Hayley vs. Gareth

Before I begin, sad news last night was that 80’s TV legend Jeremy Beadle has died, it’s like a bit of my childhood dying…Rest in Peace…watch out heaven Beadle’s About!

This week at college during our worship at the chapel on Monday evening we had a time of lying or sitting and just simply turning off all of our distractions and focusing on God. In my case I spent probably half the time trying so hard to turn off the distractions but maybe that’s just me! But anyway to aide us in our thinking or whatever we listened to some music and we listened to a song (I don’t know which one) by a band called Sigur Rós and well it’s amazing!

When I got back into the office on Wednesday morning I went onto YouTube and listened to loads of their music for hours on end, it’s just so beautiful, it is sung in a language called Hopelandic and this language is basically gibberish, it means nothing. But yet in a language that means nothing there is such a haunting importance to what is being sung. I know Mark has been a fan for absolutely ages (he’s always into great stuff before me, case in point - Christianity) but thanks to my good buddy Tom for fully introducing them to me and recommending them so highly and for coining the term “it’s the beautiful art of noise”. Well I think it was him anyway!

Next Friday I am getting my hair cut, cos it is getting to that annoying stage where its not short but its not long either and although some might say it always looks rubbish (and with my face the hair can’t really improve things too much) it looks more rubbish than usual at the moment I thinks.

I’m probably (90% sure) going to get my now usual hair cut of the pseudo faux hawk kinda thing but I’m thinking of maybe a change and so wondered what you lovely peoples ideas of my change in hair style could be

As most of you would have read or heard by now, Heath Ledger has died.

It sucks, hard. Lots. I’ll write a post about it maybe tomorrow saying what I thought of him but in the mean time if you’re a Christian pray for his little kid and his family and friends and that, and even if you’re not maybe give it a shot anyway.

To read more on the story click here

(and just after clicking on ‘publish’ have I seen Hayley has posted about this too)

As you probably know Heath Ledger has sadly passed away. He was an awesome actor in films such as A Knights Tale, Brokeback Mountain and one of my all time favourites 10 Things I Hate About You. My heart was slightly damaged when I heard the news, and I’m slightly shocked as well. He is the first actor of our generation to die, and that’s tragic, considering that he was only 28 and has a 2 year old daughter. Last night my housemate’s and I watched 10 Things I Hate About You, it’s an awesome film, if you haven’t seen it you really need to!!!!

Yesterday as part of a small group thing that I have for college, we five students who go to it (Train gang plus Pete) had to write what we thought of God in fifteen words…it had to be personally what we thought, not what we thought we “should” write…I liked what I wrote so I thought I’d share it with you guys

“God is pretty ace. God with capital not little G, which is better.”

We were then challenged to write the gospel in fifteen words and here is what I wrote for that one…

“God made. We sinned. Jesus died. Sorts it. Should live for him now. Woo.”

Both of these challenges are pretty tough as there’s only so much you can say in fifteen words and you can’t say it all in fifteen words (probably why the Bible is more than fifteen words lol) but since this challenge is so tricky but yet fun, I am challenging you, yes you, all of you, whether you’re doing a degree in theology or not (lol) to do both of the challenges!

So that’s fifteen words on what God means to you and then fifteen words on the gospel…

Use the comments thingy to do it in; I wanna see loads of them!

Some covers should not be attempted…one should not cover The Beatles, Led Zeppelin, Radiohead or Nirvana, I’m sure there are others but these are some basics…

Actually, as I write that I realised that I really love the Mark Ronson version of ‘Just’ by Radiohead and so do they…so there may be exceptions to the rule

Well anyway, when I found on YouTube a version of ‘Love Will Tear Us Apart’ (which is actually one of the greatest songs ever written and is so incredibly bittersweet and I love it) originally by Joy Division covered by Fall Out Boy…yes, I said Fall Out Boy covering it…I prepared myself to hate it…

But…unfortunately…I really like it…it does well to do the whole sounding like the original whilst sounding different and unique…which when covering a song is hard to do…

You should check it out…click here to watch it

Here is a quote from the artist Banksy that I found quite a bit witty and funny and so I thought I’d share it with you guys

“People say graffiti is ugly, irresponsible and childish…but that’s only if it’s done properly”

Now, as I’ve said before I don’t really talk about my work on this blog for a few reasons, I like this blog to be a bit of an escape from work and also the ins and outs of my job probably don’t interest you all that much!

But, I do want to share one thing with you lovely people reading this in interweb land. As part of my job I run a cafe and at said cafe we run little “event” type things to keep the young people enjoying themselves and well one we are doing next week is called ‘Hat Night’ and I had to make a poster to advertise ‘Hat Night’ and I liked my design quite a fair bit so I thought I’d share it with you guys. I’ve gone quite a bit New Rave on it and I’m pretty pleased with it so check this out…

Hello all of you wonderful people out there in interweb land, recently because of Christmas, New Years, loads of CYM work, loads of college work and various other things I have a bit of a back log of things I want to blog about, if I don’t write them down anywhere then I will surely forget them or forget to do them and so I think it’s best to write them down here where they’ll be nice and safe to slowly work through…

So here is the list,

• Christmas - what I thought of it, what presents I got and didn’t get
• New Year’s Eve
• Some theology question maybe - I like asking ‘em, you like answering ‘em (or at least trying to answer ‘em!)
• Book’s I’m currently reading or ones I like
• ‘Stranger than Fiction’ & ‘Reign over Me’ - two films that Tom has brought into college  so far this term and that I loved (this may come tomorrow, depends on how long it takes me to finish my journal I’ve got to finish)

I can’t think of the other ones but I’m sure there are some, so I may add more over time, but before I do you should use the comments thingy to suggest possible posts…go on, I dare you

Since Ruth was disappointed with my top fives of 2007 (you just can’t please some people) I started to think about if there was any “hilarious” top fives I could do and I think for me that’s a very hard task with 2007 since I have already said and shown…it sucked…however I’m sure there was some silver linings to the cloud of 2007…

So…here is, in no particular order…

THE TOP FIVE SILVER LININGS TO THE CLOUD OF 2007!

• My friends - they say that when “it” hits the fan that you find out who your friends are…and I most certainly did this past year, so thankyou to my friends who have stuck with me and supported me, made me laugh, sat with me whilst I cried, prayed with me, yelled with me and basically in every way been there. Extra special thanks to (although if you’re not on this list doesn’t mean you weren’t good it just means they did something extra special and I want to ruin their humble points by thanking them publicly) Paul, Kev, Phil Brown, Phil Green, Andy and for Mark for replying to a text one evening that if he hadn’t of done I don’t know where I’d be…thanks guys…sorry for ruining your humility
• My work - Most of you know what I do so I ain’t going to explain it but although it has been DAM hard this year and college work is mentally tough for me I have loved it and it has kept me going and I have seen it go from strength to strength. Since I don’t really like to talk about work on this blog I’ll leave it at that
• Music - I really love music, I can’t play a note on anything and I can’t sing at all but I still really love music. A big thing I love about music is that when you’re feeling really crap there have been some absolutely amazingly incredible songs that just sum your feelings up and then there are other great songs that so pick you up but yet don’t patronise you or make you feel worse…so thankyou to all you great artists that I have loved listening to in 2007
• My adventures - Even though I have been so emo it hurts and good old mister depressed and not worth spending any time with in 2007, I have been lucky enough to have some really great fun times out and about this past year and these have been highlights of the year and I will try to remember fondly these. Such adventures are; going out on the razz at college, especially for Ben’s stag-do and at the end of the 1st year for the best fireworks display I’ve ever been to. My mate Ben’s wedding, it was a good laugh for a few of us college folk to go down to Kent and enjoy that great and fun day. Soul Survivor was another wonderful time where I helped out as a “leader” for RCF’s youth group for the week, was wicked fun. Visiting Mark in London was also great. Hungary was also great fun and I had a wicked chance to have my 22nd birthday whilst I was out there and that was an unbelievably good day and one I’ll never forget. Pleasurewood Hills for Ruth’s leaving Ipswich thingy was also tons of fun. Finally the clubbing fun in Ipswich to celebrate my birthday was wicked fun too. (Facebook probably has photos of most of these occasions should you wish to check them out)
• God - I am a Christian as most (hopefully all) know and although I might not always look or dress or sound like the “best” type, I do love God and know him fairly good and he’s been cool this year, it’s been well rough at times and I have had proper yelling sessions at him (more than I care to admit) and have blamed him for so much and have threatened to tell him where to go but like with most things I’m stubborn and wouldn’t give up only because he wasn’t giving up on me and so I do thank God for being with him, even if I’ve proper felt like I hated him this year and I thank him for creating my friends and letting me have some wicked, loyal and funny ones and for helping me in my work, for creating such beautifully angry and fun and sad and brilliant music to keep me entertained and for taking me on so many great and cool adventures