The Lair

Robert Jordan, RIP.
I’ve told myself time and time again that I wouldn’t buy any more books until he finished the damn series. The last WoT book I bought was Winter’s Heart, book 9. This was almost 7 years ago. Guess I’ll run out and buy the more recently released books 10 and 11. Will book 12 ever see the light of day? I wonder. RJ really was a gifted storyteller though. That alone makes his passing a sad sad loss.

And Colin McRae, RIP too. And to think that I had been going through a retro phase - been playing Colin McRae rally 2 (released in 2000 or so) for the last month and a half.

After the professionals have passed out, repeatedly *headdesk*-ing themselves into unconsciousness.

But more seriously, I saw an entertaining interview last night which featured Andrew Keen, the author of Cult of the Amateur. In summary, an influx of amateur video editors, bloggers, journalists and pretty much every other profession into the internet is causing a surfeit of mediocrity. And horrendously long sentences like that one. It’s too easy to dismiss this as just another rant by someone who resents the usurpation of his journalistic soapbox. Wait. Another horrendously long sentence. *sigh*. It’s all a bit shite, basically - and I’m not talking about my sentence structure either.

Actually, I read Andrew Keen’s blog regularly and he makes some excellent discussion points (I read it on the internet, blogs are boring [and he hasn't even read mine, does he know what a massive datapoint he's missing?] and McLuhan’s Revenge are particularly interesting).

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What is it about that South African pulling wool over all our eyes? Turns out he wasn’t killed after all. Yes, Woolmer. Remember him? That’s the guy that I thought (and made a bet, to boot) had been crisped by Aloo. The guy that was supposedly given snake venom. The guy who apparently had a towel wrapped around his throat and was strangled.

No wait. Turns out he may have died of … natural causes.

Ok. So did the Jamaican coroner suddenly stop handling the ball, stare off into the distance like Horatio Kane, take off his sunglasses and say …

“Someone wrapped a boundary rope round his neck, mon.”
[Yeah. I do a horrible Jamaican impersonation. Don't carribbean it in.]

Talk about dropping a sitter, eh? (I really really wanted to work in a hit wicket reference but my pun-fu is weak today). As it is, will anyone believe what the coroner has to say on the matter? If someone did actually bounce Bob off the pitch, then it was the perfect murder. Pity the conspiracy theories and allegations will swirl forever, just like when Cronje died.

Then there was that 11 year old kid who heroically took on a hog the size of a mammoth with a pea shooter. Call it the modern day David versus a porcine Goliath. Of course, the kid won. And duly posed for photographs. Incidentally, hogzilla is a technical term. Think of it as the Mozilla of pigs; slow, bloated, consumes a lot (of food or RAM, depending on where you want this analogy to go). Oops. Sorry, I picked the wrong browser to hate on.

Anyway, about that boy and his wild pig. Turns out it was all … (wait for it )

(you can practically hear the crackling)

hogwash.

Porky Pig is not amused. And would like his nice snug farmyard and his massive trough of slops to be brought over, toot sweet. Oink.

And to descend further into the murk, that dutch reality show where people had to compete for a kidney was also a hoax. Fortunately for the people competing (who really needed it, and not just for a pleasant accompaniment to steak in a pie either), the kidney was real. It was just that everyone participating in the show knew who’d get the kidney beforehand.

And this is different from every other reality show because … there was a kidney involved. Reality shows have as much to do with reality as professional wrestling has a resemblance to wrestling. Allegedly, of course.