For Ben

Most of this post will not, in fact, be for Ben exclusively (although perhaps I'm crediting myself with a little too much forward planning, here), but it's as good a title as any¹  and I open with a poker video which will probably be appreciated by no-one else:

This is, apparently, the largest pot in (professional) high stakes poker history, and it's the kind of hand you just live in dread of. You can't fault either player, the poker gods merely arranged the cards such that, barring any excessive stupidity on the part of either player Gus was always just going to double up against Daniel. Paradoxically, if Daniel had played a little more stupidly pre-flop he might have won ... although, of course, if Gus had played more stupidly he might have won less. This is precisely like the draw from Casino Royale, where Bond's poker brilliance consisted of being extraordinarily lucky and not playing like a dufus-brain.

This brings us to the topic of A Quantum of Solace. Why? It just does. That shittily named² sequel (and, a first for Bond, this really is a sequel) to Casino Royale. We were told, by no lesser personage than Andrew Bolt that they had killed the Bond franchise with this movie. This, of course, prompts one to question whether or not Bolt actually contends there have been no bad Bond movies before now. One must also point out that if On Her Majesty's Secret Service failed to do this, all indications are that the Bond franchise will be the only edifice of human civilisation likely to survive a nuclear holocaust, and that Bolt should go fuck himself with the nearest available high-friction object. Apart from that, the movie isn't actually bad at all. It's obviously influenced by the Bourne movies, and he grunts and exerts himself a whole lot more than he used to. Sure, we could do with a little more of the stylish, quiet lethality of previous Bonds but the tone is much the same as Casino Royale and I think that a good thing. His only gadget is a really cool phone.

You should also see In Bruges. A movie about hit-men in which you actually like all three killers involved (in a 'I'd have a beer with that guy' kind of way, no less) without actually glossing over the fact that they all do rather evil things. It's full of nice, slightly surreal happenings. Probably the one thing I liked the most about it, though, was the fact that they did this kind of obvious (if you look out for this kind of thing ... which I do) foreshadowing of future events near the beginning.... but when they get to these future events (probably the best scenes in the movie), they end up not actually occurring as foreshadowed. Things such as this , well, they just make my life worthwhile. Rather like ducks, long walks on the beach and ponies.

While on such a topic, I'd like us all to take a quiet moment of appreciation for the first 10 minutes of The Departed. Firstly because it's just as great example of exposition and drawing you into the movie as you're ever going to see (think how much un-rushed information you digest). But also, because I just realised how much more poignant and cool Jack Nicholson's speech becomes in light of the recent US presidential election. Srsly. 

P.S. I will be in Brisbane from Dec 11 - Jan 1.

¹Assuming, of course, said title does not include such words as 'midget' and 'sodomy'.

²Though not nearly so shittily named as Body of Lies - a passable movie whose title and brief plot synopsis gives the impression that it's the anti-Iraq/Terror war propaganda movie that it just isn't.

I wouldn't want to call the Saudis sexually repressed or nothin', but...

... apparently, that was an interpretation some chose to scurrilously derive from a previous post of mine¹. I can see, in hind-sight, how this conclusion could have been drawn. It is, of course, possible that I am merely making a desperate attempt at back-pedalling having heard news which proves this position wrong. Actually ...... yes, dear reader, I am sorry to report that this is precisely what I am doing. You see, it turns out that the Saudis have seen fit to hold a beauty contest. Upon hearing this news I was gleefully expecting that all contestants would be wearing, like, burkas or something which would have allowed me once again to poke fun at those wacky Saudis. In actual fact, it turns out that the contestants were all so immodestly dressed even by western standards that I am finding myself forced to order a large serving of my own hat for dinner this evening. Anyways, without further ado, I give you the winner:

Oh, yeah. Work it, baby, work it....

¹And I don't want to sound bitter or nothin', but I thought this was one of my better posts. I enjoyed writing it, giggling all the while like a giddy schoolgirl in the process of delivering comic gold to the ungrateful masses of arse-cunts, only to receive, like, 4 comments, three of them mine .... and furthermore²...

²Look, I'm sorry. It's my problem .... I'll deal with it.

First years say the darndest things.

I have just finished marking 1/4 of the questions of a first year exam. But before I begin on what little meat there is in this story¹, perhaps a little explanation is in order about the paper² in question. It is a 'discrete mathematics and linear algebra' course. There are two such courses (covering exactly the same material) running simultaneously. One takes a year, and the other one half a year. The half year version begins half way into the full year version. The reader is perhaps under some misapprehension that the latter course, covering the same material in half the time, is full of the really bright and/or hard-working people. This is, sadly, not the case. In fact it is full of individuals who originally enrolled in the previous course who then took a long hard look at their assessment results and, looking down the barrel of an epic fail, decided to drop out of the full year version and enrol in the half year version instead. The reader is perhaps also under the misapprehension that they tend to put more effort into their second attempt.

Anyways, I want to talk to you about question 3 a): Write down the definition of a rational number. Most people answered this incorrectly, and here are some of the responses I received:

1. Any number that is not a fraction.
2. Any number which can be expressed as p/q where p,q ∈ ℝ and p ≤ q. ³
   
3. A number that exists rationally.
4. Any number that is not irrational.
5. A number that makes scence(sic).
6. Any number that doesn't believe in fairy tales⁴.
7. Definition of a rational number. There is a chap in class who I always thought was an ace but he has written less than I. I guess I am not the only person who was either stumped by this course or who didn't work on it hard enough & is now compelled to write Ramayamas in the answer sheet. Yay! 15 minutes to go. Actually 20 mins but I think I am going to make a run for it. Have no clue what I am writing and I think am simply allowing all thoughts to spill out onto paper. Possibly my constant scribbling is leading the guy next to me to get very worried as he isn't writing anything either. I wish I could go home for a bit. Really wish I could go home if only it wasn't 18 hours away.
   

¹Which may be safely characterised as being to world literature what a ham bone stew is to world cuisine. P.S. Fuck you, yes, this is a footnote. Despite your endless pay-outs on this front, I still like the fucking things.

²In New Zealand Universities 'courses' are called 'papers'. This caused some confusion for me when in casual conversation a great number of people started casually talking about papers they did in first year. I thought I was surrounded by geniuses. P.S. Yes, this is another footnote. Go to hell.

³I had to at least acknowledge internal consistency here. When asked to prove that √3 was irrational they said: √3 = 3/√3 and, since 3 > √3, √3 is irrational. The correct answers were kind of cute, too, actually (& not the way I've ever seen this answered). They reasoned as follows: Let p,q ∈ ℤ. Then the prime factorization of both p² and q² contain an even number of terms. Thus p²≠ 3q ² and so √3 ≠ p/q.

⁴This guy got marks.

In praise of the term "Douche Nozzle"

Why, oh why can't more political advertising look like this?

A brief message for Anita

DO YOUR TAXES!!!!!

The end is nigh? Don't be silly.

There's an election a-comin' up in New Zealand which, I have to confess, I have neither been following nor thought about all that much. This is, as my office-mate points out to me, rather silly in that it is probably going to have more of a direct effect upon my life than that of the upcoming U.S. election which I have been following, and which scares me a great deal. Or at least, it used to dear reader. And, strangely enough, it was Andrew Bolt who made me see the light on this one.

You see, up until now, my sympathies very much lay with Sam Harris' appraisal of the situation. I found, amongst other things, the thought that a half-witted pentecostal who looks rapturously forward to the end of days is reasonably likely to, in a few short years, possess nuclear launch codes to be a little disquieting. But Bolt has forced me to re-think my opinions on Sarah Palin. Yesm. Allow me to illustrate. Take, for instance, the following (and I beg some indulgence here) video:



Now, if you're like me, you probably thought that Kellie Pickler was pretty stupid based on this video. Be honest, now, you did. Well then, Mr Clever-Dick, feast your eyes upon this one.

Pretty confronting, right? Clearly, Kellie Pickler isn't stupid at all.

Feel better now? I know I do......

I'm not one for hyperbole........

...... but¹ and this .... is like Nazi Germany. First, dear reader, they moved my office 10 metres down the hall for no good reason at all - and you did nothing, for it was not your office. Then they took away our coffee beans for Christ's sake²!!! - and you did nothing, for you did not drink our coffee. I'm not sure exactly what they're going to do next .... but I'm sure we can all agree that the writing is on the wall and that my entire readership is .... well, don't be expecting me to stick up for your rights when things turn really nasty, O.K.? Basically, you've let me down. I am currently drinking the very last cup of free, real coffee as supplied by the school of mathematics, statistics and computer science to graduate students on up. It is a sombre moment marking the, I think we can all agree, first step down that slippery slope towards nuclear Armageddon. It's been nice knowing you all......

But moving along ..... this does seem like a good place to ask the question: What makes people vote republican? I do not pose this question in a topical "Dear god how could anyone want to risk giving Sarah Palin the nuclear codes?" kind of way - but in the more general sense as posed by the author at said link. See also an online book here. On the one hand, well, surely what makes people vote the way they do is as valid an area of social research as any other.... and, well, I tend to agree about the existence of people of a certain mindset to actively vote for parties who are demonstrably acting in manners contrary to said voter's interests and that there are substantial numbers of conservative voters that fall into this category. On the other hand, though ...... I get an uncomfortable feeling that someone approached a grants committee and said something like "basically, my research will be on how people who vote Tory suck more balls than Annabelle Chong - slip me some dough, brother". How would Today Tonight deal with this, I wonder? How do I feel about the fact that I just asked that question? It's a thorny one.

DISCUSS!

¹Happy, Dave?

²Bean-counters are stealing our beans, if you will. My office mate and I have thoroughly scoped out the administration building to find out where they hide theirs (it being our solemn duty to return the favour) ... but thus far to no avail.

In which our ingenious amphibian adopts a cunning disguise, and is yet robbed of 3rd place by having fewer points than 3 other teams.

In a tribute to Dave's tribute to Joseph Heller, and in no way because the team had grown sick of the title Ethel the Frog, our ingenious amphibian adopted the name The dead man in Yossarian's tent last night as a cunning ruse by which to sneak up unawares upon our arch-nemeses (who had yet to be identified) and open this blog post with an inordinately long sentence (which I feel I have achieved).

Within a few moments of declaring this alias, the team a few places down from us on the big excel spreadsheet display had changed their name to Major Major Major Major, thus announcing to all and sundry that it was on, dear reader, like Donkey Kong. Also on our hit-list was a team calling itself Brian Slept with a China Man, ¹who clearly felt the need to resort to such underhand tactics as bringing a team of 15 people in order to beat us. Arse-cunts. Another name worthy of note, being the Fudge Packers. Fudge Packer, dear reader, turns out to be New Zealand slang for gay. And they call Australians crass and un-couth .... to which we respond by joking that they like to shag sheep, thereby demonstrating their point.

By the end of the night, dear reader, you will be pleased to learn that we had crushed both the Fudge Packers and, more importantly, Major Major Major Major underfoot. Brian on the other hand, no doubt due to having the answers supplied to him by that China man in return for his fudge packing services, went on to win the night on 78/100. Two other teams tied on 72, and we got 68.

Questions we failed to suck at.

1. What U2 song was dedicated to Billie Holliday? But for my somehow managing to mix Billie Holliday up with Buddy Holly, we would have gotten this a whole lot sooner.....
2. The flag of Ethiopia consists of of what three colours in vertical bands? Thanks go to Helena for inducing me to look at that flags web-site.
3. Who spreads herself over a piano in The Fabulous Baker Boys?
   
4. What European team won the 1982 World Cup(the real one)? I just felt the need here to point out that there are sports questions I actually know the answer to.
   

Questions we managed to suck at.

1. Who played the title Role in the 1980s Cop show T.J. Hooker?
2. What land carnivore is said to be able to smell humans from 20 miles away?
3. What is the only animal born with horns?
4. What is the highest altitude capital in Europe? A useful one to know, since it's not the one you'd (probably) suspect. Also, my office-mate is currently disputing the answer, and apparently has some grounds to do so....
   

¹A claim over which some doubt was expressed.

Concerning Ethel the Frog's worthy ascention to the top of the trivia pack.

By which, of course, I mean the top of the Bell curve. With a team of three, we came 7/15. A great many things worthy of note occurred at trivia last night, let me tell you dear reader. Unfortunately, it is my melancholy duty to inform you that as far as I could tell they all happened to other teams.

To what should I direct your attention, I wonder? The manner in which the noble Sancho managed to confuse a stilson wrench with a monkey wrench in round one? This was, I admit, high drama indeed .... but up to the usual standards required of a trivia post concerning our most excellent of frogs? I think not.

Without further ado, then, let me just relate that the night's themes were as follows:

1. Tools
2. Military matters
3. Western Movies
   
4. The written word¹.
5. History²
6. Science and Nature
7. Pot luck
8. Grammy winners³.

And while we're on the topic of lists, let us see what manner of questions I can recall.

Questions such that, by virtue of supplying a correct answer, our noble frog earned at least 1 point.

1. What U.S. military unit goes by the motto "semper fidelius"? My thanks to the movie Rushmore, for the fact that the words 'semper fi, soldier, semper fi' (spoken in a Scottish accent, which I want you to imagine I'm imitating it right now, 'cause I am) were used in Max's play.
2. The polaris missile is used by which branch of the military? I knew this from an episode of "Yes Minister".
   
3. What battle tank was named after some general from the Vietnam war? Should I be ashamed of knowing the name of a likely, and it turns out correct, candidate?
4. Spell "brochure". Yeah, there's quite a range in question difficulty....
5. What is the difference between the words "flammable" and "inflammable"? Look, so most of the interesting questions I remember we fucked up....
6. 2007 best pop performance by a group 'My Humps'? Mentioned as an excuse to link to this.
   

Questions of such unparalleled dastardly cunning and insurmountable difficulty that our ingenious amphibian was incapable of supplying a correct answer, and was thus forced to go pointless.

1. How many branches of the U.S. Military are there? There's an obvious line of reasoning related to a famous building which occurs to you only when you know the correct answer.
2. What two actors starred in the 'trinity' western movies? For fuck's sake....
3. Who created the comic book character Dick Tracy?
   
4. The first working model of which device was invented in 1960 by Thomas Maimam?
5. Citius Altius Fortius is the motto of which organisation? Guessing roughly what he last two words meant, and reasoning that 'citius' was related to 'city' in some way ... we guessed the Freemasons. I wish we were right..... although, just quietly I think we were close (the organisation in question is fooling nobody, *touch nose*).
   

¹This category should not, I assure you, be confused with a literature round.

²For which a question about The Monkees apparently qualified.

³Where a "when unsure, just write 'Keith Urban'" policy earned us a point.

Covers

A recent conversation I was involved in turned its attention to cover versions of songs. Specifically, cover versions which are better than the original. This category turned out, unsurprisingly, to be very small. We could all agree, for instance, that Gary Jules' version of Mad World is better than the original by Tears for Fears. Yes, all agreed, Eminem's Ice Ice Baby is indeed superior to the original by Vanilla Ice¹. Things got a little more strained over whether or not Hendrix's version of All Along the Watchtower beats Dylan's (it does, damn you)..... but where things always get a little hairy (for me) is when we get onto Leonard Cohen's Hallelujah. It's not that I think the original is, well, a good arrangement per se (dear god that awful eighties backing) .... it's just that Jeff Buckley gives me the shits. In point of fact, I would submit that no-one has yet covered this song properly². It's a great song. It sounds to me a little like a drunk finding god in a pool of his own vomit (in a good way, though .... honest).... but when I hear Buckley doing it, well, I find myself saying (unfortunately, and as far as social decorum is concerned) "oh for fucks sake why don't you just shoot yourself already". Matters inevitably take a hairy turn from this point onwards. It was lucky, then, that I was able to produce the following video. However we may differ as human beings, I offer, we can all agree that Avril Lavigne must never, ever be allowed to sing³ Coldplay's The Scientist ever again.

Ladies and gentlemen, live and off-key I give you perhaps the greatest piece of butchery ever performed by a diminutive Canadian pop singer on the work of a contemporary British band:



¹Of course, this is true in a rather trivial sense. It really doesn't matter how good or bad you think Eminem's version is .... what's good about it is the simple knowledge that Eminem is covering Vanilla ice. If just knowing that such a thing exists in the world isn't enough to make you smile, well, I guess you're one of those people who didn't cry when Bambi's mother died.

²Which actually adds to its charm. If the version you end up hearing never quite matches up to the version in your head, well I mean, .... listen to the lyrics. This is .... appropriate.

³It was very, very tempting to stop typing on that word.....

Concerning the manner in which our most excellent frog acquired a dvd player, in addition to other events worth relating.

Was having coffee in the maths/comp-sci common room yesterday. Almost as though that alone wasn't enough to pique the interest of the discerning reader¹, I happened to overhear a conversation in which the man in the office next to me (who is uncannily like Peter Adams) was attempting to rid himself of a TV set. I volunteered my services. Is this really worth bearing in mind when I relate my brief trivia tale? Perhaps not.

Anyways, Ethel the Frog consisted of a team of but two last night. Myself and another who, for the purposes of our tale, we shall refer to only as Sancho. Actually, we won't be referring to them again at all .... but let's think of them as Sancho, shall we? I know I do.

The questions were substantially harder this week, even without a sports round, and we finished 6th of 11 on 61 /100. Do I remember enough questions for it to be worthwhile to submit a trivia post? Well, no. I did, however, win a draw for a dvd player. Ha ha HA!!!!! It appears that New Zealand, after first making attempts to reject me as a dangerous foreign body² was now signaling its acceptance by showering me with electrical appliances. So if you're reading this NZ, I've always rather wanted a death-ray and a small army of robot monkeys. Kthnx.

Questions I remember......

Notable gets I can remember:

1. Which Canadian car company manufactured the DMC-12? Yeah, I didn't think there were Canadian car companies either.....
   
2. What country owns the world's largest merchant fleet? Meh.
   
3. What land mammal can go for longer without water than the camel?
4. What fruit do you place in a buck-eye martini?
   
5. In poker, what is a hand consisting of both black aces and a pair of eights known as? It's a colloquial title, not the hand rank. I thought, I guess for obvious reasons, that this was a fairly easy question ...... but the room seemed to disagree with me.
   

Fuck-ups I remember:

1. What instrument is also known as the 'Cor Anglaise'? This was pretty funny. I don't want you to think I'm stupid for mis-translating the term ..... I inferred the correct translation just fine, thank you very much. I just thought it was a question with an ironic answer so I wrote down 'French Horn' instead.
2. Name the Rolling Stone who drowned. Sancho should have known this one. Oh, hey, I lied.
3. The Westinghouse company was founded to manufacture what device that drastically improved rail safety?
   

¹And seriously ..... it's about time that fucker started reading this blog.

²I was stung by unknown insects three times in the first two weeks of being here. I came from fucking Queensland, too.... I mean, I had thought to be leaving things that wanted to sting and bite me behind.

A Dog and a Duck perform the fish slapping dance..... the dog forgets his lines.

Ahem:

Stupid lyrics

Some people reading this entry of Chris' blog saw a funny post. I saw a challenge along the same lines as such previous titanic battles as The saddest man on the internet and Which country has the worst national anthem.

Now, I lost both of the above contests. The first because I couldn't find the stomach to go on. The second because Chris managed to bag Australia's right from the outset. Will I win this one? Well, probably not ...... but I'd like to at least add the following two honourable mentions. Ahem.

1. Sex in the Kitchen by R. Kelly. I like this live performance. It speaks to me. What I like most about it is the point when he says "I'm just makin' some shit up .... we're gon' do a remix" bit. This brought me to the dread realisation that he wasn't just making shit up before that. That shit was written down. I have to credit him with some sophistication, though, because frankly the stuff that followed his 'you're going to have to read between the lines' request ... well, it went completely over my head.
2. Drop kick me Jesus through the goal posts of life ..... about which there can be nothing to add.
   

In which Fitz has a rant on a topic about which he doesn't really care all that much.

Are there, dear reader, too many sports and events at the Olympics? I say yes.

I should probably hasten to add that I'm not saying 'yes' for the trivial reasons Chris or Sam would, either. I have trivial reasons of my own.

Michael Phelps, we are told, is the greatest Olympian of all time based solely upon his medal count, for instance, which is just plain stupid. Could, pray tell, a javelin thrower have possibly managed to get 8 gold medals based upon javelin throwing prowess alone I ask? Of course not. Michael Phelps, on the other hand, gets to enter 8 variations on much the same event and he's just instant Captain Fancy-pants. Is it coincidence that the previous record of 7 medals was also held by a swimmer? Are the Illuminati involved? It's not even as though swimming is all that interesting to watch anyways.

I propose, in future, that winning a swimming event be only worth 1/8 of a medal with each such winner having to compete in some manner of free-for all involving crocodiles and rotating blades. The first to manage to construct a complete gold medal gets to keep it. Then that sucker would be worth something.

Team sports, also, are for the most part kind of dodgey. Synchronized swimming? Bizarre floor routines involving a ribbon, ball and a bola hat filled with plum wine in which a single apple floats? Scrap them, I say. Walking shall stay, but only if snipers are placed at random positions around the track. Let's see the bastards maintain their silly "walk-not-run" discipline then, shall we?

In which our ingenius amphibian is confronted with an obnoxious American.

Trivia posts from me shall henceforth be titled, I have decided, as though they are chapters of Don Quixote. Various other difficulties shall, I feel, present themselves - not least of which being that you don't get to keep your answer sheets where I go (questioning and marking occur simultaneously .... efficient!). This means I have a hard time remembering questions. Which rather defeats the purpose of trivia posts.

Anyways, our evening begins somewhat inauspiciously with el capitano of team Ethel the Frog reserving for his fearless charges the one remaining table in view of the stage - which, as chance would have it, was the table immediately in front of the stage. This was, it turns out, very very bad. Before very long our hero was approached by a random American girl who, declaring team-less-ness, craved that most sought-after of boons: membership in our elite froggy cadre. To my lasting regret, I answered this request with the following fateful words: "yeah, sure, why not?". In a few further moments, the rest of the team arrived.

Said American, whose name shall remain anonymous lest a future news story of disappearance in mysterious circumstances be linked back to me, turned out to be pretty damn annoying when sober. When drunk .... well we settled into the following routine: Team Frog gets the points, Team Frog's drunken American mascot proclaims to all in the room how much more awesomely her team was doing as compared with everyone else's. The top 3 teams receive bar tabs. Prior to the third round we were comfortably in 3rd place. It began to dawn on us that winning a bar tab, however, meant sharing a bar tab.... which would be a badness of truly bad proportions¹. It was not without relief, then, that we learned that the last round involved matching television game shows with their hosts. We came a respectable 4th on 82/100.

Notable Gets that I remember getting:

1. In what sport are the dimensions of the pitch precisely those of the town square of the Iranian city in which it was originally played? Thank you, educated guess. We got 6/10 on a friggin' sport and leisure round. Yay team Frog.
2. What chemical element is archaically referred to as Brimstone? Notable because I hads to fight tooth and nail for this one.... otherwise not hard, I think/thought.
   
3. The dried leaves of which plant are used to dye leather? Probably there were other distinguishing features given in the question, there ... I just don't remember 'em.
   

Notable fuck-ups I remember fucking up:

1. Something about an Austrian formula-1 driver involved in a crash in 19 friggin 77. Sorry.
2. After a cover version of Roy Orbison's "Crying", who was dubbed the voice of the century by the big O? Not that we would have gotten it right otherwise, but our American ring-in somehow convinced us to write 'Steve Tyler' from Aerosmith. She was very convincing. Also very wrong. It was a little like sharing a table with Hazzy-K only not as funny.
   
3. Who made their name as the lead singer of a group called 'The Miracles' in the 1960s?
   

Probably there are better ones. I just don't remember 'em.

P.S. a big hello back to Anita, Sam, Geoff and Adriana. I were asleep. Sorry.

P.P.S. I'm a little curious to know the names of both individuals who voted for Full Metal Jacket.

P.P.P.S. Does having both P.S. s and footnotes seem odd to anyone else? Only it does to me.

¹My little tribute to Dave.......

Marking

To all those who think they know marking pain I would ask the following: Have you ever marked a first year linear algebra exam where they weren't allowed a calculator¹? If not, well let me just say that it's still full of the usual "hmm... I have no idea how to do this question, but if I waste the marker's time by asking them to painstakingly verify that this page of formal-looking statements is, in fact, gibberish .... well, this can only bode well for me"-type answers. In addition, you get people who write statements such as : "no calulator! ....1/52 ≈ 1/50, 1/50 ⋅ 102 = 2.04 ... so I'm going to write 1/52 ⋅ 102 as 2.04". Anyways, if ever you find yourself in such a situation I would advise you to do as I have. Print out a small pile of this comic, mark the offending answers down as harshly as your mood takes you, then staple a copy of said comic to their answer sheet.

¹Strictly this isn't true. They weren't allowed a graphics calculator, since they were being tested on (amongst other things) Gauss-Jordan elimination. Unfortunately, almost half the class in the exam I was supervising interpreted "not allowed a graphics calculator" to mean "allowed a graphics calculator", and so had to do the exam with no calculator at all. The questions weren't really such that you really needed one .... but there seems to have been an unfortunate correlation between those who owned only a graphics calculator and those who were scared of non-decimal fractions.

"This is Al-Harbi to all units. The people at number 47 Shara Jareer appear to be having a good time".....

........ in a nearby Riyadh street, the camera zooms in on an Arabic version of the Übermensch so rapidly that when it gets there time appears to stand still. Our hero is idly tossing around a toothpick in his mustachio-ed mouth sitting on a chiseled-featured, designer-stubbled face when the call goes out. He tosses aside his generic piece of Saudi take-away type food¹ and intones in a deep, purposeful manner: "Not on my watch......"

The opening credits play.

The next day we find ourselves looking in on a meeting with all the top brass (the Council of Senior Islamic Scholars), which is already in progress when we get there.

Learned Scholar 1: I ..... hear ..... that pretending to be gay .... can be quite effective.

An un-easy murmuring flows through the room....

Learned Scholar 2 (shrugging): Perhaps .... but actually being gay is already illegal, so...

The murmuring is replaced by a mixture of "ah"s and nods of agreement. There is now a long protracted silence broken only by the occasional cough and the sound accompanying the scratching of a learned chin. Eventually, our attention is drawn to a weaselly-looking scholar in one corner of the room who stares into the table as he speaks.

Weaselly Scholar 3: Well..... A .... friend of mine ..... informs me that walking a dog is how the "hip cats" do it....

A thoughtful silence overtakes the room.

The next shot is of a news headline.

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

Anyways ........ switching the channel, we catch an exciting arrest in an episode of the Saudi Arabian version of Cops:

¹Yeah .... there's only so much research I'm willing to do here......

LOL

A conversation from my office:

Adam: I've just made an infinite injury argument in which requirements injure themselves.

Me: So, that would be an infinite self-injury argument, then ....... Wow. Recursion theory goes emo.

In which I conduct an experiment.

Penis penis penis.

lol.

The post previously known as ""

I was about to begin this post with : "You probably don't remember this, but", but then I remembered just who my readership was...... Anyways, there was once this episode of Red Dwarf where the crew of said vessel met up with alternate versions of themselves from other dimensions. The humour from said episode deriving from the fact that Rimmer's opposite number turned out to be the Übermensch. I bring this up because I seem to be living with a similar happenstance. Readers may note that in the past I have mentioned that my current supervisor looks like John Bunnett. What I didn't mention before now was that, well, he kind of acts like John Bunnett too.... only with a few crucial differences.

Let's say you're sitting in a seminar or summatt when the speaker makes a statement that seems either innocuous or goes completely over your head. It is not unknown to hear an "ahhhhh" or "cool" emanating from your left such that, with your eyes closed, could fool you into thinking you're sharing a room with Gomer. Then a question will be asked of the speaker by said individual which, at first, no-body really understands. The difference being that, after a similarly long and painful exchange it will invariably turn out that the questioner has actually spotted some fundamental flaw or implication that no-one else did, and isn't merely asking to be convinced, at the freaking end of a Galois theory course, that you can't express all roots of a quintic as radicals.


This leads me to the inescapable conclusion that my supervisor is, by some bizarre cosmic trick, the man that John Bunnett was meant to be.

It's creepy.

Judicial activism, NZ style

Recently, my august colleague harbored a discussion linking judicial activism to bills of rights. Now, it seems to me that with or without a bill of rights the community will always, well, expect a certain level of judicial activism anyways.... or at least they should do. The separation of powers is, for rather obvious reasons, a damn good thing. Further, even competent and just governments cannot be expected to foresee every circumstance to which a given law may be applied - and so cannot possibly be expected to draft law, the interpretation of which will fail to be ambiguous in every possible circumstance to which it will be applied. Thus, at some point or other it will become inevitable that judges will find themselves staring down the barrel of multiple interpretations of the law to a given circumstance - one of which they must pick guided only by (we would hope) their reason and their conscience. Lastly, requiring that law-makers face a hostile judicial environment is, I rather think, a good thing for the democratic process in the long term anyway.

I would like, then, to take a quiet judicial-activism appreciation moment. I would like us to reflect that, on occasion, it can fall on the shoulders of judges to act as those that stand on the wall as our last lines of defense against a descent into barbarism. Perhaps we can all recall at this moment our favorite instance of such a moment. Much of my pinko-commo readership will, I imagine, be thinking of, say, the Mabo decision at this point. I am not. For me, there will always be the one definitive moment of an instance where, with the barbarians at gates of the courthouse a single judge stood firm and said .... "no. Here is a line that society simply must not cross. I cannot, in good conscience, allow such a pernicious blot on the name of humanity to stand." Further, I am pleased to say that this case occurred right here in my adopted home of New Zealand. Wiping away the tears, dear reader, I refer you to the details¹.

¹Make damn sure you read the readers comments. Oh, yeah, and thanks Helena.

A moment in the day in the life of Fitz

"Why" I found myself asking myself "does nobody ever take me seriously?". Shaking my fists at an uncaring universe for effect I asked once more "Why????"¹.

I then took a long hard look at the hands before me. "Ah", I said. "Perchance it's because I'm the kind of person who'd wear those."

On said hands were a pair of bright red (wind-proof) mittens. And not just any mittens, either. With these mittens, you can fold the portion covering your fingers back so as to render them into a set of fingerless gloves² with large flappy attachments on the back. Flappy attachments which ... and get this ... can be folded over to make you fingerless gloves into mittens!!! Picture the scene, if you will. It's cold and windy, and I find myself stopping off for a point of business in a corner store. I fumble clumsily for some change with my bright red mittens on, then in frustration make as though to take them off. "But sir!" the good store-keep exclaims. "Quite apart from the obvious chore involved in removing then replacing such lovely mittens over such a trifle, you run the risk of accidentally leaving them behind!!". I smile and offer a rejoinder "worry not, noble store-keep, and observe!" Then, to the wonderment of all in the store I simply fold the top mitten-portion back to reveal my naked ever-nimble fingers. I conclude my business and carry on outside, where an icy wind bites at my poor bare fingers - but do I care? No sir! with a simple flick of the flap, so to speak, my fingers return to toasty goodness.

An unfortunate side-effect, however, is that I look like a dork.

¹At this point the universe appeared to slow down so that, to my ears, the above exclamation sounded a little more like Whuuaaaayyyyy..........

²The kind you see on the hands of sad old drunks clutching a half-consumed bottle of cheap whisky in one hand with which to drown the reminiscences of broken dreams whilst singing, oh I don't know, Brother, can you spare a dime? and warming said hands over a fire in a 44-gallon drum.

A real call to arms.....

Up until this very morning I had thought that my favourite Wikipedia article was the entry on the neenish tart, which wins this accolade for its public interest, accuracy and the obvious wealth of research that went into it (click on the one cited reference ... it's awesome).

After reading the latest xkcd, however, I have another one. That no-one on the talk page appears to notice the obvious, if unintended, satirical humour in the fact that the pre-amble has tags stating that "This article may require cleanup to meet Wikipedia's quality standards" and that "All or part of this article may be confusing or unclear" is itself, I think, note-worthy (although, I really must tip my virtual hat at whoever left the "It seems to me that the added publicity won't hurt this article -- in fact, nearly any edit to it will have no choice but to improve it. For example, the entire "Logocentrism" section could be replaced by "PENIS PENIS PENIS LOL" and it would greatly improve the overall clarity." comment)

What really brings a sense of sorrow to my heart as regards this article, however, is how disappointing the history section is. I was rather hoping that a "find: 'vandal' " type search would reveal a little more than it actually did. To be sure, there have been some noble efforts¹..... only not, I feel, nearly enough. For the most part, the 'vandalism' history appears mostly to refer to people trying to link to the xkcd comic in question, or something similar.

And then I thought to myself, well, that something can be done about this.... and, damn it, we're the people to do it. We have but to take the energy we put into our chalking war on that retarded 'we killed god: you don't care' campaign by these people and combine it with both our prior wiki-vandalism cunning and the fact that it's really, really hard for wikipedia to ban ip addresses that correspond to entire frickin' universities. What say you, dear reader? Shall we fuck this page up or what? I dream of a day when it becomes untenable for wikipedia to maintain a 'deconstruction' page consisting of anything more than a brief entry such as:

Deconstruction is a term used in contemporary literary criticism, philosophy, and the social sciences. Originally coined by Jacques Derrida, he apparently took the actual meaning of the word with him to the grave.

A single tear makes its way down my cheek as a contemplate the possibility that my blog may now become a force for good in this world.

¹Others .... not so noble, exactly, but cheers Gemma just the same. And who are 'we' to talk here, anyways (I'm talking to you, here Martin)

Ethel the Frog rides again..

...or, as I like to call it, From New Zealand's heart, I stab at thee¹. It had occurred to me recently, yon reader, that I should probably be looking for a trivia competition here in sunny Wellington, what for tradition's sake and all. As it turns out, it's kind of difficult to find a pub here that doesn't have a quiz night. I opted for one in a nearby Irish pub. Irish pubs in Wellington, based on a sample size of one, can be distinguished from those in Brisbane in at least two ways:

1. Most of the people behind the bar were actually born in Ireland, or at least lived there long enough to develop a very convincing accent.
2. It is not considered sacrilegious to fail to have Guinness on tap.

I'm not at all sure how I feel about point # 2. Anyways, Trivia appears to be taken about as seriously as at Harry's..... and there were 15 teams there including my own, many of whom made up of some serious trivia freaks. All other teams were (it seemed to me) veritably chomping at the bit in their desire to bring about the complete annihilation of all that lived..... or at least as close to this as could be achieved by way of answering more trivia questions correctly than any of their opponents.

Into this grim arena stepped a single frog². Ethel the frog. Me.

Why was there only a single frog, I hear you ask дорог reader? The answer to this is two-fold. One potential team-mate felt it more important to discover that theirs was the best student band in Wellington (drawn from the poxy set of 10 bands who decided to enter the relevant competition at short notice .... not that I'm bitter or nothin'). The other had no good excuse whatsoever, and shall be duly punished with a bucket of soapy frogs and a pipe-cleaner³. In addition, there were various .... odd .... questions asked. Like "In which state of Australia is Alice Springs?" and "If Superman is Clark Kent, Who is the Phantom?". My answers to these questions commended me as a pedantic smart-arse, and they were duly marked wrong. My revenge shall be swift, cruel and probably imaginary.

To cut a long and terminally dull story short... I didn't actually come last. No sir, I came 14th. I managed to miss the entire last 'round' (there were 8), too, when the puzzle sheet in question was handed out at at a time when my entire team was in the toilet.

Notable Gets:

1. Managing 4/10 on my own in a fucking sport round.
2. Which South American country is a member of OPEC?
   
3. Hmmm... that's about it, really.
   

Notable fuck-ups:

1. Who is Cupid the son of? Notable because A) they were marking as correct only a single parent answer, and B) there are apparently 3 different accounts of Cupid's parentage, none of which I actually gave.
2. Who had a hit in 1974 with the song "Billy don't be a hero"? This was asked in a "Heroes and Villains" round, for fucks sake. Not happy.
3. Look, there were probably more, but I'm lazy.....
   

¹It has been pointed out to me that this is silly. I mean, "as I like to call it..."? I'm writing this, for Christ's sake. If that's what I like to call it, that's what I should have called it, hey? Actually, there is a lie involved here .... it wasn't pointed out to me, exactly, it's more that it just kind of occurred to me. I thought that "it's been pointed out to me" sounded better, though.

²And I like to think that's the first time anyone ever committed that sentence to writing, incidentally. As it happens .... google backs me up. So there.

³My punishments tend to be cruel, creative, completely dis-proportionate to the gravity of the offense ...... and just that little bit silly.

Left-leaning social engineering gone MAD!!!1

Look. So, let's just get out of the way the rather reasonable premise that what two (or more) consenting adults do in the privacy of their own home is no business of you or I. This is, I feel, a principle even the Bill O'Riellys among us must pay at least lip service to..... and where Bill leads, dear reader, I follow. But .... when a group of pomo, "progressive", pinko, cafe-latte-mixed-with-chardonnay-in-a-bucket swilling, chattering class elites claim the right of certain individuals to force their lifestyle choice upon an innocent child .... well it's then that decent, hard-working Americans Australians such as you and I need to stand up and be counted. Especially when this lifestyle choice represents an abomination in the eyes of GOD himself².

Which brings us to the case in question, involving a homosexual couple who identify themselves only as 'Roy' and 'Silo'³. Roy and Silo made a lifestyle choice, dear reader. And fair enough, says I. I mean, if they want to condemn themselves to eternal damnation well, that's just their choice. Unfortunately, however, those social engineers on the left (represented here by one Robert Gramzay, may this fag-enabler burn in HELL!!!!) just had to step in, didn't they? They gave Roy and Silo a child to raise. Yeah, that's right buddy, a poor innocent child. It's time the silent majority stood up to be counted here, and declared that enough, dear reader, is ENOUGH!!!! According to no lesser authority than GOD himself, children should be raised by a father and a mother. Yeah, you heard me Gramzay. Give my regards to Satan when you see him.

Roy and Silo .... or possibly Squawk and Milo shamelessly
flaunting their unholy relationship in the fag-enabling
pit that is Manhattan.... Cute penguins? Or an abomination before
god himself? I'll be the judge.........

¹Let's see if this one works, hey.....

²Such as, say, the heinous decision to subsist on shellfish. And don't kid yourself, buddy, such sick individuals are out there.

³Or is it 'Squawk' and 'Milo'? I'm confused. Not happy, Scientific American.

Let the honeymoon phase begin

Chris and I find ourselves trapped, it would seem (dear reader), in our own private cycle of violence. Not knowing how, exactly, to make it stop I'd just like to usher in the honeymoon phase in the traditional manner ..... with silly youtube videos.

Let us begin with a classic:



... before considering the plight of that most under-appreciated of instruments, the kazoo:





Lastly, let me just say that Chris, honey, it'll never happen again.....

Never one to let a pointless smack-down go .....

I come to bury Chris' blog, not to praise it;
The crap that bloggers write lives after them,
The good is oft hard to find, though one doth spend many an hour clicking "older posts"
So let it be with myblogisagoodblog ... The noble Georff
Hath told you Chris was pompous and sarcastic:
If it were so, it was a grievous fault,
And grievously hath Chris answered it ...
Here, under leave of Georff and the rest,
(For Georff is an honourable man;
So are they all; all honourable men)
Come I to speak in myblogisagoodblog's funeral ...
It was my friend, faithful and just to me:
But Georff says Chris was pompous and sarcastic;
And Georff is an honourable man….
It hath brought many bizarre prattlings of Christopher Pearson to our attention,
Whose ramblings didst suck smart from our heads:
Did this in Chris seem pompous and sarcastic¹?
When the ukuleles played, Chris hath wept:
Sarcasm should be made of sterner stuff:
Yet Georff says he was pompous and sarcastic;
And Georff is an honourable man.
You all did see that on March 14 2008
Chris didst write a trivia report as epic poetry
Which, when bested by a cheap cock joke, didst lead to much dummy spitting: was this pomposity?²
Yet Georff says he was pompous and sarcastic;
And, sure, he is an honourable man³.
I speak not to disprove what Georff spoke,
But here I am to speak what I do know.
You all did love his blog once, not ..... completely ..... without cause:
What cause withholds you then to mourn for it?
O judgement! thou art fled to brutish beasts,
And men have lost their reason…. Bear with me;
My sincerity is on the floor there with my broken dreams of getting work done today,
And I must pause till it come back to me.

¹Well, yes, actually....

²Well, again .....

³O.K. so, I have to admit here that the effort involved in saying that so many times with a straight face .... well, I'll be sore in the morning.

I love XKCD

Just a brief note to say that today's XKCD speaks the truth, and that my links have been adjusted accordingly. Also, while I'm here, might I just add that I think this entry sums the Dave's Livejournal experience up for me better than any other I've read or been involved in.

And while I'm on a random link-fest, find here a new, compelling reason for Americans to vote for Obama.

Small talk in a lift

I was just in a lift with a view to getting back to my office with a cup of coffee I'd just made. The coffee room is on level 3. My office ........ is on level 4. Having absent-mindedly pressed the button I said to myself "why aren't you walking, dufus?" when, horror of horrors .... the door opened revealing a disgruntled passenger. I paused. In the few moments it took to scan my immediate vicinity for another individual who could conceivably have pressed the button the passenger in question asked me (my check confirmed no other plausible candidate - also, note that I have written this aside in brackets, and not as a footnote) "are you getting in?". Noting that my mouth was now too dry to speak, I mutely nodded and darted in keeping my eyes on the floor and hoping against hope my co-passenger would speak to me no further. It was not to be. "I'm going to level 5" he said (and there are only 5 levels), pointing toward the buttons by the door as though to politely check whether I needed a button pushed - but I could sense that tone of accusation in his voice. Like Phillip Ruddock and Anakin Skywalker before me ..... I had become the very thing I was sworn to hate.. "Me too" was all I could think to say.

Upon arrival at the 5th floor I paused at the staff directory on the wall. Initially, this was out of habit, since this allows me to dart through the swinging door accessing the rest of the floor just before it closes behind the second to last person in the lift. But as I did so, I now thought instead to wait until my silent accuser had left before just walking down the stairs. After a brief uncomfortable pause, I realised I was being watched. My lift-mate was holding the door open for me. "Are you coming?" he asked me, knowingly it seemed. "Oh. Yes." I walked calmly around the corner where I found and read one of those Maths is really useful, kids! signs they rather inexplicably put around maths buildings even on such floors as are occupied exclusively by people engaging in research ....... until I heard the tell-tale sound of a door closing that said to me that, barring another trick from my lift-using tormentor, it would now be safe to make good my exit. It was. I slunk quietly downstairs with my tail between my legs.

How was your morning?

Never enter an arse-kicking contest with a hedge-hog, Chris....

There are people you pick fights with in this world, and then there are people you don't. In the first list we find bunnies, ducks and .... you, Chris. In the second list, we find weasels, ferrets, maniacal axe-wielding thugs and ..... me.

Anyway ... so it turns out that The Australian publishes pointless columns, the reading of which I find saps valuable time from my day which I might otherwise employ in reading Tolstoy or Jane Austen novels.

I mean, I ask you....

Watching them, I could see the degree to which many of us are often not really arguing with the people we’re arguing with; rather, we regress to a place where we are playing out our relationships with our parents.

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

The boss telling you to do something may trigger feelings of disempowerment not because his request is unreasonable but because you hear: “Son, do what I say!” Even the cleaning lady putting your socks in the wrong drawer can anger you because Mummy used to confuse your things with your older brother’s.

Perhaps I can make my umbrage a little more clear, though, if I give voice to my objections in iambic pentameter. Ahem.

Ruth Ostrow, and just quietly, she knows
says of life's ills ..... repeated childhood woes!
Forgive me maam, as I replace my rib,
if I suggest that you are trite, and glib.
I hope that this request will not annoy......
Could you, perhaps, call me a naughty boy?

I've said it before, and I'll say it again....

.... Japanese people are strange. Really, really strange. Often in an endearing way. This .... is not quite one of those times. Also, to borrow a line from Chris ... they should call Ben Mario, 'cause he just got 1-upped.....

In which I am in a bad mood about being in a good mood1

In a manner of speaking, that is. It's just that, well, I feel I'm at my best when I'm ranting about something .... only at present I've kind of got nothing to rant about. Which has left me a little annoyed, to be sure, but not enough to rant about it. I can't even summon up the vitriol to rant about that, either come to think of it. Or that. Or even that, for that matter.

Now, while I like sitting around all day recursively defining arbitrarily large sequences of stuff I just don't feel like ranting about, I guess it's time to let it go and move on. This is not the kind of thing I'm very good at, so you might want to all take a moment to drink in this personal-growth-of-Fitz moment. So, I purchased a bed today. It's a good bed. I got it on trade me which, for that majority of you who are hard of being in New Zealand is much like ebay, only better in every conceivable way. I bring that up, in the context of my general state of rantless-ness, because there was at least one petty vendetta I still held close to my heart, which was the systematic egging (or possibly leaving a burning bag of dog shit on the doorstep) of every house that had advertised a room to rent and arranged with me a time to come and view the place only to tell me upon arrival at said time that sorry, the room was already taken². I'm feeling a lot more well-disposed to such individuals now, however, and have decided that, on balance, I think I'll let them live on account of the fact that if I had gotten one of those rooms I wouldn't have found myself in possession of the room I'm going to be moving into on Wednesday.... which is far and away the best place I've looked at. It's on Aro Street. In the Aro Valley. The flat-mates seem fairly cool. The room is large, warm, surprisingly sunny and completely devoid of the truly unfortunate wall-paper pretty much every other house of comparable age I looked at sported with a perverse sort of pride. I'm about a 10 minute (tops) walk from uni. If I walk out the front door, turn left, and walk around 10 or so meters I find myself at arguably the best bakery in Wellington. If I walk a further comparable distance, I find myself at probably the best dvd shop in New Zealand. Why, only today was I sitting at the bakery in question having a conversation with an organic chemist about his conversion from practicing karate to taking up aikido. There was a long, drawn out explanation of the philosophical differences between the two martial arts and the kind of people who practice them, which I felt was getting a little too "what is the sound of one hand clapping?" for my tastes right up to this incredible point of stillness where I have to admit I achieved a truly Zen-like insight of my own into mysteries of the universe. "So," I said nodding thoughtfully, "what you're telling me ........ is that aikido is to karate.......... what Mr Miyagi is to the Cobra Kai". This, I feel, illustrates nicely not only the type of place I'm moving in to ... but just how far I've come as a person.

¹Also, in which I borrow my method titling posts from Jetta the dog, the failure of whom to update their journal for quite a while now has left a small 3-legged staffy shaped hole in my life. Come back, Jetta, we miss you.

²Arse-cunts!!!!! Seriously, on one occasion I trudged wearily up hills at 9:30 on a cold windy Sunday morning whilst fecking ill only to be greeted at the door by some chilled-out arse who took a few long drawn out nods of his arse-with-ears head before making such a statement. Not that I'm bitter. Actually, I'm fucking not. It's fucking annoying me.

Meetings with my supervisor, metaphorically speaking

Rod: "Andrew, assume the position."

(Andrew gingerly removes pants and bends over the nearest available table.)

Andrew: "You may commence boning, now, master."

I'd like to talk to you about Sweden1

Australia, as I'm sure you're all aware, has seen fit to go about purchasing billions of dollars worth of sleek, aerodynamic, awe-inspiring killing machines with money we could otherwise have ploughed into education, health, supporting under-privileged combinatorics PhD students² or .... I don't know ..... something we might actually end up using. Now, I'm wise enough in the ways of the world³ to realise that we're just never going to get over this desire to have cool tanks, ships and planes and shit .... so instead I've been thinking about something we could actually do with them.

Is there, I thought to myself, a nation on earth of such pure, unadulterated evil that invasion (or at the very least bombing back into the stone age) just for shits and giggles could be seen as justifiable, nay morally obligatory? It occurred to me, dear reader, that in fact such a country not only exists, but has been insidiously veiling its perfidy for years now with a cloak of high living standards, low crime-rates, silly accents and bad music⁴. I'm talking about Sweden, people.... Sweden⁵. They gave the world ABBA, and we said nothing - for we do not watch the Eurovision^TM song contest. They gave the world IKEA^TM - and again we said nothing, for no-one is man enough to admit that they have a small collection of strange post-construction-superfluous connective plastic thingies they hope like hell are not essential to the well-being of their cabinet. Then they gave us Hälge ... and there was nothing much to say, really. Would we stand alone, dear reader? I think not. I submit that the maiden mission for our shiny new F35s is clear......

Figure 1: proposed bombing route sticking to international
airspace and avoiding national boundaries⁶

¹You see, dear reader, it's occurred to me that Google whoring is for losers. I've decided to try my hand at a little crazies trawling. And methinks that the true crazy is of a mind to post first, read footnotes later.

²You think all of those multi-coloured pens and 3 hour lunches at 5 in the afternoon pay for themselves? Ask Geoff.... they don't. In fact, after this post I shall look into an 'sponsor a combinatorist' scheme. I submit that there is no heart so hard as to be supplied with Geoff's downcast visage and not give generously.

³Honest....

⁴Yeah, you heard me Dave. For Abba alone must the Swedes die....

⁵I'd just like to take this moment to forestall a few scurrilous insinuations. This maniacal desire of mine to pluck Sweden clean from the stream of history has nothing at all to do with the fact that a Swede kept me awake last night .... and not in a good way. I spit on such theories, sir, with the phlegm of righteousness.

⁶Norway doesn't count.

Here's hoping Tristan Dunning vanity searches.....

I have been recently surprised, dear reader, to hear the details of a brief exchange which took place on the evening of friday 20/6. Sensitive as I am to my civic duties, and in order to preserve the privacy of the individuals involved I shall refer to the first individual merely as "Person A". As for the second ... I shall refer to them only as "Tristan Dunning". The exchange itself, then, dear reader, went roughly as follows.

Person A: Hi, so I heard about that article you're going to have published ... congratulations!

Tristan Dunning: Why are you talking to me? I don't speak whore.

Of course, there are many levels on which this exchange appeared, at first sight, perplexing to me. In the first instance, the sentence structure was significantly more sophisticated than I would have thought possible from Mr Dunning¹. I suppose, however, that where this exchange was truly world-view-changing for me was in as much as up until now I had been under the impression that, at some point in his life, Tristan had had sex. Assuming, then, that he is speaking the truth ...... this exchange begs a very real question: How? Was a translator involved? Do they communicate merely by his repeatedly placing fifties into their outstretched palms until reluctant acquiescence is achieved?

To any that can answer this most mind-boggling of conundrums, I offer a gold star and a chocolate frog.

¹Indeed, while I was not necessarily surprised to learn of his inability to speak whore, it was certainly something of an eye-opener that he could speak English that well.....

And so the game continues

I guess at least two things have occurred to me over the last, oh, 48 hours what with the .... barrage¹ ..... of 'post something you bastard' messages I've been receiving. The first is that my life is not, it turns out, all that interesting. The second is that god (assuming he/she/it/Frederick actually exists) must, what with his/her/its/Frederick's constant state of omnipotent watchfulness over everyone, think that people are completely fecking loopy. I'm afraid I just can't imagine there'd be many of us who, if followed around for a day, wouldn't commit some act which, while completely reasonable and sensible in the confines of our own head, would make a casual observer believe us to be a nut-job².

Anyways, not having all that much else to post about .... rather than going and committing an act such as this travesty against human decency and in addition offering the excuse that, lately, my creative juices have been employed elsewhere, I'm going to dwell on the second thought for a moment.

So it turns out I am in the habit, dear reader, of .... darting .... through doors. Which is to say .... well, picture a set of revolving doors, or the kind of doors that are slowly self-closing. Imagine you are approaching such a set of doors which are just beating you, if you get my meaning³. Being as I am a student of human folly, I have noticed that most people negotiate their way through such a circumstance by simply extending their arm, opening the door a little further ajar and proceeding through the open doorway.

I am not such an individual.

I treat this circumstance as a kind of ....well, game. The rules are very simple. If it is at all humanly possible to get through those doors without touching either the door itself or the wall into which it is closing .... this must be attempted.⁴ Anyone wishing to understand the giddy thrill achievable through this game is directed to go to this video, fast forward to 1 minute 59 seconds into it and reflect on just how cool that scene really was.

There is, however, a moral to this story and it is this. Given the lengths to which I sometimes go to play this game, it is perhaps surprising that I would not have found the following piece of advice helpful before now. It is, we can all agree, highly likely to encounter someone else trying to get through the door going the other way. This being the case, playing said game while carrying cups of hot tea can be a very bad idea.....

Here endeth the lesson, grass-hopper.

¹Are we happy with this word "barrage"? I'm not quite sure that requests from 2 individuals should strictly count as a 'barrage' .... I'm going to run with it, though, on account of how it probably represents around 20% of my actual readership.

²Well, at least I hope this is true...

³Which is to say your rate of approach is just insufficient to beat the doors effort to close in front of you.

⁴This is important.

A picture is worth 1000 cock jokes.

So, ordinarily, I don't really go in for religious paraphernalia, but..... there's something about this piece that speaks to me.

A call to arms

It is a little-known fact that I have, in my time, seen an awful lot of Buffy the Vampire Slayer¹. Indeed, having derived a good many moral lessons from the Buff-meister, imagine my surprise to find that almost all contemporary social problems in Australia are of a surprisingly similar cause to that of the supernatural activity in this show.

Sunnydale was, of course, situated above the hell-mouth which, in a climactic final episode the high drama of which has yet to be equaled by any human endeavor, was finally sealed shut thus ending the woes of that fair dale. Australia, it seems dear reader, has a hell-mouth of its own².

THIS GATE MUST BE SEALED!!!!!

If someone else could see their way clear to bringing all the explosives and shit, I'll provide the nibblys.

¹This being due to the solid scripts and directing, and having nothing whatsoever to do with my wanting to bone Sarah Michelle Gellar. SCURRILOUS LIES!!!!!

²Damn it, Ben, if you're not going to put in that shameless plug this time .... I will.<sup>*

*</sup>Oh, wait.... you just re-plugged. Ah, well, in any case, this action allows for a new milestone on this blog .... a footnote to a footnote!!!

There are times when no cock joke can be as funny as reality

I have to admit that I struggled a little with this one .... Up until fairly recently, my blog hasn't been the kind that finds funny/quirky stuff on the internet and points it out to people. Largely because I'm just not very good at it, but also because I've come to realise that what people are really after when they visit my blog is, as often as not, a borderline non-sensical rant about some completely pointless issue. This means that when I do find something I'd like to link to I feel a duty to embellish it a little.... but in the case of a story titled Lynchings in Congo as penis theft panic hits capital, well, what the cock is there to add?

I thought at first that I might just fill a post with single/double cock-entendre action ... but, well, I feel I've already kind of blown my load on that front. Possibly, I thought I might just give a blow by blow account of the story, but it's fair to say that there is something of a premature climax to any article which opens with the sentence:

KINSHASA (Reuters) - Police in Congo have arrested 13 suspected sorcerers accused of using black magic to steal or shrink men's penises after a wave of panic and attempted lynchings triggered by the alleged witchcraft.

I suppose I'll I'd like to add to this is that, given the seriousness of the issue:

"It's real. Just yesterday here, there was a man who was a victim. We saw. What was left was tiny," said 29-year-old Alain Kalala, who sells phone credits near a Kinshasa police station.

I am appalled at the insensitivity of Kinshasa police chief Jean-Dieudonne Oleko:

"I'm tempted to say it's one huge joke," Oleko said.

For Chris

I weep. Perhaps Abraham Lincholn said best what I now wish to convey when he said the following¹:

We are not enemies, but friends. We must not be enemies. Though passion may have strained it must not break our bonds of affection. The mystic chords of memory, stretching from every battlefield and patriot grave to every living heart and hearthstone all over this broad land, will yet swell the chorus of the Union, when again touched, as surely they will be, by the better angels of our nature.

In a show of solidarity with Chris, I post the following video:


I would urge other bloggers to do the same so that we may usher in a new era of humanity where our differences may be settled not by war or conflict, but by a simple viewing of .... the video. Surely there can be none among us who can view this and not be left staring off into a point in space feeling that all is right with the universe.

¹Thankyou, X-men 2......