Good morning. My back is feeling better this morning, thanks for asking. Later I may do some back-blogging to let you know what I got up to, pain quite literally notwithstanding.

* * *

Well that never happened did it? I was feeling sufficiently perky to do the music at church today. I had an idea it went fairly badly, but Dad thanked me for the playing and I overheard Theo in the kitchen saying it was a lovely service, though obviously that needn't be in reference to me at all. It was an uphill struggle too. I knew about a quarter of the songs, and one of the communion ones was obviously devised by someone who, if not actually wishing death upon guitarists, at least wished to decrease their level of comfort on this earth. Check it out, check it out, check it out, check it out:

E       A       B7      G#7/B#

C#m     F#m7    F#m7    Am9(#7)

Am9(#7) E       B#dim   C#m

F#9     A/B     A/B     B7

Hmm. Now let's run that through Dobson's Patented Gratuitous Nonsense Remover^TM to purge it particularly of expendable extensions and bass note substitutions...

E       A       B       G#7

C#m     F#m     F#m     Am

Am      E       B#dim   C#m

F#      A       A       B

... and I still wouldn't wish it on an enemy.

Fair old amount of time playing Time Crisis after that. I had to take Mum in to work after lunch and then pick Nick up. I could od it alright, but it hurt every time I changed gear. Fortunately, when I got to Homebase to pick Nick up, he could drive the rest of the way back and thus spare me. I'm near the end of A New Eusebius now, having just finished the section on the Nicean council, which is the prepenultimate one. I'm not entirely sure that that isn't a made up word, but it serves my turn.

I then had a bit of a nap but got up to watch half of Some of my best friends are... Muslim, which was interesting and then all of Gods in the Sky, also interesting, but I suspect inaccuracies. The Greeks were a free people, he said, and my cynicism kicked in, but then freedom depends on definition, so I'll let that one go. What I was more suspicious about was his assertion that the Greeks were the first to have laws, "real laws" I think he said. Anyway, I was led to believe by another TV programme (this is, I fear, where the majority of my historical insights come from) that the first things ever committed to parchment, or whatever (and hence the first readily verifiable history) were in Sumeria, or a similar place, and that these were the first laws. Well I don't know. The guy, I forget his name, also related a creation satire which starts off like this: First there was chaos, and in the middle of chaos, night. Night, for reasons of her own, started flapping about to create Wind. This wind took rather a shine to Night and they got it on. And the fruit of their union was this egg thing. This is apparently a fairly common beginning. Now in this myth, Monkey comes out of the egg. Monkey is rebellious and does various chaotic things, all of which suggest that one should obey the emperor because rebellion sucks. This rather took my fancy. From Great Pop Things:

Bobby Dylan: "He tried to change the world by setting various suggestions about how the world should be changed to music and singing them with his acoustical guitar"

[...O]ne day, Bobby was involved in a horrifying cycling accident...[...]

FARMER I say young feller, what're you rebelling against?
DYLAN What've you got?
FARMER Well I got my mule and them stringbeans
DYLAN I'm rebelling against them then

For Monkey then, you can substitute one mule plus stringbeans for...

• Chaos


• Night


• Wind (to my mind, practically synonymous with Chaos)
  
• Remains of monkey egg, 1

...which is scarcely more impressive. Rebelling aginst chaos would seem to be missing the point somewhat, and Night? Well, you can't fight the moonlight. I'd be very interested in hearing about last time any of you guys rebelled against used eggshell. That is all.