i am sparticus: Words

Predictions For Next Year

After getting 2006 so stunningly right I thought I'd repeat the process for 2007. Bring on the FUTURE!

January

Sees the announcing of the third series of trilogies set in the Star Wars universe. There is much disappointment though when someone points out that it's not really a third trilogy, just the Godfather with lightsabers CGI'd in. Lucasarts defends itself by pointing out that the Godfather is set in the same Universe and after Star Wars so technically it's accurate. Also, it's the Godfather with lightsabers, I mean. The Godfather. With Lightsabers.

February

Ends in tears after the 29th gets wasted and fails to show up for the third year running.

March

The stock market crashes. Into it's living room wall. While playing table football on the Wii. No-one is hurt apart from some minor grazing around the FTSE, but hacks are quick to use the following words in the headlines for the next week: STOCK, CRASH, WII, FOOT, FTSE, FOOTSIE, INAPPROPRIATE CONDUCT, ECOLOGICAL DISASTER, KILLER, NEW DIANA DEATH THEORY.

April

With the release of the new Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles movie April once again becomes a popular girls name confusing people no end. "Where's April?" "Right after March!" "What's happening in April?" "Oh you know, the normal digestion process, probably some hormonal things too". I say confusing people no end, I probably mean really annoying people no end.

May

Sees the reaching of the entire year's quota for carousing. For the next seven months people have to dance while sober.

June

The sea rises up, ice caps melt and destroy, things go badly. Is announced as the winning Poem in the National Haiku competition.

July

Sees Martians invade, well, I say invade, I mean they're quite friendly really and spend lots of their money in local restaurants and make some effort to learn please and thank you in English. They leave two weeks later with four full memory cards, a bunch of tatty souvenirs and 500 human slaves.

August

Paris is invaded and conquered again. No-one owns up to it.

September

Is a peaceful month compared to the last couple. No-one gets invaded, kidnapped or enslaved. Well, apart from the regular kidnappings, enslavements and violence that happen every month and people ignore. It's amazing what human beings can ignore when they want to.

October

Sees the launch of a one-off, unique Robotron 5000xcpt, the must have kids toy. Unfortunately it's launched into space where while it becomes a crime-fighting-justice-delivering saviour of many, it doesn't get to play with little Jimmy and spends the rest of its existence feeling slightly depressed.

November

Christmas comes early.

December

World ends etc...

Merry Christmas

In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was with God in the beginning.
Through him all things were made; without him nothing was made that has been made. In him was life, and that life was the light of men. The light shines in the darkness, but the darkness has not understood it.

There came a man who was sent from God; his name was John. He came as a witness to testify concerning that light, so that through him all men might believe. He himself was not the light; he came only as a witness to the light. The true light that gives light to every man was coming into the world.

He was in the world, and though the world was made through him, the world did not recognise him. He came to that which was his own, but his own did not receive him. Yet to all who received him, to those who believed in his name, he gave the right to become children of God—children born not of natural descent, nor of human decision or a husband's will, but born of God.

The Word became flesh and made his dwelling among us. We have seen his glory, the glory of the One and Only, who came from the Father, full of grace and truth.

John 1:1-14

Sunday the 24th

It's Christmas Eve and before you get completely off your face on chocolate money read this:

• Am at my parents in Swansea now, that means free wifi, free food and free washing. Ah joy.
• Sarah Rules has posted her final photos finally. Obviously she lost as did Hayley, making me the one right and true victor. A long post explaining this all will follow surely.
• Biffy Clyro release a new single tomorrow (that's Christmas day kids), it's ace and you should stay at home bloated on turkey and buy it off iTunes. Yay!
• Also, it's Christmas, you should probably go to a late night carol service or something. There are loads, use google.

Update

• Doug won the "ask Mark a question" thing. At some point I'll explain what is the square root of cat. My answer will be fight.
• My Nintendo DS stopped recognised New Super Mario Bros the other day, wu-oh. So I blew on the cartridge and in the gap and REJOICE! It worked.

Top Five Top Five's Of 2006

It's that time of year when people have drunk and eaten too much to really care about writing anything interesting so instead they're just rehashing what they wrote all last year in list form. Of course, because everyone's on holiday there's no-one at work and so no-one reads anything and therefore everyone gets away with it and mentally promises to do better from January, and thus the circle of user-generated nonsense continues for another year. Anyway, enough with the pre-amble, on with the space-filling!

Top Five Albums (that not necessarily came out this year, though higher priority will be given to those that I did, but that I purchased this year)

• Lost - Hope of the States
• Come On Feel The Illinoise! - Sufjan Stevens
• The Eraser - Thom Yorke
• Into The Woods - Malcolm Middleton
• Silent Alarm - Bloc Party (I know, I'm a lame ass and should have had the promo-pre-release version of this on my list two years ago, but I only got around to buying it last month, so whatever)

Top Fives Things I Learnt This Year (that may not be on any news or use to anyone else other than myself, but I feel that they are worth noting due to the fact that at this late stage in the year I can still remember them)

• John Owen is a cessasionist. Possibly. Probably. I mean, he's vague and writes in confusing language and I'm only two chapters into his book on the Holy Spirit. But still, it's a book on the Holy Spirit, I should be able to work out if he's a cessasionist or not. Oh John Owen, why must you be so vague?
• Neither Ewan McGregor nor Ian McKellen live in the local square though Ian McEwan does.
• The Circle Line is best avoided. As is Oxford Street. As is Regent Street.
• No-one knows how much you should be taxed. Not even the taxman. Though he at least has a good idea that it should be lots.
• Finding a flat is going to be really, really tough.

Top Five Films (that did come out this year and that I probably therefore saw in the cinema but perhaps maybe saw on DVD instead and also that halfway through become Top Five Filmed Things because I didn't really get to the cinema much)

• Casino Royale.
• Uh... Uh... Um... Gosh, really what came out this year that was good? I think Children of Men was supposed to good, but I missed it. Alas.
• The Mitchell and Webb Look. That's Numberwang!
• Dr Who - Gosh, David Tennant is Good.
• Have I Got News For You, which is still making me laugh. I mean, not right now making me laugh, but in a general sense still making me laugh.

Top Five Places Been To (kept short because I said a lot about it at the time and saying more about it now would only confuse things)

• San Francisco was pretty
• I went to the zoo again, the zoo's pretty cool
• Hungary
• Albania
• London, Gosh yeah!

Top Five Photos I Took (with out photos to save on your loading times, but with interesting titles to make you want to go and view them)

• The hauntingly haunting type haunting figure that doesn't add to this photo of the monument which fortunately is quite good anyway.
• Shove it, shove it ASIDE
• I have no idea what happened here, but it turned up quite well
• The battle of Britain returns to Britain. But in a nice cheerful good way
• In which my Robot gets an awesome outing whilst posing spectacularly

Christmas Photo Face-Off Action #3

I forgot to lay into Hayley's and Sarah's photos last weeks. Probably for the best, because what they had coming would have made them both cry like the small little girls they are. Onwards with this weeks:

Well gosh, isn't this the sweetest photo ever. And as we all know ice skating and is intrinsically Christmassy. As are small children. And the Natural History Museum. Winner.

Even though last week was Christmas tree week, I thought I'd bring one back for this week seeing as the photo is so fantastically Christmassy that right now you're crying for nostalgia over the memory of the simple childhood pleasures of waking up at five in the morning and getting hammered on chocolate money.

Carollers? Outside a tube station? In this day and age? Why I think so!

Oops

Hello! I just had to hard reset my phone due to it being stupid. That means if you've changed your phone number in the last month or so I haven't got a record of it anywhere. Best let me know of your new number if that's alright. Probably best if you e-mail me at mark [at] iamsparticus [dot] com to avoid telling the world here.

Changing

There are a few things I thoroughly look forward to happening in the future solely because they'll ensure I'll feel like less of an idiot. Number one is getting older, because then when I say "oh yeah, so I bought series four of Buffy The Vampire Slayer on DVD the other day" people won't look at me and think "my word, he is young and immature", instead they'll say "my word, this is a man who understands the values of late 90's American TV programs and the wider ramifications in our social culture" and I'll feel all the better about myself. Similarly, number two, I look forward to when I get back my bulky full manual SLR camera so I can hold it around my neck whilst I take photographs with my compact digital camera and thereby avoiding looks that imply "what is that strange man taking photos of me for" or "this isn't a tourist site, why is this man taking photos of it" and instead get looks that say "oh gosh, he looks professional, I hope I get into the daily papers / National Geographic / Heat". Also, I think I look forward to this internet phenomenon wearing off a bit and this internet everyday-part-of-life setting in, so when I tell people that yesterday I spent half an hour writing a website entry with no discernible humour or point they won't look at me like I'm insane.

Ask Mark A Question?

ASK! VOTE! AWAIT EAGERLY AN ANSWER!

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.

Things You Can't Do In A London Park

• Use a pedal cycle under certain conditions (other than when it is parked).
• Drive over 15 miles an hour.
• Use a metal detector or any other device for finding stuff below the ground.¹
• Interfere with any plant or fungus.¹
• Have within your possession (if you're a man) anything you're going to sell.¹
• Climb a tree (or pretty much anything else).¹
• Play, or cause to be played, any musical instrument.¹
• Use any audio / visual projecting equipment, excluding quiet car radios, personal music players with headphones and hearing aids.
• Fire a gun.
• Be in Regent's Park after 6.20 at the start of October.
• Camp, erect, or cause to be erected any tent.
• Wash your clothes.
• Beg
• Give a speech outside Speakers Corner.
• Take photos for use commercially or for an activity carried out by a group of people.
• Feed or touch any Deer or Pelicans.
• Land a helicopter, except in emergency

Things you can do

• Skate on ice²

¹ Can be done with written permission from the Secretary of State.

² Cannot be done if disallowed by a notice exhibited by order of the Secretary of State or a constable.

Christmas Photo Face-Off Action #2

This weeks photographs shall all be around the theme of Christmas trees and all captioned by a fictional Victorian poet who's obsessed with the thought that he will die alone. WHAT COULD BE MORE CHRISTMASSY?

Oh lonesome Christmas tree, standing as you are outside the National Gallery. Do they not realise that you are the real picture? Alas.

Oh lonesome Christmas trees, though you are in a group, standing proud beneath the dark steel fingers of the railway sleepers of London Bridge, soon you shall be separated and cut off, sent to a house where they shall not love you. Actually, they'll probably love you a lot and you'll probably die happy. Stupid tree. Hopefull, a chimney sweep will use you for a brush. Hah, that'll teach your self-righteous evergreen self.

Oh lonesome Nelson, standing aloft on your column. Will no-one speak to you? Will no-one at least adorn your head with a festive Santa hat? Someone put a festive hat on me once, but it was street urchin doing it to distract me while he picked my pocket. Oh my aching soul. Sigh.

Wasn't that festive? Christmas trees that missed the headline on Flickr.

Christmas Smackdown 1

Sarah Wiseman: Your last photo has one of the fish saying "Que?". Clearing if you're fish doesn't understand what's going on it can't be in a very festive mode. Also, why aren't they wearing Santa hats?

Hayley Cornwell: Your last photo has plant trees in it. This would be fine if they were triangular plant trees growing out with needles and festive type decorations. If you remember the days your childhood you'll remember that LEGO made this distinction clear by only have two sorts of trees. Then they introduced bushes, and palm trees, and VINES. Danish morons what where they thinking? You can't realistically recreate what is essentially rope in plastic!

Albania (Part 3)

Alright, so the third and final post in this Albanian trilogy and I still haven't got around to making any really helpful comments about the place. I'd be a terrible travel writer, "Yeah, well, I don't know about hotels or attractions, but when I arrived in the country there was a fire at the side of the road! Wo-oah, talk about bad impressions". Whatever. I have a theory about travel writing and it goes something like this: It's a waste of time. Well, a waste of time with caveats. I mean it's a waste of time if your hope is to try and educate and inform your readers about what they should do. It's alright if you're doing it to entertain or make some money or tell witty stories (but I guess that's entertain) but as a form of writing that says "Hey you should this!" then it's fairly useless. Just because you had a fun experience trying out the Nordic baths of Huyskick does not mean anyone else will. Oh, I suppose travel guides are alright when it's all facts and no narrative, it's just the travel writing itself is useless for that purpose. The point of all this, where this is going, is that for me to sit here and try and tell you what to visit about Albania is nonsensical, I mean I was there for four days. Also for me to try and pass social comment on the place is like me passing social comment on the internet after using it for only four days. "There's loads of underlined stuff, and also, I found it hard to see the point in it all, it was rather like someone's arteries, in that I'm sure they had useful things in them, but I couldn't see it. Well, maybe not arteries, because they're red and visible, maybe more neural pathways. Sure, that's it."

So what I'll instead try to finish with is a few observations that all should read as commencing thusly; "bearing in mind that I was there for four days, didn't leave the capital for more than an hour or so, can't speak a word of the language and don't know anything, this really funny thing happened to me." I'll probably come to those few observations later though as now I don't have time. I guess the first sentence wasn't strictly true then.

Christmas Photo Face-Off Action #1

A still damp alleyway, fast marching shoppers, golden electrified snowflakes, slightly lacking in focus. All of these things combine to remind you of one thing; capitalism is tacky but effective.

And from one end of the capitalist scale to the other, I draw your attention to three things. The small malnourished teenagers. The hard cobble stones. The way the Christmas tree gently mocks them with it's undulating bows. Just out of shot: Gonzo and Rizzo discussing earnestly the criminal treatment of the poor by the rich.

Look! A star over yonder inn!
/winner

Hayley beat me to jump, which is cool, because speaking of beatings I'm going to kick both hers and Sarah's asses. Mwah-ha-ha.

Tirana

This is what I thought when I woke up¹: "This is quite a comfortable bed really". Which wasn't that surprising because actually the hotel was really nice. I didn't mention that, or the really nice meal we had with the super-friendly super-lovely couple or the extremely peaceful resolution to the road accident, earlier on because I wanted something of the reality of how I was feeling at the end of the first night to come across. I believe this is a literary effect called creative story telling, which, I think differs from lying by covering up the lying with delusion. But seriously, I really didn't like Albania that first night, it had not sold itself to me well.

Anyway, if this is an account of the amazing Albania adventure then it's not very good. After all, I haven't even got out of bed yet, so I'd better hurry this on. Myself and Phil (for that was whom I was travelling with) where shown around Tirana (that'll be the capital) by three local church going students. The city is situated on a plain surrounded on three sides by mountains and so it's all fairly flat which doesn't really help you as you try to get a picture of the city. You get places by walking or if you really enjoy using first gear you can take your time and take the car.

The transportation system of Tirana is probably best thought of as analogous to the body's circulatory system in reverse. But not the healthy sort of circulatory system as outlined in year 10 biology textbooks, the sort of system that isn't outlined because it would take up too much paper and ink and the only time they did try it they had to give up when the person modelling it didn't turn up because he got stuck in the laboratory doorway. There's high pressure as thousands of cars pile into the heart of Tirana and very low pressure as they all realise that hey, this place is full of all their friends and why should they be the ones who have to leave?

Anyway, Tirana is this big capital city of a country that was under Communist rule for forty-eight years. During that time old buildings were frowned upon and nothing new was allowed to built higher than five floors or to any semi-decent standard of build. Now new buildings are all the rage and so everything is kind of in a state of flux. Lots of new buildings going up, lots of Communist buildings falling apart and every now again a pretty old Italian style building kicking around. The mayor also has it in for multi-colours and so every new build is a mish-mash of often un-matching colours. Odd, but you get used to it.

I'm not sure I have too much to say about the buildings, you either like them or you don't. No vast conclusions here.

¹ After the standard "What? Where am I? Did I really forget to charge my phone?" nonsense.

Albania (Part 1)

It was dark when we arrived at the Mother Teresa international airport, twenty minutes out of Tirana, the glorious capital of Albania. With no street lights the only thing we could see from the back of the car was the lights of other traffic and the florescent tubes that illuminated the unfinished shopping centres that stood sentry on the road side. Occasionally we'd pass an unfinished shell of a house, all concrete and breeze blocks, where men would sit in the black of the doorways watching television and drinking beer. Once we passed by a fire on the embankment at the side of the road.

Soon we'd entered Tirana itself, a maze of towers, shopping centres and traffic. At least half-a-million people live in a city designed for a fifth of that. Through snarled up side streets, dirt encrusted roads and blaring horns we arrived at our hotel. Someone reversed into us as we were pulling up.

I read an article in the Observer one Sunday a month or two ago by a man who was riding from Turkey to the United Kingdom. He could have saved himself a few hundred words of observations about Albania if he'd just cut to the chase and said what he'd meant. It's a dump. When I went to sleep that first night, I have to confess I didn't disagree with the man.

Christmas Photo Face-Off Action

Hey Kids! You'll never guess what this Friday is? It's the first Friday in December which means it's time for the annual Christmas Photo Face-Off Action Event where myself and Sarah Rules, née Wiseman try and out Christmassify each others places of residence through the careful use of photographs (for previous antics see generally here.

Anyway, each weekend both me and the Sarah¹ will be posting our awesome photos and laying into each others in the true Christmas spirit. I'm going with mine on Sunday though in fairness I know I've won already.

¹ If you're wondering why this is news to you Sarah it's because you didn't get my e-mail, probably because it was rejected as spam for the all caps title and the frequent mention of PHOTOGRAPHY ACTION.

Update

Hayley's complained so now she's in on the action too. She's gonna get her butt kicked though, so whatever.