Downfall: The Tommy Sheridan Story is a book by Alan McCombes, former policy co-ordinator of the Scottish Socialist Party (SSP) and editor of the Scottish Socialist Voice, about the political career of Tommy Sheridan, who led the SSP for several years until he was forced to resign amid allegations about his personal life, eventually leaving the party a few years before his eventual conviction for perjury.
McCombes finished writing the book — described by the Scotsman as "the first insider's account of the fall-out from Sheridan's trips to a Manchester swinging club and his ill-fated decision to take on the News of the World after it published details of his sexual proclivities" — less than five months after Sheridan was jailed for committing perjury.
The book was launched on 6 July 2011 at Word Power Books, Scotland's oldest radical and independent bookshop.
Paul Hutcheon described the book in The Herald as "brilliantly written", adding: "Most tomes on Scottish politics are barely worth reading, but McCombes's offering deserves to be read far beyond Scotland. Although written by a modest man, the book has a savage turn of phrase and a wonderful repertoire of metaphors."
A book is a set of written, printed, illustrated, or blank sheets, made of ink, paper, parchment, or other materials, fastened together to hinge at one side. A single sheet within a book is a leaf, and each side of a leaf is a page. A set of text-filled or illustrated pages produced in electronic format is known as an electronic book, or e-book.
Books may also refer to works of literature, or a main division of such a work. In library and information science, a book is called a monograph, to distinguish it from serial periodicals such as magazines, journals or newspapers. The body of all written works including books is literature. In novels and sometimes other types of books (for example, biographies), a book may be divided into several large sections, also called books (Book 1, Book 2, Book 3, and so on). An avid reader of books is a bibliophile or colloquially, bookworm.
A shop where books are bought and sold is a bookshop or bookstore. Books can also be borrowed from libraries. Google has estimated that as of 2010, approximately 130,000,000 unique titles had been published. In some wealthier nations, printed books are giving way to the usage of electronic or e-books, though sales of e-books declined in the first half of 2015.
Musical theatre is a form of theatrical performance that combines songs, spoken dialogue, acting, and dance. The story and emotional content of a musical – humor, pathos, love, anger – are communicated through the words, music, movement and technical aspects of the entertainment as an integrated whole. Although musical theatre overlaps with other theatrical forms like opera and dance, it may be distinguished by the equal importance given to the music as compared with the dialogue, movement and other elements. Since the early 20th century, musical theatre stage works have generally been called, simply, musicals.
Although music has been a part of dramatic presentations since ancient times, modern Western musical theatre emerged during the 19th century, with many structural elements established by the works of Gilbert and Sullivan in Britain and those of Harrigan and Hart in America. These were followed by the numerous Edwardian musical comedies and the musical theatre works of American creators like George M. Cohan. The Princess Theatre musicals and other smart shows like Of Thee I Sing (1931) were artistic steps forward beyond revues and other frothy entertainments of the early 20th century and led to such groundbreaking works as Show Boat (1927) and Oklahoma! (1943). Some of the most famous and iconic musicals through the decades that followed include West Side Story (1957), The Fantasticks (1960), Hair (1967), A Chorus Line (1975), Les Misérables (1985), The Phantom of the Opera (1986), Rent (1996), The Producers (2001) and Wicked (2003).
Bibliomancy is the use of books in divination. The method of employing sacred books (especially specific words and verses) for 'magical medicine', for removing negative entities, or for divination is widespread in many religions of the world.
According to the Oxford English Dictionary, the word bibliomancy (etymologically from βιβλίον biblio- "books" and μαντεία -mancy "divination by means of") "divination by books, or by verses of the Bible" was first recorded in 1753 (Chambers' Cyclopædia). Sometimes this term is used synonymously with stichomancy (from στίχος sticho- "row, line, verse") "divination by lines of verse in books taken at hazard", which was first recorded ca. 1693 (Urquhart's Rabelais).
Bibliomancy compares with rhapsodomancy (from rhapsode "poem, song, ode") "divination by reading a random passage from a poem". A historical precedent was the ancient Roman practice of sortes ("sortilege, divination by drawing lots") which specialized into sortes Homericae, sortes Virgilianae, and sortes Sanctorum, using the texts of Homer, Virgil, and the Bible.
RahXephon is an anime television series produced by Bones and directed by Yutaka Izubuchi. It was broadcast in Japan on Fuji Television from January 21, 2002 to September 11, 2002. In keeping with the musical theme of the series, episodes are called "movements" and each volume of DVD is called an "orchestration". Each episode has a title screen that provides an English title for that episode, which generally does not correspond to a translation from the Japanese title. In addition to the 26 regular episodes, one recap episode was aired and one episode was released as an (OVA).
The original air dates are schedule dates; these are calendar dates until the April series break, when Fuji Television moved RahXephon from Monday afternoons into a Tuesday late night anime block. Episodes 10 through 26 started at 25:55, which is at 1:55 a.m. Wednesday. This means that the calendar dates of the first and last episode airings are 21 January 2002 and 11 September 2002, respectively. Stations in the Fuji Network System affiliate Tōkai Television Broadcasting network started airing the series in the late night but moved it to late afternoons after the same series break.RahXephon thus remained both a late night and late afternoon anime series throughout its original run.
"Downfall" is a single taken from the second studio album Hatebreeder, by the Finnish metal band Children of Bodom. The song, originally called "Forevermore", was written by the lead vocalist Alexi Laiho. The video of "Downfall" was directed by Mika Lindberg. Side-b contains the cover track "No Commands" by fellow Finnish band Stone.
The single spent a total of 11 weeks on the Finnish charts, 2 of which were at #1.
It is usually the last song played live at Children of Bodom gigs. They sometimes use an extended intro by keyboardist Janne Wirman in which Laiho and guitarist Roope Latvala play the riffs of famous metal songs (such as Dio's Holy Diver and Judas Priest's Breaking the Law) after which they begin playing the song's main riff.
Downfall - The Early Years is a compilation album of the Dutch band The Gathering. The record was first released on 22 May 2001 by Hammerheart Records label. On 15 September 2008, an expanded version of the album was released by Vic Records.
All lyrics written by Bart Smits, all music composed by The Gathering.