Where are you going tonight?

[William the White]

demolition man octagon anyone seen it?

Yes. I saw it. I don't think there's a play in Fred Dibnah's life. There's a lot of events but not much at stake. We have a grumpy old git and a younger wife being patient with him.

One or two moving moments, but a disappointment in a season that's offered a huge amount of enjoyment.

[General Mannerheim]

demolition man octagon anyone seen it?

Put me back in the fridge

[Bruce Rioja]

I don't think there's a play in Fred Dibnah's life.

That's my concern. Loved watching what the guy did and feeling his enthusiasm for it all, but I'm not sure that there's a play in his life story. Someone bought me Fred by David Hall at Christmas but I think that there'll probably have to be a lengthy publishers' strike before I get around to it.

[William the White]

5@50 at the Royal Exchange had some brilliant acting. The premise of the play was also promising - five women, friends forever, approach their fiftieth birthdays, to find everything that seemed a given in their lives - from lesbian partnership to 30 year old marriage, to career as prize-winning journalist, to making loadsamoney estate agent - under huge threat.

But the play, despite having some real acute observations, and a lot of fine acerbic wit lacked any real emotional heart.

Better in the second half than the first, thankfully, but will not live with me until the morning...

[thebish]

same place as last night and tomorrow night - to act out the part of the apostle philip in the Hornchurch Passion play...

(oberammegau - pah!)

the crucifixion from last night...

[TANGODANCER]

The Bolton Town Hall crucifiction production had three crosses. That's two more than Petrov.

[William the White]

The Bolton Town Hall crucifiction production had three crosses. That's two more than Petrov.

I passed by and saw them this afternoon...

This religion has chosen an ancient means of torture and execution as its central symbol... And those three fat crosses on the town hall steps looked absolutely ghastly to me... Feel the pain... feel the guilt... Grisly stuff...

[TANGODANCER]

The Bolton Town Hall crucifiction production had three crosses. That's two more than Petrov.

I passed by and saw them this afternoon...

This religion has chosen an ancient means of torture and execution as its central symbol... And those three fat crosses on the town hall steps looked absolutely ghastly to me... Feel the pain... feel the guilt... Grisly stuff...

Not quite the message being put over WTW. More, pheonix from the flames sort of thing. Three part drama: Death, Waiting and Resurection, but then I guess you know that aleady.

[William the White]

The Bolton Town Hall crucifiction production had three crosses. That's two more than Petrov.

I passed by and saw them this afternoon...

This religion has chosen an ancient means of torture and execution as its central symbol... And those three fat crosses on the town hall steps looked absolutely ghastly to me... Feel the pain... feel the guilt... Grisly stuff...

Not quite the message being put over WTW. More, pheonix from the flames sort of thing. Three part drama: Death, Waiting and Resurection, but then I guess you know that aleady.

The story is familiar - and the important bit, surely, is the hope of resurrection (however defined - I'd like to know thebish's take on it but bet he won't tell) - so the symbol of the faith being the torturer's instrument seems a puzzling decision. Until you look at the historic practice of Christian churches of all persuasions, but with a special mention to Spanish Catholicism...

[Worthy4England]

The Bolton Town Hall crucifiction production had three crosses. That's two more than Petrov.

I passed by and saw them this afternoon...

This religion has chosen an ancient means of torture and execution as its central symbol... And those three fat crosses on the town hall steps looked absolutely ghastly to me... Feel the pain... feel the guilt... Grisly stuff...

Not quite the message being put over WTW. More, pheonix from the flames sort of thing. Three part drama: Death, Waiting and Resurection, but then I guess you know that aleady.

The story is familiar - and the important bit, surely, is the hope of resurrection (however defined - I'd like to know thebish's take on it but bet he won't tell) - so the symbol of the faith being the torturer's instrument seems a puzzling decision. Until you look at the historic practice of Christian churches of all persuasions, but with a special mention to Spanish Catholicism...

Not really too puzzling, unless you wanted to make it so. It reminds those who wish to be so reminded, that God gave his only son...

[William the White]

Not really too puzzling, unless you wanted to make it so. It reminds those who wish to be so reminded, that God gave his only son...

You know, I reckon an awful lot of us, hearing the Christian story, find that 'fact' really puzzling - you give your only son to be tortured to death? Would any human father do that? But... God??? Who can do anything - he takes that choice???

[thebish]

The story is familiar - and the important bit, surely, is the hope of resurrection (however defined - I'd like to know thebish's take on it but bet he won't tell) - so the symbol of the faith being the torturer's instrument seems a puzzling decision. Until you look at the historic practice of Christian churches of all persuasions, but with a special mention to Spanish Catholicism...

that's a very nice try william - but (for you) startlingly poorly researched.

the cross was certainly not the earliest symbol used in christianity (catacomb art) - the earliest symbols used were the fish - the chi-ro and the anchor... earliest pictures had jesus as a shepherd - never on a cross.

the cross (as i am sure you know) was considered a shameful thing - the fact of jesus's crucifixion was a source of abuse for early christians - maybe you have heard of the famous Alexomenos graffiti - a donkey on a tau-cross with the caption - "Alexomenon worships his God"



over time - much like our very own Wanky Wanderers chant - the cross symbol is used by Christians - much the same way as any persecuted minority (as they then were) finds some power in turning the tables on those who taunt them - defiance, if you like.

the cross was in use as a symbol used by christians LONG before christians gained any "power" at the time of Constantine's conversion - the moment that many things started to go horribly wrong (in my opinion)

Constantine's conversion was in 312AD, the cross was being used by christians in the early 2nd century - sometimes the tau cross - sometimes the anchor turned into a cross, or the chi-ro (which is also a kind of a cross-shape)... so, your suggestion that the cross was somehow adopted deliberately because it was an instrument of torture and christians were powerful torturers, whilst it might make an interesting and controversial topic of after-dinner conversation, in my humble opinion it is a little bit wide of the mark...

for one thing it was in use well before christians had anything you could call power (quite the opposite, in fact) - and for another - it was never adopted as a decision of a council - it simply emerged through popular usage - that's how most powerful popular symbolism emerges - it isn't often something a committee or council can choose or plan.

of course - over 2000 years the image of the cross is now saturated with use and abuse - but to pretend (presumably for the sake of some kind of lame sideswipe at christianity) that it was chosen because it matched christianity's lust for torture - is a bit weak.


for my own part - i don't have crucifixes around me - i don't wear a cross - but i do use the symbolism of the cross - always an empty cross. the symbolism is just that - that it is empty.

anyway - here's my daughter pre-show tonight, with a very scary Barabbas...

[Worthy4England]

Not really too puzzling, unless you wanted to make it so. It reminds those who wish to be so reminded, that God gave his only son...

You know, I reckon an awful lot of us, hearing the Christian story, find that 'fact' really puzzling - you give your only son to be tortured to death? Would any human father do that? But... God??? Who can do anything - he takes that choice???

I didn't offer it as a fact, I offered it as an explanation as to why the crucifix is used.

I'm sure someone such as yourself has the mental capacity to make the leap from "son offered for a tough death because resurrection is just around the corner", if you chose to do so...

[William the White]

Not really too puzzling, unless you wanted to make it so. It reminds those who wish to be so reminded, that God gave his only son...

You know, I reckon an awful lot of us, hearing the Christian story, find that 'fact' really puzzling - you give your only son to be tortured to death? Would any human father do that? But... God??? Who can do anything - he takes that choice???

I didn't offer it as a fact, I offered it as an explanation as to why the crucifix is used.

I'm sure someone such as yourself has the mental capacity to make the leap from "son offered for a tough death because resurrection is just around the corner", if you chose to do so...

Worthy - without any polemical intent whatsoever - I have to admit that it beats me.

But I don't really want to go further - i know this is an important time for believers - and, though I thought it ugly and horrible - I wasn't that disturbed by the three chubby crosses on Victoria Square.

[Prufrock]

It is stated very matter of factually though. Which is all well and good, but then open to be shot at. I genuinely can't get my head around the intelligent people I know who believe so deeply something which seems to me so patently, obviously ludicrous. I just don't 'get' the line of thinking. But fook it, if it makes people happy, or it's how they've come to explain the big questions then great. I dislike militant atheism too. Interesting article by Martin Rees, the scientist who recently accepted the Templeton Prize and suffered Dawkins' withering wrath. Tis here, and I think speaks a lot of sense

[Hoboh]

Not really too puzzling, unless you wanted to make it so. It reminds those who wish to be so reminded, that God gave his only son...

You know, I reckon an awful lot of us, hearing the Christian story, find that 'fact' really puzzling - you give your only son to be tortured to death? Would any human father do that? But... God??? Who can do anything - he takes that choice???

Silly billy it's the ultimate sacrifice!!!!

(Though if it was givinc up a daughter there are times............)

[William the White]

It is stated very matter of factually though. Which is all well and good, but then open to be shot at. I genuinely can't get my head around the intelligent people I know who believe so deeply something which seems to me so patently, obviously ludicrous. I just don't 'get' the line of thinking. But fook it, if it makes people happy, or it's how they've come to explain the big questions then great. I dislike militant atheism too. Interesting article by Martin Rees, the scientist who recently accepted the Templeton Prize and suffered Dawkins' withering wrath. Tis here, and I think speaks a lot of sense

Was a short and very shallow article. No idea why you thought it interesting. Or why you think it speaks a lot of sense - beyond pretty obvious banality, it's at the intellectual level of 'look right, look left, look right again'.

It is, however, the kind of thing you have to do, if you accept the £1mill that is the Templeton Prize, which is basically an annual bribe to try and persuade scientists to offer an intellectual smokescreen that they don't actually believe. It is significantly more than thirty pieces of silver. Dawkins was kind in calling him a 'compliant Quisling'. You don't have to be a militant atheist to hear the bank notes rustling.

But if that article was all they got, they was robbed!

[Prufrock]

His motives may be what they may be. But I'm fairly sure before the Prize Rees had described an interest in religion along the lines of interested in the customs of his tribe. That notwithstanding, the sense I think it talks is the 'accommodation' aspect. The conventional ideas of religion seem ridiculous to me. As a say I fail to see how people who prove themselves intelligent and capable of independent thought in every other aspect of life swallow this story of a beardy benevolent old man watching us and judging us. I'm also convinced on a purely logical plane that a god cannot be omnipotent, give us free will AND not be a bastard. However, the argument as overevolved monkeys there is no reason we should understand everything is a difficult one to argue against. Dawkins pisses me off. His arguments are convincing but f*ck it, if it makes people happy.. Religion, or faith isn't the cause of fighting and disputes, it's people who feel the need to convert everybody else. To be right. Similar to the great art debate, it isn't one that can ever be won. Just shut the f*ck up and let people get on with it. Debate it, sure, in the right place, with an even temper and with respect, but stop keep squabbling. The lives lost in Northern Ireland, in the Middle East, in 9/11, in the ensuing wars, and for what, so we can argue over something we'll never ever know. It's bollocks.

[Worthy4England]

Not really too puzzling, unless you wanted to make it so. It reminds those who wish to be so reminded, that God gave his only son...

You know, I reckon an awful lot of us, hearing the Christian story, find that 'fact' really puzzling - you give your only son to be tortured to death? Would any human father do that? But... God??? Who can do anything - he takes that choice???

I didn't offer it as a fact, I offered it as an explanation as to why the crucifix is used.

I'm sure someone such as yourself has the mental capacity to make the leap from "son offered for a tough death because resurrection is just around the corner", if you chose to do so...

Worthy - without any polemical intent whatsoever - I have to admit that it beats me.

But I don't really want to go further - i know this is an important time for believers - and, though I thought it ugly and horrible - I wasn't that disturbed by the three chubby crosses on Victoria Square.

As a bloke generally of scientific leaning, I should probably be in the largely sceptical camp. And generally I am. I don't attend Church, I think most of the written words are yesterday's equivalent of News of the World.

On the other side of the case, many, many scientific "facts" have gone on to be disproved some years later as complete bunkum too.

For me the case is neither proven nor disproved. So on that basis, I'll stick with the faith I have - which ain't much, but sometimes it's way better than nowt.

[thebish]

Worthy - without any polemical intent whatsoever - I have to admit that it beats me.

But I don't really want to go further - i know this is an important time for believers - and, though I thought it ugly and horrible - I wasn't that disturbed by the three chubby crosses on Victoria Square.

your suggestion that the cross was adopted to match christianity's inate love of torture was hardly unpolemical...

if you are actually genuinely bewildered by its adoption - then I suspect you are missing a whole heap of (what seem to me fairly obvious) reasons why downtrodden people would identify with a figure called a saviour who, like them, was horribly tortured and ultimately killed by a ruthless national power...

this seems to have been true for Guido Rocha - who identifies absolutely with the cross - with a figure who has been through what he has. maybe he is wrong to do so - or foolish - or stupid - or simply not sophisticated enough to see his error - but, it seems like a powerful reality through his eyes...

the following from "Hope: Challenging the Culture of Despair", by Christian Mostert

Rocha was jailed for his suspected involvement in political activism against the ruling dictatorship in the late 1960s and was forced to suffer acute torture and abuse. In this situation he found his only solace in carving images of the suffering Jesus."

"During the cruel torture sessions in Brazil, when hovering between life and death, the person of the crucified Jesus gradually imposed himself on the artist. Since then he has modeled one tortured Christ after the other. Under the modeling fingers of Rocha the face of Jesus takes on quite unconsciously the features of one or the other of the artist's former fellow prisoners who died in the torture chambers... When crying out in pain Rocha remembered the cry of Jesus on the cross, and this cry of Golgotha became for him a great promise: here was a man who passed through the deepest sufferings and nevertheless remained fully human, fulfilling his mission of love, being a man for others, until the ultimate hour of truth... Therefore the almost unbearable face of the dying Christ possessed it seems by evil spirits, is not an image of abhorrence for this Brazilian artist but an image of hope.

stupid huh?