Deliver us from the crows...

Boy, some people should grow a thicker skin! The British Humanist Association published this piece of news, from Brentwood Essex, about a scarecrow that was deemed offensive by some Christians because it was seemingly on a cross, crucified like, well, you know who. I don't get it. Isn't the scarecrow simply waving its arms to scare the darn birds? I mean, that is its job, its function, as a scarecrow. And since it has to be steady, of course the arms would be maintained open by a piece of wood. Well, that is my take on it anyway, the offended Christians were literally building a straw man and being scared by it. And even if it was offensive... There is no law against this, neither should we apply censorship to some very mild (at worst) display of blasphemy. I love scarecrows, how creepy they can be (I blogged about it), I have no sympathy for those who wish to put this one down.

More Dracula

I often say the images uploaded on my blog show the colours of the seasons. Well, not always, as you can see here. This is something I would usually upload in autumn, when Halloween is coming. But I have been reading/playing on and off Dracula's Castle where this image is taken from and sometimes one's mind wanders around. And Halloween is only about three months away. As a child, we used to play "horror" make belief games throughout summer and not only on rainy days. I had not even read Dracula that I was already fascinated by the character. I do remember playing a few Dracula games before "the" Dracula game, but it is very vague in my mind.

I find this drawing interesting in many aspects. I do not know who Dracula is fighting. It could be either Jonathan Harker, who is the "good guy" character played in the gamebook or Abraham Van Helsing, who is the main adversary if the reader decides to play the Count. Van Helsing in the novel is elderly, but in the gamebook he is younger (40s? 50s) and nastier. The odds seem to be even here: the man is heavily armed and has a strong enough built. Of course, Dracula has superhuman strenght, but he might be weakened by the presence of the cross (although the man holds it in a strange way) and the stake is dangerously close to the Count's chest. It reminds me a lot of the climatic combats in the old Hammer movies, especially the one between Peter Cushing (Van Helsing) and Christopher Lee (Dracula) at the end of Horror of Dracula. Tense, dynamic, uncertain, vicious. I wouldn't mind watching some Hammer movies actually.

Crucifix

What struck me in Brittany is the omnipresence of the croix de village. Well, of all those crucifixes you see around. France is a secular country, much more than any other in Europe, but even they never managed to get rid of some remnants of Catholicism. That said, I like those crucifix, it gives the surroundings character.

Cross

A cross close to my in-law's place.