| Probability |
[Jan. 28th, 2007|04:41 pm] |
I believe that there is no such thing as random probability. There is no law of averages.
Here is my justification:
1) How many times have you been walking past a tree/bush and had a springy twig whip back and hit you dangerously close to the eye? If you're anything like me, the answer will be in triple figures at least.
2) How many times has a similar twig hit you straight in the eyeball and blinded you? If you are anything like me, the answer will be zero.
This is where I call all of our common ideas about probability into question. If I compare the number of times in my life that a stick has come dangerously close to blinding me, ripping a hole in my cornea or skewering my eyeball, with the number of times any of these things has actually happened, we find a vast discrepancy. By rights, considering the number of near misses I've had, I should have no eyes.
The only explanation I can think of for why I have two eyes instead of zero is that the world is far less random than we make it seem. There is a benevolent all-powerful God who prevents us from taking our eyes out on sharp objects. The near misses are just his way of reminding us of the valuable service he is providing, and that we shouldn't take our eyeballs for granted. |
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| Great comebacks |
[Jan. 28th, 2007|04:12 pm] |
Don't you love it when people completely miss the point of your insults/accusations? I watched a program a while ago about a man who convinced his girlfriends to let him film them having sex and promptly dumped them and released the videos. He also allegedly assaulted them. During an interview he said something so stupid and funny and perfect for comedy that all I can do is write it down exactly as I remember it:
Interviewer: We have a list of the accusations your ex-girlfriend has made... for instance, she says you tried to suffocate her by forcing her head into a vaccuum cleaner bag.
Weird porno guy: *In slight west-country accent* Well I don't know where she's got that from! We had a Dyson! They don't have a bag... that's the whole point.
This is all. |
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| A poem about my new favourite fruit. |
[Sep. 19th, 2006|11:57 pm] |
I'm obsessed with tomatoes! Read this article! http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tomatoes
Every time I see one I get emotional, thinking of their history etc. When I eat one, I look at the bite mark and imagine it's a gory mouth. Sometimes I feel like the tomato is eating me.
I tried to explain this to Char, but she said she thought it was pretentious. I'm inclined to agree. Anyway, I wrote a poem about it:
Lycopersicum
The love apple’s valentine glow
Is kiss-shaped, revolution-coloured
And ripe with blood.
More meat than fruit,
I call it beefsteak,
Dissect its muscled flesh,
Fork a heartstrung seed-filled ventricle
To my mouth,
Burst it with my teeth,
Swallow
And feel it beat:
Tomato,
Lycopersicum,
The wolf peach. |
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| Portmanteau words |
[Sep. 19th, 2006|10:59 pm] |
A portmanteau word is a word made from two other words in such a way that it combines the meanings of both. I love them, when used logically.
Examples of good portmanteau words:
Keytar
A keytar is one of those keyboards that you hold like a guitar - they used them in the 80s all the time. Keytar is a good name for it. Combining the words "keyboard" and "guitar" into "keytar" is an accurate and logical way of describing this instrument and the way it combines the versatility of a keyboard with the portability of a guitar.
Animatronics
Animatronics is the robot-like technology used to move complex puppets such as Bollo from the Mighty Boosh (Series 1). Animatronics is a good name for it. Combining the word animation with the word electronics is a good way of describing the way this technology combines the principles of animation with high-tech electronic machinery.
Sporks!
This is the perfect portmanteau word: Spoon + Fork = Spork. It's gloriously simple.
Bad Portmanteau words:
Some people think it's cool to make up a new word by harvesting bits of other words. They don't stop to consider whether they have any right to do this, or whether what they come up with makes any logical sense. Let me illustrate this with a couple of my least favourite examples.
Kissletoe
Some people like to refer to mistletoe hanging from the ceiling as kissletoe, the idea being that one kisses under the mistletoe. I question whether the word "kiss" needs to be introduced into the word "mistletoe" - I suggest that, when one thinks of mistletoe, one already imagines its kiss-inducing qualities.
However, this is not my main point. The other day I heard someone referring to one of those novelty headbands that suspends a sprig of mistletoe just above the wearer's head at all times as "kissletoe". Now this is all wrong - if you're naming a novelty item, it's easy to just come up with the first funny sounding portmanteau you can think of, but this is to forget the whole point of the portmanteau (to combine meanings in an accurate way). The head-mounted mistletoe combines the tradition of kissing under the mistletoe with the idea of wearing something on your head. Thus, the name should not be "kissletoe", as the combination of kissing and mistletoe is only one aspect of the product's appeal. I have drawn a simple equation to illustrate how the naming process should have worked.
(kissing + mistletoe) + head = X
The word "kissletoe" only assimilates the concepts of kissing and mistletoe. After we introduce it into the equation, we are still left with the idea of head-mounting:
kissletoe + head = X
Clearly X (the novelty product) cannot simply be called kissletoe, as the equation wouldn't balance. The way I see it there is one obvious solution to this problem:
kissletoe + head = headletoe
Much simpler!
TODDLERtivity
This one isn't as bad, but still needs work. It is the name of an activity group for toddlers. Now, the good folks at TODDLERtivity have made a valiant effort, but make the typical error of taking the whole of one word (and capitalising it for no reason, in this case) and only part of another. Surely it would be more logical to split both words equally and bring them together in a proper portmanteau such as "toddlivity" or "actiddler".
There are many more, but I'll save them for another day. Thanks for listening. |
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| Fruit |
[Sep. 17th, 2006|06:14 pm] |
Something's been bothering me - I've tried to explain it to a couple of people, but I'm not sure they really get it.
An orange is orange. The name of the fruit is the same as its colour. A tomato is as red as an orange is orange. A banana is as yellow as a tomato is red. In the interest of simplicity, why aren't these fruits known by their colours?
You may be thinking "maybe the colour orange is named after the fruit", but that still doesn't explain why the colour red isn't called "tomato" or the colour yellow isn't referred to as "banana". The world is a needlessly complicated place. |
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| Something deeply unsettling... |
[Sep. 7th, 2006|10:24 pm] |
I was watching Will and Grace on Living TV just now - it has those little "sponsored by" ads at the beginning and end of each section of the show and one of them causes me extreme distress. Here is a brief description of it:
A tropical bar.
A man walks up to a sexy woman.
MAN: Which way to the bathroom?
WOMAN: 2nd on the right.
The scene changes. The man enters a room. With one hand he is fumbling to undo his trousers. Suddenly he looks around, shocked. This isn't a bathroom at all, this is a bedroom!
Clearly the seemingly helpful woman at the bar has constructed an elaborate ruse to get him into bed. This is confirmed when she appears at the door with a sly look on her face and blocks his exit. This is what worries me.
The poor guy is so desperate to urinate that he begins undoing his flies before he's even established that he has the right room, and now this woman clearly intends to force sex upon him - an idea he looks extremely unhappy about! Just let him go to the toilet! He'd probably have sex with you after that if you asked nicely! I hate the view of female sexuality that is promoted by this kind of trash! Why does it always have to be about domination? If a man tricked a woman into entering his bedroom and blocked her exit while making suggestive facial expressions, it'd be sexual assault; if a woman does it, it's supposed to be a sign of her feminist empowerment!
What makes it worse is that it is at this exact moment that the ad finishes and Will and Grace continues. We leave the unfortunate man with a look of sheer panic on his face as he realises the full horror of the situation - the bed, the blocked doorway, and his unbearably full bladder.
It's so cruel! There's no resolution to the story! In the interest of reducing my stress levels, I propose that the makers of this ad produce a sequel in which the guy bursts into tears, screams, shoulder-barges the woman out of the way and sprints into the bathroom opposite and takes the most symbolically important slash in the history of post-modern gender politics. |
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| The challenge begins! |
[Sep. 3rd, 2006|04:08 pm] |
Resolutions:
It's like new year's day without the guilty bloated feeling you get from massively overeating... oh wait no I have that too... anyway, I've just entered into an agreement with Char that will stretch our will power to breaking point.
She, Charlotte Runcie, will not log on to myspace for an entire week.
I, Richard Osmond, will give up being sarcastic for an entire week.
If anyone catches Char taking pictures of herself in a mirror, writing a list of her interests, or exhibiting suspiciously detailed knowledge of someone she has never met before, then please let me know. Likewise, if anyone catches me with one eyebrow raised, a sneering expression on my face and a cutting, ironic statement on my lips, then don't hesitate to report the incident to Char so that she can take appropriate action.
This is all. |
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| Fat people |
[Sep. 3rd, 2006|02:50 am] |
So Char and I watched the most infuriating TV show last night. It was called "Fuck Off I'm Fat". The vulgarity of this title seems to be a ploy by the producers to draw in the casual viewer who thinks, quite reasonably, that, as the title is so repulsive, the actual content of the programme can only get better. In fact, the content got considerably worse.
The premise of this documentary was that, given the increase in gross obesity in the UK, it is the duty of the manufacturers of cars, clothes, toilet seats and rollercoasters to adjust the size of their products so as to cater for the stomach-turning corpulence of modern-day Britain.
My objection to this idea is as follows:
Saying that "because people are getting more and more fat, we need to make our seats bigger and bigger" is like saying that "because more and more people are becoming addicted to heroin every year, we need to provide special dimly-lit areas for smack-heads in all family restaurants." This is clearly an exaggerated analogy, but my point is that the makers of the programme have commited the school-boy error of deriving an "ought" from an "is". In other words, they fail to recognise that just because the population "is" getting fatter, it doesn't mean that the population "should" be getting fatter, or indeed that the non-obese members of society have any moral obligation to accomodate the explosion of blubber that seems to be swallowing Britain as we speak.
Quite apart from the basic flaw in the logic of his argument, the presenter enraged me on many other levels - mainly by being fat. The entire programme consisted of a series of episodes in which he met other horribly fat people who lied through their teeth about how happy they were to be clinically overweight and tried and failed to squeeze into some kind of small space, be it a Jaguar, a photo booth or the rides on blackpool pleasure-beach. Each item invariably ended with him breathing heavily through his mouth, sweating, and saying something along the lines of "Crikey, this mild physical exertion has made me fucking hungry, let's go and cram some fried food down our gullets!"
I hate everybody. |
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| There's a knock at the door... |
[Sep. 2nd, 2006|10:19 pm] |
I got an email today from the "Holy Cross Family Ministries". They wanted to tell me that, this year, the theme for their annual poetry competition will be "There's a knock at the door - it is Jesus".
Now... there's something about this (beyond its shameless cheapening of the Christian faith) that just doesn't seem right. Why have they shortened "There is" to "There's" but left "it is" in its unabbreviated form?
It makes it seem like they're putting extra emphasis on the "is" so that it reads: "There's a knock at the door - it IS Jesus", as if in response to some unseen person who has said, dismissively, just as you were getting up to answer the door and welcome Jesus into your home, "No - that's not Jesus - leave it... it's probably just some kids having a joke... or the postman". |
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| Hello friends and lovers |
[Sep. 1st, 2006|11:52 pm] |
I am Richard, hear me speak. I'm currently forcing my eyelids open and yawning outrageously while my girlfriend types this. She thinks I am very silly. I think she should have pointed out my yawning. This is getting too complicated for my sleepy little brain.
We had a Kevin Bacon lust-fest earlier. We downloaded pictures from google and made a slideshow and drooled. It was awesome. We also watched Hollow Man until the part where Kevin Bacon became invisible and then stopped because Kevin Bacon had gone. Actually, we watched a little bit further than that, just to check that Kevin had successfully recovered from the operation, but when we saw he was ok, we turned the DVD off.
I made the best chocolate and biscuit cake EVER!
Char: It's true. It was amazing. It was sooooooo good. Can we have some more?
Yes
Let's go.
Bye |
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| More thoughts... |
[Aug. 30th, 2006|03:23 am] |
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There's too much emphasis on getting a degree nowadays! Look at Jesus - he was the messiah and all he had was a vocational qualification in carpentry. Times have changed. |
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| Another poem... |
[Aug. 30th, 2006|12:56 am] |
La Coiffure
After the big metal mouth bit my family off,
My whitish curls dropped out
And scarlet wires replaced them.
Accident is too little a word
For something so big,
But it's all the therapist gave me.
I comb my copper tangles at night.
The teeth, chewing hair,
Crackle like fire. |
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| A poem... |
[Aug. 30th, 2006|12:30 am] |
Test your powers of observation
How many stairs
Are there in your house?
What brand of tobacco
Does your father smoke?
Give his height and weight.
Write down the exact measurements
Of his chest and neck. |
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| Thoughts |
[Aug. 30th, 2006|12:05 am] |
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These Al-Quaeda suicide bombers are so stupid! Think about it - if you're a suicide bomber and you don't want to get caught, then why would you try to blow stuff up? It's so obvious; it's what they expect you to do. Common sense folks : if you've just strapped on your bombs, then it's probably not a good idea to head on down to airport security and walk through a metal detector! Now, if you just stayed at home and watched tv then you'd never get caught. That's what I'd do - just put my feet up, watch "two and a half men" and eat some pork scratchings. That's real terrorism. |
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| ... |
[Jul. 29th, 2006|01:04 am] |
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Also, the other thing about the Milan transport system is that it's really easy to get on and off without paying. |
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