Exiled

Gangs and guns

2008-07-29T19:54:51Z

Kal, at TraumaQueen, is always a good read and his latest post is no different. It's a short but powerful commentary on gang culture in Edinburgh. Go and read it!

Blogging Bishops, Lambeth letters and Piskies in photos

2008-07-24T19:53:44Z

Or in other words, lots of links to people who are better at writing well informed articles than me!

Allie, a lambeth steward, has photos of a blindfolded Archbishop of Canterbury and dispels some rumours about fences, lanyards, and the Bishop of New Hampshire.

Meanwhile Ruth Gledhill doubtless creates some more...

Bishop David Chillingworth has a bedroom furniture situation, but has still found time to meet with the motley crew from the Provincial Youth Network and write about his encounters with fellow Bishops.

On the Church Times blog, Pat Ashworth has a powerful report of the words of the wife of the Archbishop of Sudan, Daburah Abuk Atem Mading, and Linda Andrea Apaya Amidi, wife of the Bishop of Lainya.

Bishop Mark Strange (Moray, Ross and Caithness) has been spotted by Penny at Lambeth Letters.

Bishop Gene Robinson (New Hampshire) has a few words for those who have called for his resignation: "Does ANYONE think that if I resigned, this issue would go away?! I could be hit by a big, British, doubledecker bus today, and it would not change the fact that there are faithful, able and gifted gay and lesbian priests of this Episcopal Church who are known and loved for what they bring to ordained ministry, who will before long be recognized with a nomination for the episcopate...and one of them will be elected. Not because they are gay or lesbian, but because the people who elect them recognize their gifts for ministry in that particular diocese."

Prossy Kakooza on Youtube

2008-07-23T21:28:41Z

Prossy Kakooza Must Stay

2008-07-22T20:16:49Z

Prossy Kakooza, who helps with the cleaning at my church is under threat of deportation to Uganda. Please read the information below, and consider signing the petition. Thank you.

"Prossy Kakooza is a 26-year-old woman seeking asylum in the UK. She fled Uganda after suffering vicious sexual, physical and verbal attacks due to her sexual orientation.

Prossy had been forced into an engagement when her family discovered her relationship with the girlfriend she met at university, Leah. Both women were marched two miles naked to the police station, where they were locked up.

Prossy’s inmates subjected her to gross acts of humiliation. She was violently raped by police officers who taunted her with derogatory comments like ‘’we’ll show you what you’re missing’’ and ‘’you’re only this way because you haven’t met a real man’’. She was also scalded on her thighs with hot meat skewers.

Prossy was eventually taken out of prison after her father bribed the guards. Her family had decided they would sacrifice her instead, believing this would ‘’take the curse away from the family’’.

Whilst her family were making arrangements to slaughter her, Prossy managed to flee to the United Kingdom to seek asylum.

When Prossy went for treatment to her local GP’s surgery in the UK they were so shocked by the extent of her injuries they called the police.
She was taken to the St. Mary’s Centre in Manchester, and she is still receiving counselling there for Post Traumatic Stress Disorder.

Prossy’s asylum application has been refused by the Home Office, who acknowledge she was brutally raped and burnt because of the medical evidence, but have dismissed these appalling attacks as ‘’the random actions of individuals’’, and state she can be returned to a different town in Uganda.

This judgement ignores the clear danger to gay people throughout the country where the penalty for homosexuality is life imprisonment.

Also, in Uganda, you cannot settle in a new town without a reference from your previous village, and on the basis she is a lesbian, Prossy would be subjected to similar persecution wherever she went.

We consider that if Prossy is sent back, she faces the continuing threat of incarceration, and further sickening attacks - which next time may be fatal.

Prossy is a highly educated woman who can be a productive member of society.

She has a right to be free with her sexuality, which is causing no harm to anyone, and she has a right not to be raped, attacked, or murdered."

PETITION - http://www.ipetitions.com/petition/ProssyKakooza/index.html

Taking the Episcopalian is back!

2008-07-04T20:13:46Z

And choirs of angels rejoiced...

Internal difficulties resolved with Gaviscon Gafcon

The Big Read

2008-06-29T11:33:05Z

The Big Read reckons that the average adult has only read 6 of the top 100 books they've printed. Well let's see.

1) Look at the list and bold those you have read.
2) Italicise those you intend to read.
3) Underline the books you LOVE.
4) Reprint this list.

1. Pride and Prejudice - Jane Austen
2. The Lord of the Rings - JRR Tolkien
3. Jane Eyre - Charlotte Bronte
4. Harry Potter series - JK Rowling
5. To Kill a Mockingbird - Harper Lee
6. The Bible - well not all of it, obviously!
7. Wuthering Heights - Emily Bronte
8. Nineteen Eighty Four - George Orwell
9. His Dark Materials - Philip Pullman
10. Great Expectations - Charles Dickens
11. Little Women - Louisa M Alcott
12. Tess of the D'Urbervilles - Thomas Hardy
13. Catch 22 - Joseph Heller
14. Complete Works of Shakespeare
15. Rebecca - Daphne Du Maurier
16. The Hobbit - JRR Tolkien
17. Birdsong - Sebastian Faulks
18. Catcher in the Rye - JD Salinger
19. The Time Traveller's Wife - Audrey Niffenegger
20. Middlemarch - George Eliot
21. Gone With The Wind - Margaret Mitchell
22. The Great Gatsby - F Scott Fitzgerald
23. Bleak House - Charles Dickens
24. War and Peace - Leo Tolstoy
25. The Hitch Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy - Douglas Adams
26. Brideshead Revisited - Evelyn Waugh
27. Crime and Punishment - Fyodor Dostoyevsky
28. Grapes of Wrath - John Steinbeck
29. Alice in Wonderland - Lewis Carroll
30. The Wind in the Willows - Kenneth Grahame
31. Anna Karenina - Leo Tolstoy
32. David Copperfield - Charles Dickens
33. Chronicles of Narnia - CS Lewis
34. Emma - Jane Austen
35. Persuasion - Jane Austen
36. The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe - CS Lewis
37. The Kite Runner - Khaled Hosseini
38. Captain Corelli's Mandolin - Louis De Bernieres
39. Memoirs of a Geisha - Arthur Golden
40. Winnie the Pooh - AA Milne
41. Animal Farm - George Orwell
42. The Da Vinci Code - Dan Brown
43. One Hundred Years of Solitude - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
44. A Prayer for Owen Meaney - John Irving
45. The Woman in White - Wilkie Collins
46. Anne of Green Gables - LM Montgomery
47. Far From The Madding Crowd - Thomas Hardy
48. The Handmaid's Tale - Margaret Atwood
49. Lord of the Flies - William Golding
50. Atonement - Ian McEwan
51. Life of Pi - Yann Martel
52. Dune - Frank Herbert
53. Cold Comfort Farm - Stella Gibbons
54. Sense and Sensibility - Jane Austen
55. A Suitable Boy - Vikram Seth
56. The Shadow of the Wind - Carlos Ruiz Zafon
57. A Tale Of Two Cities - Charles Dickens
58. Brave New World - Aldous Huxley
59. The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time - Mark Haddon
60. Love In The Time Of Cholera - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
61. Of Mice and Men - John Steinbeck
62. Lolita - Vladimir Nabokov
63. The Secret History - Donna Tartt
64. The Lovely Bones - Alice Sebold
65. Count of Monte Cristo - Alexandre Dumas
66. On The Road - Jack Kerouac
67. Jude the Obscure - Thomas Hardy
68. Bridget Jones' Diary - Helen Fielding
69. Midnight's Children - Salman Rushdie
70. Moby Dick - Herman Melville
71. Oliver Twist - Charles Dickens
72. Dracula - Bram Stoker
73. The Secret Garden - Frances Hodgson Burnett
74. Notes From A Small Island - Bill Bryson
75. Ulysses - James Joyce
76. The Bell Jar - Sylvia Plath
77. Swallows and Amazons - Arthur Ransome
78. Germinal - Emile Zola
79. Vanity Fair - William Makepeace Thackeray
80. Possession - AS Byatt
81. A Christmas Carol - Charles Dickens
82. Cloud Atlas - David Mitchell
83. The Color Purple - Alice Walker
84. The Remains of the Day - Kazuo Ishiguro
85. Madame Bovary - Gustave Flaubert
86. A Fine Balance - Rohinton Mistry
87. Charlotte's Web - EB White
88. The Five People You Meet In Heaven - Mitch Albom
89. Adventures of Sherlock Holmes - Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
90. The Faraway Tree Collection - Enid Blyton
91. Heart of Darkness - Joseph Conrad
92. The Little Prince - Antoine De Saint-Exupery
93. The Wasp Factory - Iain Banks
94. Watership Down - Richard Adams
95. A Confederacy of Dunces - John Kennedy Toole
96. A Town Like Alice - Nevil Shute
97. The Three Musketeers - Alexandre Dumas
98. Hamlet - William Shakespeare
99. Charlie and the Chocolate Factory - Roald Dahl
100. Les Miserables - Victor Hugo

Anglican goings-on (to borrow a phrase)

2008-06-24T08:56:50Z

GAFCON (Global Anglican Futures Conference) started this week and GadgetVicar is blogging from Jerusalem. Meanwhile Ruth Gledhill points out that a rival event produces an interesting culture clash: GAFCON versus Gay Pride.

Rev. Ruth has an interesting alternative to the idea of an Anglican Covenant and +Brian has put his pre-Lambeth thoughts on the all new, shiny Dioscese of Edinburgh website.

Also, while not Anglican as such, I'm sure Allan Brown's opinions on clergy blogging will be of interest to the owners of several pisky blogs:

God Save Us From Blogging Vicars

"We don’t really do trendy vicars here: once they see the modern Scotland they’re expected to embrace, 1st-century Galilee under the Romans suddenly seems freshly appealing."

Firefox 3

2008-06-22T17:03:08Z

I downloaded Firefox 3 yesterday, and was pleasantly surprised that most of the extensions and themes which I use were compatible. The only ones not yet updated were Tab Effect, which looks cool but isn't really essential, and Am I On Myspace.com?, which provides a great warning if you inadvertently stray onto any Myspace pages. How will I cope without this protection?!

For the geekily inclined, the Add-ons I use are:

AdBlock Plus
Colorful Tabs
Download Helper
Facebook Toolbar
FootieFox
ForcastFox
Google Toolbar
IE Tab
PDF Download
Shareaholic
StumbleUpon
TwitterFox
Undo Closed Tab
US English Dictionary
WOT (Web of Trust)

Best spam email ever...

2008-06-05T16:01:27Z

Aloha, dear

When I wake up in the morning, I miss the tender touch of the strong hands,
which can caress me and fill me with comfort, confidence and romantic
thoughts for the whole next day until I see you again in the evening and we
present ourselves to each other and stay together in our small world, full
of tenderness and caring. The small world, the fortress of love which only
TWO people can build. It will stand forever and people will remember about
it even when we disappear. Do you want to build this fortress with me?

Yourth faithfully

Olchik

Duchess defends size 10 Beatrice

2008-05-19T17:20:26Z

"The Duchess of York has accused parts of the media of making "outrageous" claims that her daughter is overweight. In an interview with the BBC, Sarah Ferguson said her eldest daughter Beatrice was a fit and healthy size 10. "The press has been absolutely outrageous, calling her such horrible names... I just think they ought to take more responsibility," she said."

This is what makes me angry with newspapers. If you look at the picture of her on the article, how could anybody say she was overweight? And why should they care how much she weighs anyway?

Seven deadly sins?

2008-04-25T14:12:03Z

I've seen this several places, so have no idea who to credit. It made me smile though, it's like a twisted version of the enneagram.

When I grow up I want to be a headline writer

2008-04-22T21:53:35Z

Some fine examples from today:

Brazil priest flying party balloons lost at sea

Drunk Darth Vader's Jedi assault

Lynchings in Congo as penis theft panic hits capital

Crouching Tiger, Hidden Crab Apple

2008-04-10T21:36:42Z

I love watching golf, so I'm excited about the US Masters, which started today. There is something slightly too perfect about the manicured fairways and greens of Augusta, but there is no doubt that the golf is spectacular. I'm no expert, but I will point out a few things. For one, Brandt Snedeker is my new favourite name in the world, ever. Secondly, despite what some people might say (Rob), I enjoy listening to the sometimes whimsical, often nonsensical commentary of Peter Alliss. The names of all 18 holes are based on plants, but several of them sound like kung fu or ninja names to me. No, seriously. Look up the name of the 4th hole, then imagine Jackie Chan introducing himself as that name. It works, doesn't it?!

On an unrelated note, I have realised that I have begun to sound like my mother when I sneeze. Very odd.

Drug dog suspended for duck death

2008-04-07T21:44:35Z

"A prison sniffer dog has been suspended from his post after allegedly killing a group of ducks at a Lancashire jail.

The three-year-old dog was reported to the governor of HMP Garth after the recent discovery of the dead birds.

Until the suspension, he was one of a number of dogs responsible for finding drugs at the category B prison in Ulnes Walton Lane in Leyland, Preston.

The Prison Service said he would now undergo tests to assess whether he could continue in the role."

What I want to know is, did they drug test the ducks?!

Five Songs

2008-04-01T20:46:52Z

Since scottishcabbage tagged me, here are the current top 5 songs on my mp3 player:

Living is a Problem Cause Everything Dies ~ Biffy Clyro
Paradise by the Dashboard Light ~ Meatloaf
Over the Hills and Far Away ~ Nightwish
Hypo full of Love ~ Alabama 3
Rabbiteen ~ Jack Off Jill

Not going to tag people, but if you feel the need to display your taste in music to the world then go for it.

Pictures. Better than most things...

2008-04-01T13:16:56Z

My favorite animal is steak

2008-03-27T23:00:22Z

Consider this a warning. You may be enticed by the adverts, the bubbly golden cheese, the thick grilled steak, the persuasive voiceover, but be firm! Mmmm...steak, you might think. Oooh... pizza.

Don't do it.

This is coming from someone who loves pizza, even deep fried, so trust me on this one. There is no "steak sauce"- that is a crazy, crazy story. IT'S GRAVY!!! ON A PIZZA!!! Bleurgh.

Dominoes Steak Special Pizza - Just Say No.

A fitting tribute

2008-03-21T21:07:56Z

The East Stand at Tannadice has been renamed after Dundee United chairman Eddie Thompson.

One Eddie Thompson

2008-03-19T23:29:27Z

Gutted about Sunday, obviously. Especially for Eddie Thompson.

"The advance party of United supporters chanted his name as they approached the home of Scottish football. It was like a scene from an MGM musical with a chorus bedecked in colourful costume, singing lustily. It differed in two respects. This was Hampden, not Hollywood, so the songs were not always in tune. And football only guarantees a happy ending for one side.

The script had its twists and turns. These must have seemed to Thompson like the violent movement of a knife in his gut.

Dundee United won this final three times. They were ahead 1-0, 2-1 and took a lead in the penalty shoot-out. They lost after two hours of dramatic, tension-filled football to the last kick of the ball."

- The Herald, March 17th 2008

Just in case anybody had any doubts...

2008-03-13T23:07:22Z

Also, the Dundee United eNewsletter is using Richard's picture of the last United cup final again. Therefore I don't think he'll mind if I use it too. Pretty cool, isn't it?

Warning: Not for the fainthearted

2008-03-09T11:21:46Z

"Beau Bo d'Or finds inspiration in Ewan McGregor's humongously cheesy recent aftershave commercial. He's right - the soundtrack fits extremely well with an iconic scene from Trainspotting. "

Things I never knew but know now. Or something...

2008-03-08T20:26:59Z

Scotland has less than 0.1% of the world's population but still manages to produce 1% of all published research
I have Autosomal-dominant Compelling Helio-Opthalmic Outburst syndrome
Dundee is Scotland's only south-facing city. Apparently
Euan Blair (yes, the ex-PM's son) worked on production of the film V for Vendetta
It is illegal to own a hamster in Vietnam

And as a bonus, Gareth should be in charge of the SRU.

Top 10 Reasons for Being an Episcopalian

2008-02-27T19:19:29Z

10. No snake handling.

9. You can believe in dinosaurs.

8. Male and female, God created them; male and female, we ordain them.

7. You don't have to check your brains at the door.

6. Pew aerobics.

5. Church year is color coded.

4. Free wine on Sunday.

3. All of the pageantry, none of the guilt.

2. You don't have to know how to swim to get baptized.

1. No matter what you believe, there's bound to be at least one other Episcopalian who agrees with you.

Scarily true!

2008-02-25T21:10:11Z

Seduced by Facebook Applications...

2008-02-03T21:08:26Z

This Lent I have decided to do something different to the usual giving up on stuff. Mind you, I was perhaps partially tempted by the flash Facebook application. Maybe a longing for convenience is not a particularly Lenten trait, but sometimes I need all the help I can get. Therefore, Ihave signed up for daily Carbon Fast emails from Tearfund, and have added the oh-so-handy Facebook app. for the Love Life Live Lent actions, from the C of E.

Ah, simple.