02/18/10

Day 2: No Supermarkets For Lent!

Whilst lent is meant to be a time or preparation and should be something to bring you closer to God one thing I am trying this year amongst things that achieve the former (I hope!) is avoiding supermarkets.

Local Veg!

I had a conversation with someone at church about farm shops last week and so decided to try and only buy fruit and veg locally…in theory much more of what I buy will be locally grown and the money I spend goes back into the local economy and not into the pockets of wealthy businessmen.

Onto the supermarkets!

Following on from my thoughts on the above I realised that it would be pretty easily to buy fruit and veg from a farm shop but I wondered what it would be like to avoid supermarkets completely and so I thought I’d incorporate it into my lent challenge.

Rules?

A supermarket is hard to define…for example I would probably not count my local cornershop as a supermarket yet Heidi would so I guess I need some kind of rules to stick to….

1 – The big 4 are out of bounds! – No Asda, No Tesco (the tricky bit!!!), no Sainsbury and no Morrissons….alongside this Waitrose and others are also not allowed.

2 - Mini-marts count – For the sake of lent my local corner-shop isn’t allowed for anything other than cereals, beer and other such things you cannot buy anywhere else without going miles out the way….whilst the village has a bakery, butchers and fruit and veg shop there is no beer or cereal shop and so traveling to Hull for such items would make the whole thing completely unethical!

3 – I can use: butchers, local bakeries and newsagents….alongside this specialist shops such as Wilkinsons can be used for cleaning products!

4 – I can eat pre-purcahsed items - If there’s something in my freezer from a supermarket or something that someone feeds me that is from a supermarket that’s fine!

The Cost?

Initial thoughts would be that this is going to be more expensive…but is this a big con of the supermarket or not? I’m going to try and keep a log of what I spend and compare it to what I’d spend in a supermarket.

Initial Thoughts

Bizarrely I’m a bit more nervous about this one than the veggiexperiment back in November, I think it’s going to be more challenging but it’ll certainly be an eye-opener of sorts! Let’s see what happens…maybe I’ll never use a supermarket again!

02/6/10

Worship – Screaming

A couple of years ago I post some stuff on the lack of lament in our worship using the picture to the left and once again in recent weeks as I’ve pondered worship and varying the music we use to worship (see this post) I’ve been thinking about the way we express our worship.

Dave has insisted for years that any screamy music is wrong and shouldn’t even be considered music yet as the numerous genre’s available to us prove there are many ways that people express themselves musically.

I remember reading in Philip Yancey’s book ‘Prayer’ about a man who goes to a house and the door is opened by a lady and inside this house the man can hear terrible screaming and crying out from upstairs, asking if everything is ok the lady replies ‘it’s fine, that’s my son…he’s praying’

How do we pray? Do we say things quietly to God or do we ever scream at Him? (If you don’t scream in frustration why not?).

If worship is about the way in which we connect with our creator then expressing angst, pain, suffering, feelings of abandonment and expressions of desperation must be part of that worship.

So, in drawing together Dave’s comments on screamy music, some thoughts on how we lament to God (2/3 Psalms are lament!) and adding into the mix my challenge of the way in which we worship I want to present you with a song called ‘Replace Me’ by Family Force Five. The chorus is simply amazing with the lyrics ‘desperation, needing you, every last breath I scream for you, shatter me into a million pieces, make me knew. Crush me, tear me, break me, mould me, make me what you want me to be, I am yours for you to use, oh take and replace me with you’ (There could never be the same amount of emotion in this song without it being screamed!). Enjoy and don’t forget to comment with your thoughts.

01/29/10

Fairtrade Kit Kat – Live!

So the Fairtrade Kit Kat has hit the stores and Morrissons in particular have been plugging it with a leaflet at all their checkouts and whilst my initial response wasn’t very positive I thought I’d give Nestle a chance and give their leaflet a read.

The lovely people at Nestle (sarcasm) have decided that when they’re not killing babies they are going to enter a long term commitment to improve the lives of cocoa farming communities, the Fairtrade 4-finger Kit Kat being the beginning of this.

The other ‘long term commitments’ laid out by Nestle include

A £65 million investment over the next 10 years into programmes that address key social, environmental and economic issues affecting cocoa farmers.

Helping farmers to improve their cocoa quality

Nurturing a sustainable future by providing some more cocoa trees

Better social conditions for cocoa farming communities

Now whilst all this is well and good somewhere along the lines Nestle have forgotten the point of their leaflet…this leaflet is aimed at plugging their ‘aren’t we lovely here’s a Fairtrade Kit Kat’ thing however their cocoa plan makes no commitment to making their products Fairtrade which suggests that as I suspected originally this is nothing more than a ‘buy our products’ gimmick and whilst it’s fantastic that some of their farmers are now going to be paid properly I wonder why Nestle won’t do this with all of their chocolate? (I have e-mailed them this question!)

It’s not just me wondering this either, in an article in Christianity Magazine man of many trades Steve Chalke says:

“Though we understand that it is hard to make all products ethical overnight, we want to see that this is more than a token gesture.

“So, we intend to keep the pressure on Nestlé until their commitment is global and product wide, like their competitor Mars.

“No chocolate should have the bitter aftertaste of slavery. Therefore our campaign continues.”

So there’s my thoughts, I won’t be buying any Nestle until they show that they care for their farmers rather than their pockets!

01/27/10

Apple Event – Review – iPad

I’ve just sat for the last hour or so watching the live feed from the Apple ‘Come see our latest creation’ event coverage and whilst I have a few blogs in the pipeline (which will appear over the next couple of days) I thought I’d do a round-up post with some thoughts on the Apple event.

There’s something about Apple products that oozes beauty, where-as Dell produce a brick and call it a laptop Apple form these wonderfully designed products.

The big item expected from Apple’s event today was the announcement of the ‘Apple Tablet’ and strangely Steve Jobs started off the event by launching it (actually 1 hour on they were still talking about it).

As usual Apple have designed something beautiful, the iPad is slim, has a nice 9 inch screen and seems to have a slimlined version of Mac OSX (including a dock). The other features include WiFi, bluetooth, built in speakers, microphone and headphone jack and a 10 hour battery life plus the ability to connect a projector!

The other main aim for the iPad is to compete with the amazon Kindle as an e-book reader and it looks like it’s going to be hot competition, after-all it does far more beside books…we shall see!

Whilst I think the iPad is something of beauty and can fully see the potential for users I think it’s somewhat of a niche market. I can see it being used by commuters on their way to work and maybe it could just about be used as a bag-sized PDA but it’s too big for a pocket and will probably be too expensive to buy for fun (much to my disappointment).

However for those with money to spend I could quite easily see it as being an alternative to sitting watching TV with a laptop…providing a nice, slim alternative. I wish I had money to spare!

(Since typing this the US price has been announced as $499 so I suspect in the UK we’ll be looking at 300…less than an iPhone…tempting)

Disappointingly the presentation ended after an hour and a half of iPad talk which although talked about e-books, iwork for the iPad and some fantastic looking games for the iPad didn’t talk about a new iLife, iWork or iPhone which is such a shame. iDisappointed!

Can’t wait to play on an iPad in an Apple store though!

12/19/09

Top Albums Of 2009

As the year nears a close and the battle for the Christmas number one ends tomorrow I thought I’d blog my top 6 albums of 2009. I always buy a lot of music and 2009 has been a good year for music so here is my favourites! (in no particular order)

1 – Bowling for Soup – Sorry For Partyin’ - This was the follow-up for ‘A hangover you don’t deserve’ the band never had, fantastic album full of Bowling for Soup fun – Read my full review here

2. Relient K – Forget & Not Slow Down - One drummer change later and Relient K release what is now my favourite of their career with a fantastic mix of beautiful sounding piano and pop-punk energy – Read my full review here

3. Newton Faulkner – Rebuilt By Humans - The follow-up to his fantastic ‘Handbuild By Robots’ is possibly even better…Newton Faulker does it again…not much more to say on this album…BUY IT!

4. New Found Glory – Not Without A Fight - I had anticipated and looked forward to this album ever since hearing that Mark Hoppus of Blink 182 fame was producing it and I was so right to do so…cracking pop punk album that takes the band back to their ‘Sticks and Stones’ days – Read my full review here

5. Mat Kearney – City of Black and White - I only discovered Mat Kearney this year and liked him so much I ordered both his albums at once. Mat Kearney has a fantastic voice and his music is nice and chilled yet uptempo at the same time…well worth a listen.

6. Lily Allen – It’s Not Me It’s You - I can’t stand her first album but I love this one…I never wanted to though! It’s got a good mix of catchy pop tunes with some interesting lyrics which make you very glad that you’ve never slept with Lily Allen! – Read more of my thoughts on her here

Overall 2009 has been a good year for music but there hasn’t been masses of it released in the pop-punk arena…I’m looking forward to a new Blink 182 album next year, a new Angels and Airwaves album plus a new Sum 41 album! Bring on 2010 music!

11/21/09

Dear Jack – DVD Review

Long term readers of this blog will know the love I have for Andrew McMahon’s band ‘Jack’s Mannequin’ having seen them live earlier this year and putting their ‘Everything in Transit’ album into my top 5 albums (and to this day it probably remains there).

Those who don’t follow the band may not be aware that after finishing the recording of Everything in Transit Andrew McMahon was diagnosed with Leukemia and spent months in hospital receiving treatment before having a bone marrow transplant and surviving.

During that time he carried a video camera and documented that time of his life, his fears and his feelings and a month ago that was released as ‘Dear Jack’ a DVD to go with his leukemia charity ‘The Dear Jack Foundation’ (link).

I ordered the DVD over the from States as it’s not released over here yet and it arrived this morning and so early this afternoon I watched it.

The documentary isn’t an easy thing to watch but is put together really well combining the excitement of Jack’s Mannequin which was going on in his life with the diagnosis of leukemia. The documentary features interviews with his (now) wife and his family (including his sister who donated bone marrow) and it’s a very moving documentary.

The DVD probably has a fairly niche market made up of primarily fans of Jack’s Mannequin or Something Corporate but gives such an insight to the experience of someone with cancer and their ups and downs making it a very eye-opening DVD to watch.

You can donate to the Dear Jack Foundation by following this link