Drop Which Pilate?

Listening to Heroes Symphony by Philip Glass

A funny old day Easter Saturday. I have an extra day off this Tuesday but still this strange day between Bank Holidays seems to be more of day for doing nothing than the most recent candidate for non-day of the year which was Leap Day. It never occurred to me that my company was getting an extra day out of me for no pay - I just assumed that, like the astronomical reasons for the existence of January 29th, my salary was apportioned across the four years to cover that extra day. What about the two times out of seven that the day falls at the weekend? I can't be bothered to spend time thinking for arguments either way.

I am lost in the weird world of alternative Pilates at the moment. He was either a member of small tribe from outside Rome, a Spaniard who was effectively banished to Judea by the Emperor Tiberius for marrying above his station (and this just prior to his first night with his bride after Tiberius was a guest at the wedding - handing Pilate the order to depart for Judea on the waiting Bireme from inside his toga leaving Pilate to wait six years before consummating his marriage) or a German who grew up in red trousers and whose first pair are still on display in some Teutonic town. All this ignores the real story that he actually comes from Tyneside, which is my favourite truth. And of course there is no way we will ever really know. All of this is the first chapter, which leaves me wondering how much the rest of the book can actually reveal. I suppose I'd better read the relevant bits of The Gospels to make sure I understand the only other historical context because obviously I cannot rely on the BBC Passion being entirely accurate (it probably sparked howls of clunky derision from certain people for not including Jesus' replacement of a severed ear and it certainly wound up this secular humanist by having an announcer directing viewers over to an episode of Steptoe and Son on BBC4 directly after the crucifixion scene, albeit in sombre-ish tones).

Last night I dreamed of the moment when Pilate made his decision, trying to imagine the two worlds splitting off from each other - one where Christ carries on towards our own world, crucified, risen, becoming the head of Christianity - and the other where he is released to two possible futures - a leader of a revolution maybe more political than religious - or a return to obscurity in Galilee, just about recorded as a minor distraction in the mess of Middle-Eastern history. And I could not get beyond either - it was just too much to imagine the world any different from the accepted path. And there is no point - this timeline is this timeline - those timelines (which may exist in some theories of the Universe) are only possible in our minds.

Get over it!

Frank Skinner's Let Himself Go



I nearly forgot that I was going for a whole month so this is probably just filler - isn't it all? So of course I haven't even been thinking about anything to write. And now I am so tired I just can't get anything together to again in the style of Odelay, this is just place-marking. Old man calls down alleys to the back, where the drunks and the tramps have never found the knack of filling in the blanks and the stories of the true in the night of the knives and the tales of shining blue. The trees in the night haven't seen a way through to the dreams of the days and the skies of dripping glue.

The Return Of The Orreryery



There is a part-work out at the moment which each week supplies you with a small component of an orrery for you to make at a total cost of something like £300. Not sure if you could get a fully assembled version for less than that and after thinking it was made of plastic I have found out here that it is actually made of brass. With all the PC stuff to simulate the Universe in great detail, this can only be something for the 'drawing room (you can just see into ours if you go by on the top deck of the 'bus). I am much more impressed with this Lego version which reminds me of the Lego record player I made at primary school. It had gearing to turn the record and an arm which supported a pin stuck through some paper as a resonator. The only uncool thing about it was the fact that I only had one record - a single that went along with a book of the film The Aristocats. That was remedied with the purchase of two soundtrack records - Big Horror Themes and TV Themes which gave us both the Theme To Colditz and The music for Three Days Of The Condor.

This months Wiretapper CD is probably the best yet. There are often some very difficult tracks on these CDs but this month's seems to be tending slightly towards less demanding music. Not that it is in any way a compromise or a sell-out - it has a long way to go to rival even the most left-leaning of other music magazines - unless there is a John Cage Monthly out there.

I have luckily noticed that I spelled Aristocats wrongly up there and that is a completely different story. Don't Google it at work whatever you do.

The Pop And Push Of Coffee Cups

There are many strange things which only seem strange when they result in something that is out of the ordinary. There must be a specific flag in my mind which remembers exactly how full the last coffee cup is. I always seem to know exactly how much coffee is in that last cup and bubbles along as an interrupt letting me know that it is available. So it always quite a surprise when that interrupt tells me that the cup is empty and I go to stack it on the other for transport to the bin (Clean desk policy etc) and it has a third of the liquid left. The strange feeling this produces is even worse when I realise that it is still warm. It seems to me like some sort of mini version of the loss of time reported by supposed UFO abductees. It must just be down to extreme busyness which fills the memory stack as it were and removes the interrupt. This must be filed under things that could only possibly interest me mustn't it though it all ties back with my Random-ish Sunday assertion about memory being filled with small thoughts that come and go like the creation/destruction of matter/anti-matter particles in empty space, only remaining in existence when something big sucks one of the pair away leaving the other on its own and detectable. I think this is Hawking Radiation but some scary equations stop me from reading the article beyond the first few paragraphs.

I Have Left Out The Capital Letters On Purpose.

Had a brainstorm yesterday and decided on the back of my back being up because of the assertion by a certain favourite newspaper of middle england that the BBC were attempting to bring Pilate and Judas in from the cold with their new version of The Passion, that I really should get around to reading that biography of Pilate. Luckily, there it was on the web version of the library catalogue and now here it is in my hot little hands. Now it opens with a joke about a Russian obsessed with Pilate - well a sort of a joke - and goes on to openly admit that there is not actually much you can write about Pilate as little is known for sure outside his time as Governor of Judea apart from the fact that he was born in Newcastle as the result of a union between a Roman official and a local girl - it's all in the book - though it doesn't actually say that it is true. However I do know that long before the BBC started their own attempt at rehabilitation, there have been all sorts of various suggestions about how he behaved. I came out with a long and tortuous analysis but was pipped to the denouement by a colleague breaking a third of the no Politics/Money/Religion-at-work rule with this little gem of succinctness :-

You're at the front of a baying crown of hundreds if not
thousands. The small, beaten, disheveled bloke to your right looks nothing more
than a helpless tramp. The crowd are screaming for you to have him killed
telling you if you don't your bosses will probably do the same to you. But you
say "No ! he's done nothing wrong. Piss off and leave him alone !" Yes Right !
Me too !

And then to finish off, the same colleague pointed out that had Jesus not died, he would probably have returned to Nazareth as just another minor teacher and preacher and there would have been a long wait for the next one. Here we have a strange loop - one's entire religion is based around the death and the image of the death of one man and yet you rile against the various people who brought it about. Can't have it both ways. That Pilate should have let him off - that would-a showed 'em. Judas is of course another matter though Christianity was apparently neutral on suicide for some years until the priests with too much time on their hands found a spot in their busy schedules to break off from all those dancing angels and turn their eye on human misery. As some analysis says, the death of Jesus himself could be seen as self-inflicted anyway.

And finally the same newspaper seems to have a problem with the writers attempt at historical accuracy which shows Jesus crucified in a foetal position rather than the "Cherished" Image of generations. As my friend of moderate religiosity says - the idea is to get across the misery, the pain of the death, not to read something into the standard arms outstreched image - one which sails dangerously close to being a Graven Image anyway.

Got the John Humphreys' book - Confessions Of A Failed Atheist as well. Not quite a rabid as Dawkins - much more homely in style. Now is he right in his assertion that the Urine of teetotal Methodists was worth double that of a drinker when used as a Mordant for dyeing? I seem to remember that the urine of certain drinkers was actually worth more or is that the urine used to make gunpowder? Not sure I really should be seraching on Google for this.

The Raven Demands A Garibaldi

Which might make you think that today will be very biscuity around deWeyden place. You will have to read on and find out. My step mother makes a wonderful fruit slice of pastry- mincemeat - pastry and icing instead of mince pies at Christmas. I have now discovered that in the mode of calling Garibaldis Squashed Fly Biscuits, these Christmassy goodies are known as Flys' Graveyards. None of which puts me off either Garibaldis or my step mother's fruit slices. This from Alexei Sayle:-

'It's quite interesting, y'know, the number of biscuits that are named after revolutionaries...You've got your Garibaldi of course, you've got your Bourbons then of course you've got your Peak Freens' Trotsky Assortment. Revolutionary biscuits of Italy Rise up out of your box!You have nothing to lose but your wafers Yum yum yum yum yum!'

Remember that? Is your name Toxteth O'Grady? Are you hanging from a lamppost?

Sorry! Where was I? Oh yes! Running a Windows console application as a service under XP. That's much more interesting isn't it?

No Sleep 'Til Aristotle

It's not the normal milestones of existence that make up memory - neither the standard markers that define the insanity of Christmas round robins or the daily routine events that seem to frame our craving for regularity. It is the obscure thoughts which flash across our minds and escape without ever being held in memory. See those silver letters up there - The Paradox Club or maybe just Paradox - the tower has fallen apart - broken down by elements and vandalism - but up there the collection of silver letters - the word Paradox - stays forever polished by the wind and rain. The tallest thing around here, it has decayed over the years I have known it until now and it seems forever on the edge of collapse, a broken reminder of the days before the ghost town and rebuilding made everything shiny and empty. Maybe we queued there once or twice - the blur of nights out has not left any memory of locations - just still pictures of bars and dance floors and memories of thumping music which was always far too loud to talk over - there was no call for chill out rooms in this place. All people wanted here was oblivion through alcohol or Drum and Bass. Now everyone is (or thinks they are) a bit more sophisticated, wanting something other than this rapidly fading chaos of social adhesion - maybe that should be cohesion. The lights change here and I am back in Sunday-Morning mode - all thoughts of those silver letters gone for good - except that now there is a scibbled reminder of the 30 seconds of thought that the sight of them sparked before it was forgotten again. And the weekend has gone with several things achieved but nothing actually fulfilled. It all moves too fast for real comfort or belief. And now brought back from where it was saved in my head without any chance of being recalled simply for its own sake, or even at all - just remaining as empty, unuseable space in my brain, this short memory, this single element amongst all the others has taken on importance far above all the rest. I am minded to attempt a day of full recall, to remain undisturbed by normal concerns, and to write short key reminders for a full day of remembering.

It frightens me.

Wigs And Wiggage



Nor sure of what to write about at all. The notebook is no help apart from this drawing :-



Will that do? I can't get the laugh right Bob.

The Marvellous, Mechanical Panopticon

This title is a place marker because last night after reading the chapter in 42 that mentioned the Panopticon, I thought of the most amusing and wonderful title for today's entry and then failed completely to record it anywhere, including, it seems, my brain. It is a place marker in the style of the weird phrases used by Beck on Odelay which we now discover were just nonsense to fit the music to. Of course Oasis did this first.

The notebook has an entry which just says "A Pitta Bread Clip!" followed by one which says "She ain't no Tom Waits." Forgetting brilliant blog titles seems to not be the only problem with memory I am having as both of these phrases are completely meaningless.

Advanced warning of the next book - Proust And The Squid by Maryanne Wolf - A book about how the brain operates when reading. The Author was on Open Book yesterday afternoon and seemed to be smiling all the time - don't ask me how you can work this out on radio - you just can. It nearly put me off but the actual content was enough to make me interested. trouble is, all I can see now is Proust feeding little bits of sweet biscuit to a ... er .... squid which is surely not the image the author wants to promote for a serious book about the science of reading. I will never read Proust. No single life can encompass both Ulysses and Proust - it's like the ultimate answer and the ultimate question. They cannot exist in the same universe.

It's true. It really is.

Chicken Soup For The Hungry

Another sketch by my Great-Grandmother - it is of someone called "Louie" I think from 1895. I have no idea who Louie is I am afraid. Some digging will be required though it might not be a relative of ours at all.

I do need to try and consolidate all the various bits of family trees that we have. We have one vertical one going back to prior to 1400, various horizontal fragments going back about 150 years and one traced one which seems to be Victorian and takes the form of an actual tree with trunk, branches and leaves. The trouble is that it takes so long to enter all this data into a family tree program. Yet another project on the stack/List/Queue/Your listing structure of choice.

Watch out for the Irony Signifier.

I am developing an application that runs on a server. I would like to know when it fails - not that it ever will fail because of anything I have done of course - but all I can do is get it to email a time stamp. However, I then do not know whether the absence of an email time stamp means that the program has failed or that somewhere down the line the email has failed. I could also write a program which would check that the first program is still running and then notify if it fails. What if the notifying program fails? It is less likely to because it is far simpler than the main program which uses API calls and threads (any word on strange behaviour there would be welcome). I am therefore stuck in a strange loop where I cannot think of a foolproof way of ensuring that any failure gets to me when I am not on the network. I just have to trust not only my own programming but the OS/Network/Apps that lie between my app and me wherever I may be. It's all sometimes just too much.

Interesting (But very old) article about API and other whizzy stuff.

Final bit of whoop-de-doo about technology. I got a firmware upgrade for The Toppy yesterday, meaning that there is now a series link and accurate recording (the Freeview equivalent of PDC) all under the umbrella of Freeview Playback, which seems to be working fine (after a few traumatic issues with the download). The whole concept of simply recording what you want with little fuss and then watching it when you want with pauses to get Marmite sandwiches and other refreshments is a fine one. It seems to mean that we watch better television. Having said this, I should really replace some of the watching with some good-quality reading. Maybe a rule - no blank-eyed goggling - only defined programmes with a reminder or a recording set. No more "Cops chasing bailiffs who have relocated to the country in order to train their dogs to eat better".

White Dot anyone?

You've Got Bionic What?

My daughter and I are going to see Kate Rusby of the impossibly delightful voice after Easter but we were having trouble seeing if the seats were suitable. However, having spotted that the Philharmonic Hall have a virtual tour created in Second Life we were able to stake out the seats for ourselves which was wonderful.

I rarely venture into Second Life because, while I am aware of the infinite possibilities of what I might find there, the virtual reality of the places just seems samey. Let me know of some Jaw Dropping locations and I might change my mind but even being chased by an Alligator while trespassing in someone's swimming pool did not seem that exciting and even flying becomes tiresome after a while. I do hope that I might find other places which give the place some real use. Daughter is pestering me to create a version of our house which will probably sit on the project pile for ages before being discarded.

Bionic Woman (why no definite article?) was trash - stilted dialogue - a plot which whistled by as if all the important stuff had been cut out in a race to the first sight of technology, over-simplification of complex issues, and a lack of the charm which allows Torchwood to get away with all of the above. Zoe Slater was alright I suppose - she has a much better American accent than Hugh Laurie - but that is just not enough. And to think that I got all this in the 20 minutes of the first episode that I watched before changing the channel. I seem to be thinking of the word Midi-chlorians here. Wonder why?

Gulity Pleasures in defiance of The Word. Only Five I am afraid but all is flux (not of Pink Indians either)

Nightbirds - Shakatak (they held the record for the longest silent gap in the middle of a song - still going)
Gold - Abba
Islands - Kajagoogoo
Chess - Half of Abba and Time Rice.
Tell Me On A Sunday - Marti Webb

My sister played Tell Me On A Sunday over and over and I loved it. Why is there no CD release of this? My sister also played "You're Moving Out Today" by Carol Bayer Sager which is weird in the extreme - like some art-house movie compressed into three minutes. I seem to think it might actually have been about Benny from Cross Roads - he certainly did the voice over. I first heard Nightbirds while in a car coming back to Bristol from London and it fitted with the late-night, rain-on-window ambience of the day - more Jazzy than Jazz funk I thought. One of their later songs has bits of dialogue in it which I think are from The Dambusters.