Monday 26 February 2018

Mysterious Identity of ++Tobin Tweet's Intended Recipient is Finally Revealed



Wherever the Bergoglian sun doth shine, 
There's mental hygiene and a shifty paradigm. 



At least I have always found it so, 
That tweet was meant for my sister, you know.

In other news: For the first time in this pontificate, 
Vatican City looks positively immaculate...

Image result for snow rome

7 comments:

Anonymous said...

Thank you so much for being funny.

john haggerty said...

The song came out in 1967 (the summer of 'Young Girl, Get Out of My Mind').
Was it written by Frankie Valli?
There's a DVD of an Andy Williams concert in the Albert Hall, in the Eighties. (The singer is interviewed by the late, much-missed Benny Green.) He sings 'Can't Take My Eyes Off Of You' to rapturous applause.

You work in a lot of clever breathless phrasing, and some nifty rhymes.
Reworked and without the melody, those accented syllables would be in the spondaic metre; a double spondee.
A perfect example of spondee would be 'Troilus and Cressida':

'Cry, cry! Troy burns, or else let Helen go.'

The three-stressed trochaic is also effective in those strong-beat lyrics. A good example is Blake's 'The Little Girl Found' with its archaic spelling:

All the night in woe
Lyca's parents go
Over vallies deep,
While the desarts weep.

In her book 'Poetic Handbook' Babette Deutsch has a fine example of a trimeter:

Alone he rides, alone,
The fair and fatal king:
Dark knight is all his own,
That strange and solemn thing.

Give 'all his' as much emphasis as 'fa tal' and 'sol emn'.

There are some wonderful interviews with legendary jazz pianist Bill Evans on YouTube.
He says that rock music taught the kids about the beat.
Pre-rock audiences had a poor sense of beat; Bill Evans says he noticed this when he played in dancehalls during the 1950s.

Alto sax and trumpet legend Benny Carter used to say,'If you lose the beat, you lose everything.'

There's a very good film on DVD about a jazz pianist in LA, 'The Low Down'.
The seminal movie 'Jazz On A Summer's Day' is also on DVD and features everyone from Thelonius Monk to Anita O'Day; Louis Armstrong to Chuck Berry.
This open air concert filmed in colour at Newport in 1958, ends in the wee small hours with Mahalia Jackson singing the Lord's Prayer.

What concert today would end with the Our Father?

john haggerty said...

Sorry to go so lyrically off topic, but the YouTube video is:
Bill Evans Discusses Rock Music.
Other videos:
The Universal Mind of Bill Evans.
Those 7 Times Bill Evans Went Next Level Genius.

Other recordings on YouTube:
Bill Evans - Never Let Me Go.
A Time for Love - Bill Evans.
That latter song is from the Steve McQueen film 'The Sand Pebbles', and was a much-deserved hit for Matt Monro (YouTube) in the early Sixties.

Among the great Bill albums... 'Alone', 'A Waltz For Debbie' and 'Sunday at the Vanguard'.
Adam Gopnik wrote an evocative essay ('That Sunday') for The New Yorker on the recording of the Vanguard album; it can be read online for a modest fee.

Lyrical envoi.
Listen on YouTube to:
'Claire de lune - Debussy (guitare)' played by Roxane Elfasci.
A beautiful lady.

God bless you.

john haggerty said...

Correction.
The theme song of the 1966 Steve McQueen film is called 'And We Were Lovers'; it too was a Matt Monro hit.
Both songs belong to that early-to-mid-Sixties period when the air seemed to be dancing to great melodies, and there was real hope.
We thought that if America withdrew from Vietnam, there would be justice in the world.
The Vatican II generation bought into that hope, without realizing what the modernizers in the Church were really up to.

Life must be lived forwards, but can only be understand backwards.
Kierkegaard, I think.

john haggerty said...

Back on topic.
Please listen to The Vortex - Reclaim the Church, March 1, 2018 (YouTube).
Michael Voris points out that in the USA there are more Catholics over the age of 65 than there are Catholics under the age of 30. A demographic bombshell.
'We are now reaping what was sown by the Modernist saboteurs,' says Mr Voris.

Also worth watching, 'My Family's Reaction When I Converted Catholic' by Ali-Marie Ingram, a charming young woman.

It will be those converts like Ali-Marie and cradle Catholics like Mr Voris whom the Holy Spirit will work with to save the Church from the 'Modernist saboteurs' (haunting phrase).

This will be the New Counter Reformation.
Our desperately corrupt and confused world needs it.

john haggerty said...

Bones, I think you might like to read: 'The Scottgate Tapes - A Revealing Insight into the Current State of the Church of Scotland'.
It's on the blog The Wee Flea.com.
There are insights here for the Catholic who is fearful for the future of Biblical truth and doctrine.

David Robertson who writes the Wee Flea blog looks at how 'vindictive' a monolithic church can be towards its dissenting members - especially when those members are standing up for the Gospel.

Also worth reading: 'Church of Scotland must switch from hymns to smartphones or face obscurity' (online Telegraph) a statement from outgoing Moderator Dr John Chalmers.

Dr. Chalmers might want to think about the success of the ebullient Gareth Malone who has revived interest in choirs and choral singing - watch him on YouTube.
Gareth could have England singing the hymns of Charles Wesley again if he had a mind to.
I don't know if he is a Christian but we badly need his genius as a choirmaster and revivalist.

Who in the established churches is praying that sinful Europe will repent and turn to Jesus Christ?
Where are the continual prayer vigils, fasting, sacrifices?
Where are the preachers reminding our world how lost it is?

I am reading 'Steps Towards Heaven' by J.C. Ryle (1816 - 1900) and I am wondering why there are so few like him in the established churches today.

Michael Voris of The Vortex (YouTube) has a mission for the rebuilding of Western Christian Civilization (see 'Father Barron is Wrong') and he is a brave and lonely figure in American Catholicism.

Our church leaders are politicians who talk glibly about 'justice and peace', but in reality they are ashamed of the Gospel.
They are careerists with nice pensions who belong to what Mr Voris calls the Church of Nice.

john haggerty said...

'For whoever is ashamed of Me and My words in this adulterous and sinful generation, the Son of Man will also be ashamed of him when He comes in his Father's glory with the holy angels.'

- Mark 3:8

'For I am not ashamed of the gospel of Christ: for it is the power of God unto salvation to everyone that believes; to the Jew first, and then to the Gentile.'

- Romans 1:16

It was to Paul's letter to the Romans that Karl Barth turned in 1918 in his hour of crisis, after seeing the broken men returning from the trenches; what Karl Barth discovered in Paul's theology rang a bell throughout the world, a bell that summoned at least some of the Lost Generation to the Gospel.

Listen on YouTube to William Cowper's hymn, 'There is a Fountain Filled With Blood (hymn with lyrics)' from the Klondike Baptist Church.

I heard this great hymn on a cold night (Sunday past) in a humble Reformed Baptist Church in Glasgow; two young mothers were there with their babies; hope for the next generation of Christ's people.

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