Coming Soon...

In other news, I got the first of my Sponsorship packages through the post this week, which was exciting. It was from World Vision, the Jesus pushers. I received a response to my E-Mail to them which basically went along the lines of "We are truly blessed to have you sponsor a child with us, and are eternally grateful for your future contributions, but we're teaching them Jesus so TOUGH.", if not in so many words.

But anyway, my first sponsored child is a 10 year old girl from Ghana called Ayishetu Omoru. I wrote the first letter last night which I'm going to send off tomorrow, I also sent a picture of myself along with it (as suggested in the guide book) so god knows what they'll make of this weirdly dressed white guy with dreadlocks. Yes, of course I sent an old picture.

Highs and Lows

So, I made a pretty big decision yesterday. I decided to sponsor a child. Since everyone I've told has replied with 'To do what?' (what did they think - sit in a bath of beans?), I'll elaborate a little on what sponsoring a Child actually is. According to PlanUsa.org and various other websites, the general idea of this re-direction of wealth (relatively speaking) is to provide clean water, clothes and a good education to poverty-stricken communities all around the world, with each sponsored child a representative of a family within the community. The idea is you send around £12 a month and receive progress reports, occasional letters and pictures of your sponsored family/child, and send things in return. In truth, the correspondence thing attracted me almost as much as the want to help.

I haven't received my information pack from PlanUsa yet but should next week hopefully, however thanks to their informative confirmation E-Mail, I can tell you that the child I chose to sponsor is a 3 year old (yeah, I didn't think the correspondence thing through fully there, did I?) girl named Jade Castillo Serrano. I forget where she was from but the information pack I'll receive will fill in the blanks. I did of course have Jacob and Sophie-Mae in mind when making my decision.

£12 a month is nothing. Think about it, and I bet you could think of one thing you spend more than £12 on a month that you don't need, want nor ever get much use out of, I know I certainly do (he says, with a glance over at his vast, barely-touched DVD collection)!

Brum, however, felt that this was a LOT of money per month. And so he'll probably be in for a surprise when I tell him that, today, I decided to sponsor a second child for £18 a month. I can't give you much information on the second Child because the website, World Vision, isn't exactly as helpful in it's Confirmation E-Mails so I'll have to wait for my information pack for that, too, but it's pretty cool none-the-less.

If only it ended there.

The front page of the World Vision website is set up in such a manner that you can dive right in, sponsor a child and miss a lot of the details about the organization, which is exactly what I did. Then, a day later - today - I decided to browse the FAQ to see what I could expect in the post and when.

And then I spotted an ugly word amongst the masses of sentences that leaped out at me; 'Jesus'.

Upon closer inspection, I noticed it was attached to an even uglier question; 'How does my Sponsored Child learn about Jesus?'.

Oh shit. This was bad.

I spent a good hour mulling over the situation, trying to work out what was an acceptable course of action in my head. There was no way I could justify denying a family/community improved living conditions just because I happened to disagree with the religion of the organization that provided it. It was like when I couldn't bring myself to click the 'View another child' button on any of the initial searches I had done, for feeling like I would be depriving them of an ever-so-slightly improved life off of a stupid, judgmental decision. I had after all already given my bank details and signed up - if I pulled out now, it would be a hundred times worse than simply hitting the 'Next' button.

But there was another problem - the organization didn't just teach Christianity... but part of their funding included the building of churches, the organization of church groups and Christian activities for the locals.

This really annoyed me. I signed up to help provide clean water, new clothes and better education, not to fund the perpetuation of a fucking lie.

I could see no justifiable reason for the presence of religion here. But what could I do? It was still not a justifiable option to cancel my Sponsorship. In the end I decided to write an E-Mail to the company. I originally intended it to be an innocent request for information as to what extent their religious funding would go, but I found it impossible to keep my feelings to myself. I pointed out the fact that their page was misleading, the reason I had signed up wasn't to help fund the teaching of a religion, and also threw in a little something about teaching religion to children and trusting communities that were dependent upon them for their very well-being was morally reprehensible.

It was good to get it off my chest, I feel a pressure valve has been released slightly, but I know this will continue to bother me. I guess I'll just continue my sponsorship for now - after all, it's World Vision I'm pissed off at, not the unfortunate families.

I'm looking forward to their reply out of morbib curiosity - it will either be "We're sorry that this was not made more clear but thankyou for taking part", or "Burn in hell you Atheist scum". I know which one I'm expecting..

Mick who?

I've been reading 'Foley Is Good' by Mick Foley. That is, when I'm not watching my new 'Mick Foley: Hits and Misses' DVD that I bought the other week. Yes, you could accuse me of being on a Mick Foley kick since meeting the great man in November (and the memory of him - a man who has had his front teeth knocked out, has hundreds of scars over his body and once lost half an ear in a match - asking Matt if his dozen-or-so piercings hurt will stay with me forever) but, hell, it always happens when I get mad on something. The book is really good, it's not really about Wrestling despite being by a Wrestler, it's more about what goes on behind the scenes and his journey of writing his previous book. It sounds strange to say I'm reading a book about writing a book but it works, it has a sense to it.

Speaking of meeting Foley (have I mentioned that I've met Mick Foley?), another person who was at Memorabilia was this weird guy who comes into the cinema to annoy us every now and then. And I mean that literally - neither I, nor anybody else that's worked there (for a considerably longer amount of time than I have, I might add) has EVER seen him buy tickets for anything. He just comes in, is annoying for a bit, and then leaves. It's all he does. Infact, the other day he said about how the last time he went to the cinema the tickets were £3.00. They're now £5.90. That's nearly £3 worth of inflation, so God knows when his last visit was.

I should state at this point that he does tick nearly all of the 'yes' boxes in the 'Qualifies for a Nutter' checklist. I don't think he has any serious mental problems, I just think he's delusional. For a start, he thinks he's best friends with lots of celebrities. This is based purely off having met them at conventions (by that theory me and Foley would be best chums now... although, he DID give me the impression he wanted to be........ uh oh, now I'm up to three ticks myself) and, in some cases, having sat particularly close to the TV when they've been on.

In all seriousness, though, it is getting to the point where certain staff members are considering telling him he can't keep coming in and not buying any tickets because it makes us feel uncomfortable, which is a good point. Unlike when a Nutter comes up to you in the street, or even when a Nutter came up to me in the Co-op, there's nowhere you can escape to because you're sat behind a Kiosk that you can't leave un-manned. You're effectively a captive audience, forced to endure his insane rants and nod and smile politely. They should consider sending him to POW camps and letting him wander in for a chat with the prisoners every now and then, they'd soon be coughing up the details.

Besides the afforementioned negatives, one of the good things about working in an environment where you have lots of pockets of time to yourself throughout the day is that you can fill it by reading. I've already started-and-got-bored-of 'Never Trust a Rabbit' by Jeremy Dyson, read-most-of-but-had-the-ending-ruined of 'Make Love, The Bruce Campbell Way' by Bruce Campbell (which, you be shocked to hear, isn't a sex guide), and I've currently been having my fill of Foley's book... when I'm not filling Popcorn scoops, that is.

It's a nice way to pass the time between film showings, and a good way to become well-read, only ruined by the fact that every time you pick up your book and begin to read, you just know more often than not that it's a customers cue to come in and ask irrelevant questions for 10 minutes.

Oh well, at least the intention is there.

Paulandbrumensteins Monster

Updated: Freelance Artist Blog

A friend of mine, who I shall for the purposes of this post call 'Claire' (she's young and impressionable), announced to me and my mate Brum (who is old enough to know better) that she'd decided to apply for Big Brother this year. Why she'd want to, I don't know, but what was more interesting was the fact that she wanted us to help her fill out her Application form. She wanted to make it 'attention grabbing', 'controversial' and something that would increase her chances of getting picked - basically she was entrusting her possible future to our very incapable hands. Boy, this was going to be fun.

The first question was a tough one, entertainment-value wise. "What are your aspirations in life?" We talked it over for a few minutes, with the best offering coming from Brum which was a suggestion of rather Hitler-esque ambitions, along with one which was simply 'to find the best Newspapers to sleep under'. In the end I just asked her what her Aspirations in life actually are, to which she replied, "I just try to get by each day. I don't really think about the future." ....... perfect! Stage one of our Character Personality Profile was completed - manic depressive. I knew that the best material was likely to come from within her own answers.

Then we got to the real easy stuff. "List three things your family don't know about you". Two of the three were rather bland (partly due to Claire wanting to maintain a sense of reality), but the third one was the kicker. This character we'd created, we decided, had once gone on a boozy night out in Ayr (the real Claire's hometown) and by chance had bumped into a local football team. They got chatting, and in less time than it takes for Newcastle to concede a goal at home, five of them had taken her back to a hotel room and went for the full 90 minutes. Then, a few weeks later, 'Claire' had - because of her Stalker-like tendencies - looked up the players names (or atleast the ones she knew) on Bebo, and discovered that their hotel encounter was an option in a 'Players Highlight of the Season' poll.

Except there was one rather big difference between the real Claire and the character we'd created for her. It was, infact, the real Claire that had met the footballers (presumably the subs bench, since there were 5 of them) and all of that had really happened - right down to the poll on the website. Sure, it's extremely tacky and not exactly something to be proud of - Claire says she wouldn't have done it if she was anywhere near sober - but at the end of the day this character we'd 'created' (although I was starting to wonder exactly how much was fiction) had demanded filth, and besides, just think of all the jokes! Did they get performance ratings in The Sun the next day? Did they change ends at half time? The possibilities are endless.

Now, I will say, that when it comes to dirty jokes I tend to use them sparingly. Even after writing the above paragraphs I feel like I should go and wash my mouth out with soap (or whatever the equivalent is for someone spouting filth via a Keyboard rather than their pie hole) so I apologise if anyone feels it went too far - but I must return to my point that it all actually happened. But anyway, Brum is a lot more liberal with the Roy Chubby Brown type material than I am, and the next several responses from him all more or less pointed to the same character trait - "I'm a slut".

"I need to have more sides to my personality", Claire had objected, "Not just a Ho."

"True, we need to focus more on the Homeless/Manic Depressive side".

"Haha... oh dear."

The next question arrived. "What's your proudest achievement?". I suggested she should point to her answer for the 'three things your parents don't know about you' question - it seemed fitting that this person would hold a shag-athon with Joe Blogs Football Club in the same esteem as someone might hold an academic achievement. Hell, she'd probably have gotten them to sign the condoms.

What followed was half an hour of us refining, deepening and ridiculous-ifying the character, and Claire - unbelievably - lapping up our answers and making notes as we went along to use them. To be honest we'd long since given up attempting to simply help her fill out an interesting form and were more intent on creating a Psychopath (maybe the thought of her actually getting onto the show and having to act like this person, or at the very least at the Auditions, was all the inspiration we needed) and the fact she was actually considering our answers took us both by surprise, but we grabbed the opportunity by the horns. Along with the outrageous sexual exploits, this Big Brother auditionee was now homeless, auditioning for the house to evade Debt Collectors disguised as bin men, and under "Is there anything else you'd like to tell us about?" wrote "Wombles tell me to kill people".

Towards the end of this surreal conversation, it seemed like Laura was starting to lose faith with our suggestions and with the character we'd created. She wanted the producers to still see her as 'real', and was worried that all of the over-the-top stories about this creation shagging around and stalking people might put that hope in jeopardy. It was only when I pointed out that she had in fact done most of the things mentioned that she had to concede defeat and leave them in. If nothing else, it's a morale victory for creative license!

Of course, all I'm wondering now is that if a miracle happened and she got onto the show, became the countries most famous person for a few months and was paid huge amounts by the tabloids to spill the beans on her wacky Application form, shouldn't Brum and I be entitled to a cut of the royalties?! After all, it was technically our creation - it's like when a Cartoon character becomes immensely popular and some old duffer claims he thought it up in the 60's.

Sod it, I'll just tell her to make out she's a terrorist, instead.