There is a riddle, you see. I knew the answer, and I knew how to arrive at the answer, and yet even after roping in two other people it still took the guts of half an hour and at least three beermats to reverse engineer the riddle itself. So you are going to read it and you are going to enjoy it.
Three people are standing in a line, facing forward. Like so: A -> B -> C ->. Person A can see Person B and Person C. Person B can see Person C. Person C is kind of staring off into space, perhaps pondering the merits of dogs vs. cats as household pets, or idly doing some mental arithmetic.1
Now then: hats. Each of them is wearing a hat, which has been distributed from a pool of two white hats and three black hats. They don’t know what hat they’ve been given, although of course they can see the hats of those in front of them. They are asked to say, without guessing, what colour hat they’re wearing.
A says nothing. B says nothing. C says, “I know what colour hat I’m wearing.”
What colour hat does he have, and how does he know?
They all do this. They’re very logical people, you understand, and that’s how they get their jollies. Even that bit about the dogs and cats is just a mental exercise. Do you think Person C would ever actually want to have a pet? You fool. [↩]
Some fellers are fixin’ to get some information out of me. NotRuairi is (n’t?) at it, as is this hirsute hombre. Six things they want, which is a bit annoying, since I gone and did 25 of them on Facebook a while ago. Seriously, those are all the things about me. I have nothing left.
But then I read Andrew’s facts, and it occurred to me that they were awful familiar. Awful familiar indeed… for you see, I know this man – or rather, I knew him. We were a team, Andrew and I, before an unpleasantness forced us apart. Then a while later we were a team again, before a misunderstanding put paid to our relationship. Then after a couple of years we were a team again, and then we kind of got really really drunk, and I guess there might have been some psychotropics in the mix, and basically we haven’t seen each other since.
Many fine histories of our exploits have been written1, but here’s a few choice “behind the scenes” nuggets that tend to get left out:
1. While my favourite pen is a Bic biro, Andrew is a die-hard fan of Staedtlers. In order to minimise arguments and avoid needless destruction of property, we tend to write in pencil when in each other’s company.
2. You know where at the start of those Pepé le Pew cartoons the cat would squeeze under like a freshly-painted fence or something and then the skunk would chase her for ages looking to do the deed on her? Well, [excised at the request of the British Royal Family]
3. In the space of three minutes during a late-night/early-morning singalong in a Munich pub in the 1860s, we inadvertently invented the Eurovision, paracetamol and Cambodia.
4. Pork, as a meat, was much less delicious before we started hanging out together. We’re not sure why.
5. We wrote the preliminary code for Auto-Tune in 1971. It’s taken 38 years for someone to find a proper use for it.
6. The seven-day-week thing is one of Andrew’s most common boasts but, as usual, he was only partly responsible. I recall it was a balmy Blurnsday evening back in the sixteenth century: myself and himself were pretty heavily into peyote at the time, as were the rest of the Tibetan aristocracy2, and in the middle of one of our lengthier binges I happened to make an offhand comment about there being seven celestial bodies visible to the naked eye. Well, things got somewhat hazy, but when we came to several days later Andrew was clutching a sheaf of paperwork from the US Patent Office3. After several months on the road, and some characteristic mountebankery, we’d convinced the rest of the world to adopt the new system.
q.v. particularly the following paragraph on Wikipedia: “In the course of history, men with facial hair have been ascribed various attributes such as wisdom and knowledge, sexual virility, or high social status; and, conversely, filthiness, crudeness, or an eccentric disposition, such as in the case of a bum, hobo or vagrant.” [↩]
A group of us are visiting a friend in Galway this weekend. I neglected to mention this to him until something approaching the last minute. He was mildly resentful at having to change his plans – plans in the loosest sense, since he was just going to be sitting on his arse doing nothing. In his words, he’d been looking forward to not having to put pants on for the weekend.
You might say, I remarked, that we’re forcing you to move to PANTSCON 4.
I might, he said. In fact, I will.
We quickly realised what we were sitting on. An effective PANTSCON scale would do away with the footling awkwardness of “smart casual” and “work formal” and so on – after all, once you’re wearing the right trousers, everyone else falls into place automatically.
Twelve hours later, and here we are. The PANTSCON scale, revision 1:
5: Pantsless. The lowest condition of pants readiness. 4: Pyjamas or similar slouchypants. 3: Jeans. Cords, if you’re that way inclined. 2: Work-appropriate pants. Chinos. “Slacks”. 1: Fancy pants, with a crease you could lose a finger on. A condition of maximum pants alert.
It’s bizarre how messed up you can get simply by not sleeping. I’ve been completely useless for the last couple of weeks and I’m pretty sure I was seeing through time for a while. Plus the weird fascination with what my hair was doing: I woke up one morning with it stubbornly piled on one side of my head which, combined with the natrual eyeshadow afforded by my heroin-addict good looks, made me a shoe-in for a New Romantic. At least until it went all Dylan-Moran-in-an-explosion-factory and I started feeling all deranged postpunk nasty. This happened without me getting anywhere near a mirror, by the way. I was learning of my hair situation subconsciously, through some kind of barnet osmosis. This1 leads me to believe that my hair is essentially a more versatile, less vindictive Venom symbiote. Whatevs. The ladiezz still love it, yo.
I cannot say for certain, Dublin googler, but I will say this: if I know Katherine, and believe me I know Katherine, she’s been on the razz without telling you. What you want to do is make a big noise about being tired and getting off to bed early and so on and then crack on some black face paint and those rubber shoes you wear in PE in primary school and sneak outside the house. Hide out in some bushes, or better still a tree, because dropping out of a tree makes you feel like a proper boss ninja, and wait for her to go out the door. Then follow her until she gets to some shady-looking door, probably at the bottom of a flight of stairs – you’ll know it’s the right one because she’ll be looking around all shifty-like. DO NOT APPROACH THIS DOOR. Keep a close eye on what Katherine does because that’ll be the secret knock or dance or whatever that you need to do to get in. Now, get yourself back home and into bed because even with a hangover Katherine will realise if you’re not well rested which, remember, you should be because as far as she knows you went to bed early. Even if you’re tired and feeling cranky the next morning you have to fake it – whistle or something while you’re making breakfast because for god’s sake that woman is dangerous when she has a head on her. Wait until around half one or so and then leave the house. Actually better make it like one thirty-seven or something, if you leave at half one on the dot it’ll just look like you were waiting til that particular time and she’ll get suspicious. Anyway go back to that door you saw her go through and give the sign and then basically you can just ask the barman if Katherine was there drinking or whatever. Box him in the kidneys if you need to, he’ll crack eventually. They all crack eventually.
Emergency Aldi deodorant, I have some questions for you.
Why are you in some kind of space-bottle? You’re awkward to hold. I don’t know what’s going on with your… button. Is it even classed as a button? I don’t know. It’s hard to press, is the difficulty here. I’d hate to think you were blindly striving for form over function. Where is your German work ethic? Your forefathers would be ashamed.
Secondly, why do you insist that “Efficiency = 300 ml”? Sneer all you want, but I’ve had liquids of unimpeachable efficiency delivered to me in all kinds of quantities. And maybe this is something you’ve missed, but that 300ml only lasts for a fraction of one spray. The rest of your life, by your logic, is a long slide into deeper and deeper inefficiency. Who designed you, Jean-Paul Sartre?
Lastly, emergency Aldi deodorant, and this is a big one: why in god’s name are you called “Man Fever”? That’s… I don’t know where to start. I bought deodorant so I could be confident and fresh-smelling, not sweaty and delirious. I’ll give you the benefit of the doubt and assume you’re trying to be metaphorical. Even so – whatever “man fever” figuratively represents, I’m not certain it’s a thing I would want to contract. I have a suspicion it would inhibit my rapport with the ladies, for a start.
Oh, emergency Aldi deodorant. I feel like I don’t know you at all.
So those touchscreen video jukeboxes: concealed within each one is a metric shitacre of hilarity. Every song gets a limited amount of real estate, with the result that titles often get truncated, leaving us with gems like:
But I’ve discovered that it’s not limited to video jukeboxes. The wee little yokes in Eddie Rockets2, with their charming old-timey tunes, are suggestive goldmines3. Witness:
I’m Gonna Tear Your Ann Peebles
But I Do Clarence Henry
Tell Laura I Love Her Ray Petersen
and the plaintive
She’s Not There, Zombies
I would have more for you, but things got a bit Jimmy Ruffin last night after some girl accused me of grabbing her Ray Petersen, at which point her boyfriend punched me right in the Ann Peebles. Bad times.
Tempted to say “former reigning champion”, because I’m Gonna Give Her Jimmy Ruffin is hammering on the doors like no one’s business. Incidentally, many cheers to Ruairi for refreshing my memory with these. Similarly incidentally, every man jack of you should be hitting up Futurism in Doran’s tomorrow night. [↩]
I had to google Eddie Rockets to check if there’s supposed to be an apostrophe. So I’m guessing the place isn’t owned by an Eddie Rocket, but is in some way connected with a guy called Eddie Rockets. Does anyone else think that would be a brilliant name for a gangster? [↩]
Suggestive gold: one of the few truly recession-proof commodities. [↩]
I was going to just throw a remark in about what a great song The Bewlay Brothers is, but of course I ended up listening to the rest of Hunky Dory. Huge album, like. Enormous. And what with the poncing around the flat1 and whatnot, I ended up leaving to go to Supervalu two minutes late, meaning I arrived one minute after they locked the doors2. Damnit Bowie, always one step ahead.
Still, I’ve found half a bottle of Malibu stuck in the back of a cupboard so I’m not completely at sea. Coconut is a type of food.
On my ownio this week, so I can get away with that kind of carry-on. Chess! On the other hand, cold and lonely. Boo. [↩]
You have to shave these things, man, it’s the only way they’ll respect you [↩]
My sleep patterns have been all kinds of messed up lately. All this fooling around on other people’s schedules isn’t good for a body. Three cheers for holidays then, because things have been getting back to normal. For instance: last Tuesday evening I grabbed a bus after work, met up with a friend I don’t see half enough, watched abunchofstupidvideos1, watched Syriana, read the Wikipedia article about Syriana, read the back of the Syriana DVD box, gave up on Syriana, went home, played Mario Galaxy til five in the morning, went to bed, woke up sometime in the middle of Christmas Eve. That’s a good night by anyone’s standards.
Since then I’ve gotten nicely into a groove of bed at 0700, up at 1500. That’s a sensible use of time. Who needs more than an hour’s daylight?
I say stupid, that last one’s brilliantly done. Australian comedy: underrated. [↩]
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