This series of photographs and commentary from Chernobyl twenty years on says it all: how lucky we who were not affected are. (via Antipixel)

"I've wondered why everyone was silent about Chernobyl, why our writers weren't writing much about it — they can write about the war, or the camps, but here they're silent. Why? Do you think it's an accident? If we'd beaten Chernobyl, people would talk about it and write about it more. Or if we'd understood Chernobyl. But we don't know how to capture any meaning from it. We're not capable of it. We can't place it in our human experience or human timeframe.

"So what's better, to remember or to forget?"

—Yevgeniy Aleksandrovich Brovkin, instructor at Gomel State University

Tagged: chernobyl, paulfusco, photographs.

Basic flame stands in yellow fog as copse

or corpse logging functions in the distance

of the general earth, a charred mill stands

out of narrow time roundly offered over

dim followers at war with the faces often

recognised. Stake ripped in the heart of

us, from elders on, or a blind or a lamp dew

on grass flickering to dying out can only re-

cord what it won't forget until after a sleep.

—Ian Patterson, from Some Title

Last night I was lying awake remembering with joy how my dad used to take me to cricket matches in Leicester, how we sat in the members area, and how we ate chips and choc ices (although not at the same time); and then I felt desperate at the fact that I can't remember a single word he ever said to me, how I've forgotten his voice, and how that can never change.

• Alan Statham's car in its new parking place (Green Wing, for those of you sad enough not to work it out)
• Article in Guardian about someone Stuart knew, who killed herself a couple of years ago
• Selby out of world championships but should regain top 32 place for next season

Tagged: greenwing, statham, theguardian, guardian, alice, mentalillness, bipolar, manicdepression, selby, snooker.

yu ar ridddicyoolin mee widd yur fayse.

I've been in Oxford since Monday with a relative who's been into hospital. Went to town today and did the usual coffee shop and bookshop routine; scanned through Blackwell's theology & philosophy sections and proudly emerged without buying anything. Everything's very slow at the moment. The answer is either a complete change of direction or a solipsistic immersion in jazz, garden parties, and male anorexia.

The radiators poured out heat in the midst of a drought-induced April shower. Such is the ambiguity of sharing your bed with red herrings that turn out to be not so much a Trojan Elephant as a black cat.

Rasman Jasma Spasla Pasla

Irreduced to everything:

The time for merrywishing from

The time of everwanting.

Under he arches of the breeze

A merry underwritten sneeze

Who you ask who is this man

But Rasman is a cooker point

Who made me cook your uncle's tart

And roll away the knockers.

In the many challenges

He became a dangheress.

And under all the lights and sounds

The doctor came to help him;

Jeffrey was a happy bunny

Happy quoted Jolly funny.

Who Oh Who Oh Who are you

That reads with such intensity

That OH your eyes are sore they are

And my tooth it is hurty

Mengle mingle undergrad

Have you been to Petrograd?

Who Oh Who did Johnny see

When he went up London Tree?

Goodnight then readers

Don't forget

They haven't sectioned me

Just yet

Labels: poetry

• Old friend Mark Selby knocks out John Higgins in Snooker World Championship. Woo! Tagged: markselby, johnhiggins, snooker.
• Observer interviews Graeme Hick ahead of his retirement at the end of this season. I always regarded Hick as the greatest English batsman, as a child; a shame the England team was so mismanaged during the 90s. Tagged: graemehick, hick, cricket.

• Hours of fun throwing George Bush around the screen! You can drag the President around the screen using your mouse. (Thanks Sam) Tagged: georgebush, bush, throwing.

• Yay! Preston and Chantelle are engaged. I knew they'd work it. Tagged: preston, chantelle, bigbrother, engagement, marriage.

If only I could speak the words

I need to say to you:

My mouth is shut,

My heart locked up,

How can I breathe

Or think or live

Unless you love me too?

Such love is a forbidden fruit,

Forbidden unto me:

Your mouth so near

Your heart so far

away. How can

That touching hand

So ripe, yet so raw, be?

This interdiction's interposed

By showers of delight:

Our intertwined,

Inwardly blind

Individuals

Intermingle.

Still art thou overdight.

And covered though I rest this eve,

My eyes fall shut and dream:

A country far

Beyond the stars

Where there's no You,

Nor any Me,

Just, and forever, We.

Tagged: poetry, wilshere, original.

Labels: poetry

Roland Barthes' Mythologies and Mary Midgley's The Myths We Live By are works which straddle the academic and the mainstream and flag up the myths of highly structured scientific academic discourse. (Most academic discourse is 'scientific,' regardless of its subject area.) Scholarship is at least something now where I KNOW I can succeed, but the problem at the moment is that I still have severe reservations about the limitations and contingencies of the academic pursuit. It seems to me that the academy is ultimately something which issues you with certain skills and knowledges which, for them to be redeemed and not just figure in the self-perpetuation of the education legitimation machine, need to move out of the university and into a completely different realm, a realm altogether more worldly, more real, more hands-on, where that knowledge and those skills can be transformed by encounter with anOTHER — a true dialectic, a dialectic of grace, not an arbitrary exchange of highly refined, highly formalised, highly structured debate which ultimately only reinforces itself and its own partial conclusions.

Structure, too, is something functional, necessary for a time, but something which must ultimately be moved beyond so that humanity, and knowledge, can be liberated, can reach maturity, can sever its link with the maternal frame.

We are gradually losing structures, and we are losing old meaning; many people think that equals a loss of meaning altogether. On the contrary: new morals, new maxims, new behaviours will emerge, but the structures, imaginations, vocabularies will have undergone a great post-structural transformation.

What is this transformation?

It is the boundless, limitless, structureless root word of LOVE.

When we lose structure, we will be left with pure encounter and pure love.

Tagged: scholarship, academic, academy, structuralism, structure, poststructuralism, poststructural, love, redemption, transformation, postmodernism, marymidgley, rolandbarthes, science.

Don't tell me: they rolled away the stone and the tomb was empty! Diana resurrexit!

Tagged: express, dailyexpress, diana, princessdiana, breakthrough.

I was alerted to this poem by G.K. Chesterton by a friend yesterday. The donkey assumes a key role in the narrative of Jesus' entry into Jerusalem, if you think about it, so this is for anyone who has felt unvalued, aesthetically unattractive, or passive in the face of the world:

When fishes flew and forests walked

And figs grew upon thorn,

Some moment when the moon was blood

Then surely I was born.

With monstrous head and sickening cry

And ears like errant wings,

The devil's walking parody

On all four-footed things.

The tattered outlaw of the earth,

Of ancient crooked will;

Starve, scourge, deride me: I am dumb,

I keep my secret still.

Fools! For I also had my hour;

One far fierce hour and sweet:

There was a shout about my ears,

And palms before my feet.

—G.K. Chesterton

Tagged: palmsunday, jesus, christianity, depression, donkey, chesterton.

Reading this post over at Homo Ludens made me think of a poem I wrote a while back. See Michael Rosen's comment on the post.

If I claim I'm over you

And put it into speech,

I merely reinforce the fact

That you are out of reach.

I waited by a cash machine,

I waited in a bar,

I waited in my bedroom,

I waited in the car.

I want to feel your arms around me

and feel skin on skin.

I want to let you be the vessel

to store my New Wine in.

You left me waiting, waiting, waiting,

Waiting longer than I can,

Waiting for tomorrow's Coming,

Weary, wasted, wizened, wan.

But I can say: "I'm over you!"

Despite the fact I'm breaking down.

So, like my wisdom teeth, I crumble

And there is nowhere else to

Tagged: poetry, original, wilshere, andrewwilshere, michaelrosen, homoludens, newwine.

Labels: poetry

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• 10-year-old "racist" court case adjourned. The CPS up to their usual tricks.
• And another Manchester story: The 192 bus route is in chaos! Long story short: Complete deregulation — Stagecoach monopoly for a few years — GM Buses decide to run the service — Stagecoach get pissed off and flood the route with buses — End result: Up to ten buses a minute, and massive congestion.

Labels: racism

• It's official: Boot Camp beta is released. Tagged: bootcamp, mac, apple, windows, macosx, windowsxp.
• NUT calls to end state funding of faith schools. Did we learn nothing from the Roman Empire?! Fundamentalism and extremism is encouraged by excluding faith groups from a legitimate place in the education system. (No-one is forced to send their children to faith schools.) Tagged: education, faith, state, religion, church, islam.

Today is CSS Naked Day, but I'm not taking part, because my website is too rubbish to work.

I would just like to state categorically that I did not drink half a litre of gin last night, and what's more, I did not wake up at 6.46 this morning still sporting my glasses, under the full glare of all the lights in the house, and fully dressed. Finally, I would like to confirm that I most definitely was not home alone and I am not an alcoholic.

Good day to you.

I am with you always, even to the end of time. —Matthew 28:20

You're not alone, I'll wait till the end of time for you. —Olive

There's lots of interest at the moment in theology and popular culture as a research area. My main reservation is that those on the cynical side of things, particularly in the church, are starting to appropriate legitimate sociological research (which is not faddish, and is a continuation of a thread at least a century old) and repackage it in over-simple faddish packages to try and make the failing institutions of the Church of England look hip and trendy, when they are nothing of the sort. Ian Stackhouse has criticised this aspect of bad theology. Some of you will remember that a couple of weeks ago I linked to Ten Distinctive of Postmodern Churches. In a way, this sums up the potential for short-sightedness in adopting such simplistic and uncritical views of 'popular culture.' On the other hand, many evangelical churches have appropriated the same material but put it to much more effective and more constructive use, because, it seems to me, they tend to use it only to supplement what remains a pretty orthodox commitment to Christian gospel. (Ian Stackhouse's book attempts to reaffirm a "gospel-driven church" in the light of "a loss of gospel speech.")

Anyway, for anyone interested in this area, there is a special edition of the journal Crucible being published in July dedicated to theology and popular culture; if anyone's interested in having a copy, let me know.

Tagged: theology, popularculture, church, gospel, mission, postmodern, stackhouse, pop.

• Opera stardom for woman who spent 18 years waiting in restaurants. What a fabulous story. It really should teach us all a lesson. (via Waiter Rant) Tagged: waiter, waiting, opera, metropolitan, sunnegardh, erikasunnegardh, music.