Astral Rumbles
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Sad news – the inimitable Spot has moved on. For those that don’t know, Spot was R’s cat, a big old tom who was very affectionate, fuzzy, large and rumbly. I loved Spot – he was a funny old thing, and had a purr like a motor car. He used to have this trick of rearing up on his hind paws and nuzzling your hand which was very cute.
In the last few months Spot has been deteriorating – at nearly 12 he’s getting on a little for a cat, and very recently he’s been quite ill, and lost a lot of conditioning. Spot being Spot, despite whatever he was perfectly rumbly and content as long as mum was around and giving him a scratch on the head. We are understandably upset at his loss – R most of all, however B has decided to be “adult” about it and is offering pragmatic advice to his mother such as “oh well, at least you won’t have to clean out his litter tray any more” 
Farewell Spotty cat – I can still hear you rumbling somewhere in the astral realms, happily stuffing yourself with God’s fishes – and I hope you enjoy having your testicles back
WoW Woe
Woe is Nate. A very nice fellow at work let me use his World of Warcraft account while he was away for a week (primarily so I’d get hooked and join him 
and I enjoyed it too much.
I don’t have an account of my own yet, but I’m thinking about getting one – I’ll have to be a casual player though, and not get as involved as I used to in discworld etc. A few hours or so a week maybe perhaps less is about all I can afford to spend on it, but at least R has given tentative approval for me getting an account Although my recently acquired fiscal responsibility demon tells me I should not rush out to buy a copy of the game just yet…
Word games
I have the oddest feeling I’ve already blogged on this, but can’t find it, so here goes anyways.
There is an oft repeated quote in the bible – “For it is easier for a camel to go through a needle’s eye, than for a rich man to enter into the kingdom of God”.
Most everyone has heard some version of this before, whether they be religious or not – and it is fairly self-explanatory. Obviously, you’re going to have a hard time ramming your average dromedary through the eye of a needle, ergo it must be challenging to say the least to get a rich man into heaven. That all boils down to “you can’t take it with you” plus some wisdom about not concentrating all your effort on the cash.. This is the accepted phrasing generally.
The quote by the way is from the gospel of Luke, chapter 18 verse 25 (New King James).
The interesting thing to note however is that the hebrew source word for camel is the exact same word used for rope. Wouldn’t it have made more sense to assume that the Jesus was using the term “rope” – IE a thread waaaaaaay too thick to go through the needle? For some reason, it has been popularly decided on that the good Lord went a bit Monty Python on us and decided “it would be easier to stuff, oh, say…. a camel! through the eye of a needle yada yada”. Odd that. Ultimately it makes little difference to the resulting message, but it is a nice pointer to the kinds of problems that translation and transliteration can bring up.
Mo’ Ink
I have taken to writing with a fountain pen again. It has been years since I did, and I’m quite enjoying it – it’s been spurred on by some romantic notion or other, same as usual. There is something satisfying about using a fountain pen, although I do wish my handwriting were more legible. It woudl be nice to be able to scribe good copperplate or some such but at the moment I am merely striving to be able to read what I’ve written.
For all those who haven’t used a fountain pen, I highly recommend it. They’re shiny, they feel nice to write with, and you can use them to bolster pretensions of intelligence and class.