josef k

The dirty bastards....Ah well, C'est la vie! Good spy. Well done.

Try HMV, they've been selling them on the cheap for the last couple of years. Einstein on the Beach is a 4cd set used to be 40, but you may pick it up now for about 15 or less. I'll be in town tomorrow so will have a look and see if I spot them. Just 'googled' Carter Burwell. Nice.

Forget Star Wars. Forget Lord of the Rings. Try his mammoth operatic trilogy: Akhnaten; Satyagraha and Einstein On The Beach. These three operas cover the topics of religion; politics and science respectively. Though exceptionally long, the music is breathtakingly stunning throughout. Though openly criticised for being populist - even on the aforementioned Culture Show interview ( she, the interviewer, was well out of her depth. Glass was on a completely different intellectual plane and simply confounded her) - his music is amongst the greatest written last century. There is also a third film to compliment Koyaanisqatsi and Powaqqatsi. It is Naqoyqatsi (life as War). It features the beautiful cello playing of Yo-Yo Ma!

Nae worries Ollie

You are perfectly right Ollie.J. that there has been a shift towards a religion which focuses on the self. Even, and especially, in the Christian-right. This has always troubled me, as the root of the word religion simply means 'to bind', as in something which holds us together - a bonding. In this respect music and football can be seen, without contradiction, as religions. One does not need God to be religious. I myself am an elder in the Church of Scotland who does not believe that God exists. I think that there are far more important issues concerning us besides arguing over the existence, and/or the nature of God. Albert Camus once wrote that it is because we are alone in the universe that we ought to support one another. And I agree with him. We are at our worst when pursuing our individual agendas. We are a communal species.

I don't think he'd be sectioned with "the bloke who thinks he's Napoleon". He wasn't deemed a nutter, he was deemed a threat. He would firstly be undermined by allsorts of negative propaganda. And if that didn't work he'd be bumped off...like the last time.

You're right on one thing, daveofficer. That the Ashvale is shite...but why the fuck do you persist in going dack then? Isn't that stupidity!! There are plenty of excellent chippers in Aberdeen. And frankly, the Stonehaven Bervie is purest shite. You obviously have no idea what you're talking about.

Mike's in Torry never disappoints. The Bervie chipper, though still good (the Inverbervie one, that is. Not the shite Stonehaven one), isn't what it was.