Exciting News

For a while your life sputters on, nothing much happening and then whammo! Everything is thrown up in the air.

In ascending order of importance

Exciting news 1
Doctor Who returned to our screens on Saturday. 3 more months of sci-fi genius to follow!

Exciting news 2
The cricket season starts soon and I have had a new bat made. The exciting news does get more exciting - honest.

Exciting news 3
At the weekend I found out that 2 of my friends are expecting babies in September

Exciting news 4
I was offered a new job yesterday. A very exciting job, closer to home (so adios to the commute) and a little more cash.

Judas

Last Saturday night I was on a boat on the River Thames. It was a wedding reception for an old University friend and it was a darn good evening.

During the course of the evening I got into a discussion with a friend (let's call him Alf) about Judas and the newly discovered gospel thereof. A drunken discussion ensued - the sort you had at Uni and when you thought you were being terribly profound.

My theory was thus: I think Judas got a bad rap and was the victim of some extremely negative spin.

Theory 1, - Jesus knew that Judas would betray him because it was predestined. Therefore Judas had no choice in the matter whatsoever. If the gospels are right and that the devil entered into Judas at the last supper then it is the devil's work and not Judas'.

Theory 2, - Jesus knew that in order to fulfil prophecies and his teachings he had to be betrayed (a martyrs death) and then triumph over death (the resurrection). Without his death and resurrection Jesus could simply be dismissed as one of the many holy men or prophets that were around at the time attracting followers. Messianic cults were numerous although most were based around the violent overthrow of the Roman occupation.

Therefore Jesus had to have an accomplice to facilitate his martyrdom. Step forward Judas. Was Judas the only one Jesus could trust with this task? What about Peter? No, he showed his lack of spine by the triple denial. Judas on the other hand is the only disciple called a friend by Jesus.

As a Judean Judas had greater access to the Sanhedrin (Jewish high council) than a Galilean. Perhaps only he could convince the High Priest Caiaphas to send troops to arrest Jesus.

One final point - Jesus need not have died. He knew he was going to be betrayed, so why did he not 'out' Judas at the last supper and let the disciples deal with the traitor. why did he not flee as soon as he got wind of treachery? He could still have fled from the Garden of Gethsemene, why didn't he? Jesus knew he had to die. If his death was necessary then Judas was necessary for it to happen and he should not be damned for it. For only by Christ's death and resurrection are people saved (according to Christianity)- Jesus had to die and Judas helped it happen. But was he a traitor? We shall never know. But we do know that history is written by the winners and Judas was certainly not amongst those.

The glass half full

I came across this in a book the other day. It was written by a guy called Robert Ardrey.

But we were born of risen apes, not fallen angels, and the apes were armed killers besides. And so what shall we wonder at? Our murders and massacres and missiles, and our irreconcilable regiments? Or our treaties whatever they may be worth; our symphonies however seldom they may be played; our peaceful acres, however frequently they may become battlefields; our dreams however rarely they may be accomplished. The miracle of man is not how far he has sunk but how magnificently he has risen. We are known among the stars by our poems, not our corpses.

Rediscovery

A couple of months ago I replaced my Zen Micro mp3 player with a Zen Vision:M. Without getting involved in techno-wank I have to say that it is a phenomenal piece of kit. For the first time in my life I have become an 'early adopter'. Which means I bought the ZV:M as soon as it was released, while there were bugs to be fixed and before accessories were available. Why did I do this? Because it is a bloomin brilliant object.

So far I have filled up 15gb of memory with songs. I prefer to have the Zen running on random which means that I get some wonderful suprises. Mostly these are due to the fact that a little while ago I bought a dvd off ebay that contained all of the Now compilation cds. that's 60 double albums dating back to the early 80s. On my Zen Micro I had to be picky and only upload the songs I knew I liked. But with my newly expanded memory I was able to put all of the albums on.

Welcome back, "Camouflage" by Stan Ridgeway, and "Land of Confusion" by Genesis. I had forgotten about you. Welcome to the Pet Shop Boys and Erasure - I hated you at the time, but now appreciate you. The Christians, Utah Saints, Carter USM, McAlmont and Butler - all groups that produced songs I love but not albums I own. I had forgotten how good they sounded and now I have them back again.

The downside is that there is also an inordinate amount of shite on those albums but it takes just a second to skip past Darude and on to Shola Ama, or bypass DJ Sammy and check out They Might Be Giants.

I feel liberated by my rediscovery of the past. For a while I have felt my musical tastes contracting into a narrower band. Now my tastes are broadening again. When I get a new cd I don't have to worry about putting the tracks I like on the mp3 player, I can put them all on. The Arctic Monkeys being a recent beneficiary. And of course my 200+ cd collection is slowly being uploaded and I have taken a decision to only exclude songs I know to be crap rather than to only upload those I know I love. Today I felt the benefit. Once upon a time Symposium were the next big thing. I bough their first ep and liked some of it. Then they disappeared. Yesterday I uploaded the ep and today one of the songs cropped up. It wasn't one I knew but I liked it. If I had been picky I would probably have never known that.

So my advice, for what it's worth, is to get a large capacity mp3 player (30gb or more) to fill it with everything you have and to put it on random. Go on a journey. See what you will discover!