Straw Men on Slippery Slopes

Right, can I just take a moment to remind you that we are in 2015? That we live in a supposedly enlightened society? OK. That done, can I ask why people are bemoaning the recent US Supreme Court ruling stating that two adult human beings who love each other are allowed to get married? I usually keep quiet about this kind of stuff because I've got a lot of respect for religion and my religious friends and when this debate comes up it is so often centred around religion. But I can't keep schtum any longer
   I recently saw a link to an article entitled "40 questions for Christians now waving rainbow flags" on facebook (don't search for it, they'll get money from their advertising space if you click on their page and I couldn't in good conscience allow any more to be contributed to the cause of hate).
   Well, I used to be a Christian and I've always waved the rainbow flag so I thought I'd address these questions. I think it's important to mention certain biases here. First, my religion. As I say, I'm not a Christian any more. This is not because I don't believe in God or Jesus but because, despite its other merits, I don't see them present in organised Christianity these days. Second, my sexual orientation. It's a topic for another day perhaps so all I'll say here is that if you insist on labeling me it's probably best to call me straight-ish. Despite these facts, I'm rooted in Christianity and still see myself as a follower of Christ and reverent of the Bible, so I suppose the questions are still aimed at me in some way.
   First up, here are the questions:

1.  How long have you believed that gay marriage is something to be celebrated?
2.  What Bible verses led you to change your mind?
3.  How would you make a positive case from Scripture that sexual activity between two persons of the same sex is a blessing to be celebrated?
4.  What verses would you use to show that a marriage between two persons of the same sex can adequately depict Christ and the church?
5.  Do you think Jesus would have been okay with homosexual behavior between consenting adults in a committed relationship?
6.  If so, why did he reassert the Genesis definition of marriage as being one man and one woman?
7.  When Jesus spoke against porneia what sins do you think he was forbidding?
8.  If some homosexual behavior is acceptable, how do you understand the sinful “exchange” Paul highlights in Romans 1?
9.  Do you believe that passages like 1 Corinthians 6:9 and Revelation 21:8 teach that sexual immorality can keep you out of heaven?
10.  What sexual sins do you think they were referring to?
11.   As you think about the long history of the church and the near universal disapproval of same-sex sexual activity, what do you think you understand about the Bible that Augustine, Aquinas, Calvin, and Luther failed to grasp?
12.  What arguments would you use to explain to Christians in Africa, Asia, and South America that their understanding of homosexuality is biblically incorrect and your new understanding of homosexuality is not culturally conditioned?
13.  Do you think Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama were motivated by personal animus and bigotry when they, for almost all of their lives, defined marriage as a covenant relationship between one man and one woman?
14. Do you think children do best with a mother and a father? 
15.  If not, what research would you point to in support of that conclusion?
16.  If yes, does the church or the state have any role to play in promoting or privileging the arrangement that puts children with a mom and a dad?
17.  Does the end and purpose of marriage point to something more than an adult’s emotional and sexual fulfillment?
18.  How would you define marriage?
19.  Do you think close family members should be allowed to get married?
20.  Should marriage be limited to only two people?
21.  On what basis, if any, would you prevent consenting adults of any relation and of any number from getting married?
22.  Should there be an age requirement in this country for obtaining a marriage license?
23.  Does equality entail that anyone wanting to be married should be able to have any meaningful relationship defined as marriage?
24.  If not, why not?
25.  Should your brothers and sisters in Christ who disagree with homosexual practice be allowed to exercise their religious beliefs without fear of punishment, retribution, or coercion?
26.  Will you speak up for your fellow Christians when their jobs, their accreditation, their reputation, and their freedoms are threatened because of this issue?
27.  Will you speak out against shaming and bullying of all kinds, whether against gays and lesbians or against Evangelicals and Catholics?
28.  Since the evangelical church has often failed to take unbiblical divorces and other sexual sins seriously, what steps will you take to ensure that gay marriages are healthy and accord with Scriptural principles?
29.   Should gay couples in open relationships be subject to church discipline?
30.   Is it a sin for LGBT persons to engage in sexual activity outside of marriage?
31.  What will open and affirming churches do to speak prophetically against divorce, fornication, pornography, and adultery wherever they are found?
32.  If “love wins,” how would you define love?
33.  What verses would you use to establish that definition?
34.  How should obedience to God’s commands shape our understanding of love?
35.  Do you believe it is possible to love someone and disagree with important decisions they make?
36.  If supporting gay marriage is a change for you, has anything else changed in your understanding of faith?
37.  As an evangelical, how has your support for gay marriage helped you become more passionate about traditional evangelical distinctives like a focus on being born again, the substitutionary sacrifice of Christ on the cross, the total trustworthiness of the Bible, and the urgent need to evangelize the lost?
38.  What open and affirming churches would you point to where people are being converted to orthodox Christianity, sinners are being warned of judgment and called to repentance, and missionaries are being sent out to plant churches among unreached peoples?
39.  Do you hope to be more committed to the church, more committed to Christ, and more committed to the Scriptures in the years ahead?
40. When Paul at the end of Romans 1 rebukes “those who practice such things” and those who “give approval to those who practice them,” what sins do you think he has in mind?

(h/t thegospelcoalition.org)

   Now, I could spend the next four years answering each question individually, or I could simply point out the multitude of fallacies within the questions but the former is pointless and the latter's a little childish. Instead, I'll answer the key ones and address the flaws in some of the others. I might miss some out for reasons of not wanting to turn this into a book-length response but I intend to address all the issues raised and shirk nothing.
   I must first say that although I'm arguing against this piece, my primary concern is with its poor debating technique rather than its message (though I heartily disagree with the message). If you want to believe same-sex marriage is wrong, fine, but don't try to brainwash others as sure as hell don't try and do it with lame-ass arguments like those above.

   Fallacies first, I think, to save time: 

   Questions 2, 3, 4, 6, 8, 9, 11, 12, 28, 33, 40 are all predicated on the assumption of the absolute truth of every word of the Bible, which is a shaky concept on which to build an argument. Even if you yourself believe it to be the case, you must accept that not all Christians do and that for those Christians, these questions have no meaning. More on this later.

   Questions 6, 10, 15, 16, 17, 24 are all actually additional parts of other questions. This isn't a fallacy but it rather renders them redundant.

   Questions 19, 20, 21, 22, 23, 25, 26, 27, 29, 30, 31 and 36 are examples of two fallacies at once. Straw men on slippery slopes, impressive.

   Questions 37, 38, and to an extent 34 and 39, presuppose a universal interpretation of Christianity, which is nonsense.

   I deem the following questions irrelevant, for the stated reasons:

   Question 1, because it doesn't matter how long you've believed something - is the belief of a recent convert to Christianity less valid than that of a life-long believer? I would argue it's more valid, since they are more likely to have used reason to come to their beliefs rather than simply being brought up into a tradition. So, if recent converts to Christianity are not less valid (we can agree on that at least, can't we?) then question 1 is irrelevant.

   Question 7, because the verse in question fairly clearly refers to reasons why divorce is allowed, which has got little to do with support for marriage equality.

   Question 13, because the opinions of others and their apparent changes of opinion have no bearing on one's own opinions. Unless the questioner wishes to imply that their audience are no more than lemmings?

   Question 35, because my ability to love and disagree with someone has three-fifths of sod all to do with marriage or my opinions thereof. This question was just filler, wasn't it?

   Which leaves four questions worth answering. That's right, four. And those are mostly worth answering to demonstrate their absurdity:

   Question 5: do I think Jesus would be ok with same-sex marriage? Clearly I, as a rainbow-flag-waving Christian, do. Next.

   Question 14: do I think children do best with a mother and a father? That depends entirely on the specific child and the specific parents. Many kids from "traditional" homes have horrible lives, many don't, so clearly the make-up of the household is irrelevant.

   Question 18: how do I define marriage? As a legal and/or religious commitment to another person, ideally because you love them. And?

   Question 32: How do I define love? I don't, it is subjective and indefinable by its very nature. If this was not the case then most of the major artworks since the beginning of time would not exist.
   Well, that's those questions answered or rebutted, am I supposed to feel wrong about supporting equality now? Or to have changed my mind? Or to feel a conflict between my faith and my ethics? Well, I don't and I haven't, and here's why:

   The majority of the "argument" put forth by these questions seems to be "the bible doesn't explicitly state that same-sex marriage is ok, and some parts of it suggest it is wrong."

   The weaknesses of this argument are myriad, but here is the important one: The Bible is not the direct word of God. I don't say this to cause offence and I'm really not trying to challenge anyone's faith, merely to put my side of the argument. So sorry if you believe that the Bible is God's word but even the book itself does not claim to be written by God, most parts of the book are named after the people who did allegedly write them (the Gospels according to Matthew, Mark, Luke, John, Paul's letter to... etc.). Are those people God? No. They were writing their view of events. Even if they did not embellish, even if they tried to faithfully represent facts, by the very fact of their humanity they were flawed and prone to error. Even if you believe God directly inspired these writings, you still can't completely rule out errors and you can not ignore the many things which were arbitrarily removed or omitted from the Bible by what is now the Catholic church. Who knows what Jesus said in the accounts that have been buried by organised religion?

   To call the Bible the word of God is blasphemy. It is the word of long-dead men who know nothing of faith in the modern world, who at worst used the names of God and Jesus to propagate their own world views and at best had the unenviable task of interpreting the inherently ineffable wishes of God through the prism of their own experience. How can you let these men tell you what to do, what to believe, even what to think?

   I did say I revere the Bible, and I do, the stories of Jesus are inspirational, but to take anything in the book as absolute truth is to narrow the infinite wisdom of God to something relevant only to ancient man or modern extremists. That is not my God.

Inspiration strikes

So, today I started work on my first... hmmm first novel? first short story? First something or other, anyway. I don't know where it's going to go but I'm finally writing something.

   Awesome.

   Yeah.

   Except...

   Well, what do you do when you have an idea that you think is really bad but is the only idea you seem likely to have for a while? And when you don't really think you can write well enough to save the bad idea by cocooning it in words that hide the flaws?

   Apparently you write it anyway, or that's what I seem to be doing. I foresee great danger here: either I'll hate the end product and be too demotivated to write anything else or I'll be so happy at finishing something that I'll love it too much to admit it's poor.

   Well, there's only one way to find out I suppose.

Letters from the past, nearly illegible but not nearly illegible enough.

So, I've talked a lot in here about how I like to write. You've probably noticed that the idea of writing professionally is starting to coalesce in my mind once again. Of course this isn't the first time my thoughts have swung that way. I remember a time when I was all about my various notebooks full of scribbled song lyrics (my band was never going to take off but obviously someone would want to buy the shit I'd been writing for their band: it was gold dust!).
   Recently, I was scrabbling around for something to scribble on (I was scripting/directing what was essentially a TV ad - if it doesn't make TV I might stick it on Youtube) and I came across one of these old notebooks. I deliberately didn't look at those old scribbles, mostly because I was pressed for time but also because I wanted to continue to remember them as merely weak rather than know them to be abysmal.
   Well, a few days later I'd gone to bed and suddenly remembered that yet again I'd nearly forgotten to write anything for that day. Quickly I snatched up my old notebook from the floor where I'd abandoned it and, searching for inspiration for what to write, I reviewed that time capsule from 16-year-old me.
   Mission accomplished. It certainly inspired me. Very soon I'd embarked on a essay extolling the virtues of fire when it comes to expunging unwanted records of the past.
   I think all of my old notebooks are going to be dug out tomorrow and have a lit match applied to them. I had always half intended to keep them for the purposes of refining them when I'd become a better writer or just as a reminder of where I'd come from. Well, bollocks to that for a game of soldiers, I'd much rather forget as much as possible of that. Let this blog be the start of my journey, let the feeble prose herein be testament to my origins and (hopefully) my progress towards a decent level of skill.
   The discovery of those old scribble pads did remind me how much I love writing with pen and paper though. Obviously I'm digital these days (and today I did see a typewriter in the shop where I volunteer and immediately fell in WANT) but there's something about the barely legible scrawls you make when caught in the flow of an idea that capture the tone of your thoughts the way typing can't, no matter how feverishly your fingers dance.
   So, once I get money my next purchase is probably going to be a stack of fresh notebooks in various styles for the purposes of impromptu jotting, and probably that typewriter (so much WANT).

Creative Non-fiction

So, I realised I'd nearly forgotten to write something today and was casting around for a topic. I had this in the pipeline but it wasn't something I was planning on doing for a while yet. I guess there's no time like the present though and I've got nothing else so it'll have to do.
   Cards on the table, I bought a book that's supposed to teach you creative writing and this was task 1. I honestly don't believe it's something you can learn (especially the particular aspects that I lack) but my chances of learning it are 100% worse if I don't try compared to what they are if I do, and you never know, right?
   Anyways, I'm supposed to make a list of names I've been called in my life and write a paragraph on any one of them. I might do a paragraph on a couple of them actually. Pretty sure this'll be no good, partially because it's me doing it and partially because it's a pretty lame subject, but I'm not going to turn my nose up at something designed to help me improve a skill I've been scrabbling to acquire for years. So here we go. First, my list:
Dan (duh!)
Danny
Daniel (when someone's annoyed with me)
Daniel Lovegrove (when someone's fuming with me)
Daniel James Lovegrove (when the shit's about to hit the fan)
Lovegrove
Loveshack
Shack
Shacka
Shaktar
Shakkerslovakia (it's totally possible I made that one up, but something's telling me it happened)
Mangrove
Love me Slender (I have literally no idea)
Lovebear
Sex God (I had weird friends at school)
Mr. Lovegroan
Dean
Dandeano
Big D
Son

I got called Loveshack again the other day. It's an ambiguous name for me, the thought of it transports me back to a time when I was relatively happy - or certainly a time I remember as being happy - but when there was so much confusion and sadness around that I've no idea where this happiness came from.
   That time was school and that right there should give you a measure of the confusion and sadness I'm talking about. I was never popular but then I didn't particularly want to be. I was genuinely happier as an outsider, if it wasn't for the fact that you need a few extra people for a decent game of football I'd have been a total loner. Sadly, kicking a ball against a wall all by your lonesome isn't anywhere near as fun as kicking it around with other people, so that forced me into having what in the right light might have looked like friends.
   They weren't friends, not really. Us loner types struggle to make real friends, we're too odd for people to connect with (especially at school, where odd does not play in your favour) and find that sooner or later, everyone lets you down (especially at school, where hormones and peer pressure turn everyone into an obnoxious little shit, and I include myself in that).
   Anyway, Loveshack as a nickname came from this group of pseudo-friends and while it was initially a friendly moniker, I can't help but recall the times it was used by bullies or friends who had turned against me. Allegiances were so fragile back then, so while a nickname's supposed to be something used amongst friends, part of your group's own particular slang, my name was used at least as much by foes as it was by allies.
   So. Confusing, sad, no friends to speak of. School was a nightmare on paper, but as they say, the game's not played on paper. I remember it fondly, for reasons I still can't explain. Perhaps it was that lessons were easy, breaks were frequent (and filled with football) and the future seemed bright.
   Whatever the reason, thinking about the character of Loveshack, I think of a happy person surrounded by circumstances that made him unbearably sad and a sad youth who always aspired to happiness. They are one and the same and they are me and I them but also we're all strangers.
   Being called the name again felt weird. I was sat in a car with two of my former pseudo-friends who are now mature enough and have stuck around long enough to have become proper friends if I weren't too much of a loner. That was the reality but as far as I was concerned I was practically back on the school astroturf, trying to figure out why my friends sometimes act like they hate me and why I sometimes act like a total dick (the two may not have been unrelated, in fairness).
   It's a name that'll stick though, I think. To this day I can't hear the song Loveshack by the B-52s without smiling and singing along.

Whew, that was considerably more than a paragraph, guess I'll leave it at one name. Just a note though, the person who calls me Big D is a total arse and does so without any encouragement from me. She may be family but I genuinely want to do violence when that godawful attempt at joviality is uttered. Night all.

Oh, and I guess you might be wondering about Mr. Lovegroan, I know it sounds like a shit name for a porn star.
   Well, that's a whole other story.

=

Well, it's only day three of my write-something-every-day challenge and just 36 hours since I really put the pressure on with a melodramatic outburst on why it's so important that I keep it up and I've only just noticed that I've written nothing today. I'm the king of poor follow-through but this was nearly a dismal failure by even my generous standards.

   So, in my haste to fire something out in the 57 minutes remaining of today, I've had to pluck a topic out of nowhere and I'm going for equality. Weighty stuff for midnight on a Saturday but its something I think about a lot. I've always had a passion for justice and fairness, and there's a couple of related stories/events at the moment so I thought I'd talk about one or two.

   So first things first, I consider myself a feminist. Yes I'm a man, yes you could just call me an egalitarian if you want, but this is where I'm coming from. I may be quite a bad feminist at times, as I shall recount here, but I am a feminist.

   One equality-related thing happening at the moment is the Women's Football World Cup. I've always been a staunch defender of the women's game against a barrage of sexist comments from people I'm slightly ashamed to call acquaintances and friends. Women's football is not the same as men's football but it's no less entertaining. Sometimes it's better to watch, even if you might be able to make a case for the standard being lower. Anyway, there are obvious potential challenges to my claims of feminism here. I often find myself thinking something bad about what I'm seeing. I actually made a mental comparison between women's football and "real" football earlier today and I was not happy with myself about that, I can tell you. Of course, having these thoughts doesn't make me a complete chauvinist arsehole. In fact, acknowledging my own faults and trying to address them probably makes me a better person in the long run but still, I'd rather not be prone to such slips in the first place.

   The main problem with trying to be a male feminist women's football fan though is trying not to think very bad thoughts about the endless parade of very aesthetically pleasing women on show. I wrestle them down most of the time but thoughts like these trouble me still. Can I really be fair and equal in my treatment of people with these thoughts in my head? Can I truly be a fan of the game I profess to love? Or am I merely a worthless letch? Fighting myself here proves I'm trying but does the lack of total victory mean I'm not trying hard enough?

Titles are Hard, part 2 of 2.

Part one here

   Last time I mentioned that I'd be trying to write every day, just to see if I can get any good at it. I'll be honest, that piece went on longer than I expected and I never managed to wrestle it towards its intended subject, so I inserted a break at what seemed an appropriate point and split it in two. I'm undertaking this writing on the advice of a far better writer than myself, who thought it might help. Unlike the man in question, I haven't the ability to write fiction (now anyway, hopefully it will come with time) so I'm just typing to see where it goes.

   Anyway, the second and third part of Sir Terry's advice concerned becoming a good writer, which I don't think many people asked for advice on, more commonly they wanted to know how to make as much money as he had so these other pieces of advice are less widely published. The second part was this: read, and read a lot, if you read enough words they start to overflow and you'll find yourself writing, if you've read good things and read widely about all sorts of subjects, you'll have a lot of material to draw on.

   This, I suspect, will be my downfall. Back in my teens I could read two books in a day and if I'd spent that time broadening my horizons I'd have probably ended up reading everything in the universe, but I'm a notorious re-reader so my horizons stay stubbornly narrow. There's a nice eclectic mix in there but new things are rare and these days they seem to take months to get through. However, a glut of new books recently entered my life and hopefully I can take some good things from the experience.

   One of these was actually written by a family member and I'm proof-reading it for him. Through a twist in circumstance I'm not entirely sure he knows I'm proof-reading, it could be he thinks I'm just reading it, which presents me with the dilemma of what to do with the points I notice that need or want changing. I've no idea of the etiquette in this situation and I'm really reticent to give the book back with my little scribbled notes all over it.

   You see, not only do I not know whether he's expecting any feedback or not, the feedback I do have is harsh and I've gone far beyond the remit of the proof-reader, for four reasons. Firstly, because if my relative is to go from self-published to just published, which I assume he would like to, he's going to need to get used to harsh criticism of spellings, punctuation, grammar, syntax and such (this, incidentally, was Terry Pratchett's third piece of advice: knowing your commas from your semi-colons is vital). Secondly, I've been harsh because there's a pretty good story in there but it really struggles to immerse you thanks to its presentation and making it easier to read will make it better. Thirdly, I love correct grammar (though my definition of correct may be looser than some others) and seeing it misused hurts me almost physically.

   The fourth reason is far less virtuous. Honestly, I'm jealous. I've always thought myself a writer, even if not a very good one and suddenly here is someone putting their skill into practice while I wait for an idea to strike, like some hunk of stone landing on my doorstep from which I might be able to hew a story of some kind. I've been wretchedly comparing what I've read in that work to my own efforts and while I believe myself to have the edge when it comes to the nuts and bolts of writing, the author of the piece I'm half way through critiquing has me beat all ends up on imagination and story-telling. Together we'd make a fearsome team, though I'd never say it to him. Instead, rightly or wrongly, I'll just tear his first novel to pieces and try to be as dispassionate as possible so that what I'm saying comes from the part of me that's trying to help rather than the green eyed monster who keeps urging me to find any fault I can purely for its own satisfaction. It's a perilous tightrope I walk, over a chasm of despair and envy.

   On this high-wire of the soul I have one salvation. Knowing that the trick of the tightrope walker is to lower their centre of gravity to a point below the rope, I've fashioned for myself a heavy weight. This is why I write every day now, to keep me balanced. I've done nearly 1350 words today (and amazingly still haven't got around to the topic I originally had in mind) and the release I feel is not just down to the confessional nature of the last few paragraphs, although that will certainly have helped. I know that this burden, gladly carried, can save me from becoming the terrible person I've always suspected myself to be and if between that and improving my own skills I can't find some motivation to keep on carrying it then I don't deserve to use this keyboard for anything but facebook and gaming.

You Know What? Titles Are Hard. (Part 1 of 2)

That has bugger all to do with the topic for today. It's just a comment. I've come up with some titles I've been pretty happy with over my career but sometimes I just can't condense what I'm thinking of writing about into a concise enough sentence.

   My topic for today is in fact pretty much what it always is: my struggle to express myself through the medium of the typed word. (Yeah, I know, but there's actually almost a pretty good reason for once).

   In fact, yet again I've had someone tell me I write pretty well. This happens surprisingly often and I never believe it to be true. It seems more likely to me that people are humouring their friend. I don't say this to fish for further compliments, I'm simply stating the facts of the matter.

   Having said that, I was reading back through some of my favourite posts from this blog yesterday and thinking to myself that some of them were half-decent. This is clearly selection bias though: if I'm reading my favourites, of course I'll like them, I should try reading the ones I hate or (if it were possible) the ones I've deleted if I fancy getting a true measure of my ability.

   Anyway, that's why I'm here. Compliments motivate me to try and make myself worthy of them and practice makes perfect so here I am.

   Fair warning, this piece is about to go off on such a tangent you wouldn't believe it.

   I was mid-way through my annual re-read of practically everything Terry Pratchett ever wrote when the great man passed away (naturally this extended the splurge to include other of his books that I read less often). Amongst the things I took in this time around were the anthologies of his non-fiction and shorter fictional works. Between them, the notes he makes between each piece in those books represent the closest we'll get to an autobiography, which both gladdens and saddens me. It's unusual for writers to to autobiographies. Despite being the only people qualified to do so, they always have something more interesting to write about. Such was the case with Pratchett and I wouldn't swap one novel for an autobiography but from those notes in the anthologies of his work I learned there are scarcely any people whose own story I'd be more interested to read. It is all there in his fiction, anyway, once you know where to look.

   Writers are always asked what the secret is and of all the answers I've heard, Pratchett's is one of my favourites. It comes in three parts and the essence of the first and most important part is "You want to be a writer? No-one's stopping you, write something." He himself wrote at least four hundred words a day when he was starting out. If he finished a story within one night's session, he'd simply start on another story. A lot of those innumerable words might never have made it to print but that wasn't the point.The goal wasn't necessarily to be published (although I'm sure it was appreciated), he wanted to write, so he did.

   I've decided to take his advice and try to emulate him, as much as possible. Not that I expect that by writing a couple of hundred words a day I'll turn into the next Sir Terry Pratchett, he had certain advantages over me - such as a skill in the craft - but with any luck I might at some point become worthy of those compliments I've been getting.

My name is Daniel, and I'm an alcoholic. Well, I've had a lager.

So, I discovered something today: 25-year-old me can handle significantly less booze than 15-year old me could. I think the first clue was when, after one San Miguel while ostensibly working on a project for a family member. I started slacking off, posting more facebook statuses in an hour than I have done in the previous month and singing Busted songs at the top of my voice. And now I'm blogging about totally random shit and I just can't seem to stop.
   I've always had a measure of control. Even in those heady days of Cardiff '05 and the infamous pre-birthday bender, I could turn tipsiness off if I started making an ass of myself. The lowered inhibitions pursuant to a considerable amount of lager made me less likely to do so, but the option was open to me. I still have this trait but again, lowered inhibitions mean that while the flesh is able, the spirit is unwilling. It's not like I need booze to have enjoyment but there's a certain element of what I consider enjoyable whilst not lightly inebriated being far more sober pleasures than most people would enjoy, whilst alcohol - that great leveler - brings my personality more in line with what some call "fun."
   Truth is though, fun's a nasty bastard, fun comes in flavours including "we thought it would be fun," "we were only having a bit of fun" and most perilously of all "are you having fun yet?" I hate "fun" people. I like funny people (in both senses of the term), I like diverting and engaging people, inspirational people, people... People described as "fun" are like movies described as "feel-good" in that they contain very little of merit and tend to all be the same.
   What I'm saying is, I don't like slightly sozzled me, but everyone else seems to and down this path madness lies. I'm not saying I'll never drink again, 1) because that's too cliche and 2) because it's just not true. Every now and then everyone needs a drink and I'm no different. But my current rate of about two bottles of lager a year seems sufficient, to me. And I will say one thing for far-too-easily-inebriated-me, I've written my first blog post in what seems a goodly while - certainly the first one I'll bother posting on Facebook for ages, despite what sober me might think of that later on (*evil laugh*) - and despite having to wrestle with an American spell-checker it had some pretty good vocabulary, no errors that I can see and possibly even better punctuation than usual. I even managed to reference Shakespeare (in my drink-addled fugue I think I flipped the reference 'round as well so it's probably satire or parody or something), I did borrow extensively from Pratchett but then I do that when I've not touched a drop; my sad attempts at the sincerest form of flattery being far more worthy than my own - thankfully inimitable - brand of "writing", so that's no big deal. Maybe my semi-annual beer should always lead to blogging, maybe not. But either way it's probably time to sign off - so I can post this before I get sober enough to realise its a mistake - and get back to work, we've been through happy drunk, introspective drunk, maudlin drunk and tailing-off-mid-sentence-drunk (though I managed quite an adroit save there, I thought) and nobody wants to see angry drunk, if that's something I even have in my pantheon of inebriates, I've no idea.
Adieu, friends.

Twenty-Something Life In The Bit Bucket: So, where do you get your inspiration?

Hi. Yeah, it has been a while. How are y'all doing? Good, good. How's life as automated text-scanning software treating you? Cool, Yep, any actual people reading this might be a bit confused by now, but I know my audience.

Anyways, the old uni blogging gang seem to be back on the scene and I thought I might as well join in, in my small way. Well, topics are still pretty thin on the ground, the only thing really going on at the moment is my first steps on the long and arduous journey towards being a proper football coach and since a) the human minority among the audience will quickly get bored with minutiae of VAK, STEPS, the LTPD and assorted other details and b) I have a sneaking suspicion that my first steps on the journey will also be my last ones - at least for a good long while - it seems a waste to spend a lot of time going on about it.

I will say this: I have managed to pass one coaching course and look set to scrape by in another despite showing a very low level of competency for the subject (my life in microcosm, if I'm honest: the number of things at which I've been deemed good enough to move on to the next level, only to find the next level to be beyond my limited ability, is simply staggering). Being just good enough at something to know how shit you are is rare. Generally, you're either amazing and so have sufficient appreciation of the skill to notice every microscopic detail (and therefore magnify all your own mistakes) and unjustly believe yourself to be poor OR you're so poor that you fail to understand what good or bad performance would look like and therefore believe yourself to be amazing (case studies: TV "talent" show competitors and at least 80% of management-level workers), how lucky am I to land in the middle of those two sub-sets and have total knowledge of my inadequacy?

Wow, rant over, sorry. On to why I'm actually here.

So, as this blog will attest, I'm a keen writer (though it's another area where I fall into the "I know I'm crap" bracket) and part of that is having to deal with the "bit bucket". Most of you will know what I mean by that. The space in your head where you throw those half-formed ideas that you just know you can work into something later on. It doesn't have to be what you might call traditionally creative, it could be 5 minutes worth of lesson plan, it could be an acronym for the new initiative that they're working on at the office, but generally it's for that one project you intend to get 'round to if only you had the time. Everyone's got that project, it could be a novel, a play, some poetry, a song, it could be a particularly spectacular piece of DIY (up to and including building your own house), it could be as grandiose as a general election manifesto or as modest a witty facebook status. Point is, everyone's got a project and it always starts out formless, no title, no outline, no components, just a thought, not always consciously acknowledged. At first any random inspiration can become part of it, suddenly you think of a bloody brilliant title for an album and even though you've not got a band and you haven't touched your guitar in months, you are always - from that moment on, in small ways - thinking about that album, working out genre, the songs, composition of the band, whatever. Other inspirations strike, they either become part of THE PROJECT, or they go in the bit-bucket, because of course, once THE PROJECT gets out, you'll be on a roll and ready to start on PROJECT TWO: PROJECT FURTHER which may be able to use stuff from the bit-bucket.

(Bloody Hell I'm being wordy tonight, I shouldn't leave it so long between posts, I get all gabbly, sorry folks, trying to swing around to the point, I promise).

I live in my bit bucket, if I'm honest, I'm constantly having thoughts, chucking them in the bucket for later consideration and rootling around for previous ones, trying to assess their merits as the basis for a PROJECT. There are so many thoughts in my bucket that they're actually breeding, some of them are now 4th or 5th generation bucket denizens, never knowing any other life than to swim around their own hopelessly crowded gene-pool, looking for other ideas to merge with, in the hope that the descendants of a cringe-worthy attempt at a song lyric and a desperately one-dimensional dystopian dictator could one day aspire to escape the bucket as a particularly pithy section of a stand-up set.

So, there's all these inspirations around, and everyone's got them and everyone stores them in their buckets or incorporates them into a PROJECT and by now we all pretty much know it and yet people who manage to get their PROJECT to fruition with a bit of success still get asked where they get their inspiration. Less so nowadays but still, it does happen and it's a bugbear of mine. It also sets up my point for today and a micro-rant blog on the subject is one thing that's been in the bucket for a while.

Inspiration is not what separates successful PROJECTeers from everyone else, inspiration of some kind probably strikes each of the planet's 7 billion people at least once a day and what takes it from imagination to the real world is an almost indefinable quality, mostly comprised of having the guts to try, the perseverance to keep trying, the motivation not to think that you'll get 'round to it one day but instead to get on it today and - not least - a degree of skill in the discipline.

So, part of why I'm writing this is I've got many friends managing to take on PROJECTs - a few of them taking on PROJECTs that I am somewhat envious of, in fact - and I wanted to take this opportunity to salute them because that x-factor they've got is absolutely a salute-worthy attribute. I may lack it, and that lack may hinder my every PROJECT and cause my bit bucket to overflow but it doesn't stop me appreciating the skill in others.