Category: learning curve

Day 694 – Don’t listen to this song

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I mean it. I’ve looked at the audience that I know this blog has, and I can’t see anything but derision and incredulity coming my way for sharing this. I know that already a lot of people don’t go for the music posts I put on here (but MMIRIM), and even more people won’t like this song. Perhaps even people who don’t read this blog. In fact, almost certainly people who don’t read this blog. Many people.

They – Visages from Toulouse, Strategy from Salford (shame) – won’t mind. We’re all well out of their target audience.

Because it’s niche, it’s underground; it’s not usually even my sort of thing, but I heard it at just the right time and in just the right mood for it to make its mark. But it’s really very good.

It’s deep and bassy. It’s dark and brooding and sinister and threatening.
You can only guess what sort of mood I was in. (I mean, the adjectives are all there.)

In fact, it wouldn’t have even made it onto the blog were it not for one particular line which I had to triple listen to just to make sure I had got it right. Because I thought I had heard all the insults there were to hear. People seem to love to tell me them in emails, comments, on social media and in person. I am insult magnetic.
But there is always room for new blood in the insult game. And this one was full of fresh plasma and red cells. Because from about 3:56 in (and please pardon the language), I think he’s saying:

Go with the flow, yeah I wrote this one
On an old iPhone with a broken screen
Think you’re gonna try test man with a verse like that
You’re a fucking aubergine.

I mean, look, it scans. It somehow works (it’s mainly thanks to the drawn out tri-syllabic eggplant reference), but still…
Is that really the best the he could come up with? Or is this characteristic – common, even – as the sort of diss what the yoof is frowing down these days?

Wow. Specific vegetables* as slights and slurs now? Really?
Well, just bring it on, you bloomin’ heirloom tomatoes!

* technically, aubergines, fucking ones or otherwise, are berries, but:
“Knowledge is knowing that a tomato is a fruit. Wisdom is knowing not to put it in a fruit salad.”

Day 691 – 13 seconds gone

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Another run, another 13 seconds (per km) shaved off my time. It was a hot one this morning, and I wasn’t helped by last night’s yellowtail ceviche, pork loin and chocolate brownie (and the accompanying rather decent chenin blanc). That yellowtail ceviche, pork loin and chocolate brownie (and the accompanying rather decent chenin blanc) did make up another incredible meal out at the amazing Black Sheep in town, though.

Valentine’s dinner done right.

Less good for Valentine’s Day (or any other day) was the fact that I ended up going down a bit of a flat earther rabbit hole yesterday. The alien, anti-vax, crypto, Trump stuff was all there as well – the full oddball bingo card – so this was the real deal. A lot of it had me rolling my eyes and sighing, but there were some absolute gems. Like this:

Let’s get things absolutely clear from the get go here.

Bees. Fly.

Like planes, birds, wasps and… well… flies. They fly.

Where the hell does this absolute horse shit “levitation” story come from? Who comes up with it? Who believes it? And who shares it? These aren’t the actions of normal, sane people. And yet each of the arseholes at each of those stages, making those decisions have the same voting rights as you or I.
Is it any wonder we’re neck deep in the dwang and sinking fast?

Maybe we need to “build up energy inside a hollow cavity near our larynx”, and levitate out of here.

Or maybe that’s complete BS. I asked a friend who’s a bit of an entomologist, and he said it’s absolute BS. I didn’t really need to ask him. I knew. Because any sane person who reads that knows that it’s crap.

Like this:

I asked a friend who’s a bit of a paleontologist and he said he couldn’t tell me anything because he wasn’t government appointed. He didn’t really. Perhaps unsurprisingly, he said this was absolute BS.

Because it is. But this is the harmless end of the spectrum. Then – very quickly – they slip easily into the much more serious, but equally stupid “lizard people” and “murderous satanists” (we call them medical practitioners) “killing patients in hospital”, and the whole, very prevalent, anti-Semitism thing. And while no-one is going to act on levitating bees or fake dinosaurs (and who would even care if they did?), there are real world, real serious implications of spreading this sort of crap around.

Leave the bees and the dinosaurs. Report the real world stuff.

Day 675 – Quirky intro

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Regular readers will know of my passion and enthusiasm for popular quiz show Only Connect. One of the many likeable features of the show is the quirky, single line fact given about each of the contestants as they are introduced. Stuff like:

“John Smith, a copywriter who has a room full of toy buses.”
“Angela Davies, a librarian who once unknowingly took part in a Boney M tribute act in a bar in Swindon.” or
“Stanislav Mikhailovich, a student whose favourite shirt was sold by his cousin to a man in Belfast.”

These facts are often a bit off-the-wall (hey, the whole show is a bit that way), and are always presented without context. For me, this allows the viewer to fill in the gaps in any way they choose, and thus adds to the amusement.

There are often discussions on OC forums about what people would use as their quirky facts. I don’t consider myself to have led a very boring life, but they’re more difficult to come up with than you might think. So far, I have got:

“6000, a blogger who was in a rival pub quiz team to Only Connect question editor Jack Waley-Cohen for many years.”
“6000, a laboratory manager who once watched a 90 minute argument between two prostitutes on a street in Florence, while eating a free watermelon.”
or:
“6000, a microbiologist who once sat opposite Dutch goalkeeper Edwin van der Sar on an otherwise empty District Line train.”

Not much for n years, hey? I’m sure I could do better if I really applied myself, though. Like my abseiling off the Tyne Bridge. Or disappointing my BSc supervisor by choosing not to do a thesis on Slime Moulds.

But this week has actually been very kind in supplying quirky facts. Because I can now add:

“…who once nearly blew himself up in a Victorian cottage on top of Table Mountain.”
and:
“…who once played Beat The Intro against a Quantum Physicist at a braai in Constantia.”

What fun we had.
(OK, the nearly blowing myself up bit wasn’t great, but it does make for a good story.)

So… the obvious question is: what would your best quirky fact be for your Only Connect introduction? The more bizarre, the better. But of course, they have to be true.

Day 665 – Who knew?

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According to this article – written by a Professor of Health Sciences, a Distinguished Professor of Chemistry, a Professor of Mechanical Engineering and… er… a Research Scientist punching way above his weight – being with a lot of people, in a poorly ventilated space, without face coverings or while singing, shouting and exercising, (or any combination of the above) can result in a higher likelihood of you catching Covid-19.

This isn’t new news, of course. We’ve known all of these things for quite a while, but the authors here have come up with a way of putting a figure on each of the scenarios. They’ve even made a calculator for you to estimate your own risk in doing whatever you are doing, including how long you are doing it for.

Clever stuff.

But these are just estimates. We can’t put an exact figure on any of this. And we can’t say that being with someone silently, outdoors, with a mask on, in the breeze means that you won’t get Covid. This is a Swiss Cheese Defence, where no one single precaution will prevent transmission completely, but where a combination of efforts can limit your chances of being infected. The more precautions you take, the more likely you are to avoid getting it.

Of course, underpinning all of this is our best weapon: the vaccine. That’s the single thing you can do to protect yourself and your family more than anything else.

This is especially important to understand with the Omicron variant, given that it is so much more infectious than the previous iterations of the virus. And I know that you knew all this already, but there are an increasing number of people who are proclaiming that the pandemic is over, and thus giving up on the measures to stop it, and that is still a bit of a stretch. We’re not there yet.

Keep safe.
Avoid klapping gym boet in an overcrowded Crossfit place built in a light industrial unit.
Or going to church.