Disney

I have been to Disney 3 times in 2 days.

The third time was because, at pain of sanity, I had to bail and come back in the darkness. But there is a darkness, to me, even when the sun is high and bright in the Florida sky.

When I came to pick up my family at 11 last night, my daughters were so happy and excited and jumping and smiling as they recounted the highlights in the neon shadow of Space Mountain.

Disney is the Jerusalem of Consumption.

It is the Circus Maximus for we drones of the Western Hegemony.

The rides are fantastic. But those rides are instants in aeons of purchase and queue. Retinal jolts of excitement in a system designed to take as much of your money and time and focus as possible, whilst still making you feel that you are feeling happy.

Anyway, enough of my cynical hate crimes against Das Mouse und Der Kabal, let's see what the little folk think:

The horror...

The horror......

Jesus Did Not Exist

America is drowned in Jesus,
Like the seabed in the sea,
The facts of this immersion,
Come not from history.

The facts of this perversion,
Are the lies of centuries.

There is zero evidence for Jesus,
Not a jot, a dot, an iota.
And the weight of faith versus fact,
Infinity exceeds it's dismal quota.

Not one contemporary writing,
Mentions Christ, Son of Man,
The gospels manly fabricated,
By dishonest political hand.

Jesus did not exist,
The facts cannot be missed,
This is the epiphany of truth;
The flock are Judas kissed.

http://www.nobeliefs.com/exist.htm
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Historical_Jesus
http://jdstone.org/cr/files/nohistoricalevidenceofjesus.html

Summery Road Trip Summary

The road trip part of the holiday is now over.
We drove the eastern seaboard.
Highlights were:

• New York: After London, she is still in the top two world cities. Bigger than London but Beefeaters trump Skyskrapers every time. (Including Trump Towers)
• Amish People: I saw these in a buggy, they seemed historical. I wanted to give them my Ipod touch but it might implode their reality
• Washington: Great city architecturally. Poetically, Mordor.
• Walking With Dinosaurs Live: Impressive, but they are just models, kids.
• Richmond: Pleasant, avoid Vietnamese Food due to it being the worst food inside the continent.
• Colonial Williamsburg: Hot and fairly interesting.
  
• Jamestown: Hot and pretty amazing.
  
• Charleston: Very pretty. The Slave Market was for buying and selling slaves, not for where plantation owners send their "staff" to get sprouts etc
  
• Savannah: Wonderful place in so many senses. I had the best oysters and Bloody Mary I have ever had, all in the same sitting. Bonanza!
• St Augustine: I dreamed I saw St Augustine... and it wasn't a dream, but real. Nice place, worth visiting, probably not worth selling up and shipping out to.
  

We are now in Florida.

Did you know that Columbus never set foot on the continent, that was another Spaniard called Juan Ponce de Leyon.

The Statute Of Liberty Bell Ends

We have just got back from the worst statue based experience of my life. Imagine a prison camp full of Nazi Jobsworths, hours, literally, of queues and all for something that looks much more impressive from a distance. Up close she is a squat and unremarkable form, not twice as tall as the Gateshead Angel.

Avoid like the plaque.

Mind you, we are still having a great time!

An Amercian Road Trip (With Disney/Waterparks)

I'm currently in the Big Apple, the American one, not Truro. The last time I was here I was 19, gosh that seems so long ago....

Its a family trip, with extended family, eight in all.

New York is great. Some observations so far.

• I'm shocked by the racial segregation here. There are the whites, who are served by the non-whites. Its economic/employment apartheid.
  
• Latina's have very big tatoos and are all very sexy. Everyone of them.
• It is possible to get a Coffee that has more calories than a burger.
• NYC is much bigger on foot than on the map.
• Jaywalking is illegal, but its fine to do.
• NYPD should go to the Gym more.

Start spreading the news, I'm leaving tomorrow......

If I set a Google Alert for "google" will it crash the internet?

Emergence

Emergence is the only magic.
New kinds of things just by degree.
Something for nothing,
New features for free.

Bulletpoint Buddhism: Kamma

This is the second of my attempts to express Buddhist Concepts as completely and succinctly as possible. As with the first bulletpoints, this is my interpretation and it is incomplete.

I hope you like:)

---

Kamma

1. What Kamma is not:
1. Kamma is not currency.
1. It is not earned and spent and exchanged.
1. In some Buddhist cultures Kamma as merit has emerged but this idea is not in the Core Dhamma.

1. Kamma is not justice.
1. It does not make judgments.
2. There is no absolute morality with which Kamma could be somehow entwined.
2. Kamma is not energy/matter/force
1. There is no force of Kamma that flows through life effecting things.
2. There is no wave of Kamma good or bad that can wash over you.
3. Kamma is not the results of actions.
1. It is not the fruit (vipaka)
1. What Kamma is:
1. Logically
1. All causes have effects
2. Some causes are moral
3. Some effects are moral
4. Some moral causes have moral effects.
5. All effects are causes
1. Kamma is moral causation.
1. Etiology with moral quantifications and conditionals.
2. Mentally
1. Mental events events can cause other mental events.
1. Eg: If I see a sunrise, one mental event, that can cause a change of emotion, another mental event.
2. Mental states and systems are variously balanced between progressive/productive states and regressive/disruptive states.
1. Eg: Mental States can be "good" (happiness, mindfulness...) or "bad"...
1. The term "balance" represents the manifold systems and aggregates of mind such that the realised product, the experience settles one macro-state.
1. Its as if the experience of all the merging causes the experience of now as it is becoming and that experience becomes realised as one particular quality of experience.
1. Just as the many and various tributaries of a river become that river.
2. The kamma I create comes back to me in many ways, but it all becomes just the one experience of any given moment.
3. If a Mental state B is an effect of a Mental state A then there will be a consistent and contiguous distribution of balance between A and B.
1. This is saying that the mentality of an individual will not not have any random changes of balance between productive and disruptive states.
2. The disposition/satisfaction/contentment of individuals flows continuous and connected.
1. There are no gaps in the mental/moral/physical causal chains.
3. Eg: If I am very happy today, sad tomorrow and quite happy the day after, then this transition will be a continuous and connected change in my mental states.
4. Think of how a vista of clouds will change when watched. Each new state leads into the next but there are never points of discernible transition or sudden changes of kind.
4. Disruptive states will most likely produce more disruptive/bad/unwanted states.
5. Productive states will most likely produce more productive/good/desired states.
3. Socially
1. The interconnected systems of individuals and groups has many paths for moral causation.
1. This interconnected web of moral/other causation is the closest there is to a "force" of Kamma.
2. Disruptive causes are more likely to have disruptive future effects.
3. Positive causes are more likely to have positive future effects.
4. We can think of decisions we make as having social feedback.
1. Well intentioned decisions will have more positive social feedback than bad.
1. This feedback may be extant and obvious
1. Eg: Mary is a good person because she saved the orphans and this fact causes other people to be good to her and her to feel good about her self and other people to be good to others.....
2. The feedback may be subtle
1. Eg: The smile from a stranger causes you to.....
5. Understanding the karmic relationship you have with others is essential to following Dharma.
4. Altruistically
1. Good actions have more ways to benefit the doer than bad actions.
2. Kamma is the motivation/intention.
1. It is not the fruit (vipaka)
5. Individually
1. Only the individual has awareness of the mental states they experience.
2. Only the individual has potential causal control over their mental states.
3. Mental states and decisions are causes.
4. Only the individual can choose to cause a change in their mental states.
6. Philosophically
1. Kamma emerges when there is a sufficient depth/complexity of interconnected systems with choice/morality/self-interest to allow for macroscopic changes in the mental states of individuals.
1. EG: You may feel "glum" for no reason you can pinpoint but there will be antecedent reasons/decisions of immense complexity that entail this "glumness".
1. Antecedent causes could be material (more selenium!), sensory (my back aches) or more directly to do with thought and consciousness (life is rubbish today!) and there is a compatibility between them.
2. Kamma supervenes upon/emerges from mental-moral-social systems where decisions are the significant motivator.

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Bulletpoint Buddhism

I'm not a Buddhist scholar but I am a Buddhist and I like to think that I like to think.

Over the last seven years I have been pretty deeply involved in thinking about Dharma - the teachings of the Buddha, and trying to make this fit in with my personal attempts at understanding life and reality.


The Buddhism I have studied is the traditional teachings of the Buddha known as Therevadan Buddhism. I realised as soon as I started dipping my toes in this that it was much more level-headed and rational than I would have imagined; Dharma has evolved and taken up the effects of the cultures it took root in, this is never a bad thing, but, I believe, that it might make the core teachings less accessible to western rationalists, such as myself.


The following list of 3 Bulletpoints and their subs I believe captures the very core of Dharma; everything flows from the three doctrines of existence; Anicca, Anatta, Dukkha.


I have used the original Pali terms not to be pretentious but because, as an understanding will show, there simply are not the words or concepts in English to capture the essence of these complex, composite terms.

Please note that this is my interpretation and it is not complete.

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Annica, Anatta and Dukka, The Three Marks of Existence

1. Anicca: All causes have effects/All is impermanent
1. Everything in existence changes over over time.
2. All effects are causes.
   
3. All causes have effects.
2. Anatta: There is no soul/self/ego
1. No Soul: The universe is self-contained and complete.
1. There is no material beyond matter.
   
2. No new ontological material or events are added to or connected with the universe it at any point in space-time.
2. No Self: There is no thinker, only the thought.
1. There is no central seat of experience;
   
1. That idea is an illusion created as a by product of the fact that there are experiences.
2. The totality of an individual is composed of an aggregate of the material and emergent mental sensations, experiences, thoughts and self awareness.
   
3. Dukkha: Life is suffering
   
1. This is the First Noble Truth, Dukka.
   
2. Dukkha is unsatisfactoriness.
3. Impermanence is Dukkha.
4. Attachment to the idea of self is Dukkha
5. The diminishing returns on excitement are Dukkha.
   
6. Failed Expectations are Dukkha
7. Angst and Pain are Dukkha
8. Boredom is Dukkha
1. Dukkha has a cause:
1. This is the Second Noble Truth, Samudaya
   
2. The precedent cause of Dukkha is the misvaluing of past and expected experience in an increasingly diminishing space of possible experiences.
3. This creates a Tanha, a craving/thirst/want/attachment that necessarily has diminishing returns and cannot ever meet sustainable satisfaction criteria.
2. Reducing Tanha reduces Dukkha:
   
1. This is the Third Noble Truth, Nirodha
   
2. All individuals have the capacity to manage their inner mental life and attempt to reduce Tanha.
1. It may be possible to temporarily reduce the suffering of others but ultimately Dukkha can only be reduced from the inside.
3. If Tanha is eradicated totally than Dukkha is eradicated totally (enlightenment).
   
3. The Path to reduce suffering is The Noble Eightfold Path:
1. This is the Forth Noble Truth, Magga.
2. Magga divided into three domains, the Philosophical, the Moral, and the Mental
   
1. Philosophical Development
1. The Philosophical Aspect of Dharma is rich and challenging and consistent with contemporary science and philosophy.
   
1. Right View
1. To try to see the world as it really is.
2. To understand Dharma and how the parts are connected.
1. To be able to see Kammic Connections with increasing clarity internally and externally.
1. Kamma is the complex mental/moral/physical causal web that covers human experience and interaction.
2. To be able to understand becoming and the origination of becoming.
   
1. Right Thought
1. Renouncing the self to become selfless.
2. Cultivating compassion and morality
   
1. Moral Development
1. The moral aspect of the path is not based on the idea of a moral absolute but rather the practical and pragmatic point that you cannot travel well on the path if you are poisoned by the kammic results and internal/external distractions of the prohibited acts.
   
1. Right Speech
1. To always speak the truth. Honesty is essential to Practice of Dharma. Lies have kammic consequences that can never be predicted and should be avoided even in cases where it is not in ones self interest (though this would not be without exception, of course)
   
2. To speak without anger and abuse
3. To speak with good intention
4. Not to gossip
1. Right Action
1. Not to kill. The taking of life, most especially human life, is wrong.
   
2. Not to steal
3. Not to commit sexual misconduct
4. Not to be intoxicated.
   
1. Right Livelihood
1. Do not partake in activities that could increase the suffering of others.
1. Mental Development
1. Buddhism treats the mind as a body organ that can be exercised and trained.
   
1. Right Effort
1. To analyse and eradicate disruptive mental states
2. To understand and induce beneficial mental states
   
2. Right Mindfulness
1. To practice inner attentiveness.
   
2. To be focused and aware of the sensations, perceptions and thoughts that constitute the mind
   
3. Right Concentration
1. Suppressing worry, distraction, doubt, restlessness
2. One pointedness of mind

---

The live and better formatted version of this can be viewed in my google docs here:


http://docs.google.com/Doc?id=dgxw9rth_344vkzqzfgz

What is the Purpose of Life?

The natural state of reality is systemless. It is disorder not order. It is less rather than more. It is simple rather than complex. It is low in value and information. The natural state of reality is devoid of complex and connected systems.

Persistence is existence into the future. Given the natural systemless state of reality the only systems that can persist are those that are able to defeat the collapse into the natural state.

Imagine a system at a point in time. If we accept the Law of Impermanence then it follows that this system must change at some point in it's future. This change can either increase the system's arcitechtonics (make the system more organised, structured, connected) or it can decrease it. The natural direction is for systems to decrease arcttechtonically.

All of everything is tending towards nothing and it is only the persistence of systems, you, me the galaxy, that holds this of.

The very root fundamental purpose of life, traceable through a linear and continuous, though vague, path down through the scaled of abstraction; Beneficial states persist.

The foundational fact of systems is that beneficial states persists. The beak of a finch, a job promotion, the distribution of matter in the universe, beneficial states persist.

The fittest survive. The beneficial persist. In many ways these are trivial and tautological, but in in understanding this tautology with the systems framework you can see why things are as they are. They are as they are because of enough impermanence (time and change and possibility) to allow increasingly more complex systems to emerge from more simple systems.

That is why we are here. The purpose of being here is to continue the persistence of systems. And the method of doing this is by increasing beneficial states within systems.


There is no fundamental meaning to life, in the way there is no fundamental meaning to a joke, but there is a fundamental purpose to life.

Rebirth and The Simulated Buddha

There was a point a few years ago when I really, really wanted to believe in the Buddhist concept of Rebirth; it was the one thing that was missing from me taking on The Dharma, in every aspect.

I have since realised that you don’t need the notion of Rebirth to understand the Four Noble Truths and the subsequent Dharma that stands on this. However, I did manage to reconcile rebirth with my understanding of science and cosmology and put my explanations here for your perusal.

Rebirth

Buddhists believe that individuals are the realisation, at any current point in time, of a changing aggregate of mental events and properties.

There is no thinker, only thoughts.

There is most certainly for Buddhism no concept of soul or self. No eternal non-physical substance. No Cartesian experiencer in our minds. This is the doctrine of anataman and it is key to Dharma.

But if there is no soul and no self... how then, can there be rebirth?

The unsatisfactory answer provided by Buddhist's (Though not, as far as I am aware, by the Buddha Himself) is that though here is no soul or ego, the aggregate of mentality, causally conditions the realisation of a new but related aggregate in a future reborn individual.

The metaphor often used is that its like a candle flame lighting the next candle, that this is the conditioning of rebirth to future lives.

Its an initially compelling metaphor but offers no explanation as to what is being conditioned in the future, or the mechanism of this conditioning.

Rebirth, I believe now, Isn't needed to understand and benefit greatly from Dharma. But a couple of years ago I did come up with a way that I could make sense of rebirth alongside a scientifically and ontologically consistent world view.

The Simulated Buddha

I conceived that it would be possible that this Universe was a simulation, an ancient idea in Philosophy and now modern thought. In this model the entire universe is simulated from the bing bang rather than the "brains in vats" or Matrix simulations.

Universal Simulation Features

• This simulation was initiated 15 billion years ago in "simulation time".
• The universe was started a set of initial conditions and laws and let to progress according to these laws and conditions.
  
• The universe is one of countless simulations.
  
• The fact that we are here to ask confirms it must be one of the successful simulations.
  
• The purpose of the simulation universes is to produce exceptional systems.
• Exceptional systems will be at least rare statically in the simulated universe and rare functionally.
  
• Emergent properties like compassion and being self aware are what I imagined would be the kind of properties the simulation was created to produce.
• In my model there is also this notion of understanding the nature of the reality of the simulation. Such that enlightenment is understanding and extinguishing the simulated reality.
  
• When a sufficiently exceptional system has emerged within the simulation it removed from the simulation and made real in whatever actuality the simulation is run in.

Assuming the Universe has these features I reasoned that when the Buddha reached enlightenment what happened was he passed a threshold within the simulation. His mind became detached from the other systems of the simulation, he saw the simulation as it was.

The creation of enlightened beings was the internal purpose of the simulation. We cannot make sense of the external purpose of the simulation.


Within the universal simulation context it was easier to make sense of rebirth:


The aggregate mental properties that are the information about me that is passed on
into the next life. But this information isn't identical with the me now, its just reusing sufficiently enough of this information to retain the progress I have made as a conscious potentially exceptional being. This fits well with the Buddhist idea that we all have this potential for enlightenment in us.


The motivation for rebirth from the simulation point of view was that if your simulation produces exceptional systems, like conscious humans, at the end of massive antecedent causal chains (Ie billions of simulation years) then it be beneficial to retain the essential components of these exceptional systems.

Rebirth then, in this universe, is the persistence across human systems of the aggregate mental properties that form my consciousness, morality and personality. The reason for rebirth is to preserve the progress of conscious systems towards transcending the simulated universe.



Do I believe the universe is a simulation?

I believed that Buddhist metaphysics, including rebirth and Nibbhana, could be made consistent with science and my understanding of ontology. In my mind I achieved this.

I don't however believe this is the case.

I don't believe in rebirth.

I do believe all is impermanent

I do believe there is no soul.

My Poetic Thoughts on Madonna's New Album

Madonna went from "St Madonna Of The Yummy"
With the ever flat tummy
To "The Crone you would Bone"
At exactly the point
That Lock Stock was DVDd
But her Hard Candy
is actually pretty good.

My thoughts on "The Who"

As a boy I loved The Who, for all the reasons people loved, and love, The Who.

But then came the 90's and The Who didn't really fit with the non-prescription pharmaceuticals of the Era, so I put them on hold in terms of my listening.



Then as the 90s came to an end I started to get very much back into them. Until....


Townsendpaedeogate in 2003.


Sex with children is fine if by "children" you mean "consenting adult humans who have parents".....


But the accusations against Pete Townsend where not implying that simple tertiary relationship. So, being a great follower of tabloid-herd mentality, I decided to throw away my MP3 Who Discography and place the The Who's corpus very much along side Jordi Chandler's police statement.

BBC4 on a Friday Night

But last night, my Wonderful Wife and I stumbled upon a BBC showing of a two hour documentary about The Who. From the first moment we were gripped. Golly-gosh what a rock and roll story like no other. What a band!

There were many moments where I felt like I was watching Napoleon commanding battle or Michaelangelo painting, such is the status of their product and magnificence.

Is he or isn't he?

In the documentary they mentioned Townsendpaedogate and everyone came out to say, "of course he isn't a kiddiefiddler, no way Jose." But you can't just follow what you hear unquestioningly like you are just part of a flock. So this morning, listening to The Who, I asked myself this simple question:

Is the evidence for Townsendpaedogate significant enough to outweigh the facts that everyone thinks he is innocent, including the English legal system and the fact that he is a musical genius.

So in my head I visualized a 3 axis mind-graph, with the axes being Evidence (of paedophilia), Opinion (on evidence), Quality (of Music).


I did some samples based on past paedobrities and found a pattern, a planar continuum of separation within the bounds of the hyper-visualized mind-graph.


The line bisects the cube on the evidence/opinion plane increasing against an increase of 2.4/7.1. So it's quite steep in the opinion bias. (If you are having trouble visualising this you might want to pop into Mathematica and do it in a computer.)



I will call this bisecting plane the JK Discontinuity because Jonathan King sits very close to it in the positive side. Glitter, Jackson , et al are down in the bottom of the cube, below the JKD... but where was Peter Townsend? I visualised.....

There is no spoon.

Woooooot!!! He was in the top half of the graph!!! A few mind-centimeters from Bill Wyman, in fact!

I didn't need an explanation as to why Pete Townsend joined American Childsex sites, no sir. That question was now not needed. Neuroclustuer, locate. Neurocluster, delete.

Reboot

I am happy, The remaining Who are happy, and the kids, almost certainly, are alright.

Why I love the Ipod Touch Even More

I have written poems to my iPod Touch and even... though unpublished.. a sonnet and perhaps... in my head a number of eulogies and threnodies.

But just when everything about it couldn't get any better. It actually does.

It actually has become even better, than the best it already was.

It actually is the first time in my long and promiscuous affair with technology that something has become an order of magnitude better without any physical change its its form.

There are some great games on the touch natively. But now, thanks to some free software, you can turn your iPod Touch into.... into a ...... into a nigh on fully functioning Game Boy Advance!

OMFGAJCOAB Game Boy Advance on my Ipod Touch

It's amazing, its better than an actual Gameboy Advance because the screen is better and even the virtual controls are great... even the save game aspect is better.

And there are zillions of commercial games you can get, morally but illegally, from the Bittorent fairy. These are not old games, these are modern and in many cases great little games... and most though not all play as fast and smooth as I imagine the originals would have.




Incidentally here are some other Salted Tech Firsts for the Ipod Touch:

• Its the only object x for which we already have an x in the the house and my wife would like another identical x. We do have 2 electric toothbrushes, not sure how. The point is, the Touch, because it's not a phone, you just leave laying around. So you go in and your kids or wife are playing it. And it's cool, it's hard to damage or crash etc. How bad can it get? NONE BAD, it's ace!
• It creates a pansexual coveting response in all virgin Touchers. The first time someone has a go... coverflow or the internet or iPhyscis... there is a wow factor of distinction. A wow that is so rare now with consumer products. If you have one, people like you more, it's that simple.
• It's the gift that keeps on giving. If you give yourself one, which you should do, it will give back to you many fold. And it will give to those around you. It's an experience very much like having a slab of ice made from the water from the swimming pool from Cocoon in your house, for all to use... except it's warm to the touch.

Conclusion

A fundamental aspect of Buddhism, one of the Four Noble Truths, is that the root causes of the dissatisfaction... suffering...and lack of ultimate wholesomeness to life and existence is caused by Tanha.

Tanha is a complex, deep and composite Pali term that means something like thirst, desire, craving, greed, longing. And the idea is, and it in my book is one of the most important ideas in human history, that this Tanha is unavoidable, because at every stage, all is impermanent.

This is so easy to see in all we do. The holiday we can't wait for and then when there it's not quite as satisfying as we thought. That object we have been waiting for that soon looses the value we initially placed on it. Material things or.... everything, it's all subject to the disappointments caused by the unquenchable Tahna.

I believe that the Dharma, the teachings of the Buddha, is the greatest of gifts. l also believe, that if the Buddha had had an Ipod touch (Jailbroken), we probably would not have The Four Noble Truths.

Drifting into History

I saw a woman today
Walking down the street
She was drifting into history.

Her loneliness and her illness
Were entangled with her smile.
She was drifting into history.

In those approaching moments,
Warmth of life and chill of death.
She was drifting into history.

And when she passed away,
She was just behind me,
Drifting into history.

My thoughts on inappropriate underpants

Today I had the kids at home all day; they are both under six but talking.

It was one of those days when I try to avoid them as much as possible, even though I am their guardian. There is an age old principle in parenting, if they are crying, they are probably not dying, and this something I adhered to. But come about three I decided it would be good to at least give them one activity that didn't involve asking them to leave my office when there was an advert on whatever TV channel they were watching.



So I decided upon that stalwart, The Park.



They got dressed up as a bunny and a dog, as often they do, and I knew that I needed to get changed.


And for that, I needed underpants.



My domestic assistant does my washing. It's not a sexist thing, it's not a lazy thing. I do my things, she does hers. One of hers is doing my washing. And I must say, apart from the occasional fabric over-softening, She can't be faulted. But today, for the first time since I hired her, I was out of underpants.


There weren't even any available dry "one dayers" that any right minded guy would resort to. It was not a conspiracy, it was a black hole of underpants caused by the collision of various domestic singularities. It was the Perfect Storm (welcome to the first ever use of a storm metaphor to represent a lack of underpants).


I had two impatient kids dressed as super-sized pets standing in the hallway and I has no underpants. But I had options. Until you're strapped to the nuke, you always have options.

• Go Bareback - I don't really like to do it. I don't know why. Its not just hygiene, there are chafing issues. There is the higher probability of "monkey tears" after the use of a urinal.
• Go To Marks and Spencers and get some - it's just down the road. But it would probably involve leaving the kids at home.
• Wear some of my wife's- I don't really have "transsexual" issues about this, I just don't like the idea of my wife wearing panties that I have worn. She is above that, in my mind.
  
• Wear Swimming Trunks - There they were, in my drawer. In the drawer sans underpants, a pair of swimming trunks that would make an ideal pair of pants. Bingo!

Off we went. It emerged as an issue in my head, after a quarter of a mile, that my McGivered underpants would, for the rest of the day, be a real-time dual-side scrotal garrotte, with each step.


I tried to persevere, but it was just a few steps later that I realised that each step would also be but a stage in an endless cycle of self-wedgifying. I had to go bareback. And I had to go bareback fast.

Bear Grills

I got out my ever-handy pocket Swiss Army Knife and cut the right side. I walked a few paces and cut the left side. That was that... I thought.


Even though there was a full collapse of underpant topology and morphology with those two cuts, the underpants would not budge. The fabric, 90% Nylon, 10% Elastic, grips like a goat on a bramble, and so there was not going to be any lateral sheer between my balls and this alien skin. No sir-eeeee, Bob.


I had to go in.


Both hands.


I want you to pause for a moment and imagine a man standing in the middle of a pavement accompanied by two young girls, dressed in a full-on bunny suit and dog suit, tails, ears the works, and this person has both of their hands in their trousers, to the forearms, and is "aggressively fidgeting".


I pulled and pulled the front side was free... then the back... it kind of fell like a flat jellyfish into the seam of my trousers and I thought rather than extract, I would leave... I had achieved my goal.... la liberte du lingeree.


I was done. Free!


My kids by now had run off. I closed my knife away and looked behind me. There, standing watching me, were four workmen working on the road.


There was a hiatus in my head. I raised my hands and shrugged and all I said, with an accompanying (I guess) dumb-looking smile, was , "There's nothing to say!" before I ran off after the two kids.... expecting at any moment to be gunnded down by a Black Ops Paedocopter.... To die a nonce with my makeshift pants slithered down my leg.

Swimming Trunks are for swimming.

My Thoughts on BBC's "The Passion"

The Passion is the BBC's new Easter Special; designed by The Hegemony with just one purpose:

To get bums back on this nation's pews; for just one reason:

To counter the damage done by Richard Dawkins and Tom Cruise to the notion of religious belief, think, "Children of God in Need".


It's an ambitious project - 2 hours of TV that needs to open everyone's eyes to the teachings of both the Kingdom of Heaven and the Word of The Lord; a scope probably not matched in breadth and complexity since Peter Jackson's LOTR Trilogy.


The Passion, based on a script written by The Disciple Formerly Known as Saul, could well have been the epic that it needed to be in order to meet the BBC's conversion targets, but there is one critical flaw.

It's not the miasma of textual contradiction inherent in the script or the fact that The Disciple Formerly Known as Saul was of questionable veracity before two millennia of editing, re-editing and censoring of his original narrative.


It's not even that Pontius Pilate speaks like Rab C Nesbitt.


It's the fact Jesus, in the show, is far too smug.


OK, so he is the Son of God. He knows he's special, but Nazarine or No-zarine, there is just no call for smug.

This Jesus walks the messianic walk, and all that jazz, he can even do humble, but there is always that smug smarmy "holier than thou" look on his face.



If that's the Messiah....maseltov!!!

my thoughts on the BBC iPlayer on the Apple Ipod Touch

So this is just launched... I shall give it a whirl....

Hummm..... It looks just like the Desktop version....

Categories>Comedy>Late Edition... here it is playing.....

Its fast....to play and browse.

The pictures are a little bit thatcopyofTheMatrixIboughtonPatPongin2003

It is steaming smooth and sound is in sync.

This is great.

This is new.

The is the BBC on my Iphone in My time.

We were thinking of getting a telly for the bedroom.... but now... maybe not.

I love it when a Saturday Morning has a lil paradigm shift.

My thoughts on Jonathan Coulton

I heard this musician talking on this weeks TWIT (133) and thought he sounded smart and funny, didn't really hear his music.

I liked the fact he realsed his work under Creative Commons.

I did an itunes and bought his album for my delightful ipod touch. I liked that album and then acquired, via the Bitorrent fairy, his "Thing a Week" Albums. Now I'm not sure if I stole these or not.... but I am erring on the site of less caution.

Creative Commons means Its OK to act like a common thief about other people's creativity, Discuss

Whats It Like?


Its musically excellent, diverse and interesting... sometimes funky.... sometimes country... eletcronic and acoustic... jazz/blues and blues/jazz.

Lyrically, its of the same caliber, more so. It crackles with humor and insight and satire and romance and .... futurevisions. We have been thinking laughing and dancing. Super!

He sings about the big things and the little things, and, as any techlarised troubadour must, Flickr, Ikea and Zombies.


It is possible to label all musical experiences and media with a single term. In this case, jinglejanglejungleist, but don't take my word for it, listen to his music in your browser right here on his website.

This is also him, its the credits from the Game, Portal:




Jonathan Coulton, take it to the bridge....

My thoughs on Mad Men

I remember way back when, watching the first episode of The Sopranos.... and just thinking ... as the ducks did their thing (or was it geese?)..... that this was going to be good good TV. It turned out to be the best TV ever, IMHO. But now its done....

Last night I watched the first episode of Madmen, by the same man who made The Sopranoes, and felt very similar.

I wont even go into a description, watch online, this week only, in the BBC IPlayer:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/page/item/b009364t.shtml

Fingers crossed the series is perfect. here is my quick into guide to the male characters: