Talked out Talked in

“It is useless to attempt to reason a man out of a thing he was never reasoned into” Jonathan Swift (Irish writer and satirist)

“Belief cannot argue with unbelief, it can only preach to it” Karl Barth (influential Christian thinker)

After my last ‘faith‘ post many moons ago, i got cold feet and moved all such musing to a new nom de plume… lest the monkey loose track of his mission to bring nonsense to a sensible world. Wounds licked, ive decided to get back on the horse.

Above are two quotes, both of which i tend to accept as sensible. So im trying to work out the implications of it for those who live inside a world of faith and those who live outside.

Following the logic in both these statements… well… ok … i am of course saying that ‘im correct’ that as i noted in my last post, faith is something which, if god/jesus requires it, must be something you are blessed with, not something you atain or decide. If someone cannot be reasoned into believing and cannot be reasoned out, then well… thats were my thinking is.

I do know (am related to) one person who was (i think) reasoned into faith. As in, had no interest whatsoever, wasnt brought up in the church, but now says he has a faith - truth be told its not proving easy to reason him out of it… but Swift and Barth give me hope. As for the others who were brought up beliving - Swift’s logic applies. My first question should probably always now be, what made you first believe/not-believe - and if the answer involves the phrases ‘well i was brought up in a christian home…’ or ‘at the age of 13 i went to a camp…’ it doesn’t mean their faith is any less real or valid, but as far as discussion goes,  again i must refer to Swift and Barth.

Indonesian Knights

This may or may not be interesting - as with most QMonkey musings, it’s one of those ‘stories’ again - part of a finite resource which will someday soon run dry, not unlike the oilfields of Arabia. I’ll then have to investigate more renewable post sources. A few years ago I spent a year working in Singapore, it involved quite a lot of travel in SE Asia, visiting remote power stations to install software. The actual job was as boring as it sounds but the trips made for some interesting copy.

One of those trips was to a little remote town on the north cost of Indonesia, called Paiton. Myself and fellow Irishman Sean were joined on the trip by our new recruit in the office, Catherine (Catherine was a local Singaporean, who was in her mid 20s like me, but wasn’t really ‘up for the banter’ and eventually resigned after 2 months saying she couldn’t work with Sean and I. How embarrassing!). We flew from Singapore to Surabya with Gaurda Airlines - a scarily stereotypical journey, if there had been chickens roaming free in the cabin they would have fit right in - I took extra notice of the ‘in the unlikely event’ announcement!

We were met at the airport by a driver in one of those ubiquitous Toyota vans. The journey to our apartment was to take about 2 hours, it was late at night so I figured I could maybe get some shut-eye.

People often talk about scary car journeys, but with this one I KNEW we were going to crash, I was just praying that it would be a small crash and there wouldn’t be too many injuries. It was no better than a dirt track, no road markings, but heavy heavy traffic in both directions, no one travelling below 70 mph and our driver overtaking at every possible chance. On a number of occasions we forced the oncoming trucks to brake hard to avoid us - and we did bump in to a number of cars along the way… barely acknowledged by the driver! Sean, Catherine and I didn’t say a word for the entire trip but when we arrived we all just started to laugh manically… well… Sean and I laughed… Catherine just stared at us, shaking her head.

Next day we headed to the Power Station and did our bit - no really problems as expected. The main guy Pieter was a South African who’d be living there for a few years and was keen for Sean and I to join him for a night out in the village. I was a bit hesitant and said I’d maybe stay behind with Catherine… but that was greeted with cheeky smiles and winks… it all got a bit embarrassing, so I ended up going out with the boys. Paiton village had no street lights and was really just a succession of open air stalls, hawkers selling exotically smelling street food and questionable women hanging around doorways. The locals mingled in the middle of the street, constantly bumping into people on bikes, old rickety cars and even oxes (oxes or oxen?).

We were the only white guys around - but everyone was very friendly and some of them seemed to know Pieter. We headed into a bar and the lady at the door said, hello Mr Pieter, your usual table? No idea why she said that, because there only really seemed to be one table… it was a white plastic garden style table in the middle of the room in front of a big screen. All this time I was trying to look like a ‘cool’ man of the world… in a ‘I do this sorta thing all the time’ kinda way… but the screen had me worried. The worry enhanced slightly as all got our own ‘personal bar maids’.

So the three of us sat around the table, with our personal maid standing beside us, pouring the Bintang beer into our glasses and grinning a lot. Their job seemed to be constantly shower us with complements… Mr Peiter you so funny, Mr Jonny you so tall etc etc.

It was at this point that I made a complete tit of myself - my maid was very keen to keep the glass topped up, so every time I took a sip she topped it up - catching me quite unawares and causing me to spill it all over myself. Much running around to find towels and dabbing of t-shirts ensued.

After I’d been cleaned up, and made to look like a complete amateur, Pieter nodded to the head waitress and she shuffled around at the bottom of the screen. I started to get very nervous - I’d no interest in any hanky panky and this seemed to very much be what was on the cards. Until all became clear… IT WAS KAROKE NIGHT! Sean was handed a microphone and the words to Brown Eyed Girl came up in the screen. He belted it out with gusto, with his maid sitting on his knee swaying along.

Once I knew that It wasn’t about the hanky panky I was WELL into it…which is weird because I never seemed to get to the end of my beer  … I started to find it very ironic and, well, the makings of a good story. I shuffled through the booklet of songs… and selected With or Without You… I was on my feet… blasting it out, in a shack in the middle of Piaton, dancing a long to it with my personal maid… she said Mr Jonny you such a good singer… I said… thanks I used to be in a band.

Oh my giddy aunt… I did actually say that… I’ve gone red even now as I type it. I might not publish this post - these kinda things are best left unpublished!

I might have found myself an Existential Dilemma

I’ve been dying to get one of these for ages… and I’ve eventually found myself one - not offa eBay or anything, just lying in bed thinking - flip, this whole existence stuff is a bit weird.

I must admit this may be fueled by the fact that my learn-ed brother in law lent me a book of esseys by John-Paul Sartre, which I’m loving. 

In modern civilisation, lets say from the end of the last ice age 10,000 years ago, people have been born, lived for an average of lets say 50 adult years then died.

So I am born, try my best to learn the history of all those 200 or so generations that have gone before me, do my little bit to be involved in the process of moving humanity on a little further, get together with another person to create another generation of people who grow up and learn the history of human kind (including the addition made (and being made) by my generation), I then shuffle off the mortal coil, having done my little bit.

I suppose this is Nietzschean ‘death of god’ thing… the thought that there is no overarching ‘watcher’ of the whole of history happening, the players just nip in for a while, do their bit, then pass the baton to someone else. A very few make a mark which reverberates through history, I wonder if will, probably not, oh dear that’s a bit depressing

A prize for anyone who guesses the amount of commas

Let’s say comedienne

Who’s the Question Monkey’s favourite comedienne?… is an oft asked question. I can reveal that without doubt is would be the lovely and very funny Sharon Horgan.

It’s been a slow burner. She’s been one of those people who’s always in programs I like such as Rob Brydon’s Annually Retentive and Broken News. She’s written and starred in the irreverent and very funny series on BBC3 Pulling, and last week saw the first episode of her self-written six parter Angelo’s.

I think i heard someone call it, the comedy of the uncomfortable… if not, then i said it first!  She’s in the tradition of Steve Coogan and Ricky Gervais but it’s most definitely from a female angle.

Unless someone on wikipedia is winding me up - she’s the brother of Ireland Rugby international Shane Horgan.

(point to note… the third series of the Mighty Boosh was on last week… the mrs and i were a bit underwhelmed. A lot to live up to after last series)

Who starts an accent?

How the heck to accents work? How the heck did that happen?

When the convicts starting colonising Australia, did someone just start talking in that aussie accent, and everyone else just though - hey that’s pretty cool, lets talk like that… and it caught on. Then over in New Zealand they decided to do something similar, but a little more nasally. Could that really be it, or are there some more scientific reasons to do with the climate and the terrain or I dunno, the local animal sounds.

Same with America, when did they decide to talk like that? And why did Canada decide to do something similar but slightly more sing-song.

Just one of those things, it’s weird. I don’t know, and I want to know.
Anyone would think I had too much time on my hands!

It’s NYC baby!

Mid 1999, everyone was talking about what to do for the millennium. I think new years is always a bit of a let down, I always feel that I should be doing something more exciting than I actually am, so the millennium bought added internal pressure. As is usual, by early December I’d still no idea what I was going to do, bars were charging massive entry frees, anything remotely different and exciting was already booked up, so it was looking more and more like we were going to be ‘going around to someone’s house’.As soon as this realisation had set in, my mate Grumpy Man decided to lead a last ditch effort, “let’s just go down to the travel agents and see what there is, just to see”. Neither of us had any money, but we did have newly minted credit cards, which is as good as money, right?

Our first thoughts were to go somewhere obscure, Eastern Europe, Africa or Russia. Right from the off the nice travel agent lady was strangely open to the idea. We’d assumed she’d laugh at us and say ‘don’t be silly, everything was booked up a year ago’. But quite the contrary, she said people assumed everything was too dear and booked up, so no one asked.

There was a flight to Moscow on the 28th returning on the 2nd for about £300 (I think). So we thought ‘what the heck! Let’s do it!’ we didn’t book right away, we went for a walk around town to chat about it and phone people to see who would go (we were thinking 3 or 4 of are mates would definitely be up for it). To our great disappointment, no one seemed interested.

It was disappointing, but we decided we’d just go ourselves. We went back to the travel shop and right away we noticed something about an Aer Lingus deal to New York. We joked with the lady about it, saying phew, I bet that’s dear, millennium in Times Square! She nodded and looked up the price for the laugh - £400!

£400, 5 days in New York for the millennium! We couldn’t believe it. We’d heard of people spending thousands on things like this. (It goes without saying that neither of us HAD £400, but when you’ve got a credit card what’s the difference between £-300 and £-400… right?). New York, Times Square, for new years, for THE new years, too much to pass up.

[Coming soon "what happened in New York"... including ill-advised Greenwich Village tattoo story - possibly with pictures]

Happiness, Happiness, the greatest gift that I posses

(Bonus points for anyone who knows the toothly comic who made the song famous)

Ok, I read the BBC news web site too much, and I watch too many news programs, and get agitated if I go more than a few hours without knowing what new things have happened in the world (or at least what ‘news worthy’ things have happened). I have a problem.

What is obvious, very quickly is that what is considered news worthy is really just a mater of what will get an emotional reaction from the viewers. In short… bad news and scare stories.

ICM did a recent survey for the BBC on family life in Britain, by all accounts it was exhaustive. The problem is that it didn’t give the right result. The right ‘news worthy’ result was of course the tragic decline in society and family life. However Ninety-three percent of us described our family lives as fairly or very happy. More of us considered that our parents did their best for us, thought of our families as close and are optimistic about their futures than felt those ways in previous polls going back decades.

The BBC’s home editor Mark Easton said “I think our expectation was that we would be measuring the extent to which people’s closest relationships were suffering as a result of the decline in traditional family structures. When the results came in, we had a surprise.”

Easton suggests several explanations for the poll’s cheerful findings and the anticipated tale of woe: our standards may have changed; we’re mostly better off; we can travel and telephone more easily, which means that family links can be better maintained. He also remarks on the boom in interest in genealogy and family trees. Perhaps this last point gives a clue to a much bigger reason why 21st-century families say they’re happier: it’s simply that they work harder at it these days.

The political conversation these days seems to be all about making families more stable. But I wonder what this poll says about that. Is stability really the Holy Grail for the family? Maybe flexibility and diversity is really what brings or families happiness.

[There's a wider post needed on the idea of our perception of reality, as given to us by news broadcasters. It's the old adage that everyone thinks the NHS is rubbish, but if you ask 10 people about their ‘personal' experience of the NHS it's usually glowing! TV tells them that it's rubbish, so they think... whoa I must have been really lucky, because I thought it was great! Maybe a similar thing has happened with the family survey.]

Classic movies that I haven’t seen

I will include movies which I have maybe seen 10 minutes here and the 20 minutes there but haven’t actually sat down, watched and followed the plot.In no particular order.

Maltese Falcon
Godfather 2
Citizen Kane
Casablanca
Lawrence of Arabia
On the Waterfront
It’s a wonderful life
Psycho
Raging Bull
To Kill a mockingbird
Doctor Zhivago
The Third man
American graffiti
Easy Rider

I did that thing today, you know…

The Grumpman has written a good grump about toasters which is worth checking out, i read it this morning over my Raisin Wheats (the prince of cereal), all part of my ‘get to work’ routine.  The only thing was, i’d gone and done that thing.

I’ve never in my life, got as far with the thing as i did today. Whats the thing i hear you say?

I got up around 8.05 and turned off Terry Wogan… looking back though i now remember that it wasn’t Terry Wogan but that didn’t flick any switches. I jumped into the shower thinking about what i needed to do this week. I got dressed, rummaged around the house to find my football kit. Couldn’t find my socks then realised they were in the wash basket - make a decision after a sniff test to just stuff them in the bag - got myself some orange juice and made my packed lunch - said goodbye to a confused mrs - got into the car - put on the radio - but no Chris Moyles…. it is of course remembrance SUNDAY!

Postscript: This may leave the reader with the implication that i’m a professional monkey football player. Think what you will.

I’m a football club owner - update

A website called http://myfootballclub.co.uk/ has sprung up over the last few months with an aim to raise enough money to buy a controlling share in an English football club. The idea is that it will be completly democratic, the team will be picked via the website, as will the actual club that they buy.

It’s £35 to have a share - Question Monkey has joined the movement. Join him. JOINNNNN HIM.

Update: We’ve just bought Ebbsfleet United     See Here

Just numbers and rows

An interesting tale (in the loosest sense) is that of Mr James Goodfellow of Paisley Scotland. In the 1960s he developed the design for the numeric keypad. The patent for the idea is owned by the company he worked for, so he is relatively poor, which is amazing given the enormity of the invention. Mr Goodfellow was an engineer in his 20s, working for Glasgow company Kelvin Hughes, when he was tasked with finding a way for customers to withdraw money from the bank after the end of Saturday opening.

Setting aside the ubiquitous ATM machines, he was the first person to layout the numbers in rows of 3 with zero at the middle bottom. Not all that obvious if you think about it. How must it feel to be sitting in a modest house in Scotland and use a mobile phone everyday knowing it was you who decided that layout. People probably don’t belive him, it’s a bit like Dr Evil’s father claiming he invented the question mark (a little reference for for regular viewers).

No words needed

What’s in a name?

I find brands fascinating. On Newsnight tonight they were discussing the Stella effect. Stella Artois as a brand has managed to get itself to a position where it sells two and a half the volume of its nearest strong larger rival. However, in taste tests, 18 to 30 years olds consistently could NOT  identify Stella from a range of similar lagers. It’s all about the brand baby!

‘Reassuringly expensive’ used to be the tag line which made it seem like a bit of a luxury. The reality though doesn’t quite follow the tag line. A couple of years ago my sister and I went for an impromptu weekend in Bruges and Brussels, the home of Stella, but it was regarded as the local cheap ‘cooking’ lager. Perception is everything.

It’s a double edged sword, Stella has become so popular with lads on a night out that lawyers now talk about ‘the Stella defence’ , I was drunk and disorderly your honour, because I was drinking too much Stella.

So, Stella have had to change tack… the name has been sullied. Luckily they have a ‘surname’ as it where, Artois, which they’ve use exclusively on their new adverts. If only Burberry were so lucky.

PS: on BBC1’s Arena last night there was a whole program dedicated to the history of the font ‘helvetica’. Now, here’s whats amazing, it WAS really interesting. I kept my hand hovering on the remote control  about the turn over, but i ended up watching it for about half an hour. Helvetica is the Stella of the font world, a very successfuly but ultimately tired brand.

Songs i wish i’d written #57

I know it’s sung by Leona Lewis,  an X-Factor clone, and it kills any cred i thought i had, but its a great tune, and the lyric   ….you cut me open, and i keep, keep bleeding love…   is perfect.

… oh really?.. having the words leona lewis and x-factor on the post quadruples your hits? didn’t know that!

A bit of Gavin and Stacy

Gavin and Stacy was a very funny show - another one of those BBC3 gems. Here’s a clip i love.