- Location:Upstairs in bed, next to tinyjo
- Mood:Epitaphicacious
- Music:'Standing in the Way of Control' - The Gossip (in my head)
- 23:32 In the pub, a saxophonist played over backing tracks. I'm told that he obviously overheard my criticisms. I cannot bring myself regret this. #
- 23:31 So it's come to this: drunk & watching Merlin. In my defense, I've been led astray by attractive women. Would that I always have that excuse #
- 14:37 Discussing pigeon problems, my colleague said, "The donkey from Guizhou ran out of skill"; then had to tell us the contextualising story :) #
- 15:44 There's always a jigsaw in the kitchen at work, but this one has missing & duplicated pieces. I suspect it of being a psychology experiment. #
- 16:47 tinyjo is off work with a sore throat. I prescribe ice cream dusted with Lemsip powder. I am like House crossed with Hester Blumenthal. #
- 14:23 Just had lecture on swine flu from the WHO Rapid Pandemic Assessment Collaboration. I'm in on the ground floor of the apocalypse! #pandemic #
- 14:25 One slide title suggests a band name: 'WHO and the Pandemic Phases'. First single (from same slide): 'Widespread Human Infection' #pandemic #
- 14:29 Hong Kong schools were closed to contain the flu. Hong Kong Disney Land responded with special kids offers. Capitalism vs. health! #pandemic #
- 14:36 The WHO's final 'conclusions' slide had 4 bullet points: one thing they knew about swine flu, three things they didn't. Unnerving. #pandemic #
- 19:59 Just watched 5 guys successfully shoot a wier on a punt, but I bet that they didn't expect it to take 15 mins. or have a sarcastic audience. #
- 16:06 My office window shows different weather each time I look out, but always with thick drifts of fluffy static (or seeds?) How do I reboot it? #
- 23:54 Rising volume limits conversation to short bursts of the basics: the past, the future, fractals, AI, music theory, cellular automata, etc. #
- 00:01 The group next to me sing Mel & Kim's 'Repectable' over the DJ's bland dance tunes. We came for mashups and mashups we will have, damnit. #
- 00:34 The floor's packed but people keep pushing past. Either we're in an invisible thoroughfare, we look unusually pliable, or everyone's in flux #
- 00:48 I have neglected the obvious explanation for the nearby movement: everyone here wants to rub up against me. It's Occam's very sexy Razor... #
- 02:42 *2manydjs*
Too many mashups of already similar dance tracks, too few genres defied; but enough sublime moments to make a great gig. #
- 23:17 The problem with DJs as performers is that it's hard to tell whether the guy playing records on stage is filler, support act or main event. #
- 10:19 Once you rule out the obviously mental, the racist/twatriotic & the known bad, choosing who to vote for is depressingly simple. #
- 10:34 Plane departs for Los Angeles in 20 minutes. Time to switch to stealth mode... #
- 09:03 MP Nadine Dorries describes the publication of MPs' expenses as a 'McCarthyite witchhunt'. A curious recursive metaphor; also: bullshit. #
- 09:15 MP Stephen Pound says the McCarthy analogy is 'facile', MPs reacted in 'a sort of melancholic threnody' & (HHOS) blames Thatcher. Vote: won. #
- 14:00 I need a particular sort of button, but the only haberdashery in town has closed. A lesser man would concede defeat... #buttonquest #
- 14:13 ...with my comprehensive knowledge of 2nd-hand clothes shops I found the perfect buttons, albeit with an 18 jacket attached. #buttonquest #
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archie, iruineverything and I played when we shared a house many years ago. Looking back, it seems clear that they all arose from the tension between our basic human need for communication and the realisation that we didn't actually do or think much that was of interest even to ourselves, let alone worth communicating to others. Lacking the resources (financial, physical, emotional) to resolve this in a healthy way (perhaps by experiencing things then discussing them), we turned communication or the corruption thereof into its own end, resulting in a series of semi-ritualised interactions that I choose to think of as 'games' (as opposed to, say, 'symptoms').My motive in describing this particular one is not simply to share a wonderfully damaging passtime, nor just to remind myself of how much better I am these days, but also to protect my reputation. You see, some of those that knew me and my housemates during the period in which we were playing still recall (or, perhaps more accurately, 'find themselves unable to forget') the more lurid imagery that developed as a result. From time to time, therefore, said imagery will arise in conversation, attributed to me, at which point anyone within earshot who is unaware of the context tends to blink in incomprehension or recoil in horror, depending on the vividness of their imagination. The conversation is derailed, and a lengthy and hasty explanation is necessary to provide the proper perspective lest I become known as, say, a Frankensteinian incestuous zoophile. I hope that the remainder of this post will supply that context, and that this introduction will have served as a warning to potential players.
When Surrealist Terrorists Attack
You will need: Two or more players with scant regard for the mental well-being of themselves or others.
Rules and history:
"If X and Y were in a burning building and you could only save one, who would it be?"
The game began with the above question, a classic inducer of a thousand traumatic conversations. We soon realised that its real power was in iteration: repeated applications of this question with appropriately chosen variables can rank a person's entire set of acquaintances in strict order of affection. This can be troubling/entertaining enough, but only begins to explore the possibilities inherent in the game. Logical readers will already have spotted, for example, that the question poses a strict inequality: you have to choose one option over the other, allowing ill-defined edge cases where the two options are of equal value. Sadistic readers will note that the closer in value the options are, the harder the choice. Creative readers may realise that any two options could be brought closer together with inventive riders. Being logical, creative sadists, we soon moved on...
"If X and Y were in a burning building and you could only save one, who would it be, if you knew that Y was going to die of cancer within a year?"
Here we have a simple yet ingenious extension of the original question. By painstakingly tweaking each option like this, we can eventually reduce any choice to insoluble equality. Again, the logical will realise that this allows the players to rank conditions as well as people. For example: "Would you save your sister or your brother? OK, but what if your sister was pregnant with twins, but your brother was running an orphanage?" Let your imagination run wild! Soon you'll be forcing other players to choose between saving their mother or a paedophile who's on the verge of curing cancer. The disadvantage is that eventually you'll manage to present your victim with a dilemma so difficult to resolve that they will opt to toss a coin, or even to lie down in the building and let all be consumed. That, of course, is when you escalate...
"If terrorists burst in and forced you to choose between saving X, saving Y, or having yourself and everyone you've ever loved tortured to death, which would you choose?"
Another simple extension of the premise, but its advantages are clear. Replacing the impersonal catastrophe with sentient agents (albeit with rather cryptic motivations) makes the question much harder to avoid. Not only does this more strongly compel a choice, but it neatly defeats clever-dick answers to the original burning building scenario like "I'd save X because Y could probably escape on her own". Essentially the terrorists become a proxy for the questioner, shutting down all avenues of escape from the central decision. Once again, we find that this extension has unexpected benefits: you are no longer limited to life-and-death choices, these terrorists can and will force you to choose between anything at all. This opens up another questioning technique: rather than attempting to traumatise the victim with impossibly equal options, you can present them with alternatives which are traumatic even to evaluate. Once this questioning paradigm is established, you'll find it becomes second nature to face each other with entirely unacceptable decisions at the drop of a hat. The end results are, of course, limited only by your imagination, but as an example of high-level play I will present one that we developed when playing eight years ago which is still quoted to this day:
"If terrorists burst in and forced you to choose between fucking a tiger, fucking a chimpanzee with the mind of your sibling, or having everyone you've ever loved tortured to death, which would you choose?"
End: A choice is presented which reduces all players to blank-faced horror or helpless giggles.
Winning: No-one wins.
- Location:At work (tsk)
- Mood:Unhealthy
- Music:'Tender' - Blur
- 16:12 The Oxfam bookshop received a big bag of Dicks. Once we'd emptied the Dick sack, we ended up with 30" of Dick, all told. Why not grab one? #
- 19:36 Good: Twitter's broadcasting to UK mobiles again (at least on Vodafone)
Bad: I found out from 5 texts between 2 and 3am (bloody Americans) #
- 20:27 I am having an evening of insightful analogy.
Insight 1: The traditional English breakfast is our equivalent of tapas, but all on one plate # - 20:38 2: Economics is like A-Level mechanics: not a bad approximation, but if you invent a perpetual motion machine it's an error in your model. #
- 22:14 3: Miso-garitas! You could make miso soup with tequila & lime! I'm pretty sure that you could live on this. Or it's at least worth a try. #
To: [adminstrators of a pension scheme I paid into for a few months 9 years ago]
Reference no: [redacted]
Good afternoon,
I've just received my statement of benefits for this scheme, which
estimates that by 2042 I can expect a pension of £20.00 a year. Granted,
if all goes to plan, by 2042 I'll be living in space within a brand-new
robot body, but that kind of money won't even cover the cost of having the
micro-meteorite dents buffed out of my shiny metal chest-plate.
I would therefore like to close this account, either by transferring it to
my current pension (I am with [current pension scheme], if
this is meaningful and relevant) or by simply withdrawing the money. I
would be grateful if you would let me know what options are open to me.
Thanks,
- Location:Work (tsk)
- Mood:Responsible and/or frivolous
- Music:None. Forgot my headphones :(
Given my uncertainty, perhaps it's best that I describe some elements of the film in a truthful but misleading fashion; that should provide the best (and/or worst) of both worlds. So, 'Far North' features:
- A cute girl with a gun
- Sex
- Seal stalking
- Violence
- Attractive women sleeping with each other
- Blood
- Husky dragging
- Guts
- Knife-crime
- Cookery
- Full facial snow-balling
- Aurora Borealis
- A naked Sean Bean
- Some of the most explicit on-screen scrimshawing you're ever likely to see
- Location:Downstairs on the sofa next to tinyjo
- Mood:Chilled
- Music:A little 'Stargate' bleeding through tinyjo's headphones
I know people who've had babies, of course, including an ex-girlfriend and some old OUSFGers, but they didn't have quite the same impact as learning, at the end of last year, that
iruineverything and pinata23 are expecting. Unlike the aforementioned, these are friends who were very definitely of my generation at university, who are still living in Oxford and that I see on an irregular but fairly frequent basis. I find it impossible, therefore, to characterise them as Others, as grown-ups; they are people like us. Now this event (or perhaps process is more accurate, after all I'm getting regular updates on its progress) is unnerving in and of itself, but I was slightly saddened to learn that
iruineverything was worried about telling me because of what I might say. I was and am genuinely surprised that anyone might treat me that way, but I guess it's a reminder that what I say is who I am for most people. I have indeed been rather (too?) vocal in my trepidation about the prospect of the baby-wave, but I hadn't intended to come across as so dogmatic, to blur the line between expressing 'what I think' and 'how things should be'. I suppose that as a man of few convictions and no evangelical inclinations, I'm always surprised when people take me seriously, or even think that I expect it.Still, it did lead me to consider my (apparently vehement) aversion to reproduction. After all, it is true that not only do I not favour the idea for myself but I also don't favour it for my friends. I don't expect them to pay this the slightest heed, of course, but the fact remains that I have said as much and people have apparently listened, so it's an opinion that's overdue some serious thought. Not in order to marshal a more convincing case, you understand, but to understand my motives better, with an embarrassed suspicion that I should have shut the fuck up on this topic all along.
I had initially framed my objection in terms of disappointment with people for caving in to the demands of biology and/or societal expectations. However, if that were really the case I'd be equally disappointed when my friends had sex, or wore clothes, so that's clearly pretty spurious. I think the true explanation is an extension of why I don't want children myself.
tinyjo and I have a nice life, and children would change that (in fact, we believe, they would spoil it). However, a vital part of that nice life is our peer group, and therefore them having children would also spoil my life, albeit to a much much lesser extent. It's as simple and selfish as that, and hopefully if I do continue to share my opinions I will at least be able to explain this. After all, it's quite a flattering reason, really, and its unabashed immature selfishness might help lessen the sting. I'm just one of the Lost Boys, and not only do I not want to grow up, I don't want my playmates to grow up either...- Location:Upstairs in bed, next to tinyjo
- Mood:Unreproductive
- Music:'This Sceptered Isle'
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