i am sparticus: Words

We're Just Rebuilding

Reading a Christian magazine the other day I came across an article explaining how this year had been a time of rebuilding, renewing and reinvigorating (or something similar, I paraphrase). This isn't uncommon talk for Christian organisations to use, but even if you're not familar with the world of para-church ministry then you're probably still familiar with the language. You've certainly heard similar language if you follow a middle-of-the-table football team like all the best people do. The first season I followed Ipswich Town, Joe Royle made a big deal about how this season was a time of change and renewing, getting the new side prepared and the team working together, in preparation for the big push next year. The first season I believed him. Four seasons and the same language is being used and really, I'm not so conviced. The short of it is this; the language of renewing, rebuilding, getting the new team ready is language that's only used to explain why you're doing nothing now. It doesn't just affect middling teams either, listen to people talk about Arsenal now and they say the same thing.

I'm not saying it's ever true, but it just seems to be a bit over-used. If you're not doing well, then why don't you say so?

Wednesday The 29th

• Okay, so I'm back from Albania, a movie premiere, Sizewell, a Joint Staff Conference and Greek Practice respectively. Blogging will continue in earnest as of now.
• Last night after work in the local I tried to persuade the Polish barmaid that Communist rule wasn't as terrible as it was made out to be. While I don't think my persuasion worked, she did say that Oxford Street in the week before and after Christmas reminds her too much of queuing up for bread.
• My Nintendo Ds Lite is getting considerable abuse currently. 50 stars on Super Mario 64 DS though.
• I'm looking for houses lately and I'd like to ask some people the following question: What makes you think I'll share a house with you if you post your advert in allcaps? If you're going to shout at me over the internet and we haven't even met, heaven knows what you're going to be like if we do get to know each other.
• I've finally started uploading Albania photos! Hooray! Witty comments to follow I'm sure.
• Do you know how hard it is to buy an A5 notebook on or around Tottenham Court Road? Night on impossible. I found a Moleskine one in the end, thus fulfilling my deep desire to be as pretentious as possible.
• Speaking of pretentiousness, in the bookshop where I purchased said moleskine I overheard a discussion regarding the origin of the subjunctive into language. Gosh.
• I was also in Ipswich last weekend a fact almost worthy of it's own entry.

New Musical

Hooray for birthday money, I just purchased two Radiohead EP's and the new Foo Fighters live acoustic album. First, this is a sign that I am getting old. I didn't purchase any real new music, just old stuff, which is at the most redone. Nothing not safe and comfortable here people. Second, the US Version of Stop Whispering that appears as track one off Itch by Radiohead is the greatest thing ever. It sneaks in under your skin and destroys your mind in the most exciting way imaginable. My work rate has dropped phenomenally because I can no longer do anything but listen to it very loudly. Gosh it's good.

Which brings me to a point which¹ is probably as good as any point to finish upon. Radiohead should release a cover album of all their old songs. How good would Radiohead post-Kid A versions of Radiohead pre-OK Computer sound²? FANTASTIC, that's how good.

¹ An aside, but do you have to use commas to deliminate no essential clauses that start with which? I know you can't if you use that, but I like the idea of not using them with which because I use commas more for indicating breathes than deliminating ideas.

² You can actually hear this in action if you download a later bootleg of Karma Police. The guitars have changed and it's now so much better it makes you want to collapse in a giddy heap.

Delivering Things

Today a postman taught me how to get into a block of flats without a key.

"Oh it's easy" he said "just buzz any number then say 'Postman'."
"Really?"
"Oh yes"

Wednesday the 22nd

• I'm back from Albania, photos and witticisms to follow once I get round to tagging and uploading stuff. Ace.
• It was my birthday on Sunday! Hooray! If you all missed it boo for you. If you didn't well done and thank you! Individual thanks to follow later I'm sure.
• Speaking of which, someone sent me and ACE card that involved a play on my name being Walley. However they didn't sign it. Could someone please confess? Thanks.
• Finally, advice when reading a book in a public place; don't use a dirty dancing flyer as your bookmark.

Weather

Gosh I love the internet, half an hour before leaving the house and still to pack and bringing up Google to ask "weather in albania". Clear for the next four days apparently, just like this website.

Modem Dial Tones

This is a thought that makes me sad: We are the first and last and only generation to every know what a modem dial-up sounds like. Play that sound sixty years ago and it would be new and unheard of. Play that sound sixty years in the future and maybe if your hearing aid is in and you haven't been sent off to the near death star you'll be able to identify it, but in all probability it'll be gone. And no-one will believe you anyway, that one day you lived in a time where you had to wait for the internet to appear.

Also secretly right now I'm listening to a Postal Service song that I downloaded through an online McFly recommendation.

Dead iPod

So my iPod died today. Do you know how long it took me to order another one off the Apple Store? About 12 hours. This is because I am a weak and pathetic human being who can't cope for more than a few days without having music played into his ears at every opportunity. Ho-hum.

Update

I ordered my new custom engraved iPod at 11 o'clock at night last Wednesday. Thirty-Six hours later and it turns up at work. That's fairly decent service.

Fireworks

Last night myself and Catherine and her mum went to the fireworks down in Tower Hamlets. This in itself is probably a story as Catherine is living in Norwich and her mum in Swansea but it's probably a dull story, so whatever. These firework celebrations weren't the classic Guy Fawkes burn-the-papal-whore-ist¹ celebrations though, much to the Daily Mail reading percentage of the population's³ disgust, these were celebrations based around the Bengali folk story of the Emperor and the Tiger. The show and the fireworks were excellent, especially when they looked like they were going to set fire to the trees, but the story left something to be desired.

The plot is this. There is a greedy Emperor who decides he wants to be really rich and have a tiger for a rug so he puts up tax, the people complain and he is unrelenting. The people go to the local shaman / guru / wiseman and say "hey, he's oppressing us!"⁴ to which the wiseman says quite perceptively "hey, I'm just a wiseman". He then recommends they go speak to the jungle spirits who send a tiger to go speak to the emperor. The tiger arrives at the emperor's house with a man on his back and then when the emperor acts a bit cocky and threatens to shoot it and make it into a rug the tiger promptly maul's him. The emperor quickly sees the errors of his ways, is forgiven and they all live happily ever after.

Now the problem I have with this story is the idea that somehow being threaten by death by tiger will somehow grant anything other than a short term hypocritical change in moral nature. What, somehow the emperor is now going to cease to be proud and desiring of money because he got threaten by a tiger? The threat of a tiger has no moral efficacy in turning somehow's heart away from their proud nature. The second that tiger has gone back to it's Jungle the emperor is going to start thinking "that tiger wasn't so big, it was probably more scared of me than I was of it" and before you know it taxes are back up, oppression is in fashion and there's a large bounty on the head of all tigers.

¹ Sorry, been reading to much of the Puritans again²

² Sorry, for the 90% who don't find this funny

³ Article text here bonus points to the Daily Mail for using the phrase "political correctness gone mad" in scare quotes that weren't attributed to anyone. Good skills.

⁴ Bonus points to me for not making any Monty Python jokes! Also while I'm throwing points around, bonus points to me for not making an Idlewild reference with the title!

Stop Climate Chaos Protest

At least 50% of these people will head straight to Starbucks after this, of those 62% will feel some sort of hypocrisy about this. After some maths it seems like I'm in the 19%

Before I talk about today's Stop Climate Chaos Protest, a brief caveat: While this entry may carry on in the spirit of pointing out the things there that were comic or entertaining and ignoring the major issue of the earth and our deliberate destroying of it this is not to say that I'm not wholly in favour of changing our attitude and actions towards the earth's climate and ecosystem. It's just that it's much more fun to go to big protests to take photographs than it is to actual stand around and protest. I'm fairly certain this isn't the right attitude to go to one of these things with, but lets deal with that issue some other time. Anyway, as Simon Amstell said on stage, "You see, I'm using humour to point out the big issues that we're facing" and as someone heckled, "Well you're doing a crap job of it".

A protest about climate change under a statue of a man who burnt hundreds of wooden ships in view of a huge ferris wheel sponsored by a gigantic airline company whilst a naked amputee looks upon. I think the irony is evident in all of those things.

Overheard spoken by some middle class lady who if I was to make her into an unfair stereotype would come from a landed family, would drink Earl Grey and has a some point given her daughter a horse, "Of course, last year we got a hundred thousand people". Shortly afterwards overheard spoken by the world's mildest mannered socialist as he tried to give out copies of the Social Worker, "The Socialist Worker, ummm we'reagainstclimatechangenuclearpower and uh... thewarinIraq".

Of the signs kicking around my favourites were "Ban Lawn Mowers" (If that's not someone taking the proverbial then I'm not sure what is anymore), "Cars Suck" and "We're so worried about climate we brought our mums" (nuclear family = yes, nuclear power = no). The best actual sign were probably the Tearfund (give them your money) ones "Climate Change Hits the Poorest Hardest" which manages to reduce most of the arguments into one concise and catchy slogan. Disappointingly, I think, were all the stop the war protest slogans. I'm fully in favour of a carefully thought through withdrawal from Iraq but it seems wrong to somehow lumber it with the climate change protests. Both issues are important enough that the deserve their own space. I'm sure you can argue quite convincingly that actually the ideas are all part of the wider misgiven political ideology of the American Government and therefore should be linked in protest but I feel that's not going to help either case. I'm reminded of the Simpsons episode were Springfield is about to be destroyed by a meteor¹ and the US Government try to push through a proposal to evacuate the entire town but someone tags an addendum on that grants everyone the right to not pay tax (or something similarly dumb) whereupon the proposal is dropped.

Other things heard or seen: Simon Amstell telling a story about promising never to buy Nike shoes, but then Converse got bought out by them and now he faces an ethical dilemma or would if people knew that Converse were owned by Nike but as no-one does he can wear them with impunity (which lead to the earlier comment about humour to raise awareness of issues). KT Tunstall covering the Jackson 5 and "I Want You Back", which if she meant as a deliberate re-imagining about the world and not an ex-girlfriend is absolutely appalling. Also the Bishop of Liverpool and Razorlight but not at the same time.

It was good to see vast amounts of people though and hopefully it made a difference. More photos by me and by others and more information here.

¹ Which rather ironically doesn't destroy the town but instead burns up due to Springfield's highly polluted atmosphere.

Audiences

From the Wikipedia page about the Dawn of the Dead

The final sequences on the boat and island were shot much later (Universal Studios in California, a different location) than the rest of the movie. Preview audiences objected to the sudden ending of the original print.

More proof if needed that the only thing stupider than a human being is a group of human beings.

On advertising for housemates

Don't not put your general location, price per month or any personal details. Do not put the words LOL. No-one wants to share with someone who says the words "LOL".

XFM

John Peel's show used to have a tagline that went something like "playing stuff that you know and you like and playing stuff that you don't know and we think you'll like". I think I've worked out XFM's tagline and it's quite similar "playing stuff that you know and you like and... oh who cares, we can't be bothered, that'll do. Let's just get the songs in the top forty that were made with guitars onto a CD and stick it on shuffle and all head off to the pub".