Is This A Blogger I See Before Me?

They say if one gives an infinite number of monkeys an infinite number of typewriters, one of them will eventually come up with the complete works of Shakespeare.

That all seems a bit of a rigmarole to me. The complete works of Shakespeare are readily available from the likes of Borders and Waterstones, after all.

It appears to me that there is a number of issues which would have to be resolved.

1) How would you feed them?
It seems irresponsible in a time of food shortages to waste an infinite amount of food on this folly.

2) Where would you keep them?
On the face of it, this seems a much easier problem to solve. You could keep them in one of those infinity pools. But you wouldn't want them to drown. Monkeys, as you know, can't swim.
So you'd have to empty the pool. But how long would that take?

3) How would you source them?
Frankly, I'm not sure which would be harder to get hold of these days - an infinite number of monkeys or an infinite number of typewriters. Manual typewriter production has been scaled down for years, and I can't remember the last time I saw a typewriter ribbon.

Supposing you overcame these obstacles, what level of accuracy would be acceptable? I mean, it could be quite frustrating if you were expecting perfection. Imagine your dismay if a manuscript was finally delivered, and Hamlet's most famous soliloquy made reference to "outrageous frotune."

If you are hell-bent on going down this lavish path, I recommend that you restrict yourself to, say, a million monkeys with a million typewriters. You would probably be in for a longish wait, but nothing ventured...

In any case, I wish you luck.

In other news, my alter ego has set up a Facebook group, which you are more than welcome to join.

Blameless

Why are we blaming the poor pigs for this horrible new strain of flu which you might have heard about briefly on the news? How on earth do we know that pigs have it in the first place?

MIGUEL:
Eh, Jose, what's up with you?

JOSE:
You know, Miguel, I don't feel so good. I think I'm coming down with the flu.

MIGUEL:
The flu? What? Is it going around little Rosita's school?

JOSE:
No. I think I caught it from the peeegs.

MIGUEL:
The peeegs? How do you know?

JOSE:
I've been watching them for days, amigo. They've been snuffling, snorting and generally lying about. Classic flu symptoms, I think you'll agree. Do you want to finish these refried beans?

MIGUEL:
Better not.

It's probably quite hard to quantify. It's not like pigs have jobs to do and even if they did, it would be difficult, if not nigh on impossible, for them to hold a phone in their trotters to ring in sick.

I don't think I've ever heard a pig sneeze, but I imagine it would look quite funny, if a bit messy.

Too Much Information

Twitter's funny, isn't it? Lots of people saying things. You can follow me, if you like (twitter.com/grahambandage).

I follow a number of celebrities and people whose work I admire and, in some cases, love to the point of tears. But I don't expect them to follow me.

And why should I? They have many thousands of followers. If I were to show up on their radar I would recommend that they have their radar checked out for excessive sensitivity by a qualified engineer. They literally don't have the time to consider the likes of me, to decide, "You know what? This chap Bandage is smashing, and I'm going to follow him in a reciprocal arrangement."

Or so I thought.

There's a little button to the right of your screen. I've marked it "I Know Where You Live." Every so often, I have a little look at my profile on StatCounter to see how many thousands of people have had a look at this blog*. And one day last week I saw it. Somebody, I'm not saying who, but it's somebody I admire and had recently started to follow on Twitter, had read my blog.

"Ooh," I thought, "Mr X [that's not his real name] has read my blog." And for a moment I was quietly pleased. "Now," I thought, "The big time is beckoning. It's diamond-studded iPhones and swimming pools in the shape of this blog all the way for me from here on in."

And then I had a look at the people he follows on Twitter. And I'm not one of them.

This man, this Mr X [that's not his real name], has done the necessary research and found me wanting. If only I hadn't had access to such a wealth of information, I would be living in blissful ignorance. It's all my own fault.

In a way, it's the worst review I've ever had, apart from when the recipient of my youthful longings told a go-between, "I'd rather f**k a penguin."

*Don't worry, I don't really know where you live. Also, I only know who this person is because he has his own domain. That's the size of big-shottedness which this man possesses.

Grrr. It Makes Me Moderately Cross

Regular readers of this blog, of which there are few, often ask me: "Graham, why haven't you been updating your blog? Is the world no longer lovely?"

The truth is, I've been busy. Very busy. About as busy as Grant Bovey's bodyguard on Beat The Crap Out Of An Idiot For Charity Day (May 7, in case you're interested).

But I told somebody important that I write an amusing blog, so I suppose I'd better keep up the pretense for a few weeks on the off-chance he checks. If you wouldn't mind keeping schtum on the subject, I'd be grateful.

I've been marginally frustrated by something lately. I won't go into details. This isn't one of those confessional blogs. I'm not going to be played by Billie Piper on ITV2 or anything like that. I'm not even sure I can tell you how much I've been frustrated.

Actually, I can. Remember trying to get the silver paper off an old-style Kit-Kat that had been just that little bit too close to your cup of tea? About that frustrating.

This is why there's so much knife crime. Youngsters today don't have the petty grief chaps like me had. They don't get the training in minor frustration.

They don't have the five-minute wait for a Sinclair ZX Spectrum game to load, followed by a crash right at the end.

If you wanted to see a woman's lady bumps in colour, you had to watch late-night BBC2 or Channel 4. Even now subtitles make me come over all peculiar. If I ever went deaf, I'd need a wheelchair.

But today it's all instant gratification. Oh, yes it is. Pick a random teenager off the street and tell him to his face that you had to rewind a video cassette before you watched it and they'll look at you as if you're mad. Have a go! Tell me I'm wrong. I've tried it with about 30 randomly selected teenagers on the street. Some of them were quite rude.

It's easy to blame the internet, but, of course, it's not a recent invention. It existed in medieval times, albeit considerably slower than the current version.

Monks would stand at the top of hills shouting "Zero! One! One! Zero," while a second monk would take note of these binary codes and convert them into characters which he would inscribe into a book. This monk was known as the browser monk, or Friar Fox.

Downloading a movie took ages. The browser monk would have to draw the scene described by the shouting monks in the corner of a book, and when, years later, the 'movie' was finished, he would flick through the pages, effecting a rudimentary animation.

And it was still quicker than Orange Broadband.

That's Personal

I saw this ad in the Metro.



LOCAL woman wants to meet with like-minded men.

I know what you're thinking. The first thing you're thinking is, "What sort of man is she looking for, because, on the surface, she isn't giving us many clues?"

And the second thing you're thinking is, "How can I apply the rules of algebra to solve this question?"

Well, let's take "like-minded men" to be the unknown, x, if you will. Then there must be enough information in the term "local woman" to help one work out what sort of mind she has.

Let's start with the woman part. Now, what distinguishes a woman from a man? She has a womb. She can give birth. She's going to find it tricky, at best, to find a man similarly equipped.

But wait! It says "like-minded," not "like-bodied." If one works back from the physical difference and examines how that affects the female psyche we see that women have an attraction to men for the purposes of copulation.

Could there be men who are attracted to other men for these purposes? I believe such men exist, but we'll come back to this.

So, this woman has a limited number of words in which to describe herself. Does she choose to identify as warm, wise, compassionate, intelligent, or even, dare I say it, sexy?

No. She's taken a long hard look at herself and decided that what she is, the sine qua non of her being, is local. So proud is she of the city in which she lives she allows her love of it to define herself. I think that's beautiful.

So, x, we can finally establish, equals a homosexual who is fiercely proud of his Liverpudlian roots.


The answer is Pete Price.


Unless she's a lesbian.