i am sparticus: Words

Defective

At the Apple store today there were a group of protesters from defective by design standing around outside and giving out flyers while dressed up in hazmat suits. I'm in two minds about this. On the one hand as an Apple fan I felt it was a bit unfair to pick on Apple as they're hardly the ones pushing hard for DRM. It would have made far more sense to protest outside the Warner Brothers, Disney and Sony stores as they're the ones who love DRM so much. Or stand outside of HMV and Virgin and praise people for not succumbing to online music but rather staying with un-encumbered (you hope) CDs. But on the other hand they did put on a good display, seemed very good-natured and most importantly didn't try and make me feel guilty whilst displaying photos of lobotomised kittens to small children. Kudos for that then.

Squint

Seen at the Tate Modern:

I don't know how much they paid for this but I imagine it was a lot. Stupid when you think that I had a whole book of these when I was twelve. Apologies for the blurred photo; if it makes it impossible to work it out then don't worry it was just a not very good pair of dolphins.

Patrick Swayze

I said last post that whoever was famous inside the theatre was about to come out on the street when I walked past (or I was going to till I re-edited it). This isn't strictly true. What happened was this; I was walking up the back streets of the West End to avoid going up Regent Street directly when I saw a group of women hanging around outside the back of a theatre by some big sturdy looking gates. Thinking that this being central London, they're probably waiting for some famous celebrity type person and what better do I have to do than stand here for ten minutes or so till they come out. After all, I reasoned, either ten minutes from now I could be texting everyone to tell them the exciting story of the celebrity I saw or ten minutes from now I could be texting everyone to tell them "hey, guess what, I'm five minutes from being home?" So I found a convenient set of steps to stand upon and stood around to wait. And wait. And wait. It turns out famous people take a long time to leave after performing onstage.

Patrick Swayze? He's worse than a beaten up car.

As I'm waiting an ever increasing number of people start turning up. And by people I mean women in denial about the fact that they're middle aged. So I'm standing towards the back of a crowd of middle-aged women holding my camera waiting for some unknown celebrity to walk out in the hope that they're worth holding on for. A guy walks out of the Italian restaurant and comes over to me and asks me "who is everyone waiting for?" and I say "not a clue, I just happened to be walking past and thought I'd see what was going on". Which is a bit of a lie really, because judging by the age of everyone involved and going on my limited knowledge of what's showing in the West End right now and from the amount of people holding programmes for Guys and Dolls I'm guessing it's actually Patrick Swayze who everyone is waiting for. Who is a good sighting by any measure, but not the sort of person as a young guy you want to be caught standing around for half an hour waiting for.

Le Patrick Swayze? Il Es Mer.. (ah multicultural London)

Anyway, standing around on a street in central London at any time of the day isn't that interesting, but fortunately the reaction of passers-by to this mass of people was quite interesting. Generally they fell into three sorts of categories; one group asked who was coming out and decided to hang around and join in the waiting, one group asked who was coming out and decided to express loudly their disdain for Patrick Swayze and the last group where those who were incredibly wasted and couldn't decide anything including which way up was.

And then Patrick Swayze came out and it turns out he's neither taller nor shorter nor fatter nor thinner nor older nor anything else than you imagined. He's pretty much an identical replication of the man you see in movies on Channel 5. In fact the only difference with the TV Patrick Swayze is that the real life one is actually real and reflects that. Patrick Swayze, metaphorically exactly the opposite of all the pictures that appeared on the menu in the kebab shop you went to last night.

So I took a photograph of his face and left.

Celebrity Spotting

I was going to post one of those "something the somethingth" posts all about my wonderful life and these terrible photos I took but it turns out I haven't got long enough to flickr all the photos. So instead here's just one photo. Points to whoever can tell me who all these women were waiting for:

De Tat?

So Thailand has suffered from it's first coup d'etat in 15 years¹ and it's all going rather peacefully. No-one has died, the press has been left relatively free and the deposed government are free to come back to Thailand as regular, albeit now un-employed, citizens. Better yet² they'll be elections for a new government in under two weeks. Which got me thinking, maybe having coup d'etat's every 10 or 15 years is a far better way of doing things than the current system.

Ideally what would happen would be this, someone is elected prime-minister for an indefinite period of time. He, together with his cabinet, have a fair amount of power. After four years in office the chief general in the land starts rolling two dice every week. If he hits two sixes it's time for a coup. If there's been no coup for six years he starts rolling every morning. Eventually some way they'll be a coup and when there is everyone gets a two week holiday as the country shuts down. Then after two weeks elections are held and if the people still like the old government they can vote them back in. The element of randomness will keep both the government and the opposition on their toes and everyone can look forward to a two week holiday.

Obviously this system wouldn't work if a corrupt government got in, so we'd have to introduce some control type system whereby if enough people txted in saying they wanted the government out then there would be a forced coup. This would keep everyone happy.

So in summary, living in fear of a military take-over = excellent.

¹ Previous coup d'etat's in Thailand; the 1932 absolute to constitutional coup, the 1947 democracy-is-involved-in-regicide coup, the 1976 democracy to bloody revolution coup, and the 1991 brief period of military law coup. There was also a revolution in 1973. Impressively the same monarchy has managed to remain more or less the same through all this.

² Well, better than a free press and a lack of punishing the old government. Not really better than no-one dying though.

Ask Mark A Question 10 Billion

Fill in the blanks:

The winner is the real Phil Brown and how many mickles make a muckle? with 2 votes. The poll is now over, stay tuned for the answer.

The Three Classic Questions In Youth Work

There are three classic questions in Christian youth work.

So I don't know what these questions are but I'm fairly sure there are three of them. There are three of pretty much everything Christian. Of course, there's the off chance that there are actually five classic questions, but then if there are five there are probably more and so they'd probably be best described as the top five most asked questions in youth work. Then again, as I'm clearly talking about something I know little about, there could only be one question, but then this would logically be 'the ultimate question in Christian youth work'. However, I think that, on balance, if there is going to be only one ultimate question then I can probably tell you the answer already. It's "because". Or possibly "Jesus".

So there are three classic questions in Christian youth work. Any suggestions?

New Apple Stuff

So Apple released new stuff today and obviously being a huge Apple Fanboy I'm incredibly excited. However, the following quote makes me field quite weird. Bear in mind twenty two years ago Apple released this famous 1984 inspired advert

From the Apple Media Event

Apple is in your den
Apple is in your living room
Apple is in your car
Apple is in your pocket

In other news, the new version of iTunes has coverflow built in, the bestest looking to use OS X app in a long time. w00t.

London Tourism Day Three Addenum

I walked back through Grosovenor Square, a small and surprisingly tasteful garden that, due to it's proximity to the American Embassy, has American memorials in it. Taking pride of place is a statue of Franklin D. Roosevelt (not to be confused with Franklin W. Dixon), my favourite American president of all time. Which got me thinking, who is your favourite American president of all time and why? And also, can you name the only four surnames that have been shared by more than one president? And also, can you name all of the Hardy Boys books in which they dealt with smugglers and buried treasure?

London Tourism Day Three

So, today brings more tourism and my witty recounts of London thereby revealed by it. Or something, I remain sorely unconvinced that that last sentence made any sense whatsoever, nor on balance, this one. Gosh this is the worst start to someone's website I've ever written in a long time. On with the tourism!

Four jumpers, one ball and a bunch of people. That's all you need.

Last week I cut short my visit to the country-running end of Westminster¹ so I figured that this would be a good as place to start as any other, that and I had a meeting in The Strand² last week and the area around there looked worth a visit.

If you arrive through the Westminster underground, the first thing you notice is that just in front of you are views of the Houses of Parliament, Westminster Chapel, The London Eye, Big Ben and Westminster Bridge that are all obscured by thousands of tourists. Now, I can't really feel angry about this seeing as I am one of them but it does spoil the opportunity to get many great photographs. Also it's harder to think of witty comments to write on your website when you're being constantly jostled in seven different languages. Hooray for whoever laid out the roads around Parliamentary Square then!

Parliamentary Square is the square that sits in between Whitechapel, Westminster Abbey and the Houses of Parliament. It's green and square like, contains lots of statues and due to some management / design type fluke it's completely inaccessible to the public unless you want to run across at least four lanes of traffic. If you've ever travelled to a major city abroad and been confused by the local traffic system then you'll understand why with a thousand tourists milling around there were just ten people sitting in Parliamentary Square. Nine of the ten people were all looking rather smug and eating their lunch, the tenth was a Japanese gentleman who looked rather distressed and was trying to eat his camera³. It's almost a shame that the square is so inaccessible because it's full of statues of really interesting famous people. Like Churchill and Ian Christian Smuts, Viscount Palmepston, Derby, Beaconsfield and Peel. The last one was actually on a pedestal that was revolving at around 33rpm, but I think it would have sounded better at 45rpm. And so with two badly thought out jokes written in my head I left Parliamentary Square and proceeded over Westminster Bridge to the South Bank.

Rather obviously The South Bank is the name for the Southern bank of the Thames, generally the area's restricted to the bit between Lambeth Bridge and London Bridge or Tower Bridge. It's quite artsy and pretentious, but quite enjoyable too. Some quick notes on various things on that side of the river.

• Lambeth Palace is the house of the Archbishop of Canterbury, the head of the Church of England⁴. It's a rather out of place building and it seems rather daunting and inaccessible, I certainly couldn't see an obvious way in. So uncharacteristic of the Church of England.

• The BA Eye is remarkably impressive. I'm sure I'll go on it soon and let you know how it goes then.

• There are lots of street performers on the wide boulevard between Westminster Bridge and the London Eye, some are quite interesting and try and grab the audiences' attention with clever ideas. A large percentage of them though just spray-paint themselves silver or gold and then pretend to be statues that only move when money is put into their tip jar, effectively making them really lazy mime artists. Has no-one ever told them that statues as a fairly universal rule don't move when paid and that also, generally speaking, statues aren't made out of silver or gold but stone? And also has anyone told them that, as a golden law inshrined in the head of everyone good and true, mime artistry is the most vicious and evil way of earning a living outside of professionally drowning puppies?

Next week: London's worst jobs!

¹ Westminster isn't just the parliamentary/state type bit, it's the name for one of the two city's that exist inside London, the other is helpfully called 'The City'. For practicality's sake it's treated like most other boroughs of London which are much like counties in the rest of the country (The City is different though, it is treated as practically autonomous from the rest of London). Westminster borders the Thames on the South East edge, and runs from the West End in the East to the Eastern half of Hyde Park in the West. Confused?

² On that list of places to visit I've got Vine Street, Bow Street and Pentonville Road left and then, hotels on everything!

³ I joke! Realistically he could have been from anywhere in East Asia.

⁴ Technically the Queen is the head of the Church of England, but you know what I mean. Well, really technically, God is, but you know what I mean.

Thursday the 7th

• I just saw Volvér. Yeah. It's not all that.
• Helen today in the park saw a famous celebrity chef whilst training for the Great North Run. It's a really witty story which I'll tell you some point but it's probably not this time.
• Work continues well, however my desk / office / cubby hole is dull. I want something for my walls, and if you truly love me, you'll send me something awesome of postcard size to stay on the wall. E-mail me for my address or give it to me on Sunday when you see me.
• Sunday? That reminds me, there's YALPFM¹ at Dave Hannah's on Sunday evening at 7 if you want to come. It'll be swell. I'll be there for three whole hours. I have witty stories to tell about celebrity chefs and rock stars.
• Having made significant amounts of Ikea furniture on Sunday I realise I no longer need to buy Lego. Think about it.

¹ Yet Another Leaving Party For Mark

New Job

As you probably know I don't like writing about work, or generally my life, in anyway that really reflects it. Usually things are based around anecdotes not real events. So I don't want to break with that tradition and tell you anything about my first day at my first real paid job, but I will say this; we have the coolest garden veranda on the roof with a picnic table to boot!

Banksy Alters Paris Hilton's CD

From the BBC, Banksy has gone and altered a whole bunch of CDs of Paris Hilton's new album. What I like about this story is not that it is a particularly witty or clever stunt, because picking on Paris Hilton never is, but the record store's reactions. Bearing in mind that 500 CDs have been mis-sold to customers this is what HMV had to say:

"I guess you can give an individual such as Banksy a little bit of leeway for his own particular brand of artistic engagement."

and Virgin Megastores:

"I have to take my hat off - it's a very good stunt,"

I'm not sure whether the reaction is so because they like Banksy so much or perhaps more likely, they dislike Paris Hilton so much.

London Tourism Day Two

Yesterday I headed to the West side of Central London and starting from Hyde Park wandered down towards Whitehall. If you like parks, memorials and the Royalty then this is exactly the journey for you. For the record, I like open spaces and think the Queen's alright.

The Serpentine is so named after the man who built it, Roger Serpentine. Sometimes facts are just dull.

The first thing you notice about Hyde Park is that it's got Diana's name written all over it. Literally, you walk in and there are big ungainly metal signs on the pavement pointing out directions to take on the Diana, Princess of Wales memorial tour, there are signs pointing to the Diana, Princess of Wales Memorial Fountain and signs to Kensington Palace, one time home to Diana, Princess of Wales. There are probably little displays highlighting how wonderful Diana, Princess of Wales really was but I think I ignored them in favour of not becoming even more cynical. I wonder if in a few hundred years time people will come back through the various London parks and ask questions like "Who is that in memorial to?" and they'll say "Oh, that's in memorial to Wellington, his military cunning and leadership defeated a general bent on conquering all of Europe" or "Well that's for Florence Nightingale, who went and looked after hundreds of soldiers when no-one else would" and then they'll get to the first Diana related memorial product and ask the same question and they'll stay that it's to Diana and tell of all the important and valuable stuff she did and then they'll get to the next memorial and ask the same question and they'll give the same response. And so forth for the rest of the park.

Speaking of Diana Memorials, the actual Diana Memorial Fountain is a pretty clever affair in real life. Okay, so it's a bit dull being effectively a concrete circle set into a sloping bit of grass with water being pumped around it, but the way the water flows around it and changes speed and ferocity is quite pretty. I imagine it'd make a good, if somewhat disrespectful, log flume. The question that really bothered me while I was there though was that if I was to set two sticks off against each other at either side of the top, how long would it be before I got thrown out?

In between Hyde Park and Green Park (the park that contains Buckingham Palace) there's a five lane roundabout, and in the middle of that there is a small plot of land which contains pretty much every statue and memorial that no-one else wants. Or something like that. It seems that at some point during the redesigning of London's traffic system a lot of memorials that stood at the entrances to different parks had to be moved and a lot of them seemed to end up in this no-man's land. There's the Wellington Arch which had atop a statue of Wellington and inside London's smallest police station¹ until it was moved whereupon Wellington was removed and so were the police. There's the memorial to the artillery units in the Two World Wars, which is a very impressive memorial indeed and quite sobering when you realise just how many people died in just one section of the army. There's also a memorial to the Australians who fought in both World Wars and is by all account how a memorial should be made these days, very grand and very representative of exactly who fought and when and why. Apparently it's normally obscured by water running over the face of it to symbolise the wear of time or something, mercifully the pumps seemed to be broken though and it could be viewed properly. Then there's my favourite monument, a statue of Wellington on horse back looking very determinedly at something in the distance. Unfortunately it's been placed in a rather perverse location, which gives Wellington the distinct impression that he's about to declare war on an oak.

I then realised I had spent far too much time thinking of witty comments to say about statues and was therefore running late for my appoint with the bank. So I pretty much ignored Buckingham Palace, most of Whitehall and Big Ben (aside from taking the obvious photos) and got the underground home.

¹ The first is not inside Marble Arch, as is sometimes thought but rather in Trafalgar Square. Marble Arch is probably the third smallest.

How Many Youth Leaders Does It Take To Change A Lightbulb?

Q) How many youth leaders does it take to change a lightbulb?

A) I don’t know. But as long as they don’t do it with a member of the opposite sex in a room with the door shut it doesn’t matter. (from and inspired by Matthew)

Q) How many youth leaders does it take to change a lightbulb?

A) Two, one to change the lightbulb and one to moan at the PCC over the lack of lightbulb funds.

Q) How many youth leaders does it take to change a lightbulb?

A) One. There can only be one youth leader. No-one else can put in the effort or take the responsibility for these young people. No-one else can be trusted with their salvation and growth.

Q) How many youth leaders does it take to change a lightbulb?

A) Two, One to change the lightbulb and one to tell the young people not to have sex.

Q) How many youth leaders does it take to change a lightbulb?

A) One, however there aren't any lightbulbs left because they were all used in trying to make the biggest tower out of ordinary household objects.

Q) How many youth leaders does it take to change a lightbulb?

A) Two, one to change the lightbulb and the other to give a short talk about how once there was only a lightbulb which glowed brighter than any other lightbulb, and it never blew up or was the wrong wattage. And that lightbulb's name was Jesus and he really wants you all to not have sex. I mean have eternal life.

Q) How many youth leaders does it take to change a lightbulb?

A) Change! Hooray! Finally we're dragging this place into the 21st century.

Q) How many youth leaders does it take to change a lightbulb?

A) Two, one to change the lightbulb and one to hold the ping-pong table they're standing on still.

Q) How many youth leaders does it take to change a lightbulb?

A) One, and he does it really quickly, everyone knows being alone in a room with no light is tantamount to a sin. I mean sex. I mean sin.

Q) How many youth leaders does it take to fit as many lightbulbs as possible into their own mouth?

Q) How many youth leaders does it take to change a lightbulb?

A) Five. Two to start a Friday night discipleship group, one to start a sport's ministry team, one to meet with young people one-to-one and one to do some schools work. With all that in place they can empower a young person to do it for them.

Q) How many youth leaders does it take to change a lightbulb?

A) Lightbulbs! Who cares about lightbulbs when some of the young people might be having sex!?!