Incompetence

Whew, thought Pat to himself, this looks like a tough crowd. Hitching up his cassock, he sat himself down on the little stool provided, and raised his eyes to meet the General Synod's collective steely gaze with a calculated air of meekness.

"Now, Father Patrick," said the Archbishop of Armagh silkily, "I expect you're wondering why we called you here today."

"Well, you know, I, er, that is to say, yes, I was wondering that, indeed, Your Grace."

"Really," said the Archbishop. "So you wouldn't have even a little clue on the matter. Maybe just a teensy-tiny one?"

"Ooh, that's a difficult question and no mistake, Your Grace, give me a moment to think about it, hmm, would it be something to do with The Job perhaps?"

"The Job. You've hit the nail right on the head there, Father Patrick. Now, since you're on such a roll, perhaps you'd like to hazard another brilliant guess, this time as to whether the holy church is satisfied or dissatisfied with your work."

"Oh dear," said Pat modestly, "I couldn't possibly say, Your Grace, it wouldn't be right for me to blow my own trumpet, though if you want to blow it for me, of course I wouldn't dream of stopping you, go right ahead."

The temperature in the chamber was rapidly dropping from merely chilly to positively arctic. They should probably get some insulation work done, thought Pat, maybe he'd recommend one of his cousins to the synod later.

"Okay. Right. I can see that we're going to have to take this right from the top," said the Archbishop, doing his best to retain his composure. "Could you tell all of Our Graces what task it was you were hired to carry out?"

"Ah, an easy one at last, Your Grace. That would be dealing with your little infestation problem, in layman's terms, ridding Ireland of snakes."

"Just so, Father Patrick. And could you explain to us the method by which you planned to effect the extermination of these vermin?"

"Well, Your Grace, after brainstorming a number of possibilities, and bearing in mind that your snake is a tricky little customer that just isn't going to be sorted out by half measures, I decided to introduce the African mongoose to Ireland."

"An inspired solution, Father Patrick. It certainly sent the snakes packing, with their tails between their... well, suffice to say we didn't have a snake problem any more. But presumably you noticed that your sudden insertion of many thousand hungry mongeese to the Irish ecosystem was having unforeseen side effects."

"Mongooses, Your Grace. Well, yes it's true, once all these mongooses had run out of snakes they started on the small local fauna, mice and rats and hedgehogs, maybe a few cats and little dogs, that sort of thing..."

The Archbishop of Dublin could contain himself no longer. "And babies in their crib, Patrick, you blundering idiot!" he yelled, his face red as an apple.

"Well, what you must understand is that your average mongoose is incapable of distinguishing between one small squeaky thing and the next, I'm sure they didn't mean to upset anybody. Anyway, I had a back-up plan for exactly this eventually."

"An even more ingenious one, Father Patrick," said Armagh, pushing his Dubliner counterpart back down into his seat. "Come on then, I want to hear you explain it in your own words."

"It's very simple really - to give the mongooses a taste of their own medicine, we imported to Ireland some mated pairs of, er, the Alaskan wolverine."

"Right. Make sure you're getting Father Patrick's conf... Father Patrick's account down there exactly as it's coming out of his mouth," said the head Archbishop to the scribe frantically scribbling behind him. Turning back to Pat, he continued: "I think we're getting to the crux of the matter now, Patrick. We asked you to rid our country of snakes. Snakes, you imbecile! Do you realise that the very rare Irish elk is now extinct due to your interventions? Has it sunk into your thick skull that there will never again be bears in Ireland thanks to your marauding wolverines? Well? Have you anything, anything at all to say in your defence."

Pat took a deep breath. "Well, Your Grace, I know it looks bad, but I'm not the sort of priest who shirks taking responsibility for his actions, and I've already taken steps to rectify the wolverine problem."

"Steps?" An expression of abject despair had fallen upon the Archbishop's features.

"Yes indeed. You see, I racked my brains to think what might be able to take on a pack of wolverines and win, and eventually I hit upon what I reckon is a foolproof plan - varanus komodoensis, the komodo dragon. I've already released..."

"Enough!" bellowed the Archbishop. "You may be blissfully unaware of the gravity of your situation, Father Patrick, but I assure you that we have a crack team of bishops combing the Scriptures for any little loophole that will enable us to burn you at the stake. You will be informed of your fate in due course, in the meantime, get out of my sight, you utter nincompoop!"

His face a mask of absolute injury that would not have disgraced a kicked puppy, Pat stood stiffly and hurried out of the room. Once out in the open, he breathed a huge sigh and wondered no one ever seemed to understand how good his intentions always were.

Suddenly he was hit by an absolute brainwave. He had in his pocket the perfect peace offering - a cute little brightly-coloured insect hailing from foreign parts, just the thing to cheer up a population currently too scared to set foot out of doors lest they be ripped apart by wild animals. He dug his hand deep inside his cassock, found the matchbox, and opening it smiled at the natty yellow and black stripes of the beetles within. The children especially would love them. Trotting over to a nearby field, he knelt down and, with utmost care, freed leptinotarsa decemlineata, the Colorado beetle, into the Irish wild...

Normal service will be resumed as soon as possible. I just feel I need my life to regain some sort of *shape* before I write about it, you know?

In the meantime, I feel I owe you something, so here's the opener I wrote for an online debate.

Ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls (as long as your fake IDs are in order), This House Believes That It Will Have Another Pint.

Ordinarily such a motion would be passed in approximately thirty seconds flat, and we could all repair to the Three Chambers Bar and table some serious motions (elbow on table, pintglass to mouth, pintglass back to table). Apparently, though, three of our number are vetoing this course of action. They say they have compelling arguments against it. I shall only say that, if I were he sort of man who kept a miserly watch on whose round it is, it would seem like a very long time since Ghoti, Hazard or Phyphor last got the drinks in.

I have to say that the Opposition's position is either unusually frivolous, dangerously radical, or both. After all, it flies in the face of the opinion of all the greatest philosophers the world has ever known. Take, for instance, Aristotle, that well known "bugger for the bottle".

Aristotle proposed that there were four "aitia" or causes of a thing or an action: the material, the formal, the efficient and the final. These four causes must be present for a thing to come into being; if these four causes *are* present, it is difficult to see how a thing would not come into being.

The material cause of having a pint is the delicious liquid itself, with its lovely golden or nut-brown colour, topped off with an aesthetically pleasing head of creamy foam. Faced with such blandishments, the human appetite naturally finds it difficult to resist.

The formal cause of having a pint is the measure in question. A pint is the perfect amount of beer, balancing ease of consumption, portability, affordable price and alcohol content in one convenient package. "Another pint" is exactly what we should be having, no more and certainly no less.

The efficient cause of having a pint is that a pint is *designed* to be had. The explicit purpose of a pint is that it should be drunk, i.e. that we should have it. What kind of topsy-turvy world would it be where people failed to drink their pints? The breweries would go out of business, for a start, at tremendous cost to the British economy.

The final cause of having a point is, of course, an extremely pleasant state of inebriation.

Aristotle, using the action of "having a pint" as an exemplar for his theory of aitia, observed that, blimey, philosophy was thirsty work, how's about blowing this classroom and heading down the pub, Alexander, we could talk about more light-hearted things than philosophy, like what laws we'd make if someone put us in charge of the whole world.

Of course, this is just the classical position on having another pint. But if the Opposition really want me to outline more modern refinements, such as Descartes' Oinological Argument, or Kant's Categorical Inebriative, I will be only to happy to oblige.

Come on then, Opposition, let's see what you've got! And if you could make it snappy, that'd be a bonus - we want to get out of here in good time for last orders after all...

Bleurgh. You'd think that a fortnight of worklessness would be a great opportunity to get some really useful things done. Sadly, what with all the applications and the fretting, it doesn't seem to have worked out that way. Poor little neglected blog.

These are some seriously bad times for the web development industry, it would seem. Two or three years ago, me being out of work was a cue for half a dozen phone calls each morning from pestering recruitment consultants refusing to take no for an answer. Now, I've sent out my CV (with two or three years more experience on it, of course) to at least three dozen agencies, and gotten only a couple of callbacks, of which nothing much seems to come. Everyone wants senior personnel, no-one wants junior or mid-level people. So if you were already earning £30k plus when the bottom fell out, you're fine, otherwise, dropped like a hot potato!

Still, I do have an interview tomorrow at a very splendid looking company for a Technical Writer position, which would be great to get. I have the funny feeling that the fact that I know one of their people from university (and still play cards with him occasionally) may have contributed to getting me the audition, though. Nepotism, it's the only way to get ahead in this game any more. Anyway, wish me luck.

In other news, this is now officially my favourite joke in the world:

Q. Why is the alligator so ornery?
A. Because of its oversized medulla oblongata.

Maybe it's just me. Did you get sent that picture of a racecar, along with instructions to listen to the accompanying sound file, and if you laughed it was proof that you were completely insane? I didn't notice the instructions, and looked at the picture on a computer without speakers attached, and collapsed into hysterics. I'm not sure if that proves I'm insane or not.

"Be careful what you wish for, it might come true."

Or, alternatively, "ask and thou shalt receive."

As of 5.30pm this Monday, I am no longer a gainfully employed person.

At the moment I'm feeling quite positive about this. Then again, I only have a couple of weeks before the money runs out...

At a party I was at last night, the question was posed: what comic-book superpower would you have if you could have any single one you liked? (I'd like to hear your answers, if you have time.)

I, true to form, came up with an instantaneous silly answer: that I'd like to be able to shrink myself down to tiny size, like The Atom, due to being tired of being tall, after all these years of banging my head on lintels, tree-branches, low flying aircraft, etc.

I guess it would be nice to be able to hide from view, to slip into the gaps between things and simply observe for a while... but I don't think that's my real answer, just yet another deflection of a tricky question with facetious.

I was thinking about the power of being able to stop time today, to continue the theme of this entry. If we could freeze personal time, such that the whole world ceased to move around us, and had all the time in the world to do things we wanted to do, without fear of aging, how much would we use it? I think at first it would be a lot of fun, you could read all those books and hear all that music that you'd never otherwise have gotten around to, but I think ultimately you'd get bored, there'd be too many bad books, and only a certain amount of music that you *really* like. You could learn a lot of stuff in your "time out", but at some point you have to stop learning and start living... I don't know, I think most of the good bits of life happen when time is ticking by, when you're with people (what's the fun of a world where everyone else is frozen) and on a clock. When you have to squeeze every last drop of enjoyment out of an evening because tomorrow morning it'll be gone forever. And I wouldn't really want to hide from growing older in frozen time, since to age is to develop as a person. We need to have a future to contain our aspirations, we need to have a past to put our mistakes behind us. Even at death's door, I don't know that I'd want to delay the end inevitably, since what lies beyond this world may be the greatest adventure of all, for all we know.

Everything flows, everything moves on, no river or person is ever the same from one moment to the next. Crystallising what ought to be fluid is a fool's errand, if you freeze a perfect sunset you'll only get bored of it after a while. Transience is very very sad, but it's also a wake-up call, teaching you to discriminate because there isn't enough time to waste on cheap rubbish, teaching you to live now because, like so much dying around us all the time, you may not be around to live tomorrow.

Hmm. It's interesting that whatever I start writing these days ends up being about making the most of one's time. Maybe if I psyche myself up enough I will stop just dreaming of a better, more productive life and start doing things that'll make it happen. Or maybe I'll just wait until I'm hit by a meteorite or bitten by a radioactive spider and the hard task of making my days interesting is done for me...

The end of January is in sight at last. It's been a horrible bleak month, in this small corner of human experience at least, and I'm filled with yearning for spring. (Autumn's my favourite season, but right now, spring would definitely do.)

I am having one of those months where I look at the state of my finances and fall into despair: my expenditures are well in excess of my income, and as anyone who has read David Copperfield will know, that way lies misery. Glum thoughts fill my head, such as the nagging doubt that settling my mountainous credit card debt really would require six months-odd of joyless austerity. Not a pleasant realisation to kick off a new year with.

I need a windfall, or at least a payrise, and neither looks likely to happen right now. *Eventually* I'll have paid off all my debts, but by then maybe I'll be too old to travel the world, or be in a band or be an angry young artist, and I'll look at my remaining options and realise that the only course of action is to carry on working behind a desk until retirement because there's nothing much better to do any more, and won't that be sad?

At least I have some nice toys to help me forget my slavish life (thou hast conquered, consumerism!). RW's "Poses", Mull Historical Society's "Loss", Stereo Total's "Musique Automatique", and Rammstein's "Mutter" are new recruits to our CD collection this week; last week I bought "The Eyre Affair", "A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius" and a couple of Lemony Snicket books, not that I ever get round to reading half the books I buy, but I think I'd feel bad if I didn't buy them anyway; my beautiful red electric guitar "The Frail" has been retrieved from Oxford and had lots of Magnetic Fields songs strummed artlessly across her neck; "The Longest Journey", a nice little PC adventure game, came from Oxford with her and is good stuff; I'm in an interesting debate on my BBS ("This House Believes That The Against Team Will Win This Debate"), doing the Quick-Shift writing project on Sunday, and starting our own Chapters clone (except for people who aren't infuriatingly talented) before the end of the month.

A thousand ways to spend my time. But I still feel I'm frittering myself away, one way or another. Need a new job, need to meet more people, I wish it was the sixties, I wish I could be happy, I wish, I wish, I wish something would happen.

And I know I should be able to make it happen for myself, but maybe some of us just aren't competent to take control of our lives and sort them out? Or if there is a way, why haven't I seen it yet?

I'm going to stop now, before all this low moaning convinces people that my blog is haunted by a ghost, and the exorcists get called in, holy water and censer smoke and Latin incantations all over the place. 'Night!

Rufus Wainwright is now on my music wishlist, but that doesn't mean I don't hate him:

He immersed himself in Montreal’s café culture, writing and performing songs and, as he puts it, “partying my ass off.” He was also experiencing tremendous creative growth. “I’d be hanging out in my bathrobe all day, stinky, just writing,” he remembers. “And my mom allowed me to do this—as long as I was writing songs. She said, ‘As long as you’re seriously working on music, I’ll support you. Don’t get a job, because if you work, it will crush you.’”

No-one saved me from being crushed by work.

Of course, the whole thing is academic if I can't get online in the evenings due to my beloved housemate pre-emptively monopolising the phoneline. Bah!

There are obvious limitations on how much I can add during work hours, so I've decided to take a leaf out of Meg's book and conduct a survey, thus cunningly putting the ball back in your court, dear readers.

Today's hot survey topic is: what is the worst song you can think of to be played at someone's wedding? I'll start you off with Be Sweet by the very great Afghan Whigs.