Friday, August 24, 2007

In the blogosphere no one can hear your audience groan

I might have said it before, but when the blogs go down in regularity, the work rate in real life goes up. A shame really, because I should have capitalised on the unforeseen popularity of the Guess The Header poser from last week. I'm actually surprised that people didn't guess more books, but I suppose that's only because I'm the one that sits there looking at them all the time.

I would like to extend some mad props to the hockey boys who zinged me with my own pet peeve before training on Tuesday night, thereby proving my theory right that I would regret bringing it up. Unfortunately I had been listening to Tool very very loudly and hence was in no state to understand what the hell they were talking about when they kept saying "That was
so funny!" So, as promised on the night: Number 7: Contextless jokes.

A quick hi to Herr Rogers who also got me a ripper last weekend in similar circumstances:
'And what about that one: "I would never, ever drive stoned ... not unless I was
really hungry."'
I thought that was a solid gold pearler. Pissed myself laughing, I did.
'Where did you get that?' I asked once my breath had been regained.
A short silence followed.
'That was you, actually.'
Oh.

The reason I'm so slow on the uptake is because I have been working and studying almost non-stop, apart from brief hockey and beer-related activities. The "good" news is that the PhD proposal presentation that I've been worrying about for nigh on a year has been rescheduled from mid-October to ... dum dum da dum ... a week-and-a-half's time! Wish me luck! Aargh!
When I received the email that broke this "wonderful" news, I was lucky enough to have my webcam running so you can see for yourself my reaction shortly afterwards:




And now, without further adodo

Guess The Header

Pretty anti-climactic really: Here are the pictures, as promised:



And the original source of all the trouble:

Points go to Nai for actually getting a title, Milly-Moo for turning her computer sideways and squinting and Neil for being a smartarse with the answer about counting the books and for being a spelling-nazi. I'm tempted subtract points from Trent for planning to come over and scour my bookshelves, but I'll leave them there because he admitted it and he's got a sore ankle.

****

In this week's GTH we return to a simple guessing-game: where was this photo taken? There is an important clue: somewhere in Adelaide. The winner will be the person who gets the closest.









































14 comments:

  1. Can't be a pub because they don't serve beer in plastic cups.

    ReplyDelete
  2. That reminds me, it's been ages since I read anything by Sue Townsend.

    As for pubs serving beer in plastic cups, my local does... it's a hell hole of a place.

    ReplyDelete
  3. CURSES! i KNEW some of them were John Marsden but i was too afraid of being wrong to say so. i hate being an obsessive perfectionist..

    ReplyDelete
  4. Memorial drive - looks like a beer being drank alongside a tennis court...even with an arm 'serving' as a background shadow?

    BTW - I can't believe you have Kathy Lette book on your shelf, for shame! She's about as funny as death!

    ReplyDelete
  5. THE PINES!!!
    Front row, North Grandstand!!!!

    Bwahahahaa! What do I win???

    ReplyDelete
  6. Right on Millymoo, Kathy Lette is definitely unfunny.

    ReplyDelete
  7. Who said anything about funny? I remember Girls' Night Out being quite sad.

    Mtk - fortune favours the bold.

    ReplyDelete
  8. The white reflection on that cup does look a bit like a tennis serve.

    ReplyDelete
  9. Wow River! Posting at the same time! That's not a reflection, that's a beer tide mark, but man does it look like a tennis serve!

    ReplyDelete
  10. No idea about the beer, but WOW, you have Bailey's Bones! Victor Kelleher was my favourite author when I was a kid. Master of the Grove was the first novel length book I ever read that wasn't written by Enid Blyton.

    ReplyDelete
  11. Damn you other, other Sam... My guess is also the Pines hockey Stadium. I will also lay clim to the beer on the left being mine!

    ReplyDelete
  12. Note to self- re-read Kathy Lette from (with?) a different perspective.

    ReplyDelete
  13. Too slow Trent! Perhaps if you were able to browse the interweb without the aid of crutches you may have beaten me?

    Happy hobbling, cripple!


    Oh - I also claim the beer as mine; because you can't chase me!

    ReplyDelete

An explanation of The Joy Division Litmus Test

Although it may now be lost in the mysts of thyme, the poll below is still relevant to this blog. In the winter of 2008, Mele and I went to live in Queensland. In order to survive, I bluffed my way into a job at a Coffee Club.
It was quite a reasonable place to work: the hours were regular, the staff were quite nice, it wasn't particularly taxing on my brain.
There were a few downsides: In the six weeks or so that I worked there, there was about a 90% staff turnover (contributed to by my leaving). This wasn't seen as a result of the low pay, the laughability of staff prices or the practice of not distributing tips to staff, rather it was blamed on the lack of work ethic among Bribie Island's youth.
However, one of the stranger aspects of the cultural isolation that touched our lives during our time "up there" was the fact that nobody at my work had heard of the band Joy Division.
The full explanation is available here.
But please, interact a little further and vote in my ongoing poll. The results are slowly mounting up, proving one thing: people read this blog are more well-informed about Joy Division than anyone who works at the Coffee Club on Bribie Island.

Have you heard of the band Joy Division?

Chinese food, not Chinese Internet!

Champions of Guess The Header

  • What is Guess The Header about? Let’s ask regular “Writing” reader, Shippy: "Anyway, after Franzy's stunning September, and having a crack at 'Guess The Header' for the first time - without truly knowing what I was doing mind you - I think I finally understand what 'GTH' is all about. At first I thought you needed to actually know what it was. Don't get me wrong — if you know what it is, it may help you. I now realise that it's more Franzy's way of invoking thought around an image or, more often than not, part of an image. If you dissect slightly the GTH explanatory sentence at the bottom of his blog you come up with this: “The photo is always taken by me and always connects in some way to the topic of the blog entry it heads up.” When the header is put up, the blog below it will in some obscure way have something to do with it. “Interesting comments are judged and scored arbitrarily and the process is open to corruption and bribery with all correspondence being entered into after the fact and on into eternity, ad infinitum amen.” Franzy judges it, but it's not always the GTH that describes the place perfectly that gets it. “The frequent commenters, the wits, the wags and the outright smartarses who, each entry, engage to both guess the origin and relevance of the strip of photo at the top (or “head”) of each new blog and also who leave what I deem the most interesting comment.” It generally helps if you're a complete smartarse and can twist things to mean whatever you feel they should mean - exactly the way Franzy would like things to be twisted." - Shippy Blogger and GTH point scorer.
  • Nai - 1
  • Lion Kinsman - 2
  • Will - 2
  • Brocky - 2
  • Andy Pants - 2
  • The 327th Male - 3
  • Mad Cat Lady - 3
  • Miles McClagen - 4
  • Myninjacockle - 4
  • Asheligh - 5
  • Neil - 5
  • Third Cat - 5
  • Adam Y - 6
  • Squib - 6
  • Mele - 6
  • Moifey - 7
  • Jono - 8
  • The Other, other Sam - 14
  • Kath Lockett - 15
  • Shippy - 19
  • River - 32