If you have not read the last update, I suggest you do so now. If you are too lazy to read it, or perhaps if you did read it but have forgotten everything, or maybe if you are just the kind of pedant who reads everything, regardless of whether or not they know it (I know I am), then here is a synopsis. If you have read it, can remember, or just plain don’t care, then by all means skip ahead.

Previously on Columnist

I’m doing a longer degree course than my current housemates and therefore need to find somewhere to live next year. A couple of weeks ago I went and visited one likely looking house. This was hard because they seemed to have a system whereby they left their phone off the hook to let callers know they were in. It turned out that this wasn’t the case, but it certainly gave that impression.

The Following Takes Place Between 20th March And 31st March

Over the weekend, I arranged to see some more houses, having been informed I couldn’t get the room in the house I had already seen. Apparently they found someone better than me. That’s fine. I don’t need them anyway. Unfortunately the second house I saw seemed to be rather busy, so in the end both visits were arranged for the Monday. The first house was near where I used to live anyway, and so I got there with no major problems, except that the people at Streetmap.co.uk lied to me and the road didn’t actually connect to the one I was walking down looking for it. Fortunately, Taylor’s Third Law Of Leeds — which states that any journey, no matter the distance, will take precisely half an hour (unless Bodington Hall is involved, in which case all bets are off*) — prevailed and I arrived there about on time. I had a perfunctory tour of the house, and hung around for about half an hour chatting to the current housemates, at first about the house and other relevant matters, but the conversation was quickly derailed and we ended up discussing what a complete waste of time high school music lessons had been. Personally I think that told me a lot more about what living there would be like than I could have learned asking about rent.

The visit to the other house was recheduled to the Tuesday, which was convenient. What was not convenient was that the second house is in Headingley. Now, anyone who knows me will tell you with very little prompting that my sense of direction is not great, but there is something about Headingley that causes it to freeze up and erase all its data. I had got myself a map online, but I haven’t got a printer, so I simply memorised the route as best I could and set off. Unfortunately, I am not great at judging distances, and got a little impatient waiting for a particular road to present itself. Instead, I went up a different road with a similar name which went in about the right direction.

I arrived at a large, modern looking complex that resembled a hall of residence with woefully inadequate parking facilities and very possibly was. I tried my best to ignore this and carried on past it. I then arrived at a grand looking old mansion and began to question my own sanity. This does not happen in real life. In real life, grand-looking old mansions are situated near rivers in the country where they should be, not in run-down student areas of major cities. This happens in poorly thought-out RPGs, where certain locations are required but explanations of why they are arranged in this way are not.

I went past the mansion as well, all the time looking out for nasty dogs, which would have been a problem because I had left my meat and my yellow petal in my other coat, continued past the high fenced gardens in which people were burning things, jumped over the makeshift wooden barricade that had been erected at the bottom of the road by parties and for reasons unknown, and ran like hell. This was not so much out of fear but beacuse it was becoming increasingly apparent that I was late. Taylor’s Third Law Of Leeds was holding, of course, but I had set off ten minutes later than I had planned to. This of course, combined with the fact that I opened this paragraph with a seventy-three word sentence, meant I was rather out of breath when I reached the house. But that bridge did not need to be crossed yet, because I was still hopelessly lost. I was hoping that I would see a street sign I recognised as soon as I hopped over the roadblock, but I didn’t. I emerged into a street that looked like the set of a post-apocalyptic drama series — that is, nobody around except for one rather shifty looking dog, everything smashed in including the pavement, and an amount of paper lying around that is almost inexplicable considering no generally accepted account of the apocalypse prophecies reams of A4 will blow to Earth and snuff out mankind, but is very easily explicable considering that this is not a post-apocalyptic drama series but is in fact a run-down part of Leeds. This street led me into a road which, while mercifully pre-apocalypitc (it did contain a smashed TV set or two, but it also contained two unconcerned looking women which always ruins that post-armageddon feel), was not, apparently, deemed important enough to be named. I picked a direction and walked.

By what I can only assume is the most superlative good fortune — I certainly can’t hope to ever take credit for it — the next street I came to was one I ken was on my way. From there I found the house with relative ease, though I suppose ‘relative difficulty’ would be asking a lot of Fate. I was given the standard tour, and a much needed glass of water, and we chatted for a while. Then I set off home. This journey was surprisingly easy; I was never once accosted by Sirens or Old Men Of The Sea, and Homer entirely failed to write an epic about it, although I did take what I presume to be a rather circuitous route and in doing so passed every building I have ever visited in Leeds, with the obvious exception of Bodington Hall, since it is in the middle of nowhere. One day, mankind will have built on the whole of the Earth’s surface, including the sea and Wales, and Bodington Hall will still be an hour away from everywhere.

On the Thursday I phoned the first house to let them know I was interested and they said they’d let me know after Monday.Today is Wednesday and nothing’s happened. Oh, well, such is life.

*Bodington Hall is miles away from every single place in the known universe. One day, mankind will have built on every single square metre of land on the Earth, and it will still take two hours to get anywhere from Bodington Hall.

I am having the strangest week I’ve had in a long time. By rights it should have been dull. Officially it was Write Lab Reports Week. Over the weekend I wrote about five thousand words. On Tuesday I phoned some people about a house for next year. This is because my friends are very inconsiderately graduating next year and I’ll need somewhere to live. Saying it that way makes it sound easy, but you have to understand that these people have free dial-up internet access and keep their telephone in their basement. I saw the house on Wednesday, and when we arrived* it turned out that the person who had failed to turn up on Tuesday was there, wanting to be shown around. Also on Wednesday we went to the Ship after a long time away. While there my phone went off with a reminder. It’s been doing that a lot of late; I’ve been busy. Having your phone beep and flash ‘REMINDER’ is not entertaining when you sit down to start a pint. Fortunately, it was merely reminding me to go and look at the house, because I’d put the time in wrongly. According to Neil, Tracy — she’s my stalker — hadn’t been at the Ship for a week or two and had spent the last month or so bugging him for my phone number and address. (This is why I spent a few weeks either side of Valentine’s Day avoiding the place.) This was both good news and bad news. Bad news because that’s fucking creepy and she’s clearly totally batshit insane, but good news because she already has my phone number so clearly she’s forgotten it. Besides, between her and Neil all they know about me is my first name and my taste in music. That’s not going to be enough to track me down. Not unless they’re reading this, in which case calm down, Tracy, you mad woman. On Thursday I had been expecting to have a viva, because somehow the word had wormed its way onto my calendar that day. I think I copied down the date for someone else’s, though, since mine isn’t for months yet. Instead, I used the time to prepare for my oral presentation the following day. Now, I went and got some overhead transparencies and pens for them, and drew diagrams and things on them. I had neglected to attend the “practice orals” the week before, and if I had my time again I’d do the exact same thing. Everybody else had to present the talk to the person who demonstrated their experiment. I was given a full list of who was doing what talk, in what order, and to whom, before I even chose a topic. That was yesterday. Today I may or may not have to help out at an event I know nothing about, which is inconvenient, because I had planed to use the weekend to write another few thousand words of deadly boring lab report. Ah, well.

PS. Hiro’s Song has nothing to do with anything, but that’s what I was listening to.

*I got a lift there with one of the current housemates. It turns out that it isn’t a great idea to arrange to meet someone you have never seen before outside a pub unless you arrange a way to recognise her first. Oh, well, we live and learn.

Every so often a small village Post Office in the middle of Nowhere, Noshire closes down and there’s a small outcry among the locals. People have complained about this process being accelerated by things like direct pension payment. If people don’t need to go to the Post Office, they reason, they probably won’t. Then the Post Office will close and it will be a crying shame. No it won’t. Nobody will care that their local Post Office has closed, because they don’t need it anymore. I use the Post Office for exactly two things: buying electricity tokens, and buying stamps. I think I can get both of these things from Co-op if need be anyway, and at least Co-op don’t close for no apparent reason on a Wednesday. The Post Office is also a wonderfully useful place to weigh parcels and post them. Unfortunately, this appears to be the end of the line for that parcel. It would be nice to believe that the Post Office would then immediately rush the parcel to the address printed on it, or something along those lines. But no. What they do is they bring it to your house after a few days, look at it, look at your letterbox, look back at the parcel, look at the letterbox again with a puzzled expression, look back at the parcel once more and head back to the van. On the way back I expect they glance over their shoulder at your letterbox to make sure they’ve got this right: “This person has a standard issue envelope sized letterbox. They have had a book, a bowling ball, the third series of Will and Grace, and a package of rose petals delivered*. Surely they knew they wouldn’t fit. Oh, well, back in the van with these”. Then they post a little card through your door saying you can come pick your parcel up on Monday.

Am I the only person who thinks this isn’t good enough? I paid for delivery on that parcel†, so I would like delivery. That seems reasonable enough to me. I fail to see how picking it up from some place in the centre of town is acceptable. Because that’s where they took it. All this fuss about local Post Offices being so important and the Royal Mail don’t bother to use the damn things. I can have it delivered to the local Post Office if I want. If I pay again. I can have it delivered to my front door if I pay again, but I fail to see what this would achieve since I have a card from the postman saying it doesn’t fit through my letterbox. I can’t imagine it having shrunk in the meantime. It damn well better hadn’t.

So now I have to go pick up my book from some industrial estate I’ve never heard of, let alone seen. I asky you. What is the point in having an online bookstore if you have to go and pick the damn thing up?

*These are all actual parcels we have ordered but the Royal Mail has failed to squeeze through our letterbox in the last week.

†Mine was the book, alright?

On my way home from University a few days ago I was given a pair of booklets by a woman who seemed very polite, but was also, I am forced to conclude, completely batshit insane. I know I just did a fairly anti-organised religion piece, but hey, I can’t control what people randomly hand me in the street, can I?

I’m attacking the booklets and the culture that produced them, not religion in general. You just go right ahead and believe whatever you want. Just as long as it isn’t demonstrably insane and if you try to convince me to believe it too, don’t be offended if I try to convince you that your beliefs are a load of baloney. Fair’s fair. If you want to pick up copies of the booklets yourself, I have the 22 March 2004 issue of Awake, and the 1 April 2004 issue of Watchtower.

The booklets are called “The Watchtower: Announcing Jehovah’s Kingdom”, and “Awake” (the latter being the general interest one, apparently). The dates on the front covers claim them to be very recently made. (Specifically they were printed in a few weeks. How prophetic.) I think Awake is branded the “general interest” version simply because it is marginally the less offensive. In amongst the fairly dull articles about bees, lactose intolerance, and sand, are two of note. The first is about sugars, and is only of note because of how it ends:

Clearly, the complex mechanisms of the living cell bespeak an intelligence of the highest order. In the case of many, this fact engenders a feeling of reverential awe. Is that how you feel?
–Revelation 4:11

Now, I’m not questioning the sentiment. Sugar’s interesting stuff, certainly, but I looked up Revelation 4:11 and it says this:

Thou art worthy, O Lord, to receive glory and honour and power: for thou hast created all things, and for thy pleasure they are and were created.

I know the Bible is open to interpretation, and I know Revelation is particularly so, but it’s painfully obvious even to me that that passage is not about biology (at least not in any halfway scientific way). The other article of note is entitled “Why Does God Let Us Suffer?” and is a very poor three-page discussion of The Problem Of Evil. (For a more in-depth discussion than you will find in the Jehovah’s Witness publications, have a look around the webcomic Men In Hats‘ site.) Their answer to the problem (which, as we’ve discussed, in its simplest form states that if God is omnipotent, omniscient, and omnibenevolent then evil cannot exist, and since evil quite obviously does exist, logically God doesn’t) is that God will abolish suffering at His own appointed time. Now, I’ve heard this excuse before. I’ve used this excuse before. This is God saying “I’ll abolish suffering when I get round to it”. “Take comfort”, they say in closing, “in knowing why such suffering takes place — and that it will not last long”. This strikes me as a mistake, because it merely serves to draw attention to the fact that they rather glossed over just why God chooses to allow suffering. It seems fairly common practice in religious propaganda (and mathematics, but that’s a different column) to simply tell people there is an answer and hope we don’t really ask what it is.

Does it make sense, then, to be angry with God because he permits suffering? Not when you consider that God has promised to end all suffering.

That doesn’t follow. That would make me angrier. I would have hoped God would keep His promises. If you can’t truse God, Who can you trust?

Nor does it make sense to feel that God causes bad things to happen. Many tragic events are simply the result of random events. Imagine, for example, that the wind blows a tree down and it injures someone. People may call this an act of God. But God didn’t cause the tree to fall down.

Maybe, but He didn’t stop it, either, did He? If I was God, and I was all powerful and merciful, I’d've created a world where trees didn’t randomly fall down and kill My followers. Also I would tell people outright I exist rather than making them guess, but that’s just me.

The only other page of any interest in Awake is the letters page, simply because they are all very obviously fake and for its claim that pornography is more addictive than almost every major drug.

The other booklet, The Watchtower, is less interesting. Apart from a page answering the question “Why does 1 Corinthians 10:8 say that 23,000 Israelites fell in one day for committing fornication, while Numbers 25:9 gives the figure as 24,000?”, it is mostly taken up with a discussion of what it refers to as “The Spirit Of The World”, but I call “society”. Personally, I would have thought anything with a name like The Spirit Of The World would be a good thing, but apparently I would have been wrong and gone to Hell. Apparently The Spirit Of The World is in fact the Devil working through governments and the entertainment media. According to The Watchtower, “those who are led to believe [the Devil's] claims may easily fall prey to the misguided notion that they are free to worship God in any way they please”. It then goes on to attack all governments and media that dare to portray fornication or homosexuality as anything other than an obscene sin. Then the author goes on to wonder why Solomon stopped worshipping god after being blessed with great wisdom. To me it seems patently obvious: the Bible’s position on these issues is clearly immoral and untenable. You can interpret it differently and take a modern viewpoint; you can assume the Bible is also a product of ancient minds whose views were shaped by their out-dated cultures; you can throw the whole thing out of the window. You cannot take it literally and expect to be taken seriously, because it just doesn’t stand up to scrutiny.