Plus Ca Change*........

As I settled in for my morning coffee whilst perusing the latest offers of cheap viagra, new & improved penis enlargement techniques and an exciting new (and mysterious, unless I click on the kindly supplied link) product guaranteed to keep my woman satisfied in bed¹ that I receive like clockwork in my Mac email account², I ruminated upon possible titles for this post.

This is a trivia post, incidentally. 

I had initially considered something like: Name Changes, Ball-Sucking Continues. Not a very witty or brilliant one to be sure, but it's inclusion can only help people cotton on to the general class of performance we achieved last night more quickly than they otherwise would. Also, it helps google direct people looking for specialty porn to my site, so I just thought I'd add it³. The above title was settled upon instead to further my ongoing attempts to come across as a debonaire, witty, Oscar Wilde-type man of the world. I think we can all agree that this cause progresses nicely.

Anyhuckus, our night begins with your hero⁴ doing just that little bit of nail-biting. This owed itself to the fact that Sam and Geoff were, in order to get me to engage in such nail-biting, waiting around the corner until precisely 7:30 before entering the trivia-dome. Possibly that last was a lie, but that's how things seemed from my end. And if it's going to be me, Georff and Sam this week, I thought to myself, we're going to be the Gaussian Eliminators again, damn it. As it transpired, oh my brothers⁵, we did not bathe this name in glory. Adriana showed up slightly later, which made for a team four times the strength of last week's debacle. Unfortunately, this corresponded to a single goat-blighting point extra for fuck's sake. What, I am forced to ask myself, is the fucking point of it all?

So why, I hear you ask, did we suck so badly? Well, for one thing the puzzle page was harder this week and not just 4 easily recognisable characters/individuals . We got only 11/16. What really hurt us, though, was....... well, let me put it as follows. There was a real advantage to having Dave instead of me as el-capitano: Dave doesn't drink. This means that towards the end of the night his judgement doesn't get so appalling that the following scene might take place. You're given, as a five point bonus question, What Broadway Musical was based upon Puccini's  La Boheme?. Fitz agonises as follows: "Look, it's going to be something like Rent. Something like Rent..... shit what could it be....... I'm thinking of a musical like Rent...... Fuck ! Think people! Like Rent, OK!!!" .... and so on. We ended up not being able to think of such a musical, and the space was left sadly blank. The correct answer was Rent.

Other Notable Fuck-ups:

1. Which singer was placed in the boot of a car in an Eminem clip? Also a bonus question. Our thinking: "Dido", since she wrote the music he was rapping over in the clip. Our entered answer: Christina Aguilera. Our reasoning: "When you absolutely, positively have to have a skanky ho in your boot: accept no substitutes." I maintain we would not have found such reasoning persuasive sober. Dido was the fucking answer. 
2. Name the cocktail made of rum, lime juice and sugar named after a Cuban town? I immediately wrote "Daiquiri", knowing damn well that it is an originally Cuban cocktail the original ingredients of which are precisely: (white) rum, lime juice, sugar. We changed it to "Mojito". Why? Fucked if I know. Daiquiri was right.
3. What does a milliner make? My gut feeling "hats". Our answer: "linen". Same reasoning as in the last one. Hats was right.
4. Who wrote the Album Pet Sounds? I wrote down "The Pet Shop Boys", thinking it a good guess. Georff knew the correct answer to be the Beach Boys. It would have been nice, in hind-sight, if he'd fucking told me!!!!!

Notable Gets:

1. What is Mitch Buchannen's son's name in Baywatch? I'm not proud.....
2. What is the name of the mythical city of gold after which the spaniards lusted? Thank you Cities of Gold.
3. In what famous video series are college girls asked to take their tops off in exchange for cash? Thank you, Sam, for not only knowing the answer, but treating us to a long, drawn-out pre-amble of umm-ing and ah-ing that fooled no-one.

Notable questions we got wrong by virtue of just not knowing, the answers to which I'm sure some of you will get with laughable ease.... go on, you bastards, have a laugh

1. In what city will the next winter olympics be held? Go on, Dave/Martin. Laugh at the sports illiterate.
2. Name Othello's Wife One of those "shit, now people will realise I know a lot less Shakespeare than I'd like to pretend" moments, there. A bonus question, too.
3. Who will captain Australia in (I think) the next 20-20 match? Yeah, same commentary as before.....

Have fun. Over and out.

* I would just like to take this moment to voice my disgust at the terribly un-cultured status of Australian keyboards. Their failure to allow me to place the required cedilla on the "c" here fills me with a deep and abiding sense of shame in my countrymen.

¹Statistically speaking, I am informed, it is almost certain I'm just not doing it for her. I suspect the real reason here is that she doesn't exist.

²Seriously, though, I have to take my hat off to these spam-meisters. It took them ten minutes to discover this account had just been created, zero in on it and engage it in the email equivalent of carpet bombing. Bravo!

³ You probably don't want to read this footnote. I just thought I'd get some more google-whoring out of the way in an out of the way way, if you follow me. Ahem. titty fuck arse horny blow job donkey sex well-hung she-male goats on heat college girls who will do anything for a peanut nuts scrotum midgets midget sex porn porn star porn actress porn producer porn camera-man porn afficionado porn consumer porn distributor anti-porn protestor bondage S&M mistress whip who's been a naughty boy then bollocks right bollocking give the dog a bone wink wink.

⁴That would be me, just to forestall your smart-arsery. Smart-arsery being a word, incidentally, I would very much like to think found its way into a Dr Seuss book.

⁵Someone's been watching A Clock-work Orange recently...... by which I mean me. I'm not just parroting an obvious statistical near certainty.

I'd Like to Buy Some Tabouli (touch nose)

It has come to my attention that, on a regular basis, unknown individuals contact my place of work to place orders for large quantities of tabouli. I can only assume, since I work for a geostatistics consultancy, that this is an error on their part. I bring this up because it seems , to me, a little odd that tabouli is the only foodstuff they ever order. Never anything else. Never even any other type of salad. Just tabouli. Large quantities of tabouli.

This has led me to the inescapable conclusion that somewhere there exists a warehouse in which there is a phone manned by a tall unwashed hippy named Leon. Leon's associates, following (almost?) having their fingers burned over that unfortunate Schapelle Corby affair have happily discovered an alternate means by which to both package their goods and cloak telephone conversations with an air of legitimacy. They now deal in crates the top section of which contains a thin layer of tabouli. Beneath this layer, however, the crate is packed densely with ..... "tabouli".

In any case, if anyone out there is looking to score a large quantity of "tabouli", it may be fruitful to try a few likely mis-dialings of the number of my employer. You should be warned, however, that your efforts may in fact end in your possession of far more of an arabic salad dish than you could possibly hope to eat.

Ethel the Frog Rides Alone

I think we'll just draw a discrete veil over the double-entendre action in the title this time and just focus on the team name: Ethel the Frog. I had been of a mind yesterday that, whatever else we¹ might choose to name ourselves, Ethel the Frog was definitely out - carrying, as it does, a green, froggy curse. In this vein, other names I might well have chosen had been suggested to me. I thought of a few myself. There were a few factors which swayed my decision here, however. The first was an ominous silence in response to my last post, in addition to some cancellations from some of the more ...... reliable members of the team. As for the second, well, let's put it this way. Nothing, in the trivia world says "bend over, drop your pants and prepare to be boned" quite like the following 2 pieces of information:

1. This is grand final night you've walked into. Any team not in the top 5 could be drawn as the wild card to compete for the $1000 prize at the end. Hence every side brings both their A-team and as many warm bodies as they can muster.
2. You, on the other hand, came alone.

And if I'm going to be boned anyway, I thought to myself, I'm going to do it in style². I'm going to draw a big fat target on my arse and yell "Bring it on, Harry!" at the top of my lungs. I am, in short, going to call myself Ethel the Frog again, and damn the torpedos, sir.

In addition to the message of bonage, I felt that there were other little coded messages to be found in each round. The first round said, to everyone, "Sure, round one is usually a bit of a cake-walk, because in the event of a tie the prize-money jack-pots - which brings joe public back in search of that cheese. Tonight, however, is finals night. That jack-pot is going off, baby. This round is going to be hard". I came, I thought, rather respectably last on 10/16.

The second round, I felt, had a message specifically for me. The second round, for the uninitiated is always a music round. It is entirely song/artist recognition from fairly short sound-bytes. It is traditionally the lowest scoring round for most teams and, believe me sister, it's the lowest scoring round for us, too. Now, while round two hurts at the best of times, last night it was partitioned into three themed sections: B105, Triple M and 4BH Easy Listening. Harry was, I felt, sending a message exclusively to me, here. That message, dear reader, was as follows: "May God have mercy on your soul, little frog". I got 5/16 which, thanks to Harry's mercy rule, translated to 8/16. Two other teams got 8/16, too. God knows what they had originally.

Third round? Did O.K. here. Got 12/16 and beat 3 teams. I beat four teams in round four on a princely 10/16. This was a music-themed round and, frankly, I'm proud of not knowing some of the trashy answers I got wrong here. I got a perfect 16 on the puzzle page .... but so did every other team in the room. Of the four five-point bonus questions, however, I can't have beaten anybody. I got one right, for a score of 5/20 .... and that was the question Harry put up on the web. 61/100, people. Dead last. Did I get wild-card entry into the prize round? No. Would I have come even close to winning if I had? ....... no.

Notable Correct Answers:

1. What is the French word for cheese? Thank you, television.
2. The contestant from what country took out the Miss Universe title? Thank you ..... actually, how the fuck did I know that?
3. What airport corresponds to the initials LHR? Thank you wild guess.
4. What famous stunt-cyclist died recently at the age of sixty-something? Thank you person X for being the only famous stunt cyclist I could think of.
5. What West-End Musical is a re-modelling of the Puccini opera, Madame Butterfly? Thank you Leesa, for taking me to Madame Butterfly, meaning I knew the story well enough to guess the correct answer.

Notable Wrong Answers (of which there were many):

1. Insert random motor racing question here Christ, there were a lot of these.
2. Insert random crap musical sound-byte Oh, dear god, how this round hurt me.
3. In what sport do we get the quadruple Selchow (sic ?) Throw? This was a bonus question, too. I'll be impressed if you guess it correctly.
4. Where did the Spice Girls hold their first re-union concert? You're breaking my balls, here, Harry.
5. Who sang a cover version of "I got you babe" with UB40? Hint: It wasn't Cher.

Anyways, the thought has occurred to me that a lack of attendance was, in light of disclosures on my previous Ethel the Frog post, a bald-faced attempt by people to get me blogging trivia again. Bastards.

¹An odd choice of pronoun, as it happens.

²Also probably not quite the right word.....

Random Thoughts

Hello, and welCOME to this latest instalment of my blog. This current post is destined TO be, I think, probably the winner in that most competitive of categories: pointless, TRIVIAl posts to be found on my blog.

This state of affairs owes itself either to the fact that I feel I have nothing much to write about, or to the fact that I feel I should be writing something ON this blog at the MOment rather than actually feeling like writiNgtoDAY, as such. I haven't decided which yet. Anyways, currently in the news we do have, of course, the story about that poor little teddy bear named Muhammed who's gone and caused such a lot of trouble in the Sudan. While I almost feel duty-bound to write on such a silly story¹, I rather feel that its ridiculousness sells itself a little too easily. It doesn't need my help, and the only thing I can think to add are the following two suggestions:

1. That the class in question correct this hienous act of blasphemy by re-naming the bear "Satan".
2. That the peoples of the rest of the world (this includes YOU, dear reader) henceforward adopt the custom of naming all stuffed toys after some prominent religious figure chosen at random.

Also making the news is Brendan Nelson's newfound status as leader of the Liberal (note use of capitals) party. On this I would say the following: to date, I have actually rather liked Kevin Rudd for precisely the reasons a number of conservatives have dis-liked him: I suspect that he may actually be the wolf-in-sheep's clothing they make him out to be (I knowingly I await my eventual dis-illusionment and slide to dependancy on the bottle and crack-cocaine on this front). Well, actually, that and because he beat John Howard .... and frankly, there were times there when, were I offered the choice between voting for John Winston Howard or Adolf Hitler, well, this would have been a serious moral dilemma for me². Anyways, Brendan, on the other hand, seems more of a BASTARD in warm-and-fuzzy-pillock'S clothing to me. In all honesty, this commentary has only really been inserted as the easiest way I could think of to throw in a use of the word "bastard".... but I do more OR less stand by it.
Hmmm.... possibly I'm stretching this out a bit too much now..... so fuck it: WILL CLAIM YOUR FIRST-BORN.

¹Which seems perhaps a little less silly if you happen to be either the British teacher caught up in the furore .... or one of those frighteningly large number of people in the Sudan who actually give a fuck about what a small class of children calls their teddy bear. Human history would be considerably less bloody if more people had a well-developed sense of the ridiculous. Ah, well.
² "Dilemma" is not really the right word here..... I know of a better word, but I just can't remember it. It can be found in Douglas Adams' Deeper Meaning of Liff and has the following meaning: "A situation in which you have only one choice, but you can't take it".

Ethel the Frog Goes Down.

It occurs to me upon writing the above that I've just hit upon a wonderful title for that woefully under-represented genre of literature: porn for children. Sadly, such an opus must wait for other hands more capable than mine. This post is about trivia on monday instead. Those of you who find themselves now too disappointed with life to go on may excuse themselves quietly.

....................

Some portion of those of you who have not leapt out the nearest available window are perhaps wondering why I have not done this before, given my prior role as Red Room Trivia correspondent for Team Gauss - as relinquished by Dave for reasons of difficulties in commuting¹. But what, dear reader, would I have said? In all preceding weeks, we've done alright. Not brilliantly, not appallingly - just alright. Unfortunately, this blog is exclusively reserved for tales of mediocrity I can get completely and irrationally incensed about - and in the case of a mediocre trivia performance....... I'm sorry, I just can't do it. NO², my friends, when it comes to trivia there are but two reasons to blog about it:

1. You kick arse.
2. You suck balls.

Have a guess, given the following hint, which one occurred to us on monday. Our team name was Ethel the Frog. 

Being a team of 2 1/2 members³, no-one could have really been expecting great things from us, exactly, it's true. Given that we've never done so before, however, I at least felt just that little bit disappointed when we came in stone, cold motherless last on 63 points.

What really let us down here were the big fat juicy points we missed out on from the puzzle page and the bonus section. On the former, we correctly named an octagon, a dodecagon and found the only English anagram for noiseless. We kicked ourselves⁴, however, for missing the only english anagram for aspirant. The bonus round (each worth 5 points) went as follows:

1. What country, out of China, Brazil and South Africa, makes 70% of the world's light-bulbs? Our thought process: South Africa: too stupid, China: too obvious, Brazil: just right. I even went into a long, drawn-out justification: what country surely uses more light-bulbs than any other? The U.S.A. - hence a major manufacturing centre in Brazil makes a hell of a lot of sense........ bzzzzzzt China was correct.
2. In what U.S. state is Fort Knox? This one was the question Harry had posted on-line, which I'd neglected to check like a big fat dufus. My thought process: In Goldfinger, they rob Fort Knox. I distinctly remember James Bond drinking Mint Juleps whilst being held captive. The Mint Julep is the signature drink of the Kentucky Derby. Let's answer Kentucky. Hmmm.... why would you put a big gold-filled fort in Kentucky? Let's go with a big state.... like Texas. O.K. Texas it is....... the answer was Kentucky!!!!!!!
3. What element, once common in hat-making, was responsible for inducing madness: hence the phrase "as mad as a hatter"? This one we got right.
4. Who successfully covered the song "Up-town Girl" in 2000 and something? I feel we should have gotten full marks for our answer: "trick question - this song cannot be successfully covered". Harry felt otherwise.

In other news, I was kind of impressed with my recognition of song and title: The Gambler by Kenny Rogers in the music round. I got this not out of any special love of country music, which I assure you I lack, but because they play it ad-nauseam at every fucking poker final I've ever been to⁵. It's nights like these that seriously cause me to question my status as a trivia god. You, and you only, dear reader, can prevent a repeat of this ignominy by coming to monday trivia..... and maybe reminding me to check Harry's web-site for that damn bonus question.

¹By virtue of his being in France.

² I like big letters. I also like shiny objects, and footnotes.

³ We had a 3rd member who stayed for 1/2 the night.

⁴Hmmm... or rather Adriana kicked me.

⁵ Actually, me and a friend of mine are in the habit of standing up from our allocated tables in a hands-on-heart salute. This is a lie. Actually, we meant to do so, but what actually ended up happening was as followed: I stood up, looked for my friend, who didn't, then made like I was stretching my legs or something and sat down like a pansy.

Kevin 07

November 24, 2007. The day on which the Australian people collectively said of the previous decade:

WHAT THE FUCK WERE WE THINKING?

Ode to a Nondescript Bird.

Every now and then we can have our lives drastically affected by outwardly minor events. Tiny happenstances, chance meetings or non-meetings which incrementally adjust the lens through which we see the world - taking a hazy, chaotic mess and leaving our sight clear if only for a precious fleeting moment. It could be a small, nondescript bird that flies into the cell of some prisoner locked in solitary confinement in some black pit of a dungeon somewhere that reminds him of a greater world that still exists outside his own torment. It could be a trusted friend informing us that it really isn't as socially acceptable as we had heretofore assumed to wear our underwear on our head. I am here today to inform you, dear reader, that I, too, was touched in such a way over the weekend. At precisely 19:35 on friday night I recieved the following text message from an unknown sender:

Are you fuckers coming or what?

The profundity of these words I have even now, quite frankly, failed to adequately come to terms with. There is, I feel, something in them for all of us as we sit here awaiting the outcome of today's pivotal federal election. Are we fuckers coming........ or what? or what, you fools? Only once before now have I been so affected by a mis-sent text message. This occured to me a little under a year ago when I recieved the following two messages involving three individuals who, in order that their identitys be left protected, I shall refer to as Scrotum, Wench and Slapper. The first went as follows:

Hey there scrotum im slapper younger sister. WENCH IM 20 N I HEAR YOU LOOKIN 4 A
GIRL FRIEND. GIVE ME A CALL TONIGHT. HOPE YOU DIDNT MIND SR¹ GIVING
ME UR NUMBER.

It was shortly followed by the following message:

Scrotum its sr¹ sis wench, id like to meet u my sister says ur a
really nice guy! send me a txt..

Needless to say, it has to this day been a great source of sadness and regret to me that I could not, at the time, think of a suitably pithy way to tell the hapless Scrotum, Wench and Slapper just how much their situation had touched my life and, of course, to inform Wench that she had the wrong fucking number². I do not wish, dear reader, to live with such regrets as regards Senor Are you fuckers coming or what? His or her words were simply too deep and world changing to go unheeded and unthanked. Should anyone reading this feel the need to thank this person³, just let me know and I'll send you their number.

¹This is intended to be a 2-word abbreviation of Slapper. A fact more apparent when real names are being used.

² I briefly considered pretending to be Scrotum, but this seemed kind of cruel, even by my standards ....... and also more than a little creepy.

³ Preferrably in a cryptic, non-sensical manner.

On Why The Dentist Must Die

O.K. So, it's occured to me that my blog has essentially become the blog about nothing. I've eased off adding to it of late, perhaps hoping to have something meaty, deep and profound to add. Instead, all I really have to report is that over the last two weeks or so I have developed a messianic hatred of the dentist on the other side of the wall from my desk. This is perhaps a lie. Not the hatred bit - that's perfectly true¹- but I suppose I could be reporting other things also. There is, as it happens for instance, a very good hole-in-the-wall cafe just down the road I discovered in the last week which completely invalidates my previous post². This has left me happy that I can now purchase a hot liquid that leaves me convinced, upon tasting it, that it was derived originally from coffee beans and not the testicles of a diseased rodent. This has also made me a bit annoyed that I've lost a perfectly good topic to rant about³.

Another important milestone in my life I feel I should tell you all about is my discovery of the curried prawn pie, which can be purchased from a dodgy-looking pie⁴ shop a few metres away from the office. The curried prawn pie is, I feel, an invention of genious⁵ to rival that of the wheel, sliced bread and the baby's dummy⁶. I mean, seriously, think about it. Firstly, prawn meat is a hell of a lot tastier than the usual pie-filling fare. But the real kicker is the curried nature of the pie. A major problem with your standard meat pie is that they are expected to be an in-expensive food-stuff and are yet also expected to be filled with beef which is, nowadays, not actually that cheap. So how does the vendor make a profit? By filling the pie with those portions of the cow that John West Rejected, that's how. The curried prawn pie on the other hand is filled with a few prawns and a cheap, presumably vegetable-based curry-sauce type filling infused with a prawny flavour. I mean, seriousy people - GENIOUS⁷. You get your cheap much tastier pie safe in the knowledge that you're not eating intestine and hoof.

Anyways, back to the dentist. I am convinced that it has become his purpose in life to drive me insane⁸. The man's waiting room lies, as I have previously mentioned, just on the other side of the wall against which the monitor I spend my rather dreary day staring at sits. He plays really loud music into this waiting room. Music which is generally of such a calibre as I am convinced he does it to convince his patients that the experience of their scheduled root-canal is actually downright pleasant by comparison. The patients, however, get to leave⁹. I, on the other hand, have to stay there all fucking day. I ask you, dear reader, is there a jury in the land that would convict me for his long, drawn-out murder? Well, O.K. so yes, yes there is. Probably all of them, come to that. Since I may be forced to do it anyway, I'd just like to put in a request to any interested party that they act as a character witness at my trial. Thanks.

¹I'm actually considering arranging subtle hints to Lorenz that it was the dentist in question, and not I, who ate his noodles then letting nature take its course. Well that, or bursting into his office with an axe yelling "here's Johnny!". Helena should take this as a subtle hint to re-send the Stanley Kubrick quiz link on facebook, as I've just decided I'll give it a try. She should take the previous sentence as an explicit request to that end.

² Though not all of it, in as much as statistics didn't suddenly get interesting overnight. Actually, there is a rather interesting post to be had in elaborating on just what exactly I've come to realise the purpose of my current post is. I'll leave this as a 'Gabbo is coming' style teaser to hide the fact that the revelation in question, when it comes, would have otherwise not really been all that interesting if you were to sit down and think about it for too long.

³I've actually considered, in my idle moments (of which there are many) whether or not it might be a good idea to burn this cafe to the ground. I'm also just now considering whether or not I should shoot for a post in which most of the content is to be found in the footnotes. As to the former consideration, I rather think my motivation may be a little difficult to adequately communicate in a court of law. As to the latter..... we'll see how it goes, yeah?

⁴ I say this, of course, not to denigrate the pie shop. Decent pies cannot, in my experience, be purchased from non-dodgy-looking pie shops. Note the gratuitous attempt here to get footnote text to over-take main text.

⁵This misspelling has been deliberately left uncorrected to allow me to place another footnote.

⁶ The ultimate in a win-win situation. You want the baby to shut the fuck up, and the baby wants to suck something. Seriously, the dummy is a work of genius. And why the fuck am I trying so hard here, anyways? The footnotes are clearly ahead.

⁷ This time I've purposefully misspelled the word for the same reasons the last instance of it was left uncorrected.

⁸ I rather think he's not the only person I know who's adopted this goal either, lately.

⁹ Luck bastards. This probably really should have been placed in the main text, hey? Also, the previous sentence was clearly unnecessary. As was the last one. Oh, and that one too. Maybe I'm taking this footnote thing too far......

Coffee and Statistics

People seem to spend an awful lot of their lives looking for stuff. For the most part, you might say people are looking for love, power or distraction. I, on the other hand, perhaps deciding that the first two items on this list will forever elude me¹ ...... actually, fuck ....... hang on. If I'm going to include such a big, pervasive category as 'distraction' I may as well forget the other two, hey? More importantly, the completion of the sentence "I, on the other hand,..." becomes stupid and banal because whatever the fuck follows is almost certainly a member of the "distraction" category² and hence my poignant little opening just collapses under its own weight. Ah, Shit. Oh, well, so accepting that the last few moments spent reading this post represent time wasted you'll never get back (sorry), let's just proceed with more of the let-down and say that much of my free time in the last week has been spent in a search for coffee.

Now that, I'm sure you're thinking, is a pretty stupid thing to spend too much time looking for. They sell the stuff in every supermarket in the country, it's one of the most widely consumed beverages on the planet and it's difficult to be placed at random in any moderately inhabited locale in the country without being within a few hundred metres of some cafe or eaterie claiming to be able to sell you an espresso. The problem is, dear reader, that when it comes to the set of cafes and eateries within walking distance of my current place of work these claims are lies!!!! Ask for a long black³ at any such establishment near me and what you get is this brackish liquid that smells vaguely like coffee but tastes like really bad tea - and frankly if black coffee doesn't induce a slight pain behind my left eye, well I'd say the vendor has failed in their contract with me, the consumer. And I mean it's not as though espresso machines are cheap, so how hard can it be to hire one fucking person who knows how to use the thing? Hmm? I mean I could bloody well do it if they'd just see fit to set up a coin-operated do-it-yourself machine..... actually, that's a really good idea..... I'll squirrel that away along with my plans to manufacture party tooter thingies⁴ that sound like an elephant and have an extension that looks like an elephant's trunk......... O.K. so, maybe this isn't the wisest thing to be worried about at present what with global warming and an imminent federal election and all, but I think we've all established by now that I'm a terribly petty person who gets rather worked up over small things. That, or possibly this is a lie and I just do it for effect. Who can say?

Anyways, on the statistics half of things (what I seem to be spending most of my non-free time on at the moment....). Does it strike anyone else as terribly odd that statistics is generally so very boring? I mean, take probability theory to start with. I mean, this is basically measure theory and analysis, right? Nothing wrong with those, and in any case I've gone and done courses in probability theory and I've found it to be a perfectly interesting subject. So now consider the idea of applying probability theory to the independent world around you. This is, philosophically, really rather interesting too. This is kind of foundational meta-science type stuff in the same way as set theory and logic can be thought of as meta-mathematics. And yet, when you move on to the class of stuff taken as falling under the umbrella category of 'statistics' which is, essentially, just applied probability theory, well, it all seems so dull and I'm buggered if I can work out why this should be so.

¹go on, cue the violins you bastards

²And, in point of fact, it will be

³ I've never been game to ask for a short one.

⁴ You know the ones I'm talking about. You blow on them and get a 'toot' sound, while pneumatically extending this colourful paper thing.

"Oh the humanity", or what I remember of wine and cheese

Well, first of all, I was reminded last night that I haven't blogged the last Red Room Trivia, so lets just warm my wine-pickled brain up by recalling that to you now. This was the last red-room trivia for the year and it was (and let's be fair to it) completely crap. This is more than mere sour grapes on account of the fact that we didn't win. Anyone failing to notice, by virtue of Rupert's novelty sombrero, that there was to be a theme should probably have cottoned on when they got their answer sheet. This was a photocopy of a hand-scrawled job with "Gringo Trivia" written on the top, two columns and "horizontal" lines about as straight as Molly Meldrum. Rupert, however, feeling that the point had not been sufficiently well made announced that it was to be a Spanish-themed trivia. This was unfortunate for me given that, when it became apparent we had put the wrong nationality for South American Paulo Coelho, the night's theme lent me sufficient confidence to bet Geoff $10 that we could at least be sure that the answer wasn't Brazillian. This was not a wise investment ladies and gentlemen. So not only is this son of a bitch responsible for The Alchemist, he went and lost me $10. Anyways, Two rounds of ten questions became two rounds of 5 instead¹ . So, how do we sum up this, the last Red Room trivia for the year? I'm inclined to paraphrase T.S. Eliot myself: This, my friends, is the way trivia ends, not with a bang, but a whimper. Were the comic book guy from the Simpsons present, we might instead say WORST. TRIVIA. EVER. Perhaps we said it best, though, with our answer to the question "What is the English translation of 'Naranja'?". We wrote the following:

Naranja: "So, this is the way trivia dies. To thunderous applause...."

Which, I feel, also gets across our nerd credentials.

Anyways...... to get back to the original post title. Wine and cheese. Why oh why, dear reader, do we look forward so to this event? A mathematics department wine and cheese night sounds superficially so very civilised. "Sure," we seem to be saying "like many departments we see fit to hold an end-of-semester get-together. However, unlike yours, ours is no mere seedy booze-up. No Sir. We hold a wine and cheese night at which members of an intellectual elite sample fine wine and cheeses whilst discussing sundry philosophical difficulties with the axiom of choice." In fact, it is of course the case that the MSS wine and cheese night differs from your average seedy booze-up only in as much as there's more cheese involved, and in that probability of hearing the phrase "mathematician celebrity head" is significantly higher.

Attendance seemed lower than last semester to me, and we were a little worried that it wasn't going to be a real wine and cheese night anyway on account of how....... hmmm.... a small digression is in order here. So as to avoid naming too many names un-necessarily I'm going to institute a coding system and the lecturer in question here shall be code named "Mrs Robinson". Most of you will know who I'm talking about. Anyways we were a little worried that it wasn't going to be a real wine and cheese night on account of how Mrs Robinson took a while to show up and at first didn't appear to be drinking. Luckily, this state of affairs did not persist. It was, to be certain, something of a shame that "Dustin Hoffman" had at this point left, but before too long Mrs R. was crawling around, throwing a tennis ball at people and throwing water all over Claire - so there was a happy ending on that front at least. I remember the night finishing with a group of us climbing onto the roof of the maths building and, rather predictably I suppose, urinating over the side². I also remember sundry trips into the strange, strange mind of Mary Waterhouse. Apart from that the reader can probably fill in most of the remaining blanks themselves from the last booze-up they attended. I'm just going to go and lie down now......

¹ My cries of "why not one round of ten with two prizes given out Rupert? Can't we end this farce now?" went sadly unheeded.

²you'd be amazed how far you can reach

Who has the right to be glib here - Marty McFly or Emmett Brown?

Right. So. I was watching Back to the Future III recently. Now, call me petty, and what with the plethora of other time-travel paradoxes just kind of overlooked in said movie you'd be justified in so doing - but I have a quibble Mr Zemeckis!! On two separate occasions Marty is jibed glibly with not thinking 4th dimensionally by the Doc - on the first he's afraid of smacking into a wall that didn't exist at the point in time where he's going, and the second time of running off of a bridge not yet constructed when travelling 100 years into the future. Now, as with most people, my tendency was, once again, to sit back and laugh smugly at the hapless Mr McFly and think to myself "ah, Marty.... what a dufus". But is this really fair ladies and gentlemen? If I were to say to you "This delorean is a time machine - it will take you back in time only when you get to 88 miles per hour". Supposing you then travel back two months. Is there not a case to be made that if you arrive at the same point in space, but at a different time you'll end up in the vacuum of space? Is it not at least a little surprising that the delorean seamlessly ends up on the future (completed) version of the bridge at which it reaches 88 mph in 1885? Hmm? I think Marty raises a reasonable concern. Pointless post over and out.

Gaussian Eliminators\{Dave} play trivia again. Did we win? Read to find out. Or alternately you could just scan the bolded text. Your call, buddy.

I should probably open this with a few brief notes. Firstly, that there have been two trivias since my last post. Some of you, such individuals being distinguishable from the general populace by virtue of being BASTARDS, know about the first such trivia but chose not to attend. I'm not bitter or anything, but be warned that my friends in the Russian mafia may have misconstrued certain .......remarks......... I made in the heat of the moment and may remove your spleen. I have it on good authority¹, however, that you can live without one - so hey, what's a spleen between friends? Feel free to come next week, assuming you're over the surgery by then. I didn't blog monday's trivia as seems to have become customary for these things as I have had various other things on my mind in the interem - one of which being that I have now aquired a proper maths-type job (this is to say a job attained because of, rather than in spite of a first class honours in mathematics - yay me). Also, my potential supervisor for next year looks an awful lot like John Bunnett. As the reader can imagine, this has caused me some angst.

A few things of note in Monday's trivia that I will mention are as follows. Martin may remember a "nerd-off" we had about who'd kick the other's arse in a Tolkein round². Well, apparently the question "to which mountain were Frodo and Sam taking the one ring"? was, based on wrong answers, the hardest question in round three. Talk about dufuses. We kind of missed having anyone who knew or cared anything about sport questions, though, giving the answer 10³⁸⁶:1 in disgust when asked for the results to some sporting match no-one could be expected to care about. Oh, actually, this question's kind of interesting: What was strange/special/of note about the Australian national cricket team that toured England in 1868? We wrote "they were all English". This was wrong, but the correct answer is along these lines. As a test to see whether or not anyone actually pores over the mindless trash I spit out into the great void of the WWW, I'll leave that as an exercise to the reader.

Now, on to last night's trivia at the Red Room. We felt, in many ways, short-changed last night. For one thing, recent recruit Tim defected to some random team we'll just refer to as the Judas Turn-coats. For another, Rupert, declared that there'd only be three rounds this week. Helping us swallow these bitter pills, however, were the following two happenstances: 1. Chris turned out to be marking Tim's Phys2100 assignment at the time - so Tim, if you're out there buddy, imagine I'm talking like a crusty English gangster from Snatch when I say: "It's a shame what can happen to a Phys2100 assignment when the marker isn't too careful, my son". Oh, and 2. As it happened, we were ahead at the end of round three anyways, so We won, bitches!!!!! It must have been pretty close, though, because there were two teams 1/2 a point ahead of us and one team 1 point ahead of us just prior to this round - and we scored a perfect 10 when two other teams tied for 9. Anyways, we don't have to pay for beer next week either.

Possibly the reason for Rupert's cutting trivia short was because he knew there would be a mock-wedding between a representative of King's college and a woman's college a comin' to the read room. This mock-wedding differed from a real one in as much as A) it wasn't legally binding, B) there was even more alcohol involved, and C) it was basically a frat party. Someone had gone to the trouble of making matching tight-fitting white shirts for, I guess the bridesmaids (of which there were, oh I don't know, 100) on which they were writing such witty aphorisms as Tits out for the drought³, Huck me Fard and I am a cum hungry slut. We joked as to what we, being witty maths-nerds, would have written on said shirts instead. Geoff's response involved the petersen graph. Mine involved the pigeon-hole principle. Man, we're funny. Anyways, notable questions and suchlike........

Notable correct answers:

1. What movie, in 1985, represented Madonna's screen debut? I gained us a point here, but lost the respect of the table.
2. What is a Haboob? O.K. so, a clue is that this was in the Weather and Climate round in which we scored a perfect 10. We originally thought the point was down to Rupert's thinking the answer "a boob only 1/3 as funny as a hahahaboob" as funny as only we could have, assisted as we were by a largish amount of beer. Actually, it was down to the fact that I scribbled a footnote saying "or maybe a/an X" - where X is the correct answer - proving once again that teams who don't have the word "Gaussian" in their team name suck balls.

Notable incorrect answers

1. What city held the world cup in 1986 after being devastated by an earth-quake?
2. What musician's birth-name was 'Decland McManus'?
3. Who sang the 1980 hit 'I am a woman in love'? and for bonus marks, perhaps you could compile a brief list of who the fuck cares, anyway.

¹An episode of Doc Martin. It was a good episode, though, so I think we're in the clear.

²The answer to that question was "me", incidentally. I'm not proud.

³While we commended the young lady's commitment to help out in this national emergency, we were divided as to whether or not this represented an effective response.

I'm βringing Sεxy βack

Sam introduces himself on his blog as "Sexy Mathematician Sam". Sadly, however, if we exclude the laudable Hot Mathematician website and, of course, Sam's questionable characterisation of himself - it would appear that the web is not altogether kind to us when it comes to appreciating the raw, unbridled sexual power of the mathematics community¹.

It is time to redress this imbalance. I propose, dear reader², that we hereby compile a list of candidates in a quest to uncover the the sexiest mathematician of all time a-la Dave's classic and terribly popular 'what's your favourite cardinal?' poll³. You can nominate yourself if you like, and yes, Martin, you can nominate Victor.

I wish to propose the following two candidates.

Geralomo Cardano , of Cardano's Method fame - a method which has the dual distinctions of 1 Victor Scharashkin's actually expecting us to remember the fucking thing on a 4th year Galois theory exam⁴ and 2 not really being Cardano's anyway. Apart from his dashing good looks, debonair smile and raw animal magnetism he has the following to commend him as a hard-drinking, hard-living, devil-may-care hornbag:

1. After wheedling the general solution to the cubic from his friend with the promise not to tell anyone else, he promptly published it.
2. He was a professional gambler who published posthumously a book on, amongst other things, effective cheating methods.
3. He was convivted of Heresy, with his own son contributing to the prosecution.
4. Having predicted astrologically the date of his own death, he killed himself on said day.

If I had my druthers (I'm bringing back the word "druthers" too, incidentally) the young and hip would be wearing the visage of Cardano, not Che Guevara proudly on their chest^5.
Kurt Gödel , the man himself. And when I say "the man", I mean this in the sense of "who's the man?" Kurt's the man. As I go through the following I challenge you, ladies, to tell me you wouldn't hit that.

1. He looked like a relative of Count Dracula.
2. He married a night-club dancer. Up high, Kurt.
3. He proved results which ran counter to, not only the entire generation of which he was a part, but pretty much everyone who went before him.
4. Not only did he proved the mutual exclusiveness of the completeness and consistency of formal arithmetic on upwards - he did so by inserting into formal arithmetic an analogue of the statement "this statement is unprovable" - leading one to the inescapable conclusion that people were uncomfortable about his work not due to point 3., but because no-body likes a smart-arse.
5. When being naturalised as a U.S. citizen he lectured the judge on the U.S. constitution and explained to him a loop-hole he'd found while Albert Einstein sat in the background saying "It's allright,........he's with me".
6. He was completely, irretrievably insane - dying of starvation presumably because he thought that ghosts lived in his fridge.
7. Whenever asked the question "What are you rebelling against?", he'd always answer with an Arnold-Schwarzenegger like voice "Vat Haf You Got".

Over to you.......

¹Clio Cresswell doesn't, doesn't count.

²And I probably really do mean "reader" - singular, here.

³I still go with aleph₁ . There's something I can relate to in the least cardinal in a state of identity crisis.
⁴Bastard!!!!!
⁵ Having bought said shirt at some trendy expensive boutique and failed to appreciate the irony

Whatever Happened to MC Pooh?

Find here a truly awe-inspiring collection of album covers ben assures me are real.

Man sentenced in 'pride' killing of ostrich

See here. I don't know which is greater - my dissapointment that this was (apparently) not a bizarre case of an islamic honour killing which would imply some pretty wierd shit going down with two men and an ostrich - or my joy that the Ostrich's name was "Gaylord".

Either way, you really have to feel sorry for the ostrich. Seven months seems kind of light to me. People who would do something like this over such a petty matter should probably be where other people aren't for a very long time.


Veni Vino Vici

That's right people, we came, we drank, we conquered¹. The relevant Gaussian Eliminators \ {Dave} statistics now stand as follows:

Trivia nights entered: 2
Trivia nights won in a spectacular display of PWNAGE: 2

Turnout was at possibly the highest it's been all year (I think about 11). We were joined early on by some random Law student who, we subsequently discovered, was only there in an attempt to steal our mojo (bitch!!). Later arrivals included a biology student and friend who awarded Sam with a high-five for being a Jew² - something he assures us happens all the time.

There were many heroes in our team last night. All were impressed and, yes, just that little bit scared by Claire's encyclopedic knowledge of Winnie the Poo, for instance. But for my money, the nights' paragon of awesome was - much as it pains me to say this - Nick. We were awarded a total of 2 unjustified points this evening - a 1/2 mark for answering "Soul-brother Rupert" to a question about some soul singer shot at the age of 33 (the correct answer being "Sam Cook") - another 1/2 for stating that the name of the strip-club from the movie Striptease was "Scores, New York" (thanks Chris). The remaining point we owe to Nick. The question asked for the title of the song to which David Brent from The Office, danced in a well-known scene. We didn't know the answer but pledged that, if awarded the point, Nick would re-create the scene for the viewing ...... pleasure(?)...... of the Red Room. Let's just say that we got that point, baby. And Nick, if you're out there, there ain't no-body except Harry Kinsman himself would have been able to out-impersonate you at a sad middle-aged middle-management exec dancing appallingly to Disco Inferno. You go, girl.

We scored 28 over-all (including a perfect ten the tie break being one by us when Nick out-skulled two competitors proving that those years spent in College weren't a complete waste of time). Next closest team: 25. I kind of wish it was at least 26, though, given the above.

(Other) Notable Correct Answers:

1. What fruit goes by the latin name Ribus-Nigum? Thankyou, Ribena, the correct answer was, indeed, blackcurrant.
2. On What River was Babylon on? Tigris, no Euphrates, no Tigris, no,........ Euphrates!!!!
3. What City means, in Arabic, "Sanctuary"? Mecca, no Medina, no Mecca, no ......... Mecca!!!!!!
4. What was the name of the Wood in which Winnie the Pooh lived? See previous comments about Claire. Not only did she know the wood's name - she knew the entire back-story of the naming process.

Notable Incorrect Ones:

1. What is Limnophobia a fear of? Surprisingly, the answer is not a fear of the island of Limnos. And, incidentally, in the cold light of sobriety I now think that the island I was thinking of was "Lemnos", anyway.
2. What is the collective noun for a group of wood-peckers? Hint: it isn't a "Peck"
3. What band, when asked to mime on Top of the Pops in 1977 performed with their guitar strings removed in protest? We answered the Sex Pistols. Again in the cold light of sobriety, it occurs to me that while we were right on the money in thinking that this would be something the Sex Pistols would do - what the cock would they be doing on Top of the Pops?
4. What part of the Sphinx is, according to some emininent engineer whose name escapes me, likely to fall of by the year X - X being a number not much greater than 2007? The correct answer is not "The Beard". The correct answer is, in fact, the head. The entire goat-blighting head, no less.
   

¹To the reader now inclined to point out that the actual translation of the post title from the latin is more like "I came, wine, I conquered" - you are cordially invited to go and fuck yourself.

²Yay team Zion!!!!

A Brief Message For Geoff

COCK

An elaborate form of petty theft

People who know me know that I have various modest goals in life. I'd like to be the first person to circum-navigate the moon on a pogo stick. I'd like to beat Gary Kasparov at a game of Battleship.¹ I'd like to actually finish reading Don Quixote. I'd like to organise for Kevin Andrews to be made a contestant on the next episode of Survivor: Africa and, further down the line, I'd like to take that stab at world domination - preferrably in a manner involving an elaborate extortion scheme and a death-ray in space. These are all long-term goals, but in the mean-time I think it'd be cool to be able to steal people's wallets by hypnotism. This last goal, apparently, is eminently achieveable. All manner of further hijinks can be found by typing in "Derren Brown" to Youtube. Apparently he has a show on UK tv.

¹ I don't know if anyone got this reference to a scene from Bill and Ted's Bogus Journey parodying a scene from The Seventh Seal, but I totally dug it.

The Australian is Jerking my Chain, Here.......

Alright. So, if you go to The Australian blogs page today you'll find the words Biased? Don't take our word for it next to a picture of Janet Albrechtsen. What is The Australian trying to do to me here? Again, this one is just the title of her latest blog. Way to dash a guy's hopes, Oz.

In other news, Kevin Andrews has left us all asking the question "Is this an attempt at Tampa mark 2, or is Kevin Andrews really that big of a dufus?" I'm inclined to go with "dufus", myself whatever the answer to the first half of that question is. Don't get me wrong, I'm sure he hopes this will help in the upcoming election, he just seems to have forgotten that it's middle-easteners on boats that scare the living shit out of Australians. Note to Kevin: If you're going to bad-mouth an entire ethnic group for shits and giggles, in this day and age, it's just not a good look if they're all black. People would have been totally cool with it if you'd decided to pick on Lebanese people or something.

In other other news, my dreams of constructing, from scratch, my ideal woman a-la cheesy 80s science fiction flick Wierd Science just got one step closer to reality. Yay for me.

Oh, and also, I've gone and deleted this site from my list of links on the blog-roll. Technically, there's a day left of voting but I think the writing is on the wall. Unfortunately, I didn't include another option "I have no opinion either way, but don't feel that Fitz should get his hand off it either" - so for now, at least, the hand stays on.

Looks like I got out just in time......

Alright, so I know we all appreciated that extra point on the "20-sided die" question at trivia on wednesday. And while I, at least, probably wouldn't have got that question right but for having a misspent childhood involving pretending to be a dwarf with a silly germanic name on weekends, whose interests included mead, his +3 axe of awesomeness and picking up bearded dwarf chicks on his sweet, sweet, chariot......... I have only just now come to realise that this victory in trivia could have come at a terrible price.

I guess it's just lucky that no witches coven came for me.

Gaussian Eliminators \ {Dave} undefeated.

O.K. So the following report is appearing to you, the reader before you see
the comments that appeared before the report. It's all very Star Wars episode
IV. So let's just pretend that report and comments make sense together and leave
it at that, shall we?

Hello. So this is me, Fitz, filling in for Dave as the official trivia correspondant answering to the need of you Joe Public, the little people, to have constant up-to-date information as to the trials and tribulations of a (sometimes) small and (sometimes) dedicated team of University of Queensland maths-department affiliates who see fit to play an awful lot of trivia. Well last night the team was neither small nor dedicated. We weren't even calling ourselves the Gaussian Eliminators exactly - but we won, god damn it, we won.

After inital suggestions that we name ourselves The Gaussian Eliminated Dave, we instead adopted the far less nasty, far more nerdy title you see above you. So why was this team so successful? Some said it was because we culled the Dave Barry dead weight (the author would, of course, like to acknowledge that this comment is grossly unfair - partly because Dave did, of course, tend to answer a lot of questions, but mostly because he'll be reading this post. Incidentally, if anyone knows how to insert footnotes on a blog post, I'd appreciate your letting me know. In the meantime, if the reader could imagine that the text within these brackets is in the more aesthetically appealing form of a footnote, the author would appreciate it. Thank you.). Some said it was down to our two new recruits. Some said it was because Nick saw fit to drag his arse from the minor human catastrophe that is the current state of his honours thesis and join our team. Well, actually, Nick said this at any rate, and we're all sure he had a point. Mostly, though, I'd like to put it down to our answering more questions correctly than any other team. Our final score was 32 1/2. Our nearest competitor scored 30. That's right team 30 points, if that is your real name: you were PWNED.

Our notable incorrect answers were as follows (correct answers to which, if not given here for comedic effect, can be found in subsequent commentry if anyone actually cares):

1. What country's first government was headed by Henry Sewell in 1856? We put "South Africa". We was dufuses.
2. What does W.A.P. stand for in the context of mobile phones? This one is notable, since we managed to get it wrong at the last Staff Club trivia also. We got a 1/2 mark, though.
3. What percentage of the population of the Northern Territory identifies itself as indigenous? O.K. so Rupert gave everyone the clue that it was somewhere between 10% and 40%. We answered, incorrectly, 35%. This was notable because we should have listened to Geoff when he said that Rupert, bless his simple soul, would have selected those bounds such that the correct answer was precisely half way between them. He was right. The answer Rupert wanted was 25%. So, again, we was dufuses.
4. Who was the first female director to gross 100 million at the box office? Now, this one shat me right off, because I was pretty damn sure (and wrote as much) that the correct answer was whoever the fuck directed the movie Big. This was right. Since I couldn't give this woman's name, we instead opted for the only female director we could think of: Sophia Coppola.
5. What element comes last alphabetically? We wrote Zircon. This word has the benefit of requiring to be listed after Zinc in any dictionary in which the two words are listed. It does not, however, have the benefit of actually being an element. Zirconium was the answer Rupert was after. We got half a mark, which put us at 9 1/2 in a maths and physical sciences round when two other teams got 10. These kind of shennanigans make it very difficult to justify our team name.

Notable correct answers:

1. From which city did the worlds longest car race begin in some year I can't remember? Stevo got the correct answer to this question. The Rally was called "Peking to Paris", from which an astute reader can infer the correct answer. Maybe getting this right only seems impressive to me, though, since I know almost nothing about sport.
2. Who discovered Kangaroo Island? We got 1 1/2 points on this one for writing that the answer we thought he wanted was Matthew Flinders, but the answer we were nonetheless giving was "The aborigines". Readers take note: Rupert may not be giving out any more half marks for funny answers but you can still use the powerful weapon of guilt to get him to hand them over.
3. How many faces does an icosahedron have? Notable because, in the maths and physical sciences round, I got this one right not because of any special knowledge of Platonic solids derived from years of formal mathematics training - but because I knew that the 20-sided die you use in Dungeons and Dragons was called an icosahedron.

You don't know, man, you weren't there

As we all know, there are absolutely no comparisons which can be made between the Iraq war and the Vietnam War. In other news, Iran can in no way be compared to Laos.

This is good news, yes?

Democracy in Action

It has been pointed out by one Dave Barry that I have listed this site on my list of sites better than this site. I had expected people to spot this earlier but, hey, it turns out no-one ever actually reads the lists of links on people's blogs. There is a gold star making it's way to Dave even as we speak. This is a lie. Say rather that there will be if Dave will be so kind as to email me his current mailing address in France.

Now that the cat is out of the bag, I am leaving it open to you, my loyal readers (all, what, five or six of you..) to decide on this weighty issue.

I was going to add another option "I feel that each viewing of a web-site constitutes a new web-site (you can't cross the same river twice, after all) and that each new viewing is better than the last - so yes", but someone went and voted so I can't change it now.

The train that wasn't, then was.

I boarded a train today. Shortly after arriving at the station in question, I was informed by an automatic speaker message that the train I was about to board would, unfortunately, be approximately 29 minutes late.

"Ah", I thought.

Immediately after this announcement the seeds of a letter formed in my head. It would be a glorious letter of complaint, sent to Queensland Rail dripping with sarcasm and a biting caustic wit. In it I would announce the manner in which, when 29 minutes after its scheduled arrival the train in question arrived, I decided not to board it - confident as I was that around 1 minute later another train going the same way would be arriving - only to find out that no such train was to be forthcoming. Everyone from the nameless drone first to open the letter all the way up to the PR stooge tasked with crafting a response would know that the writing was on the wall. I'm on to you Queensland Rail. The revolution would have humble beginnings. Gradually, others, too would join me - each of us awaiting that fateful spring day in which we hoist our revolutionary flag over QRs offices ushering in a new dawn in which the railway would have the common fucking decency to acknowledge that a train arriving 29 minutes late is, in fact, the next train, and that those waiting for the train in question should be allowed their opportunity to grieve and achieve closure, as the train they were after is no more.

Three minutes after the announcement, however, I was informed that the train in question would arrive in two minutes.

Just so you all know where I'm at. In my life.

The Price of Free Speech

Anyone choosing to visit The Australian Blogs Page will notice the title The Price of Free Speech immediately to the right of a picture of Janet Albrechtsen. Unfortunately, I have the melancholy duty to inform you that this is not, as I assumed, a laudable case of The Australian changing the name of Janet's blog in the interests of honest trading. Rather, it is a link to This rant on what Janet sees as the blatant hypocrisy of the global pinko-commo conspiracy as illustrated by the fact that Columbia university saw fit to allow Mahmoud Ahmadinejad to give a single speech there (following an introduction in which he is labelled a "petty and cruel dictator" by the president of Columbia University), while at a completely different university 3000 alumni signed a petition opposing Donald Rumsfeld's appointment to a fellowship at the Hoover Institution.

FOR SHAME!!!!!!!!!!

I may not be able to find, in her little tirade, what exactly her fucking point is but I will defend to the death her right to champion the right of right-wing columnists everywhere not to make any fucking sense at all. Vive le free speech!!!!!! Vive le Janet!!!!!

Poker

Suppose you are a sporting club or some other kind of similar organisation and you're looking to host a fishing competition. There is an entry fee and a cash prize for the winner which is drawn exclusively from the sum raised by such entry fees. I'm not a lawyer, but I imagine that this would be a perfectly legal thing to do in the state of Queensland (and if it isn't, why the fuck not?). In fact, if you were to substitute 'bridge' for 'fishing', well, that'd be ducky too, yeah? Bridge is a nice, respectable game, after all. You play it wearing dorky bow-ties and vests. It's like the golf you play when you want to play golf instead with a deck of cards, a partner and a table.

So, given the post title, I'm sure everyone reading this sees where I'm going with this (this is probably trivially true.......), but I'm going to spell it out anyway. What, pray tell, would happen if you were to now substitute the word 'bridge' for 'poker'? Well. Now it becomes gambling, therefore bad and therefore illegal unless you've payed for some ridiculously expensive license that lets you do so (when the real benefit of such an event is not in takings from the game, but in the crowd you draw). Apparently, it's perfectly alright for a sports club or pub to own row upon row of pokies into which hypnotised cretins can pour money to see the pretty shiny lights. It's alright for the Treasury casino to skim of the top of people's winnings in a stupid structured-betting version of texas hold-em (rules that make consistent big winnings much more difficult). That shit's just ducky, Charlotte - but heaven forbid we allow people to start playing the kind of game with each other, from which a casino cannot really profit that much and which, with practice, you can actually learn to consistently win. What the fuck is the deal here? Here endeth the first part of my polemic rant.

Now for the second. I was at the season QPE final in Ballina on sunday. There are 300 qualifiers from, I think, 20 clubs (no-one has paid to enter). First place gets $5000, 2nd place $2000 and downward from there. I came in somewhere in the 40s. So why am I pissed? It's not entirely sour grapes at being more or less forced by blind sizes to go all-in on pocket jacks, because to be fair I would have been in real trouble anyways seeing as the flop showed a 10, a 9 and an 8 (giving me an open-ended straight draw on top of a pair higher than anything on the board) .......and I was facing off against a half-drunk bogan with pocket aces (and obviously I didn't subsequently get a queen, a jack or a 7). After coming back from the final break they were rising the blinds by a lot every 15 minutes (there were about 70 people left in and they kind of want to force an out-come). Having broken the second table I was sent to just prior to the break (I mean this literally... I knocked 5 people, half the table, out of the tournament - I left with 21,700 having started the tournament with 2,400). I was forced to move. This is bad at the best of times - you have to learn a new table and you want to establish some fear there. Worse, I look down the table: person 1: half-drunk bogan, person 2: half-drunk bogan, person 3: half-dr....... I mean, if I'd wanted to play against a table of heavy drinking bogans who treat the game like 'bingo', only with more cards and beer involved I'd be playing in the Australian Poker League. The up-side is that if I hit something really good, I can be pretty much guaranteed to sucker these people into insane calls when they feel their manhood is at stake and they don't want to look scared off. The down-side is that I can't afford to bluff too early or try to steal pots because I'll get called for pretty much the same reason. I get a run of un-playable cards in unplayable positions. Table gets broken up, and I'm shortly at another bogan-heavy table in about half an hour, where blinds are now 3000-6000 and I have 18,000 left. The blinds started at 25-50 and I made almost all of my 21,700 (the highest I saw) with blinds at no more than 300-600. The point being, I had to work a lot harder to gain those chips than those who took them by virtue of being in the right place at the right time. I really see no reason for the blinds to rise at such a meteoric rate..... especially when you're going to be pushing people around from table to table like that. It doesn't need to be this way QPE!!! Not fucking happy Jan.

Hello, and welcome to my blog

So, I'm sitting around one Saturday afternoon and I'm asking myself to come up with a short list of things, the lack of which, is making the world a far worse place than it otherwise could be.

Sadly, all that I seemed able to come up with was another pointless blog in the proud tradition of Chris' myblogisagoodblog and Sam's opus myblogisafairblog. Whereas the reader is left to come to their own conclusion as to whether or not Chris' blog is good and whether or not Sam's blog is, in fact, fair there can be no argument when it comes to mine - my blog is, most definitely, another blog.

In keeping with this name the reader is asked to expect great things from this blog. Expect caustic wit. Expect a thorough, insightful and up-to-date commentary on current events. Expect deep and reflective monologues revealing the true nature of mankind and its place in a grand, majestic universe. Expect to laugh. Expect to cry. Expect all of these things so that my blog can truly make you know the meaning of the word "disappointment".