Gaz's Blog™

Of the four, my personal favourite was the Cider and Pernod, though this may have been in contrast to the unequivocal foulness of the preceding drink. Alas, after the last drink I managed to negotiate my way into the waiting taxi where I quickly decided that I didn’t like to have my eyes open whilst it was moving. As a result of my sitting there with eyes closed and enough alcohol in my system to allow me to piss a reasonably fortified cocktail I quickly fell to sleep.

Upon being nudged into life again back in Manchester I struggled to stand, opting for the classic 45 degree slant rather than the proven much more successful vertical position and was promptly ushered into the house where I made a beeline (if anyone’s actually observed a bee fly then the use here is far more accurate than is implied in standard handling of the phrase) for the front room. The first chair I attempted to sit on pulled itself out from underneath me and so I decided to go for a different chair, reassuring the cabinet facing me insistently that no one saw me. After the second chair joined the same league as the first, I decided to sit on the floor for a while lest my continued spinning and falling inspire me to reproduce one of Jackson Pollock’s great works on the living room floor.

I’m fairly sure the moral of this story is self-evidential, though it remains to be seen whether it will actually make the slightest difference to anyone, anywhere or ever. Alas, I’ve declared myself teetotal for a few hours in order to recover though I’m unsure how successful I’ll be. All’s fair in love, war and binge drinking, I guess.

Gaz out.

I'm better at languages than I ever thought I might be. Now, you may think that awfully pretentious of me, but one of the experiences that has led me to believe as such could have been experienced by anyone just thinking a little bit logically about language. The first, however, is completely egocentric: I managed to watch an entire episode of futurama in French and - what is more - understood a very large portion of what was going on. So much so, in fact, that I might estimate I got a large percentage of the jokes that were translated directly and a couple of the ones tailored for French audiences.

The next, however, is open for everyone. In discovering Sigur Rós recently, I've gone to the lengths of acquiring their song (Hoppipolla) which I am quite enjoying. I knew they were an Icelandic band, and so naturally [and correctly] assumed that they would sing in Icelandic. I realise they also sing nonsense lyrics based around the phonetic structure of the Icelandic tongue, but a little research later and I found that Hoppipolla is mostly in foreign. I was having a listen to the 'lyrics' and managed to comprehend one of the lines:

Vill springa út úr skel

I'll admit that I didn't know what a 'skel' was, though I had a few ideas after I'd looked at the rest of the sentence. It doesn't even take that much explaining: Will spring out our skel. Granted that Will is the Germanic form (i.e. I want rather than I will) but it still doesn't negate too much from the overall understanding. Based on this, skel might mean shell which, true enough, it does. If you want a listen to check I'm not ranting and dribbling on, give the song a play from around 1:25 onwards and you too should be able to understand it.

Gaz's Blog: teaching you things you didn't know or care about to such an extent that you didn't even know you cared about them.

Gaz out.

I feel like an extra in a Disney film. Well, felt. There I was, idly brushing my teeth whilst part-muffled singing along to the Colin Hay's I'm waiting for my real life to begin. I won't digress for now on how much I like the song, as it's really inconsequential to the point I'm going to make and, in any case, evident from my mentioning it in the first place. It had reached the end of the song and Colin was hitting a long G note (I found this out by playing the keyboard along to his singing and even trying to try my ear on working out what it was and came to the same answer in both occasions) when I suddenly became aware of a second voice singing along.

I thought it might have been someone coming into my room with a particularly angelic voice (no luck there, then). That out of the way I thought it may have been a second vocal track that I hadn't yet noticed: then I realised that I'd listened before and there definitely wasn't anyone else on the song. Where was the music coming from, then? I looked around and the music was coming from in front of me - it turns out the tap had spontaneously burst into song and decided to join in. Of course, I'm not so naive as to consider that inanimate objects might join in impromptu a cappella versions of whatever happens to be gracing itunes at that particular moment in time, and attribute the perfect G emitted to nothing more than creaking at a fortunate frequency. How it managed to stop at the precise moment Colin did, however, remains a mystery.

I was reminded of the Disney song 'Be our guest' when the flatware of the palace suddenly springs to life and begins its catchy tune with unconvincing french accents. I fear that if this happens in my room then the choreographed study aids will be the least of my worries and that I will have well and truly lost it, however for a moment just then I thought that the time of the double lobotomy and rubber wallpaper was nigh.

Gaz out.

How can some people struggle to grasp even the most simple and clearly-defined of all facts? I mean, sure, I'm not expecting every average Joe Bloggs on the street to be able to give me a concise summary of Newton's laws of motion, nor for them to be able to bang out the clarinet part to Beethoven's 9th on demand, though I think some things shouldn't be above what one might expect someone of average intelligence that you stop on the street to be able to do. First and foremost amongst these, in my books, is proper use of the English language.

I was shown today an example of atrocious grammar and spelling, whose transgression I shall not reveal for obvious reasons. (Not that they'd even know who they were, so they won't even know this is being directed towards them - thus, I implore anyone who has ever misspelled anything ever to pay heed for I may well be talking about you.) However, I felt, in light of this magnanimous display of ineptitude to redefine a few immensely simple concepts that I've had mastery of since well before I even knew the Internet existed.

Your, You're

These two always manage to rile me up when people mistake them - mainly because they're so immensely different. Your defines the possession by a singular or multiple third party in direct address. For example: This is your mistake. You're, however is short for 'you are' and does not have any possessive qualities in itself whatsoever. For example: You're a cretin. Yore is another matter altogether, and 'ur' does not even constitute a word, though is a proper noun if used in reference to the ancient Mesopotamian city. Chances are, however, if you use the word 'ur' that you won't have the foggiest where or what Mesopotamia is.

For note, the same applies with 'theirs' and 'there's', also 'whose' and 'who's' which can be substituted mutatis mutandis into the first few sentences of the above paragraph.

They're, There, Their

As with above, they're implies omission of letters, shortening 'they are' into a single word by use of the magical device we with IQs larger than that of the average German Shepherd folk call an apostrophe. There is a demonstrative pronoun to stand in for any proper noun or direction, whilst also having the additional function of being an imprecise location over yonder. Their, however, implies ownership again. The three are not related other than being homophones, and ought not to be confused.

"I couldn't of...[sic]"

It's mildly amusing (on the same level that one might experience should they realise that an elderly relative has just told an embarrassing story from their childhood) that I put [sic] after the quote, as that's precisely how it makes me feel to write such a crude perversion of English. The sentence above, if you haven't realised already, should read 'I couldn't have'. I mean, how is it possible to mix the words 'of' and 'have' up? Do I go into a chemist and ask for "a box have that"? No, I don't. Why don't I? Because I have an ounce of sense about my person.

Linguistically, conditional sentences demand an auxiliary verb which, in any Indo-European language, will most likely take the form of 'to have' or 'to be'. Last I checked, 'of' was not an auxiliary verb, nor a conjugation of one and so I think I'll go ahead and use the proper conjunction if it's all the same with you. Even if it's not I still will.

(Oh yes: I'm back.)

Gaz out.

One of my favourite songs of all time has to be Joan Osbourne's 'One of Us' (Alternatively - and wrongly entitled - 'What if God was one of us?'). I'm not even sure why I like it so much, but I've always liked it; from the first time I ever heard it right up until the last time I listened to it (it's playing as I write this, incidentally). It prompted myself and Mr Mann to write the skit version of 'What if God was a platypus?', dealing with the problems of a monotreme deity and the possible exclusion he must feel as a result - a venture that I'm sure we'll try and record for you good people at some point or another.

Anyway, why am I telling you this? Well, I was looking for a nice piano arrangement of the piece to learn and play (which I found, incidentally) and I stumbled across several versions on youtube which I'd like to share with you now;

Proper version

Live Version

Piano Version (My favourite, possibly)

Skit Version (What if God smoked cannabis?)

I think that's enough for now. I just thought I'd share these little links with you as I have nothing better to do, in fairness.

Gaz out.

So said Rafiki, anyway.

Yes, yes, I realised (and have been pulled up on the fact no less than three times in the past 24 hours) that I haven't blogged in a long while. Thus, this is to appease those out there that were afraid that I might've stopped blogging for good: nil desperandum, mes amis. If you have to know why I haven't been blogging for the past week and a half, allow me to explain briefly for you;

Easter Monday - Wednesday: I was in Nottingham as the guest of Mitch and Emily. It was nice to be down there and, what with all the relaxing and enjoying myself I was doing, I found little time to blog.

Thursday: Recovering from Nottingham and working all day with the Tories.

Friday - Sunday: Went away with Youth Fellowship to Tarn which is, quite precisely, in the middle of nowhere as well as being at the back of beyond. (From this, one might formulate that the two are somehow related and, whilst I'm tempted to draw a diagram to explain this little thesis of mine, I shall refrain for the good of us all.) I had minimal access to modern technology whilst up there, being without the Internet, a computer and signal most of the time. I'd thus like to take this opportunity to apologise to anyone I didn't text back on account of my not receiving the text due to my being in the middle of a field.

Monday - Today (Wednesday): It was Mitch's turn to come and see me in jolly old Bolton. What possessed him to do so is beyond me, though I'm awfully glad he did - it was good fun to spend time with him (not that it normally isn't, nor that it was anymore fun that it would be with anyone else, I just felt like a bit of unprecedented flattery). Together, we managed to devour half a pig and cow respectively grace a the strawberry duck, spend far too long looking at toys than grown men should and top my previous personal best in the pub quiz combined with the brains of Bolton.

I feel I must also apologise to everyone for not putting up an April Fool's gag. In truth, I couldn't think of one that I hadn't done in previous years, and so shall have to think long and hard about what to do for next year. Actually, I didn't really manage to fool that many people compared to what I normally manage, though I'm going to attribute this in part to being in bed until 10 more than anything else.

Anyway, until next time;

Gaz out.

And so, today, we come to the official end of lent, as determined by the western church and, as such, today's entry shall be my last Lenten blog. It's been quite fun doing it through the past forty days or so, though also a lot harder than I thought it would be. My ideas began to wane after the first few days (hence the idea drive and, whilst on the subject, my most sincere apologies if your idea did not get covered - if you're really desperate for me to do it then simply send me a message or leave a comment or something) and my commitment after the first two weeks or so. By the time we got to this stage, then, I've found it incredibly hard to keep going.

Also, I might mention that the Lenten blog program hasn't been an unfettered success. I managed to miss two days along the way and for that I profusely apologise though, after all, I'm only human and I think, as far as Lenten promises go, I did pretty damned well. I'd like to thank all of you that read, commented, suggested topics and kept me focused on doing the blogs throughout this time - you've been an inspiration and, without it sounding far too cheesey, I do it for you guys. (Quite frankly, I've no need to blog for myself - I know everything I'm going to write about or else can simply read about it. The regurgitation of the facts with my own spin is for you guys. Remember that.)

Anyway, I'm going to end this little apostle shortly and leave the entry relatively short and sweet. Though it has been fun, I think I need a well deserved rest. I'd like to thank you all again and assure you that there's some good stuff to come in the following months, so stay tuned - just because the blogs may not occur as frequently doesn't mean they won't at all and/or that they'll be of anything less than the high quality you've come to expect.

Gaz out.

I was sat here pontificating over the subject of the next blog and it struck me what day it was: Good Friday. (Well, I'd known about if for some considerable time beforehand if we're honest, though that detracts from the magical element I'm trying to imbue within my blog.) So I began to think about the term 'Good Friday' and tried to fathom it's etymology though to no avail: I can't see what was so good about the day itself. Alright, so if you believe the story then Good Friday is the precursor to the salvation of all mankind, though surely we should called Sunday 'Good Sunday' in which case? Anyway, I had another little ponder and then realised that I didn't know where the word 'Easter' came from.

I decided to compare it to the languages that I'm reasonable adept in: in French the celebrate Paques, In Germany Ostern and in Holland Paas. German, then, is the only one that's reasonably close and thus I assume that the two terms are in some way related, though I then wondered why Dutch was so similar to the French word. Downtrodden and defeated by my own lack of etymological insight, I turned to wikipedia in an effort to enlighten me.

It turns out that all romance languages use a derivative of the Latin form of the Hebrew word 'Paschen' (Passover). Fine, thought I, that's France and the Netherlands sorted out - now what about us and Germany? Turns out that Easter is descended from the German month of Eostur which had some link to the original celebration of the Passover celebration in the western church. The venerable Bede, who I detest for an unconnected and The Peoples of Early Medieval Europe related reason, wrote in the 8th Century about "Eostur" and this, I gather, is the earliest recollection of such that we have.

I would now like to draw everyone's attention to a little gripe of mine that has managed to plague me throughout this blog so far. I keep misspelling the word 'the' and instead writing 'teh'. An honest mistake, one might think, and you'd be right in assuming as such. So, when I go back and right click the underlining of the word I get a lovely list of words, though the word 'the' is not amongst them. Instead, I could change it to some of the following gems:

tech; techno, tether; Tehran, tae, thy, tie, toe, 1st, THC

Not one of them is the word I want. I'm sorry, windows: you have failed.

Gaz out.

And anyone who's known me for more than three weeks can see what I'm talking about: a gradual degradation from a former perfect being. Of course, whether or not the perfect being existed in the first place is irrelevant - that people believe it existed is the important thing and as such will be able to relate everything against the (frankly unattainable) superman.

Now, replace myself with 'Sparta' and you'll see what I've been talking about all day in my incredibly exciting essay: "Studies into the development of the Sparta legend". Essentially six thousand words of tosh and drivvel loosely connected with Sparta in some way, shape or form with my own personal biases and opinions thrown in as though they were commonplace facts, this could well be my magnum opus. (At least until I write something more impressive and/or longer. Actually, come to think of it, I'm not sure if magnum opus is a definite or a relative term; as in, does one's magnum opus change after you write something better or does the term apply reversibly even after you've managed to write something better? In the case of the latter, I might be more tempted not write anything else so that you can never outshine yourself. After all, the definition of 'the best work one could possibly achieve' might take some beating.)

For anyone interested, I guess you could read it once I'm done. Not that I really expect anyone to volunteer themselves for such torture (It's bad enough to write even if you know the texts inside out and back to front) though you're quite welcome if you're into the whole academic BDSM thing.

Anyway, time to let my eyeballs slowly shape them into the near-circles they were meant to be and not the squares that they have become.

Gaz out.

I figure, with Easter Saturday looming just around the corner, I should crack on with some of the requested topics before I run out of time. One of the more interesting ones still outstanding is that of the Fermi paradox, as suggested by Duncan.

The Fermi paradox was proposed in the 1950s by the physicist Enrico Fermi. Actually, I'm lying already; he summised what would later become the paradox when he asked that, assuming life on earth was standard, and given the high amount of star systems, then "Where the fudge is everyone?". (He didn't actually say that, though his question was probably along similar lines and with comparable emphasis and frustration.) It's a fair question: if the chances of life existing elsewhere than on earth are so vast given the correct conditions (like those recently found on Io) then why haven't we been able to see, or at least detect, alien civilizations?

There's a couple of reasons selon me, the first of which being that there is nothing to see. This encapsulates a few theories in one: firstly that there is nothing out there and that intelligent life is so rare as to only exist in a selected few pockets spread across the universe. (Sod's law would then dictate that these would be at the furthest point from us, and would travel everywhere we weren't.) Further, what if this intelligent life had not managed to develop space travel, had managed to destroy itself in a series of wars and clashes, or that - even if they hadn't yet managed to get into space - they hadn't been able, nor possessed the wish to, broadcast things over a wide enough area for us to pick up.

Secondly, and slightly in the realms of the conspiracy nut this time, they can travel, do know about us but don't make themselves seen for various reasons. Perhaps there are problems with the visibility of such visitors - they are too small or too large for comprehension, have superior technology that would allow them to cloak themselves, exist on a different plane of reality or simply like to observe us and treat earth as something of a giant zoo. Of course, this is all assuming they're interested in us: perhaps they stay away because we're of no real concern or value to these visitors and so no one bothers coming here anymore.

All viable reasons, I reckon, though the first block form a little more logical sense compared to the begging-to-be-sectioned influence present in the latter block. Anyway, I shall leave it for you to decide; Personally, I'm not overly sure I'd like to know if someone is out there or not. Part of the wonder and mystery of it all is in not knowing and speculating instead and I'm not sure I want to give that part up.

Gaz out.

And I'm back home again. I know this is something of a contentious issue for some people as to precisely where 'home' is, not least those at University. For example, I feel quite at home when I'm living at Hulme Hall, though I also feel quite at home when over in Moose Jaw in Canada. This said, I wouldn't class Moose Jaw as a home per se, more rather homely. I recall stories of people referring to 'going home' (by which they were returning to Manchester) to their respective mothers and them getting fairly upset by this notion.

I gave this issue a little bit of thought and came to a (rather boring) consensus opinion that one can, in fact, experience home in two separate locations quite simultaneously. If I were to be technical, which I shall be for a moment, then I would suggest that home is anywhere where you can - or at least are entitled to - vote. Contrary to popular opinion, one can have several votes in the local election - essentially one per permanent residence. As such, I get one vote in the Bradshaw ward and one in the Rusholme ward in the next local election, though shall have to chose in which consistency (Bolton North East or Manchester South) I cast my one vote in the general election. (And it's probably no surprise who I'll be voting for in all three times.)

Rather than home simply being where you live or where you feel at home (I've visited friends and been made to feel quite at home after only a few hours or a single night of staying) I'd like to suggest that home is in the company of whomever you feel feels at home in your company. Thus, it might be quite seemly to be at home with your parents, at University accommodation, with good friends or any manner of other things. I realise this may be a touch soppy and I apologise for that in retrospect, though I'm fairly sure you can't argue with my logic.

Gaz out.

Hrm... it would appear that my attempt to put a pi symbol as the title for this blog failed a little bit in the fact that it doesn't look at all like a pi symbol. I guess you'll have to just take my word for it. It is one - honest.

Today is pi day, hence the [attempt at a] title. Pi, the Greek letter for the Latin letter P, is a symbol used to denote the irrational number that, in turn, denotes the circumference of a circle. Now, when I say that it's irrational I don't mean to imply that it often runs around in a flap because it's managed to work itself up into some description of frenzy, nor do I intend to buy into the 19th century argument of why we should continue to deny women the vote - I simply mean that it cannot ever be fully expressed.

I guess this doesn't really go to far to explaining why today is pi day. Today is the 14th March, which, when expressed in the American form for displaying date, makes today 3.14 - the first three digits of pi. (Normally, it's shortened to 3.1416, though in the absence of a 1416th day of March, 3.14 is as close as a date can come to expressing pi.) The first ten thousand digits of pi, should you be at all interested, can be found here, and if you really want to you can buy a book that contains the first million digits here. Don't ask me why anyone in their right mind might want to - partly because I don't know and partly due to the fact that even if I did know, I doubt I'd pander to your curiosity to such an innate degree to actually divulge such meaning.

Though, should today really be international pi day? It might be more appropriate to term today American pi day (pun intended) - both on the grounds that it's using the American date system, not the sensible European one, and that in doing so doesn't really come very close to expressing pi at all. I mean, 3.14 does bear resemblance to pi to a modest extent, but no more so than two dissimilar words with a similar three letter sequence might resemble one another. What should we decent, honest Brits do instead, then?

Well, I propose that we change pi day to the 22nd of July, expressed in the British form as 22/7. Why? 22/7 is (apparently, so Mr Mann tells me) a more accurate representation of pi than 3.14 is. I'm not one to argue with a man who knows his maths as well as Mr Mann does, and so I shall concede on his point and proclaim it from the rooftops. Figuratively, natuurlijk. I shall wait for the 22nd of July, then, and we can celebrate a good old fashioned British pi. Maybe with some custard.

Gaz out.