So, it turns out that moving house is quite difficult. It’s not the ‘putting things in boxes’ part that’s hard (although it turns out that duvets resent being put in boxes), it’s the ’sorting through stuff’ part that turns ones brain to a confused mush.

In case you hadn’t gathered, Heather and I are moving house. In fact, we are really moving country – we don’t yet have a house to move to. Nevertheless, this means that a lot of our possessions need to go into boxes, where they will be stored for two years, and re-opened when we return. This is, therefore, not your average move.

Firstly, we have to decide if it is ours – Heather has lived in this house for 5 years, and had 5 years worth of roomates who have kindly left her a lot of their possessions. Secondly, we have to decide whether it is coming to England or going to Purgatory. Then, we have to decide if it is worth keeping in a box for two years, or given away / sold / burned. Finally, we have to decide if it is a precious item – and, therefore, must live inside the in-laws house – or, if it is suitable for their garage. So, effectively, there are several moves taking place.

In less than a week’s time we will be in England wondering why we ever got so worried about the move… maybe!

Going back to SPCK stuff. I received a comment today from one of those who reposted Dave Walker’s “missing” blogs.

Relating to a post I made about the WHOIS information on various SSG websites, the anonymous commenter writes:

“Another interesting question is who exactly owns the online bookselling arm of the SPCK, particularly as they are now happy to offer books by such important religious writers as Aleister Crowley, let alone a wide range
of ‘adult’ material. spckonline.com is still registered to the SPCK although they of course say that they’ve passed the domain over to SSG. When you go on to spckonline though you are in reality on a twinned site ‘Third Space Books’. You’d have expected to find that to be registered to one of the Brewer brothers’ myriad enterprises, but it’s hard to tell. The whois for thirdspacebooks.com shows up thus:

Registrant Contact

Name: Carey A McDonald
Address: 202 N Curry St.
Carson City, NV 89703
US

Note that Andy McDonald is not listed as the registrant, merely as the contact. Andy himself has a site http://www.juland.com (correctly registered), which appears to have nothing whatever to do with bookselling, let alone the Orthodox faith. How do I know that he’s actually known as Andy? Well, I rung him up (his office number’s on the whois, and his answaphone gives out his mobile number). It would have been nice to establish what and who exactly lay behind an Orthodox Christian online bookseller prepared to use the name of a long-established and respected UK charity to flog such distinctly un-Christian literature, but alas I fear that Andy was not able to give me any assistance whatever.”

I live only 15 miles from Carson City (the capital of Nevada, and also the cheapest petrol around). However, a quick Google search does reveal that the address is an Antiques Store. Confused? I am.

EDIT: Although I think the information is quite bizarre and interesting, I also think it is important that we respect the privacy of some of these people. They are probably innocent of the SPCK/SSG incident, and probably unaware of its existence – so we should be a little careful before contacting them / accusing them of anything.

Next week, Heather and I go to Burning Man – a psychadelic, unhibited celebration of… well… anything! Every year, during the last week of August, part of the Black Rock Desert is taken over by tens of thousands of campers, artists, and miscellaneous to form Black Rock City. This year, that city will form on August 25th, and for a week it will be the 5th largest settlement in Nevada before disappearing without a trace. Heather and I have our tent, cooking materials and water (1.5 gallons per person per day) ready. We have also started to get our ‘gifts’ ready.

There is no commerce at Black Rock City. Nobody owes anybody anything, and you are positively encouraged to be an anti-capitalist and give out as many free objects / services / milk and cookies as you can. Heather and I decided to give out seeds. The picture above is of 200 bags of 5 sunflower seeds that we have spent the afternoon collating. These bags will go into envelopes that explain how to grow them. Those envelopes will be given to as many people as possible. We plan to give out 1000 seeds during the weeks that we are there – otherwise you can all guess what you will get for Christmas from us!

We also have another plan involving some glow-in-the-dark paints – but I might leave that as a surprise.

No posts this week as I am on holiday at Lake Tahoe.