Ciaran’s Omnipurpose Blog

There's something awesome about William Shatner's stop-start gravitas.

Alongside Mr. T and Verne Troyer (Mini-Mi from the Austin Powers movies), Shatner's taken Blizzard's gold to advertise World of Warcraft, the massively-successful MMORPG. With coming close to 9 million subscribers, I'm at a bit of a loss to see how much bigger they want it to become, but I love the advert anyway.

I honestly thought they were Italians.

I was sitting (yes, sitting! I got lucky!) on the Tube on the way home last night, head buried in the Endymion Omnibus, when a load of rowdy blokes got onto the tube, adding to the already sardine-like quality of the rush-hour crowds. They started singing football songs, which had a south European lilt to them, hence my false assumption: they were Croatian.

Apparently, there was a big football match last night at Wembley. I live fairly near Wembley and I had no clue. This is because I don't follow football. It doesn't interest me in the slightest. In fact, on some level, I'm anti-football. I see people talk for hours about the ins and outs of their sports, applying incredible reasoning and statistical powers to the points-systems and league-tables. At the same time, the real world around them needs these people to apply this deep thought to the real world problems around them.

It's a taboo to talk about sex politics and religion in polite company, but it's OK to talk football. In the end, our public discourse is infantilised.

The Croatians started banging the ceiling of the carriage, singing "We love Croatia, we do!", and some brave Londoners tried to start a counter-chant of "So why don't you fuck off back there then!", but it was a flaccid attempt and the commuters weren't in the mood.

Still, the local pride was still there. After all, London had once been the capital city of an Empire that controlled a quarter of the world's population, and this faded jingoism is now relegated to playing itself out on the football pitch. Perhaps this is better than the fields of Flanders or Omdurman, but the pride's still there and one chap muttered to the other, "They'll be laughing on the other side of their faces after the match".

England lost 3-2 to Croatia. Croatia was all over them like a cheap suit, from what I saw whilst channel-hopping. England was beaten by a country with a population 13 times smaller with an economy 31 times smaller. The Croatians were laughing on the other side of their faces alright -they had to give the other side a rest.

I know this is a little late, but I've been on holiday:

It's all kicked off about yoga, that uncomfortable-looking way of sitting and lying around.

It started at the end of August, when a Church of England priest decided that the yoga class that had been using the church hall for some years should no longer be allowed to take place on church property.

The yoga teacher couldn't understand that permission had been withdrawn from two different churches in Somerset.

The more reserved of the two Somerset priests said, “If it was just a group of children singing nursery rhymes, there wouldn’t be a problem but she’s called it yoga and therefore there is a dividing line we’re not prepared to cross.”

So an exercise regime based on Hinduism is fine if you omit the Hinduism part? Fair enough - perhaps that's why some christians have recognised the popularity of Yoga and the indifference of many to the Hindu roots of the practice. So they've created a christian alternative to Yoga called "Praise Moves":

But whilst one of the priests was at least open to the idea of compromise, the other wasn't. How exciting!

“Any alternative philosophies or beliefs are offering a sham - and at St James’s Church we want people to have the real thing. Yoga has its roots in Hinduism, and attempts to use exercises and relaxation techniques to put a person into a calm frame of mind - in touch with some kind of impersonal spiritual reality.

“The philosophy of yoga cannot be separated from the practice of it, and any teacher of yoga, even to toddlers, must subscribe to the philosophy.

“Yoga may appear harmless or even beneficial, but it is encouraging people to think that there is a way to wholeness of body and mind through human techniques - whereas the only true way to wholeness is by faith in God through Jesus Christ.” 

My personal view is that since the Church of England is tax exempt, I'm theoretically paying higher taxes and therefore subsidising a "public service" that I cannot use. I live with this, because I don't claim dole money or a lot of other public services, but I don't expect to be denied access to their Services or related services. The Church's doors are open to unbelievers, but their schools are closed, as if to say, "We welcome you if you might potentially become a customer, but you can forget access to the schools you pay for". This is one of the many reasons why I think faith schools are a terrible idea. 

But I couldn't help my eruption of bemusement and amusement at the news that the Hindu Council UK is considering challenging the ban. Said Anil Bhanot:

"These priests might appear to be advising Christians not to practice yoga because they believe it is based on a 'sham' and a 'false philosophy', but what in effect they mean is that Hinduism is a false religion,"

Well, of course they do! They're not polytheists who believe in reincarnation: they're Christians!

So I think this bleating about being referred to as a false religion is pretty laughable and the Hindus claim the Christians are wrong and the Christians claim the Hindus are wrong. There's always a silver lining to every cloud. In this case, I can happily say that I agree with both of them!

You may know that Dinah always throws awesome parties. This year, her birthday party was held in Knutsford, Cheshire and held jointly with her friend Caz. The theme was "Under the Sea", so I was forced to unleash my inner pirate.

Photos of the event are all over Facebook, but will be posted on this blog shortly.

It's astonishing how a costume can make you enter your character. I was "Yarr'ing" and Shivering me timbers for all it was worth - barfing up bits of lung and vocal chord the next day. It reminds me of a story I read about actors in Lord of the Rings or a similar movie, who actually started to unconsciously segregate themselves according to whether they were Orcs or Elves. Very odd.

OK.

I've been very disparaging about an exhibition at the Tate Modern in a previous post, but I can't help marvelling at this crack. A small crack in one concrete slab has been expanded upon by an artist to stretch the entire length of the Tate's Turbine hall. It's impressive work.

What's nice as well is that although there have been injuries resulting from the crack, the management at the Tate hasn't caved into the Health and Safety brigade and fenced it off.

However, the artist couldn't help herself from emitting some unnecessary arty-guff about how the gap symbolises racial division: representing "the gap between white Europeans and the rest of the world's population". Does this mean that there's a huge gap between white Europeans and Americans? And Japanese? And Australians? Does this mean that there's a huge gap between white Europeans and non-white Europeans?

My advice: Either spend more time on the drivel-text or just forget about it in the first place.

You had me with the crack on its own; although why it cost £300,000 is beyond me.

It has been reported in the news today that a mother died hours after giving birth in Shropshire. The details are still unclear pending an enquiry, but it seems that she died because she needed a blood transfusion after complications during the birth of her twins.

The technology was available: it isn't wholly uncommon to have complications during birth that require transfusions.

The blood was available: the doctors were desperate to perform the procedure.

She refused the blood that would save her life.

She refused by ticking a box on a form and this choice appears to have been upheld by her husband and family during the medical emergency in the hospital, whilst she lay dying on the bed with her newborn infants.

She chose death over life, and was supported in this grim choice that left her children without a mother because she and her family are Jehovah's Witnesses and refuse blood transfusions.

It's sad to think that a lot of people say that having children gives their life new hope and meaning - this is something that she and her family have denied themselves because of what would seem to the outside, rational observer to be a tragic devotion to a dubious set of beliefs.

One's thoughts turn to the surviving father and the children. the children who will be without a mother, and the father who supported his wife's decision to die in the name of a new take on Christianity dating from the 1870s. If it were me, I would wonder if I were a suitable father after choosing death for my wife in a parallel to the story of Abraham and Isaac.

But I think that would be too hard on the man and his family: religion's about social control as well as belief, and people in groups will often enforce the hardest line possible. It must have been a terrible dilemma; and the intense pressures from the church leadership must have been unbearable.

After surrendering your mind to the authority of those "above", what room is there for compassion, for protecting yourself, protecting your family, for doing what's right and what's natural?

I'm a genius.

You know this to be true simply because I say it is so.

If you need any proof of my genius, simply ask me, "Ciaran, are you a genius?".

I'll tell you that I am.

Q.E.D.

Tonight, I had occasion to go to The World as a Stage. I went with Rebecca and Rosie, who took part in a piece of art by Roman Ondák. She joined hundreds of others in drawing a picture of the "artist" based solely on a description of him. Not everyone got their work hung in the exhibition: only about 30 were chosen. Rebecca's was one of them. It's obviously a very cool thing to say that you had work on show in the Tate.

What amused me was the writeup for Roman Ondák in the programme. The art by other people was not the only thing in the room. There was also a little video of peoples' feet as they wandered around a gallery with their shoelaces untied. Quoting the programme:

"This quiet act of non-conformity remains ambiguous, suggesting a protest against (or for?) something we can only imagine."

A suggested "protest against (or for?) something we can only imagine"??

Oh please!

What a ridiculous piece of non-commital prose! Why bother? Why not just have an empty room in which to sit and read a good book? Why pulp trees to print flyers with that nonsense? Why not just forget the whole stupid charade in the first place?

The rest of the exhibition went downhill from there, until I came across an interesting timeline/ mural about the Miners' Strike. For such a major incident in my early lifetime, I didn't know much about it, so I read the wall eagerly. At this point, the exhibition was more like a museum piece, so I didn't really see the art in it, but I was lost in there for a good 20 minutes.

Walking between exhibits, we joked that the floor-level lighting in one of the corridors was probably a weird bit of conceptual art. Actually, it was. The Telegraph singled it out as the most compelling piece in the show, no less!

And would you believe it? On going into the exhibition, the attendant who handed out the programmes said to us, "The News at Ten is back!".

I just shrugged, gurgled and moved on.

Rosie didn't, "Sorry? What? What are you talking about?".

"Dunno. They just told me to say it", came the reply.

Apparently, the Telegraph had the answer to this madness:

"What looks at first like a bit of nonsense actually has a purpose – to make you aware that you are leaving one world and entering another, passing from real life into the irrational realms of art.

When I stood at the entrance to the show the attendant said, "Children die in half-term horror", implanting the idea that, by comparison with what happens in real life, the art I was about to see is frivolous and self-indulgent."

"Credo quia absurdum" - "I believe because it is absurd". That seems to be the watchword here, and why I think I'll always have trouble with this bizarre sort of abstract art, or other things that require me to suspend my reason.

Maybe I'm just a grouch…

Still, in that spirit of the absurd: I'm a genius. Credo quia absurdum.

I'm back on Vancouver Island and the road-trip part of my Canadian Adventure is now at an end.

We traveled about 3,000km in all; passing through 2 states and countless towns and cities.

Click on the map below for an interactive version of our route. 

Here's a short video of the car that took us approximately 3,000km across British Columbia and Alberta.

The car is almost as old as I am. Unlike me, however, it got a lot of admiring glances during the trip, including:

• Several people wanting their photo taken with the car.
• Numerous gas station attendants commenting on how much they loved the car.
• And memorably, one roadside worker's jaw dropping as we drove by and murmuring, "Cooooooool…."

We're in Osoyoos. It's in the Okanagan Valley, a desert in the middle of the Rockies.

It's rather incongruous that during the few hours it took to get to Osoyoos from our last stop of Nelson, we were passing through cool forest and snow-capped mountain terrain.

At one point I saw a hobo walking along the road with his dog and a shopping trolley. He was in the middle of nowhere (much of Canada is, it seems). I remember wondering why on earth he was there and where he was going.

Digression aside: on reaching the Okanagan Valley, we found ourselves looking at an arid landscape, which reminded me of a hamada. The clouds don't seem to like this valley very much and there are vineyards everywhere.

It was here that we decided to make a two-day stop. We'd done quite a bit of travelling through the Rockies and for once, I was feeling hot. Osoyoos is lovely and warm and set on a beautiful lake. 

Soon after throwing our bags into the hotel, we headed out to see what was going on in Osoyoos. I didn't hold out much hope: the receptionist's answer to my question about where the action was, was that it was an hour's drive north.

In any case, we found a bar or two and the usual depressing series of chain "restaurants". I'm both fascinated and horrified by the prevalance of these places. I'm fascinated because I can't understand how one town can possibly justify having a dozen hamburger "restaurants, which all feature essentially the same menu. I'm horrified because I've been eating on the cheap and now have a lot of running and swimming to do when I get home.

Undaunted, we made a base of operations at a local pub in Osoyoos: had a bit of lunch and shot a bit of pool.

Pretty soon, we were playing pool with a Floridian called James. He was passing through for work. He's a cartographer, and his work involves driving around the world and place pyramidal mirrors at selected points so that a special aeroplane can fly over and fire lasers at his mirrors in order to create accurate physical maps. 

Several hours in, we were shooting pool with lots of different people from around Osoyoos, and before we knew it, we were holding court at a table surrounded by locals. Even the manageress joined us and started buying us shooters.

But nobody knew what they were letting themselves in for when the Karaoke started.

Nev and I dominated the proceedings: belting out horribly atonal renditions of Bohemian Rhapsody, some Depeche Mode, some Guns and Roses and Dennis Leary's famous crowd-pleaser. I was also dragged up to duet with a gravelly-voiced woman who later gave me her email address. It began, "whackedgranny@…".

The Floridian joined us back at our hotel room after last orders. Unfortunately, so did two other people from the bar, so copious drinking on the balcony overlooking the lake ensued but was marred by having to make a near-herculean effort to drive the gatecrashers out.

The next morning, we headed down to the local Smitty's "family restaurant" (greasy spoon to you and me). We looked awful and felt worse.

Looking across the restaurant, there were several families in their Sunday Best and clearly having a wholesome family meal after church. And here we were, having just got out of bed and suffering for the sin of drink:

"Let there be wine, women, mirth and laughter, Sermons and soda-water the day after." - Byron

The food was a stodge-a-thon. I had pancakes with maple syrup and lots of smoked pig. Nev had the same but with potatoes and toast instead of the pancakes. Neither of us could finish our food.

People here seem to have a real obsession with food: every table had a little collection of Trivial Pursuit cards. Perhaps this was in keeping with the "family restaurant" theme. One of the questions on the Trivial Pursuit cards read:

"What was the Boston Chicken chain renamed, after branching out into other entrees?"

Stumbling out of Smitty's, we lurched back to the hotel and passed the hobo we'd seen the day before in the middle of nowhere.  

Aside from a very sore head, I've no idea how much that night of boozing cost us. In true Gonzo style, we had bade gladhandedly farewell to all before walking confidently out of the bar, and leaving our tab behind.

Hopefully our sheer charisma was reward enough…