A Futile Attempt To Improve The Internet

Posted on September 22, 2019 by JC

A very simple post this time and also the first (and perhaps only), post this month.

I went through and scanned all the images in an old Sunday Missal I bought a while ago. With the amount of horrible, vile, distasteful, unpleasant or just plain silly images on the Internet—let this go some way to improving it. These are probably all around somewhere anyway but it would be nice if we could make nice pictures more likely to appear in Google image searches.

Feel free to save and spread as I assume there is no copyright issue here.

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Transgenderism & Transubstantiation

Posted on August 4, 2019 by JC

In the Catholic Church it is believed that at the consecration the bread and wine become the body and blood of Christ. Although they remain so in appearance, they are no longer bread and wine. The Catechism of the Council of Trent explains that:

the whole substance of the bread is changed by the power of God into the whole substance of the body of Christ, and the whole substance of the wine into the whole substance of His blood, and this, without any change in our Lord Himself.

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The Lion King: A Subversive Masterpiece

Posted on July 8, 2019 by JC

I always have a number of topics/ideas in drafts and this is one I’ve probably had for the longest time. I usually get around to them eventually and the fact that this has now been written is proof of that. As you shall see, it is a good time for me to complete it now. 

Disney has been out of ideas for a long time and if not for Pixar, it is hard to imagine that their animation studios would still exist today. They have been steadily remaking many of their better known animated movies as live-action spectacles. Most recently was Aladdin and July will see the release of The Lion King. These remakes are pointless at best, but they at least give a reason to look back at the original films.

The 1994 release of The Lion King was one of the most significant film events of my childhood. The other two would be the live-action Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles and Jurassic Park. I still remember going to see them and they are all films I still enjoy today. The equivalent for literature would be having books like The Chronicles of Narnia, The Secret Garden and The Magic Faraway Tree read to me by parents and teachers. As I observed with TMNT a little while back, viewing these films again as an adult gives you a knew appreciation. That is assuming they were made to be more than quick cash-grabs for children which these films were.

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Captain Catholic or Captain Compromise?

Posted on June 23, 2019 by JC

Battlelines by Tony Abbott
Melbourne University Press, June 1st, 2013 (first published in 2009)

Not being good at being relevant, I decided not only to read but also review this book a decade after it was first published. This is after Tony Abbott won the 2013 election, was deposed as Prime Minister in 2015 and most recently; has lost the seat he held since 1994 in the 2019 Federal Election. The decade since this was published has been both cruel and kind. So in a way it is relevant to look at what the man thought before he had the chance to put it into practice. I don’t have any published proof but Tony Abbott was the main leading Liberal I thought best placed to win back government back in 2007 and I was right. Of course, you only have my word for this.

I wrote about Tony Abbott a few years ago and after reading Battlelines, I still stand by what I wrote. As with Cory Bernardi, he is the kind of person I’m inclined to like because of how widely he disliked he is by his political enemies. As I concluded back then, I think he is a good bloke. Battlelines is far more political than personal though and I have taken much issue with the weakness of leading conservative figures and despite Abbott being portrayed as particularly right-wing, he is no less immune to criticism. It will become clear as you read, that this media image of him is far from accurate.

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The Absolute State of Video Games

Posted on May 26, 2019 by JC

As one of my resolutions for this year is to reduce the amount I play/buy and my overall involvement with gaming as a hobby, I have naturally been reflecting on the reasons why I came to make this decision. There are many and this is an attempt to put them down in writing.

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A Gamma’s Journey

Posted on April 28, 2019 by JC

mogworldMogworld by Yahtzee Croshaw
Dark Horse Books, April 22nd, 2008

Yahtzee Croshaw is best known as the creator of Zero Punctuation, an irreverent video game review series that has been published at Escapist Magazine since 2007. I stopped regularly watching it many years ago but I do still see a video here and there and I have been impressed with its staying power. Croshaw has proved that the series was much more than the gimmick based solely on how long he has been doing it. The show is substantially the same as it was when he published his first few videos on YouTube well over a decade ago and still reaches a large audience.

People have a tendency to look at someone who suddenly becomes successful as it is merely luck but this is rarely the case. Zero Punctuation was in reality one of the many things he had produced that happened to find a large audience. It wasn’t just a fluke. He had already been making text adventures, comics and writing before he tried his hand at video. And the success of this series also gave him exposure enough to become a published author. His first book is the subject of this review.

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Enjoying and Obsessing

Posted on April 17, 2019 by JC

While I haven’t watched the new trailer and am not at all interested in the new film, it was hard to miss this and the ensuing reaction and I think it is worth posting about. What I am talking about is embedded below and at the link [now deleted].

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Ancient Egypt for Moderns

Posted on April 7, 2019 by JC

egyptAncient Egypt: All That Matters by Barry Kemp
John Murray, December 3rd, 2015

I recently got in mind that I wanted to learn more about Ancient Egypt as I considered this a big general gap in my historical knowledge. So searching around for good books I came across a large textbook that was quite expensive by Barry Kemp. The price having put me off buying, I turned to the library and found what I thought was the same book. As it turned out, it was a shorter book for the general reader but by the same author. Having little time to include extra reading, this seemed like a good place to start filling in the gap.

It wasn’t.

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Call me Underwhelmed

Posted on March 31, 2019 by JC

I have been on something of a mission to make sure I have read most of the books that are considered “great”. When I say this, I don’t mean books that have appeared on New York Times Bestseller Lists or Oprah’s Book Club but simply books that have stood the test of time. Books that people of many stripes tend to agree are great works of literature. Most of the time, this is really a good way to go  about reading but sometimes it isn’t. Catcher in the Rye being a perfect example of the latter. Now if you’ve not gathered by the post title, the book I’ve most recently crossed off the classics list is Moby-Dick.

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Coming Home

Posted on March 24, 2019 by JC

It has been almost a year since I returned to live in Australia after close to ten years abroad. In coming back to Australia I find myself feeling somewhat like Odysseus arriving home after his eventful journey from Troy. I find my home occupied by people abusing the hospitality they were given and many watching too weak or powerless to do anything about it. Where it differs from the Epic is of course, I am no great adventurer nor was I away doing battle and making a name for myself. Odysseus was not as I recall subject to any treachery within his own household either.

I had been making fairly regular trips back to the country year to year for short amounts of time. During these times I did notice changes such as the clientele at a shopping mall I frequented growing up changing completely. But it is nothing like what I have experienced just living here the last year.

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