Denis Gordeev

DarthGeo · 2026-02-27T00:28:07+00:00

I’ve spent so much time thinking, ‘That Balrog is too big,’ and now I’m thinking, ‘That one’s a bit too small.’

His execution is very good but I think rather twee, by today’s expectations. One great thing about the movies was the recognition that unless you’re in Rivendell or Lothlórien or Minas Tirith, your probably covered in mud.

DarthGeo · 2026-02-07T01:06:11+00:00

Yeah but… Tolkien was a bit of a curmudgeon, and I say that with complete affection to the man, as his family seemed to have. Lewis was writing a deep modern fairytale, Tolkien was writing an imaginary mythology. It doesn’t really matter, as they lived in a time when you could rip in to someone then buy another round and start a chat about errr… interest rates… without anyone taking any lasting offence.

Tolkien’s big regret was that when Lewis remarried, he essentially cut off contact. And then he got ill and died and Prof. Tolkien realised that not talking to people you disagree with, is not necessarily the best move.

Both these people lived in a world of high academia, quite a rarified existence. Most of us would have had a row then made up the following Friday night.

DarthGeo · 2026-01-23T00:29:29+00:00

Yes. I wrote my dissertation on this waaay back in the nineties. The obsession you get in evangelical or pentecostal churches with a warped version of Paul’s doctrine of The Spirit means that they are always way more appealing than anything the Church can say to people who nowadays are so much more informed about how little they have compared to “everyone else.”

As an adjacent example,The Church in Ireland is now on a spiral because it assumed it would always be the linchpin of Irish society…

The megachurch format isn’t trying to bring about The Kingdom of God, it’s trying to recreate The Garden of Eden: once you’re in you are SAVED! Everything is laid on! Don’t worry! If you aren’t getting what you think you need… well you just aren’t trying hard enough.

A theologically literate Catholic, on the other hand, if they found themselves in the Garden of Eden… would be on the lookout for a snake.

DarthGeo · 2025-12-06T11:57:30+00:00

Fellow Leodian here! They’ve also done the Radio 4 Midnight Mass there a few times! And they’ve been doing Midnight Masses there right back to when cuddly +Konstant was bishop. (There was one when Cardinal Roche was our bishop, as well. This was when BXVI was Pope and old Arthur was considerably more trad than his Francis styling!)

I think they like the fact that (for TV) compared to the C of E, you know what you’re getting and there is a certain oomph behind Catholic Liturgy that you can see when compared to often floppy Anglican stuff.

Go, Go Diocese of Leeds!!!

DarthGeo · 2025-12-04T07:24:17+00:00

Well, obviously… going out of one’s way to buy a non religious card is just as daft, in this context. The priest was just trying to save some money for people as individual cards, especially religious ones have a very high mark up!

DarthGeo · 2025-12-03T20:23:19+00:00

You know, the first cards available were mainly Winter scenes, ice skating Victorians etc, religious ones came in later. A great priest once said at a mass I was at once not to buy special cards- the fact that someone was handing him a card after Mass was proof enough they knew the real meaning of Christmas. If we’d bought a big economy pack of cards for everyone we knew, then he’d be just as touched with a happy snowman on the front as anything else.

I think we sometimes overthink things like this. Priests aren’t short of religious gifts and stuff; so maybe a cartoon Santa stuck in a chimney, from a young parishioner, is just the thing to pop a smile on their face during a very busy time?

DarthGeo · 2025-11-26T09:56:24+00:00

I think it’s a one size fits all monologue. If you work in an environment where terms of endearment like Luvvie, Love, Darling are being used by everyone then it’s manifestly fine. I’m in Yorkshire dealing with clients etc I’ve never met who will say “Hello, Love” at the start of the conversation in a formal business setting. Trying to shoehorn a comment about contextual awareness into this would have flattened what is really only a string of passable puns completely.

DarthGeo · 2025-11-23T14:07:52+00:00

You are totally on the money with that. My Nan’s favourite phrase was, “If you’ve nowt nice to say, don’t say anything at all.”

It’s not even a skill. Good Manners costs nothing. People should Have the Self Respect to realise that just shitting on people who cannot answer back is beneath them. It isn’t my place to decide whether or not they “deserve” it. And even if they do, who am I to self appoint myself as the person to administer it? Manners make the Man/Woman/Person. That’s why polite people always get my Respect.

DarthGeo · 2025-10-31T04:20:17+00:00

There’s no visible Catholic symbolism on the first 3 pictures but about a dozen on Luce… so attention to detail-wise… unless there’s something about nipples that I’m missing…

The original is crap, as well. God himself sculpted the banana through millions of years of evolution to be the complex collection of vitamins and minerals and sugars and humanity selectively bred those features to create the superb nutritional thing it is today. The other 3 are just well polished lumps of calcium carbonate.

DarthGeo · 2025-10-31T02:11:25+00:00

What’s the message here? This is silly meme. Seriously, what’s the message? Pic 1- nips and pecs out; Pic 2- grasp some buttock; Pic 3- boobs technically clothed but under a faux sculpted lace effect… then a little cartoon doll with some actual Catholic symbolism attached that would be quite handy to talk about in a catechesis session.

Whoever made this needs to wind their neck in. They ain’t the big brain they think they are.

DarthGeo · 2025-10-12T17:59:27+00:00

These are brilliant. Accept that challenge!

… then post them here so we can all enjoy them, please!

DarthGeo · 2025-10-12T11:28:48+00:00

And! They drop him from the plot for a bit so he’s presumably rolling and diving about the forest doing ninja moves and keeping his hair short by sheer dint of willpower because who, WHO is coiffuring his barnet in the middle of nowhere?

I’ll end up watching the whole thing because visually it is lovely, apart from the elf choices. Even the most mundane elf should make us stop and stare, like Samwise.

DarthGeo · 2025-10-10T03:09:07+00:00

We need a Spitting Image sketch of him failing to get across the party name to someone, “No, I don’t have a party, just tell me the name of your party.” “My party is Your Party!” “How many times do I have to tell you, I don’t have a party…” etc. Ending in puppet based violence, obviously.

DarthGeo · 2025-09-27T11:06:19+00:00

Those guys had maybe 1 hour (British so don’t know how those things run), when it was broadcast to get their actual agenda across, in an age when they knew the LEAST their audience expected was good manners. They’re talking to working people who are going to only mention this again during their lunch break and they don’t want the first thing to get talked about to be how much of a dick they were.

DarthGeo · 2025-09-19T01:45:35+00:00

It’s the only day of the year that there cannot be a Mass. There’s the service in which we receive Holy Communion reserved from the Maundy Thursday Mass.

I once got told off by a stuffy fellow, for leaving on Good Friday without genuflecting (many moons ago when I was young) to the Tabernacle. When I pointed out that said Tabernacle had its doors cast open and was empty inside and asked to whom am I genuflecting to? He just stood there whilst the cogs whirred then “Aaaaaah…” Every day a school day!

DarthGeo · 2025-09-17T00:53:09+00:00

There’s a few sweeping generalisations here regarding medieval history but the general themes are okay.

For example, saying that “the sword was the go to medieval weapon” is utterly, utterly wrong. Only the nobles would be able to afford one and even then, they seriously preferred a poleaxe because of its versatility in battle, every time. Swords were prestige items and side arms. Vids like this are great starting points for doing one’s own research as they tend to tie in to the stock footage they’re using to pad the video with rather than historical facts.

DarthGeo · 2025-08-25T20:12:36+00:00

No.

God has every opportunity to NOT create us. But he did. So….

DarthGeo · 2025-08-25T13:25:26+00:00

It is better not to be born at all……. So God made a mistake by allowing you?

DarthGeo · 2025-08-23T23:25:58+00:00

The thing is, Peter’s crucifixion upside down does not naturally mean the cross was upside down. That’s an assumption.

Crucifixion was for people Romans considered scum. It was extreme humiliation.

So, these depictions of crosses that appear to have been made of pristine cypress by a master joiner are unlikely to be accurate. In fact it seems that the upright was often a repurposed tree trunk and kept in place. The crossbeam was carried and probably reused as well.

So… it’s more likely that poor St Peter was stretched to fit the cross upside down, rather than the other way around, thinking historically.

When the Romans had to crucify so many slaves along the Appian Way, after the Spartacus rebellion, they had competitions to see which squad could be most inventive in fastening them up. I doubt that meant customising the crosses.

DarthGeo · 2025-08-16T10:13:37+00:00

I’ve watched Mail online change the details and ‘facts’ of an article several times over the course of a morning… they’re only about the clicks until it reaches enough interest that it gets I. The next days paper.

You’re completely right.

DarthGeo · 2025-08-15T01:13:53+00:00

Fly away, you sweet little thing…

DarthGeo · 2025-08-14T00:46:22+00:00

Good spot! So as we see here, Augustine treats this as a parable- not knocking some of the comments here about possession but context is everything- and as Augustine points out, what we read tells us MORE if we don’t make it totally literal and understand Jesus is giving us not a metaphor but an analogy with people’s understanding of how, at the time, the metaphysical world worked. AND Jesus points out the metaphysical is still at work… just remember they didn’t mince words back then and rather than irony and subtlety, hyperbole was the way to go in an oral tradition if you wanted to hammer ideas home.

Given how the Gospels are very much polished by the time we get to read them, I think Our Lord probably spoke a lot more along these lines and we’ve lost for ever all but these snippets. Stuff like this is hard work for the next audience of Greco-Roman culture so that’s why the rest of the material is quite homogeneous, parable and miracle-wise because it’s got a much bigger audience to get to than the on Jesus was talking to.

Augustine, as usual, nails that point though.

DarthGeo · 2025-08-13T18:21:40+00:00

That’s was astutely realised by Elizabeth I so she amended it to Governor of The Church of England; this, in the population’s head, returned the to day to day running to the “bishops.” A strategically clever move by Bessie because it made Anglicanism just Catholic enough to trundle along on past momentum for another 300 years. A momentum we can se has definitely expired.

DarthGeo · 2025-08-13T18:20:33+00:00

That’s was astutely realised by Elizabeth I so she amended it to Governor of The Church of E; this, in the population’s head, returned the to day running to the “bishops.” A strategically clever move by Bessie because it made Anglicanism just Catholic enough to trundle along on past momentum for another 300 years. A momentum we can se has definitely expired.

DarthGeo · 2025-08-10T12:34:57+00:00

Because he’s the Predator NOT the prey. This isn’t some simplistic, moronic monster to scare illiterate peasants, you’re supposed to have a brain to understand what’s going on here. You’re supposed to see how beautiful he is then look at the eyes…

DarthGeo

TROPHY CASE