i am sparticus: Words

Greek News

I slept in today, so I missed Greek. I wasn't feeling very funny today so it's probably for the best.

In the Air

The flight was BA and as such pretty blissful. I sat at a window and saw the Alps and felt the turbulence, and got fairly poor food (since when does a two and a half hour flight only get you a sandwich?) but then we landed and all amiss again.

There are a multiple of bad things about arriving at a country via an airport, but my current favourite is reserved for those countries inside the EU. Formerly, arriving into an EU country was beautiful, you turned up, waved your passport and walked through while all the other poor nationalities outside of Europe (and the Norwegians) had to queue forever. However, due to the complicated labour / visit / ratio / number confusion that concerns certain newer Eastern European countries inevitably the previously under-worked EU passport control officer now finally has something to do and do with, at least a this terminal, a certain perverse joy.

It wasn't till the train station did Italy start to feel like a genuine foreign country, when a double-decker train pulled into the platform covered in graffiti and, in my head at least, throwing out copious amounts of steam upwards into the 19th century station roof. And when hundreds of Italians spewed out of the train grabbing their bags and speaking so fast that I couldn't stand to hear the sentences, let alone the words, I was very happy.

And then my train turned up and it was new and sleek and made of sharp plastic bits and looked nothing like another country and I was sad again. But only till I found out that the door handle to get into my carriage was broken and someone asked me if they could sit next to me in a foreign language.

In The Airport Departure Lounge

So much for super-early booking in online and choosing your seat. I got moved due to a technical issue. If it wasn't for the five minute process of booking in, the skipping of a thirty-forty minute queue and the general peace of mind it gives you, I'd be fuming. I still will be if I find a Mr Son of the Head of IT-In-Charge of Online Booking Systems in my seat.

Queuing up to get food at some Wetherspoons type pub and I see the latest (possibly) Jennifer Lopez (possibly) video. In it she bursts into a nightclub, shoves a woman down some stairs, pushes a guy off the dance floor, gets a bunch of women to cheer on her sexually explicit dance routine, stuffs money in the mouth of some bloke, kicks another, bursts down a door, bursts down another door, and then in an unexpected twist, rescues a child stuck in slavery in the kitchen. Who would have thought she wasn't the bad guy? I can only imagine the conversation between her people and the music video people "we want something that says 'J-lo is against child slavery'" "okay" "and men exploiting women" "uh-huh" "and for doing really sexual dances while wearing very little" "right..."

Holiday Snaps

I was very grateful to meet a woman in Italy who had left her camera battery at home, it made me feel a lot better about taking all my photographs in ISO 800 by accident. Bother.

Friday the 19th

• When checking in to British Airways flights online, it is worth hitting refresh every ten seconds until it opens up.

• Re: Above, I'm in Rome for the weekend. Expect no updates while I'm gone.

• Re: Above, you probably weren't anyway.

Partial Transcription of Lectures on a Christian Response to the Current Plague of the Undead Especially Concerning the Particular Terror Towards the Zombie (part 4)

"On killing them? As I have just spent an hour arguing that the soul leaves the corpse on death, whether to be with Christ or await damnation, I can only presume you mean the practicalities. Remove the head."

Lectures on a Christian Response to the Current Plague of the Undead Especially Concerning the Particular Terror Towards the Zombie - Rev. Dr F.H. Graves

Greek Update

Today the only funny thing I could think of to say in greek followed "Mark":markmeynell.wordpress.com/'s answer to his own question of "which country is shown on the side of his mug?"

Mark: "Uganda!"
Me: "No, she left of her own accord"

However I didn't say this because I know, that only I would have found it funny.

Partial Transcription of Lectures on a Christian Response to the Current Plague of the Undead Especially Concerning the Particular Terror Towards the Zombie (part 2)

On Werewolves

"Werewolves are not zombies, nor even undead, and so outside of the scope of this lecture, but as you have asked so politely...

"The common werewolf can only transform at most thirteen times a year. They abhor crowded and busy places and will happily eat a cow or a sheep as a man. Given the low number of werewolf sightings, which due to hysteria is probably much inflated, and the common-sense measures any man can take at full-moon, the chances of being bitten by a werewolf, and bitten enough to start they lycanthrope process in them, is so low as to make the fear of it laughable. If government practice was to provide secure accommodation for werewolves during the full-moon as opposed to their current failure of a policy we could cure the disease within a few generations. Let us worry about graver threats"

Lectures on a Christian Response to the Current Plague of the Undead Especially Concerning the Particular Terror Towards the Zombie - Rev. Dr F.H. Graves

Sample

Theft

Last night by laptop and iPod got nicked from work. Hopefully some insurance somewhere will cover it, and I've got a complete backup from last week (God bless SuperDuper!) but obviously it's frustrating and slightly worrisome as insurance may not cover it. In case anyone has the presence of mind to google, my iPod had "God Loves His Children" engraved on the back. If you have it, well, let me know.

Still, let us not be sad, not today of all days, not on Radiohead day

Partial Transcription of Lectures on a Christian Response to the Current Plague of the Undead Especially Concerning the Particular Terror Towards the Zombie (part 1)

"Of all the undead Zombies are the only type to hold any real grip on the Christian conscience. With large amounts still unknown about the general process of zombification and the consequential debate upon the nature of the soul in a zombie the fear of being turned plays large on the mind of a believer. This is due in part to some theologians speculation that the soul remains in the body at the point of undeath until the corpse is destroyed. Not content with these thoughts some have gone further and stated that zombification prevents all hope of the resurrection, arguing that there can only be one resurrection of the dead, and all who partake in the unholy resurrection cannot partake of the holy one.

"I hope, that over the course of the next hour to show these teachers to be the false prophets they are and put to death their wicked and unscriptural doctrine that owe more to the hysteria of the resurrectionist in the 18th century than the Word of God. Did Lazarus cry out in despair when he was brought back to life, knowing that he'd had his one shot at the resurrection? If he did not fear, then let us not either."

Lectures on a Christian Response to the Current Plague of the Undead Especially Concerning the Particular Terror Towards the Zombie - Rev. Dr F.H. Graves

Wednesday the 3rd

On Greek

At the restart of Greek today, disappointed with our lack of studying over the summer, Mark said that it was sad because we were half-way through the book and now we've got to go back a few chapters and we aren't half-way any more. I said we could just read a bit of chapter 14 for next week and then pretend we were half-way through the book and he said that that was very clever and so I said well you can use that on your website and he said oh no that would be too much, you use it on yours. So I did. Later on I managed to parse a verb though, so it was all alright.

On Radiohead

ONE WEEK.

On Stealing Music

The way to solve this is for someone to buy this woman an iPod. That's if she likes music. Which I'm sure she does, because most people do.

On the Idlewild Best Of...

The new Idlewild best of is a best of CD, and in line with all best of CDs serves to fill gaps between albums, provide a good opportunity to tour, and allows people who liked them once when the say them at a festival and they would have bought their album but they were too busy trying to get that girls number and then they bought that giant hat to get into them. Also like all best of CDs it has to have some sort of hook to get the more hardcore fans to buy it. The CD does alright; you can buy it with a DVD and get a live performance and all the videos and a documentary and some live acoustic stuff which is pretty sweet, but one of the real hooks is that when you put the CD in, you can then download Queen of the Troubled Teens and Chandelier, the first two singles, both of which were never on an album. Except it's the most badly executed download system ever, involving java applets and multiple website visiting. Having already got the songs I tried the download link out of curiosity and in the hope they'd be a higher bitrate. They're not. Why don't they just give them away for free?

Fame

Yesterday with the girlfriend, walking along the pavement and LO and indeed perhaps BEHOLD, a mighty google street car drove down the road, mapping it for future generations.

In a few months time we are here.

You Do It To Yourself

(Today's entry is bought to you by Mark's attempt to rip Radiohead's "The Astoria London Live" DVD to a handy mp3 format for iTunes / iPod / generic music playing.)

Radiohead fact fans! Can you guess which of the following pictures is the end of Just and which is the quiet bit near the end before Johnny Greenwood goes nuts?

Picture A

Picture B

Answers on a blank postcard with a self-addressed envelope inside sent to... oh wait, I forgot, we're not allowed to run competitions since that incident with the prize money and the poor starving homeless children and the swiss bank account and the still poor starving homeless children.