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Mick Harper
Site Admin
In: London
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We don't actually have a place for these. Since I have a fund of them on Medium now going to waste--and they often started life or were echoed here in the AEL--I thought I'd put up one a day, interspersed with others as they arise spontaneously, and anyone else can post theirs. You are free to critique others' funny stories but let's not get into a commentate-a-thon. Unless people want to. I propose, never dispose.
I'll post chronologically from Medium so patchiness goes with the territory. I see the first story I ever posted was, not noticed by me at the time, on All Fools Day. Prescient or what?
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Old Lags, Young Virgins April 1, 2023
I got an email from Virgin boasting they were the fastest internet provider in Britain at 650 mbps (miles per second) and provided an URL where you could check this for yourself. As it happened I was experiencing a bit of lag (as we buffers call it) so I did just that. It came back with the figure
For those of you not good at figures, this is quite a lot less than 650. The email told me things I could do to boost my mbps so I started moving my router around, shutting down other devices (the fridge needed defrosting) and other technical stuff I won’t bore you with, but nothing seemed to make any difference.
Hence I did what they said to do when all else fails, and started having social intercourse with a Virgin bot. No cheap jokes, please. He (is it?) eventually said he couldn’t solve the problem and was passing me on to ‘a member of the team’. People, I assumed, not a team of bots. [What is the collective noun for bots? A boticelli, I expect.] After an hour of
| 'We are experiencing an unusual volume etc etc’ |
I gave up and resigned myself to a bit of lag. It didn’t matter a fig to me I was only doing all this because they had drawn my attention to it.
I checked this morning and it was 665 mbps. Apparently Virgin engineers had been out and about in my area, as is their wont. The moral of the story? Having the fastest or slowest computer in the known universe is not important, it’s the person using it that counts. One mbps, two mbps, three…
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Boreades
In: finity and beyond
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Lucky you.
Out here in the deepest parts of The Shire, we can't find any Virgins.
First they tease us with "Special Offers" to join Virgin Media. So off we trot, full of excitement at the very idea. Only to be told:
| Whilst we're busy expanding our network, it looks like we're currently unavailable at (this place) but we can keep you posted! | |
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Mick Harper
Site Admin
In: London
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It arises from Virgin's ambition to have its own exclusive network. In the early days we got that same message, even here in the heart of Texas. The sticks are way down the line. If you want more chocolate on your biscuit you'll have to wait to join our club.
[Belay what I said about commentate-a-thons.]
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Mick Harper
Site Admin
In: London
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I see this was posted up the same day. My, what a busy bee was I. It will remind you of the days when Trump was younger and more fun to have around.
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American Jurisprudence Explained April 1, 2023
It was good to see Donald Trump back in the news. It was good to see Stormy Daniels back in the news. How one misses these colourful characters. It was less exciting, though doubtless more important, to see Manhattan lawmen trying to nail the bum. (Donald Trump, I mean.)
Especially as he had just had another go at overthrowing the lawfully constituted government — a capital crime in any jurisdiction — by inciting his supporters to violently wave placards in an attempt to prevent the law taking its course. But down to cases.
Insofar as I understand the American way of doing things it is not a crime to have extramarital sex with porn stars, it is not a crime to pay them hush money to dissuade them blabbing about it on CNN, it is a crime not informing some footling dogsbody that you have given money to a porn star in furtherance of your seeking election to the presidency of the United States.
So the world’s news outlets devoted most of their airtime to the question, “Did he fill in the right form?” As it is not contested that he didn’t, he’s looking at a substantial stretch at a federal facility near him.
He gets no sympathy from me. I’m a firm believer in “If you can’t do the time, don’t do the crime.” Being President of the United States was a definite error of judgement on his part.
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Mick Harper
Site Admin
In: London
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Contrary to remembrance, I gave up on trying to be funny (yes, I know) early doors--later, they were interspersed with heavier stuff--so this one is a coupla dozen stories later. It shows, inter alia, how difficult it is being colloquial about sports you didn't grow up with.
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British Guide to American Football Apr 29, 2023
Forget all about American football being 'rugby league with forward passing' but still essentially two sets of enormous thugs tearing lumps out of one another. It’s two sets of enormous polymaths tearing lumps out of one another and forward passing, because American football is the most complex sport on earth.
I’ve been watching it religiously for several decades and I still don’t know what a Tampa Cover Two is. Americans are born with this knowledge so it is never vouchsafed to foreigners. Actually, come to think of it, I might as well find out what a Tampa Cover Two is
| It asks the middle linebacker to be quick enough to recognize a pass versus a run, and when a pass is coming, drop back deep in the middle of the field between the two safeties and cover a third passing zone. |
I’m not much the wiser. In all those decades, nobody has ever stopped to tell me what precisely middle linebackers and safeties are. I can probably work it out from first principles:
* There is periodically some enormous people, knuckles scraping on the ground, in a line
* hence presumably linebackers, albeit facing front not back.
* Some of these will, by definition, be in the middle of that line
* hence middle linebackers.
* I hear references to a ‘strong safety’ and a ‘weak safety’
* which does add up to ‘two safeties’
* but doesn’t make a lot of sense.
* A weak American footballer is a contradiction in terms.
The game itself is not tremendously important, there being too few of them. Seventeen and out for most of them. Strewth, in British football that would hardly be time to drop the expensive imports bought in the summer window that ‘can’t get used to the physicality of the Premiership’. Not that there are foreign imports in American football. [Though I grew quite attached to the ‘Nigerian nightmare’ a few years ago. Big bastard but affable with it.]
There’s no international anything, club or country. American football is entire unto itself. No relegation or promotion either. What you see is what you get forever. It’s not, as far as I know, enshrined in the Constitution like gun sports, but not far off. [N.B. Don’t go to games put on periodically in Mexico City, London and Germany except ironically.]
The longueurs between action within every game can be unendurable. I’m not referring to the ad-breaks, they come extra, but to the ‘huddles’ as each team listens through their headphones about what they are to do next. Free onfield expression is not encouraged in any American sport. The manager is so deified they call him Coach Harbaugh, like Pope Francis or Prince Andrew.
* The players chat among themselves in the huddle
* Making sure everyone knows what is expected of them for, say, Omaha Red Thirteen
* Then someone says ‘hut’
* Then everyone goes off to line up as per Omaha Red Thirteen
* Then some of them move around, as per Omaha Red Thirteen
* But others may not move as much as an eyebrow for fear of penalisation
* Then someone says ‘hut’
* Then everyone hurls themselves in any number of pre-determined directions, many of them pre-determined misdirections
* Then after a few seconds of action it’s back to the huddle.
This is the giddy limit for half of them who troop off disconsolately and replicants, sufficiently recovered from their own five seconds of action, make their way to their respective huddles and begin the cycle all over again. Unless there’s a change-of-possession which requires more radical changes — each team has three teams depending
1. whether they’ve got the ball
2. whether the other team’s got the ball
3. whether the kicker’s got the ball.
A game technically lasts sixty minutes but what with the huddling, the substituting, the changes of end (three times), a half-time break, two minute warnings, challenges, their version of VAR, carts coming on to cart injured players off, several hours of real time have to elapse before everything is done and dusted. Unless there’s extra time because a tie is like ‘kissing your sister’. I wouldn’t know but I wouldn’t knock it.
The games being so few means the season is short. What we call ‘the close season’ (June and July) lasts from February to August for Americans, but that does not mean their football is anything but a year-round sport.
Green Bay Packers playing the New York Jets is of less moment than whether the Packers will get an extra third round draft pick from the Jets if Aaron Rodgers plays a second season for the Jets. I have to waste two hours of my precious day, February through August, listening to a couple of twerps discussing this and allied bureaucratic niceties. I hope they’re proud of themselves.
Why do I do it? Well, on top of contractual discussions of Byzantine complexity there are always fascinating accounts of off-field misdemeanours the players (and/or the owners) have been getting up to, and what ‘345 Park Avenue’ intends to do about it. As a rough guide: propositioning twenty-five masseuses to give you ‘extras’ equals an eight-game suspension and twenty-five million dollars to the masseuses. But not, it seems, any extras. Nice work if you can get it.
When the games do begin — I’m back with football now — it’s only ones featuring the New England Patriots that are of any interest. The other fifteen being played coevally can be dispatched to highlight round-ups. Not necessarily the same day — in theory it could be any day except Friday when the under-18’s play and Saturday when the 18–21’s play. This is, I learned courtesy of the twerps, courtesy of a Supreme Court ruling, a quid pro quo for allowing a billionaire’s cartel to operate in the land of the free. Though of course most people in America are billionaires.
To sum up, the critical difference between their football and ours is down to where you live. Not geographically, but deep down. In your bones.
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Boreades
In: finity and beyond
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| Mick Harper wrote: | | Contrary to remembrance, I gave up on trying to be funny . |
Don't worry. We will hold a remembrance service. We will tell tales of how Harpo made us laugh.
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Boreades
In: finity and beyond
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Potential notice of my own remembrance service came earlier today.
M'Lady, myself and #1 Boreadette had a hard day's toil in the rear paddock. Chopping down some offending trees, and a once-every-20-years job. Repairing post & rail fencing (plus wire mesh) that (a) keeps murderous foxes and marauding deer out and (b) keeps the dogs and hens in. If only they could all meet on neutral ground and have an amicable discussion about their differences. Hey Ho.
By 7pm, all feeling rather cream-crackered, none of us fancied cooking dinner, so I was sent into town to get a treat. Fish & Chips for three.
Me: One haddock, two cod, and one large portion of chips please.
Them: That will be 28 pounds something.
Me: Gulp, well, never mind, it's a treat.
Them:About five minutes, OK?
Me: Yes OK.
While waiting, another customer comes in. He places his order, and then turns to face me.
Blimey. (he says)
You look like George Best.
Was it the tanned handsome young George Best, with superb skills, loved by many women, that I so resembled?
Or the older one that spend most of his fortune on fast cars, women and drink?
(I'm told he just wasted the rest of his fortune)
Or the one that has been dead for 20 years or so?
In case it's the latter, you now have enough material to fill about one minute of my remembrance service. I'll leave it to you to phone around and dredge up any more.
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Wile E. Coyote
In: Arizona
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Mick Harper
Site Admin
In: London
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I shall dig out a George Best story just for you, Borry. And ta muchly, Wiley, a tune with melancholic charm that aches for the old days when you could leave your doors unlocked because the Gestapo were in charge of law and order.
Meanwhile here is a counterblast to American football on behalf of the British version.
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Ten things that have changed in football during my lifetime May 1, 2023
Just to give you my qualifications for bringing these matters to your attention, I had a trial for Lewisham primary schools as a goalkeeper in the late 1950’s. But I was sent to a rugby-playing secondary school and never realised my promise. So I will start with them. Goalkeepers that is. I don’t suppose you’re that interested in south London grammar schools or my lack of achievement in life.
(1) They never ‘come for the ball’ now. In my day, the keeper ‘dominated his area’. Any ball crossed into it, unless it was an outswinging corner of prodigious dimensions, would be plucked off the beetling brow of a centre forward — of prodigious dimensions — with something close to panache.
Today’s goalies in their day-glo harlequinage (we were grim in green) skulk on their goal line, piteously complaining to the referee they are being interfered with by foreign imports. So? You’ve got two boots, haven’t you? They’ve got two shins, haven’t they? If the ref is keeping an eagle eye, you’ve got two fists, one for each of their goolies. Never forget that foreigners treasure their wedding tackle in a way no decent Englishman would. Not after tackling the wedding anyway.
(2) Centre forwards, of any dimension, seem to have departed the game. Apart from becoming ‘false number nines’ which says it all. There was a ‘deep-lying centre forward’ called Don Revie but it didn’t catch on.
When I was watching Charlton Athletic trying to get out of the second division (and where’s that gone, pray?) Johnny Summers would stand stock-still on the centre spot, i.e. not offside, and wait for the ball to be thumped over his head. Thereupon he would advance towards their centre half (that will be an unfamiliar term to many of you) who would thump it back over Johnny’s head so he could resume his lonely vigil on the centre spot. That, ladies and gentlemen, is proper football.
(3) A proper football. I have no time for people who yearn for the leather monstrosity of yesteryear, and probably vote Conservative. I’m a member of the SDP Frido generation with many of my mental faculties to prove it, but I do not approve of a different ball for every occasion. Including an orange one if it’s midwinter for goodness sake. What are we, Finland?
A Frido ball was orange but took no more cognisance of the playing conditions than we did. If you could still see your studs for mud when you got home, what’s the point in having a mother?
(4) The midfield schemer. He was slight and Scottish. You’ll all remember Blackie Grey who played for Melchester Rovers. Where is he now? Well, he likely is black for a start. And there’s half a dozen of them, all melling around, interchanging like mad, tackling back, pressing forward, spraying it around like Johnny Haynes before he was reincarnated as Glen Hoddle.
Nowadays even goalkeepers can ping a forty yarder to someone getting his boots whitened on the touchline. Who’s not a winger. Oh no. He hasn’t ‘beaten his man’ since the old queen died. One before. He will ‘cut inside’ and thread a precision ball through to the centre forward only it won’t be a centre forward, will it?
Not if it’s Harry Kane, he was probably the bloke on the touchline. And he captains England! What sort of example is that for young Roy Races trying to decide between football and a career in computers?
5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10. Sorry, I’ll have to go for a lie down. Something else that’s changed in my lifetime.
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Pete Jones
In: Virginia
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Just read an unintentional admission about the failure of scientists (emphasis added):
| How difficult it must have been for Kepler, a Pythagorean to the marrow of his bones, to forsake circles for ellipsi! For a mature scientist to find in his own work the need for abandoning his cherished and ingrained pre-conceptions, the very basis of his previous scientific work, in order to fulfill the dictates of quantitative experience this was perhaps one of the great sacrificial acts of modern science, equivalent in recent scien-tific history to the agony of Max Planck. Kepler clearly drew the strength for this act from the belief that it would help him to gain an even deeper insight into the harmony of the world. |
Imagine the sacrifice! Your theory has to accord with experience! I'm about to faint.
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Mick Harper
Site Admin
In: London
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I'm almost fashionable in regarding Kepler, not Copernicus, as the start of the Scientific Revolution for that reason. He got rid of Aristotle (I don't know why Pythagoras got a mention, perhaps you could explain). Now we have to get rid of the Max Planck Institute.
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Mick Harper
Site Admin
In: London
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This is the next in a genre that is not much used, apart from in stand-up alternative comedy and then only as something to riff on. A personal experience that was in itself sufficiently comic to be lifted from life. Despite being a recluse they seem to happen to me with gratifying frequency.
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In a monarchy, you don’t get to choose May 7, 2023
We didn’t have a street party for the Coronation. We did for the last one — I was dressed as a little Swiss boy according to family photographs, in case you were wondering. I’ve often wondered myself, being from the Elephant & Castle.
The nearest thing to a street party this time was a group of people dressed as socialists selling the Socialist Worker outside Ladbroke Grove station. They did not appear to be selling many, possibly because the headline, in my estimation, missed the spirit of the occasion
| Coronation Special: Off With His Head |
Personally I’m opposed to capital punishment in any circumstances but I recognise that royal decapitations are part of the radical tradition and should be respected as such. I was approached by a young woman who said to me
| Spend money on education not coronations. Buy the Socialist Worker. |
Coronations plural was, I thought, pushing it a bit but I made no reply, continuing with my original purpose, the weekly Tesco shop. Thinking about it now I ought to have said
| Surely this is a false antithesis, madam? Coronations pay for themselves in terms of units of happiness per pounds spent. You might equally say ‘Spend money on education not cup finals.’ |
I rather fancy the lady would not have remained a Marxist-Leninist very long after that but Marxism-Leninism is part of our radical tradition and should be respected as such, so on the whole I’m glad I didn’t.
I remain a confirmed monarchist. Not because of any aversion to living in a Marxist-Leninist republic — I’ll try anything once — but because I’ve seen too many republican heads of non-Marxist-Leninist states. No, give me royal families every time. Preferably dysfunctional ones, they are more interesting.
Others may like their royals riding round on bicycles and being happily married but it’s not for us. Bicycles, happy marriages, it’s all a bit alien. In fact I am still confident Charles and Camilla will take the traditional Edward VIII route:
| I cannot discharge my royal duties without the woman I love by my side. Not if the entire country prefers she wasn’t by my side. |
Then we would have a William the Fifth coronation and my Socialist Worker friend would have been all too prescient about coronations plural. Something to ponder.
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Pete Jones
In: Virginia
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| Mick Harper wrote: | | (I don't know why Pythagoras got a mention, perhaps you could explain) |
I don't think the mention of Pythagoras is anything more than pointing out that Pythagoreans wanted to stick to pure geometrical forms and the circle was the best of all. And then Kepler wanted to stick to the Platonic solids in his cosmology---until he couldn't anymore (although, truthfully, I have a purely notional picture of Pythagoreanism).
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Pete Jones
In: Virginia
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| Mick Harper wrote: | | I'm almost fashionable in regarding Kepler, not Copernicus, as the start of the Scientific Revolution for that reason. |
Copernicus seems like a scandal to me. The way I understand it, he reduced Ptolemy's epicycles---from hundreds to dozens. Not exactly radical, in the sense of uprooting the paradigm (but I learned this from a geocentrist).
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Mick Harper
Site Admin
In: London
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You got it right. Copernicus's only qualification was to be first in the field. Though, in truth, heliocentrism was not nearly so unique as they make out. Ditto the earth being round. A lot of tidying up has gone into the history of science.
But I'm not exceptionally versed in this area so don't take my word for it.
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