Might Be Mad

“In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. The same was in the beginning with God. All things were made by him; and without him was not any thing made that was made. In him was life; and the life was the light of men. And the light shineth in darkness; and the darkness comprehended it not.” John 1:1-4 “And the Word was made flesh, and dwelt among us, (and we beheld his glory, the glory as of the only begotten of the Father,) full of grace and truth.” John 1:14 “It is the spirit that quickeneth; the flesh profiteth nothing: the words that I speak unto you, they are spirit, and they are life.” John 6:63 One of the questions that keeps coming up among Christians, is whether one should read the Bible literally, or figuratively. Loosely speaking, the ultra-conservatives preach the former – hell, the great flood, the resurrection, etc., are all real; whereas Christians of the more modern ilk take greater liberties with the scriptures, such that bits in t...

I feel I ought to say something about this matter; I owe her this much at least, for the pleasure she has given me through her soul-rending music -- I am talking about Jiang Meiqi, one of my favourite singers in Chinese Pop. She has a most beautiful voice, but for some reason, she's never quite hit big time, even if people generally have praise for her work. Perhaps it's because she's not impossibly pretty -- at least in the conventional sense, which seems to be the necessary ingredient for pop starlets that the record industry wheels out like pretty confections on a conveyor belt. But Jiang Meiqi is pretty. A bit on the tanned side, and she looks ordinary even; there's a certain willfulness in the shape of her jutting jaw and lips, and her nose is a little too large. But what an ensemble they form with her eyes, which are large, full of emotion, vulnerability and yet an utter absence of self-consciousness. A picture of perfection in imperfection, I would say. Of cours...

It's an ongoing series based on a popular manga, so on some days, i find myself in a state of withdrawal as I wait for the fan groups to work out the subtitles. Excellent stuff and so off-beat, with the funniest dialogue, and the subbers have done a brilliant job, including the wealth of contextual information and cultural references. In brief, it's centred on the life and adventures of the members of an odd-job agency (more like a surrogate family), who are more than what they'd care to admit, set in a Japan that melds sci-fi (alien oppressors, spaceships, thinking robots) and post-Samurai era where the carrying of swords have been banned except for the police and militia (sort of like Samurai X, or the period of the Meiji Restoration, where samurais were forbidden to bear their swords...). This is done wonderfully, and besides, it's such a wonderful metaphor for change, the hazy transition period between the classical age and a subsequent one taking shape at breakneck...