OK, that’s it, I give up! They’ve gone and put Smallville (starring the delightful Alison Mack) on right after Gilmore Girls. The universe is obviously determined to make me watch the damn show, so who I am to argue? From now on Saturday night is Gilmore/Smallville night – who cares if what little straight male cred I have runs screaming off into the night in the process?
Actually talking of Smallville I happened across a hilarious Smallville related quote the other day. Or at least I found it hilarious…
Welcome to ClarkLex. This is the list for people who watch Smallville mainly ’cause it’s gay as a picnic basket. Yes, Smallville, starring Clark “Gayer than a leather pi
A Complete Misuse of Mathematics
Rebecca and I have a bet going at the moment.
As a result of our (that is myself, her and Dom) getting together at the Red Orchid last Saturday I’ve found myself organising a similar get together for my Birthday, provisionally scheduled in for the 28th (that is the get together is provisionally scheduled for the 28th. My birthday is going to be on the 28th no matter what I do 🙂
Now before I actually fix the schedule to this date and do more organising I need to find out if Andrew and Travis can make it or not. As such I’ve emailed them and am currently waiting for a reply…
The thing is that Andrew is completely notorious for not checking or replying to messages – be they emails or left on his answering machine. So while bored at our respective workplaces, Rebecca and I set up a pool on when I’d actually hear back from him. I (somewhat optimistically) reckoned it’d be Saturday at the latest. Rebecca went for Monday. At stake? A bag of low-fat sun-dried tomato pretzels!
Well we were hardly going to bet money were we? 🙂
Anyway, it’s now Friday night and there’s still no sign of a response. I’m tempted to just give him a call, but under the rules we negotiated any attempt to influence the outcome by contacting him results in a forfeit. Not that I’m absolutely desperate to win the pretzels or anything, it just wouldn’t be in the spirit of the thing. So, I guess I’ll wait until Sunday, at which point Rebecca will have won by default and it won’t matter what I do.
Actually talking of Rebecca and probabilities (well betting has to do with probabilities doesn’t it? Please try and keep up 🙂 I got thinking yesterday about something she said to me while we were organising last week’s dinner. We were talking via email at our respective workplaces and had just agreed on Saturday night when I remembered that I might be busy on Saturday and emailed back saying we might have to switch to Sunday instead. Her response was “Please tell me you have a date”. Sadly I had to instead tell her that I might be doing some role-playing at Fabian’s place 🙂
Anyway I was thinking about this conversation yesterday and reflecting that her question was really rather silly. After all, given my general level of geekiness my having a date that Saturday night or indeed on any given night is intrinsically unlikely. Then I got thinking about just how unlikely it was and realised I could actually calculate it. So, being a gigantic Geek I decided to do so 😀
So, here we go. How likely is it that I – Denys the Purple Wyrm – would have had a date last Saturday?
OK, let’s set up some basic starting points. We’ll assume that we’re talking about a first date since if I’d already been out on a date with someone and it had gone so well as to make a second date possible, then Rebecca would have heard about it. We’ll also assume that this first date was arranged at some point during the preceding two weeks, as two weeks would seem to me to be about the longest time you would reasonably wait to go out with someone (if they couldn’t find or make some free time with two weeks notice, they’re probably not very interested).
OK, to actually go on a date, I would have to have someone to go on a date with. This someone would have to meet some basic criteria – specifically they’d have to be female, and around my own age, let’s say 25 to 30. So how likely is it that I would have met someone matching this profile over the previous two weeks?
Unfortunately I work in a male-dominated industry, and don’t have much of a social life, hence I don’t meet a lot of women. I would say that over the last ten years (since leaving high school) I would have met an average of 5 women aged 25 to 30 a year. So, the odds of me having met a woman aged 25 to 30 over the previous two weeks would be…
5/(52/2) = 0.1923
… or about 5.2 to 1 against.
Assuming that I had met someone, she’d have to be single. I don’t have statistics on the ratio of single women in Perth in the 25 to 30 age bracket, so I’ll make a simple assumption of 50%. So, the odds of me having met a single woman aged 25 to 30 over the previous two weeks would be…
0.1923/2 = 0.096154
… or about 10.4 to 1 against.
Now, this woman would not only have to be attractive enough for me to be interested in seeing more of her, but she’d have to be attractive enough for me to overcome my various social phobias and neuroses and actually ask her out *g* (OK, I suppose theoretically she might ask me out, however that hasn’t happened even once during the last ten years, so we can safely ignore the possibility). Within the last ten years I’ve only met one woman that I found so instantly attractive as to even consider such a course of action, had circumstances made it possible. So, if I’ve met an average of 5 women a year for the last ten years that comes to a ratio of…
1/50 = 0.02
(NOTE: This is not to say that none of the other 49 women were attractive, or that I wouldn’t have liked to go out with any of them, just that for me to actually pull myself together enough to do something about it the woman in question has to be something really special 🙂
So…
0.096154 * 0.02 = 0.001923
…or about 520 to 1 against.
Naturally in order for us to have a date, the woman in question would have had to agree to go out with me. Given my social skills, general appearance and presentation the odds of this are not fantastic. However we can be charitable and assume that the qualities that made this woman attractive enough for me to ask her out in the first place (above average intelligence, good sense of humour, an obviously unconventional take on life etc.) would make her slightly more likely than average to at least give me a chance. So, let’s assume a probability of 30%…
0.001923 * 0.3 = 0.0005769
…or about 1733 to 1 against.
OK, so the odds of me having a date on any given night over the last ten years are 1733 to 1 against. What about any given Saturday night?
The likelihood of any date being arranged for a Saturday night is actually quite high, as I’m generally too tired after working all week to do anything on Friday nights, and I’ve got to get up and go to work the next morning on all other nights. So let’s say 75%…
0.0005769 * 0.75 = 0.00043262931
…or about 2311 to 1 against.
So, the final odds of me having had a date on any given Saturday night over the last ten years are about 2311 to 1 against. Not quite Heart-of-Gold-elderberry-bush-full-of-kippers style improbable, but I still wouldn’t be holding my breath Rebecca 😉
PS: I was really looking forward to the season premiere of The Dead Zone but taped the wrong channel. GAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!!! >:-Z
The Pornographers were ripped off!!!
I had a rather weird dream last night. It was an episode of a new sitcom about a bunch of people taking a university course together (actually I think it might have been the second or third season premiere, since there were some implications of some cast members having left and other new ones joining). It was kind of like that old Head of the Class show, you know the one that featured Billy Connolly for a while? Anyway the weird thing was it had an ensemble cast of characters from other sit-coms. The class was made up of Dr Frasier Crane from Frasier, Phoebe from Friends, Linda from Becker and… well Andy Dick (no matter what he’s in Andy Dick only ever plays one type of character and they’re all completely interchangeable, so we’ll just say Andy Dick). Lisa and Beth from Newsradio and Finch from Just Shoot Me might have been hanging around at the back, I can’t quite remember. In any case the teacher was the guy from According To Jim.
Not a lot happened really. Frasier acted like a pompous ass, Linda and Phoebe got into a prolonged and bewildering conversation about some inane subject, and Andy Dick made some stupid Andy-Dickesque comments about the teacher’s new PDA. Oh, and the teacher accidentally spilled the contents of his bag on the floor, and Frasier leapt from his seat and started picking them up in a blatant attempt at currying favour. But that’s about it. WIERD no? 🙂
I suppose all the Newsradio stuff had to do with a documentary on the archeology of Alexandria I watched before going to bed (one of the Archeologists looked surprisingly like Maura Tierney), and this week’s TV guide has a photo from the last episode of Friends which would account for Phoebe, but the rest is completely beyond me.
Anyway I had a pretty busy week socially (for me that is). On Tuesday night I went to the Sunset Cinemas at King’s Park with Ryan, Justin and Marika. They were playing that French bird film that everyone’s been raving about for the last years or so, so after work I caught the train down to Victoria Park and walked to Justin and Marika’s new place. As usual with Justin we were a bit delayed getting going (we had to make pizzas so as to have something to eat which took a while to cook) but we only missed the first ten minutes or so, so that was OK.
The Sunset Cinemas are held in the open air, you sit on the grass and watch the movie on a big screen held up by scaffolding. It was really good actually, the weather was perfect (although it got a little bit chilly by the end) and the film was amazing. Three bits in particular stuck in my mind, a gaggle of geese wandering around the Arizona desert (on their migration from the Gulf of Mexico to Canada, they didn’t just truck geese out to the desert for the shoot – or at least I hope they didn’t), some grebes running across a lake in Oregon (they looked like penguins speeded up five times, it was hilarious!) and a baby snowy owl waddling across the tundra looking like a disgruntled overweight hobbit with a backpack. The pizzas were great, Ryan bought a gigantic heaped platter of grapes (some of which we fed to the ducks while packing up, they couldn’t get enough of them!) and all in all it was a really fun night. I even got a pot plant as a belated Christmas present. It’s a succulent, which is great because it only needs to be watered about once a year which is about as often as I’d remember to 🙂
On Saturday night I headed down to the Red Orchid with Rebecca and Dom, just to catch up. We ended up sitting outside in the little courtyard at the back, which was great because it wasn’t as crowded as out the front, but didn’t have the appalling acoustics of indoors (in order to look cool and trendy the interior has a whole lot of bare concrete and girders, it echoes like crazy). As usual the food was excellent, although the service was a bit sloppy. We were asked for our orders twice, had to ask for a carafe of water twice, and the lemon lime and bitters I ordered with my meal failed to appear until I asked for it again. Oh, and we were offered desert and coffee menus three times, but by that point they may have been trying to get rid of us 🙂
The weird thing is that people kept coming out to sit at the table adjacent to us, then changing their minds and moving indoors. We figured we were doing something to drive them away, although we couldn’t quite figure out what.
So yeah, that was my week socially.
Today of course is the Australia Day/Invasion Day public holiday, depending on how you look at it. There’ll be the big firework display over the river tonight, but I’m not going. To get a decent seat you have to go in at about nine in the morning, and then spend the entire day sitting out in the sun surrounded by even increasing numbers of other bored people, all for fifteen minutes of fireworks choreographed to mindless top 40 tunes which you just know will feature Guy Sebastian. Then you’ve got the hassle of getting home through the thousands of other people all trying to get home. I can do without it frankly.
There was some kind of fireworks display last night as well, to judge by the noise. Either that or an artillery attack of some kind. It was probably over at Gloucester park or something, although I did entertain myself with the thought that the barges for tonight’s show might have caught on fire and the display was going off 24 hours early with no-one to watch it. Haven’t heard anything on the news though, sad to say 🙂
This being Australia Day means that yesterday was of course the Triple J Hottest 100 countdown. All in all it wasn’t too bad, although once again Powderfinger got way more placings than they actually deserve. The New Pornographers didn’t get in at all which annoyed the heck out of me, we could have taken out a few Powderfinger tracks to make room – no one would have missed them!
I would list the top ten here, but Triple J haven’t seen fit to put the results on the website yet. I can say that number one was Are You Gonna Be My Girl by Jet, and two was Hey Yah by Outkast. The Royskopp (which is not how you spell it I’m sure) remix of Coldplay’s Clocks was at about five, and… um I can’t quite remember the rest. A full update when Triple J does one I promise 🙂
As for the songs I voted for, a big chunk of them failed to get in alltogether. That’s what happens when you limit people to ten songs I guess, stupid policy that it is. Let’s see…
Biftek – Read To Me – Didn’t make it in!
Downsyde – El Questro – Didn’t make it in!
Eels – Dirty Girl – Didn’t make it in!
Electric Six – Gay Bar – Got in at about 26, which is good
Nofx – Franco Un-American – Made it in
Screamfeeder – Ice Patrol – Didn’t make it in
The Herd – 77% – Made it in
The New Pornographers – All For Swinging You Around – Didn’t make it in!
The New Pornographers – The Laws Have Changed – Didn’t make it in either!
The Waifs – Lighthouse – Got in at about 12, yey!!
Of the other four I would really have liked to vote for, they all made it in except for Spencer Tracy. They played the ‘Armageddon’ version of ‘Bomb the World’ I’m happy to report by the way, which is the far superior version of the song. A lot angrier than the normal one. Oh, and two songs I maybe would have voted for if I’d remembered them are Growing on Me by the Darkness, and Man of Constant Sorrows by the Soggy Bottom Boys. Now they rock!
Well that’s that for another year then *g*
Finally I should mention that Wyrmworld has undergone a major revision and re-arrangement. I’m aiming to reformat the entire site over the next few months, lord knows it needs it. Next on the horizon are the Tales of the Geek Underclass, I’ve got a design worked out, it’s just a case of finalising it and converting all the files. *sigh* so much work, so little time.
OK, I’m shutting up now 🙂
Songs, Songs and more Songs
I’ve had a rather rough week all told. First of all the ridiculous heat, then the huge problems upgrading my computer at work, then the lunatics who decided to move their party out into the carpark last night. You’ve got to love it when you’re woken from a very pleasant dream about Rose McGowan (not that kind of dream, get your mind out of the gutter!) at 1:00am by people shouting, laughing, smashing bottles and screaming just outside your bedroom window. Happily they decided to call it a night around 3:00, and I was able to get back to sleep, Ms McGowan however was nowhere to be seen. Oh well.
Anyway, computer problems.
Ever since I inadvertantly dragged the windows directory into the wrong place on the hard drive – and then panicked and reinstalled Windows 98 over the top – my work computer has been acting fairly erratically. Rather than erase everything and do a complete re-install (not smart since most of our sites are backed up on my machine) we decided to get a new hard drive, set that up as the master and install Windows on it, while keeping the old one as a slave. Good idea no?
No, not really. The installation process (which took the better part of two and half days) went something like this…
- Take off case and install new hard drive.
- Spend a good two hours trying to get the correct master/slave settings.
- Spend several more hours trying to match the office’s many copies of Windows 98 to the office’s many Windows 98 registration codes.
- Find a CD and code that will work together. Spend about two hours installing Windows 98.
- Spend a further half day re-installing all my software and configuring Windows.
- Realise I’ve installed Windows 98 First Edition when I need Second Edition to recognise the new 80 gig hard drive as an 80 gig hard drive instead of a 2 gig hard drive.
- Spend an hour searching through office for Second Edition CDs.
- Spend two hours trying to match Second Edition CDs to second edition registration codes.
- Find a CD and code that will work together. Spend an hour trying to get the installation to upgrade without crashing. Fail miserably.
- Despair.
- Convince Dale to buy a copy of Windows XP.
- Spend an hour trying to convince the Windows XP CD to recognise the correct hard drive. Eventually force it’s hand by taking out the wrong one.
- Spend two hours installing Windows XP. Spend a further two hours reinstalling all my software and settings. Again.
- Realise I don’t have enough memory to run Windows XP properly. Canabalize chips from other computers until I have enough.
- Go home.
So yeah, not the most productive week.
I’ve had a pretty productive weekend though. I’m not going to go into details just yet, but expect some big changes to Wyrmworld. And maybe to the Wyrmlog too if I can muster the energy 🙂
About the only other thing I’ve got to mention is that I did my patriotic duty today *g* and voted in the Triple J Hottest 100. For reasons best known to themselves the powers that be down at the J’s have decided that this year each person can only vote for ten songs, which was a bit of a problem for me personally since there were at least 131 songs listed that I would have voted for. But I eventually whittled the list down to the following ten tracks – my official ten favourite songs of 2003 (in no particular order)…
Biftek – Read To Me
Downsyde – El Questro
Eels – Dirty Girl
Electric Six – Gay Bar
Nofx – Franco Un-American
Screamfeeder – Ice Patrol
The Herd – 77%
The New Pornographers – All For Swinging You Around
The New Pornographers – The Laws Have Changed
The Waifs – Lighthouse
There were four other songs that almost made the cut, specifically…
Hilltop Hoods – The Nosebleed Section
Michael Franti/Spearhead – Bomb The World
Magic Dirt – Watch Out Boys
Spencer Tracy – Ocean
And I suppose I might as well list the rest of the 131 songs. You know, just for the sake of completeness 🙂 (the best of these are bolded).
1200 Techniques – Eye Of The Storm
A.R.E. Weapons – Hey World
Amiel – Love Song
Andromeda – Something White And Sigmund
Architecture In Helsinki – The Owls Go
Audioslave – Show Me How To Live
Beastie Boys – In A World Gone Mad
Ben Folds – There’s Always Someone Cooler Than You
Billy Bragg – The Price Of Oil
Bob Evans – Friday Come Five
Bob Evans – Turn
Chemical Brothers – The Golden Path
Chumbawamba – Jacob’s Ladder (Not In My Name)
Cody Chesnutt – The World Is Coming To My Party
Coldplay – Clocks
Curve – Want More, Need Less
Dallas Crane – Ladybird
Dallas Crane – No Through Road
Dan Kelly – Counter Meal Kim
Dan Kelly/The Alpha Males – Summer Wino
Dandy Warhols – I Am A Scientist
Dandy Warhols – We Used To Be Friends
Dandy Warhols – You Were The Last High
David Bridie – Hotel Radio
Dirty Lucy – Nothing Is Free
DJ Format – Ill Culinary Behaviour
Dropkick Murphys – The Outcast
Dsico – Smells Like Electro
Eels – Saturday Morning
Electric Six – Danger! High Voltage
Epicure – Armies Against Me
Freeland – We Want Your Soul
Frenzal Rhomb – Hippy Song
Frenzal Rhomb – Russell Crowe’s Band
Full Fathom Five – Built You A Gun
Futureshock – Pride’s Paranoia
Genshen – Nothing Quite Like This
Givegoods – We’re Here About The Budda’s
Gorgeous – Air Balloon
Gorgeous – Do Do Do Song
Grandaddy – Now It’s On
Hedrock Valley Beats – How Do You Feel?
Hot Hot Heat – Naked In The City Again
Idlewild – A Modern Way Of Letting Go
Jack Johnson – The Horizon Has Been Defeated
Jack Planck – Fit, Slender And Attractive
Jet – Are You Going To Be My Girl
Jewtown – Jewtown
Junkie XL/Peter Tosh – Don’t Wake Up Policeman
Klonhertz – Three Girl Rhumba
Ladytron – Evil
Layo And Bushwacka – Love Story
Lazy Susan – Sometimes
Le Tigre – Deceptacon
Legends Of Hip Hop – Fifth Element
Liam Lynch – Still Wasted From The Party Last Night
Liam Lynch – United States Of Whatever
Living End – One Said To The Other
Living End – Tabloid Magazine
Magic Dirt – Plastic Loveless Letter
Mark Ronson – I Suck
MC Honky – 3 Turntables & 2 Microphones
Mclusky – There Ain’t No Fool In Ferguson
Michael Andrews/Gary Jules – Mad World
Michael Franti/Spearhead – Everyone Deserves Music
Mint Royale – Show Me
Nick Holder – No More Dating DJ’s
Nina Simone – Sinnerman
Nofx – The Separation Of Church and Skate
Nokturnl – Woomera
Offcutts – Break It (Down James Brown)
Outkast – Hey Ya
Panjabi MC – Jogi
Panjabi MC – Mundian To Bach Ke
Placebo – Running Up That Hill
Radiohead – There There
Rancid – Red Hot Moon
Relaxed Muscle – Billy Jack
Sahara Hotnights – On Top Of Your World
Salmonella Dub – Slide
Screamfeeder – 1 2 3 4 5
Screamfeeder – I Don’t Know What To Do With Myself
Scribe – Not Many
Sir Veto – Underneath A Burning Sun
Sodastream – Blinky
Sonic Animation – (This Is Not) A Love Poem
Spearmint – Left Alone Among The Living
Starky – Girl Talk
The Bumblebeez – Pony Ride
The Casanovas – No Time For Love
The Cat Empire – The Chariot
The Fergusons – Sinner Is Red
The Fiery Furnaces – Don’t Dance Her Down
The Go! Team – Ladyflash
The Guild League – Jet Set…Go!
The Herd – Burn Down The Parliment
The Libertines – What A Waster
The Mountain Goats – See America Right
The Postal Service – Such Great Heights
The Postal Service – The District Sleeps Alone
The Raveonettes – Attack Of The Ghost Riders
The Raveonettes – That Great Love Sound
The Shins – Mine’s Not A High Horse
The Spazzys – Lets Get Spazzy
The Strokes – 12:51
The Thrills – Big Sur
The Weekend – 80’s Rockstar
Trash Palace – The Metric System
Turbonegro – F.T.W.
Two Up – Why Do I Try So Hard
Underworld – Dinosaur Adventure 3D
Vassy – Cover You In Kisses
White Stripes – Girl U Have No Faith In Medicine
White Stripes – In The Cold Cold Night
White Stripes – Seven Nation Army
Youth Group – Shadowland
Yunyu – A Prayer
Whew! That’s that over for another year. Oh, and my tip for the winning song? Either “Hey Ya” by Outkast or “Gay Bar” by Electric Six. I’d be very surprised is neither of them ended up in the top 10 anyway.
OK, I’m all typed out now, so I’ll shut up 🙂
Intransigent DNA Influenced Cute Woman of the Week: I happened to see some of a repeat of Undercover Angels yesterday. It’s an apalling show, but ex-Popstar Katie Underwood? Wowee! Actually she bears a slight resemblance to a certain someone else, which may have something to do with it 😉
They’re stealing my thoughts!!!
Ack! It was meant to be cool this week before another hot weekend, but instead it’s just decided to be hot all through. Given my extreme aversion to heat and inability to sleep properly at anything over about 16 celcius this means that by the end of the week I shall most likely be psychotic.
So, don’t expect any updates for a while because I’ll be too busy cowering under my air cooler. Or gluing aluminium foil to the ceiling to block the mind control lasers. Whichever.
It’s too HOT!!!
I was going to make a big entry this weekend covering (among other things) my opinion of The Return of the King, but it turned out to be 40
Random Observations
A few observations, comments and other ephemera…
Do not under any circumstances ever order whitebait!
On the Thursday before we closed up business for the Christmas/New Year break, the entire office went out to lunch on the company budget, which is about the one tradition we have at GTP. When I say the entire office I mean myself, Dale, Bevan, Dale’s Dad (who does accounts for us), Bernie (a Swiss guy who’s doing part time work for us at the moment) and Gail (who runs a web/print design out of one of the rooms next to us and who would have been left all alone in the building while we were out pigging ourselves which just would have been mean otherwise). Dale had selected the venue (as company Director he was paying for the meal after all) and so at 11:30ish we all ended up at Steve’s Restaurant, overlooking the river.
It was a weird day, heavy cloud cover that threatened torrential rain without ever delivering it, humidity high enough to make the view to the opposite shore foggy and indistinct, and sudden gusty breezes from out of nowhere. Nonetheless Dale decided we’d eat out in the courtyard. I don’t know why, possibly it was cheaper. In any case the strange weather may have influenced my decision to go completely insane and order the whitebait.
The problem of course was that I had no idea what whitebait actually was. I knew it was seafood, obviously, but beyond that I was a bit shaky. I think I had some vague impression of it being some kind of small shrimp or prawn which would be very enjoyable deep fried in a golden batter which is how it was described on the menu. As it turned out I was wrong. Very wrong.
Whitebait it seems is a small, sardine like fish which is cooked and eaten whole. When I say whole, I mean whole, as in head and bones and scales and digestive system and all. Ack.
Needless to say I was quite horrified when I was served a gigantic pile of these tiny fish – even if they were deep fried in a golden batter. In fact the batter somehow made it worse, it’s bad enough that your food is looking at you, let alone through crispy golden eyesockets. But, I could hardly send it back. I would have looked like an idiot. And, I suppose, Dale would have had to pay for two meals for me – but mainly I would have looked like an idiot. So I had no choice but to tuck in.
Actually it wasn’t that bad. So long as I ignored what it actually was it was kind of like eating slightly oily and mushy chips with a faint flavour of sardines and charcoal. Luckily there were some sauces provided – the sweet chilli was particularly good – so I munched away with an impassive expression on my face making carefully considered comments like “not bad” and “a little salty” like some kind of whitebait connoisseur when asked how it was. All the while suppressing my gag reflex.
I managed to finish almost all of the horrid little things before the sweet chilli sauce ran out, at which point I decided I just couldn’t face any more. There were about five or six left at the bottom of the dish, but I decided the kitchen staff could go hang if they were going to be upset by that, so I stubbornly left them behind. I spent much of the rest of the day feeling queezy and burping softly, and didn’t fully recover my appetite until late Friday.
(By the way I should point out that none of the blame for this horrible experience falls at the feet of Steve’s Restaurant – it’s all down to me ordering the wrong thing. For all I know it was really excellent whitebait 🙂
So, no more whitebait for me thanks!
If It’s Catchy, It Means You Stole It by the Sneeze
If this is not the worst song ever written, then it’s damn close. Constructing a song from the lyrics of other well know songs is actually a great idea – so long as you have a decent tune, select lyrics that actually fit the meter of that tune, and don’t sing every line four times in a row. Let’s look at an extract from the song in question shall we?
Yesterday,
Allmytroublesseemedso far away,
From Michelle, Michelle, Michelle-Michelle-Michelle, Michelle, Michelle ma belle,
Michelle, Michelle, Michelle-Michelle-Michelle, Michelle, Michelle ma belle,
Michelle, Michelle, Michelle-Michelle-Michelle, Michelle, Michelle ma belle,
Michelle, Michelle, Michelle-Michelle-Michelle, Michelle, Michelle ma belle,
When you consider that it’s sung in high weak, reedy, voices and the “Michelle” lines only have two notes (something like A-A A-A A-A-A-A-A-A A-A A-A A#-A) it’s like (and about as enjoyable as) listening to morse code. Lets have a look at another extract shall we?
Falling down like love,
Falling down like spring rain keepsfallingonmyhead,Spring – rain – keeps fallingonmyhead,
Fallingonmyhead,
Over you,
Over you,
Over you,
Over you,
Or maybe…
WhenIwasyoung,
Ineverneeded anyone those days are gone,
(yesterday)
Ineverneeded anyone,
But Michelle, Michelle, Michelle-Michelle-Michelle, Michelle, Michelle ma belle,
Michelle, Michelle, Michelle-Michelle-Michelle…..
If I ever see Tom Morgan on the street, I shall personally shoot him. In the meantime I will mainline Reseda Casino and Letter to Memphis until this musical monstrosity is wiped from my brain.
I hope.
And while we’re on the subject…
… of the Pixies, the guitar riff from that new(ish) smash hit Powderfinger song (Love your Way? Sunsets? One of them anyway) is obviously copied from the b-side version of River Euphrates. Just thought I’d point that out 🙂
Dale-isms
My boss, Dale, simply cannot write. He couldn’t write a coherant English sentence if his life depended on it. He can speak perfectly intelligably – in fact everyone in the office’s livelyhoods depend on it since he does all the marketing – but the minute you put him in front of a keyboard it’s as if the linguistic sections of his brain go into to total spasm. For instance, from the email newsletter he wrote today to send out to our clients…
“Unfortunately many e-commerce sites usually needs a price reductions on your products to attract a sale”
“I would like to wish you a prosperous new year over the next 12 months and beyond for your business”
Thankfully he is at least dimly aware of his failings in this area and gets me and Bevan to have a look over anything important he writes before he prints or emails it 🙂
Website Updates
It will no doubt please everyone to hear that over the Christmas break I had sufficient rest and relaxation to totally unwind from the working year and get my writing mojo/groove back. Unfortunately I got it back on Friday, a mere three days before having to start all over again at the begining of a new work year. Believe me, no one is more annoyed and frustrated about this than myself.
With another two weeks off I could have written a bunch of new chapters for the Tales of the Geek Underclass not to mention totally revising and updating the entire site. As it was I only had time and creative juices enough to do some more work on Zurv
Obscure and Foolish Charmed Reference
So, vanquished demons don’t die – they turn into plastic surgeons. Makes sense to me!
Davey Jones’s Pantaloons
A conversation Ryan and I had on MSN the other day…
Ryan: Yar me hearties. That reminds me of a tale on the high seas. A tale of adventure and daring-do and the time ah didn’t wash for 40 days and 40 nights, and that’s just a conservative estimate!
Me: Arrrr, do tell matey!
Ryan: Well it was a dark and stormy night. A windy, blowy night. Then ah realized it was me that was windy and all about the sea was calm like glass. But the goings-on in me trousers was a different tale all together. I decided then and thar that ah would not wash meself for a very long time. And a very long time indeed, as it turned out…
Me: Arrr! And did that fix tha problem in ye panatloons?
Ryan: Fixed ’em? NO! It was then that ah founds that me pantaloons was filled with a contentious and foul odour the likes of which ye ‘ave never smelled. Not even old Davey Jones in his slimy, watery sewerage plant ever had to deal with such vapours! So ye be a wondering then… why ah chose that throat chokin’, eye waterin’ moment not to wash fer such a time?
Me: Aye matey! Why’d ye choose such an inopportune moment to cast off the shackles of an adequate personal hygiene regimen?
Ryan: Well that there’s a secret ah’ll be taking to me watery grave… and sharing only with old Davey Jones, if he turn out to be a nice enough chap!
Me: Arrr!!!
We are such DORKS!! ;-D
For the sake of completeness I watched the World Idol results show last night. Remarkably not only did the guy from Norway (Kurt Nilson was it? Something like that) win, he was voted number one by every country except for the pan-Arabs – which is pretty good going for a Hobbit 🙂
Actually it was interesting because the pan-Arab voting was radically different to the rest of the world’s – they voted Alexander from Germany in at number one when everyone else put him last or second last (where he deserved to be frankly). You’ve got to wonder if this is because of a different musical heritage – ie: Alexander somehow managed to mangle Maniac into a great sounding Arab pop-song – or if it was politically motivated. Remember Germany and France were the two countries most vocally opposed to the war in Iraq, and there was no French contestant to vote for. Hmmmm, interesting…
Should old aquaintence… zzzzzzzzzzzz
Well, it’s 2004. Woo-hoo.
Sorry, but I refuse to get all excited about what is a fairly arbitrary point in the Earth’s orbit. Maybe if the date actually meant something, scientifically speaking, I could get enthusiastic. Like a solstice or an equinox, or the sun eclipsing a particularly significant star. But just an arbitrary date? Bah!
(This surly attitude may have something to do with once again not being invited to any parties or anything and not having anyone cute to snog at midnight – then again it may not ;-D)
So, on the 31st I defragged my hard drive (which is as close to a yearly ritual as I get), watched Scrubs and went to bed. Oh, and I also changed my sheets, but it was time to do that anyway so you probably can’t attach any great significance to it.
Yes, very sad me 🙂
Anyway I thought I’d catalogue my Christmas loot, so you can all go “I got more stuff than that!” and feel all smug…
From Mum and Dad
- A bathroom scale, which I’d mentioned I needed.
- A 40 piece socket set, which I hadn’t mentioned but I suppose it could come in useful.
Andrew and Travis (Andrew was in Vegas for Halloween last year, which probably explains a lot 🙂
- A “magic towel” from the Luxor (it expands in water, hence ‘magic’).
- A polar bear Christmas tree ornament.
- A “dinosaur egg” – you chip away the dirt to reveal a plastic dinosaur skeleton.
- A magic expanding-in-water Dracula sponge.
- A deck of souvenir playing cards.
Aunts Faye and Beverly (who went to the UK and France last year)
- A souvenir box of chocolates from Paris.
- A Union Jack beach towel.
- A Union Jack t-shirt.
- A box of Union Jack mints.
- A teatowel from Oxford.
- A model London Bus (in a Union Jack box naturally 🙂
- A London Calendar.
- A Sherlock Holmes Hotel ashtray/dish thing.
Rebecca and Dom
- A four piece dinner setting and a set of glasses. Possibly they’re trying to get me to hold dinner parties or something – the way I see it I can now go four extra days without having to do the washing up! 😉
Helen
- A copy of The Postman (the novel that is, not the film).
- A set of magic number cards with which to pull tricks on people with 🙂
Ali
- Computer Waiting Games, which is seriously cool 🙂
Ryan
- A hand drawn picture of dribbling man standing on a pedestal with a beer in his hand and simutaneously burping and breaking wind while bystanders point and gasp in horror 🙂
I think that just about sums it up.
Hey! The Norwegian Hobbit won World Idol how about that, it looks as if the world has taste after all. And Guy Sebastian apparently came 8th or something. Yey!!
OK, I think I’ll shut up now 🙂 Happy new year everyone!
