i am sparticus: Words

Bluebird/Kinesis/Hell Is For Heroes

So yesterday, I went gigging to leeds, to the leeds cockpit no less. Bluebird Kinesis and HIFH were playing, but I can't be bothered to review it properly because too much stuff happened other than the gigs.
So anyway, I met my friend Charli and her friend Bec, we wandered around and found the venue was like 2 minutes away from the station, and it also had kebab shops! So all kebabbed up we went over to the venue properly, where upon we mocked the younger 14 year olds in their slipknot hoodies, and also mocked the 16-17 year olds in their "whatever band is just heard of enough to be trendy" t-shirt. Really we were just jealous becuae we never went to gigs when we were 15.
So anyway we go in just as bluebird start. Bluebird are okay if you like the melodic sorta metal stuff. So we saw them, then saw Kinesis, who where ace, and played lots of good new stuff. Then we talked to the guitarist from bluebird, who used to be in Amen. He was very amusing, and told many an amusing ancedote and he compared Casey Chaos (Amen frontman) to Lenny Kravitz.
Anyway then HIFH played and where ace, and played an amazing cover of The Cure's "Boy's Don't Cry".
So after giggage we hung round a bit, (Charli and Bec were sleeping over with Kinesis and my train had ages before it left) and talked to Kinesis, who still are the nicest people in alternative rock and they make for good watching when 16 year old girls approach them and tell them they love them.
Anyway, I'm just about to leave and Conor's all "hey come back with us to the hotel" and I'm all
"really? I can't I've got a train :( " and he was all
"oh well maybe some other time" and I was like
"mwahahahaahahhahaaha".
So yes I realise that if you read all the way down this far you are probably thinking "what a dull entry". But y'know, I don't care. This moment will live on as a great moment in the history of the life of sparticus so it needs to be recorded for posterity

Version 10: About Time

I would like to announce to the world in general that I've finally finished redesigning iamsparticus. If you think it's great thank you. If you don't, well then tough (there is a possibilty that by upgrading your browser (which you should do anyway) that it'll look much much better). I'd like to draw your attention to the little thing on the menu that says "skin me" click it for mild amusement.
Anyway I haven't thoroughly tested it, so if things break, just comment it or something...

Let's start again shall we?
Right, in my eagerness to get everything working yesterday, I forgot to delete the other index page. So there were two conflicting pages you viewed when you went to iamsparticus.co.uk
I apologise. The people responsible for hiring the people responsible (and the llamas) were shot.
I've found a few bugs with the displaying of the entry titles, which I'll fix over the next day or so. I'll also stop blogging about this site.

Things to do while you are home

1. Finish Website
2. Sleep Lots
3. Eat Lots
4. See Various People
5. Go to the pub
6. Sit round Jaclyn's house and do nothing
7. Download thousands of windows updates

Good Friday

What shall I do, then, with the one you call the king of the Jews?" Pilate asked them.
Crucify him!" they shouted.
Why? What crime has he committed?" asked Pilate.
But they shouted all the louder, "Crucify him!"
Wanting to satisfy the crowd, Pilate released Barabbas to them. He had Jesus flogged, and handed him over to be crucified...

At the sixth hour darkness came over the whole land until the ninth hour. And at the ninth hour Jesus cried out in a loud voice, "Eloi, Eloi, lama sabachthani?"--which means, "My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?" ^{(Psalm 22:1)}
When some of those standing near heard this, they said, "Listen, he's calling Elijah."
One man ran, filled a sponge with wine vinegar, put it on a stick, and offered it to Jesus to drink. "Now leave him alone. Let's see if Elijah comes to take him down," he said.
With a loud cry, Jesus breathed his last.
The curtain of the temple was torn in two from top to bottom. And when the centurion, who stood there in front of Jesus, heard his cry and saw how he died, he said, "Surely this man was the Son of God!"
(Mark 16:1-38)

Mexican Waves And Bouncy Castles

I want a bouncy castle.
Once again I'm truely shattered after more hard holiday club stuff, so I can't be bothered to write much, but I will give you something far more valuable than my meanderings.

How To Make Juggling Balls For 40ish Kids

You'll need

• 120 sandwich bags
• 360 medium sized ballons
• Approx 12kgs of rice
• Scissors

Prepartion

Take one sandwich bag, poor approx. 100 grams of rice into bag. Tilt bag so rice goes into one corner, then push air out. Tie a not in bag and cut off the end. Repeat x120.

Activity

Give each kid 3 sandwich-bags-o-rice, 9 ballons of different colours, and one pair of scissors. Instruct kids to

1. Cut off the end of one ballon.
2. pull ballon over sandwich bag (may require adult supervision)
3. Cut off end and make slits in second ballon
4. Pull ballon over sandwich bag and first ballon
5. Repeat processes 3 & 4
6. Repeat steps 1-5 twice more
7. Attempt to juggle

And here's one I made later after everyone had gone home...

The End

Oh but I got a letter the other day from the nice people at The Centre For Youth Ministy offering me an interview, so I can do a degree with them. Excellent.

Holiday Clubs and Ephalmups

So today, me and the dearest Stetler spent the most vastest amount of time preparing craft, painting pictures and cutting out cutting things. And bagging rice. Stupid Rice.
Why? Well my church is running a holiday club wednesday-thursday-friday and we had to decorate lots of stuff.
So I'm very tired out, and can't think straight. Thusly I'll just leave you with 3 links...
Mmmm spam for comments
mmm the stuff you can buy on e-bay
Hooray, new Strong Bad E-mails!

Blog Shares in Neon

Hooray everyone... Look, I'm listed at...

Go buy shares in me before I become grossly expensive.
Also go buy the hell is for heroes album now. As it's excellent.

How To Establish a Cult, Step Two: Beliefs

Step Two: What you're going to believe

So you've got a name for your fantastic new religion, but you're still struggling with what to actually make all those people you're going to brainwash believe. Don't worry though, suprisingly enough it's not that hard, as long as you adhere to these 3 timeless principles.

Principal one

 Making anything orginal these days is nigh on impossible, all the good ideas have been stolen. I mean, look at the internet, I dreamt up the internet way back in 1993, only to find out someone had beaten me too it. Of course as someone famous used to probably say "use your problems to work for you", so in our case we'll just take some already invented belief systems and modify them to suit our cult. It's probably best to take an already existing belief system, and then claim it's the precursor to your new fangled and much better system. Like our not so good friend, Reverend Sun Myung Moon. Using his Unification Church as an excellent example, I'll show you how to alter the religion of your choice to meet your own ends ^(disclaimer). So bare with me...

• Take a major religion, that most people think they know reasonable amounts about, but in reality know very little. Christianity is a good one in the western world (Rev. Moon agrees).
• Claim that the religion wasn't actually completed properly and that you alone are the completion of this religion. Cite a few out of context bible (or Koran or Torah or whatever religion you choose to alter) verse's to prove how right you are. Rev. Moon cites Exodus 20:5 as a key verse explaining hereditary sin and Matthew 5:48 as a verse explaining why we can all become God incarnate.
• Remember that you'll come across people who point out verses from the same holy book, contradicting you. This is because that version of the Holy book is wrong, and only the new true holy book you've created is the true one! The quickest way to do this is get the bible in some text format and do a search and replace on it. Replace Jesus/Mohammed/Abraham/Siddhartha Gautama with your name, replace Sin/Wrong Doing/Karma with the name of your worst enemy, and replace "World" with "sparticusville".

Principal 2

The second principal is a lot simpler. Simply find some popular issue (one that's popular with rich people especially) and offer a unique perspective on it. And when I say unique, I mean exactly the same as what they already think, but seemingly subtly different. The best way to find out what rich people think is spy on them in dinner parties. When they start to debate politics, and all come to a general consensus on an issue, then use that issue as a base for your teaching. eg. "hey, aren't you really annoyed about gas (they're always American) prices?" "yeah the suck, my SUV costs like soooo much more to fill up now". "Hey, I'm into this new belief system, one of our basic tenants is that gas price increases are wrong". Simple eh? Okay so if you want to go for more popular appeal you may have to go for other hot topics. Homosexuality is a good one. It doesn't matter whether you are a for or against it, talk about Homosexuality and people pay you attention.

Principal 3

The final point is an important one. You're religion has to seem as if it's perfectly normal and sane. However once you get people successfully converted and discipled (read brainwashed by hypnotic monkeys), you can have as crazy as religion as you like! So while your religion may seem to the uninitiated to be about love for all, and how you, the wonderful leader will bring about world peace, underneath it all, it's about how you are the son of an alien and a dinosaur clone, who has come to start/end/divide the world. The important thing to remember is that you have to slowly bring your followers to believe the higher truths. It's easy to persuade someone that peace lies in love, so that's a good starting point. When however, they are suitably "ready" then it's time to unleash all your hidden science fiction potential.

So that's how to create your standard cult belief system, but remember you don't want a standard cult belief system, you want a much better one! We'll look into adding bells and whistles later, but for now all I can say is plagarize! I'm sure we all know brainwashed cult members who especially like one specific aspect of their beliefs. Well find out what this is, and then steal it! And the more things you steal from, the better!

Disclaimer

I'm not saying that the relgion of Reverend Sun Myung Moon is a cult here okay? It may well be, but I have no proof of that. What I am saying is that it's based on another religion and quotes another religion's holy book. I think that it's wrong in doing this because it takes it out of context and goes against the principles that christianity stands for. But I'm not saying it's a cult unless someone can give me some evidence that this so.

I tell you the truth, the infidels have made no website

I was going to post part II of "how to make your own cult", but instead I found something that's far more interesting. Via Brown Pau the Iraqi Information Minister has a fansite!
Sample true quotes "It has been rumored that we have fired scud missiles into Kuwait. I am here now to tell you, we do not have any scud missiles and I don't know why they were fired into Kuwait." "They are superpower of villains. They are superpower of Al Capone." "There are no American infidels in Baghdad. Never!"
Also worth viewing is The Iraqi Information Minister Through History

How To Establish a Cult, Step One: The Name

So you can't get employment, you've only managed to pay your taxes in the last five years because the government can't tax nothing and no woman will come near you. So what do you do?
Well if you're clever, you establish yourself a cult. This guarantees you money from devoted followers, tax breaks (as you're a religion) and all the beautiful women you can brainwash.
In the words of Scientology founder L. Ron Hubbard, "Writing for a penny a word is ridiculous. If a man really wants to make a million dollars, the best way would be to start his own religion"
 The only problem is, the cult market is crowded, everyone's offering the promise of eternal happiness with the aliens via cool-aid these days, so you've got to do something to really stand out.
So here, to help you, is Sparticus' guide to establishing your very own cult.

Step one: Getting yourself a name

First impressions count, and let's face it, most people's first impression of any cult is when the FBI raid the meeting place and it's on the front page of the newspapers. You want a name that above all looks good in size 24 Times New Roman and will fit on one line.
Now with that in mind, the second point is to make sure that the name has nothing to do with your Cult's beliefs. Is your religion completely and utterly scientifically rubbish? Then call it Scientology!^Disclaimer Now if your religion is going to based around hate, then it should probably have love in it somewhere. Don't worry if you haven't got round to thinking of the beliefs yet, sometimes if you just think of a cool name the beliefs will just spring out of them!
Thirdly don't call yourself a cult! This may sound odd, but most people are put off by the word "cult". We tested 100 passers-by, and found that 97% ^{(all facts made up)} of them associated the word cult with "weird crazy stuff". So ditch the cult. Here are some better names you could try...

• Religion of (it's an oldie, but a goodie)
• "The Church of Whatever", or even better "the first church of whatever"
• "whatever-ism", "whatever-ology" or possibly "whatever-tarianism"

.
Example: You believe that monkey's are actually descended from man, and we should revere them as the gods they are. And we should smoke lots of pot. Well, remembering all the three rules of naming above, "the first church of human ascendancism". Now this example may look like's it's breaking rule one. But I think you'll find "ascedancism cult leader found guilty/dead/stark naked" fits very well on a front page.

Coming Soon. Step Two: So what are we going to believe then?

disclaimer

Claiming that Scientology is a cult is my personal point of view, if scientology proves to be anything other than "a confused concoction of crackpot, dangerously applied psychotherapy, oversimplified, idiotic and inapplicable rules and ideas and science-fiction drivel that is presented to its members (at the "advanced" levels) as profound spiritual truth." I will apologise to the followers of L. Ron Hubbard personally.

Homestar Runner t-shirts?

Ohhhh You can get Homestar Runner T-shirts! The choice is incredible though...
I think that theTrogdor (Dragon! DRAGON!!!!) one is perhaps the coolest t-shirt ever created, but I'm not sure how many people will get it, and I've got loads of black ones anyway.
The HomeStar Star one is pretty cool, but kinda simplistic.
They also have two amazing Homestar Runner ones, him running and him standing still.
And they have more cool as Strong Bad T-shirts, but I'm not sure how good they'd look.

So anyway my kind reading public, I'll let you all decide... Currently I'm leaning towards homestar runner standing in a star, but I can be persauded...
Oh and if you have no idea who strongbad is then go here the best e-mail (I reckon) is The Japanese Cartoon One. Be Amazed.

"what's the deal? I didn't know you had to shave?"
"Oh I don't, it's cinnamon."
BAHAHAHA.

Schools out for the day

Hooray for school, or um something. Yeah. I'm in one of the primary schools helping out with this after schools club and running the computer room. All the kids around me are busy playing with random programs and on Bob the Builder excellent.
So with thousands (I mean 8) of kids entertained I thought I'd aimlessly look at other service providers, as easily (where we are currently hosted) has been playing up lately (although it doesn't seem to be their fault). Anyway in the google directory I found they have a whole directory for Hate Related Web Hosting. So now even facist pigs can get webhosting...
Woohoo :S
In other news I can't go see {kinesis} at nottingham. Boo, hiss! But I can go see them at Leeds, that's if they haven't sold out.
Bah

Update

I updated my musiclist, well the albums part bit, it's in xml and I don't get xslt (which makes it looks shiny) so you're mileage may vary, but it'll look okay in IE 6.0 and obviously Opera (but shockingly better in IE). Anyway it's here.

The Reason I'm not scared of having long entry titles

I played football today, grass stains on knees, jumpers for goalposts, etc... We won, no thanks to me I think, but that's to be expected.
That aside, today I learnt lots, mostly about the bible, but also why you shouldn't wear big baggy trousers whilst playing football.
It was also el vicar's birthday today. So we had cake today. Which was nice. Mmmm cake.
This isnt' going anywhere. But fortunately I've learnt when to stop. Oh no, wait, no I haven't.

I played double dragon (2) earlier on my P.C. and I'd like to point out that it's unfair because you have to beat up someone that looks like a nerdy duke nukem who has taken growth pills. Plus you need two people to do any of the cool stuff. I guess it's back to rainbow island for me then, now that's an awesome game.

Oh and stoobs do you wanna go see hifh and kinesis with me in rock city in like 3 weeks or whenever it is.

Top Five Reasons Why You Should Stop Using Internet Explorer

1. It incorrectly displays boxes. Which may sound pathetic, and it kinda is, but it's symptomatic as to why Microsoft Internet Explorer is wrong as a whole. The people who made HTML and CSS said one day that when you said a box was a certain size, that meant the text in side the box would fill that size. So if the box is 300px, you'd get 300px of text. Microsoft said "we know better" and decided that what you meant when you said a box was this big, was that would it include the gaps between the text and the edge of the box (including the border). Which is just wrong. And annoying. And stupid. If you really care here is the place to go.
2. It's a magnet for viruses. It just is. Okay!
3. Everytime you use a microsoft product, a new reality tv show is created. Proof, the only industry that's growing as fast as the software industry is those companies that make reality tv shows. Coincidence? I think not.
4. Every single other browser is better. Internet explorer can't do half the stuff that opera or netscape can do. I've turned off popup windows that popup in the background now. Hooray! No more popup ads for me! Oh and I can pretend I'm other browsers, and I can resume downloads I started a while ago. Internet Explorer is so featureless
5. All the cool kids diss microsoft. I was on the bus the other day and these two cool guys where all "hehe I created this virus for microsoft, yeah bill gates sucks" "oh man u rock" "lol dood" (they where so cool they spoke in 733t speak and actually said lol as a word). And these two guys had the coolest pen holders in their pockets. Man I'm becoming such a nerd lately, I really need to go get one of those life things. Y'know. Apparently they come in handy. Oh man I'm even more nerdily than stoobs right now. Gee. :(