My Bury Life

[j4]

Maybe Bury St Edmunds isn't that far away after all. Decided last night that if I stayed in I'd just feel guilty about everything, and while it'd take me an hour and a half to get to London (and I'd be perpetually worrying about catching last trains back etc.) it'd only take me 30 minutes to drive to BSE and I could leave whenever I wanted. So now instead I feel doubly guilty about not making it to the uk.misc meet, made even more guilty by Huge being so cross about it. Probably best if I just don't go near misc for a while.

It was really nice to see J-P and Colin and everybody though. And the pub was great, it's a brewery as well & makes its own rather good beer. And the drive there was good driving practice. But I feel like I'm not supposed to have enjoyed anything because I was supposed to be somewhere else. :-(

Slept badly, and had weird dreams. I can only remember fragments: in one bit I was trying to skate on a frozen pond because cats were walking on it quite happily, but I knew as I did it that I was probably too heavy, so I sort of slid across the pond but then slid off towards the side so I wouldn't be over the deep bit if the ice broke, and the person I was with said "You're doing it all wrong, you're supposed to go towards the middle", but I couldn't be bothered to try to explain to them, I knew why I'd slid that way. In the other bit of the dream that I can remember, emperor had asked me if I could photocopy some of the cards from the game "Whot" [it's a real game, honest], only he called them the "danger cards", and I assumed he meant the wild cards, and I was going to photocopy them but then it turned out lnr had already done a really complicated database of hundreds of games, with spare pieces available to download, only the database was all on paper, all neatly coloured in to show the relations between things, and I felt really cross because it seemed as though somebody always came along and did everything better than me before I even had a chance to try. [Sometimes I wish my dreams were a bit more subtle.]

American Paul cheered me up enormously this morning by telling me that you can buy BADGERS at Asda. Apparently they're ornamental badgers designed to go in your garden, so they look like they're coming up out of the ground. They sound gloriously tacky and apparently they're very cheap so sion_a may come home some day soon to find that the garden is full of ornamental badgers.

Comments

[oldbloke.livejournal.com]

Huge is just a big old poopants, don't pay him no heed.
I had my weird ferry-from-Land's End dream again last night.
Somebody in my extended family had a Whot pack when I was a nipper.
Errrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr.... that's it

[j4.livejournal.com]

Huge is just a big old poopants, don't pay him no heed.

Yeah, but I suspect he's right, really. I mean, it's not even as if I had a proper excuse; I don't have an internationally-important job, I didn't even have pre-booked cinema tickets.

Somebody in my extended family had a Whot pack when I was a nipper.

I'm glad I'm not the only person who remembers it! I have two packs actually, a modern (80s-ish) one and an older (1950s-ish?) one which I picked up in a junk shop for 50p.

[k425.livejournal.com]

Okay, having been to a meat that everyone else decided on the day not to attend, I can sympathise somewhat with him (but I'll say that Huge's bark is worse than his bite, so really don't fret). An email saying "sorry, I can't come after all" would have been good for me, since then I wouldn't have spent the afternoon thinking a) I was in the wrong pub; b) I'd got the wrong day; c) no-one liked me. However, you said sorry (and you're not crap), and generally that's all that should be required.

I have never heard of Whot. Thankfully you and OldBloke have, so "youth of today" and "before my time" won't come into it!

[imc.livejournal.com]

We used to play Whot! quite a lot in the olden days. I seem to remember the symbols on it were dark blue, not the gaudy red and yellow illustrated here (http://www.iwantitcheaper.com/whot.htm). It wouldn't surprise me if the deck still existed somewhere in my parents' house - though I suspect the packaging (and instructions) are long gone.

[sparrowsion]

My (early '70s) deck was maroon on white (with, IIRC, green backs). I don't think I have it any longer, so it can't be added to the house collection....

[jiggery-pokery.livejournal.com]

Another maroon on white deck owning family here. No clue about card back colour.

I remember the existence of "Calling Cards" within the game, and calling the name of a suit (usually, for me, crosses and stars) at the highest volume my four-ish-year-old voice could muster, which was this: quite high.

One could play an entirely serviceable and somewhat chairmanly game with a Whot deck and a little imagination.

[boyofbadgers.livejournal.com]

Third maroon on white here. Back of the cards was Whot? printed both ways up in a semicurly font. I also remember a not dissimilar, but slightly more complex game called Uno.

[j4.livejournal.com]

The older version which I have is like this (http://www.kiddstoys.co.uk/whot.htm) only in dark blue -- does that look like what you remember?

[imc.livejournal.com]

That's pretty much it, yes - though I think the WHOT! card had a different design on the front.

[hoiho.livejournal.com]

I don't have an internationally-important job

Who does? Me, I'm just an insignificant box on the org chart, trying to keep his nose clean in his probationary period, coping with a CEO who seems to view mass firings are a useful management tool.

If I really was all that important I could have gone anyway...

[j4.livejournal.com]

Me, I'm just an insignificant box on the org chart,

Well, I think you're a bit more than that. You get to hire minions. (I will have half a minion this summer though! :)

trying to keep his nose clean in his probationary period,

*hugs* I know what you mean. (When does your probationary period end, again?) Mind you I think you hardly need to worry...

coping with a CEO who seems to view mass firings are a useful management tool.

Yeah. *sigh* I don't see how that can ever help. It sends morale through the floor, leaves those remaining with more work than they can handle, costs a fortune in recruiting new people, presumably involves some costs in training new people too (if only in the sense that they have to learn their way around the company way of doing things) ...

Maybe I should "retrain" as a management consultant.

[nja.livejournal.com]

Probably best if I just don't go near misc for a while.

William Godwin's philosophy was that you shouldn't make promises to do anything, because something better or more important might crop up, and people have no right to keep others to commitments. Skimpole, in (I think) David Copperfield, is loosely based on Leigh Hunt, who loosely followed Godwin. Um, where was I. I think it's better applied to financial commitments than meetings etc, but it's not as if you left Huge standing in a muddy field with only the owls and voles for company.

Wot oldbloke said, really.

[j4.livejournal.com]

William Godwin's philosophy was that you shouldn't make promises to do anything

I didn't make a promise to do anything, though! Though probably people would think that that's a weaselly thing to say, and that I implicitly "promised" by acting as if I was planning to go (well, I was planning to go!).

it's not as if you left Huge standing in a muddy field with only the owls and voles for company.

I dunno. Did anybody else turn up? I'd feel really bad if nobody else but Huge went.

[nja.livejournal.com]

I think Eric Jarvis was planning to go, wasn't he? It's all academic to me as I rarely go anywhere near London. The Godwinian view is that planning to do something is fine, as long as everyone accepts that plans can change and there's no moral censure attached to changing your plans (Huge, as a "libertarian", ought to have no problems with people making their own minds up about the importance of things).

Wittgenstein and his disciples held/hold the view that if you say or think you are intending to do something but you don't actually do it, you aren't intending to do it either (in fact, "intending" doesn't mean anything, you either will do something or you will not). I intend to finish The Philosophy of Mind one of these days.

[j4.livejournal.com]

Wittgenstein and his disciples held/hold the view that if you say or think you are intending to do something but you don't actually do it, you aren't intending to do it either (in fact, "intending" doesn't mean anything, you either will do something or you will not)

I like this viewpoint as an abstract[1], and I agree that when it comes to the point of doing something you either do something or you don't. And that it's not really that much use saying "I meant to do this" or "I want to change" or whatever.

OTOH in the real world I think there are situations where intent does mean something, in the same way that "it's the thought that counts" (well, it isn't solely the thought, but sometimes it makes a difference to us illogical emotional human beings).

I keep going round in circles on this one. Will stop thinking out loud now.

[1] Would I sound like I was showing off if I said I'd arrived at it independently? If you prefer you can count it as a shamefaced admission that I still haven't read any Wittgenstein (though I keep intending to...)

[hoiho.livejournal.com]

Do. Or Do Not.

There is no Try
--Yoda.

[j4.livejournal.com]

Despite being spouted by Yoda, it's not a bad philosophy...

[hoiho.livejournal.com]

Can I just say I've only seen the first Star Wars film, once, in 1976?

[sparrowsion]

That's very impressive, as it wasn't released until 1977....

[hoiho.livejournal.com]

Was it? I could have sworn it was '76.
Ah, well, it's nearly 20 years either way.
Which is a Long Time. And a 5% margin of error.

I saw it on the same day as I saw Close Encounters.

[nja.livejournal.com]

I like this viewpoint as an abstract[1], and I agree that when it comes to the point of doing something you either do something or you don't. And that it's not really that much use saying "I meant to do this" or "I want to change" or whatever.

OTOH in the real world I think there are situations where intent does mean something, in the same way that "it's the thought that counts" (well, it isn't solely the thought, but sometimes it makes a difference to us illogical emotional human beings).

I certainly don't think it's impossible to have conflicting desires, so I think it's possible to want to do something even if it's not what you decide to do in the end. A lot of this stuff makes me boggle - Wittgenstein was obviously a very very very intelligent man, which makes me think I must be missing some subtlety because some of what he believed seems to me to fly in the face of common sense. Gilbert Ryle thought (following LW) that there is no such thing as a privileged perspective on your own mind - since all "thought" is manifested in action, there is no "interior" thought. He seems to have seriously suggested that the only way I know I'm happy is because I see or sense myself smiling, that I know as much about someone else's state of mind as my own, which I'm afraid I think is just bollocks. I think there's a lot of truth in the intent/action argument, though - ultimately, intentions and un-acted-upon¹ desires count for nothing, it's what you actually do that counts, so if you "intend" to do something and don't do it, you didn't really intend to do it.

¹ This is so inelegant. I have spent nearly three hours in a meeting tonight and I am simultaneously wired on cheap coffee and knackered.

[k425.livejournal.com]

Actually, I think you had two blooming good reasons for not trekking into London, if not three. So really, don't disappear from misc!

[j4.livejournal.com]

I can't think of one good reason, let alone three!

I dunno, at the time I thought I was being non-crap because I was managing to do something, rather than just staying at home and phoning my mum up and crying at her again. But now I feel like, I dunno, if I was capable of doing anything, I should have gone to London.

Sometimes I just want to hide under a rock until everything goes away.

[k425.livejournal.com]

Period pains are a damn good reason, imho.
Having been stuck in London because the last train to Cambridge was cancelled, not wanting the hassle is another good reason.
Someone you hoped to see not being there, especially if he's the only person you've met, a third.

[emperor]

How amusing that I should be telling you to photocopy cards from a game I've never played :)

[juggzy.livejournal.com]

Huge will get over it; I echo what Linz and Dave said. The thing is, if you stay away from uk.misc you'll end up making things worse. He is in a rightful grump, but if you stay away, you will then make him feel guilty about driving you away, and as if he can't express his righteous grumpiness. Friends let friends get grumpy.

Anyway, it wasn't just you. I am going to be making every effort to ensure that he blames everything on August. Which will be fun.

[juggzy.livejournal.com]

Of course, the thing is, now I have thought a bit, that you might want to stay away from uk.misc for a few days, in which case, do so, if it makes you feel better. Not that you need anyone's permission, least of all mine. But my considered opinion is that, if you are worried about how Huge feels, the best thing is not to make things more complex for him by not being there, as that will make him feel guilty as well as grumpy. Whereas if you are still there, he grumps, everyone lets him know that they are suitably abashed, he gets over it.

Badgerworld

[vinaigrettegirl.livejournal.com]

You were at Badgerworld, as mentioned by Craig Brown on the Beeb a few Thursdays ago. I saw you in the distance.