Shot from a canon..

Working in the office environment, such as I do, there's a lot of good-humoured banter to help the working day pass a little bit quicker (and a little less painfully).  Now, I'm going to go out on a limb here and make the following controversial statement: your normal Software Development department is traditionally a predominantly male-oriented environment and whilst this is bad in the eye-candy stakes, it does mean that very few topics are taboo, or over-the-line.  Indeed most conversations in this office overstep the line of taste and decency by such an amount that the line is more-often-than-not a dot on the distant horizon.

However, it's not all farts, tasteless jokes, discussions about the last boozy night out and lengthy conversations about the best totty currently on television.  This we proved today.

You see, we were discussing the fact that on Friday it is St. Patrick's Day, and how only the Irish (and the Guinness marketing department) seem to have really exploited the patron saint idea (bear with me, I know this sounds like another "boozy night out" discussion, but I'm going somewhere with this).  You see, this Friday thousands more pints of Guinness will be poured, supped and eventually vomited up than would sell on any normal Friday night just because everyone automatically thinks: "Hey, it's St. Paddy's Day, let's get arseholed!".

Suddenly St. David and St. George look like poor patron saints in comparison, don't they?  After all you don't automatically go "Hey, it's St. George's Day let's go drink some Stella!", do you? 

It was whilst we were lamenting the fact that the other patron saints are ignored (not that I'm religious you understand, but I don't believe you have to have faith in order to get drunk), when a colleague of ours piped up with the following assertion: "Of course, St. George isn't a Saint anymore."

"What?" we exclaimed, as this was certainly the first we'd heard about it..
"Oh no, he's been de-canonised, by Pope Paul in 1969"
"Bollocks!", we retorted
"No it isn't, and he wasn't the only one.. St. Christopher and St Valentine have all been de-canonised too!".
Now, as I've said, I'm not religious at all, but this seemed like a bit of a revelation.  After all I'd heard of all of these saints, I'd even seen people wearing St. Christopher's.

This "Naah, that's crap"/"No it isn't" discussion went on for a further five minutes, and was escalating to the point where the participants were bordering on the eating of arse...

Now..
Allow me to explain that one..

This has become the way, at least in this office, to say that you believe a statement completely, that you are 100% sure that what you are saying is factually correct, and is usually said in the terms of "Night follows Day and if that isn't true, I'll eat my own arse".  We have even seen a variation of the theme, where developer's have been heard to utter: "I'll fix that bug by the end of the day or I'll eat my own arse".  You'll no doubt be relieved to know that a precedent has been set that when the statement is proven to be complete bollocks (as it normally is) or the bug still isn't fixed (as it normally isn't), that the person who uttered the gibberish isn't actually expected to eat their own arse (as that would just be gross, icky and very impractical) but they instead reward the entire department with enough fresh cream & jam doughnuts to go round, so everyone's a winner in the end.  

Anyway, where was I?
Oh aye, yeah.. the debate was getting quite heated in the end as to whether St. George was actually St. George or was just plain old "George", when some bright spark hit upon the idea of using the internet to confirm or disconfirm the assertion that in the late sixties a number of Saints had been de-canonised..  And it turns out that it's actually true, that the Pope did indeed "downgrade" these Saints (and others, such as St. Ursula(?)) because they never existed in real life but were instead borne out of myth.  So there you have it, a serious theological discussion in this office. 

Wow.. 

And then someone let rip with a massive fart and told the funniest arse gag ever, and normal service was resumed..