matthew henry john bartlett

Thankyou all my commenting friends, I love you all, and feel privileged to be alive now and rich and online and part of this.

Paul the Apostle says “there is one loaf, we, who are many, are one body, for we all partake of the one loaf.” This appears to me to bind together the loaf and the body pretty tightly, so that in ordinary circumstances those who are part of the one Body should all share the one loaf. A corollary might be that if you won’t share the loaf with someone, you are saying they are not part of the same Body.

The Polite Rise And Discreet Fall Of Belle And Sebastian
Read Mercer Schuchardt on the Default Culture
Jono reviews some albums

I was thinking of writing about Friday’s Salmonella Dub/Trinity Roots gig but chud did a good job, so you’re welcome to go read about it there.

Saturday evening featured a get-together for Richie S’s birthday. Malaysian at Roti on Willis Street was a mixed blessing (peers peerless, food not consistently amazing). Interpretive dance at the K-Club karaoke bar was a highlight. We had a bit of a boogie to some reasonably nifty covers band whose bass player had wee beady eyes at Kitty O’Shea’s. Daylightsavingschangeover + notreallydrinkingmuchbooze + nicebigcoffeejustbeforebed = nosleeptillfivea.m. & quitetiredandcrazyallSunday.

So it turns out Jono W is the hottest photographer ever to live in Island Bay:

My friend Aaron and i are sending our friend Ben Goldenhorse’s lush album Riverhead (Lyrics). We are keen to get him to like some pop music.

Tonight i went for a walk with the dog and the discman and wrote down some notes about each track to help Ben like the CD. Happily he despises blogdom, so he won’t see this before the CD & notes arrive in the post.

MP3 schnippets of the songs available at smokecds.com.

Northern Lights Kirsten M’s nice voice. Your first glimpse of a band whose expressed intention is to create beauty in an often ugly world.

Spice Islands Opens with pretty triplets on the hihats which come back to say hello later on. Pleasing boy + girl harmonies. Quite exciting instrumental finish.

Golden Dawn Whimsical old church piano on the left channel. Bouyant chorus floating up above the verses. More happy piano arpeggios to end.

Maybe Tomorrow Bass guitar replacing bass drum.

Riverhead Lots of inconsequential and fantasy lyrics throughout album. Starts dark but they can’t seem to help lapsing into prettiness. ‘On a thorny bed’ soaring over lush lush strings.

Wake Up Brother Bass guitar wandering around all over the place. Oo-aah’s that make me fear for my poor mortal heart. Super lovely contrasty section towards the end.

Shrinking Her Legs First obvious use of electronic bits and bobs. A lot of interesting drum textures. A song structure considerably more complex than your average pop ditty. Clarinets. Trills and triplets in the strings. Melancholic, understated guitar solo to finish.

Out Tonight Happy silly song to cheer us up again. Feels like some wierd new polished folk-esq genre.

Baby’s Been Bad Deuling trumpet & trombone. Drums so crazy happy.

American Wife Inspired by the book My Year of Meat apparently. Satrirical somehow but obsurely, and not nastily so. Guitar solo could have come from the same 50s America of the lyrics.

Dark Forest
The crowning glory. The guy who does the backing vocals must be quite modest to be content to be never more than a gentle support for the lead. I am walking down my street now, almost home, with headphones on and this notepad in my hand, following Jenny the dog. The stars are out, it’s a completely clear night. The Southern Cross is directly in front of me. I can smell woodfires and a bit of pot. Now that the CD is done, the click of Jenny’s toenails against the asphalt is the loudest sound around.

Hot free VST plugin: iZotope Vinyl
PHP developer tips [1.6MB PDF]

Today i realise that it is incumbant upon preterists to be the realisation (as best they can) of the hope that the orthodox doctrine of the Second Coming represents. If you understand that sentence, kudos.

Suicide in San Francisco [via ALD]
The church in the gutter
Shareware MP3-based record label

For perhaps five years i have been half-heartedly searching for the Heinlein’s book Tunnel in the Sky. I used to see it listed in library catalogs on the stack, but i used to be afraid of librarian. I read it a decade ago, and the plot lodged permanently in my mind. Today i found it in Bellamy’s and bought it for $6. I’ve started it and dearly hope it will live up to my memories.

my first foray into paint

I went to church today twice and emerged unscathed. My beautiful sister Katherine made lunch for me and gave me issue #37 of Adbusters. Of course at first i thought too trendy too postmodern too earnest too imporant. But I should have had beginner’s mind. I had a bath and read it. I was in love by the end of the letters page. Someone mentioned Neil Postman. Now i find that not the hearers of the law are just, but the doers thereof.

Postcript: Neil Postman died last week *

I heard a real estate agent use the phrase “literally lots of money” with a straight face yesterday. I was laughing on the inside, that’s fer sure.

For a while now i’ve been wondering in a vague sort of way if there is any way to help mentally ill people (schizophrenia, depression etc) without resorting to nasty powerful drugs. Recently someone told me about the Tidal Model. Read about it here. The model trys to acknowledge the amazing, vast complexity of every human being.

Java-based animation of a Heap Sort ADT

Your host, enjoying a cinnamon cigarette. Hoodie by Volcom

Encyclopedic Grant Lee Buffalo fansite
LEGO + Escher
Prayer in Parliament
Reaction timer
Jesus in the news, c.AD33

Richie S and i left Ohakune at 6am this morning. Jess & Nick let us stay at their nifty borrowed cottage. We spent yesterday skiing Turoa. Richie boards and i ski. We went as hard as we possibly could, conquering fear at every turn, getting impossible amounts of air. The weather was completely bluebird; we were in t-shirts by lunchtime. We met some nice new people.

At the end of the day i was gliding down Clary’s Track by myself and i thought to myself – This is a superdoubleplusgood time. It’d be nice to blog about it and share it around. But how could some barely-coherant words about it be anything like the thing itself? If i were a good writer i might make you feel like you were here yourself. But would that be a good thing? Isn’t that like watching a game on TV vs. being in a scrum? Now i’m thinking to myself – enough pseudo-intellectual bollix. Come up to the snow with us some time.

Review of Milbank’s Theology and Social Theory
Flirting then and now [via Aaron S]

pass it around

Tonight I noticed eyes are nice if you don’t look too close but they’re black and empty in the middle.

We can only live the changes we wish to see: we cannot think our way to humanity. Every one of us, every group, must become the model of that which we desire to create. We must break the obsolete social and economic systems that divide the world between the over-privileged and the under-privileged. Each of us, whether government leader or protester, business executive or worker, professor or student, share a common guilt. We have failed…through our lack of responsible awareness…and thus added to suffering around the world.

All of us are cripples—some physically, some mentally, some emotionally. We must, therefore, strive cooperatively to create a new world. There is no time left for destruction, for hatred, for anger. We must build, in hope and joy and celebration.

[via Bruderhof]

Wellington chums come to Goldenhorse tonight at Bar Bodega. If you can’t afford i’ll pay.

A List Apart is back!
Local lessons in love
Mistranslation, men’s wings & holy mixtures
Amazon adds full-text search [via mefi]

Wellington folk: Can you suggest a good dentist for me? I spent my hatred every place, on every work on every face. Whoops i mean when i was young i spent every coin i earnt on tiny treats to rape my teeth. Pornography for the tastebuds. Now i must pay the price.

a nice Jason K post about writing for a music mag

After skiing on Monday last week, we drove to Turangi to bathe in the hot pools. We stopped at the BP/BK for dinner. I had some sandwhiches left over that i hadn’t eaten on the mountain, so i ate them while the others ordered their meal. Someone had left a NZ Herald lying on the table i was sitting at, so i flicked through it. I read all the birth/death/marriage notices. One old lady who had died had about ten different obituaries addressed to her. I want to live a ten-obituary life.

NTW on Love, Knowledge, Eschatology, Eucharist
James H Kunstler – Virtual is no Refuge From Reality
Dress your cat [via jono]
Kafka wrote about the impossibility of living

Shiny new email address for me – matt at mhjb dot co dot nz. I’m gradually phasing out the hotmail one.

Mostly, when I ask about loneliness, a deep, sad silence descends on audiences of young men and young women alike. They know they are lonely together, even when conjoined, and that this imagery is a big part of that loneliness. What they don’t know is how to get out, how to find each other again erotically, face-to-face.
more…
[via fearsomepirate]

the problem with worldviews

I’m somewhat worried because i have shizloads of work to do on assignments before my programming exam.

I’m somewhat nervous because i’m going to a BBQ this evening and won’t know anyone there.

I’m rather happy because three books from the US have just arrived – Peter Leithart’s Against Christianity, Mark Horne’s The Victory According to Mark and Douglas Wilson’s Joy at the End of the Tether.