The Long Now

The highlight of my week (in fact, the high light of my year so far) was seeing Brian Eno, one of my all-time heroes, speak at a conference on the reform of the financial system.

The Long Now Foundation has started a Long Finance project to look at long range planning and investment. Someone who is twenty years old today, can expect to live until they are 95. So at the very least, we need a financial system that looks seventy-five years ahead. And that's only one generation.

I was very encouraged that 400 people, mostly from banking and investment, turned up for the day, and took the ideas very seriously.

Brian Eno managed to make U2 interesting. Compared to that, reforming the banking system should not be especially difficult.

Weirdest. School. Reunion. Imaginable

This weekend I am in an emotional decompression chamber after a week spent helping two guys I was at school with sue the Catholic Church over allegations of child sex abuse.

I hope I'll be able to write about this at some point. In fact, I hope that I'm going to feel a lot freer to write and talk about a wide range of things, because of what we were able to achieve this week. But first, I have to let the news sink in.

We know, beyond any shadow of a doubt, that it really happened. Not to me (I just got the standard institutional brutality, lucky me) but to people close to me.

Weirdest school reunion ever, and most muted celebrations imaginable.

In other news: guys who haven't seen me in twenty years tell me that nowadays, I look like Eddie Izzard, or Philip Seymour Hoffman. It could be worse, I suppose. I had better lose some weight, and learn to wear makeup.

Surf's Up

I don't have much to report this week, apart from the fact that I'm still coughing and making noises like a broken hairdryer, but I seem to be enjoying it more. Oh and I found some really nice coffee for a quid in my local Co-Op, thus proving that socialism isn't all bad.

I've been finishing off a project for a local firm and writing a report for a client up in the Midlands, and have been active on Twitter, trying to pimp my arse to Americans. So I watched the Obama inauguration on teh Interwebs and somebody said Obama was 'our first surfer president', which reminded me of an erudite remark Fathorse made a while back (that's erudite with a capital rude) about what a doss degree subject Surf Science at the University of Plymouth is.

Obama is the first Hawaiian president, and when he flashed a 'shaka' sign during the inauguration ceremony, according to the Honolulu Star Bulletin, " it caused chicken skin to ripple across Hawaii like a tidal wave of, well, rippling chicken skin." Phew, wow.

I have a neighbour who works at Plymouth Uni. He's a senior lecturer in Tourism Management and his specialist subject is social anthropology of surfing. Well, the dude's American, so he's probably an expert.

Except he's from Kansas.

Not noted for the quality of its beaches

Students who are not capable of the rigorous academic standards required of Surf Studies or Tourism Management can now go to Falmouth and do an honours degree in Performance Sportswear Design.

Hard-working students revitalising the SouthWest's economy


Yeah, right

A Gift from God

So...

I woke up this morning with so much interest and enthusiasm for what I had to do, that I found myself saying

"Don't waste this! It's a gift from God..."

Our regular expert was not available.
Then I thought: "I wonder how I could say what I'm feeling right now without invoking some kind of monotheistic deity that I don't believe in?" So I figured I'd blog about it.

Unfortunately, Hot Vimto's regular theology and religious affairs expert was not available to offer her advice, so I had to make do with Scarlett Johansson instead.

An inadequate substitute

I know, Dear Reader, there's simply no comparison. But this picture of Ms. Johansson, believe it or not, is the number one match on Google Images when you search for "there is no God".

So, in the absence of a proper theologian, she'll have to do. Credit to Fox News for the picture, and another crazy blogger for the interesting choice of caption.

Now, maybe a higher power is at work here? (See, I never said I didn't believe... I just said I didn't believe in... what I don't believe in, okay?) Because Scarlett, apart from making 'Lost In Translation' and being strip-searched at Heathrow with my best friend (he looks like Bill Murray, allegedly) has also recorded an album of Tom Waits songs.

And Tom Waits has received the thumbs up from the Pope. It makes no sense to me at all, but here's the news.

The Civilta Cattolica, a Jesuit journal, the contents of which are subject to Vatican approval, says that Waits represents “the marginalised and misunderstood”.

Father Antonio Spadaro, 40, who normally writes about literature but is emerging as a Roman Catholic authority on pop music, said that Waits, whose songs include Dragging a Dead Priest, had lived a youthful life of “drugs, alcohol and sex” as an outcast on the streets of California.

He therefore understood “the lower depths” of society, and was able to convey the desperation of those on the margins. His past also enabled him to express their “capacity for hope and instinct for happiness” in “authentic songs devoid of vanity and false illusions”, Father Spadaro said. "

So, maybe that'll be alright then?

"Devoid of vanity and false illusions"

I'm not even going to mention what you get when you Google
"a gift from God"...

Saint Rita

Today is St. Rita's Day. St. Rita is known as the patron saint of the impossible. The day after she was baptised, a swarm of bees settled on her crib and walked all over her face, going in and out of her mouth, thus proving that she was a very holy person.



Today is also the national day of Yemen, which gives me the perfect excuse to post a clip of the greatest comedian ever born in Yemen, Mr Eddie Izzard, talking about bees.

The Lord also marked St. Rita's face with the stigma of the Crown of Thorns; people who met her reported that she had an exceedingly painful wound on her forehead that emitted a disagreeable odour, yet she considered it a very great grace.

Life was so much simpler in the old days.