SWEENEY TODD

The Demon Barber of Fleet Street

starring 

Angela Lansbury 

and George Hearn

  The 1982 Television Adaptation of 

STEPHEN SONDHEIM’S 1979 Broadway Musical 

with book by

HUGH WHEELER

Angela Lansbury as Mrs. Lovett, Len Cariou as Sweeney Todd

Senator Ted Cruz, R, Texas

STOP, LOOK, LISTEN,  Determine for Yourself What You See and Hear THEN TELL US WHAT YOU THINK

This Crazy World

Daumier - The Third Class Carriage

VIAGROSIS? CIALISITIS? PARRICIDOMANIA?

Rare Syndrome Causes Man To Suffer 9 Orgasms At Father's Funeral...

AUTOS NOW IN LOCO PARENTIS?

'Smarter' Cars Recognize Owners, Access Phones For Reminders...

Hogarth - Bedlam

MUSICAL GHOULS?

Manilow Halloween Surprise: 'I Sing with Dead People'...

Duets with the Deceased...

Bette Midler Announces Comeback Album...

Hogarth - Gin Lane and Beer Street, London

DO YOU REALLY WANT TO KNOW?

PAPER: What does human meat taste like?

DO WE NEED TO FUNCTION AT ALL?

CHALLENGE: 'Artificial tongue' better than finest wine critic...

WRETCHED EXCESS HITS NEW HIGH

Gustave Doré - Houndsditch, London

BOOM: Manhattan Condo to Be Listed at $130 Million!

Bong Franklin

Fail, Columbia

Fail, Columbia, crappy land

Fail, ye zeroes, hellbound band

Who fought to kill the Founder's Cause

To hear the Devil's loud applause, 

And when the storm of words was done

Enjoyed the wreck your efforts won.

Tom Paine gone raving mod 

Let fierce dependence

Be your boast

Ever mindful what you've lost

Ever scornful you have won the prize:

Independence vanquished lies.

George Washedupton

Disunited let us be

Lauding our slavery,

As a band of gangsters joined

Endless conflict we shall find.

~ Frank Hoaxingson

I should've stayed in France. The food's better there.

With deepest gratitude to Kurt Silver Fiddle 

who gave Mr. Hoaxignson the title, 

and inspired the parody.


And Now Francis Hopkinson's Original

The Jersey Bounce

Two Versions

Connie Frances 

and 

Ella Fitzgerald

Benny Goodman

"The Jersey Bounce" is a song written by Tiny Bradshaw, Eddie Johnson and Bobby Plater with lyrics by Buddy Feyne who used the nom de plume Robert B. Wright (as this song was written during an ASCAP strike). It hit #1 in 1942 as an instrumental recorded by Benny Goodman and his orchestra, and also charted that same year by Jimmy Dorsey (#9) and Shep Fields (#15) . It was covered by numerous bands and swing orchestras including Glenn Miller, Jan Savitt and Red Norvo. Artists such as Ella Fitzgerald, Ella Mae Morse and The King Sisters also recorded it. Fitzgerald recorded it on her two albums Clap Hands, Here Comes Charlie! and again on All That Jazz. The King Sisters and Ella Mae Morse recorded singles.

Burned head to foot an American soldier desperately clings to life

The Face of War

SO YOU WANT to GO to WAR?

Fine, But First Try To Answer These Questions 

How does it feel to be cut in half 

_____ by a sudden burst of machine gun bullets?

What does it feel like at the precise moment 

_____ when a bullet enters your eye, and pierces your brain?

Can you imagine having your lower jaw smashed by bullets

_____ and then see its bloody, splintered fragments 

__________ drop to the ground ?

What is it like to take a direct hit to the skull? 

_____ Would you know that you were dead?

What sensations must a person feel 

_____ as his body is being consumed by fire?

What might be the thoughts of someone 

_____ just thrown to the ground and kicked, 

__________ whose hands have been tied behind his back, 

who then gets chained by his heels 

_____ to the rear end of a vehicle 

__________ about to drag his still-healthy, still-unbroken 

_______________ young body over stones, gravel, 

____________________ dirt and thorny stubble?

How does it feel to have the flesh ripped off your cheeks? 

_____ To have all the flesh on your hands torn off 

__________ exposing bones and tendons?

How does it feel to have grit and gravel 

_____ embed themselves in your eyes? 

How does it feel to be torn 

_____ limb from limb by a jeering mob? 

Exactly how does it feel to have your head 

_____ stomped to jelly by hobnailed boots? 

Or your genitalia ripped out by the roots 

_____ and stuffed into your screaming mouth?

How does it feel to be smart enough to realize 

_____ you are suffering and dying for the sole purpose 

__________ of lining the pockets of international bankers, 

____________ ___ global industrialists and the suppliers 

____________________of war materiel with gold?

Exactly how would you react to being held down 

_____ and having your teeth kicked down your throat, 

__________ your eyes gouged out, 

_______________ your ears and your nose sliced off, 

____________________ or a glass rod inserted in your urethra

_________________________ and then smashed to pulver?

How would you feel when you are forced to eat 

_____ ground glass or drink hydrochloric acid?

How would you feel if you were sodomized by barbarians 

_____ then buried up to your neck in sand 

__________ and systematically stoned and kicked to death?

How does it feel to be held down and deliberately blinded by acid?

How does it feel to be maimed by “Friendly Fire?"

How does it feel to be flayed alive 

_____ and then slowly cut to ribands?

How does it feel to be forced to kneel before your captors, 

_____ hands tied behind your back

__________ while you wait to have your head hacked off

_______________ by a hand held knife?

How? How? How?

But much more important is

WHY?

__________ WHY?

____________________ WHY?

~FreeThinke

American soldiers witnessing the destruction of a Japanese bunker

How, when we need to ask questions like this now more than ever, could we imagine even for a moment we have no need for the healing power and redeeming grace of Our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ?

Agnus Dei, qui tollis pecatta mundi, miserere nobis

WANTED

Jersey McJones, Florida restaurateur

Hopefully Alive

Any information leading to the whereabouts and current health status of this individual would be welcome.

Even more, if you are in contact with Mr. McJones, please convey our hopes that he has remained in good health, and has only absented himself  temporarily from the blogosphere.  

PLEASE COME BACK, JERSEY. 

The blogosphere just isn’t the same without you.

Sincerely,

FreeThinke

The Mysterious Moderate Muslim

By Carol Brown

AMERICAN THINKER

September 16, 2014

What, and who, is a moderate Muslim?

Islamic values are codified in the Koran. The idea that some Muslims might interpret those values in a moderate way is like saying there’s such a thing as jihad lite. There’s no getting around the fact that a central tenet of the Koran is mass murder – whether through the directive to kill infidels (non-believers), apostates (those who leave Islam), or hypocrites (Muslims who don’t practice their religion appropriately). In other words, most of civilization is fair game for slaughter. What, pray tell, would be a moderate version of that? 

And if people try to suggest there are many peaceful verses in the Koran, they are either uninformed or practicing taqiyya, because older, more peaceful teachings are abrogated by more recent violent teachings, as written in Sura 2, Verse 106. Jihad Watch reports:

Those Westerners who manage to pick up a translation of the Quran are often left bewildered as to its meaning thanks to ignorance of a critically important principle of Quranic interpretation known as “abrogation.” The principle of abrogation — al-naskh wa al-mansukh (the abrogating and the abrogated) — directs that verses revealed later in Muhammad’s career “abrogate” — i.e., cancel and replace — earlier ones whose instructions they may contradict. Thus, passages revealed later in Muhammad’s career, in Medina, overrule passages revealed earlier, in Mecca. The Quran itself lays out the principle of abrogation:

Whatever a Verse (revelation) do We {Allah} abrogate or cause to be forgotten, We bring a better one or similar to it. Know you not that Allah is able to do all things? (snip)

…Meccan suras, revealed at a time when the Muslims were vulnerable, are generally benign; the later Medinan suras, revealed after Muhammad had made himself the head of an army, are bellicose.

David Wood, from Acts17Apologetics, has created a short video of essential verses from the Koran that highlight the pervasive call to violence. Would that such violence were only written in some ancient document that no one cared about. Unfortunately, we see Muslims the world over following these violent teachings as they commit mass murder, engage in honor killings, as well as rape, stoning, floggings, acid attacks, beheadings, and on and on and on.

The Muslim community appears to have no desire to expunge these violent teachings from the Koran, and so Islam remains a totalitarian ideology that puts it in a class all its own among other religions. Yet most in the West refuse to accept this fact. Instead, they want to believe a sweet story about Islam that exists only in their minds. Case in point: Just a few days ago after ISIS beheaded a British aid worker, Prime Minister David Cameron publically stated the all-too-familiar refrain that “Islam is a religion of peace.”

This gaping hole between the reality of what the Koran teaches and the fantasy so many want to embrace was highlighted when Bill Maher was interviewed by Charlie Rose recently. The interview included a discussion about Islam, Muslims, and ISIS. Maher, who has been outspoken about Islam in the past, was forthright on Rose’s show. (It’s the only positive thing I can say about him.) He spoke the truth about Islam and – miracle of miracles – even defended Christians.  Rose, smirking and laughing, resisted being educated at all cost. But more importantly and emblematic of so many progressives on this topic, he was left with only one card to play as he said another familiar leftist refrain: “But I don’t believe….” Real Clear Politics reports:

MAHER: But most Muslim people in the world do condone violence just for what you think.

ROSE: How do you know that?

MAHER: They do. First of all they say it. They shout it.

ROSE: Vast majorities of Muslims say that?

MAHER: Absolutely. There was a Pew poll in Egypt done a few years ago -- 82% said, I think, stoning is the appropriate punishment for adultery. Over 80% thought death was the appropriate punishment for leaving the Muslim religion. I'm sure you know these things.

ROSE: Well I do. But I don't believe --

“I don’t believe” are critical words for progressives.

The left wants to live in a fantasy world. Part of that world includes the idea that most Muslims are not violent nor do they support violence. Many on the right are fond of making this proclamation, as well. But how do they know what “most Muslims” truly think or want?

As noted in the excerpted transcript above, a Pew Research poll from 2013 showed that a large percentage of Muslims around the world support Sharia law, with varying interpretations of what the law should dictate.

In addition, two years ago a poll was conducted on behalf of World Net Daily that revealed the following:

Nearly half of 600 Muslim-American citizens polled…believe parodies of Muhammad should be prosecuted criminally in the U.S. (snip)

“Almost half of those Muslims surveyed – an astonishing 46 percent – said they believe those Americans who offer criticism or parodies of Islam should face criminal charges,” said pollster Fritz Wenzel in an analysis of the survey’s results.

“Even more shocking: One in eight respondents said they think those Americans who criticize or parody Islam should face the death penalty, while another nine percent said they were unsure on the question,” he said. (snip)

Four in 10 said Muslims in America should not be judged by U.S. law and the Constitution, but by Islamic Shariah law.

“A much smaller percentage said they think the U.S. should establish an entirely separate court system to adjudicate matters involving Muslims,” Wenzel said.

While the respondents overwhelmingly lean toward the Democratic Party…they also have a fundamental conflict with American life, expressing objections to the freedom of speech and religion guaranteed in the Constitution.

American Muslims, Wenzel said, “show signs of ambivalence toward the U.S. Constitution generally and the First Amendment specifically.” (snip)

When you read polls like these. When you consider the tens of thousands of Muslims around the world who poured into city streets this summer to chant “death to Jews,” yet who are silent in the face of atrocities committed by Muslims in the name of Islam; when you watch the Muslim Day parade in New York city and witness their embrace of hate and faux victimization; when you see the violence that is unfolding in Europe as a direct result of Muslim immigration; when you realize there are increasing numbers of Muslims who seem like regular folks who then turn around and become jihadists, one realizes there is no way to know just which Muslims are “moderate.” See here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, and here among a litany of examples.

As Daniel Greenfield recently wrote in FrontPage Magazine:

Every week another lad or lass from St. Louis, Toronto or Sydney makes the trip through Turkey to the Islamic State. A reporter dispatched by a local paper to talk to the neighbors scribbles down the same recollections about how nice and normal Jihad Joe or Jihad Jane was.

Classmates remember a loud partier or a shy student. Neighbors mention that everything seemed normal until those last few years when he began wearing a robe and she began wearing a burka.

The Somali and Algerian immigrants, the German and American converts, the black burkas and dyed beards, headed into the dying summer to kill Christians and Kurds, Turkmen and Shiites, to behead babies and crucify critics, don’t seem like monsters.

They loved their parents. They posed for jokey snapshots on Facebook. They had dreams of becoming biologists or boxers. Until they began killing people, they seemed just like the rest of us.

And with one difference, they were.

The forensic examinations of their lives rarely reveal anything of significance. The extensive digging into the lives of the Boston bombers told us nothing about why they would plant a bomb near a little boy.

The answer lay in the topic that the media carefully avoided. As with the other Muslim terrorists, the meaning of their motives was in the little black book of their religion which commanded them to kill.

Then there are those Muslims who are not outwardly violent (yet), but who support those who are and/or who participate in creeping Sharia. Throw taqiyya into the mix and it becomes extremely difficult to know or trust who is the ever-elusive moderate Muslim.

Sorry to be so blunt, but there it is.

Read more: http://americanthinker.com/2014/09/the_mysterious_moderate_muslim_.html#ixzz3DU6jKY5z 

Follow us: @AmericanThinker on Twitter | AmericanThinker on Facebook

What To Renounce

9/15/14

We have renounced the hidden things of shame . . .  —2 Corinthians 4:2

Have you “renounced the hidden things of shame” in your life—the things that your sense of honor or pride will not allow to come into the light? You can easily hide them. Is there a thought in your heart about anyone that you would not like to be brought into the light? Then renounce it as soon as it comes to mind—renounce everything in its entirety until there is no hidden dishonesty or craftiness about you at all. Envy, jealousy, and strife don’t necessarily arise from your old nature of sin, but from the flesh which was used for these kinds of things in the past (see Romans 6:19 and 1 Peter 4:1-3). You must maintain continual watchfulness so that nothing arises in your life that would cause you shame.

“. . . not walking in craftiness. . .” (2 Corinthians 4:2). This means not resorting to something simply to make your own point. This is a terrible trap. You know that God will allow you to work in only one way—the way of truth. Then be careful never to catch people through the other way—the way of deceit. If you act deceitfully, God’s blight and ruin will be upon you. What may be craftiness for you, may not be for others—God has called you to a higher standard. Never dull your sense of being your utmost for His highest—your best for His glory. For you, doing certain things would mean craftiness coming into your life for a purpose other than what is the highest and best, and it would dull the motivation that God has given you. Many people have turned back because they are afraid to look at things from God’s perspective. The greatest spiritual crisis comes when a person has to move a little farther on in his faith than the beliefs he has already accepted. 

~ Oswald Chambers - My Utmost for His Highest

Helmut Walcha (1907-1991)

HELMUT WALCHA
plays
Passacaglia and Fugue in C-Minor
by J.S. BACH
And what, you ask, is a Passacaglia?  A set of continuous variations on a ground bass. What is a ground bass? A theme or tune stated repeatedly and continuously in the lowest voice.
If that sounds tedious, just listen to the magic Bach performed above the ground. One theme embroidered and embellished with magnificent, mysterious, awe-inspiring figurations each radically different from the rest, yet organically intertwined and perfectly related to the whole.
The Fugue takes the main theme and develops it further by repeating it at different levels with accompanying counterpoint in each voice then moving it through a variety of keys with different "episodic" material heightening the intensity each time till it returns to the original key  and comes to a grand climax.
The hideously overworked term "AWESOME" must have been invented to describe the great organ works  of Johann Sebastian Bach. 
Helmut Walcha, the great German organist, was blinded at age nineteen. Nevertheless he continued his studies and mastered the complete organ works of J.S. Bach and many other masterworks for the instrument as well. His recordings are among the very finest ever made of these marvels of ingenuity, complexity, wonder, glory, mystical significance and deep commitment to faith in Our Lord, Jesus Christ.
~ FreeThinke

I'D BE SCARED TOO, WOULDN'T YOU?

Would anyone in his right mind want to be 

in HIS shoes right now?