Jo S. Wun's Blog, page 2
February 3, 2012
Thou Fobbing Hasty-Witted Measle!
I came across this quite a while back and bookmarked it for future use. Well, you know how it is - the best laid plans of mice and men, and all that. I forgot all about it until today, when I embarked on a session of clearing out the dead and the dross from my bookmarks, and there it was, grinning at me like an idol of idiot-worshippers..
The original Shakespearean Insulter can be found here, but I've taken the liberty of embedding it here for your delectation and convenience*, even though thou art the veriest varlet that ever chewed with a tooth.
* You may actually find it easier to read on the source webpage (it has a white background).
February 2, 2012
An Open Letter To Jo Ratzinger
Dear Jo,
Seeing as this is my first letter to you, I'd better put it in some sort of context.
Firstly, you'll have noticed that I addressed you informally. Well, I don't know for sure if you've ever been known as plain old Jo (as I am) but, assuming your peers, in your younger years, were like most children, it seems likely that they called you 'Jo'. Be that as it may, I'll be happy to address you as Joseph in the future, if you'd prefer it. Just let me know, okay?
Secondly, the reason for my informal approach is that I'm not looking for an 'official response', but rather to talk to the man 'behind the façade'. Besides, to be absolutely candid, I'm not expecting a direct response of any kind, but that's not an issue for me (you'll see why later).
Thirdly, I had to make this an open letter, even though it's personal in nature, because, search as I might on your website, I couldn't find any contact information
Anyway, if you get a few spare minutes when you're feeling relaxed and contented, with not much else to do, perhaps you'll be curious enough to peruse the rest of my letter to find out what prompted me to write it.
Still with me? Good. Because, you see, there are several things which I'm puzzled about. One of them, which seems both trivial and serious at the same time, is Leviticus.
Yes, I know. Sigh...not that again. But that's the point. Why not get it sorted? There's so much 'iffy' stuff in there, and it's easy pickings for anyone who wants to have a pop at Christianity.
I couldn't manage to wade through it all, sentence by sentence, but here's some of the 'highlights' I picked up at BibleGateway.com (I use the Contemporary English Version alongside the Douay-Rheims 1899 American Edition, it makes it easier to understand).
3:16 ... All the fat shall be the Lord's.
3:17 By a perpetual law for your generations, and in all your habitations: neither blood nor fat shall you eat at all.
11:1-47 About what you can eat
12:1-8 About what women must do after giving birth
13:1-59 About skin diseases
14:33-57 About mildew in houses
17:10-14 About eating blood
18:1-23 About sexual relations
20:1-27 About death penalty offences
24:10-22 More punishments
26:14-29 "Vengeance is mine..."?
Unless I'm much mistaken, putting people to death for cursing their parents, for example, isn't any longer preached as the right thing to do. Times have changed, as have the rules of conduct we are expected to adhere to, and the methods used to enforce compliance.
It may not seem to have much in common with 'the word of God', but in the world of computer programming, when a construct in a computing language is considered out of date, and planned to be phased out, but still available for use, the manual is updated so the construct in question is clearly marked as deprecated.
As it happens, Wiktionary gives the etymology of 'deprecated' as: from Latin deprecatus, past participle of deprecari (“to pray against (a present or impending evil), pray for, intercede for (that which is in danger), rarely imprecate”), from de (“off”) + precari (“to pray”). Which rather neatly brings me to the purpose of this letter.
If I understand it correctly, then you, in your official capacity, are as close to the Lord who features in the book of Leviticus as it is possible for a human to get. So, why don't you ask him what to do about Leviticus? After all, it needn't be a complicated question. Simply ask if it should be deprecated, or maybe just ditched altogether. There'd be some real kudos in getting a definitive answer (and it'd be 'one in the eye' for your detractors - and Lord knows there are a few of them who've been having a bit of a field day of late, what with all the scandals and what have you).
Well, that's about it for this letter. I know what I've written about might not seem so important in the grand scheme of things (although some of that Leviticus stuff is pretty horrendous), but wouldn't it be a massive credibility boost (for very little effort) if you could come out and say, "Leviticus is deprecated/ditched - and that's official. Please mark all bibles accordingly."
Anyway, I'll let you get back to pontificating now.
Thanks for your time.
All the best.
Till next time.
Jo
February 1, 2012
Nuclear Families
This is a sobering video. A time-lapse map of every nuclear explosion since 1945 - by Isao Hashimoto.
The soundtrack consists of a beep for each passing month, and a beep for each explosion. The pitch of each 'explosion beep' corresponds to the country which detonated each explosion. It makes a kind of music remeniscent of (bad) 8-bit home computer games from the eighties. As an alternative, mute the video and listen to the Carlos Santana track from his Divine Light album (it's about the right length, and the title seems appropriate).
The thing that struck me most is this. Of the seven countries which have detonated nuclear bombs, only the UK and France didn't set any off in their home territory.
January 31, 2012
One For The Bucket List
Do you have a bucket list? I do, but it's an amorphous beast that threatens to bite me because many of the things on it I haven't a hope of doing (unless my circumstances undergo a radical change). Mind you, I've marked 'done' against a few items on the list. One that's still on there is probably a common item on bucket lists galore; to see the northern lights, or aurora borealis if you want to be a bit fancy.
Apparently there was a solar storm recently and this video captured the show in real time.
The music is Visions of Socrates by Martijn de Man
Tip o' the hat to WEIT
January 30, 2012
A Music Player To Be Proud Of
I've been growing increasingly frustrated with the built in Posterous music player. There's nothing wrong with how it plays the music, but the lack of control over how it displays the Artist and Title rubs me up the wrong way.
Look at the way it dealt with the Arlo Guthrie track the other day. That mp3 file has standard ID3 tags which every other player seems able to read, but the Posterous player resorts to using the file name and substituting an underscore for any spaces. It's just ugly!
[image error]
Driven to a frenzy of exasperation (exaggerate? Me?), I spent some time today searching out the code for the music player I used when I blogged on WordPress. The thing is that using it is not as convenient as the inbuilt Posterous system. To make it work you have to get your hands dirty with some HTML code.
I'm actually quite happy mucking around with HTML, but I like convenience too, especially when my objective is simply to put up a post which includes some music. My solution was to turn to AutoHotKey, with which I made a small program to automate the task as much as possible. Here's the result - I hope you like it (assuming it works!)
I like this version of Green Day's Basket Case (it seemed rather appropriate). You can find out a bit more about Janie Porche at her website.
January 29, 2012
My Way, Or No Way!
Here's a fun little exercise. Get a sheet of paper and make a list of people you know who exhibit the "my way, or no way" attitude. When you've done, you can write the title Self-Righteous Pricks above the list, and stick it up on your wall (and throw darts at it?). If you've included women on your list, don't worry, having a penis is not a requirement for behaving like a prick.
Okay. So it wasn't really much fun at all, and if your list is anything like mine then one sheet of paper is not enough. But perhaps the interesting part is thinking about other people's lists. Do I feature in any of them? Do you? Do I feature in your list! Do you feature on mine?
I'll come clean. I didn't actually write a list so you can be fairly certain you're not on it. My list exists in conveyor belt form. When I come across someone who meets the criteria - holier-than-thou, self-important, condescending, prick - I put them on my imaginary conveyor belt, and watch them disappear off the end where they fall into the great oblivion.
I suspect that Sid Vicious probably falls into the self-righteous prick category for some people. But it's neither here nor there because he fell off the end of life's conveyor belt quite a while back, possibly because he was curious enough to go see what was over the edge.
In one of those chains of thought which take you somewhere you didn't expect to go, I ended up thinking about Sid after doing my usual in-the-car-in-the-church-car-park routine this morning. It started off with Knockin' On Heaven's Door (Bob Dylan's original version) as the first song to be randomly played by my music player.
If you don't mind, we'll skip the discussion about why I like the song even though I am about as convinced as it's possible to be that there is no door to knock on. Maybe another time. The thing was that I featured covers of that song in a previous post, so I didn't want to include it in this post.
As coincidence would have it, the Guns N' Roses version came up a few songs later, which is probably my favourite version because their treatment of it is, what shall I say, sacrilegious? Later in the day I had the misfortune to pass by a karaoke party (you know the sort of thing - people who are really quite bad at singing amplifying their efforts to such a degree that nobody within several miles can have any doubt about how bad they are), and, to my horror, the miscreant of the moment was singing My Way.
And that's how I got to thinking about Mr Vicious. Here he is doing his memorable version of that 'classic'. Now that's sacrilegious!
January 28, 2012
Whose Land Is It Anyway?
In the squares of the city, in the shadow of a steeple.
By the relief office, I'd seen my people.
As they stood there hungry, I stood there asking,
Is this land made for you and me?
As I went walking, I saw a sign there,
And on the sign there, It said "No Trespassing."
But on the other side, it didn't say nothing!
That side was made for you and me.
These are the original last two verses of "This Land is Your Land", which American folk singer, Woody Guthrie, dropped from his famous song which he wrote after the 'Great Depression', and the Dust Bowl. They certainly make it much clearer what his views were.
His son, Arlo, carried on the tradition of writing and singing protest songs, in his own style, and, as far as I'm aware, he didn't have to drop anything from this song, from 1967, to get it published. It's long, but it remains a classic, in my opinion. It still makes me chuckle.
Arlo_Guthrie_-_Alice's_Restaurant_Massacree.mp3
Listen on Posterous
From the album Alice's Restaurant.
January 27, 2012
Is That A Handlebar Moustache You're Wearing?
Photos again. But this beetle caught my eye because of its 'feelers'. It's difficult to think of brown beetles as beautiful, probably because of their visual similarity to cockroaches, but this one's adornment sets it apart from the others.
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I'm deep into some AutoHotKey programming at the moment, which is the reason for this brief post. But to keep you from feeling hard done by, here's a song to maintain the fauna feeling.
The_John_Butler_Trio_-_Zebra.mp3
Listen on Posterous
The John Butler Trio website is here
January 26, 2012
Telemarketers: The Final Solution
I stumbled across this PDF while I was rummaging around in my documents folders. I can't remember where I got it from. What I do know is that it was a very long time ago. I also know that although it's quite clever, and amusing to a small degree, I never used it to deal with any of the telesales people who used to call me up. I suppose that just means I'm lazy.
Anti-TelemarketerScript.pdf
Download this file
I went through various stages in my responses to those who rang to sell me double glazing, a time-share apartment in sunny Spain, or any one of numerous other things I didn't want. I tried the put-the-phone-down-quietly-on-the-table-and-leave-them-to-talk-to-the-air routine, the I-am-mister-angry-and-I-will-shout-at-you-loudly-until-you-disconnect thing, the keep-them-talking-for-as-long-as-possible-until-they-give-up tactic, and others too, none of which were very satisfying, and, more to the point, did not stop them from calling me again at some future date.
The reason I object to those calls is that I'm the sort of person who, if I decide to buy something, will do some research, search out sources, compare what's on offer and come to a conclusion about what I will buy, and where I will buy it, based on the information I have gathered. Some stranger ringing me to tell me 'how white my shirts can be' is a waste of time, both theirs and mine.
I tried the 'Do not call' lists, but while it may have stopped some of them, it was not as successful as I'd hoped. It took me far too long to hit upon the sure fire way to stop a company from ever calling me again. I'll tell you how to do it, and maybe it will be the start of a new anti-telemarketer/telesales campaign. It's really quite simple, but it does mean you have to make a small investment of time. However, it works, so that's a negligible price to my mind. It goes like this:
Telesales person calls you up and tries to interest you in whatever it is their company sells. You say that's marvelous because you were only just thinking that you'd like to buy it, and how convenient it is that they have called. Make arrangements with them to send someone round to discuss your needs, and, if it seems necessary, tell them that you are thinking of replacing all the windows in your home (or whatever is appropriate) to encourage them. You won't be lying because you really are thinking about it - you're just not mentioning that the thoughts you are having are that you don't want to do it.
When the appointed time arrives, and the sales person comes to your door, invite them in and make them comfortable. When they've relaxed and are about to start their pitch, ask them if they've got all your details correct - telephone number, for example. As soon as you've established that they know who you are, tell them the reason you invited them is because you want to tell them face-to-face that you do not want their company to ring you ever again, and, if they do, you will again invite a sales call so you can repeat the message.
There might be an awkward moment or two before they leave, but you will be the one in control, and you can be certain that the message will get through. Wasting the telesales person's time on the phone is expected, as is the abuse they get - it's built in to the costing of the operation. The cost of sending a salesperson to your home is a different matter altogether.
Think it's a bit cruel? Not a bit of it. A valuable lesson that won't easily be forgotten, and, [insert evil laugh], it's payback time for all those occasions when their telesales people annoyed you with their patter (they work off scripts like the one at the top of the page).
Happy hunting!
January 25, 2012
Motheaten!
My Nokia N95 might be old, and the cause of exasperation when it's my only means of access to the internet, but it takes a fair old picture. This moth (that's what it looks like to me), and twenty or thirty others, settled on the wall of the house today. I rotated the picture because, without a wider field of view, it looks more sensible this way. This little chap is about one inch long.
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This 'little chap' was about three feet long. Hoping to find some dinner in amongst the grass. The house geckos who share my abode would struggle to eat the moth, but this bayawak wouldn't even bother with it. Bigger fish to fry, so to speak.
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Here's an atmospheric track from Bill Furner to go with the pictures.
Bill_Furner_-_Wind_2.mp3
Listen on Posterous
