Initial Conditions

I’m aware my recent posts were of a rather downbeat nature, but I thought I’d share this with you.

This page (from Friday’s metro) made me smile.

Hoy: Not as bad as he looks

If I was editing the Metro, I certainly wouldn’t have placed the rather unflattering headline underneath a picture of Olympic hero and Sports Personality of the year Chris Hoy smiling with a camera. But what do you expect from a free paper?

The title of this post doesn’t really roll off the tongue. Sorry about that.

There is only one serious question in fantasy football:

Picking Ronaldo. Is it ethical?

I quote Gav Marshall (who I haven’t met) from the league forum of “manager’s select”:

I want a team which consistantly [sic] scores points, but that I enjoy watching. This means I refuse,contrary to all conventional wisdom, to just throw Ronaldo in as captain and sit back and watch.

This is a noble way to play, but alas many of the teams in the bottom half of “manager’s select” (including his) are Ronaldo-less. A friend of mine said that;

Having Ronaldo in your team is just cheating!

Which, although clearly untrue, has a certain point to it. I would be interested to see what percentage of points Ronaldo earns in each team he’s in, as I imagine it’s quite high.

However: being dependent on one player is not a Ronaldo-exclusive issue, as Frank Lampard is also a big-hitter in terms of points scoring, and according to the stats, is in as nearly as many teams as Ronaldo. This may be as a result of people building their teams around him as opposed to around Ronaldo (who was injured at the start, catching many people out) who would surely be in more teams if he wasn’t crocked at the onset.

So in conclusion, nobody should be stigmatised for picking Ronaldo, however, doing so is often as a result of an unwillingness to try out other ideas and trying to win without him is an honourable exploit to try, though is likely to end in tears. Which is what you probably knew already. Sorry.

The code was correct but alas thanks to flawed logic my result was incorrect in any case

Back to the drawing board…

Apparently the 118 118 questioning service was free today so I took the opportunity to ask some deep (and possibly immature) questions. Here they are and the answers accompany them:

Q:How can we discern between free will and divine preordination?

A: It is really hard to tell. It would depend what you believe in or your faith. Thanks, Your 118 Team.

(To be honest, what did I expect?)

Q: What is the actual iron content of Irn-Bru and does it sell well in England and Wales?

A: No info found. you may contact Irn-Bru on (phone number) for details on the product!s [sic] content. Thanks!

(I did actually want to know this. Shame they didn’t have it..)

Q: Where do babies come from?

A: Babies were born from the womb of their mothers. Thanks, Your 118 Team!

(I’m sorry, I’m so sorry)

Other rejected questions included:

What is love?

What is art?

Who is you daddy and what does he do?

Was the Second World War an inevitable consequence of the First World War?

How does the writer make the passage humorous?

Do you believe in life after love?

etc.

I hope you found this informative!

Proportions are probably not accurate

So, yes the majority of my emails seem to come from either the MTO or spam-land. Actually, I would say about 20% of the emails I receive are actually of any use, and the emails from other PGs moaning about clogging up their inboxes because you’re trying to tell them stuff are the least welcome.

I have been really bad at posting of late, so to remedy that, I’m starting a new series called “Why I like/ Why I don’t like..” where essentially I write about something I like and something I don’t and explain my rationale behind them. Should be good for “fillers”. So to begin:

Why I like… Formula One

I will admit I haven’t been a proper F1 fan for too long. I would often spend my sunday afternoons as a youngster watching races with my dad (the Nigel Mansell and Ayrton Senna days) but didn’t really get into it. During the Michael Schumacher total domination years I almost lost all interest entirely. Still, I managed to catch certain races, not being particularly excited by them. Despite Fernando Alonso doing well in 2005, I didn’t see many races then other than the US GP (you remember the one when only six cars competed?).

Then I started playing Gran Turismo, and raced a lot on the Suzuka circuit. I got intrigued by seeing a real race there, so I decided to get up early and watch the Japanese GP which was coming up soon. Great decision, as it was easily one of the best races you can ever hope to see. Unfortunately, the season was over by then (in terms of the championships), so competitive racing didn’t really come again til the following March, by which time I had re-acquainted myself with circuits, drivers and things like downforce so I could understand better.

I did, and I’ve enjoyed it since, for when there isn’t much action on track (e.g. in Spain or Hungary), there is always pit strategies to be excited about, since you don’t really know how much fuel a car is carrying. However, the rivalries between the drivers are great, particularly when they as evenly matched as Hamilton, Raikkonen, Massa and Alonso (when he has a decent car). The politics isn’t such a good thing, but then everything has its downside.

So anyway, yes, in a nutshell that’s why I like F1.

Why I don’t like.. The Mighty Boosh

I can hear the accusations of bandwagon-jumping a mile off, but I have to say that with this show there is a “love it” bandwagon and a “hate it” bandwagon, so really, you’re not accusing me of anything. Anyway..

I remember ages ago when I didn’t find The Office to be funny. I didn’t like it because everyone was saying how brilliant it was, and I just didn’t get it. Over time though, I changed my mind and I now have all the episodes on DVD.

The Mighty Boosh, however, is a whole different kettle of fish. The first episode I watched was to do with kangaroo boxing, an inherently amusing subject, but I just couldn’t find anything to laugh at at all. I saw a few more episodes, spurred on by friends who insisted it was the best thing ever and was just baffled as to what people saw in it. The “actors” couldn’t act and were often perilously close to corpsing on many occasions, and then there’s Noel Fielding’s hair, which I find grotesquely offensive, but of course, that shouldn’t detract from how I enjoy the show (although it does..). Hair disasters aside, the lack of laughter track IS welcome (it’s good to let the audience decide for themselves what is funny- incidentally, I recalled that most of the old Hanna-Barbera cartoons had a laughter track. Do kids really think that there’s a remote possibility that they were acted before a live audience?), but the down side to that is that there’s an awkward silence (where they expect you to laugh) rather than something to fill the air. I could talk about the plots: but there really isn’t any plot to speak of as it seems to just get weirder and weirder every time- it prides itself in being surreal, but sadly for me, the surreal isn’t something I particularly connect with.

So yes, the reason I don’t like it is that it’s been overhyped and underdone. However, that’s my opinion, and if you have a sense of humour that suitably aligned to this show, then I hope you enjoy it for many years to come. But it just isn’t my bag and no amount of hype can tell me otherwise. Booya.

I saw something brilliant earlier. Clearly, some poor fellow had been left holding the baby for the night, but really, really didn’t want to miss out on his evening run. How do you solve such a dilemma?

Easy, go running with the pram! Childcare AND exercise, brilliant! Who says men can’t multitask?