Time Is On My Side - After It Stops Fighting Amongst Itself

I am perfectly in control and arriving places when I should be. The Sydney Morning Herald incorrectly told me to put my clocks forward, which cancelled out my phone company "3" putting my clock back by an hour, a week early.

Thus nature balances itself.

Backing Out Of The Church Slowly And Avoiding Eye Contact

For a while now, I’ve had a hunch that the Church of England is trying to back out of the deal.

I’ve mentioned before that there’s an almost resigned air of defeat to their communications. (Specifically in Organising Atheists...) It’s like they know the jig is up, and just want to leave quietly so that not too many people are embarrassed.

I have divined their plan to achieve this quiet withdrawal.

Smurfy sent me an email with the title, “Is the Archbishop of Canterbury secretly one of us?” At first I was confused. I was expecting to see a picture of the Bishop painted blue. It would make sense, he’s already got a pointy hat. But when I read this article God Will Not Give Happy Ending I realised Smurf meant atheist.

If you don't read the article, here’s the summation. The Archbishop of Canterbury has said that God can’t help us with our environmental troubles. What is He willing to help with?

So far they’ve said that; He doesn’t intercede on a trivial personal level of folly or sin. He doesn’t intercede on man-made acts of evil and now He won’t do anything about the planet. According to the Church of England, all we can count on, even in the worst disaster, is His love. Great. Stick that in your survival kit and send a flare up with it.

See what they’re doing? See? They’re incrementally removing the advertised features from the product until there’s nothing left to sell. It’s a recall by attrition.

The greatest trick that God ever pulled, was convincing the world he didn’t exist – gradually.

Curios Chiaroscuro

I’m lying out in the desert, the midday sun beating me in the face. I’m testing how tight the ropes are tied when I’m plunged into sudden and complete darkness.

I’m on my back in a city street. Labouring bystanders give me mouth-to-mouth and heart massage but I’m suddenly in the light. I have reached the heavenly brightness. As I am about to bask in God’s love, I am cast out. Total, aching darkness.

The spaceship engine has failed and we are plunging back into the arc-welding brightness of the exploding space-station. As we hit the flaming penumbra, darkness engulfs the ship. The light of further explosions hit us again and again. And then darkness.

At 7am, my alarm goes off and I roll over to flick the switch. I am almost blinded by a sudden, intense light. I rear up and the culprit of the dreams falls off my cheek. 

I had fallen asleep on my Smiggle Book Light and the tiny bastard had glued itself to my face. Every time I rolled over I had switched the thing either on or off and as it had been resting on my left eye, it had really given the lobes of my brain a workout. 

(I don’t care if it happens again and again, though. I have a Smiggle Book Light. The only thing that doesn’t make me the envy of 9-year-old girls everywhere, is mine is black, not pink.)

Good Times

It's good to mark the important milestones in your life. You all remember your twentyfirsts and graduations. I would like to mark some of the smaller moments as well.

So, as an insomniac, I would like to present a selection of great times in my life and what they brought to mind when I was there.

I wonder why I'm so hungry, I musn't have had enough dinner. I keep thinking of Pi.

I wonder if those crazy Jacksons will get back together. I mean, Michael's going back out onto the road. They must be jealous.

Fibonacci time. I wonder if they'll make Tom Hanks wear that wig in The Da Vinci Code Part II?

Collect the whole set, and you have witnessed what I like to call "Goldilocks and the Three Mazdas."

We Were A-Mazing

Above is a 3D maze with a small ball-bearing inside it. There are various twists and turns you must navigate to get to the finish which are all numbered, and they go up to 100. There are 90 degree and 180 degree turns, swinging arms, flip floppy buckets to drop the ball into and all sorts of other devilish little tricks to confuse those who prefer a 2D world. It is utterly brilliant. Because I'm not at all a nerd, when the bloke who owns it brought it in to work, I wasn't at all forced to finish it before anyone else and did not feel inordinately proud of myself, at all, for doing it. Not one little bit. 

I will admit to one thing, though. And I'm sorry to say you are either going to get this, or not. There's no explaining it. Through the entire exercise, I was singing, "One two three four five... six seven eight nine ten... eleven, twelve, Do do do dooo do du du.

Joss Doin' Some Whedon

Emergency Contact was given a box set of DVDs recently. I think the show’s got a good chance of being a big success when the networks air it on the telly. 

The actors are very nice and the script is snappy. It doesn’t require so much attention that you can’t relax and enjoy it, but it still provides some take-away lines for the next day at work. The look is fresh and new in a quaintly under-funded 90s way, and I don’t think I’m endangering my credibility when I say that Buffy The Vampire Slayer could be a hit. Watch this space.

However, no positive review can exist without some avuncular advice. Vampires are supposed to be sexy and smart and sleek. So, if there must be special-effects dentures for the fangs, they should be supplied for both the upper and lower jaw. Giving vampires only the top set of choppers just gives bad-guys a crook look. Evil lairs end up looking like badly lit roadside-diners when there are a bunch of chinless guys with chronic overbites, groaning and leering around a spunky, blonde stranger.

If The Hat Fits, Pull A Rabbit Out Of It

It’s the season for 40th birthday parties at the moment. I’ve gone to a few lately, then again, once you hit a certain age, lately stretches for a couple of years so, you know, don’t bank on the accuracy of my assessment… anyhooooooo, at the last one I attended a guy with a video camera came up and asked me to give a video message to the host.

“Happy Birthday, Miles. Damn tasteful of you to have your 50th birthday on the 50th anniversary of the recording of ‘Kind of Blue’ by Miles Davis…” I smile, then pretend to hear someone off camera say something so I can do an embarrassed backtrack, “What? Not 50!? It’s his 40th? Jesus!” (Somebody stop me, oh my sides.)

Birthday boy was within earshot and came over and said, “Actually, I was named after Miles Davis.”

“So that observation of mine is not terribly original because it is a genuine connection and you’re probably going to get that same sort of message 30 more times tonight, I would imagine,” I answered.

He politely opined that he probably wouldn’t, and then followed up with, “I got it really confused when I was a kid, but it worked out okay. When I asked my parents why I had been called Miles, they told me that I was named after a musician. I misheard them, though. When people would ask me about my name, I would proudly say that I was named after a magician. That was actually kind of cool in primary school. It wasn’t until I went to secondary school that a teacher, when told the story, sat back and said that he couldn’t think of any famous magicians called Miles. I checked with my parents and sure enough, musician. But by then I was in high school, where it’s definitely much cooler to be named after a musician rather than a magician.”

If you’ve got cloth ears and you’re called Harry, you’ve got a whole world of options open to you.

Pugnacious Times

Live feed on? Yep? We're Up? Ok.

Ahem... OK. In Three... Two... One... Not since the 'New Deal', have financial reporters had to go without pants, or be so 'restrained' in their coverage...

Hey, is that a butcher going out of business over there? No? Oh well... back to you, Stan.