Overheard conversation... #4

Two chaps walking out of Piccadilly train station, one animatedly trying to express himself: "I can't really describe it... it goes nice with meat balls."

But what was he talking about? Sauce? Parsley? Ikea?

Anski updateski onski myski campaignski

My 'Save Takuma Sato!' campaign seems to have paid off.

Midland, the mysterious Russian mafia that have taken over and re-painted the Jordan F1 team, have revealed the hapless Janapese to have signed a contract a month ago. I launched the Save Takuma Sato! campaign 26 days ago. Coincidence, methinkNO!

Midland boss Colin Kolles is nicknamed Chavski because he thinks Burberry looks good and he has the manners of, erm, a chav. He also likes confusing his sporting analogies when talking about F1. He says of the contract: "'The ball is in [Sato's] court. If he wants to sign it, he could be a Midland driver next year - we're waiting to hear."

This is a resounding success for the Save Takuma Sato! campaign. Running this campaign has been a lot of hard work; the past 26 says have consisted of:

- thinking about saving Takuma Sato;
- eating crisps;
- reading articles about Takuma Sato;
- wondering what Japan is like;
- watching Dr Who reruns on UK Gold;
- licking pavements;
- thinking about saving Takuma Sato.

So as you see, I have put tremendous effort into the campaign. Takuma is currently prostituting himself in Hapan for corporate whores (ie doing PR work), whereafter he will go on holiday happy in the knowledge that the campaign continues for as long as crisps are 3 for 2 at my local newsagent.

I only have pies for you

Cockeyed.com is one man's obsessive quest to find out everything about everything.

Sometimes it is informative, such as his recent re-posting of his trip to New Orleans during a hurricane alert a few years ago. Most of the time it is just silly. He replaces menus in restaurants with carefully designed parodies, and devotes pages and pages of his site to finding out how much is inside stuff (eg, how much toothpaste inside a tube, how much tree is in a Christmas tree).

However, and this (sadly) is my reason for my post, the site author's recent turn of genius is a pie chart based on a survey he conducted. He asked people's favourite TV channel - and he came up with this, the best pie chart in the world. No, really. It's complicated, messy and fantastic, and how all pie charts should look.

His pie chart is far more interesting than this one, far less yellowy than this one, and less scary than this one.

This is INTERESTING, dammit!

Screw Mr Scruff, get yerself some electric toys and heroin Britney instead

Yours truly and a few chummies stumbled upon a couple of bands at the In The City festival last night. We had tried to get into Mr Scruff, but with just one doorman and a queue to rival Ikea on 'Two Square Bits Of Wood For The Price Of One' Day, we took a wander and ended up at Dry Bar.

The band we saw were not entirely non-undisimilar to the Zutons, only more stoner and with a person 'Bez' dancing while adorned in a suit made of hands. They are Misty's Big Adventure and they were massive fun. They describe themselves as "hip hop, scratching, screwy beats, pop and electric toys". One of their toys flashed. Ooo.

The second is a scuzzy garage rock band called M.A.S.S  Their show was compelling mainly thanks to lead singer Justine, a frenzied 'Britney on heroin' (thanks Dan for that description). I actually recognised one of their songs from the wireless, Hey Gravity, which Justine sang while standing on the bar at the other end of the venue from the stage, holding the microphone with one hand and smashing the hell out of the venue's piping with the other hand. If the piping had burst, spewing effluent on the crowd, it would have been one of the less eventful moments in an a startlingly exuberant performance. Apparently the Libertines love 'em as much as Docherty loves his Class As.

I must make a note to check out more In The City gigs next year. I'm off to find a piece of paper.

Save Takuma Sato!

In 2006, the famous privateers in F1 motor racing will be no more. Peter Sauber has sold Sauber off to BMW, Eddie Jordan's bright yellow will make way for the dull dark blue of Midland F1 and even Minardi are leaving F1 having given their team to Red Bull.

Another massively important change in Formula One next year will be the absence of the Formula One Losers League, a fantasy league I have been running on the interwebular cyberspaceway. Without proper web support, I can't produce the all-singing all-prancing website I need to take the League to the next level.

Perhaps the most upsetting change in '06, however, is Takuma Sato not getting a race drive. The cheeky little Japanese has wowed us with his inconsistency and crashes over the past few years, and despite his frankly dangerous driving style, he is the most successful Japanese F1 driver of all time.

I have been watching the Brazilian grand prix. He came into the race demoted ten places on the grid for smashing wildly into Michael Schumacher two weeks ago. And he has just been demoted another ten places because of an engine change. There are only 20 cars in F1, so that's a pretty impressive penalty. I love Takuma Sato for exactly this.

But BAR have dumped him in favour of grinning Brazilian Rubens Barrichello and some bloke called Jenson Button. It's been on the cards for some time - as Taku says, ""I am not surprised by todays confirmation about next year."

But look on the bright side. He put in a near-perfect drive in Turkey, and I think it was the British GP where he produced a solid points finish in front of a British crowd for British American Racing.

So what are Takuma's options? Test driver for BAR? Getting a seat in Jordan/Midland (like BAR, they have a Japanese engine, so national loyalty could play a part)?

Whatever, Takuma Sato deserves a seat because:

a) I have watched crap Japanese F1 drivers for years, and Taku has broken the mould;
b) He performs like a rally driver, throwing his car around the track like a child with a Tonka;
c) He's cute and I want to adopt him.

Save Takuma Sato!

Tripping Yellow Madness, a death hole and "What in Pete Sampras is going on heaaaw?"

The three funniest things about the new Homestar Runner toon.

Click here.

Overheard conversation... #3

Couple walking arm in arm. He says: "I've been meaning to tell you, I've invited four other people on holiday to Lanzarote with us." She says nothing.

Honeymoons aren't what they used to be.

Life, the Sanctiverse and everything

This following post is part of my response to ongoing discussions within my church, Sanctus1. it may or may not mean anything to you...

For those worrying about where Sanctus1 is going, there is one thing we can be sure of. Sanctus will *not* become a prescriptive church that requires a sign-on-the-dotted-line minimum commitment if you are to be a ‘proper’ Sanctus member. Sanctus is not like that. Ben is not like that. The strategy group folk are not like that.

But! I think there is something we need to be aware of as Sanctus that I may not be too popular for pointing out.

Lost orders

Think back to Sunday’s service if you were there. It was a multi-media fest that was complicated and technical. I only turned up to do the sound desk and the DJing, but I was shattered afterwards. It was a lot of hard work for a small number of people. When the service finished, I hung around to chat to a few people before I started setting down the sound; pulling out wires, putting things away, trying not to let the speakers fall on my head, etc.

As time went on, I realised the pack-down was not going as quickly as it usually does, so much so that by the time we had finished, the few of us who remained couldn’t possibly go to the pub. Pack-down had taken so long, we were staring down the barrel of last orders.

You are not a muffin

I am not suggesting that getting to the pub is an essential part of our Sunday services. Nor am I suggesting Sanctus1 is just a bunch of lazy muffins who don’t help to clear up after services. I think this happened because there were unusual circumstances: a few key people either weren’t there or a few key people had to get away.

However, it was unfair that Ben, having planned and run the service and knackered himself out as a result, had to work his butt off putting everything away at the end. It was unreasonable that the people who were most heavily involved in the service were left to tidy up their mess by most Sanctus people (not all, thankfully).

Which I think brings us back to getting practical, as Richard says. What if the Covenant Community idea gets knocked on the head because of the strong reaction to the leaflet that was sent out a few weeks ago? Where do we go from here?

Where do we go, part 1: Shredding Ben

We are a cool, chilled-out post-modern community that is led by the creativity and skill of its fuzzy-edged attendee-base. So why on Earth does Ben do most of the work? Why are we, in practice, almost totally led from the top?

As Sanctus1 gets larger, we need to work to make Ben redundant. By that I don’t mean bribing the human resources folks in the Church of England offices into shredding his contract. Sanctus1 as a loving community needs to take on Ben’s role, which means leading the Wednesdays and Tuesdays, doing the services, etc. It will free Ben up to lead the vision of Sanctus and initiate or develop more things like Blah, II, the MBS fair, other missional stuff, etc.

Of course, this relies on willing and discipline on Ben’s part to be let go of his role as it stands.

Where do we go, part 2: Teenager vs badger

Although I sound as though I’m admonishing a lazy teenager, I will say this anyway. People should not have to be asked to do the washing up, to put the chairs away, to scrape the wax up from the carpet, or to carry the tray of cups to the smelly Methodist kitchen. Badgering the service organisers on Sunday and offering five minutes of your time would have meant the world. (Sorry to mention Sunday again. I’m not annoyed about it, it is just an observation – I am merely using Sunday as my ‘model’ to argue with!)

I do recognise that a lot of people do these jobs a lot of the time, but not always and it’s often the same faces.

Where do we go part 3: Venn I fall in love, it will be forever

Richard’s suggestion of fairly low-key Venn diagram group structures deserves some thought. If the idea of being led by these groups scares you, just remember that it already happens to some extent, it’s just that the groups are often not overtly identified (are Kolyn and I the II Group?).

We arguably also need a group that identifies ways of getting people involved in S1 stuff that want to get involved, e.g. Claire doing some talky / discussion leading. I have really enjoyed the Wednesday evenings that have been led by other peeps – remember Stefan’s rapping?

Where do we go part 4: Navel fluff

I’m quite glad Richard suggested thinking in more concrete terms. We must move this discussion on because as long as we are navel gazing we are distracting ourselves from first-priority stuff like God and our relationship with God and our missional focus, etc. Not that the discussion shouldn’t be a priority, as I think it’s necessary and we are going through all-important growing pains, but we need to arrive somewhere.

One thing that struck me at Blah… was we can spend too much time discussing about ‘secondary’ things in the kingdom, so we need to manage our debate sensibly (which I think is achieved very effectively by Blah…).

Let’s enjoy a multitude of stimulating discussions during this Covenant-themed summer, but do remember that we are trying to move things forward, and do please please let your voice be heard.

Wishy-washy disclaimer

If I didn’t go to Sanctus1, I wouldn’t go anywhere. I love the people in it and around it. I hope I have not been too critical or too judgemental. If so, it was a bad turn of phrase and was not intended. I have deliberately not edited my text above so I do not water down what I’m saying (I can become so appeasing, I can disappear easily into diplomatic nothingness). Also, I have not covered everything nor am I ever likely to.

I am surrounded in S1 by very committed and loving people, and I’m so glad it is you lot I am discussing with. Please respond, criticise, call for my summary execution, or gush [delete as appropriate].

Time for breakfast.

PS – my red-underline intrusive spell check thingy says ‘missional’ is not a word.