The Thoughts of Captain Autumn

Having read an Irish joke on one of my Friends' weblogs this morning, I thought it might be the time to share my own favourite.

An Irishman goes for a job on a building site. The foreman tells him "We don't just employ anyone here, you'll have to pass the intelligence test first."

"Fair enough," says the Irishman, "let's have it".

"Right," says the foreman. "What's the difference between a joist and a girder?"

The Irishman thinks for a minute.

"Well," he replies, "Joyce wrote 'Ulysses' whereas Goethe wrote 'Faust'".

Perhaps the role of the Irishman should be replaced in the traditional joke form by "quiz machine question compiler". I want a job setting these questions, because apparently you have to do no research whatsoever and simply type out any old drivel you think you know. Here are five of the more radical 'facts' that I have recently encountered, with their flaws spelt out for any Westlife fans who happen to be dropping by.

Q: Who famously went to the moon in Vostok 1? (It actually said famously.)
A: Yuri Gagarin
Westlife debriefing: Gagarin was the first man in space but he never went anywhere near the moon. In fact it was eight years after his flight that man reached the moon. Interesting nuggets: Gagarin was only 5 feet 2 inches tall, and died in a routine aeroplane training flight in 1968.

Q: Which country has 52 states?
A: America
Westlife debriefing: America has only 50 states. Hawaii became the 50th in 1959, Alaska the 49th a few months earlier. Before that Arizona and New Mexico in 1912.

Q: Which former Goon played Basil in 'Fawlty Towers'?
A: John Cleese
Westlife debriefing: Whilst he played Basil in 'Fawlty Towers', John Cleese was never a member of The Goon Show.

Q: Which one of these starred in 'Cape Fear' - Gregory Peck, James Stewart, Robert Mitchum.
A: Robert Mitchum
Westlife debriefing: Although Robert Mitchum did indeed star in 'Cape Fear', and appeared in a cameo in the remake, the same is true of Gregory Peck. Interesting nugget: Gregory Peck's first name was Eldred.

Q: Which of these is a fruit - potato, tomato, orange.
A: Tomato
Westlife debriefing: Oranges are not the only fruit. But they are a fruit.

Attentive readers of my weblog will both no doubt be relieved to learn of the announcement of three UK dates in Steely Dan’s 2007 tour, given that it saves me the decision regarding which of my children to sell in order to fund a trip to America to see the band. So relieved am I that I have barely been able to hyperventilate at the cost of the tickets, fume at the additional fees levied by the Rackmanesque Ticketmaster organisation (a total of £13.25 for about five minutes on the phone and the cost of a stamp), or absorb the reality of having to make one of my extremely sporadic trips into our festering capital for the occasion.

It is perhaps appropriate at this point, having largely failed in my Petrucciani bid, to try and convince my distinguished readership of the merits of Steely Dan. Having been my favourite band for nearly a quarter of a century now it’s hard to make any sort of objective case for them. I’ve tried in the past to explain to people their unique appeal, but all the adjectives that do them any justice make the band sound pretentious and me sound didactic in my proselytising. Maybe I should just point you in the direction of ‘Peg’, and concede that if you don’t like that you’re a lost cause. On the other hand if you do, a world of wonder may be just around the corner.

I've received a rather odd communication about the sort of websites which henceforth will be blocked at work. Obviously the usual suspects feature, but there are some specific elements which I find rather rum. For example, as of next week I will be unable to access sites about "LSD, heroine, cocaine, XTC, pot, amphetamines, hemp, stimulant drugs and the utilities for drug use (e.g. water pipes)." That seems rather harsh on XTC, a splendidly idiosyncratic band who produced an admirable body of work. And whilst I have established previously that I am not a great fan of mind-altering substances, if asked to name a top ten of utilities for drug use I can't say that water pipes would be amongst them. I thought it was mostly syringes and foil. The occasional teaspoon. Certainly nothing that requires cladding.

The paragraph prohibiting Erotic/Sex sites refers to those "containing nude photography and erotic material, as can be found on television or obtained free of charge from magazines". What magazines are those then? Free of charge? The Oxford Star is free of charge, but it's not big on nude photography and erotic material. It seems to be mostly adverts for car showrooms, and it's a very particular type of person that gets a sensuous buzz from hanging out on a rainy forecourt.

The Extreme paragraph prohibits "websites that are normally assigned to other categories, but are particularly extreme in their content". I'm somewhat bemused by that. Are they saying that I'm OK to access, for the sake of argument, a needlework website, but 'extreme' needlework - let's say Parachuting Embroidery - is unacceptable? ("Parachuting Embroidery", by a complete fluke, turns out to be a googlewhack - one of those searches which only returns one match. Although I wonder about the programmers behind Google when the listing informs me that it is displaying "Results 1-1 of about 3".) Even more confusing is the parenthesis - "(e.g. violence)". So I'm allowed to access violent websites, but not extremely violent ones. Where does one draw the line? I need some sort of framework here for when violence ends and extreme violence begins. It's a minefield (or possibly not, because those places can be pretty extreme themselves).

Other sites I can't look at any more include those relating to computer crime, credit card misuse, internet fraud, software cracks and illegal licence key generators (huh?), instructions for murder, manuals for bomb building and sodomy. I will also have to wave goodbye to the Westboro Baptist Church as I can't access sites dedicated to "extreme right and left wing groups, sexism, racism, religious hate, suppression of minorities and the belittlement of National Socialism". Run that one by me again? I can't belittle the Nazis? If there's a group in history which merits belittlement, surely it's them? I suspect that this e-mail may not have been written by an English person, and what they actually mean is sites which serve as apologia for the Nazis. Either that or I've somehow managed to get myself employed by a subsidiary of Odessa Inc.

My favourite bit of the e-mail is the line that says there is a process that can be followed in case you do need to access any of these sites for a genuine business reason. I wonder whether my explanation of my bona fide corporate need to visit www.buildyourownhandgrenade.com will stand up.

I saw my first rubbish personalised number plate for quite some time yesterday. I used to see them all the time, but the frequency seems to have dropped off. Perhaps word of my scathing attacks on the PNP-bearing vehicles of Oxford has spread, and drivers are eschewing the opportunity to transmit a compact message which isn't quite what they mean. The one I saw yesterday was J889UAR. I wouldn't even have realised it was a PNP if the letters and numbers hadn't all been run close together like that. It was on, if you need to ask (which you probably do) a Jaguar.

Needless to say (but I'll say it anyway) there are a couple of problems here. In the first place, whilst a 9 can look somewhat like a g, it really can't look like a G, and if the A and R are upper case then consistency demands that the G should also be. Secondly, an 8 really doesn't look like an A. Even the most illiterate txt msging buffoon can see that, and if they can't there's a handily placed A between the U and the R just to ram it home. An 8 doesn't really look like any letter. (Amazingly, it mostly looks like a number.) So we have fundamental flaws with the approximation of the numbers to the letters they are intended to represent even before we come to the main issue, which is that were they perfect substitutes the number plate would STILL say JAAGUAR. Perhaps the car is owned by someone so posh they elongate even the first A in Jaguar. Or maybe a South African. Or, more likely these days, someone who just doesn't know how to spell Jaguar. Even though it's printed on the back of their caar.

I'm just bitter because I've been stuck on 345 for weeks. It's 18 days since I saw 344 (of which I saw two more this morning, just to rub it in.) Admittedly I haven't been giving it my undivided attention, but even so you'd think the law of averages would have thrown one my way. From my new office I look down on maybe a hundred vehicles in the various car parks of surrounding businesses. I bet one of them is a 345. But I can't even go and check, because this building is practically all glass and I'm not ready to reveal my innate obsessiveness to my work colleagues, many of whom I seem to make uneasy already. Shuffling around looking at car boots with a notepad is not going to improve matters. Incidentally, when I look up from my new desk, by a complete fluke, I look directly at The Kassam Stadium. Not only that but at the South Stand, where I sit. Slowly, slowly I am being called to my destiny. (Not sure what it is yet, but I'm pretty sure that if I have a destiny it's not to eke out a survival standard of living doing what I am now.)