The Mudcat Café TM
Thread #121939   Message #2693356
Posted By: Jack Blandiver
04-Aug-09 - 05:08 AM
Thread Name: The re-Imagined Village
Subject: RE: The re-Imagined Village
the purchase of a MASSIVE flat screen telly,

Our telly is quite big, but not flat-screen - a contingency plan is in place in the event of its demise; it's a Goodmans, bought in 2001, so it's only a matter of time really. It's size and prominence in our front room is a reflection of its importance in our lives, and though it never goes on before 7.00pm, we do have one of these hard-disk recording things in the freeview box that means we can catch those stay day-time classics as when they appear. This coming Friday, for example, it's A Gift for Heidi (1958) which gets two stars in the Radio Times who describe it rather sniffily (Never has Johanna Spyri's little Alpine orphan found herself so immersed in sticky sweetness as in this glutinous fable...) but I recall been utterly enchanted by it as a kid, thus do I record it for a rainy day. Other films recently recorded (and not yet watched) include the classic Hell Drivers (1957) and Cottage to Let (1941).

I hereby request that 'drinks and nibbles' 'coctail parties' 'wine bars' and 'tennis clubs' are all TOTALLY BANNED in the re-Imagined village. And anyone caught indulging in such aspirational behaviours promptly has their head sliced off.

I agree. I also suggest their heads go as display on spikes outside the Post Office, there to be mocked by village gossips as an example to other would-be transgressors. ("Eh, there's that Mrs Prosser - doesn't look so glamorous now does she? See? I told you it was filler and foundation...")

including a couple of lawn tennis courts for the gents, and a table tennis hall for the ladies

In my experience women make the best tennis players (my old pal Mandy has trophies to prove it) whilst men are the best at table-tennis (I believe the Tyler Bros are famed in this respect).

and on the eighth day, God created Evolution too that is...

The very essence of Evolution is random selection which leads with no sort of inevitability whatsoever to Human Kind. Now, if God created evolution, and Mankind is the crowning glory of His Creation deserving of Dominion etc., does this mean that there is, in fact, no such randomness and that God has been controlling the entire thing from the off? If not, how come God comes to favour humanity over, say, penguins? Or do they have their own Messiah too?

I was once invited to tell a wee story as part of a church service some years ago during which the vicar invited his confrontation to pray not just to the God of Mankind, but also the God of the Spiders, the God of the Stones and the God of the Trees. I got a bit freaked out about this, asking him afterwards if such wilful pantheistic animism was entirely compatible with his Christian faith...

No doubt WAV might enlighten us in this respect.