... and now for something completely different.

Of all the places & things I've ever seen Japan is unquestionably the weirdest.

... which is not in any way to be considered a criticism.



Sandii is now a famous Japanese hula teacher (I kid you not), running schools in Yokohama and Tokyo, while the really cool dude with the glasses playing rythym guitar and keyboards is Makoto Kubota, who is now a successful Japanese music producer specialising in world music.

I promise we'll return to regular programing shortly...

... in the meantime you've got admit both Sandii and Makoto are a whole lot more attractive than the Jensens (or anyone else involved in destroying the Anglican Comumion).

... and the Wichita lineman...

The guy from Wichita was late this week, but I'm glad to see he finally made it. I was getting worried something had scared him away.

In honor of his reappearance on the morning's stats I thought this clip appropriate. As a general word of advice: if anyone ever gets the chance to see Jimmy Webb (the guy performing here, who also wrote this song - along with a whole bunch of other classics) take it. Absolutely unforgettable.

A few minutes nostalgia.

It's not only a great song, but also one of few genuinely funny music videos ever made. Where would the world be without Billy Bragg?

This week's anthem contender.

Looking over the last few things here has left me worried that I've been coming across rather gloomy, which is really not what I'm like. Absurdly busy: yes (hence the absence of any new posts this past week), chaotic: probably, and sleep-deprived; absolutely, which is perfectly normal when you're a parent. But depressed? Not any more. Pessimistic? No way.

So correcting this glaring inaccuracy is this week's anthem, from the one and only Ian Dury. God bless 'im - one of the Britain's finest. Ever.

Time for another anthem contender.

A little known fact about yours truly is that (among other strange predilections) I'm a chronic Shakespeare aficionado, and one of my favourite productions ever is Baz Luhrmann's 1996 film Romeo + Juliet. It's simply brilliant, conveying Elizabethan perceptions of 'those fiery Mediterraneans' better than anything I've ever seen. Sure the purists have issues with it, but I couldn't care less.

... and damn but it's a beautiful looking picture!

More Chocolate Cake please!

For everyone who liked the song from My Friend The Chocolate Cake yesterday there's a special bonus courtesy of ABC Radio National (that's the Australian public broadcaster ABC - not the other one) show 'Music Deli'.

Recorded live at Victoria's Queenscliff Music Festival in November 2007, it's pretty damn impressive indeed - classic Melbourne music. My faves are "Let's Go Walk This Town" and the classic "I've Got A Plan" - but click here to listen and decide for yourself. You'll have to be quick though: the ABC doesn't usually leave these up for very long.

PS. Guess what Mrs. Caliban is going to be hearing on high rotation for the next few days... ;-)

Or maybe this should be our anthem?

They're called "My Friend the Chocolate Cake", they're a quintessentially Melbourne band founded by two very talented people called David Bridie and Helen Mountford, and sometimes they can sum up just about everything that's great about life in inner-city Melbourne/Sydney/Brisbane on a sunny autumn afternoon.

Which makes it a pretty strong contender in my search for a blog anthem...

This song's called 'Home Improvements'. It always makes me smile, think of my friends, and enjoy being part of the notorious Duck Noodle Gang.

Whoever they are ;-)

This blog needs an anthem.

Lots of the real blogs have anthems, so (just like Israel wanting a king) I've been hunting around for something the Duck Noodle Gang can rally around here.

This is one of the leading contenders at the moment. Aside from it being a great song, I especially like the way Natalie Merchant disproves in just a few minutes the years of "teaching" we've endured that purports women can't bring a message of inspiration and leadership.



And how great is that woman's drum line??!!

Slow Emotion Replay

The past few days have been defined by some serious sleep deprivation courtesy of Miss Twenty-Months-old-and-getting-four-big-teeth-all-at-once. Consequently voices sound as if they’re coming from the other end of a long tunnel, and the atmosphere feels like it’s been replaced with some kind of thick fluid manufactured by the DuPont Corporation.

This week I’ve also happened to drive past a few of the old nursing homes in which I once used to celebrate Communion. They’re nasty places, reeking of urine and stale savoury mince served in a cruel parody of what you and I call dinner. Where you end up parked if you’re poor - or even just not quite middle class - and have the misfortune to outlive your body and/or mind.

Visiting these people was my favourite part of parish ministry; when the Eucharistic Sacraments became most real. Men and women would dribble, grab hold of me and spit in my ear, then laugh while cursing uproariously. Claws gripped in equal portions by dementia and arthritis grasping at my surplice for another drink. Or genteel ladies and long-retired freemasons apologising profusely for the behaviour their of fellow patient-prisoners: betrayed by age, and weeping for the desolated temple which was once their body, these were the ones cursed with a crystal-clear mind. The harshest affliction of all.

It is expressly forbidden in Sydney to reserve any element of the Sacraments; any consecrated remnants must be consumed by the Priest in the presence of the congregation. The chalice would be coated with a greasy film, and my reason would silently scream everyrything I’d ever learned about hygiene when faced with the breadcrumb-flecked soup that remained. And I’d drain the chalice with pride, for God had called me to be a Priest, and this was the least I could do for these Children of God in their agonisingly slow transition between this world and That-Which-Is-To-Come.

If you've been kind enough to read elsewhere on this blog you'll know it wasn't the bacteria that ended all this. No point going over it all again here, but I’d love to go back to those nursing homes. Nowadays there’s no longer any Priest visiting them; the demented and defecating don’t constitute a strategic use of ministry resources. Mercifully the people I knew will have died long ago, but such is the world that there’ll be others like them filling the same stained mattresses. The white metal bed-frames won’t have changed.

Last year I asked for permission to once again conduct services in these places, but the Diocesan offices didn’t reply to my letters ...

Since I’m not interested in being on the receiving end of legal action from the multi-millionaire who owns most Australian nursing homes, I’m not going to show a photograph of any of the places I’ve just written about. Instead here’s a video from the Matt Johnson’s The The. It’s a song called Slow Emotion Replay, and it sums up a lot of what I’m feeling right now. Watch out for the wonderful Annie Sprinkle among the cast of glorious eccentrics.

And because I know my taste in music isn’t to everyone’s taste, and I quite understand that, here’s the words. They say it almost as well.

The more I see
The less I know
About all the things I thought
were wrong or right,
And carved in stone.
So, don't ask me about
War, religion or God
Love, sex or death
Because ...

Everybody knows what's going wrong with the world
But I don't even know what's going on in myself.

You've gotta work out your own salvation
With no explanation: to this Earth we fall,
On hands and knees we crawl.
And we look up to the stars,
And we reach out and pray
To a deaf, dumb and blind God who never explains.

Everybody knows what's going wrong with the world
I don't even know what's going on in myself.

Lord I've been here for so long
I can feel it coming down on me;
I'm just a slow emotion replay
Of somebody I used to be.

Ok, maybe it's not as bad as all that. But if anybody out there knows a Bishop who'd let a ne'er-do-well Priest do something vaguely vocational out on the edges somewhere please don't be shy about dropping me a line. Because I miss being useful, and not just because I'm feeling so tired. Thanks.

Jesus the Lunatic: the Trilemma Pt.2(a).

This clip won't make sense, but why I've posted it just might once you read Jesus the Lunatic Pt2. I'll try and have it up in a day or so.

Till then watch this: it's a pretty accurate depiction of how my life became for a while...



It's by an Australian team called "The Avalanches". I don't know much more about them, but if I ever need someone to produce my autobiography as a musical they'll be who I call.

A little exegesis (an earlier post explained).

Reading the Warren Zevon blog below, She-Whom-I-Love asked “But what are the sentiments expressed in that song which the church needs to grasp?”

Aghast, I first thought that despite playing this song very loud, and excruciatingly often, she simply hadn’t been exposed to it often enough to see what I thought glaringly obvious. Still, after patiently waiting for my alarm to settle, she continued: “Not everyone knows all the lyrics by heart. What’s the point you're trying to make?”

Thus, chastened and concerned lest I appear even more cryptic than I already am, I offer an explanation:

”Boom Boom” Mancini is a real person, and, the events in Zevon’s song really occurred, give or take a little license when it comes to Boom Boom’s alleged reply (listen again closely if you want to know what I mean ;-). Zevon is expressing a young working-class man’s enthusiasm for someone he sees as the embodiment of courage and endurance, and I find this enthusiasm infectious.

I can’t claim to have ever been a big boxing aficionado, although since seeing the tremendous change “Fighting” Father Dave and his boxing gym/church has made in the lives of countless young people from appallingly disadvantaged backgrounds, my empathy for the sport has changed. I’ve certainly come to recognize that the objections I’d previously had to boxing were nothing more than the residue of one of Protestantism’s greatest delusions; that working class sins (like drinking, and smoking, and swearing) are intrinsically more offensive to God than middle class ones (like avarice, racism, and materialism). Since Christ has so much to say about the latter, and so little about the former, it’s hard to take the evangelicals’ claim of having a “biblically based” ethical framework seriously: it always seems more "culturally based" to me.

So, against this background, I never cease to find these lines inspiring:

“When Alexis Arguello gave Boom Boom a beating
Seven weeks later he was back in the ring
Some have the speed and the right combinations
If you can't take the punches it don't mean a thing"

and

"They made hypocrite judgments after the fact
But the name of the game is be hit and hit back."

For me that’s right at the heart of what it means to be standing up to the fundamentalist bullies; and to continue living in Laughter and Grace in the face of those who exclude, shun and ridicule. You’ve got to take the punches and beatings they blithely throw out from their pulpits, tracts, magazines, Matthias Media brochures, and Blog Nasties, as well as from their Synods, Councils and Pompous Proclamations.

And then you’ve got to get up and hit right back again. Because if we don’t throw the money lenders out of the temple, who will?

Priorities matter (thank you Warren Zevon).

In my "Favorites" is a folder called "Blog Nasties". The title says pretty much everything anyone needs to know about the wingnuts inside: for example there's a clown who thinks the Sydney Anglican Diocese are hell-bound heretics because they’re not explicit enough in their support for a literal seven day theory of creation (although he does like their prohibition against women reading the bible aloud when in the presence of men), and there's another charmer obsessed with the idea that childbirth is a painless process for any truly "biblical" Christian women, and that the feeling slightest twinge of pain is "proof of a rebellious unsaved heart and a Jezebel spirit" (Please pray for the poor lady married to him). Sadly these two are by no means the worst of the bunch.

I'll never post a link to any of them, because the less exposure they receive the better. While they are kind of funny, it should never be forgotten how much misery, hurt and alienation this kind of crap causes.

Still, one of them - who incidentally, I knew while we were both studying - has for these last few months been on a bender about Penal Substitutionary atonement (here’s the Wikipedia definition - although please read it with a grain of salt: it's not exactly written from a neutral viewpoint). Like all true fundamentalists, he’s adamant that anyone who disagrees with this way of understanding Christ's death is a raving liberal with no respect for scripture - whatever that means.

In response I’ve been writing my own $0.02 worth on the subject of atonement (a class that my erstwhile fellow student didn’t enrol in all those years ago), and these words of insight and erudition were just about ready to post today…

… but this evening I found this clip of the late great Warren Zevon playing “Boom Boom Mancini”, and was reminded by the Holy spirit of the need to get my priorities right. So here it is.



When the church has a better understanding of the sentiments expressed in this song than it does of soteriological permutations then I think we’ll really be getting somewhere. And when we can demonstrate these understandings in the way we live then people really will be climbing the walls to hear what we have to say. Just like they did when Jesus spoke.

Move over, Graham Kendrick

Since Sydney evangelicals have been demanding a boycott of Hillsong tunes on theological grounds finding home-grown hymnody has become rather difficult.

Praise be to God, however, that the void has now been filled by the goodly brethren of the Church of Bluejuice. Even the song's title "Vitriol" should be just perfect for the next fun exegesis packed Matthian hoedown:



Shame about them wearing such unreformed vestments; however I'm sure if someobody gives these clearly zealous boys & girls a Matthias Media catalogue they'll quickly see the error of their ways and start dressing more like Jesus and Paul, who always wore that most sacred of costumes, the business suit, when teaching - yet another fact previously obscured by the Satanic Popish Conspiracy.