ONE HUNDREDTH POST DISMAY

I always thought my one hundredth post would be an occasion for joy. Since suffering emotional turmoil my blogging frequency was jolted into increase, and seems to have been sustained, such that I have 'blogged 346% more from quarter 1 to quarter 4 in the year my 'blog has existed. (Sorry; the analyst Matt runs the fingers during daylight hours).

However, I use this momentous posting to tell you that Stew's studio is well and truly up a certain rather well known creek without the requisite directional impetus provision implements.

In other words I’ve lost all of my backing tracks.

Recording: Insanity welcomes swiss drivers

With big ups all round to Simple Sound Studios (point: it doesn't exist in this plane of reality) and the pouring rain adding atmosphere to 'Waiting' hence Stew constructing the miniature fort / booth you see below.

I encourage you to make a fort today. If yu have kids you have the perfect pretence that it's for them. We just make forts in our front room anyway. Futon not so great, sofa cushions very good, solid, tessalatable, and useful weapons to repel attack.

SCGS: The malaise continues

I put before you a sad example of a full blown case of SCGS:

Employees, also have the option of participating in regular consultation forums and feedback surveys.

This is a fairly straightforward sentence requiring little elaboration stylistically to make its point. What the hell. Let's have a comma!

M

PS some photos of my day recording to come after my dad returns my laptop.

Yes, yes !

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/lancashire/5271252.stm

C of E Vicar decides to save PosOffice from closure to open up links with Community. Can't agree more.

Either I agree with him or he agrees with me

but in any case Carbon offsetting is nonsense

At the offices of Travelcare and the forecourts owned by BP, you can now buy complacency, political apathy and self-satisfaction. But you cannot buy the survival of the planet.

George Monbiot. Go but his book, read his articles, think about them and then consider whether any of us should take a short haul flight for £30 again.

You know what?

No matter how many times I give in, fall over and dust myself off, have another go, fail, fall, dust off, repeat try AGAIN, Give in AGAIN but a bit later than last time, try again ...

No matter how many times I believe lies then repent . . .

No matter WHAT, He loves me. The cross isn't just an illustration of divine love, but the basis of it. Perfect love casts out fear on the final day. I have crossed the line form darkness into light. Anything that happens to me now is for my good, transforming me into the likeness of Christ.

Robipedia on tour

SCGS - Spontaneous Comma Generation Syndrome
A newly discovered mental disorder, whereby, the sufferer, often in , the most ridiculous and unxpected, places in a sentence inserts a comma for , no, or no known, reason. This disorder speaks of , the fear that many in society, face when , confronted with a comma, in which they turn from rational individuals into gibbering , illiterates.

Needless to say SCGS seems to have worked its way into my life and is causing me great distress.

Think before you offset . . .

So the Co-Op, in its latest quest to be seen and heard to do the right thing, is to become the first high street travel agent to offer travellers the chance to offset their CO2 emissions by way of a green surcharge .

For those unfamiliar with the concept, this method allows companies or activities to continue emitting CO2 as long as they invest in Carbon reduction technologies elsewhere. It also happens when companies buy in carbon credits from emissions trading schemes.

(For those unfamiliar with THAT concept, this is where nations or supranational organisations agree to cap emissions at a certain level in any given year. Individual sites are given allowances for how much C they can emit in a year. If they fall short of this they can sell their entitlement to the ones who have failed to meet their limit. Once this trading has been done, the overall limit is reduced for the next year so all have a financial incentive to be continually reducing their emissions).

As a solution to the catastrophic disaster that is irreversible climate change, this is nonsense. We need to cut emissions. This means some alterations in our lifestyles and a permanent move away from fossil fuels. We can’t all pay someone else to do something about the problem! Aviation taxation is nonsense too – tax the ears of flights and aviation fuel; result, the rich keep flying.

And on the Carbon trading thing – it depends on countries in the EU actually agreeing to an overall cut in their emissions. I refer you to someone wiser than me:

“National targets for 2008 set by Austria, Finland, Greece, Ireland, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, Sweden and Spain are out of line with their Kyoto obligations, as are Estonia, France. Latvia, Lithuania and Slovakia. Poland has proposed a hugely extravagant plan that permits 70 million tonnes more CO2 than it emitted last year. Overall, 130 million tonnes of carbon need to be cut from the national plans so far submitted.”

See – it doesn’t work. I think the only way you get the level of change we need is through personal carbon limits and personal carbon trading. To quote George Monbiot, we got into this through millions of seemingly innocuous infinitesimal actions. So we need the same number of small actions to avert the coming crisis.

Silhouettes and fake charades

Well I feel I have disappointed the blogosphere by not writing as much as I usually do, and also by not writing anything very interesting. Or least not thinking that I have which is part of the reason for doing it in the first place.

It seems to have been a bit of a period of change for a lot of people round me – Dan is miles away, Becky less miles away, Tom soon to be miles away, Martin miles away but reducing as we speak, sister miles away. So for some life is entering into a new period - another Marsh married, an extra Cotton in the world and one less McCoy, a smaller new Marsh and new Sopwith on the way- but for me things are progressing nicely along the same familiar routes.

I have been appointed as a non-exec director to the ECCR which is more exciting than the website would portray. I also might be becoming one of the trustees of my Dad’s new charity. So some people clearly think I am capable of rational thought and analysis in addition to helpful and insightful comment and criticism. God help them – literally.

I just want to be honest with you, though. These kind of things appeal to my vanity much more than the whole lead worshipper thing (which also presents issues, but I’m getting more used what I have to do to deal with them). In the same breath I see these things as answers to prayer about where my life was heading and what God needed me to be doing.

But above all else currently I am concerned with what I am becoming. I bear the image of God, but I want to be transformed into the likeness of Christ. And not how I perceive Christ to be but how He really is in Himself.

Don't be deceived . . .

Our cause is never more in danger than when a human, no longer desiring, but still intending, to do our Enemey's will, looks round upon a universe from which every trace of Him seems to have vanished, and asks why he has been forsaken, and still obeys.

It is during the trough periods, much more than the peak periods, that it is growing into the sort of creature He wants it to be. Hence the prayers offered in the state of dryness are those which please Him best.