i am sparticus: Words

Words found on my phone

"We've sold our sense of irony to the devil for cheap thrills and the ability to dance to vanilla ice without compromising our coolness."

"A mum packing a kids lunch box 'Don't worry dear, it's ironic' A child in a cafeteria drinking from a bottle. 'dude you're so old school' "

This Is The Voice...

A conversation had in the pub

• G: "Captain Scarlet was so racist! The bad guy was called Captain Black! And the head guy was called Captain White (*). How could it be more prejudiced?"
• M: "Didn't Captain Yellow used to run a restaurant on the third floor of Cloudbase?"

Footnote

* Turns out memory served incorrectly and he was actually a colonel. But you know, whatever.

Bible Translations

Does it worry anyone else when people say "I prefer the translation in this version of the bible" as if somehow we get to choose which meaning of the bible we take based on what most appeals to us?

Christmas #1

This morning I woke up and thought, ISN'T IPSWICH CHRISTMASSY! Okay, so it wasn't my first thought, but it was only preceded by "oh dear me is that the time already?" and "I guess no-one texted me last night" and those thoughts are inextricably Pavlovianly linked with my alarm going off and my phone going on. That's how Christmassy Ipswich is, that it was my THIRD THOUGHT THIS MORNING. In fact, so confident am I of Ipswich's superior Christmas skills to Edinburgh that I'm not even going to take this first day seriously. Check it out.

Look, even with a rubbish camera phone Ipswich still fills your heart with sleigh bells and the love of mince pies.

The leave-less trees, the bold Christmas pine, the beauty of the Cornhill silhouetted against the crisp winter sky and oh my word are those Dickensian stall keepers I see before me? Core Blimey Guv! In the immortal words of The Pogues "'You’re a bum' 'You’re a punk' 'You’re an old slut on junk'"

Yes it's dark, but doesn't that just make the plaintive light of the Christmas tree shine out even stronger? Doesn't it tug at the very strings that tie your purse to your heart? Charity and a Christmas tree, what could be more festive?

Sarah posts a response / presponse. She tries hard, but if that's the Christmassy-ness of Edinburgh expressed well then I think it's safe to say I'm not going to struggle beating her puny website into submission.

Snow

Just for your information, this side of the country, it just started to snow.

Tuesday The 22nd

• Fact: Cheese on toast sticks to the roof of your mouth in direct inverse proportion to how it sticks to the toast when precariously balanced on a plate on the edge of your bed.
• Fact: What with Dr. Dre not releasing anything for a while, for the last few weeks I completely forgot about him. He should really release a record explaining what he's been up to for the last few years.
• Fact: I was going to write about Birthday Presents, but then I forgot. It'll come later.
• Fact: The Bible is True!
• Fact: Ipswich > Edinburgh

Obligatory Wish Me A Happy Birthday Post

If you wish to wish me a happy birthday, by all means do so here.

Christmas Photo Show-Off Fight

So Sarah foolishly stated that she could make Edinburgh look more Christmassy than I could ever make Ipswich. Ever quick to respond, I told her that this is obviously an untrue statement, as Ipswich is blatantly more Christmassy than Edinburgh and she lacks the necessary skillz to prove otherwise. She disagreed and even though she must know she's going to lose she saw this as a challenge. Eventual Result: Friday Christmas Photo Show-Off Fight!

So, from next Friday onwards me and Sarah will be posting Christmas photos on our own websites in an effort to prove to the world the Christmassy-ness of our adopted home towns. The rules are simple; 3 photos maximum every Friday, clever linguistic style captions are in, Photoshop tomfoolery is out. The Winner to be decided by some as yet un-worked-out-upon scheme. Whatever though, I'll win.

Update!

Sarah responds, "Not only is Edinburgh the capital of Scotland, it is also the capital of CHRISTMAS". Little does she know, the Edinburgh Christmas virgin that she is, that come the 13th of December Scottish people get so drunk on alcohol and the prospect of that Hogmanay/Hootnany thing they have at new years that they can't stand up straight enough to work. With no money coming in by the 15th of December they're all burning down their Christmas decorations to keep warm! IN YOUR FACE!

Good News Criminal Masterminds

The brand new UK Top Most Wanted Criminals In The UK Ever website is down due to the amount of people viewing it. Quick! Run out and commit crimes while no-one has access to photos of your face!

Addendum

iamsparticus.com does not endorse crimes nor the committing of crimes. Crime is wrong. iamsparticus.com also does not hold any responsibility if you commit crimes due to this announcement and then get caught. We'd like to remind the viewers of this website that the police don't use 'the internet' to track down criminals. They have better things to do with it, like read The Onion.

I'll Punch Your Line

Sometimes I feel my life consists of seeing or hearing things that make for amazing jokes, only to have the punchline ruined. After some thought I realise that to say "my life consists of..." is some what hyperbole, but then I realised that hyperbole is acceptable as it's the best figure of speech in the known 'verse (apart from maybe metaphors, which could eat hyperbole for breakfast).

Anyway, to give an example. Yesterday I was walking home and it was bitterly cold, the sort of weather in which icicles start to form on your nose and the such. As I was about half way home (opposite Clarks and Virgin Megastore) contemplating the lack of feeling in my toes I saw a police van ahead of me, with a police officer standing outside of it, which wasn't too odd except that in front of the police officer were two people, one of whom was clearly speaking very aggressively to the other and the police officer was just standing there without moving. He wasn't even looking at the town people. As I approached, things started to make sense. The aggressively speaking man was being filmed by the other man and the police officer was there presumably to be interviewed at some point. Just as I walked past the TV Presenter put his arm out and went "like this" and the Police officer handcuffed the man to himself. The camera stopped filming and the police officer smiled and reached for his keys.

At this point I would have liked the police officer to have fumbled with his keys in his big heavy gloves and accidentally dropped them down the drain. The police officer would have then looked apologetically to the TV presenter and the TV presenter would have sworn loudly. To make things even better the TV presenter could have taken off his coat to do the interview and then been unable to put it back on (due to the handcuffs). Then trying to warm himself up he would have tried to put his hands into his pocket and then dragging the police officer's hand with him, accidentally smashing his head into the police officer's.

Unfortunately the police officer managed to open the lock in one slick motion upon which they shook hands and all went home. How dull.

Cold Weather

This morning it was cold. So cold that when I woke up I didn't want to get out of bed. Which isn't a new thing, but at least it meant I had a poor excuse to stay in bed for longer. To prove how frosty it was, here is a picture I took as I left the house:

Note the significant frost on my garage roof. Also note the significant laziness that was me not going back into my house and getting my nice digital camera but instead using my phone.

On the way to work things went from bad to worst (if you live in a world where frost is a bad thing).

Not only is there frost, there is also low mist in the air! Thinking things could get no worse I proceeded to work, only to be stopped in my tracks by this horrific sight. First frost, then mist and now...

The markings on the road had started to fade! Will this fair town ever get a break?

Part Four: In Which December 25th Barely Gets a Mentioned

So to catch up with what's been said, first no-one seemed to care about Jesus' birth, then some people started to care about when He appeared on earth but decided that didn't happen till His baptism. Then some slightly less confused people started to connect celebrating when Jesus appeared on earth with his actual birth. Now some clever people realise that actually celebrating Jesus' baptism and His birth on the same day may not really be that helpful. Which means that Jesus' birthday celebrations get moved! Only they don't get moved to December 25th just yet. Rather logically given the normal order of birth and baptism, the celebration for Jesus' birthday get moved back to the night before the Baptism celebrations. So on the 5th January people stay up late (and in some cases all night) to celebrate Jesus' birth and then reconvene the next day for more celebrations, but this time of Jesus' baptism. On top of these two things other early stories of Jesus' appearing on Earth are also celebrated, so His much celebrated water into wine miracle gets a mention.

This is all very exciting, but it does make the January 5th/6th Birth/Epiphany festival quite full up and it still leads to confusion between Jesus' birth and baptism. Then in 325 AD the bishops of churches met together to discuss the on going problem of Jesus being fully human and fully God. After some deliberation they decided that actually maybe it wasn't such a huge problem and that the idea of Jesus being both fully human and fully God made quite good sense. So all the bishops go home feeling contented (apart from the heretical bishops who go home feeling, one can only hope, duly chastised and repentant) with how it all turned out only to realise that if they are going to clearly teach that God came down to earth in Jesus' conception then maybe they shouldn't be doing it at the same time they were teaching about Jesus' baptism. Being typical Christians they decided that as Epiphany had been around for a hundred years or so it was a tradition that was engraved in stone and could never be altered. Therefore the Christmas part of the festival had to be moved.

It's Your Birthday! (Well, Mine Actually)

Okay, so my birthday is on the 19th of November, which is a week Saturday. I'm going to be 22 which is a fairly non-descript age so y'know, whatever. However in case you're part of the close group of people who feel obliged by the rules of society to buy me a present here is my amazon wishlist.

Help Save iamsparticus.com

...from being drowned in a wave of unorganised information!

As promised, as of today you can tag every single entry on iamsparticus.com! Click through to the magic iamsparticus.com entry tagger read an entry, type in a whole bunch of tags in the box (like this "cows farmyard animals farmer shotgun pigs"), click submit and watch as you're swooshed off to the next entry. This way not only do you help me, but you get to catch up on past episodes of my life! Golly, the sheer joy of it all! Further guidelines are available on an entry but it's all quite simple really and strangely addictive. Enjoy!

Gimme The Keys!

Citing a failure to think through any of the reasons for giving up beer, Mark and Gareth have temporarily given up giving up beer and instead have post-poned their challenge to not drink, putting the date back to the period of Lent. As some compensation Mark has decided not to have anything more than one pint in an evening for the next month. In response to a question about the issue Mark responded "Yes of course I know Lent is 10 days longer".

Changes To The Site

So, I was mulling over what to do with this website the other day when I had a sudden realisation that it was tea time and I was hungry. A while later I realised that I had forgotten to charge my iPod and it would probably die on the way back from the pub. Some time the next day I realised that I'd left my keys at home. This made me come to the conclusion that haven't some overall wondrous strategy for this website is a bit pointless. Therefore changes to the content that's produced on this site will more or less be ZERO. Apart from I might be a bit more self indulgent, and a bit less caring about you, not so dear reader.

All that said, I did think that the organisation of this site is pretty shocking, what with no easy way to find anything whatsoever. So, with that in mind, I decided to adopt a tag based system of organisation. If you aren't web 2.0 enough to understand, this is what I mean. If you can't be bothered to follow links, it means that every post ever gets tagged with keywords. The keywords will become links and the links will go to a list of every entry that is tagged with the same thing. Clever huh?

But I can't be bothered to tag 1253 entries myself, so I've created a clever script so that everyone can join in. Coming tomorrow... Or some time this week... you get to tag this site! Oh you lucky lucky people!

Hope that makes sense! Much love and happiness!

Congratulations

Congratulations to The Royal George Pub, Ipswich! After winning the early Christmas tree award at the start of September they've gone on to win the "first decorations taken down award" after removing their Christmas tree upon completion of their building work.

9th September 2005 - 4th November 2005, a good season for Christmas trees

Beth asks about Yellow

Beth asks:
What is Yellow?

As I started to answer that question I realised I couldn't do it justice in the space of a regular entry, so for your learning and delight... An Interview With Yellow.

Wednesday The 2nd

• Apologises for not getting the next part in the series on the origins of Christmas up, at this point the history of Christmas gets even more vaguer and messier than it already has been, so it's going to have to wait till I'm in Cambridge and have access to the Ridley Hall's Library for me to really sort it out.
• As for what is Yellow? That's coming on Friday. FRIDAY PEOPLE! Ho-and-indeed-ha!
• As for new designs? What are you, my mother? (Hi mum!) In fairness I have an old design sitting on my computer and a new design in my head that I'd like to get down, but I haven't got around to it yet, what with all the heathens I've been converting attempting to convert.
• Me and Gareth are off the beer / alcohol for an entire month! MONTH! Gosh, this is just after I discovered the joys of Fuller's London Pride as well. Ho-hum.
• How come the BBC e-mails me to say that David Blunkett just resigned (which is shame but there we go) yet I still turn up to church an hour early because no-one mentions the clocks going back? Huh? Where's your technology now eh?

Rupert The Bear

In the ever growing list of travesties committed by sick entertainment companies eager to cash in on past success a new low has been reached.

When will they stop destroying our nations children? WHEN!?

(In a small after note, respect to the Goldie Lookin' Chain for saying this about Burberry's itchy lawsuit finger "What next? Are they gonna sue Rupert the Bear?")

I should also point out that Kerron posted about this entirely separately to me proving how important this issue is. Also I should point out that Hayley first told me about this story, but only because she was wasting time reading the BBC News website when she should have been doing work.