to live a Christian

Posted on October 28, 2002 by acb

Yesterday, the Sunday Times carried a detailed story about a gay priest in the diocese of Monmouth who had a fortnight ago adopted a fifteen-year-old boy with severe behavioural difficulties whom he and his partner had been helping to look after for ten years.

This morning’s Times carries a nib saying that the priest in question resigned on Saturday. He hasn’t been named, but I presume the adoption records are public. I have no idea what he will do for a living now.


Well, you’ve got Monday Tuesday

Wednesday Thursday

Friday, Saturday and all day Sunday

Ain’t it grand to live a Christian, ain’t it grand.?
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Martial art

Posted on October 28, 2002 by acb

Et delator es et calumniator

et fraudator es et negotiator

et fellator es et lanista. Miror

quare non habeas, Vacerra, nummos


I came across this in a disintegrating copy of Martial’s epigrams, translated by James Michie, who makes it out to be:

You’re an informer and a tool of slander

And a notorious swindler and a pander

And a cock-sucker and a gangster and a ….

I can’t make out, Vacerra, why you’re poor

I suppose the rap version would be something like

You’re a backstabbing snitch

pimp son of a bitch

a cocksucking gangsta

So why ain’t you rich?

But the charming thing was learning that the original meaning of “negotiator” was “pimp”. Perhaps they read Martial in the White House.

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The revolution has arrived

Posted on October 27, 2002 by acb

The weapons of the hated enemy are turned against them.

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essex timeslip

Posted on October 26, 2002 by acb

I went out to supper tonight on my own, with a couple of books to remove my attention from this unwelcome fact: the penguin Nietzsche Reader, and Idoru.
Some years ago I interviewed William Gibson, and liked him hugely:

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Some sort of justice

Posted on October 26, 2002 by acb

— though distressingly prosaic — was served on me yesterday. I had just published a press column warning poor Rowan Williams that he would soon be savaged by the pack when someone came round from the Sunday Programme to interview me on Careyballs.

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There’s no perfect browser

Posted on October 23, 2002 by acb

IE doesn’t do tabbed windows, keyboard control, or security. Opera does those three, but not proper DOM, so lots of otherwise valid DHTML won’t work and I have to type in all the code for this blog by hand even though IE has got lots of cute little bookmarklets that work with Movable Type. Mozilla I find unspeakably slow to load, and I can never remember whether the next window is going to pop up in a tab or not. But I’ve just discovered a really clever trick.

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Take out your gold teeth

Posted on October 23, 2002 by acb

I have no idea when this first apppeared. It has to be the funniest story ever written round a Steely Dan lyric.

This week it turned out that the man who bought the gold teeth is selling “Virginia for snipers” T shirts, too.

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Statesboro blues

Posted on October 21, 2002 by acb

Listening to the original of this, and a familiar line came up: “I loved that woman, better than any woman I’ve ever seen”. Today, for the first time, I noticed that it was odd, sung by Blind Will McTell.

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What would he know?

Posted on October 15, 2002 by acb

He’s only the husband.
But you’d have thought that someone from the Church would have checked with him or the hospital records, before proclaiming a miracle.

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I’m not the only one

Posted on October 15, 2002 by acb

with finger trouble. It’s pleasing that the highest-ranked genuine entry comes from a university.

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