i am sparticus: Words

Ethical Dilemma of the Day

So, in writing a syllabus to teach young people the rules of the road for their theory test, do you follow the outline of the Highway Code or the outline of The Big Book of How To Pass Your Theory Test First Time?

L is for love

Glove

I dropped my left glove on the way home from work today. I realised this when my hand got cold walking past a bad pub. So I turned around and re-traced my steps, back past the bad pub, past the ugly hotel, past the not particularly pretty but certainly not terrible church, and over Euston road. Lo.

Euston Road is purportedly the road with the slowest average speed in all of the UK. This is not due to excessive speed restrictions, this is the road the M25 wants to be. My glove was lying in the middle of the section of traffic lights I have cross, seemingly unharmed by five minutes of traffic. As I watched, I saw that my glove had had the fortune to fall exactly between the middle lan of westbound traffic, cars, lorries, even a bendy bus, managed to pass straight over my glove without doing it any harm. The speed was so slow that even the air turbulence couldn't pick the glove up and carry it. And then, as the lights where about to change and as I was about to be able to rest my glove, the traffic miraculously parted and a black cab hit fifteen mph, carrying my poor glove forwards through the air and into the yellow hatched box. Of doom. And then the light switched

From this direction the bendy bus could hit it. As did a truck, three cars, and possibly a motorcyclist.

The good news is that all of this did remarkably little damage, so my glove is fine. That's not that point of this story, the point of this story is a moral and the moral of this story isn't don't drop your glove, but rather, more importantly, don't pull off your gloves with your mouth when you finally get home.

Checking it twice

Would you believe it, but in this modern day and age, nowhere can I find a list of crimes possible to commit in Great Britain. I don't say this with any great desire to go out and commit a crime I've never heard of, just it'd be nice to able to say about somethings, 'hey, that's wrong' without someone going 'prove it'.

On time management

Paul (dictating): "For this I toil, struggling with all his energy that he powerfully works within me."
Timothy (unsure): "Paul, are you sure you want to have that? You know you're knackered all the time right?"
Paul: "That's the point."

Discuss

• Due to recently discovering it's illegal to rip CDs in this country I've spent the last week or so only listening to music I've downloaded, whether that be through iTunes, band websites, or various live bootlegs¹. Two almost rhetorical questions, is there not an irony² that now in keeping the law I'm listening to more music obtained without directly monetarily benefiting the artists? And secondly, isn't it arcane that I could have listened to Kid A if I'd kept the free downloaded edition from the BBC website from 2000, but as I've purchased it on CD now and copied over it, I can't?

• I spoke on 1 Colossians: 21-29 yesterday. When Paul says "Now I rejoice in my sufferings for your sake, and in my flesh I am filling up what is lacking in Christ's afflictions for the sake of his body, that is, the church" is he, rather than being completely insanely heretical, actually talking about how Christ still has to suffer in his body (that is the church) before he will return and therefore Paul is happy that he is suffering as it fills up these lacking afflictions? I think this would make sense given the wider passage and Paul's different uses of the word body, but I'm willing to be wrong.

¹ For example, the Idlewild bootleg from the live tour.

² Yes, this is probably used wrong.

The Parable of the Music Pirates

"A sower went out to sow. I mean, no wait, you guys don't care about seeds do you? Alright, so this put loads of music up on the internet, and then e-mailed his friends about it. I mean im'd. I mean facebooked. And as as he sowed, I mean e-mailed, contacted, look whatever, some of the e-mail or whatever got flagged up as spam and so they never really saw it. Other e-mail got read, and they were all 'cool, free music' but then the hassle of going to the site and downloading it, and whatever was just too much for them and they got flustered and so gave up and since they didn't really like that sort of thing, their desire withered away. Other seeds, I mean, e-mails, whatever, where read and the music was downloaded, but then they got other new stuff and stopped listening to it and forgot they ever downloaded it and skipped it when it came up on shuffle. Other e-mails fell on good ears and they loved it and they told all their other friends to listen to it and it got redistributed a thirty, sixty a hundred odd times. Yeah."

...

"Hear then the parable of the sower, I mean e-mails, I mean music downloading: When anyone hears the word of the kingdom and does not understand it, the evil one comes and snatches away what has been sown in his heart. This is what was caught by the spam filter. As for what was never downloaded, this is the one who hears the word and immediately receives it with joy, yet he has no root in himself, but endures for a while, and when tribulation or persecution arises on account of the word, immediately he falls away. As for what was downloaded but not really listening to regularly this is the one who hears the word, but the cares of the world and the deceitfulness of riches choke the word, and it proves unfruitful. As for what was read properly and downloaded, this is the one who hears the word and understands it. He indeed bears fruit and yields, in one case a hundredfold, in another sixty, and in another thirty. Yeah."

...

"Uh, just before we break into small groups to discuss that, I just thought I'd clarify a few things. When I said download music, I didn't really mean music, well, I did, I just meant, legal downloads, like something you made yourself. Like Jesus made the gospel. So he could give it away. And so we could give it away. But you can't do that with real CDs. So it's a bit like our parable, but without the illegal bit. I mean, our parable isn't illegal. Just maybe don't download music."

...

"Yes, the story we heard is like the parable of the seeds in the bible. Thanks for pointing that out."

...

"Sorry, who just asked 'what's a parable?' "

Predictions For Next Year (Delayed)

(If you get three in a row correct you win a expenses paid holiday!)

January

January blues leads to unproductiveness, unproductiveness leads to boredom, and boredom leads to Wikipedia. Alas, though, a freak fire at the server plant causes the website to go down for three days, preventing anyone from updating Kitty Pryde's page to reflect the fact that in Uncanny X-Men #312 the writers killed off her dragon. Riots are only averted by the timely release of Battlestar Galatica Series 5 and the fact that no-one could find any clean trousers.

Febuary

Finally loses that pesky silent r.

March

Sees the beginning of the end. Of Death. Defying Stunts. Over Sharks. Lawsuits and animal rights complainers close them all down apart from one in China.

April

Invitations to add facebook applications overtake spam e-mails for the first time. Thousands hug their friends. Over facebook.

May

National line-dancing month arrives, and with it all pomp and ceremony is forever turned on it's head. The queen now line-dances to open parliament, the new president line dances up the White House steps and on TV, Batman line dances with the Joker. The world isn't necessarily a better place, but it does become a simpler place.

June

They start shooting the people who refuse to dance.

July

For the seventh year running, global warming fails to stop the Thames freezing over. Newly elected Mayor of London Sam Allardyce promises to turn Regent's Park into a fridge and CRT land-fill by 2020.

August

Reading, V, and Glastonbury all get off to a rough start (Glastonbury through a strange time-paradox) when no-one turns up. 100,000 touts and a low supply and demand market mean that the only people who see the Killer's Friday night headline set are soundmen, bouncers and three old ladies who thought they were buying the big issue.

September

Rock finally realises it could kick paper's ass if it had to. Scissors takes up drinking.

November

Your mum jokes become old and tedious. Dad's bear the brunt of punchlines for a few weeks before paraplegic children make a revival (alas, not in the happy way though).

December

World ends. etc...

Oh Gosh I Still Want To Ask This:

I was dying of the plague earlier this week, then I got a bit better, but not so I managed to do anything with my time other than what I absolutely had to. Which wasn't updating this website. Maybe next week will be a better fitter, happier week where we shall all achieve our aims and our dreams shall be realised.

---

Well, that broke. Dirty spammers. I mean, I really should have coded it better so that it wouldn't break, but still. Dirty spammers. I'll answer Phil's question though, because it made me giggle.

"how many mickles make a muckle?" - Phil Brown

Things I Found In My Filing System

The Girlfriend: "What do you mean you don't know where Hackney is?"

Me: "Well, that maybe true, but I can explain the offside rule"

From about eight months ago on our very first date (if you ignore all the ones that happened before this).

Pre-

Getting Engaged

Initial thoughts:

• Fiancee is a horrible word. Fiancée is even worse. Why is it that boyfriend / girlfriend and husband / wife have masculine / feminine whereas fiancee just has the one? (also, isn't it odd that people say that English has dropped the use of the masculine and feminine and yet we still use it all the time. I think it would be more accurate to say it has dropped gender when it does not add to the meaning of the sentence).

• I'm getting married.

• It's currently 12 - 11 on our respective Facebook walls, but about a thousand apiece over the phone, thereby proving that if you have to Facebook someone congratulations, you maybe don't know them that well (apart from you obviously, me and you get on great).

• I think we might make up a lot of the planning as we go along.

• When it happens you won't realise how big a decision you've just made is.

• About 7 hours after telling most, I'm finally getting around to replying to text messages.

Yes.

Free Travel

The assumptions TFL makes about people in london based upon the free travel arrangements set up last night:

• No-one lives in Central London
• No-one goes out into the sticks of say, zone 2 to party.
• People enjoy night buses so much anyway, they'll really enjoy them when everyone can get on without paying.
• People won't see a bus driver and think "HEY, he's in a uniform, I should ask him anything".

The truth about people in london based upon the free travel arrangements set up last night:

• We're all ingrates.