i am sparticus: Words

Monday The 31st

• Belated happy Birthday to Gareth. He was 21 last week so you know, you should go buy him a present or something.
• Speaking of which, last week I went to the beach for the aforementioned birthday. Lots of photos were taken. I now have about 100 photos on my iBook I need to organise and 200 photos I need to upload on Fickr. I never realised there was such a thing as photo overload until now.
• Speaking of which, we're going to the zoo on Wednesday for Rhiannon's¹ birthday. This will be awesome fun, but I'm slightly worried about how many photos I'm going to take. I think I need to get down with deleting things a bit more.
• Speaking of deleting things. Today is my last day in the office with CYM. So far I've cleared most of my desk (turns out it's a light sandy colour underneath) and have copied over most of my still-needed work stuff to the server. Tis a sad day.
• And in a traditional, unrelated to anything, save the most important news till last, manner, I accepted a job in Central London last Friday. So I'll be living there as of the end of August. It's an awesome job and I'm very grateful for to God to providing it for me. Hooray!

¹ Possibly. Or possibly Hayley's Birthday. Or Gareth's. Or Mine. I can't remember, there have been so many lately. And they all want presents. And I still haven't got Rhiannon's hers. Gosh.

Christian Parallels

Is the new Superman meant to be Jesus? the BBC provocatively asks. In case they're reading this the answer is 'no' but, as they point out, the new film does draw quite a few Superman-Jesus parallels.

• Stabbed in side with Kryptonite - like Jesus stabbed with spear
• Empty hospital room - empty tomb of Jesus
• Falls to Earth, arms outstretched - Crucifixion-like
• Cradled in mother's arms - like Michelangelo's Pieta
• Superman says world needs saviour
• Superman's five years in space echoes the Ascension
• Shown with weight of world/sin on shoulders¹

I think this is good of the BBC to point out, but if they tried harder they'd realise the parallels that exist with the Christian story in every single film ever. I've already pointed this out with the Matrix Trilogy but in case they need some more examples here are three more analogies that can be drawn.

Batman

God is made angry by the injustice and suffering in the world, but he has a plan to sort it all out so that's cool. Batman too is made angry by the injustice and suffering. I'm not sure he really has a plan to sort it all out, but he is cool. So whatever.

Inside Man

God has created an amazing book filled with interesting characters and revealing a fantastic way for the entire world to be saved. However, very few people have read it. Idiots. Similarly Spike Jonze has created an amazing film filled with interesting characters and revealing a fantastic way to rob a bank. However, very few people have seen it. Idiots.

Bruce Almighty

God has the power to do whatever He wants to do anytime He wants to do it. In Bruce Almighty Bruce has the power to do whatever he wants to do anytime he wants to do it. Also, both God and Bruce like dogs.

¹ Parallels that were written in after reading early Gnostic works and the Da Vinci code and then subsequently dropped when the author sobered up:

• Is a regular guy and a hero, but never at the same time
• Spoiler! hi-light to reveal: Has a secret hidden affair with a woman he gets along with and so has a secret hidden child.

Hungary: Budapest and Going

Up until 1988 all planes flying into Budapest airport where legally required to land like this. The sign carries over from those days.

So Hungary yeah? We flew out last Sunday morning, proper airport Sunday morning too. I think we flew at seven or eight in the morning which meant getting up around one to get the bus to Heathrow for a four o'clock check-in. Two things to observe here.

1. Don't even bother trying to sleep if you're getting up at one am. It's silly.
2. Costa Coffee is a terrible establishment. Why would you, when check in for ten or so flights is going to open at four o'clock have one person manning an airport check-in coffee shop at three thirty in the morning? And would you insist on only making espresso based coffees which take three years to make?

The flights were BA inter-Europe and typically good and consequentially there is nothing to remark about them. Disappointingly the same can be said about Budapest airport. It's the model of homogenous bland airport nothingness. If it wasn't for the fact you've just been in a metal tube that is propelled by air a few miles above the ground you'd have no idea you've arrived in a new country. Still, we got through the whole process quite fast.

Goodbye bland non-descript airport, Hello former Soviet Bloc!

Budapest itself is somewhat pretty. The buildings are large, old and embellished by large amounts of gothic type embellishments. French architectural terms abound. It has trams and a decent underground system, which always endears a city to me in my eyes. It also has a large area called the castle which contains not one castle, but instead thousands upon thousands of old fashioned buildings, churches, statues and turrets. It's rather more impressive than any castle could be so I'll forgive it it's misnomer. It's all fantastically pretty and if we all hadn't been so vastly tired I'm sure I'd have some better observations to make.

Which leads me to a further observation: If you fly out from an airport at seven in the morning you are in no fit state to visit one of the prettiest cities in Eastern Europe. Anything you take in will be surrounded by a haze of tiredness and any comments you make will come out making you sound like a complete and utter idiot. I know that comparing the part of the Castle that over looks the Danube to Minas Tirith is not a socially acceptable comment at any time, but tiredness seems to prevent that understanding. I also know that commenting on the angle of the placement of signs on the escalators leading to the subway and how they're angled to put you off balance as you read them¹ is not really a good topic of conversation to try to hold with a Hungarian you've just met, but again, the whole tiredness thing is a killer.

¹ Seriously, the adverts on the escalators on the London Tube are all positioned angled to the escalator rail but vertical to gravity and consequentially vertical to the way you're standing. In Budapest they're aligned to the escalator rails and therefore not aligned to how you're standing so if you try and align your head with them, or get in your head that as they should be read horizontally you should treat them horizontally you start to get off balance. An important issue I feel, but then again, I'm still quite tired.

Returned

Hello! I'm back from many voyages and franticness but as my throat's feeling a bit bad and it's ridiculously hot I may refrain from doing anything for the next few days other than sleeping, snoozing and taking naps. Photos and witty commentary to follow soon I'm sure.

Hungary

I'm in Hungary next week. Entertain me so that when I get back I have lots of witty Hungary? Why no I just ate jokes in my comments.

Ants

If you've been paying attention to the news lately you'll have heard or seen that Israel has decided to blow up various parts of Lebanon's infrastructure in response to Hezbollah taking two Israeli soldiers hostage. There are three given reasons for this. The first is that Hezbollah is a Lebanese government recognised militia and therefore the government and the whole country should be held accountable for them. This neglects the fact that the Lebanese government doesn't really like Hezbollah due to it being more an arm of the Syrian government than a force for the good of Lebanon. Also, it neglects that fact that the Lebanese government doesn't actually have a say in how they operate. So maybe a government should have a say in how the militia in it's country operate, but in this case they don't. Therefore attacking the government just ends up destabilising them and so makes Hezbollah all the stronger in comparison. Attacking is therefore not the cleverest move.

The second reason is that by blockading the ports and closing the international airport Hezbollah can't get hold of any weapons. This neglects the only border that Israel can't close. The 375 km long one with the nation of Syria who, as previously mentioned, really get along with Hezbollah and quite like supplying them weapons. Attacking is still not the cleverest move.

The third reason for the Israeli army attacking Lebanon is to take out Hezbollah. When the Hezbollah militia fire rockets over the borders the Israelis responding by launching rockets back or, if they're feeling generous, scrambling helicopters and jet fighters to level the place. This is akin to an ant somehow managing to stand up on it's ant hill and throw as stone at you and in response you crushing the ant hill with your foot. Would you kill the specific ant? Maybe. But you'd get a lot of ants so you'd never really know. Ten years ago the Israeli army launched attacks on Lebanon to root out Hezbollah. In the space of a few weeks they managed to kill around 150 Lebanese civilians, dozens of Syrian and Lebanese soldiers and probably a handful of the Hezbollah militia (I seem to remember at the time that even the Israeli government placed the number of militia killed at under twenty, while the Lebanese government where placing it nearer five). Attacking is still not the cleverest move.

Och

As reported yesterday I arrived home to three shiny new albums. Thom Yorke's The Eraser, Malcolm Middleton's Into The Woods and Hope Of The States' Left. Here would follow my attempt to persuade you to buy them all, but I've only listened to one of them through more than once, so I can't with any real authority try to persuade you. So instead of that, here is a brief note about Scottish people and swearing.

You see, what I've observed so far from the Malcolm Middleton album so far is that it's very very good, but he does swear and awful lot on it. And not just mild explicatives either, full on "never mind my own grandmother, I wouldn't say that to anyone" swear words. But, you don't really notice it. When English people swear it generally sounds quite forceful, they wouldn't normally say anything like that but they want to offend in this case and so they're using it. It's not a nice thing to hear. When Americans swear it sounds much more normal but it still manages to be offensive. I imagine this is because with Americans offensive and acting normal are tied together. Irish and Australians manage to swear and not be offensive but only because their dialects seem to understand the swear words as semantically meaningless and so therefore they're only used as filler words or as a word that can describe anything¹. In Scottish though, the meaning of the word is kept, but the offensiveness is not felt personally. I don't know what it is about the Scottish accent or dialect, but somehow when someone swears using it they also seem to imply that you shouldn't be getting your panties in a twist over what are just a few words.

I'm not encouraging the use of swear words but it'd certainly be an interesting experiment to see someone rate the offensiveness of swear words by the accent of the person who said them. This may sound like the least practically useful study ever, but actually uses for this abound. An example: Instead of bleeping out words of songs or TV shows they could just dub them over with a Scottish person saying the words. Imagine watching Trisha with the unhappy participants jumping into Scottish every few words.

ftn1. Technically these sorts of words are known as Speech Disfluencies and Metasyntactic variables respectively. God bless, Wikipedia.

Monday The 10th

At the Driving Theory Test Centre:

"Woman": "Uh, is Mark Wa-lley Here? Mark Walley?"
"Me": "Hi, yes"
"Woman": "Sorry how do you pronounce your last name? Whale -e? Wall -e? Walley?"
"Me": "Walley"
"Woman": "Oh wow! My son used to be called Walley at school. Although it wasn't his real name, just a nickname some people gave him."
"Me": "Oh."

At the Sandy Beach

Ha, I went to Frinton last week. Frinton is place that has that beach with lots of sand. Jealous? I think you might be.

At the Shingle Beach

There is a rule guideline concept in photography that says you should take photographs as if you've split up the photo into thirds horizontally and vertically and then you should put natural lines or things interesting along these imaginary lines. I spent at least ten minutes at another beach on Wednesday getting this photograph to perfectly aline along those lines. This therefore is scientifically the best photo ever.

At the Printing Press

I got interviewed a few months back about what I, as Christian youth worker, though about Scientology. It got published the other day and it's now online. Here is the part where I label Scientology a cult: 'When I asked Mark if he thought Scientology is harmless he replied “No, it seems to have the characteristics of a cult. New members often don’t know what they are embarking on; the truth is hidden from them.” Mark compares this with the way Christianity is presented, “it’s very open, and questions are welcome. No one is led into a false sense of security. If you try to hide the truth of a religion, it becomes cultish.”' Here is the part where the quote ends right before I start on about justification by faith: '[Scientology appeals because] it’s something that we achieve, something we discover.'¹ And here is the bit where I my wise words are quoted 'consider Mark’s words of wisdom'.

At the Drive-In

Thanks to "Thank you for all your hard work over the last few years" Amazon vouchers recently received today I should go home to the new Thom Yorke album, the new Hope of the States album and the last Malcolm Middleton album. Winner.

¹ In context the quote makes more sense. Also, I think I've learnt that it doesn't help in interviews to try and steer the questions around to what you want to say unless you do it really well. Inevitably they'll quote the bit where you try and steer the question away because at that point you're still talking about what they want you to talk about.

Survivors: Why?

Time for more bad theology! If you've missed the start of this new gripping and exciting series, go read the first one here . Over the next few weeks we'll be taking an important journey through the horror that is this Survivor book. And as with any good literary review we'll start by asking the question "why have the authors written such abomination as this?" The author here is a man named David McKay writing under a pseudonym, part of a group of people naming themselves "The Jesus Christians", the reason they have written this book is to try to correct the wrong they see portrayed in the Left Behind series. They don't believe that the Left Behind writers have written their books because they want people to know the truth, they reckon that the reason the Left Behind series has been written is because the authors wanted to make a lot of cash. The authors of the Left Behind series don't really believe what they write, they've just picked the most sell-able theology. In the introduction to the Survivors book they state that the Left Behind series is set "at a time when the mass media is monopolised by materialistic forces that seek to distort the truth. We believe that this is already the situation in the world of religious entertainment. In order for a book to sell in a really big way, certain important truths (truths which are uncomfortable, ad hard for the masses to accept) must be left out." And again, "I could (as others have done) make millions of dollars by altering the facts in order to give the public what they want to hear".¹

Part of the reason the Jesus Christians can't believe the Left Behind writers actually believe what they're writing is that they can't understand how anyone could read the Bible and come to any conclusions other than their conclusions. After all, how can anyone honestly read the Bible and come to believe anything other than the one true correct theology of the Jesus Christians? The problem here is one of how to read the Bible. The dispensationalist school of interpretation, to which both the Jesus Christians and the Left Behind writers belong, teaches that you have to take the bible as literal except when a literal reading is not possible (the expression commonly used is 'understood plainly unless it would do violence to the text', which is a fantastic expression and one that needs to be used more often). And that leads to the question; how do you work out what is literal and what is not possible to be literal? If I read "For He has founded it [the world] upon the seas, And established it upon the rivers" (Psalm 24:2) and then do not believe that the world rests upon water have I done violence to the text and disobeyed God's word? If you go around teaching that the bible must be understood as literal whenever possible then at some point you have to arbitrarily decide what is not possible to count as literal and at that point your own personal ideologies and viewpoints start to dictate how you interpret the bible because you have no other guideline. An example?

Revelation 7:4 reads "And I heard how many were marked with the seal of God-144,000 were sealed from all the tribes of Israel." The Survivors authors see this text as obviously literal in the number of people who are marked by God towards the end of the world, however the part about the tribes of Israel can't be taken literally because the different tribes of Israel don't exist any more. In their book, as we'll eventually see, they give the name of a tribe to each of the 12 geographic groups they divide the world up into. The Left Behind writers take a different approach saying that the 144,000 should be read as the literal number of people marked and sealed from all the tribes of Israel that God will reform from the Jews on the earth towards the end of the world, however they'll be more non-Jews outside of those twelve tribes who get marked. The difference between the two views doesn't arise because out of a different understanding of God's word, it arises because the Left Behind writers (following their right-wing American politically-conservative Christian tendencies) like the present Jewish nation of Israel whereas the Survivors writers (following their left-wing Commonwealth politically-liberal Christian tendencies) don't like the present Jewish nation. And so both their literal readings end up miles apart, because they failed to realise that reading a text as understood plainly varies greatly depending on what's plain for you. If it's plain to you that modern day Israel is great then you'll read that into it and if it's plain to you that modern day Israel is bad then you'll read that into it. And if that's not doing violence to the text then I don't know what is.

¹ As an aside, how bitter does McKay sound here? "I could have made millions of pounds, but I took the moral high ground and therefore really I'm wealthier where it counts even if I do have to sleep on my mates floor while they drink Shiraz a non-alchoholic fruit based drink from crystal glasses."

In Pictures

"Taking photos of beach huts and fishing debris? My word Mark you're the most original photographer ever!" (Anon)

Yesterday we went to Felixstowe. This is a recurring theme in my life and I'm starting to get deja-vu whenever I arrive there but at least this time we parked at the nice end. The reason for turning up was that it was Hayley Cornwell's birthday and of all the things in the world she could pick to do she decided that we'd all go to the beach.

Here are all the amazing things that can happen on a mild July early evening on a British shingle beach: Swimming, pebble-skimming, eating cake, feeling rather cold, mocking someone for having their primary school swimming badges on their beach towel, taking photos of the sea and beach huts, debating the sanity of people swimming and playing 'is the tide coming in or going out'. For the record I was in the group debating the sanity and the tide was most definitely going out. Also both me and Paul managed to get skimmed stones to bounce thrice although there is no hard evidence to prove this.

That's your present she's opening right now. See the look of confusion on her face? That's because you thought it'd be clever to wrap it across seven different dimensions and now she can't open it. See what happens when you bend the laws of physics?

Some point later, Hayley gotten given what seemed like far too many presents for one person. I won't list all the amazing things she got because that's her job and lets face it, you wouldn't be that interested in reading them. Needless to say though, my present was the best.

After that we all walked down the beach to the tacky part of Felixstowe, the bit that reminds you of that time you were at that carnival and ate all that candy-floss then went on The Giant Gyroscope of Wildly Spinning Fun (now shutdown). Only being able to take so much garishness we quickly made tracks towards the warm indoors of The Pier whereupon our retinas promptly overloaded. Despite our partial¹ blindness² (or perhaps because of) we were soon spending all our 2 penny pieces trying to win a variety of exciting prizes, not least more 2 pennies. Not particularly impressed by my own skill at dropping coins into slots, I decided to branch out and see if I still had any gifting with the mechanical grabby arm machine. Forty pence, two goes and one Bagpuss stuffed toy later and my skill remains. Win.

Just out of shot, Three Ford Escorts with customised body kits, two overflowing wheelie bins and a kebab shop.

¹ My eyes rebooted in good old fashioned 256 colour after a short while.

² This is a lie.

Bible

My NAS Bible fell apart the other day, the troubles of getting a hardback bible I suppose. But it brought to a head some of the issues I've been wrestling with with my Bible. The translation is very very close to the original Greek and Hebrew in language and grammar which while nice for studying makes it nigh on un-readable over any period of time. There's a point about two paragraphs in when the part of the brain not frantically re-arranging words into an understandable order starts to tell you that maybe, just maybe it'd be nice to have a Bible that you can read. Also, I have some issue that while the NASB may capture the meaning of the words, it misses out on the tone of it, which I suppose means it misses out on the meaning.

After some deliberation and reading 1 John in a bunch of translations, I'm buying an ESV with some Amazon vouchers. I know this is a sell out, because all the cool reformed kids have ESV's and it's the fashion (it's the Converse hi-tops for the truly reformed) but it's a very nice translation and actually surprisingly readable. It's a slippery slope though, If I start buying "I ♥ J I Packer" t-shirts and going to seminars entitled "Why Paul never explicitly stated the 5 points¹ and other awkward questions" feel free to push me down some stairs and claim divine sovereignty on it.

¹ Don't ask. Really.