You may remember that, several months ago, I made a blog entry called Music Suggestions, where I gave ten suggestions of good songs. Today I'm going to suggest ten more for you! I hope you'll enjoy at least one of them. Of course, as should be quite clear, I do not own the copyright to any of these songs. I have tried to use their official YouTube videos, but it seems that some of them either don't have an official upload, or have an official upload which is very hard to find. Hopefully these unofficial videos will stay up for a long time so that anybody looking at this entry in the future won't be looking at videos that won't play due to having been taken down!
3 Comments
I don't know whether this is just me, or whether it's something that applies to everybody, but I must say that I am awfully attached to each piece of clothing that I own. Now, this isn't because I have some materialistic love of all of my clothes, rather, it is because they are attached to the memories of all the times I was wearing them.
Let me specify with an example: I have a regular black t-shirt. I can remember several English lessons from my last year in sixth form where I was wearing it (I really loved those English lessons), I wore it at my sixth form leaver's party, I wore it when I first visited my internet friend Mairi Mac Arthur, I wore it when I took part in my friend David Tubb's At the Castle Gate video (and subsequently, while observing a strange man on the bus) and I can also remember just odd days while spending time with various friends when I was wearing it. As such, whenever I wear this shirt, I'll be reminded of all of the fun things I did while wearing it in the past, and since it's attached to all of these memories it's infinitely more valuable than any old black shirt. And, of course, every single piece of clothing I own is attached to various memories of mine. I'm not sure if everybody thinks like this or not, it's not something which is commonly discussed. But I see my clothes as a clear connection to things which happened in the past. I may be in different states of mind and change in appearance as I get older, but these clothes always look the same and they all make me feel nicely nostalgic when I think about their previous outings. Plus, whenever I buy a new shirt, I can’t help but wonder what days it will see… Just in case anybody reading this entry doesn't know what my Reading is Cool shirt is, here's a picture of it just to show you: I designed it myself on this handy little website and I'm really very fond of it. One day, while eating some messy food, pizza I believe, I accidentally got a dollop of tomato stuff on it. Before I continue with this anecdote, I'd like to just say something in my defence: had I been eating dinner at the dinner table, this almost certainly wouldn't have happened, but there was junk all over the table and so I had the tricky task of eating off of my lap from the sofa. As you can tell, I didn't succeed.
Anyway, I popped the shirt into the laundry basket and waited for it to come back out as white and pure as it had ever been. However, when the shirt did come out I was faced with tragedy: the tomato gloop had stained it and left a couple of reddish blots on it. Just when I had given up hope for the shirt, a friend of mine suggested that I use it as a pyjama shirt instead of an everyday shirt. This was an excellent idea! While it did have the downside of me being unable to show everybody that reading is, indeed, cool, it did mean that I would still be able to wear it and I wouldn't have to throw it out! So, from then on, the shirt had received its demotion to pyjama shirt (but was still useable). After two nights with it as a pyjama shirt, I was downstairs one evening while my brother was bringing in the clothes from drying outside. To my big surprise, the Reading is Cool shirt was along with them! Now, I hadn't put the shirt in the washing, so this seemed very odd to me. As did the fact that its stains were now gone... I went upstairs and found that it had disappeared from under my pillow (which is where I keep pyjamas) and all I could do was wonder what on Earth could have happened. Okay, well, most probably I, for some reason, put it into the washing while a little tired in the middle of the night and then just forgot I'd putten it in there. Though, of course, if I mentioned that it would make the whole entry entirely unoteworthy... Darn. Just to clarify, this entry is another book review. It doesn't actually say clearly who wrote it, so I decided to avoid putting an author's name in the title. I was lucky enough to get this book for free, but even if you buy it new, it is still very cheap, so this alone is one good point if you're looking for an economical read.
Basically, what the book sets out to do is introduce people to the idea of Hare Krishna chanting. It talks a lot about how true happiness cannot be gain through material gains, and other such things. I suppose this is quite a good line of argument really, I think everybody agrees that happiness cannot be obtained through material objects alone and this proposes a way to achieve proper happiness (Hare Krishna chanting). The idea is that the vibrations caused by the chanting will make you aware of God, and God is pure love and therefore it will make you very happy. I do partially agree with the idea that certain vibrations evoke certain things from people: why is it, for example, that a particular piece of music will make us feel either happy or sad? So it's an interesting idea that sound vibrations can bring people close to God. However, while they may back up their claims by giving numerous personal accounts from people, other than that, they stereotype anybody who doesn't believe in the mantra's ability as 'intellectuals' and paint them as rather snobbish close minded people. Arguing for something by criticising the people who don't believe in it seems to be rather silly, in my opinion (not to mention rude!). Perhaps my favourite parts of the book though, were the conversations with George Harrison, John Lennon and Yoko Ono. I'm quite a Beatles fan (as I'm sure regular readers of this blog will know) so it was nice to learn a little about their involvement with bringing Hare Krishna chanting to the western world. There was also a nice little story taken from the mythologies surrounding the mantra, which takes up one of the chapters. On the whole, while all the information on beliefs about the mantra, its history, and links with The Beatles, was very interesting, there were some parts of the book which bothered me. Firstly, I don't believe that the Hare Krishna mantra does link somebody to God, so that makes me into one of their snobbish 'intellectuals', though having said that, I think it's very possible that chanting it could make people happy, sound vibrations CAN make you happy (for example, as I said before, happy songs!) so whether you believe that this links you to God or not, it could be interesting to try. Also, the ending, in my opinion, is very bad. Throughout the book, they seem to be merely politely suggesting that you should try the chanting to see if it makes you happy, then at the end it suddenly gives you rules such as "Be a vegetarian" and "Only have sex if you are married and it will produce God-conscious children" which is ridiculous. There isn't even any real argument for it, they just say it. Plus, there's the very unfortunate fact that they are ruling out homosexuals (they just seem to be too scared to say it outright). So while it was certainly interesting (I always love to learn about the beliefs of others) at times I felt its points were argued poorly, and other times were downright disagreeable things were said. I'd rate it a 6/10. (buy it here) |
About the AuthorAdam Randall is the author of the blog. Is he a good or bad writer? Who knows? Why not read a few entries and make a decision! New to this Site?
Click here for all the best posts.
Archives
I'm currently in the process of completely overhauling the archive system to make it more easy to use. Bear with me, it may look messy for a bit.
Anecdotes Funny & Silly Entries Archives
February 2016
Categories
All
Any Suggestions?
Give me them here.
|