But, so far from being a sort of insect Ishmael, ready with its sting on all occasions, for the benefit or injury of friend and foe alike, the wasp is one of those apparently unpromising animals that will respond to and repay man’s kindness and attention by becoming both tractable and affectionate.
GODS
James Mason = Him
Guy Rolfe = His
SAINTS
Mario Lanza = He, Mario or Poor Mario
Orson Welles = It or Harry Lime
Mel Ferrer = This or The Angry Man
Jussi Björling = That
Rupert of Hentzau = Who
(Charles) Boinard = ?
Perhaps as a way of preserving his artistic self-respect, he sometimes painted two portraits: one a fairly agreeable likeness that would be acceptable to the sitter, and another, expressing his true vision of the person, for himself.
She treated her classmates with an airy bemused dismissiveness: it was as if they were barely to be taken seriously as human beings. One day when Form 3A had, for some reason, congregated in the cloakroom, she walked in and in her imperious voice proclaimed, “You girls look so positively mid Victorian.” No one was exactly sure what she meant, but it was tremendously impressive. So funny and so like Juliet! It would be remembered forever.
What these other “gospels” are instead is a series of pamphlets in which Jesus serves as the mouthpiece for the author’s preoccupations, usually magical or esoteric. It isn’t that they cast an intriguingly different light on someone who is recognizably the same person as the one in the New Testament. They are worlds away in mood and tone and attitude.
The Jesus of the orthodox story treats people with deep attention even when angry. Their Jesus zaps people with his divine superpowers if they irritate him. Orthodox Jesus says that everyone needs the love of God, and God loves everyone. Their Jesus has an inner circle you can be admitted to if you collect enough crisp packets. Orthodox Jesus likes wine, parties, and grilled fish for breakfast. Their Jesus thinks that human flesh and its appetites are icky. Orthodox Jesus is disconcertingly unbothered about sexuality, and conducts his own sexual life, if he has one, off the page. Their Jesus can generate women to have sex with out of his own ribs, in a way that suggests the author had trouble talking to girls. Orthodox Jesus says, “Don’t be afraid. I am always with you.” The Jesus of these documents says, “Advance, Blue Adept, to the 17th Jade Portal of Amazingness, and give the secret signal with your thumbs.” Read much of the rival “gospels,” and you start to think that the Church Fathers who decided what went into the New Testament had one of the easiest editorial jobs on record.
(Francis Spufford on the non-canonical gospels, from Unapologetic. Whether or not I agree with any given portion of it, this book is consistently well-written and hilarious)
It’s a bizarre mix of Baroque rave synths, over driven and nervously splitered breakcore-punk drums, with massive Rave-Baroque Harpiscords.
Some people get really into it. Danilo Ramos told Reuters it was his 23rd time being crucified.
[A]s well as backing the existence of roses and kittens, the God of everything must sustain tapeworms, necrotizing bacteria that reduce flesh to a puddle of pus, and parasitic wasps as they eat their way out of their hosts.
But I think they’re the most beautiful near the point (½)exp(i/5).