Sunday, April 29, 2007

Bummed Out at the End of an Awesome Day!

This is Glyn. Glyn is sad. You can tell because, when he's sad, he talks about himself in the third person (a kind of detachment thing I suppose). Glyn is bummed out because this evening he tried to do something that he hasn't done in a number of years - and he was unable to do it. He was never brilliant at the thing that he tried tonight when he did used to do it many years ago but he always assumed that when you knew how to do it, you'd always know and was therefore expecting to be able to do it - but he couldn't. It wasn't even that he was just rusty. He actually just could not do it. Whatever part of his brain had enabled him to do this thing in the past (for confidentiality reasons, Glyn is unable to disclose what that thing actually was) has gone completely now. Vanished. Removed completely from existence. Glyn might has well never have known how to do this thing. It was an extra sad time for Glyn because all of his friends, who had also tried the thing (and many of them had not done the thing for a number of years either) were really pleased at how well they all managed to do the thing. But it's a shame that Glyn feels this way at all because the rest of the day had been absolutely brilliant. In fact, when Glyn focusses on the day rather than the thing, I am suddenly much happier (see? back into first person). I've had an awesome day. A day involving picnics and frisbees and rounders and my first ever flip flops (thank you Chell) and friends and barbeques and home made burgers (thank you Roland) and getting lost and dancing and music and sitting out under the stars and Risk. So I guess it's not really appropriate for me to gripe about "the thing" when I've had such a great day. Maybe the above picture shouldn't be so morose then. It should have more colour. More life. More pizzazz. Something like this:

Thursday, April 26, 2007

Procrastination Hall of Fame!


After many a thought about procrastination since I blogged about it last week, I have decided to set up a blog dedicated to the art of procrastination.

Actually, that's not entirely true. It was after reading John Mitch's blog in which he wrote his own eurovision song and I said it should be in the Procrastination Hall of Fame and then I thought, "hey, that's not a bad idea" and it was then that I decided to set up a blog dedicated to the art of procrastination (don't worry John, the song'll be in there).

So ladies and gentlemen, I present to you: The Procrastination Hall of Fame!

Needless to say that I really need to have something finished by tomorrow morning and will likely be up most of the night getting it done but there's a small part of me (albeit a very small part) that thinks it was worth it.

P.S. I also doubt it will last more than two posts (three tops).

Friday, April 20, 2007

Gotcha!

For all those who continue to be concerned for the whereabouts of my laptop, I think I may have found it:

I'm sure it's one of those anyway.

P.S. I have no idea what Shut Down Day's about (if pushed I'd guess it had something to do with shutting down something but what and why? These are questions that I cannot answer) but it seems we've missed it anyway.

Thursday, April 19, 2007

How Rude?



This morning, during my driving lesson, a song came on the radio which got my instructor quite riled up. It's that one by Sandy Rivera (see above photo) about licking ice cream and lollipops and other such sexually explicit confectionary. It made him angry because his 5 year old daughter, who doesn't understand the connotations of what she's singing, often dances round the house belting out hearty renditions of the tune. It made me think of another couple of examples when innappropriate lyrics have been warbled by innocent voices.

I remember when I was a kid singing along (quite passionately) to "Girl I Want to Make You Sweat" by UB40. I'm not sure if I'd have been able to offer any suggestions, at the tender age of 10, as to what was making the poor girl cry but I certainly didn't clock the strong references to, what now seems to me, pretty forceful sex, bordering on rape. I had no idea. Even my grandparents would be subject to my sung tales of how I was going to push it, push it some more.

Another story that came to me was when I was in Manchester with Rhema Theatre Company and I stayed with a family one week while we were on mission. One evening the family invited me to join with them in a game of Playstation Karaoke. We got into pairs to play the duet game and I was teamed up with the family's 8 year old son. He chose for us to sing Maroon 5's This Love and I, not being wholly familiar with the song at the time (but knowing it was a good tune) was quite happy with this. The song started and I couldn't believe it. This 8 year old was happily and unwittingly singing about all the things that he does to keep his girlfriend satisfied and I, unsurprisingly, decided to opt out (I was unable to sing the rude lines because they were rude but was then unable to sing the rest for laughing). The father apologised and explained that his son, of course, had no idea what he was singing.

I guess this happens all the time in our current pop culture. I'm just not sure how to react to a child singing innuendos. Do you tell them not to sing it and then have to explain why? Or do you just let it slide because, as far as they're concerned, what's wrong with licking a lollipop?

Wednesday, April 18, 2007

I Sleep in Crust!!


I want the world to know that I have been living in Matt and Christina's spare room since December and I have not once changed my bed sheets. I am not proud of this but it's part of who I am and PEOPLE WILL NOT CHANGE ME!!!!

So to Matt White and Matt Leeder who are trying to blackmail me with this piece of information, it's not going to work. You can change your own darn sheets.

I'm happy for mine to look like this.

Monday, April 16, 2007

Procrastination:

(pro-crass-tin-ay-shun)
noun
1. the act of procrastinating; putting off or delaying or defering an action to a later time

noun
2. slowness as a consequence of not getting around to it

(pro-crass-tin-ate)
verb (used without object)
3. to defer action; delay: to procrastinate until an opportunity is lost.

verb (used with object)
4. to put off till another day or time; defer; delay.

verb (intr.)
5. to put off doing something, especially out of habitual carelessness or laziness.

verb (tr.)
6. to postpone or delay needlessly.


10 Interesting Facts About Procrastination

1) Procrastination derives from the latin procrastinare meaning "defer till the morning" - from pro meaning "forward" and crastinus meaning "belonging to tomorrow" (from cras meaning "tomorrow").

2) The word procrastinate was orignially coined in 1548 by Edward Hall in The Union of the Two Noble and Illustre Famelies of Lancestre and Yorke and was recorded as an English word for the first time in 1588.

3) "Procrastination" was dictionary.com's Word of the Day on August 17th 2002.

4) Here are some pictures of people procrastinating:





5) The physiological roots for procrastination are thought to come from the area of the brain called the prefrontal cortex which "acts as a filter by decreasing distracting stimuli from other brain regions. Damage or low activation in this area can reduce an individual's ability to filter out distracting stimuli, ultimately resulting in poorer organisation, a loss of attention and increased procrastination" (Wikipedia).

6) Paul Graham argues that not all procrastination is bad:

"There are three variants of procrastination, depending on what you do instead of working on something: you could work on (a) nothing, (b) something less important, or (c) something more important. That last type, I'd argue, is good procrastination."

7) Procrastination is thought to have more to do with anxiety than laziness.

8) Here is a good example of where procrastination can lead:



9) The internet is both the best friend and the worst enemy of the procrastinator.

10) 20% of the population identify themselves as chronic procrastinators.

Hmm. Interesting. I should probably get on with my report.

Tuesday, April 03, 2007

The Greatest Milkshake in the World!

Sunday night was one of the best youth fellowship evenings I've known for a while. Thanks to a moment of inspired genius from Christina White, we spent it making milkshakes. If you've ever been to Shakeaway then it was that kinda thing with the guys choosing what flavours they wanted from Twixes and Oreo Cookies and Skittles and fruit and then mixing it with milk and icecream to create awesome milkshake flavours (if, for whatever reason, you've never been to a Shakeaway, then get on it straight away - ignorance is no longer an excuse).

I was in charge of milkshake production (see above photo) and for those of you who want to make your own, I found this was the best way to do it:

For a pint of milkshake, fill a pint glass two thirds full with milk and put into liquidiser (blenders also work but not as well as the liquidiser). Then add three scoops of icecream (for thicker/creamier milkshakes then you can add more but this is the best amount to use for a good consistency if you're making milkshakes for a whole youth group and don't want to run out of icecream). Then add whatever you want to flavour your milkshake with (can be anything - sweets, chocolate and fruit are the most popular options but Shakeaway do a cucumber flavour milkshake and there's even a place in London that sells marmite flavoured shakes). Blend for about a minute and then pour. Magic.

It was all very nice and pleasant but then, I came up with the ultimate in milkshake flavouringness:

Barbeque Chicken Pizza Flavoured Milkshake.

It was awesome. We had a whole pint and between about 6 or 7 of us brave enough to give it a go, we managed to consume about a tenth of that. The tasting consisted of a brief sip, tasting the concoction, realising what we'd just done, scrunching our faces in disgust (those watching were way ahead of us on that one), stomping, flapping our arms, covering our mouths, making muffled "Hmmm! HMMMM!" noises, finally swallowing and then taking great pride in what we'd achieved.

Needless to say, it was a guy thing.

The Big List!

There seems to be a big fuss over bloglist positions these days. Everyone seems to have a different method. Andy Hill takes the alphabetical approach while Kirsty takes the week off to calculate blogging consistency ratios. Everyone else, it would seem, measure the worth of their own blog by how high up they appear on other people's blogrolls. As such, I may have caused some offence. I should clarify that I have no such system. People appear on my list simply by the order they were put on the list. The only exceptions are Kirsty and Becky (Wainthropp) as they were added as replacements for people who simply weren't blogging. So please don't read anything into it. It really doesn't mean anything.