Mein Craft - U gotta love da Lava

Last night I died from playing with Lava. ☹ 

I spent an hour collecting diamonds and red sparkly things and gold,

I was trying to find my way back out of my mine, and I came across some underground water, so I tried to isolate the source block, when I placed a block, the water rushed over and flushed me deeper into this great cavern, my torches glistened miles above like so many little stars. I thought, let me just explore a little, and then I will try get home again.

 

And lo, I came upon another little underground river, which I successfully captured. When I reached for my bucket I realised I had left in my chest, back home. So off I went to get my bucket, and saw a brightly lit area, so I thought, ooh, I must have been here before. But it was a little 2 x 3 pool of lava. So I decided to trap the source block, just like I had just done with the little river, and I will come back with a bucket, and the start of my Lava farm ☺. 

First block in place, Yatta.

Second block, not so Yatta!

And as the Lava flowed over my body, I knew it was all over.

 

From a distance I looked down upon my smoking pixelated corpse, let out a big sigh and some expletives, and clicked respawn.

and thus sayeth simon!

how's your grammar?

I came across a totally interesting question this week, what's the difference between an idiom and a proverb? The really interesting part is, I had no idea how to answer that, no clue.
After a bit of googling I think I found out, still not 100% sure on this though,but that's not really the point of this post.

Idiom
a group of words in a fixed order that have a particular meaning that is different from the meanings of each word understood on its own:

Proverb
a short sentence, etc., usually known by many people, stating something commonly experienced or giving advice

It's still a bit vague... But accorcing to these definitions, a proverb must be a SENTENCE while an idiom is just a phrase (a group of words)???

A proverb is a saying such that almost everybody knows and you understand easily what it means. For example "Necessity is the mother of invention" is a proverb.

An idiom is a phrase such that almost nobody knows why it means so. "Kick the bucket" is an idiom to mean "die". Do you understand why it means so?

The point is that I learned this at some point in my english grammar classes, as well as tautology, spoonerisms, and a host of other super interesting grammatical devices. However, I have forgotten this, most of it anyway. And that makes me sad, and thus shall I blog about it.

I would like to issue a challenge, that we all keep our eyes and ears open for cool grammatical happenings. Let's try re-learn some of the ish we learned in high-school.

Borg

Imagine

Imagine a political party that offers rebates when the systems aren’t working, and services aren’t being delivered, we do pay for essential services after all. To mention the hyper-ten-shin. Nothing grates me more than seeing municipal budget being blown on repairing the damage caused by striking municipal workers instead of much needed developments and upgrades, all the while my rubbish piles up outside my front door. And its coming out of my pocket, surely, when my power is out, or my garbage is standing, the local government should be refunding me for the services I haven’t received. . Anyway, that’s my bitching done, but I can, cause I vote.

Actually, no, I'm not done. I want to talk about delegated authority. As a legal entity, when I vote I am delegating my authority (to make legal and financial decisions) to a person, who represents a party. I choose this party because I believe their values are in line with my own and therefore they will most suitably represent MY needs and desires. However, that party won't necessarily "win" the election process. Therefore the party whose "values" most suitably align with the majority stands to make my decisions for me. I don't like that, not one little bit. I did not delegate my authority to you money hungry, gravy train riding, under educated and over inflated, blood sucking morons. Yet you reserve the right to spend my tax money on ineffective and outright idiotic ideas, and then, you tax me even more. You tax me for driving to work so that I can earn a living, then you tax me on that too. Then you tax me on the groceries I buy to feed my family, and double tax me on the cigarettes I smoke to cope with all the fucking taxes. I most certainly did not delegate my authority to you, and most certainly not for the above mentioned reasons.

-Simon

Election Time

Election time is coming up, and everybody has an opinion, and luckily everybody has a voice. The problem is the ones with the loudest opinions are the ones that never use that voice.

If you want the right to moan and groan about the crap-ass local (or national) government, you have to exercise the responsibility to vote. Or else shut the hell up, I don't want to hear it.

I am probably preaching to the choir here but no matter, just some friendly advice. Use it or don't use it

-Simon

Say my Name

What’s in a name, a rose by any other name would smell just as sweet. However, were the rose named stink weed, or stinky gourd? Would you still bend to smell this ill reputed plant? Or would you give it a wide berth?

By the same token, a man is only as good as his name. You can work many years to build a good reputation, vitally important, in life socially as well as in the workplace. And the better person you are the better your name becomes. However, and this is a big one. All the work you have put in, and over many years, can be destroyed in an instant by you or someone else.

The bible says to stay away from even the appearance of evil, which is truly sage advice. If it is perceived that you are immoral, unscrupulous or an assortment of other less desired attributes, you will be labelled as that attribute. Regardless of how inaccurate that may be, you are no longer a rose, but a stinkweed.  It may also happen that somebody else may spread a vicious rumor about you, which will spread and ruin your name. Even if it’s not true, and people know better, it still goes to cast doubt on your good name.

That’s all.

-Simon