Nathan runs St Eutychus. He loves Jesus. His wife. His daughter. His son. His other daughter. His dog. Coffee. And the Internet. He is the pastor of City South Presbyterian Church, a church in Brisbane, a graduate of Queensland Theological College (M. Div) and the Queensland University of Technology (B. Journ). He spent a significant portion of his pre-ministry-as-a-full-time-job life working in Public Relations, and now loves promoting Jesus in Brisbane and online. He can't believe how great it is that people pay him to talk and think about Jesus. If you'd like to support his writing financially you can do that by giving to his church.
The 14th of March (3.14) is pi day. Assuming you write the date like an American. Pi day. It makes the world go around. Pi day has an official website. Where you can get some digits of pi. For fun.
To celebrate the awesome magicalness of Pi. Here are some bits of pi.
This guy used the decimal points of pi to make music.
Finally. Check this out. Blow your mind. Eat a pie for pi day – and use pi to help calculate the size of portions required. Because pi is just the other side of pie.
Did you know that the ampersand (&) was originally meant to be an e and t joined together. From the Latin et? Did you know that typographers love the &? Did you know you can judge a font by its &?
If you answered “no” to any of those questions then you need to get your & on. So. Check out these & resources.
You can, using a little bit of CSS, serve up fancy &s to visitors to your webpage. Here’s how (and it’s the source of these graphics).
Here are the &s available on Mac…
& on PC…
You can also, if you’re technologically inclined, install some webfonts. This site has a bunch. Here’s a sample.
Ties are classy. But if you’re not, and you want to either passive aggressively make annoying noises in meetings, or be a scion of fashion, then you should get one of these bubble wrap ties. The bubble wrap is meant to be worn on the inside. But I reckon you could flip it easily.
So my dalliance with crappy pop and boy bands didn’t last all that long. I graduated to crappy Australian guitar angst driven teenage rebellion just a year later. Actually, the move was probably happening earlier than that.
Regurgitator’s Black Bugs, Spiderbait’s Calypso, Massive Attack’s Teardrop, and Custard’s Music is Crap were all on my radar around the same time (1997-98).
But for me, 1998 is the year of The Living End. Heroes to a generation of Australians. Now an incredibly tight live act replete with double bass. Well. They’ve always had a double bass. They haven’t always been that tight live though. Judging by the clips I sorted through on YouTube (the official film clip for this song has had embedding disabled by request).
I think I scored the Living End’s debut album with a CD voucher I won at school, or maybe it was a birthday present. I remember hanging out in my room listening to it while reading Redwall, by Brian Jacques. Those were the days.
Words can’t express just how excited I was to be hanging with the cool kids, musically speaking, when I discovered the Living End. Though my frenemy, Sam Conway (who tried to put out the Olympic Torch with a fire extinguisher) made it clear to me that the cool kids had moved on from the Living End about the time I discovered them. In hindsight there was probably some causation there, not just correlation. Better yet. The Living End could be turned up to 11. Which was especially useful when my family decided to pull up stumps and move to Brisbane.
Other notables from the year included this little number by Grinspoon.
Though, for a while, I had merged Green Day and Grinspoon, in my head, and was adamant that I really liked the band Greenspoon.
And of course, there was the Verve’s Bittersweet Symphony. Performed here with Coldplay, because, well, that’s kind of cool.
Everybody has a musical awakening story, and a musical skeleton in the closet. Despite my relatively awesome beginnings, my life in albums almost went off the rails in my first year of really liking music. My sisters and I used to watch Rage on a Saturday morning. And before I’d really discovered the magic of radio we used to make mix tapes by holding the tape recorder up to the speakers.
One of the songs on high rotation on Rage in that year was Hanson’s Mmmbop. Still a catchy little number. Even if Taylor does look remarkably feminine.
My sisters were hooked. This album was on high rotation in our house. All the time. I know all the words to all the songs. My middle sister bonded with her now husband when they sang some Hanson songs together after church one night, their “recessional”, or whatever the song at the end of the wedding ceremony is, was another Hanson song, and at their wedding reception I used the song Madeleine to draw people’s attention back from their conversations to the original proceedings (that’s my sister’s name). Anonymity lost.
But for me, it was perhaps a darker musical year. One week my attention turned to Video Hits after Rage. I remember it like it was yesterday. This song came on. Some guys were walking into a haunted house. The music started. There was thunder. And then there was boy band magic. And some sort of werewolf.
I got on my pushbike and rode down to my sisters’ netball games on the other side of town. In Maclean, NSW. So not far. The song playing over and over in my head.
Am I original? Yeah.
Am I the only one? Yeah…
I saved up my pocket money ($2 a week plus mowing money in those days). And one day, on a trip to the Gold Coast, I think Pacific Fair. I had a look around Toys’R’Us. And a couple of other shops. And then walked into Big W. And came out a changed man. If not for that moment I would not have been bullied at school for a whole year, for thinking that the Backstreet Boys were cutting edge and awesome. I read the liner notes, and most of them thanked Jesus. So they were Christians too. And back then, at the age of 13, I thought Christian music was pretty cool. In fact, a year later, a Christian band called Aroma opened my eyes to rock (listen to the song Maggot here). And from there… well, you’ll have to wait until 1998’s post.
These were the only videos I could find easily and embed…
If I recall, there was a certain very good friend of mine (I won’t name – but he blogs and I’ve linked to him heaps, and he likes Pixar) who borrowed my CD and also enjoyed it.
“What you going to do with atheists? All those pagan atheists?
I’m going to set them free. Make them Christians just like me”
I hope they don’t think this song is part of that process.
But it could be worse.
I’m happy for you to believe that the earth is 6,000 years old, and that dinosaurs died in the flood, I like the Bible too. And I think taking it seriously is important. But please. Please. Please. Don’t take a song like this, and turn it into a song like that. Just awful. If people think your cause is ridiculous
This may be premature. Because there’s only one post so far. But you should totally check out my friend Phil’s new blog where he reviews movies. He knows all about the fillums. So you should read. Interact. Subscribe. Do all those web 2.0 things. Stalk him.
Welcome to Phil’s All-Positive Movie Reviews. If there’s something I don’t like in a movie, you won’t hear about it. I am, by nature, a pessimist, making this blog something of an exercise against character. I had considered starting a blog of reviews in which I rubbish the rubbish as much as I laud the laudable, but then I remembered that I want to work as a screenwriter and I’ll really be shooting myself in the foot if I start picking holes in the work of people I want to work with in the future. So I figure, if I don’t say any negative stuff, no one can be offended.
Back in the olden days of blogging, when I was a wee lad using blogger and posting on Nathan Goes to Townsville my friend Phil and I started a group blog. Just the two of us. It was grand. It stands the test of time. If by “test of time” you mean “still exists” and it resides, now defunct, at this link.
Phil and I co-wrote the OCC, a little Christian soap opera parody about the kind of camps you go to as a hormonal, post-pubescent young-adult man looking for a wife. I’ve posted it before, but you can find the five episodes on YouTube.
But now, Phil lives in Melbourne and I, in Brisbane. And so. I have to get my dosage of Phil via this blog. Which I heartily recommend. Though that’s like the kiss of death for a blog. Most seem to get a “go read this” link from me and then wane into once a year stiltedness.
I don’t think I’ve ever had a burger as good as the McDouble. Not even a pounder. Except maybe the Cactus Jacks Build your Own Burger in Townsville. But that’s eight times the price. And I don’t think we’ll ever see a burger that’s quite so good again. Certainly not priced under $2. It’s an unbeatable mix of value and taste. Some burgers taste better but don’t represent value for money. The only burgers cheaper than the McDouble – the cheeseburger (which is, actually, the same price I think) and the Junior Burger (is that what they’re called still?) pale in comparison. No burger in the past, present, or future, looks like being able to match it. This is my fearless prediction. I’m looking forward to the results if people try to prove me wrong.
Image Credit: Gaarawarrgabs
There’s something about the combination of fat, flavour, and texture in these burgers that makes them the item I sit craving between lunch and dinner each afternoon. Luckily I so rarely act on these cravings. Some would say my definition of rarely is broken at this point.
The tomato sauce and onion combo in the “seasoning” department is genius. The McDonald’s food scientists have outdone themselves in understanding umami, or something ephemeral, and yet delicious, in the cheese to meat patty ratio, and the size is perfect for guilt free burger snacking. Even if there’s some cognitive dissonance involved. We’re talking 19.8 gm of fat and 384 calories (according to the McDonalds product page). I challenge you to find a better calories/$ ratio anywhere in the world – short of eating pure butter.
So, hands up if you want to be a breakdancer? No, too busy busting a move all over those polished floorboards hey…
Apparently breakdancing is one of the four components of the hip-hop lifestyle – so says one of my friends when I asked what the difference between rap and hip-hop is. The answer “rap is something you do, hip-hop is a lifestyle”… the other two components (in addition to rap and breakdancing) were, from memory, graffiti and DJing… anyway… if the above shirt (one of my favourites) doesn’t do it for you, perhaps you’ll appreciate this list of breakdancing moves on wikipedia. Seriously. Hundreds of them.
Including:
“Coffee Grinder/Helicopter: Go down on one bent leg standing on your toes with your hands on either side of your bent knee. Other leg is lying flat out on the floor beside you. Swing the leg that’s on the ground. To avoid being hit by your swing leg; you pick up your hands and put them back on the floor, then use them to pick the rest of your body up lifting it over your swing leg. Drop your body and repeat.”
This guy didn’t do so well in an exam. So his mum dressed him up with a cardboard sheet that tells of his bad grades and says “honk if I need an education”… and now this is on YouTube. Way to go lady.
I’m not sure where the hipsters hang out in your part of the world. But in Brisbane they all like to play in West End. So, I’m up for heading down there with a handful of these cards. If you look closely the middle square has an asterisked out rude word. So language warning and all that…
There’s an NM Campbell out there somewhere who keeps trying to buy cars – and he’s getting annoyed that car dealers keep not emailing him. And then there’s this NM Campbell. Me. Who can’t figure out why car dealers from the US and the UK keep sending me quotes or newsletters. I got another one on Friday. From Medved Ford Lincoln Mercury. The salesperson in question is a Ms Carolyn Hammack-Clark. See her if you want to buy a car in Castlerock, CO.
Here’s the email I got.
So, here’s my response.
Dearest Carolyn,
It is such a long time since I have heard from you (I can only assume there aren’t too many Carolyn Hammack-Clarks running around). I am sorry we’ve lost touch. Do you remember that time we cavorted around the orchard in our pyjamas. Chasing rabbits. Oh, those were the days.
I live in Australia now, actually, I always have. So I’m not sure why I’m receiving emails from this car dealership and can only assume somebody signed up to your database with the wrong email address. You’d be surprised how often that actually happens.
However, it just so happens I am considering putting together an off-road truck race – and I’d be interested to know what sort of discounts you’d offer if I wanted to buy 16 of these trucks. I also want to convert them into amphibious vehicles.
The race I’d like to organise is on the bottom of the ocean – so they’ll need a pretty long snorkel, or perhaps some type of airhose with a flotation device fitted to the pipe to keep it somewhere where there is airflow so that the drivers can breathe. Did I mention that the drivers will be dwarves? They will be. I’m going to call my race the Snow White Cup. I believe in giving hope to the disadvantaged and downtrodden. And as a tall man I thought doing something for the vertically challenged would be a nice gesture.
Could I purchase these 16 amphibious utes customised in this manner – and with some sort of adjustable operations so that short people can both drive the trucks and see over the dashboard. I assume there’ll be some sort of discount if I’m buying a fleet.
Would you be interested in sponsoring the race? I think it will provide pretty good global exposure – because who doesn’t want to watch 16 dwarves driving trucks on the bottom of the ocean. I know I do.
The Medved Ford Lincoln-Mercury Castle Rock Snow White cup has a nice ring to it. Don’t you think.
These look amazing. And delicious. And if you make them for me I will love you forever (I’m looking squarely at my wife, but anybody else who wants my affection should also take note).
