Saturday, April 17, 2010

Jens Lekman's Your Arms Around Me

Jens Lekman is a Swedish indie musician currently residing in Australia. His sound uses a lot of samples, but I find them comforting. Especially the odd lyrics.



This is a song from his second album. It is also used in the movie Whip It.
He is known to change his lyrics every time he sings live, so I use the lyrics taken straightly from the album.

Who the Hell Is Clara Adelin Supit?

About a week ago, Dewi Sartika or Clara Adelin Supit (23), a student in Jakarta, reported to the police about her allegedly nude pictures that spread on the web.
She said the pictures were made at her friend's request.
Misly, the friend, said she needed them to cure her ex-boyfriend who was under a hex.
Dewi reluctantly agreed after making it clear to Misly that she wanted the pictures to be well-kept.
So she was surprised to finally find them on Facebook.
The police have questioned Misly, who accused her ex-boyfriend as the one who put them online.

Jesika Dhanies/© 2006 Richard Kern

The paragraphs above pretty much sum out the popular news filling out most headlines on the net.

It seemed pretty simple, right?

Well, in the next days, twists have come to make the matter worse.

Thursday, April 15, 2010

Pageblug, the Deathly Plague

Pageblug is a Javanese term meaning 'deathly plague'.
I use the word 'deathly' instead of 'deadly' because the plague isn't just deadly (capable of producing death), it is deathly (suggestive of death, deaths are certain).
The plague itself means a lot more than a widespread disease, it means affliction.

In 1972, Pageblug descended upon three adjacent areas in Yogyakarta. The areas, Patangpuluhan, Sindurjan, and Bugisan, had a series of numerous deaths. For 6 months, death occurred once a week. The cause varied. Some died of old age, some died of illness, and some died for no apparent reason at all.

The Early Years of Gay, Queer, and Faggot

Just everybody knows what the words gay, queer, and faggot mean these days.

Well, in the early years of their origin, they had a wholly different meaning.
Gay actually meant happily excited; queer simply meant odd, or eccentric; and faggot meant a bundle of sticks, a knitting technique, or a kind of meatball.
Sometimes they're still used like that in literature, but hardly.

It's interesting how paragraphs like these would be seen nowadays.

The lady stopped faggoting her piece of cloth and offered him some faggots.
"I apologize for the food," she said. "My husband is a hunter. This is the only thing I can offer."
Flambeau kindly refused. "What do you do anyway?" he asked.
She looked at him and said with a warm smile, "I gather faggots in the woods and sell them."
She then fell into silence as she continued knitting.
Flambeau watched her work closely. It wasn't done yet, but it had already shown its beauty. He found himself amazed. Everything in his sight was so queer, that he became gay.

Sunday, April 11, 2010

A Bit About Anarchism

Symbol of Anarchy

Every time I heard about anarchy or anarchism, the first picture that came to mind was people throwing rocks to the police in some kind of riot. In my ignorance, anarchy and anarchism were something of a retarded-violent-childish mind. So when I read somewhere that the character V from the novel ‘V for Vendetta’ was actually an anarchist, rather than a romantic freedom fighter, it intrigued me. The character was described as educated and civilized. What an educated-civilized person would have to do with anarchy?

I finally decided to look it up (sadly, in Wikipedia for the time), and this is a bit of what I came up.

Doubts in Faith: A Beautiful Sunday Mass Sermon

John 20:24-31 (New International Version)
Jesus Appears to Thomas
 24Now Thomas (called Didymus), one of the Twelve, was not with the disciples when Jesus came. 25So the other disciples told him, "We have seen the Lord!"
      But he said to them, "Unless I see the nail marks in his hands and put my finger where the nails were, and put my hand into his side, I will not believe it."
 26A week later his disciples were in the house again, and Thomas was with them. Though the doors were locked, Jesus came and stood among them and said, "Peace be with you!" 27Then he said to Thomas, "Put your finger here; see my hands. Reach out your hand and put it into my side. Stop doubting and believe."
 28Thomas said to him, "My Lord and my God!"
 29Then Jesus told him, "Because you have seen me, you have believed; blessed are those who have not seen and yet have believed."
 30Jesus did many other miraculous signs in the presence of his disciples, which are not recorded in this book. 31But these are written that you may[a] believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and that by believing you may have life in his name.

In today’s mass, the passage was about Thomas. Most sermons I’ve heard about this passage took on Thomas as the antagonist. His doubt was despised and considered a sin. That’s why I decided to write the sermon I heard today. It took on a wholly different take.

Saturday, April 10, 2010

Gabor Arkangyal

Gabor Arkangyal

Picture description
Gabor Arkangyal means archangel Gabriel. I don't know much about him other than God favors him the most. He is surprisingly the leader of the favored four, not archangel Michael as a lot of people believed.
A friend of mine knows him a lot more than I do. Maybe he'll write about it sometimes.

The picture is based on a statue of him in the center of Budapest.