Stephen Fry on religion

don't think we should ever allow religion the trick of maintaining that the spiritual and the beautiful and the noble and the altruistic and the morally strong and the virtuous are in any way inventions of religion or particular or peculiar to religion. It's certainly true that you could say the Christ who said "Let him who is without sin cast the first stone" - that's a wonderful to have said. Anyone who said that would earn a great deal of respect and interest, you'd say that's one of most beautiful phrases ever, ever uttered. But there is no, absolutely no monopoly on beauty and truth in religion, and I suppose one of the reasons that I'm so fond of the Greeks, and one of the reasons that the great radical and poet Shelley wrote his Prometheus Unbound was that he understood that if you were to compare the Genesis myth, which has, which had bedeviled our culture, the Western European culture for a very long time indeed, for two thousand years, it was essentially a myth in which we should be ashamed of ourselves. God says: who told you you were naked? What possible reason have we to believe that we are naked or that if we are naked there is something to be ashamed of, that what we are and what we do is something for which we should ever apologise, we should apologise for our dreams, our impulses, our appetites, our drives, our desires, are not things to apologise for. Our actions sometimes we do apologise for and we excoriate ourselves for and rightly, but that's the Genesis myth. The Greek myth of Prometheus, who stole fire from heaven and who gave to his favourite - his favourite mortal: man. In other words what the Greeks were saying is that we have divine fire, whatever is divine is in us, as humans. We are as good as the gods. The gods are capricious and mean and foolish and stupid and jealous and rapine and all the things that Greek mythology show us that they are, and that's a much better it seems to me - and for that the gods punished Prometheus and chained him to the Caucasus and vultures chewed away at his liver everyday as it regrew because he was immortal of course, and Shelley quite rightly understood - and interestingly his wife of course wrote Frankenstein as the modern Prometheus - understood that that mythological idea, that champion of a real humanity and a real humanism, as we've come to call it, is we are captains of our soul and masters of our destiny, and that we contain any divine fire that there is, divine fire that is fine and great. I mean it's perfectly obvious that if there were ever a God he has lost all possible taste. You've only got to look - forget the aggression and unpleasantness of the radical right or the Islamic hordes to the East - the sheer lack of intelligence and insight and ability to express themselves and to enthuse others of the priesthood and the clerisy here, in this country, and indeed in Europe, you know God once had Bach and Michelangelo on his side, he had Mozart, and now who does he have? People with ginger whiskers and tinted spectacles who reduce the glories of theology to a kind of sharing, you know? That's what religion has become, a feeble and anaemic nonsense, because we understood that the fire was within us, it was not in some idol on an altar, whether it was a gold cross or whether it was a Buddha or anything else, that we have it. The fault is in our stars, but also the glory is (correcting himself) in us not in our stars. The glory - anything - we take credit for what is great about man and we take blame for what is dreadful about man, we neither grovel or apologise at the feet of a god, or are so infantile as to project the idea that we once had a father as human beings and we therefore should have a divine one too. We have to grow up, which is partly what Christopher was saying.

Ladies (and Gentlemen maybe)

Mr Zachary Quinto
http://roflrazzi.com/upcoming/?pid=25265
*drools*

How to dress like a celeb

http://www.guardian.co.uk/lifeandstyle/2009/sep/27/elly-jackson-la-roux-fashion

http://www.guardian.co.uk/lifeandstyle/2009/nov/22/how-i-get-dressed-paloma-faith

http://www.guardian.co.uk/lifeandstyle/2009/apr/05/scarlett-johansson-dressed

http://www.guardian.co.uk/lifeandstyle/2008/mar/09/fashion

Green Living myths

Very interesting
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/green-living-blog/2009/nov/26/top-10-green-living-myths

Efron Interview

http://www.guardian.co.uk/film/2009/nov/26/zac-efron-me-and-orson-welles

New Moon (spoilers)

I wrote this for a bunch of Twilight fans on thestudentroom.co.uk .Its not modified much.

It was great! I loved it. Just a few points:
OMG Taylor Lautner's abs! Seriously they are crazy!
Kristen still annoyed me. That whole breaking up her sentances thing, and breathing heavily, its so unnatural and awkward.
I hate Robert Pattinson all made up, it looks freaky and makes him not look hot. His acting was not up to the old standard.
Fight scene with the volturi-Awesome
Alice's vision of Bella as a vampire I didn't like, wtf is up with the cheesy running?!!
I didn't like the ending much, it was way too sudden. The audience needs some downtime after all that drama. I also thought the plane jouney and the panic of trying to get to Edward should have been played up more, its so dramatic in the book
I loved the scenes with Kristen and Taylor, both when they're having fun and when they're "breaking up"
The deciding about Bellas transformation should have been alot more dramatic and tense as well, in the book Edward is furious with her and it would have worked better around the table as in the book.
Loved the wolves, though its still dissapointing how ugly the guy who plays Sam Uley is. The Volturi were all awesome, and I loved how most of the British actors kept their accents. Some of the Volturi guys are so hot.
I liked the general adherance to the book.
Overall, it was awesome :D there is stuff I would have elaborated on but obviously you can't have a film that long (even though you know that Twilighters would sit through it :p)

I also found this, which I agree completely with:
http://www.fearnet.com/blogs/new_moon/b17398_20_differences_work_between_lsquonew.html

Twlight saga

http://socialitelife.celebuzz.com/bfm_gallery/2009/10/taylor_latuners_photoshoot_for_rolling_stone/gallery_main/gallery_main-taylor-lautner-rolling-stone-shoot-10092009-36.jpg

http://www.denimblog.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/10/taylor-lautner-rolling-stone-photo-shoot-04.jpg

Yeh me and Molly got a bit hyper :p

http://g4tv.com/videos/42956/Possible-Twilight-Breaking-Dawn-Footage/
posted by Peter Facinelli earlier today on twitter

http://community.livejournal.com/lion_lamb/1651773.html#cutid1
best Breaking Dawn spoof ever! Spoilers though, be warned

Want this job

http://www.ntjobs.org.uk/job-detail.asp?id=4267

Bunch of Muse stuff

Muse on a French TV show:
http://video.mytaratata.com/video/iLyROoafI9T9.html

Muse lolz:
http://community.livejournal.com/ihasabellamy
http://prootage.livejournal.com/ -icons
http://community.livejournal.com/ontd_muse/357761.html?view=9676417#t9676417#
http://board.muse.mu/showthread.php?t=61004
What is Matt looking at? used to be on LJ but I can't find it anymore

because Muse slash is funny:
http://community.livejournal.com/muse_slash
some people get faaar too into it (lol pun)

blog

National trust blog from the Farne Islands. Cute pictures of seals :D
http://farnephoto.blogspot.com/

Food on the cheap :D

http://www.guardian.co.uk/travel/2009/nov/24/york-10-best-budget-eats

cutest video ever

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PP4xZXsV6m0&feature=related

JM

These are the few things for JM that I can find so far:
http://memegenerator.net/Andrew-McMahon-is-fckin-pissed-because?pageIndex=1

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r_INC0EJV_A

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5yNluDcUe9M

video

So, this is the music behind the whole introduction on the current Muse tour. Awesomeness personified
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m6FpDtSU928

I suppose I should write about the gig. I'll put the highlights here (i've talked about it enough)
1. the stage set was amazing! the crowd were broken into three, which really helped with the shoving. The stage was circular, with three towers that went up and down :D and two "wings" off each side. I was on Matt's side for the first time.
2. The introduction was cool. They had big brotheresque people projected walking up these tower blocks. Near the end the people started falling down.
3. Helskinki Jam is mindblowing. Chris and Dom playing their fastest whilst rotating :D
4. Talking to a girl called Hannah in the crowd. She went to her guitar shop in Devon and because she was a Muse fan they let her play on Matts guitar they had just finished and were going to ship out to him!!! I also met Din from the TSR Muse soc
5. MK Ultra!!!!!
6. Matt's awesome light up glasses that he chucked into the crowd
7. Lazers! so many lazers! Matt even used his CD thing on his mic stand to aim them at us
8. Ending, got a tour programme and a t-shirt. Ran to the train station and pyro missed her train so came back home with me

News

Hello everyone. Not used this blog in a while. Am back in the UK now. Third year is suiting me.
1.I deleted all the poltical blogs. Some were naieve, some were boring and all of them were a bit pretentious. So, I got rid of them.
2.Henceforth this blog will be to keep all the awesome websites I come across in once place. I'm going to have to start labelling the posts (urgh)
3. Film reviews are, however, still going to be placed here
4. Personal stuff has no place here, as ever
5. Certain themes of stuff I like will keep cropping up. Some funny, some serious, some random, some topical, but always awesome

This is my catch up list:
the breaking dawn review with rpattz pictures
massive political picture
Obamas promises
prootage
whats matt looking at
post some fucking muse
doctor who LJ thing
dr mcmahon
uprising not so much, with new born not so much