i am sparticus: Words

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Because we haven't done this in a while.

Apple Store

Woo

If You Want To Write Like Em Clever Folk, Talk To Kletus

Following the success of If You Want To Walk On Water You've Got To Get Out Of The Boat by John Ortberg there has been a splurge of Christian books with similar sounding titles (eg If You Want Breakfast In Bed, Sleep In The Kitchen). As has previously been shown I'm a sell out, so I have no qualms in saying; publishers of Christian books, if you need someone to join you on the bandwagon I'm there!

To show I'm serious, here are some of my suggested book titles:

• If you want to be bright and shiny, you've gotta stop hiding under that basket.


• If you want to turn water into wine, you've got to start getting invited to more wedding parties, loser


• If you want to speak to angels you've got to start speaking with donkeys.


• If you're having girl problems I feel bad for you son, I've got 99 problems but my eternal relationship with the Lord Jesus Christ our saviour isn't one.


• If you want to be born in the line of David, you've got to be born to Joram who was fathered by Jehoshaphat, who was fathered by Asa, why was fathered by Abijah who was fathered by Rehoboam, who was fathered by Solomon, who was fathered by David.


• If you want to be born of a virgin, well then you can't. Who do you think you are? God? You'd better be repenting right now you big heretic.


• If you want to kill 1000 pesky Philistines then you need to kill a donkey and leave it's corpse to decay for a while.


• If you want to commit murder, you're kinda stuffed. Did you not read the 10 commandments. THOU SHALT NOT KILL.

TURN IT UP

So there was this big Christian gig worship event down in Ipswich this weekend of which I'm now going to make sarcastic comments. Caveat whatchamacalit though, the event was pretty good and certainly high quality. Also filling part of a football stadium with young people isn't easy. So all comments are just me trying to be big and clever and funny, no more.

Firstly, Andy Hawthorne Manchester Reference Watch is pleased to announce that Andy Hawthorne mentioned Manchester fourteen times in his first talk. Disappointingly he didn't mention it once then afterwards. Overall though this still averages to about one reference of Manchester every two minutes which is a very acceptable ratio.

Secondly thebandwithnoname are so ghetto it hurts. That is all.

When famous musicians walk out on stage it's more fun to yell out the names of their roadies then the names of their bands. The bands look confused, the roadie looks embarrassed and the people nearby you wonder whether they should inform you that you're yelling the wrong names out.

Apart from that, I have nothing more to say except that Gareth has nothing funny to say on this website ever.

Frinton-On-Sea

Yesterday it was very hot and there was very little work to be done. In celebration of this, myself and a few friends all decided to go to the beach! Hooray!

Because of the solstice though, and all the crazy tide shenanigans that go with it the beach was pretty much non-existant, submerged as it was by a foot of water. Which while suck-tastic for sand castles was AWESOME for swimming so all was not lost.

In bonus 'help I need a punchline' news one of the beach huts nearby is apparently called 'Jabba The Hut'. Flickr has the photos.

Wednesday the 22nd

• No more essays! NO MORE ESSAYS! At least when I sort out this one's bibliography and post it off.
• My hardcore jet-set lifestyle finally gets me a new gadget: New power adaptor plugs for my iBook so that I can use it in European and American sockets!
• Last night I saw hedgehogs in my garden. It was very exciting and only didn't get photos because my flash didn't really work over that distance.
• Check out the awesome video I made the other day when I had ten minutes of free time and two different coloured lumps of plasticine. Dinosaur Attack!.
• I have a day off tomorrow and the beach is so calling me. Shame all the beaches here suck.

Accepted!

So iTunes accepted me on their program. Now all you suckas can click on music links and actually purchase the songs I'm ranting about. In celebration of all this here's what I've been listening to lately:

• In Your Honor - Foo Fighters: The new album( s) is very good. The rock album is better than One By One and probably better than There Is Nothing Left To Lose. Anyway, DOA is my favourite track off it just because of the catchy as chorus (curiously upbeat for a song with the lyrics "it's a shame we have to die my dear / no-ones getting out of here alive"). The acoustic album is (almost) all good if not very Foo Fighters in places. The last two tracks are the best, Cold Day In The Sun is awesomely upbeat (and sung by Taylor Hawkins! THE DRUMMER! DRUMMERS SINGING!) and Razor is just very very nice. (I said (almost) all good above because "Virginia Moon" featuring Norah Jones is the worst song they've ever done. Ever.)


• Chris Moyles played Mr. Brightside by The Killers this morning as I was getting out of bed. It's still the best song of the last year and a half ish or so.


• Other best songs in the world: Everlong - Foo Fighters, Joy.Discovery.Invention - Biffy Clyro and Love In An Elevator - Aerosmith


• As well as this, I've been listening to 65daysofstatic whom you can't find on iTunes. However I heartedly recommend you download Radio Protector for free off my amazing music store website. Oh yeah.


• Definitely Maybe - Oasis. I had forgotten how good this was till I listened to it again the other day. It's been on in my local pub quite a bit since (oh the joys of a good jukebox). If you've never heard it, or have forgotten about it,Slide Away wins out.

Tightrope Walking

People who are doing public speaking take note: Charles Blondin never tightrope walked over the Niagara Falls with his son in a wheelbarrow. For that matter he never tightrope walked over the Niagara Falls with his wife, mother or manager in the wheelbarrow. For that matter he never tightrope walked in front of the Royal Family with any of his family members in a wheelbarrow. For the record, he tightrope walked over Niagara Falls with his manager on his back. People who are doing public speaking: Get your facts straight.

Justification

Hey I was right, Franklin W. Dixon was a pseudonym!

Making Me Money

I just applied for the iTunes affiliate scheme thing. If I get on it all the links to songs that I put up in the "Right Now" box will not only take you to iTunes, but make me money if you buy them. I say if I get in, because entry into this isn't unconditional, some person has to come and view this site to see if it's up to scratch. So if everyone could act nice and try to look smart that'd be much appreciated.

Our New, Happy Life

It's that time of year again when I have to submit approximately 30,000 words to pass my course. I don't like deadlines like this and in a token gesture of defiance my works gets increasingly sarcastic as I get nearer to them. Todays sample:

...I had no agenda for speaking to her; I was just going to talk to her. This is youth work however and so nothing is that simple. You see going to speak to a young person and having no agenda is not simply being friendly, it’s befriending them which is one of the many things that youth workers do to help young people grow and develop into fully rounded members of society who are fitter, happier and more productive. Befriending is like making friends with a young person, except it’s not. As this young person says (quoted by Kerry Young, 1999) “the relationship is like a friendship but it won’t be such a strong friendship, just a mutual friendship where you respect them and they respect you”. Glad that’s cleared things up then.

Only five thousand odd words to go!

New Screen

On Saturday, whilst in the pub I broke my phone. Not in an extreme 'my phone no longer works' sense, just in a 'my display doesn't display properly' sense. Seeing as my phone has been dropped from a great height, stood on and got sprayed by water, catching my leg on a pool table while it was in my pocket hardly seems like a fair thing for it to break over. Straw on a camels back I'm guessing. Anyway, I'm stuck on my contract for another four months and even if they would help me out with an upgrade I don't want to stick with them after my contract runs out. So basically I have two options. One, spend £40 (which I don't have) on getting a new screen and fitting it myself (one of my housemates used to fix phones, so I'm not worried). Or two, get given a free phone by someone. There is a third option which is to affix my old T610 screen into my broken T630 phone. That sounds fun, but also runs the risk of me having no phone whatsoever.

So yeah, anyone want to give me an old phone or £40?

You Can Find Me

You know how when you stick a CD in a computer iTunes or Windows Media Player or whatever accesses some online library that gets the names of the song tracks on the album? And you know how it works out which album is which by working out how long the songs are and how long the album is and comparing it to its database of albums it knows? Well theoretically this means that if an album is exactly the same length and has exactly the same number of songs which are each exactly the same length as another album it won't be able to tell the difference and presumably the more popular album will win out therefore labelling the other album the same as the popular album. Or in simpler language, sometimes iTunes and Windows Media Player think one album is actually another album.

Ladies and gentlemen, Breath of Life (volume 1) by Emmanuel Baptist Fellowship is, as recognised by Windows Media Player, 50 Cent's Get Rich Or Die Trying (Clean Version). 'Breath of Life' is 'P.I.M.P.', 'Sing Out The Lord is Here' is actually 'What Up Gangsta' and 'I Go To The Rock' is in reality 'In Da Club'.

Note

This gives me lots of ideas of crazy Denial of Service type attacks where some works out the 'submit this album's information' type thing and codes something that repeatedly tells the service that an album should actually be labelled something different. That way when some sticks in an album Windows Media Player would read it as "I'm stupid for buying this album". Track one "I'm an idiot", Track two "really I am". Etc...

Why?

The oddest thing just occured. Over my house flew five flights of planes. Each flight consisted of three aircraft; two fighters flying either side of a passenger plane with each flight flying over at one minute intervals at a height of a few hundred metres. Each flight was identical in every way, so much so that when the fourth and fifth flight flew over I felt twinges of deja-vu.

The only thing reason I can think of is that they were training on how to escort hijacked planes, but that seems a bit odd since they were so low in the sky. How odd.

Ice-breakers for everyone

The following is taken from a noted Christian youth programme leaders guide. So sue me.

Arrival Game
...The young people form caterpillars by sitting down on the floor one immediately behind each other... Let them run! ...Nobody can touch the ground with his hands or her hands. This shuffling along on your buttocks is very hard - so be sure to make the course a short one!
"Some of us have blisters in painful places as a result of those hard fought caterpillar races. The truth is, the human body just wasn't made to walk on its behind"

To summarise: Here is a game that not only injures your young people, but is actively designed to do so! It's alright to injure young people for the sake of introducing a theme (prayer if you can believe that)! Carry this to it's natural conclusion and you get the following great ice-breakers:

• Sometimes it's hard to understand what Jesus did because of the changes in culture. By recreating the past your young people will be able to comprehend Jesus' teaching much easier. Try holding your meeting somewhere with no electricity, running water, sanitary facilities or mobile phones. Maybe you could get some actors in as Roman Soldiers to beat them up for looking at them funny. For real realism infect a young person with leprosy and exile them from the group. This will help them appreciate the teachings of Jesus in a new way.


• Cooking for your young people is a great way of getting to known them and growing as a group. You can even blend the cookery into an illustration to really help your programme run smoothly! Just lie on one side the entire time you're eating food that's been cooked over cow manure


• To provide a memorable illustration of the realities of hell set fire to a young person.

The Queen

On Wednesday when I went to college I saw the Queen. Not that she came to visit me or was at my college or anything like that, I just arrived in Cambridge for college and someone was like 'hey the queen's in town today' and I was all 'really? cool'. So I wandered down the road at lunch and stood around on a bridge for a bit taking photos and eventually the Queen turns up and drives past, doing the whole waving business.

That was it really. I've seen the Queen but it wasn't really that interesting. Oh well.

UCAS, T-Shirts, Gareth and Pints

• Blog re: Stupid age of accountability
• Various weddings
• Look up rules Ultimate Frisbee
• Tell *name changed* about burn honeymoon rug
• 066 - LV56
• Talk to Dave H Re: T-Shirts
• Buy Idlewild CDs (x2)
• Name and Shame Breakfast
• To Blog: PAA entry about Gareth being STUPID and LATE
• Really Late
• Don't get Gareth pint when arrive early in future
• Drink Gareth's pint!
• Hide PAA stuff about Gareth from Him

It's gonna blow

Apparently tea is bad for you. I never believed anyone before but now...

Advice For Women

You remember in Rupert the Bear where under every picture they have one short rhyming caption and then one long paragraph explaining things in a slightly more lucid way? Imagine that but with the order reversed. And no pictures of strange animals in checked clothing. And no odd mixed-species relationships.

The following two accounts are based upon actual events that really transpired. Names and places haven't been changed because the only names I know involved in this story are Sainsbury's and Mark Walley and neither of them are going to complain about the free publicity.

I was in Sainsbury's today buying stuff (milkshake ingredients for my drop-in centre if you must know) and had just started with the whole standing in a queue business. Now in case you don't know my ability to pick the wrong queue in a supermarket is legendary, if I even think about picking the shortest queue, even for a second, then whatever queue I choose will end up the longest. This isn't one of those crumby 'it only works if I don't mention it to people' things either, I can tell this to the people I'm with as I pick the queue and it'll still end up the longest; it's a knack.

Anyway that's almost an aside to the story except to say that there was only one woman in front of me who was just buying stuff for lunch so it she should have been through quickly but knowing who I was I expected some exciting complication to occur any second. Sure enough, the woman wanted to purchase the lunch stuff on two separate receipts presumably because she was purchasing for a friend as well (or because she had no friends but wanted to look like someone was sharing lunch with her. If that was the case then it worked; kudos!). Anyway the till person scans through half of the stuff, bags it and tells her how much it is. The woman gets out her purse from her handbag, extracts the right cash sum and gives it to her, then puts her purse away (notice the italics? That's to tell you that what I just said was the key to the forthcoming punchline, I say this because the punchline isn't obvious and some of you reading this may need to stop and think). The till person then scans through the other half of the stuff, bags it and tells her how much it. The woman then looks perplexed, frowns and slowly her eyes clear and she goes into her bag, takes out her purse, finds the right money and gives it to the till lady.

The second story is this: Me and Cafferine (oops, third name) go into some posh tea / coffee shop because she wants some posh coffee. While she's buying it I get a look through the staff only door and see their staff room. On a sideboard next to the sink is a kettle, some mugs and a jar of Tesco's generic instant coffee.