My collection of Jesuses – or Jesi?

I don’t know how it has happened, but I have a rapidly increasing collection of Jesuses, or maybe Jesi. No idea what the plural might be. It started years ago with Nick giving me a Jesus Super Hero figure. Then Henry brought me a little plush Jesus mobile phone cover thing from Hong Kong. My nephew and niece gave me a plush toy Jesus for my birthday this year, and I bought myself a Jesus action figure when at the Woodend Winter Arts Festival.

This week Cat sent me a Jesus on a spring for my dashboard. It came through the mail, and I opened the parcel just outside the Post Office and almost had hysterics.

   

And then Murray bought me some Jesus pencil tops.

Not quite sure why this is happening, but should I just give in and accept that I now appear to collect kitsch Jesus?

 (Thank you Cat and Murray – you definitely brightened my week.)

Courageous Decision, Minister

Sir Humphrey: There are four words you have to work into a proposal if you want a Minister to accept it.
Sir Frank: Quick, simple, popular, cheap. And equally there are four words to be included in a proposal if you want it thrown out.
Sir Humphrey: Complicated, lengthy, expensive, controversial. And if you want to be really sure that the Minister doesn’t accept it you must say the decision is courageous.
Bernard: And that’s worse than controversial?
Sir Humphrey: (laughs) Controversial only means this will lose you votes, courageous means this will lose you the election. (From The Right to Know)

Yes, Minister and Yes, Prime Minister  are among my favourite comedies, and over the past weekend they kept coming into my mind. Whenever Sir Humphrey wanted to steer Jim Hacker away from something he told him that it was ‘courageous’. This Sunday four people told me the sermon I preached was ‘brave’, which I have a horrible suspicion has a very similar meaning; 99% of people in the pews would have disliked it. So, if you’re interested, here it is:

Ramblings

Is there anything worse than buying clothes? Well, there’s genocide and racism and homophobia and stuff like that but, seriously, of all the things that make me squirm inside at the moment clothes buying is pretty high. I can only manage to do it once every couple of years, which sadly means that all my clothes seem to wear out at once and when I shop I need to shop big.

And why do trousers wear out faster than tops? I have jumpers and windcheaters that are over a decade old (and probably look it) yet are still wearable, but trousers get holes in inconvenient, difficult to patch, places after two years.

Then there’s the trouble of finding things that feel comfortable, and the worry that the trousers I’ve just bought were made by exploited outworkers in Australia or factory workers in China, and the horror of seeing myself from behind in those three-way-mirror changing rooms. In ordinary life I never see myself from behind and I’ve got to say that I’m quite comfortable with that.

Anyway, I spent an inordinate amount of time in a shopping centre on my day off this Monday and I now own three new pairs of ‘wear to church and preach’ trousers and two new pairs of jeans. After the horror of purchasing them I bought myself The Amazing Spider-Man Volume Six: Happy Birthday, which made my slightly happier.

And, on another topic altogether why, at JB Hi-Fi, are Buffy, Angel and Charmed in the TV – Action section, while Supernatural and Stargate SG1 are in the TV – Sci-Fi section? What’s with that? And why are the new Doctor Whos (which seem to hover in a special BBC section) so bloody expensive?

As you can probably tell by these rants, my life is way too comfortable at the moment. If the worst thing in my life at the moment is clothes shopping then I probably need to get out more.

Well – duh! From the ABC website

Chocolate a sweet fix for depression

An Australian study has found that chocolate can help alleviate symptoms of depression and anxiety in people with certain personality types.

Nearly 3,000 people with clinical depression took part in a study of which the average age was 40 and 70 per cent were women.

Professor Gordon Parker from the Black Dog Institute says chocolate appeared to have a calming effect in people who were more likely to be irritable and sensitive to rejection.

It improved the moods of people who saw themselves as ‘worriers’ and ’self critical’ but did not seem to benefit those personalities classified as extroverts or perfectionists.