Psalm 88 (NIV)

A song. A psalm of the Sons of Korah. For the director of music. According to mahalath leannoth. A maskil of Heman the Ezrahite.

1[a][b] O LORD, the God who saves me,
day and night I cry out before you.

2 May my prayer come before you;
turn your ear to my cry.

3 For my soul is full of trouble
and my life draws near the grave. [c]

4 I am counted among those who go down to the pit;
I am like a man without strength.

5 I am set apart with the dead,
like the slain who lie in the grave,
whom you remember no more,
who are cut off from your care.

6 You have put me in the lowest pit,
in the darkest depths.

7 Your wrath lies heavily upon me;
you have overwhelmed me with all your waves.
Selah

8 You have taken from me my closest friends
and have made me repulsive to them.
I am confined and cannot escape;

9 my eyes are dim with grief.
I call to you, O LORD, every day;
I spread out my hands to you.

10 Do you show your wonders to the dead?
Do those who are dead rise up and praise you?
Selah

11 Is your love declared in the grave,
your faithfulness in Destruction [d] ?

12 Are your wonders known in the place of darkness,
or your righteous deeds in the land of oblivion?

13 But I cry to you for help, O LORD;
in the morning my prayer comes before you.

14 Why, O LORD, do you reject me
and hide your face from me?

15 From my youth I have been afflicted and close to death;
I have suffered your terrors and am in despair.

16 Your wrath has swept over me;
your terrors have destroyed me.

17 All day long they surround me like a flood;
they have completely engulfed me.

18 You have taken my companions and loved ones from me;
the darkness is my closest friend.

[a] Psalm 88:1 Title: Probably a literary or musical term
[b] Psalm 88:1 Title: Possibly a tune, "The Suffering of Affliction"
[c] Psalm 88:3 Hebrew Sheol
[d] Psalm 88:11 Hebrew Abaddon

We're All Smegheads

The first episode of Red Dwarf went out in the UK in 1988. It’s set on a mining-spaceship in the 23rd century, and in the first episode Rimmer gets killed by a radiation leak. Holly, a super-computer, scans Rimmer’s body, brain and memory in intricate detail and, creating a hologram of him, runs an exactly-calculated computer-simulation of how he would have behaved if he hadn’t died.


“But it’s not me,” protested Rimmer in the first episode, gesturing down at his molecularly-pixelled holographic body, “it’s a computer-simulation of me!”

I was in awe. Rimmer’s soul had gone to Heaven, Hell or wherever, and here was this soulless copy of him running around carrying on his life for him back in this world.

He had no soul, no feelings to hurt (only the physical simulation of how Rimmer would have behaved if he had felt them) and absolutely no human rights whatsoever.

Rimmer was as alive as a toaster.

Indeed, subsequent episodes saw his nemesis Lister rewriting his memories, threatening to switch him off, and watching on a TV monitor what Rimmer would have been dreaming, had he not died.

I was 17 when I watched this, and absolutely fascinated by this idea’s implications.

My reasoning went like this:

1 + 1 = 2.

As far as we know, God will never change this. Of course, God can do anything, so it is entirely plausable to suppose that we could all wake up tomorrow morning to find that, if God wants it to be so, then 1+1 from now on will unexpectedly equal 3.

Or 1. Or 0. Or &. Or a penguin. Or beige. Or a beyond-infinite number of bigger-than-God universes. For sake of argument though, let’s all just assume that God will never change (and never has changed) the laws of maths. 1+1 has, and always will, equal 2. It’s nice of Him to keep it so simple for us.

And physics, biology and chemistry, let’s assume that all the actual laws of science haven’t, and won’t, change either.

So, for example, the position into which a line of dominoes will topple can be exactly mathematically calculated beforehand. So can the position of each individual domino. So can the position of each atom making up each domino.

Cause and effect.

We know how atoms will behave, so we can therefore calculate how everything will behave.

So, if all my thoughts at 17 were electrical impulses going through a binary computer called my brain, and my brain was also a physical object made up of atoms which are governed by calculable mathematic and scientific laws, then the behaviour of the atoms that made up my brain could be exactly mathematically calculated beforehand too.

So my thoughts, like Rimmer’s, and like the falling dominoes, were all predetermined, down to the finest atom.

And so were everyone else’s.

Therefore if everything had only one possible outcome, we could make no choices, and therefore had no free will.

Even the supposed freedom of my thoughts was in fact a domino-style series of earlier thoughts triggering-off new thoughts, which would in turn trigger-off other predictable thoughts. Any claim to be able to think or do what I wanted was nonsense. Everything I thought was, in fact, the result of everything that I had already thought, done or experienced so far in my life.

So I tried to disprove this by thinking of something different, but even making that decision was the consequence of all my previous thoughts on this subject.

So I would try to think of something random, but I would always find a reason for whatever I had thought of. Try as I might, every random thing I thought of was from my past. So I tried to think of something random and new, but even these thoughts were built from my past experiences, as I believed there was some deep subconscious reason why I was inventing those particular things.

It seemed that there really was no such thing as a new idea.

So for years I believed that there was no such thing as free will.

Somewhere along the way, however, I changed my mind and decided that actually there was, probably because I wanted there to be.

Yeah… yeah, that felt like a better thing to believe.

This belief gave me a different problem though.

If everyone really does have free will, then barring the rare supernatural miracle, God’s does nothing. We do it all.

Even if someone thinks they are giving their life to God, they are in fact, every day, just doing whatever they personally choose to believe that he wants.

“I did it because I felt it was what God wanted me to do.” That’s right – you did what you felt.

After all – you only follow God’s will when you decide it is right.

So we have must have higher authority over our lives than God.

As Buddhism puts it “With our thoughts we make the world.”

On September 22nd 2003, although I’d always been a Christian anyway, I gave up trying to follow God and asked Him to just do everything from now on. Well actually I sarcastically had a go at Him to. I was pretty angry at the time. I was trying to cajole Him into actually answering some of my prayers.

I still have no complete trite answer from Him to this challenge yet, but I mention this story because, if I meant what I said, I had to try subscribing to this belief that God controls everything, even though it completely contradicted mankind’s free will.

For example, if I went to a job interview and was given the job, I would now have to believe that that was God's will, leaving no room for the choice of the interviewer.

As usual, God’s life-changing answer to my challenge is S-L-O-W A-S.

I have, however, replaced my usage of the word co-incidence with God-cidence.

Whenever something happens, I either find a cause for it, or I attribute it to God.

So when I can see no causes, and therefore can foresee nothing in the future, then it’s time to expect God to do something instead.

After all, everything God does was once unexpected. I guess that’s where new ideas actually do come from.

So if everything in my life was once unexpected, then everything must originally come from God.

So it’s really all God’s life, not mine.

But if my decisions are all the result of God’s work, do I have free will?

Was my decision to ask Him to run my life my choice or his?

Well, I can only tell you the conclusion that my thoughts have come to…

Look At Me - I'm A Missionary!

Hello - I'm a missionary.

No, really – I actually am. I’ve got the paperwork and everything.

Sometimes, people at parties ask me what I do, and I say to them “Well, I’m a missionary” and then I watch their faces go blank because they’re convinced that I’m winding them up.

Today I was on the bus over to Auckland hospital, to visit Lionel, when I had a bit of a moment.

I was sitting alone on the backseat, rummaging in my backpack which has somehow come to define me these days, getting out my Bible to read, when suddenly it hit me:

Here I was, 10,000 miles away from home, perhaps for another year, with nothing to rely upon but God. If the world turned against me, there really was no-one else in my corner but God. I felt a bit pleased about this. Here I was living the life of adventure that I had always dreamt of since… well on some level since always. Even when I was seven, I’d dreamt of travelling the world after being enthralled by seeing Japan on Blue Peter.

And now here I was alone on a bus in faraway New Zealand, Australasia. Alone, but for God. Oh, and that guy on the opposite seat.

At that moment, said guy on the opposite seat suddenly asked me a question about my Bible. We chatted a bit. He was tired, depressed, going nowhere in life, and disillusioned with the answers he’d got at church. Then he actually asked if I would sit down and talk about God with him. This was definitive missionary stuff. As Lionel was expecting me at the hospital, we fixed a time a few hours later to meet-up, at about 8:30pm.

He didn’t show, so I phoned him using one of the phone-cards containing excess credit that God had sent my way months ago. He was at home in his flat, and wanted me to come up and visit him.

I didn’t like that. It was getting late, he was a complete stranger, and he lived just off K’Road – Auckland’s red light district. Still, I looked for his flat, and was quite relieved when I couldn’t find it. Now I had a poor excuse. I rang him again, and invited him to come out and meet me for a coffee. He was adamant that I had to come into his flat. I declined, we agreed to do this another day, and I headed back to the bus stop.

On the bus home, I looked again at my backpack, and found I was taking a longer, grimmer, far less heroic look at myself. Where was the fearless "missionary" now? Where was the story of an amazing divine appointment for my blog? Had I done the right thing in backing out? What if I’d entered his flat and been beaten-up by his mates inside? Was my imagination being ridiculous? Had I failed? Most of all, just what on Earth did my decision make me?

Surely there must be something to learn from this experience?

I thought back to my conversation with him on the earlier bus. I’d postponed him to fit in visiting Lionel first. If this had been a divine appointment, and they do tend to be unexpected, then I probably shouldn't have tried to fit it into my preconceived schedule.

Or maybe I had been just a bit too keen to group myself with so many real heroes, in countries far more poor and obscure than rich English-speaking New Zealand.

Chris Riding Got Baptised

Stand-Up Steve

Ever gone away for a weekend without actually leaving town?

I have.

My church meets in Ponsonby, but our annual church retreat this weekend was at Willow Park here in Howick – near where I live.

Certainly this was a fiscal advantage, however it demanded a much higher pricetag from my self-respect.

Yes, there was no way I could escape helping out.


Worse, a while ago I’d promised fellow church member, and professional comedian, Jamie that I would at some point take the plunge and try my hand at stand-up comedy.

Saturday night was entertainment night, and Jamie, being as I said a pro, was hosting the evening Letterman-style, complete with desk, loud band and WILL IT FLOAT? segment. No escape now.

Jamie also told me that as well as himself, there would be 2 other stand-up comedy acts that night, that we'd each have 3-5 minutes, and that I would be on last.

So, due entirely to spending this week turning over in my mind what UK buddie Herschel had said in an email about my always missing deadlines, I put off actually coming up with an act until about four hours beforehand.

Curse you, klown. Curse you and all your scary, face-painted, trained professional harlequin friennnnnwaaaaaaaaitaminute. Herschel writes stand-up comedy every day on his blog. He wouldn’t mind me using, well, borrowing, well, adapting, well, scanning through for some inspiration, well, stealing his best material for my own benefit, would he?

Noooooo, of course he wouldn’t. Herschel was my buddy, my friend, my trusted mentor in all things comedic, but, best of all, Herschel was 10,000 miles away and wouldn’t know.

So with mere hours remaining, I scrolled through his exhaustive blog and wrote down the following words:

ROLLERCOASTER, WALKMAN, SECURITY, TIME=MONEY, RAIN, BARBIE, CHEAP FLIGHTS and RIDGES, TROUGHS, VALLEYS.

But one act in particular caught my eye here.

So with everyone else out of the flat, I rehearsed three times an act that would begin with his computer security bit, continued into my own bit about computers stopping people speaking to each other, back into his bit about co-workers who don't know your name, segued into how computers have thankfully removed the need for the alphabet, linked that into sleeping bags that have the KEEP AWAY FROM FIRE label, took that into my own bit about people who take everything camping with them, including an iron, which would finally lead into the whole “Why do we flatten clothes?” routine.

After my last rehearsal, I looked at the clock. It was ten minutes long. I decided I'd cut the more negative-sounding stuff.

When I arrived at the hall, with flatmate Dave in tow (eager for a night of free entertainment) Jamie told me that each of the three comedy acts would now have to perform for just the one minute.

One minute.

One whooooooole minute.

Major rewrite suddenly needed.

"Ovaltine. Why do they call it Ovaltine? The cup is round, the jar is round, they should call it Roundtine. You know what I'm talkin' about. Goodnight!"

I sat down with David, ran through my act with him, and it quickly became clear that such a short act's natural ending would be after the opening computer security bit. Still, it was good to have the other material in reserve.

When it came to the performance, the other two ‘acts’ were literally just a Q&A joke, and a knock-knock.

So, my turn.

Oh dear, I always think the worst thing about fear is that moment when I remember that I shouldn't let it beat me.


Jamie introduced me, during which I mouthed everything he was saying like a dubbed movie, and it has to be said, this unrehearsed joke completely bombed. Even when I explained what I was doing, still no-one was polite enough to even cough. So I went into what I'd rehearsed.

"My name's Steve Goble, those of you who know me know that in 2003 I lost my office job in the UK, so I moved here and after a few adventures and a lot of prayer, God got me... if I can get it out... “ (yes, curse that pocket flap on my trousers again) “…this Work Permit!"

They cheered, I gestured Heavenwards, and put it away again.

"Some of you guys prayed for that, so thank you, as I now have a job in another office."

I had intended delivering this line as a joke, however as I approached it, I realised that I hadn't (erroneously) emphasised how much I had hated working in an office in the first place, so to travel all the way around the world just to get a job in another office didn't carry any irony anymore, so I just hurried along. In fact I hurried so much that I forgot to ask them "Who here works in an office?"

So much for making it relevant.

"The great thing about working in an office, is no matter how mundane your job, you always FEEL important." At this they laughed, which slightly irritated me because this line wasn't meant to be funny.

"...because of the amount of SECURITY involved." I have no recollection if they laughed here, the way things were going, I really wouldn't have blamed them all for dying of spiritual inertia at this point. The rest of their reaction is a bit of a blank, as I was concentrating so much on stopping the mike shaking too much in my hand.

"You show a security pass at the gate to get in in the morning. They give you one of those little electronic key-fobs to open all the doors inside. Even when you sit at your computer, even your computer doesn't trust you and asks you for a password. But even that's not enough, because what does your computer ask you for every 30 days? What does it ask for?"

I held out the mike to the audience. Everyone seemed to say something, but I couldn't make any of it out, so I decided to feign their obedience.

"That's right - a NEW password." And here I got into my stride.

"Coming up with a new password every 30 days is the hardest part of my job. You know you're safe for the first few months, you put in your name, your girlfriend's name, your pet's name, but after that it gets difficult. You get creative and put in six asterisks in a row. One morning you get in and you're in a really bad mood, and you're in a real hurry so you put in 123456. Then the next month you're going ‘PASSWORD! No that's too obvious. COMPUTER! No that's too obvious as well. Errrrr – (looking around) BOOK! CHAIR! DESK! COFFEE-MACHINE!’ No, you're not coming up with a password there - you're having a game of eye-spy.

“And then suddenly it hits you! You're done it, you've broken the system, you've out-psyched the computer... you just put in your last password AGAIN... but with a 1 after it!"

I tapped my forehead intelligently and pointed at the audience.

"Pretty clever huh? No criminal's gonna think of that! Pity the poor villain who's there in his mask and his swag bag and his stripey jumper, he's up all night using Photoshop on his own computer to fake a pass to get in at the gate, he's spent all his money on the black-market to get one of those electronic key fob devices that can go through every single 4-digit number in a couple of seconds to get through the doors like in the movies, then he's sitting at your desk and he's put in your name, he's put in your girlfriend's name, he's put in your pet's name, he's put in a line of asterisks and 123456, he's put in BOOK, CHAIR, DESK, TABLE, COFFEE-MACHINE, and then SUDDENLY IT HITS HIM! He puts in your last password again with a 1 after it...

…and it doesn't work. Do you know why?"

…

They were all dead silent. You actually could have heard a pin drop. This time this was good.

"Because by now another month has passed, and you've changed that 1... to a 2!"

There was a good laugh, so I Wolfied the air with my fist and shouted "My name's Steve Goble - goodnight!"

Really – it was like being back in a school play again. Except that it was the third time this weekend that I've had no microphone stand.

That Handheld Feeling

Part of the joy of presenting a radio show on a low-power station must surely be the fun unexpected challenges.

One week I arrived and found only one CD player working. On another, the headphones had vanished. Another week there was no chair.

Tonight, for the first time, I presented an entire show handheld.

(to broadcast in stereo, that actually required holding two microphones, in addition to standing without headphones and talking whilst reloading the only CD player between each track)

How I pity the bigger stations, still limping along under the otiose crutch of automation.

TOMORROW:

Goble becomes a stand-up comic. "What is the deal with microphone stands...?"

Biblecast

For the first time in the world, the entire Bible is being read live, cover-to-cover, in one sitting over the internet.

So at 8am this morning, guess which gormless mug had gullibley volunteered to read for the first 15 minutes?

The timeslot had been a strategic choice – apart from anything else I knew I’d be the only participator with the opportunity to rehearse the night before. I may have been practising with a different translation, but I still didn’t want words like Pishon, Havilah and Gihon catching me by surprise.

So at 8am I sat in Carey Baptist College, drew breath, and began to read aloud the first book of Moses, commonly called Genesis, hopefully to listeners all around the world.


The clock behind me must have been wrong – because Jody took this picture during the exact syllable that I began, before quietly closing the door, shutting me in alone.

After about 7 minutes, I realised the downside to my decision – I was the project’s guinea-pig. No-one had done this before me, so part of my job was to get everything wrong first.

Like the microphone, which was ever-so-slowly sinking lower and lower on its loose stand.

My chin. My neck. My chest.

Oh dear. Mic stands require 2 hands to adjust them, and I was already holding a huge CEV Bible, and couldn't let my eyes stray from the text.

So I did the only thing I could do - I continued reading as I quietly sank lower and lower in my seat, trying not to think of all those teachers at school who had told me never to slouch.


Outside the room’s closed door, project manager Tim was listening to me on the internet, but could not see me, and so was wholly unaware of my spine’s increasingly stressed contortion. I had to somehow get a message to him, but without stopping the broadcast. Despite the sinking microphone potentially offering me an audience of about 3 billion, I was ironically quite alone in my predicament.

And yet I wasn’t. Whilst making an idiot of myself in front of the entire, yes the entire world, I knew I could still find comfort through God’s everlasting word, so I continued calmly reading, and wondered if the next reader might find me on the floor.

”For as long as you live, you will crawl on your stomach and eat dirt.”

Ha. The Bible. It really jumps the shark in chapter 3.

More on the Biblecast here.

Lost In Translation Convention

So today I asked my kiwi boss if tomorrow (Hawkes Bay Anniversary Day) was a bank holiday, and he replied that it wasn't but that Monday will be a public holiday, because it's Labour Day, which he reckoned probably meant that it was "Workers' Day".

He then asked me why I call them "bank" holidays, and whether this was because the banks are shut. I replied that I had no idea, but that as a kid I had always presumed that that was the reason.

Then I paused, recalling one of Herschel’s recent comedy acts regarding the whacky old English language…

THE MONEY IN THE BANK TX 18/10/2005

Should we trust the bureau de change with our money? They're offering to trade your US dollars for pound sterling, your Euros into rupees, but they can't seem to make the simple translation of the shop's name.

Bureau de change. De? De?! Hello?! We have an English word for "de". It's "of". Bureau of change. Was that so hard?

And, in fairness, bureau's kind of a French word anyway. It's been inserted, piecemeal, into the English language, but it's not, strictly speaking an English word. In context, it's really "office" is the word that they're looking for. Office of change.

... Which kind of sounds backwards, because this isn't how you construct phrases in English unless you're Yoda the Jedi Master. How does everyone feel about "Change Office"? Would that really cover it?

I'm comfortable with that. Next time I'm in a bureau de change and they ask what I'd like to change I'm going to begin with their shop sign.


I had an opportunity here. If I could successfully recite all of that while the subject was still fresh, then my kiwi boss would probably laugh and I would be elevated in his esteem so much, that I might even get promoted. So seizing the moment, I went for it…

I said "You know what I don't get? Why they call places where you change money 'Bureau de changes.'" I mean what's with the 'de'? It's French - it means 'of,' and 'bureau' means 'office.' So it's an 'office of change,' which is backwards, they should really call it the 'change office.'"

Then I drew my breath for the final line: "Next time I go into a bureau de change and they ask me what I want to change, I'm going to start with their name."

Kiwi boss looked bored and replied "Yes, we don't call them that here."

Don't Milk It

It was almost 10 o’clock. Food Town (no finer place for sure) was just about to close, and I was a man on a mission. A mission for milk.

It was Saturday night, and that meant that if I didn’t buy milk now, then I couldn’t restock until Monday. I have no idea whether Food Town Howick opens on Sundays, but the point is that I don’t shop on them. One way or another I needed to buy some milk now.

And then I remembered…

Hang on a second… hadn’t I been in this situation before? That’s right – last year. I had been staying at the youth hostel on Queen Street, it was a Saturday, and I’d been about to stock up on food for the weekend when… I’d changed my mind. I’d decided to have faith in God to provide it instead. So I had deliberately gone into the weekend without enough food, and then God had provided it. And ever afterwards I had not needed to buy any more food, because it had always, incredibly, shown up – even when I’d been away travelling. Wherever I’d been, there had been free food there.

I stopped walking.

I stood motionless on the pavement.

What was I doing? Had I learnt nothing? Why did I no longer believe that God would provide for me?

I turned around and headed back to my flat.

What a fool I’d been. God had proved time and again that he would always come through and feed me. I didn’t want to go back to all that expensive shopping again. And anyway, tomorrow I was going to drop by and visit the youth hostel, so God could easily provide for me there again. For me… for… me.

I stopped again. The reason why I had been heading out tonight for milk had been for my flatmates David and Neil. Although I drink most of it, we all share each other’s milk. I could have faith that God would provide for me, but what of them? This really wasn’t fair. I’d drunk all their milk, and now here I was expecting God to replenish it, when He would probably do this just by getting them to go out to buy it instead. It wasn’t fair. This was my walk with God, not their’s.

I turned around and once more headed briskly towards the town centre. I was going to buy that milk. No I wasn’t.

I stopped again.

One time Mark and I had gone into a shop, bought a load of food, and then an hour later when we’d arrived at our destination we had found duplicates of everything healthy that we had just bought.

Then, while I’d been away with Jamie driving through the Coromandel, I’d given in again and we'd bought a load of food. When we’d arrived at a backpackers and just started cooking it, someone came in and offered us all the barbequed food they’d made way too much of. We’d stuffed ourselves – we never touched the stuff we’d cooked – it was too much.

On both occasions I’d failed to expect God to provide for others too. It was time to make things right.

I turned around and headed back towards my flat.

Then I stopped again.

God had taught me to put my security in Him, and now He had provided me with a financial income. Surely I should use the money He had provided to buy the milk, from the shop, in exactly the same way that everyone else did?

I stayed stopped.

But I needed to know. Was God expecting me to spend the money on milk, or would He rather that I still relied on Him for it? There was only one way to find out. I had to have faith, and see if He still provided for me. The only way to determine whether God wanted to support me through my monetary income, or through His divine providence, was to just go into the weekend with no milk and see what happened. I was going back to the flat. This weekend would confirm whether God wanted me to get into paying for things again.

But I still stayed stopped. Blast it, it was nearly 10 o’clock. Soon the decision would be made for me by whoever locked the supermarket’s doors.

And then it came to me.

“Thou shalt not test The LORD thy God.”

That was it.

I spun around and hurried back up the increasingly worn pavement towards Howick town centre, wondering whether my procrastination had allowed Food Town to shut up for the night.

It hadn’t.

Avoiding shop assistants who were pulling blinds down over the refrigeration units, I skipped quickly around the aisles, picking-up not just milk but bananas, biscuits, cereal and yoghurt.

At the check-out I realised that I’d forgotten my One Card, but the cashier kindly put the reductions through for me anyway. I’d also forgotten my handkerchief and asked for a tissue. She looked around, found a box and offered me one. I took two, in case, although I only in the end used one. I guess I only needed to take what was offered.

Back home I put the milk in the fridge, and flatmate David showed up, insisting that I have some waffles with him. I protested that the starch would just turn to fat when I slept, but he persuaded me, and even got me to agree to a second. I spread some marge and marmalade that I’d found at the hostel on them, and ate.

Then I realised what I’d just done. Or, more accurately, what had just been done for me.

As I inwardly chuckled, David, completely unaware of my moral dilemma, stood-up.

“Steve – would you like some ice-cream?”

Hope-tastic, mate

The phone rang today, and it was Patrick from Hope City Radio. There was a bit of a do over at Green Bay Community Centre, and he wanted me to do some promos for it over the phone.

Within minutes I was having one of those matey chats with him on air, encouraging listeners to pop along and have some fun.

Mr Hippy was also at the event selling ice creams from his van, where he had the station on for his customers.

Patrick also told me that the previous night he had followed my recorded show with a repeat of an earlier live one that I’d done in September. I was a bit pleased about that. I’ve never had a whole music show repeated before. I’m rather hoping that we can rerun some of my other shows now as well.

After work tonight, I caught the bus to New Lynn to record another block of dialogue for Christian puppet company Joy Puppet Theatre, to perform to in various Auckland schools.

As an actor of course, I demanded a trailer.

And they were as good as their word.

Below is our cool studio!

Padded Cel

Since returning to New Zealand, I’ve come through Auckland Airport, slept in my old bed, resumed working-out on flatmate David’s running machine, eaten Korean food at the Salvation Army, collected my post from the youth hostel, attended my church, worked at CBA, dropped into Rhema, listened to Life FM, caught-up with Lionel, presented my show on Hope City Radio, travelled through Waikato and spent another weekend away with Jamie, but none of those things had given me the same sense that sitting inside Neville’s living-room at church cel-group tonight did.

Now I knew that I really was back.

Land Of The Goodies

I have previously touched upon New Zealand’s curious interest in amusingly big things here, but travelling through Waikato today I encountered a new spin on it.

First, we encountered the big sheep at Tirau:

Then, just next to it, we stared-down the slightly famouser giant dog (presumably a sheepdog):

But finally, would you believe it, just further along I happened upon the lesser-known enormous Christ:

Expecting nightmares tonight.

In Prison

I spend last night in a backpackers called "The Prison." And it actually IS. The prison closed in 1993, so they turned it into a backpackers. Look:


Looks a lot like school.


Cushier than L A Fitness.

As you can see, Jamie and I were not allowed to bring in even the most basic home comforts.

The place was built by its first inmates, some of whom would carve pictures into the bricks they made:



And this is what you saw if you escaped:


(that waterfall is artificial)

For a few extra dollars you can actually sleep in a cell. So I did:

Odd little things were different, like the lightswitch being outside the room, and there being no way of shutting the door from the inside.

And then this morning they told me the place is haunted.

Website:
http://www.napierprison.com

When Clowns Fight

Yesterday I came down to Hastings to see buddy Jamie compete against 20 other comics in a national stand-up comedy contest.


Fig. 1: Jamie kills the photographer with a mere look.

The prize was, ironically, a trip to work as a stand-up comic in the UK.

Jamie was good, but alas he wasn’t selected for the finals the following night. So licking our wounds afterwards, Jamie and I made our way back to The Rotten Apple backpackers in Havelock North, where we quickly discovered the place had closed for the night.

Fortunately they agreed to make an exception for us:


Fig. 2: The Rotten Apple was teeming with parasites.

The following morning we checked out again to explore Hastings in daylight:


Fig. 3: There is no escape from the village.


Catching the train here must feel like catching a ride at an amusement park.


Happiness is a sheep with 6 legs


This is the town that inspired the original movie version of War Of The Worlds.

Our itinerant slouching over, it was onto Napier to watch the final.

Here, I was surprised to see several competitors actually repeating their act from the previous night, for an audience that predominantly consisted of the same people. Intriguingly though, everyone except me seemed to lap it all up a second time.

However my lowest marks went to one of the swearers, who managed to recite word for word David Spade’s aircraft pilot bit from the second episode of The Larry Sanders Show.

That’s right. That was a funny act. That’s how come I still remember it.


The guy above on the other hand used his own material, and did well, but the guy who finally won really deserved to. His song about who all the different nations hated had everyone in stitches, especially the final line.

I was taking notes. A while back I promised Jamie that I would do some stand-up comedy myself at some point. And, unfortunately, I keep my promises, no matter how much they scare me.

Still, first things first - tonight God had me sleeping in a prison cell...


(that episode tomorrow)

Star Trek: The Motion Picture

Imagine if Star Trek had never been revived as a movie...

...and now, imagine if it were revived as a movie today.

It wouldn't be much like the original. No, it would be a comedy.

Will Ferrell as Kirk, Ellen DeGeneres as Mrs Spock and we both know it'd be more about him getting her back again than saving the universe. Lots of jokes about technology, a laugh-filled montage as bungling Kirk learns how to be a starship captain, and all to a brand new track by Shaggy.

Gone are the days of a couple of years ago...

Do you remember when a movie version of an old TV show came out, and it would actually be the same team behind it that had made the original?

Star Trek: The Motion Picture is a good example. Eight years on, the whole surviving cast was asked back - even Nurse Chapel and Janice Rand. Creator Gene Roddenbury was behind it. And it confidently trod the same ground, in the same serious tone, as the original series. No frightened recasting to attract new viewers at the expense of the existing ones here.


Kirk's drive to control was subtly underplayed, as is Spock's soul-searching, while everyone else just carries on with work as usual... like they would, if it were real.

Yes, it's a slow film, but thank God for that.

As I rewatched this tonight on a gigantic screen, thoroughly enjoying it, my experience was marred only by what Comic Book Guy would call:

"All-time worst spoiling of a movie's ending ever."

Kirk, Spock, McCoy, Decker and Ilia are all at the evil super-computer about to blow-up the Earth. It's called "Vger." Kirk steps forward like a hero and rubs off the dust on the side of the machine.

He reads.

He gasps.

"Voy-" Neil walks in and says "Ronnie's Barker's dead."

U H F starring "Weird Al" Yankovic

"For those of you just joining us, today we’re teaching poodles how to fly."

There’s not much more I can say about the movie UHF than that. You either ‘get’ “Weird Al” Yankovic’s brand of humour, or you don’t. And even if you do, it’s still pretty hit and miss. Fortunately in this tale of downtrodden community TV station Channel 62, Yankovic hits more times than he misses, which is no mean feat given that the film is a collection of now 15-year-old parodies.


Gandhi II (he’s rough), Conan The Librarian (he’s rough as well), and Rambo (hang on – isn't this the same joke?)

The formulaic plot works extremely well, and one wonders just how much better a film like Amazon Women On The Moon might have been with even a simple story like this driving the sketches.

It’s always disappointed me that there isn’t more of this sort of wildly impossible quickfire comedy around. There’s so little of it that we don’t even have a word to describe it, although some people box it as “Monty Python humour”.

Indeed, Monty Python’s Flying Circus, The Goodies, The Monkees, Father Ted, Mr Don And Mr George, Police Squad! (In Color), Top Secret and the Airplane! movies. That’s all I can think of. Modern attempts, including the Naked Gun movies, tend to be thinner on jokes, and get slowed down by enforced emotional content.

In UHF, Yankovic doesn’t play anything straight except in the interest of a gag, and consequently there’s little to remember afterwards other than the stuff you laughed at.


Who else could come up with singing the lyrics of The Beverly Hillbillies to the Dire Straits track Money For Nothing?

The other thing I like about this film, and Weird Al’s material in general, is he’s usually quite clean. No easy-to-write smut or sex scenes to cut the huge potential kid-audience here.


"I'm thinkin' of something orange. Something orange. Give up? It's an orange.

Okay, now I'm thinkin' of something blue. Something bluuuuuue."

Disappointing then, to discover whilst writing this review that upon its original cinema release in 1989, the movie in fact bombed.

I think I’ll leave the last word on that to Weird Al himself, quoted from a MuchMusic interview:


"I knew when I was writing (the script) that it wasn't a critic's kind of movie. It's a silly, goofy, fun, harmless, brainless comedy, and the people who had accepted it as such had a great time with it."

8/10

Channel 62 website:
http://www.allthingsyank.com/uhf15/u-62.htm

Review of soundtrack album:
http://stevegoble.blogspot.com/2007/10/uhf-original-motion-picture-soundtrack.html

Damaged VHS cover:

Sorry, Coach...

...but I left my kit at the bus stop.

Shooting Potatoes

About three months ago, via the free food shelf back at the youth hostel, God provided me with a cardboard sack containing about a dozen potatoes to eat.

Today, having spent most of the past three months in the UK, I rediscovered the same sack, still sitting in the larder, and found that the potatoes had been using their downtime effectively:

"It’s time to play the music,
It’s time to light the lights…"

All The Major Highways Are Completely Congested With Tarmac

The four million-strong population of New Zealand is a bit spread out.

As a result, national radio stations wishing to broadcast travel news inadvertantly develop a 90-second hole in their schedule in the quieter regions.

“Hi Steve, well the southbound country-lane is gridlocked by slow-moving oxygen this morning, while there are also major hold-ups five hundred miles north of here. What? You want me to fill for another 70 seconds? Flippin’ ‘eck…”

And this is where the company that I work for comes in.

They’ve been making daily 90-second filler shows for about 6 years now, each one offering listeners a modern-day parable to digest. They’re presented by high-profile Kiwi Christians, and often get subsequently repeated on other stations, including within my weekly show on Hope City FM.

Being an ex-BBC Christian, part of my job is to sort much of this 2,000-strong archive out in preparation for podcasting on the internet, but another lovely part of what I do is helping to put new shows together.

As a result, I’ve had the pleasure of listening to a great deal of this uplifting material, as well as editing and reading it. I’m also looking forward to writing some.

It’s fair to say that this is the first job I’ve had that I have really believed in, and the first employer that I’ve believed in too, not least because they seem to believe in me.

They even did a special payrun for me this week.

So today, Saturday, after over a year of trusting God to provide me with a job, I did something very normal, and yet to me miraculous.

I went to the ATM machine, I got some money out, and then I went shopping at Foodtown.