Random thoughts from my notebook on the train back from New Brighton
“My eyeballs are about to detach themselves from my optic nerves and roll out of my head into an imaginary gutter out of my reach. My brain is useless and will never be able to work again. I am bloated, slightly nauseous; I don’t think I can ever eat another morsel. This is how I feel. Exhausted. Could be the coke and fags again. What to do? What to do? Feed the blog. It is an insatiable thing. Like a tapeworm hungry for words, no matter how strange or banal.”
“Read the whole of that Visual Factfinder History Timelines book on the way up (it’s a long train journey; but I can take the train. I’ve inflicted it on myself again and again). The result? I ALMOST got two questions right. Or made me think I did, but didn’t. Which, on reflection, has done nothing but increase irritation with myself (I am always the person who is most disappointed in themselves). I confused the dates of the 3rd Crusade with the 5th, and put down Philip VI as the first Bourbon king of Spain rather than Philip V. It could have got me 28 on Arts & Culture. An Ashman score. At least, I still got the Sex, Lies and Videotape DVD for winning the genre. It was the most pretentious choice of the lot, and as you known, I am capable of pretension so astounding it makes Brian Sewell blush (hyperbole alert).”
“Automatic Answers: I’ve coined a new phrase. I did this on seeing the G&S operetta subtitle The Statuory Duel and instantly applying The Grand Duke to the question space. It was a conditional reflex that had no factual substance in my mind. A result of instinct. I had no idea if it was correct and was therefore terrified by its potential wrongheaded-ness, though was pleasantly surprised when it was deemed so.”
“Odd hearing my own questions. People speaking my words and intoning phrases I had conjured up with my own peculiar ideas of grammar and, on occasion, coded wit. It makes me feel like I want to protect them. It also makes me wonder if they could not have been just a tad shorter.”
“Mind Lock: Invented yet another new phrase. It’s when you put down an answer and you cannot be bothered to go back and examine other, far more viable options. It happened with 'infantile paralysis'. Whooping cough, that’s very juvenile isn’t it? So my mind was closed off to thinking of any other, like the right answer, polio. It happens probably because I’ve written it down. Imposing sanctity (Hammer or 'Can’t touch it' status) on the answer only because of that. I need to think harder. Moby has commented he does this on the Scan and Drop, but I think a ML is slightly different because at least you've read the answer, as opposed to just ignoring crucial parts of the question. Whatever. It merely makes us all look like silly people.”
“Reading Paul Theroux’s The Kingdom by the Sea, a travelogue detailing his coastal tour of the British isles during the Falkland War, on the way home. It’s excellent but brutal. He meets yokels, racists and thickies. He has to tackle Littlehampton sometime, I think. And he does, but quite badly. He goes past it in a train from Worthing from Bognor Regis (which I believe everyone else thinks is the El Dorado of seaside rubbishness) and describes it so on page 72: 'Littlehampton was plain and semi-detached and flinty, the sort of place in which people did little but water their plants'. Perhaps, if he made the same journey now he could remark on young girls’ astonishing ability to impregnate themselves and tighten their foreheads with their hair, and the unwashed smelly skag addicts who cluster around certain, visible corners. And the way LA revellers treat the Wetherspoons like their alcoholic Mecca. You may think that’s stereotyping, but that’s what springs to my mind. Theroux is not averse to laying facts down associated with each miserable rain-soaked nowhere that he visits. For instance, he states that Dolly Pentreath, who died in 1777, was the last Cornish speaking person. Is that true? Not sure. He takes a perverse pleasure in telling fibs. But then, you would to, if you spent three months sleeping in B&Bs run by Fag-ash Fionas and Educationally-deficient Ediths and staring at the oblivion of the sea that surrounds us.”
So back to the reality of today. I liked yesterday's event alot. But then again I always like events where I come second in the individuals. Perhaps, I also made people see just how seductive and interesting trash can be and how it certainly raises some people's buzzer quiz scores to their evident delight, though I appreciate Tom's saying thanks for the questions, despite his not being suited to them.
Yet I dropped 14 in the individuals with some silly errors. It's the old 'ten or twelve per cent drop rate' that afflicts me. For instance, the description of the making of creme fraiche. I thought it probably is, but then thought that it might have been a bit too hard for this sort of quiz. So I put yoghurt. Little did I notice at the time, that it was a bolded-up question (one of ten used for deciding who wins genres) and was therefore judged to be tricky. I will learn in time. Learn like Bayley, who actually did sport and leisure for the first time, scored 17 and did not drop it. From the look of his answers, he knows sport a lot better than he thinks. Still, I regret missing out on John Profumo's cabinet position, the creator of detective Thursday Next (I have several Jasper Fforde books, maybe I should get round to reading them sometime) and bromine (I didn't read the nonmetallic bit of the element that is liquid at room temperature question).
But back to the trash. It was a pity we didn't get round to doing round five and the final, because it means I have to think of ways to recycle them in a tournament in which the BHs aren't competing (considering that three of them have seen the questions), and there was no time for the expected Simpsons starter. I would also like to apologise for my Billy Whizz style of reading and occasionally word-tripping. Knowing the questions inside out means that you forget it's quite hard for people who've never heard them to pick up on whatever the hell you're saying. I will be more considerate in future.
“Read the whole of that Visual Factfinder History Timelines book on the way up (it’s a long train journey; but I can take the train. I’ve inflicted it on myself again and again). The result? I ALMOST got two questions right. Or made me think I did, but didn’t. Which, on reflection, has done nothing but increase irritation with myself (I am always the person who is most disappointed in themselves). I confused the dates of the 3rd Crusade with the 5th, and put down Philip VI as the first Bourbon king of Spain rather than Philip V. It could have got me 28 on Arts & Culture. An Ashman score. At least, I still got the Sex, Lies and Videotape DVD for winning the genre. It was the most pretentious choice of the lot, and as you known, I am capable of pretension so astounding it makes Brian Sewell blush (hyperbole alert).”
“Automatic Answers: I’ve coined a new phrase. I did this on seeing the G&S operetta subtitle The Statuory Duel and instantly applying The Grand Duke to the question space. It was a conditional reflex that had no factual substance in my mind. A result of instinct. I had no idea if it was correct and was therefore terrified by its potential wrongheaded-ness, though was pleasantly surprised when it was deemed so.”
“Odd hearing my own questions. People speaking my words and intoning phrases I had conjured up with my own peculiar ideas of grammar and, on occasion, coded wit. It makes me feel like I want to protect them. It also makes me wonder if they could not have been just a tad shorter.”
“Mind Lock: Invented yet another new phrase. It’s when you put down an answer and you cannot be bothered to go back and examine other, far more viable options. It happened with 'infantile paralysis'. Whooping cough, that’s very juvenile isn’t it? So my mind was closed off to thinking of any other, like the right answer, polio. It happens probably because I’ve written it down. Imposing sanctity (Hammer or 'Can’t touch it' status) on the answer only because of that. I need to think harder. Moby has commented he does this on the Scan and Drop, but I think a ML is slightly different because at least you've read the answer, as opposed to just ignoring crucial parts of the question. Whatever. It merely makes us all look like silly people.”
“Reading Paul Theroux’s The Kingdom by the Sea, a travelogue detailing his coastal tour of the British isles during the Falkland War, on the way home. It’s excellent but brutal. He meets yokels, racists and thickies. He has to tackle Littlehampton sometime, I think. And he does, but quite badly. He goes past it in a train from Worthing from Bognor Regis (which I believe everyone else thinks is the El Dorado of seaside rubbishness) and describes it so on page 72: 'Littlehampton was plain and semi-detached and flinty, the sort of place in which people did little but water their plants'. Perhaps, if he made the same journey now he could remark on young girls’ astonishing ability to impregnate themselves and tighten their foreheads with their hair, and the unwashed smelly skag addicts who cluster around certain, visible corners. And the way LA revellers treat the Wetherspoons like their alcoholic Mecca. You may think that’s stereotyping, but that’s what springs to my mind. Theroux is not averse to laying facts down associated with each miserable rain-soaked nowhere that he visits. For instance, he states that Dolly Pentreath, who died in 1777, was the last Cornish speaking person. Is that true? Not sure. He takes a perverse pleasure in telling fibs. But then, you would to, if you spent three months sleeping in B&Bs run by Fag-ash Fionas and Educationally-deficient Ediths and staring at the oblivion of the sea that surrounds us.”
So back to the reality of today. I liked yesterday's event alot. But then again I always like events where I come second in the individuals. Perhaps, I also made people see just how seductive and interesting trash can be and how it certainly raises some people's buzzer quiz scores to their evident delight, though I appreciate Tom's saying thanks for the questions, despite his not being suited to them.
Yet I dropped 14 in the individuals with some silly errors. It's the old 'ten or twelve per cent drop rate' that afflicts me. For instance, the description of the making of creme fraiche. I thought it probably is, but then thought that it might have been a bit too hard for this sort of quiz. So I put yoghurt. Little did I notice at the time, that it was a bolded-up question (one of ten used for deciding who wins genres) and was therefore judged to be tricky. I will learn in time. Learn like Bayley, who actually did sport and leisure for the first time, scored 17 and did not drop it. From the look of his answers, he knows sport a lot better than he thinks. Still, I regret missing out on John Profumo's cabinet position, the creator of detective Thursday Next (I have several Jasper Fforde books, maybe I should get round to reading them sometime) and bromine (I didn't read the nonmetallic bit of the element that is liquid at room temperature question).
But back to the trash. It was a pity we didn't get round to doing round five and the final, because it means I have to think of ways to recycle them in a tournament in which the BHs aren't competing (considering that three of them have seen the questions), and there was no time for the expected Simpsons starter. I would also like to apologise for my Billy Whizz style of reading and occasionally word-tripping. Knowing the questions inside out means that you forget it's quite hard for people who've never heard them to pick up on whatever the hell you're saying. I will be more considerate in future.
posted by That Quiz Guy at 9:24 AM
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