i am sparticus: Words

Rambo; Born For Our Salvation

From the wikipedia entry for the new Rambo film "Rambo, now operating boats for tourists in Myanmar, leads a team of mercenaries to Burma to search for missing Christian aid workers. " Which sounds all lovely and fine until you find out that Rambo has been hired by the pastor of a local church, who has collected an offering for Rambo to go in and rescue the Christian aid workers. I'd like to explain how this is horribly wrong and far worse for Christianity than any number of Golden Compasses could be, but I feel a bit ill at the thought of having to write about it. So I made up some other hypothetical film sequel plots that'd be equally damaging:

Home Alone V (we are onto five now right?): The kid who is no longer being played by Mcwhathisfaceculkin decides to show some charity and invites a homeless man over for dinner. Hilarious shenanigans ensue until the family are robbed blind and then shot in the head by one by one by the hobo.

Oceans 14: Clooney's character becomes a Christian and convinced by his pastor he goes and uses all his conning skills to close down all of Vegas for three weeks. Clooney then preaches to them all for a bit, before driving off in his really expensive car. In a sub-plot the IRS try to catch up with him, but he's always one step ahead with his connivingness.

Under Seige 3: Effectively the same film as one and two, but Seagal is doing it all for God!

Left Behind X: Quite.

Cracker Jokes

Q) "How did the human cannonball lose his job?"
A) "He had no body to go with!"

Q) "How do snails keep their shells shiny?"
A) "Mrs Sippi!"

Q) Why didn't the skeleton go to the New Years Eve party?"
A) "He got fired!"

Q) "Who is the most famous married woman in America?"
A) "A River!"

Q) "What has a bed but does not sleep, and a mouth but does not speak?"
A) "They use snail varnish!"

Turkey

I think this year is the year I've survived longest without getting insanely bothered by Christmas songs. This is possibly good. I also discovered a theory about crackers that I would like to share, but will take some doing. I also discovered that all good Christmas songs have at least a line about Christ's second coming. I also discovered that I still hate sprouts.

(I remember once when I was about eight being told by my teacher that I should not start every sentence with the same phrase, as it sounded like I was a small hyperactive child telling a story. I told her that also I was a small hyperactive child telling a story. She replied to this that this didn't matter, because if I was old enough to be so cheeky I was old enough to write better. This was ridiculous I told her, as Much A Do About Nothing's second act has every line starting with the phrase "I protest". This successfully silenced her for about a minute before she said "No, I think you mean Othello", to which I replied "No, she left of her own accord". Sensing the surrealness of the conversation, the classroom caught fire and paradoxed in on itself, resetting history to something much more likely.)

Turkey

I think this year is the year I've survived longest without getting insanely bothered by Christmas songs. This is possibly good. I also discovered a theory about crackers that I would like to share, but will take some doing. I also discovered that all good Christmas songs have at least a line about Christ's second coming. I also discovered that I still hate sprouts.

(I remember once when I was about eight being told by my teacher that I should not start every sentence with the same phrase, as it sounded like I was a small hyperactive child telling a story. I told her that also I was a small hyperactive child telling a story. She replied to this that this didn't matter, because if I was old enough to be so cheeky I was old enough to write better. This was ridiculous I told her, as Much A Do About Nothing's second act has every line starting with the phrase "I protest". This successfully silenced her for about a minute before she said "No, I think you mean Othello", to which I replied "No, she left of her own accord". Sensing the surrealness of the conversation, the classroom caught fire and paradoxed in on itself, resetting history to something much more likely.)

Church !of God

Regarding the below entry and my comment about jokes about the Wikipedia page for Church of God; I did write a hilariously funny series of jokes about alternative names for that page (seriously, it was the best thing in the world ever, you would have wet yourself seven times over) but I felt it was fairly unhelpful to publish an entry making cheap shots about God's church. However, in researching this I did stumble across this heart-warming entry. The Worldwide Church of God was, when first setup, a fairly boringly heretical movement. All the standard "Rome is the babylonian whore, we are the one true church, our prophet is the best prophet ever, we have the real truth" stuff with the typical "we need all your money if you want to go to heaven, and your wife too" postscript. Terrible stuff, but not particularly original.

Anyway, the reason it's particularly heart-warming is because when the first one true prophet died, the successor, rather than asking for more money, sex and worship, instead told everyone that the last guy was wrong and they needed to repent their ways and change their beliefs and bring them more in line with the rest of Evangelical Christianity. Even more surprisingly, it actually worked.

Blog Entries The Internet Ran Out Of Space For

• Plots holes in Con Air.
• My incomprehension surrounding how banks and mobile phone companies make money.
• Unhelpful jokes about the Wikipedia entry for Church of God.
• Problems my band handwriting has caused.
• A list of articles written as lists to fill space in a magazine.
• A list of entries written as lists to fill space on a website.

O Come, O Come

O come, O come, Emmanuel
And ransom captive Israel
That mourns in lonely exile here
Until the Son of God appear
Rejoice! Rejoice! Emmanuel
Shall come to thee, O Israel.

O come, Thou Rod of Jesse, free
Thine own from Satan's tyranny
From depths of Hell Thy people save
And give them victory o'er the grave
Rejoice! Rejoice! Emmanuel
Shall come to thee, O Israel.

O come, Thou Day-Spring, come and cheer
Our spirits by Thine advent here
Disperse the gloomy clouds of night
And death's dark shadows put to flight.
Rejoice! Rejoice! Emmanuel
Shall come to thee, O Israel.

O come, Thou Key of David, come,
And open wide our heavenly home;
Make safe the way that leads on high,
And close the path to misery.
Rejoice! Rejoice! Emmanuel
Shall come to thee, O Israel.

O come, O come, Thou Lord of might,
Who to Thy tribes, on Sinai's height,
In ancient times did'st give the Law,
In cloud, and majesty and awe.
Rejoice! Rejoice! Emmanuel
Shall come to thee, O Israel.

So here's the question; "O Come O Come Emmanuel", is it about Christ's first coming or His second?

The Sky

I think today forgot to wake up. Since I got out of bed this afternoon the sky has progressed from #999999 to #AAAAAA¹. Apparently it would be a fallacy to say my circadian rhythm is on the whack as apparently circadian is defined as something that happens regardless of sunlight. But then, apparently it's a fallacy to use fallacy in that context (and therefore presumably this one too) as a fallacy doesn't mean that at all.

¹ Something like this to something like this

Thursday the 6th

Buffy Season 8 #5-9 (No Future Left For You arc): Why do people always get sucked into teleport portals / out of teleport portals just before they manage to say the one thing that'll clear the air and make everything alright? It's a bit like how everyone walks in on people in Eastenders in time to hear exactly the wrong part of the sentence. Actually, it's exactly like that, except with magic. Buffy the Vampire Slayer writers, you can't write British dialogue. I'm sorry, but, really, no. At least we don't have the accents this time. Oh that was awful. That said; AWESOME.

Risk: Is still awful.

The Sufjan Stevens Christmas EP's: I'm not sure if they were up last year, but you can buy Sufjan Steven's Song's For Christmas series on iTunes now. It's absolutely the best Christmas album ever, and fills me with wonder and Joy every time I hear it. The best one of the five EP's is the second which starts with "Angels We Have Heard on High" and ends with "Bring A Torch Jeanette". (It's worth getting the boxset because it's beautiful and contains stickers and a comic and a short story on Christmas, a bit like a Kinder Egg if Kinder Eggs were any good.)

Hail

You do know Radiohead tickets are on sale right? (With a £9.10 booking fee and postage, I want my ticket made out of caviar.)

Monopoly

It's Christmas soon, and the chances are it's going to snow heavily taking out all power to the neighbourhood and leaving you cooped up inside the house with nothing to do but play boardgames all day. If you only have Monopoly in your house, here is why you'd probably be better off opening the doors and the windows and accepting the cold embrace of mother winter.

Everyone who has ever played monopoly can probably tell you the main flaw in the game. They can all identify the horrible sinking feeling that occurs about halfway around the board the third time. They all know what it's like to realise that you're stuck playing a game for another two hours that they're never going to win. And so you start getting silly and steal money from the bank and hide houses from their owners and punch your brother repeatedly in the leg. Part of what's wrong with Monopoly is that you can only rarely come back from being down, but ultimately what's wrong with it is that everyone knows who is going to win from the early stages of the game. That's a challenge for any game that keeps score as you go along, but Monopoly compounds this by only letting the game end by the winner bankrupting every other player. If you want to keep people playing a game you need to give them the chance (or failing that, give them the impression that they have the chance) to win even on the last turn. It's a bit like if a boxing match was always decided after the second round but wasn't allowed to finish until the winner had turned the loser into an evenly spread layer covering the boxing ring. And the thing is, everyone knows this about Monopoly, yet they still chose to play it.

From something everyone can tell you to something no-one can; the rules. If only the last paragraph was true then Monopoly would merely sap your soul of all life and joy. Given that no-one knows the rules, it possesses the ability to tear apart families. Here's a quiz, which of these rules are found in the original rules of Monopoly?

• If you pass GO you collect £200.
• If you have to pay tax or security or money on a chance card it goes onto free parking where it can be claimed if you land on it.
• If you roll a double you get to go again.
• If you roll three doubles in a row you go to jail.
• If you land on GO you get £400.
• You can sell houses and hotels at the price you buy them.
• It's hilarious funny to try and knock other people's pieces of the board with the dice.
• If you don't want to sell a house you land on you can auction it to other people.

Finally, give yourselves ten bonus points if you can correctly explain how to mortgage property. The correct answers were; I DON'T KNOW, and neither does the rest of your family, so next time you're playing with it and they do something against the rules, don't try and correct them, because chances are you'll get into a fight. Instead just steal their large notes while they're in the toilet. I sometimes wonder if Monopoly would be a good game if you played it according to the rule book. But then again, I sometimes wonder how strong I'd have to be to punch through the wall with my head.

On top of these two glaring flaws, you also have the quite fundamental problem of not having anything to do. Okay, so you get to role two dice (TWO! See what a great game this is!), but really that's where your interactivity ends. Hooray for setting into motion a random process! Then, if you're lucky, you can choose whether to buy a property or not. You also might get the opportunity to auction a property, build houses, haggle with other family members, or invade Russia, but nobody really knows where in the turn you're meant to do this, so chances are you'll miss it.¹

Defenders of Monopoly make a big deal about the skill involving in haggling for property and selling at the right time. Maybe everyone I've played it with enjoys haggling over the rules too much, because I've never noticed anyone really haggling over the property before. Begging perhaps, emotionally black-mailing maybe, but never haggling.

Theoretically, I think monopoly maybe redeemable. If you said the game ended after five times around the board, and perhaps was played with an 8 sided die (to slow the game down and ensure everyone progressed at a more similar speed), had forced auctions of any empty property that's landed on and actually had a defined order of play (role, move, buy/pay rent, auction, mortgage, build houses) you might be able to play the game through without wondering how much fun it would be to gouge your eyeballs out with the little green houses. But it would still probably provide more fun by being set alight.

¹ Risk, the second worst board game in the world ever, is the second worst board game in the world ever because it allows you to make the decisions that Monopoly does not. It does have one extra critical flaw that Monopoly does not, but at least it's possible to make your own decisions in it, and sometimes it's nice to be able to go and cook a full roast dinner in between your turns.