - excluding graphic novels, comics etc.

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Heroes to Torchwood

This amused me. Short and doesn't really contain any spoilers, although if you've not seen any Heroes episodes then it might reveal a little bit...

...new classical music. Opinions?

I skimmed an interesting piece in the latest Gramophone magazine, which commented that there's no 'hook' that can be used to get new work into the mainstream - I think they namechecked the Turner Prize as an equivalent hook for modern art, but I don't have the relevant piece to hand.

There's a bit of my brain that thinks the sort of people who appreciated, say, Tarmvred (to pick a not-so random interesting experimental electronic act) at Infest, are also vaguely likely to appreciate a modern classical composer like Tüür... but I'm not sure that's actually true. Hmm.

May need to think on this a little more, but comments are welcome...

Edit: Well, ok, John Adams is on MySpace. That was a pleasant surprise.

Edit2: ...and so are the Kronos Quartet, among others (...and I hadn't realised they'd been busy remixing NIN. I guess that's a decent hook, hmm? :)