Just Wondering

From the atheist socialist bar -




Are good and evil just concepts, or real powers in the universe?

What is your view on forgiveness?

Does organised religions do more harm than good?

New Mutants Trailer

Another Marvel movie i am looking forward to is this one -

The New Mutants | Official Trailer [HD]

Comments

Just a thought ...why does LJ seem so quiet these days?

Comment me if you think the same.

The Creaking DWP

This is disgusting -we need to be more empathic and understanding - damn DWP and the Universal Credit. The staff are fine it is the system that is wrong.

I work for the DWP as a universal credit case manager – and what I've seen is shocking
The Independent

http://www.independent.co.uk/voices/universal-credit-dwp-worker-case-manager-benefits-system-government-food-banks-a7998196.html

Thugs

The government is acting like an abusive partner with claimants, whom it can beat at will, and claimants are too scared to be able to do anything to escape due to their chronic ill health or disabilities, says GAIL WARD

http://www.morningstaronline.co.uk/a-a0fb-Preying-on-the-weak-and-vulnerable#.WeJQEUDrZDp.facebook

Monday Musings

A day of relaxing due to the fact that the next two days,and probably rest of the week, i will be bust with work.

Managed to catch up with episode 4 of STD (Sera Trek Discovery) ,and i must admit ,i am quite hooked on the series now.

All i am waiting for is the next season of Agents of SHIELD to come on.

Another paperback read and finished - well on the target to reach 80 by the end of the year.

Just Wondering

Do you take any daily prescription medications?

Do you take vitamins?

Do you take any daily OTC (over the counter) medications?

Book 69 - Richie Tankersley Cusick "The Harvest"

Richie Tankersley Cusick "The Harvest : (Buffy the Vampire Slayer)" (Simon Spotlight Entertainment)






The Harvest is the novelization of the first two episodes of the TV series Buffy the Vampire Slayer (episodes by the same name, for that matter). As novelizations go, it's really not bad. Cusick manages to adapt the script into something very readable whilst also incorporating some of the charm and originality that the actors brought to the show.

Also, as media novelizations go, the writing -- while again, not bad -- seems to target a younger reading audience. In my opinion, it was at level with tween-ish YA. Content wise, Buffy the Vampire Slayer had not yet reached the maturity level that it would in later seasons, and the edgiest things in The Harvest are standard action-movie violence and mild references to sexuality.

This introduction into the Buffy the Vampire Slayer universe (following the events of the 1992 movie flop) follows slayer Buffy Summers as she transitions into a new life and new highschool in Sunnydale, CA after being kicked out of her old highschool for events that those familiar with the movie will recognize. She thinks she can finally have a normal life, but her slaying duties reappear almost immediately -- along with a new watcher (a person meant to help train and guide the slayer as she battles evil creatures) and a new group of surprisingly resilient friends. Her first challenge in this new town -- which has more than its fair share of vampires and other nasties -- is to prevent "the harvest" -- the ascension of a particularly gruesome vampire from the church he has been trapped in underground for many decades -- and the evil that follows it. Many new allies are created -- including some that will become popular additions to the character lineup very shortly -- and the theme and style of the series is laid out.

The action is carried along smoothly with very little added to what is cut-and-dry from the script I imagine. Cusick attempts to add some internal monologue for some of the more major characters, but in most cases it falls kind of flat. One of the challenges of adapting media is obviously making it recognisable but not so true-to-form that the reader would be better off just reading the script. Cusick manages to get a good, steady rhythm going and sustains it throughout the entire novel and with a little more adventurousness I think this could've actually been a very good book. As it stands, it is passable and enjoyable for Buffy fans but not likely to lure any new folks in.

Denied

This is just so not okay.


Catholic Mum Upset After Daughter Is Denied First Communion Over Trouser Suit

http://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/entry/daughter-communion-pant-suit_uk_59e47767e4b04d1d5182cfb9?icid=maing-grid7%7Cmain5%7Cdl1%7Csec

Book 70 - Ted Hughes "Birthday Letters"

Ted Hughes "Birthday Letters" (Faber and Faber)





As background Ted Hughes was probably one of the finest English poets of the 20th century.

He married Sylvia Plath in 1956 and was estranged from her upon her death by suicide in 1963.

This is visceral, confessional poetry of an immense power and feeling. It is the final work of a man who, knowing he is soon to die, cares nothing about displaying the soiled linen of their relationship; her weaknesses, fears, obsessions, his failings as he looks through the demonic power of his words to their inevitable conclusion. One is cut to shreds as he sifts the spikes and shards of their failings and failed relationship. There is bitterness too, Plath's father is certainly not spared, nor is Hughes himself but there are goblins and bees aplenty in that superlative, supernatural and ill-fated place they inhabited together. I wanted it to cease, I longed for it to be over, I never wanted it to end.

Hughes spared nothing. He was blunt and his verse often less than flattering but always the images conjured are powerful:

From 18, Rugby Street

, "And I became aware of the mystery
Of your lips, like nothing before in my life,
Their aboriginal thickness. And your nose,
Broad and Apache, nearly a boxer's nose,
Scorpio's obverse to the Semitic eagle
That made every camera your enemy,"

His word in "Visit" are stark and doom-ladenly prophetic

"Inside that numbness of the earth
Our future trying to happen.
I look up - as if to meet your voice
With all its urgent future
That has burst in on me. Then look back
At the book of the printed words.
You are ten years dead. It is only a story.
Your story. My story."

Looking back on that time and facing his own curtailed future (he died of cancer shortly after publication) Hughes left possibly his best work for the very last to be savoured after his passing. Given the subject matter that was just right.

Charles Ives Symphony No 2.

Times for some music - one by Ives - one of my favourite composers.

Charles Ives - Symphony No. 2

New York Philharmonic
Leonard Bernstein
Date: 1990

Symphony No. 2 was written by Charles Ives between 1897 and 1901. Although the work was composed during Ives' 20s, it was half a century before it premiered, in a 1951 New York Philharmonic concert conducted by Leonard Bernstein. The symphony premiered to rapturous applause but Ives responded with ambivalence. Indeed, he did not even attend the concert in person but had to be dragged by family and friends to a neighbor's house to listen to the live radio broadcast. The public performance had been postponed for so long because Ives had been alienated from the American classical establishment. Ever since his training with Horatio Parker at Yale, Ives had suffered their disapproval of the mischievous unorthodoxy with which he radically pushed the boundaries of European classical structures to create soundscapes that recalled the vernacular music-making of his New England upbringing.

Like Ives' other compositions which honor the European and American inheritances, the Second Symphony never makes verbatim quotation of popular American tunes such as "Columbia, the Gem of the Ocean", "Camptown Races", "Long, Long Ago", and "America the Beautiful", but reshapes and develops them into broad themes. There is a subdued version of the opening notes of Beethoven's fifth symphony and a rescoring of part of Brahms' first symphony, as well as a reference (early in the first movement) to the chorales of Johann Sebastian Bach. The work is an interesting precedent to another significant piece of the 20th century, Luciano Berio's Sinfonia, which was composed about 65 years later. Ives' 5th movement uses quotation techniques comparable to Berio's in his 3rd movement.

Bernstein's premiere and subsequent interpretations were later widely criticized for taking extravagant liberties with the score. Although the 1951 score itself contained about a thousand errors, Bernstein reportedly also made a substantial cut to the finale, ignored Ives' tempo indications, and prolonged the terminating "Bronx cheer" discord. Many conductors and audiences, influenced by Bernstein's example, have enthusiastically considered the last of these practices one of the trademarks of the piece. In 2000, the Charles Ives Society prepared an official critical edition of the score and authorized a recording by Kenneth Schermerhorn and the Nashville Symphony Orchestra to adhere more closely to Ives' intentions.

Movements:
0:00 Andante moderato
6:16 Allegro
17:28 Adagio cantabile
29:16 Lento maestoso
32:20 Allegro molto vivace

Enjoy,