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.