Grateful Dead

M.R. James: Ghost Writer Mark Gatiss steps into the mind of MR James, the enigmatic English master of the supernatural story. How did this donnish Victorian bachelor, conservative by nature and a devout Anglican, come to create tales that continue to chill readers more than a century on? Mark attempts to uncover the secrets of James's inspiration, taking an atmospheric journey from James's childhood home in Suffolk to Eton, Cambridge and France, venturing into ancient churches, dark cloisters and echoing libraries along the way.

A monument to American excess mixed with a reverse twist of sarcasm. Colbert is a monumental ego who addresses his audience as "Nation". Inevitably there would be a comic who took it to this edge. Although a stupid conservative might feel a kinship with Colbert's comments, it is his unique brand of sarcasm that makes his show witty and Emmy-winning. Although entertaining, it can wear on the intelligent mind after a longer or shorter period.

can't come a moment too soon. Robert Hood, Luke Slater, Jerome Sydenham, Shifted, jozif, Fritz Zander Oval Space/ 29-32 The Oval; Bethnal Green; London E2 9DY; United Kingdom. we await a plan for the floor.

'There's a marvellous antidote to the surfeit of office party faux-bonhomie and murder-inspiring John Lewis ads this Christmas thanks to Robin 'Scanner' Rimbaud. The electronic artist is curating a night called Scanner: Lachrimae takes place on December 13th 2013, and features the following excellent mordant entertainment: Scanner will be performing his interpretation of John Dowland’s Lachrimae, Carter Tutti and Gazelle Twin are playing, Chris Turner and Anna and Maria von Hausswolff are screening films, and friend of tQ Spencer Hickman of Death Waltz Records will be gothing it up in the lounge after.' Details and persons wishing to buy tickets are available here - https://whatson.bfi.org.uk/Online/default.asp?BOparam::WScontent::loadA… Tickets £15, concs £11.50 (Members pay £1.50 less) http://thequietus.com/articles/13796-scanner-gothic-festival Scanner - Lachrimae -

Scanner / Lachrimae from Favourite Colour: Black on Vimeo.

'One of the UK’s foremost composers presents an evening of live music and film inspired by the the gothic spirit. As well as performing an interpretation of John Dowland’s mournful ‘Lachrimae’, Scanner will be joined by Gazelle Twin and Carter Tutti in exclusive live cinematic performances, and present specially made films by Chris Turner and Anna and Maria von Hausswolff. With Death Waltz Records presenting spectral, dissonant dancefloor tunes in the Benugo lounge until late.'

Thank you. Please see PM. A heartfelt response is coming soon.

i sincerely urge everyone to watch this documentary film. Pussy Riot - A Punk Prayer i sincerely urge everyone to sign the Amnesty petition to release Nadezhda Tolokonnikova and Maria Alekhina. http://www.amnesty.org/en/appeals-for-action/PussyRiot http://freepussyriot.org/news

With season 4 just around the corner I can't help but wonder what's in store for some of the beloved characters. I haven't read the books so I really haven't a clue. But I will say that i'm rooting for the dragons and hoping for King Joffrey to have his throat slit from ear to ear...very slowly.

All things considered, I am not for the moment going to unpublish the full copyrighted article posted above. For future reference, as we have noted previously, please post a short excerpt with a link, as we have no legal rights whatever to reproduce other people's articles here, unless it's the author or another rights holder doing so. See the TOS, not to mention the Berne Convention. I will be editing down all future posts of the work of third parties in this fashion. Thank you. And now back to your regularly scheduled discussion. Thanks.

I wrote about Pussy Riot in the Current Events thread when the incident happened and it drew exactly -0- response from deadheads. As you aptly observe, nobody gives an apathetic two shits about Pussy Riot. These three courageous and creative protesters might as well be from Mars, being from Russia. Now they have disappeared into the Gulag with only Amnesty International left to look after them. I'm afraid institutional prejudice is going to win the day in this case and there is not much to be done, unless Ed Snowden takes up their cause personally with his new pal Putin. But I'll sign the petition. I believe what they did in the US, depending on geographical location, would have warranted a stern legal warning from a Catholic lawyer to stay away to a charge of Criminal Trespass with perhaps a few days of jail time, if it happened in Tupelo, Misssissippi. The Russians are a strange, long-suffering people and you don't want to cross them. Not in this way, in this institution. I think you aptly pointed that out. I know it sounds trite, but how would Christ have responded to Pussy Riot?

by Grace Dent - Storyville: Pussy Riot - A Punk Prayer. Review - The Independent. 'The actions that skewered Russian protest group Pussy Riot, causing national trauma, are, to the British viewer, so minor that the footage is rather laughable. We watched during Pussy Riot – a Punk Prayer as the girls donned pastel-coloured balaclavas in the Cathedral of Christ Saviour, Moscow, then ran about dancing, singing and making some unsporting comments about Putin. In fact, most Brits wouldn't even find this laughable. More utterly unremarkable. If I were to go to Westminster Abbey this Saturday and leap about in a silly hat and no bra saying David Cameron was a prick, I'd have a bloody long wait for Sky News and the police to turn up. The reactions, I'll wager, would involve: some Christian types who were mid-Mass tutting, someone in a Boden cardigan mumbling that this was a bit like when Jesus protested against money-lenders, some nuns on a day trip from Tring putting me on Instagram and then, eventually, a volunteer in a tabard from the tea shop bringing me a cup of milky PG Tips and a lavender slice. What it would certainly would not lead to is national horror, mass rallys, calls for my hanging, my burning, my exorcism and my eventual transportation to Penal Colony Number 14 in Mordovia. As the documentary aired this week on BBC4, Pussy Riot member Nadia Tolokonnikova was being transferred to another unconfirmed colony. Nadia was, essentially, missing in the Russian prison system, which feels, to me, as disconcerting as the threats that the girls would “be killed in Siberia” for their unholy, feminist, anti-establishment actions that were heard during the trial footage. Nadia is an enigmatic character. She is staggeringly beautiful and aware of the fact. She is emotionally ungiving and puts her feminist beliefs before her role as a mummy. She is wholly shameless about a previous protest she took part in where she had sex in a museum. She is calmly, aloofly and defiantly unrepentant about this whole Cathedral business. All of these elements – each and every one – so very very unbecoming in a woman, especially a Russian woman. The Orthodox Church, the media and her prosecutors detest her. The manner in which the Russian Orthodox Christians of 2013 quickly slip into calling Nadia, Masha and Katia “demons” or discussing how there must be a devil moving in them to commit this “sacrilegious act” feels like earwigging on footage of the Salem witch trials. But it's 2013 and they're holding the Winter Olympics there next February. As we watched footage of the girls in their prison cage, being refused the right to see their children, being warned they might die in prison, while their ageing parents were jostled about by Orthodox thugs, it struck me how half-hearted and duplicitous the tone of tolerance and acceptance would be at the Sochi opening ceremony as compared to Danny Boyle's explosion of Great British free-thinking tolerance. Pussy Riot could have ran across Boyle's Green and Pleasant land topless with chainsaws and, in the grand scheme of things, no one would have cared. “But don't you see, in Russia dancing in a cathedral is the equivalent of pissing on a war memorial?” someone Tweeted the other evening as I watched. And, yes, the documentary showed this too. It showed a country where religion was suppressed for many years and is thus now doubly sacred. But, more importantly, it showed a country with no history of performance or conceptual art protest; therefore, Pussy Riot playing bad electric guitar near an altar felt literally like the end of days. Like the Sex Pistols going on TV in the Seventies in Britain and telling Jesus himself to fuck off. Meanwhile, in Britain 2013, we're bored to death with performance art, with Spiderman clinging to Buckingham Palace shouting about his rights as a father, or the Turner Prize exhibition full of child mannequins with cocks for faces or a whole array of passionate political fools who turn up daily on the green at Westminster in fancy dress as toilets, sheep, vaginas etc waving banners to make their point about clean water, EU quotas or chlamydia. In fact, we're so bored by the British equivalents of Pussy Riot that when laws are brought in to deplete our rights to protest, we don't really give a damn. Whether one agrees with Pussy Riot's beliefs or their methods, A Punk Prayer's examination of the girls' fearlessness, their determination to shove feminist protest in the face of Russian Orthodoxy and their unflinching calm in the face of jackboots and holy water was wholly compelling. Before the girls were sentenced – their vows that they weren't being sacrilegious, weren't militant atheists and were in fact making a comment about state involvement in religion roundly ignored – they were permitted to give statements. Katia said: “I now have mixed feelings about this trial. On the one hand, we expect a guilty verdict. Compared to the judicial machine, we are nobodies, and we have lost. On the other hand, we have won. The whole world now sees that the criminal case against us has been fabricated.” I'm not sure that the whole world knows Pussy Riot's story, but this Storyville certainly helped augment their growing legendary status.' Randall Lard - I once again humbly urge everyone on this site to sign the petition here - http://www.amnesty.org/en/appeals-for-action/PussyRiot