My birthday cake
August 27, 2009
I sometimes think my family don’t take my interest in parapsychology too seriously… 
My birthday cake
It was delicious though!
cj x
My fortieth birthday complete with infamous game photos
August 25, 2009
OK, so I’m still recovering from a long weekend of debauchery. Well ok, I drank half a pint on Sunday night!
A good crowd of folks descended on Cheltenham, and some took part in almost everything, and some took part in only one event, and some appeared for five minutes then vanished as swiftly as they arrived! I think most people have come here looking for the infamous Screws of the World game photos though, so I’ll concentrate on posting those!
The Game
For those who don’t know, the Screws of the World is just a slang term for a British newspaper, The News of the World, which is actually quite readable and is a weekend paper – the daily is called The Sun, best known for it’s famous Page 3 girls. It’s a tabloid in the British sense, not the American, it reports real news! Anyway as the game was just named after it you don’t have to know any more – the game was invented by Ben Hayes and myself back in 2000 one long hot summer, and we played it then with hilarious results, and some of the teams narrowly avoiding arrest!
So for my fortieth I decided to revive the game, and it can be explained simply – nine players were split in to three teams of three each, and given three hours to take photos to illustrate ten of the most outrageous tabloid headlines i could find (not all from the News of the World of course!) They had a total of forty real tabloid headlines to choose from. The photos that follow are some of the “best” of the attempts – team Jez, Martin and Barbie won in the end, their photos being voted the best, but that hardly matters. Here follow the photos, each captioned with the tabloid headline they were trying to illustrate…
The Photos
Devil Toaster Ruined my Life!
What car would Jesus Drive?
Werewolves Protest Plan to Blow up the Moon
Nun Fight at the OK Chapel
Nun Fight at the OK Chapel
9' Guinea Pig Attacks Joggers
9' Guinea Pig Attacks Joggers
Man takes out Restraining Order on Invisible Friend
Gnomes of Death/Killer Strippers
Satan employs PR firm to improve his image
The Fatal Fart
Cowardly Matador Only Fights Rabbits
My toilet Roll Holder is Possessed
How to Housetrain Your Werewolf
Woman gives birth to 8lb Duck
hula hoops lead to alien abduction
hula hoops lead to alien abduction
hula hoops lead to alien abduction
What Car Would Jesus Drive?
Judge who refused to allow Witches to Adopt turned in to Hamster
Vegan Vampire Attacks Tree
Vegan Vampire Attacks Tree
10,000 hits, six months – a celebration!
August 18, 2009
OK, I created this blog over a year ago, but never actually posted on it till the end of February of this year, and yesterday I crossed the ten thousand posts mark! I’m really quite pleased, and wondered who read it. Well it seems very few people come to see what I am up to – a handful of friends regularly read and comment – but a few of my little essays do seem popular. The articles on Science and Religion, the Historical Jesus, and my mini-review of Heroquest the roleplaying game are all immensely popular, but actually one of the most read articles is my essay on Futurism, the Italian Art movement, that has been on my website for well over a decade. That does surprise me, though given this year marks the centenary of Marinetti’s Futurist Manifesto maybe it shouldn’t!
Life has been full of ups and downs recently, a lot good, a lot bad. I won’t go in to detail, but I’m doing ok I guess, and I’d write more but I have a lot to try and get done today, indeed this week, and this weekend sees my fortieth birthday celebration.
So how does it feel to be almost forty? Perhaps surprisingly I don’t really feel that much different to how I did at 23. My interests are much the same, my lifestyle has not changed that drastically, and I still spend far too much time reading, writing, and thinking, and far too little time doing productive paid work I guess. I’m actually quite happy at the moment – being ancient mellows one, and you growe used to the crises, the lack of money, the tiredness and the chaos. Sure I still get depressed from time to time (in a clinical sense as well) but I work through it, by throwing myself in to doing stuff.
One thing I have noticed is that I’m FAR less self destructive than I was at 23. Back then, following the death of my beloved grandmother Alice I was a rather sedate and conservative with a small ‘c’ wild child – I was risk taking, and constantly putting myself in what I now would regard as highly foolhardy and dangerous situations. Nowadays, I’m very careful, very ’safe’ and remarkably adverse to serious risk. Maybe that happens to us all? Also, in my youth I was prone to living in the past, staying at the university long after any sane person would have walked away. Now i’m looking to the future, trying to find new challenges, and looking forward to what is to come. How odd – should it not be the other way round?
Anyway today I find it hard to focus, hard to write. So i’ll just once again thank everybody who reads my blog, no matter how irregularly, and end with my favourite search terms of the last few weeks, as always –
object displacement with haunting – well I can see that, and yes I talk about it here!
i+was+fat – yep, I was. Still am sadly!
atheists have no compassion – er, no, many atheists are very compassionate. This person will be disappointed!
pigs with farmgirls – er, the mind boggles.
vandalizing bicycles oxford — did they want a how to guide?
“if it rains” -???
mustard seeds experiment – loads of people google this it seems, so maybe my little article has given rrise to a few experiments. No one has ever commented though!
Anyway I’ll go wash up. Thanks for reading all!
cj x
