Speaking in tongues

Fancy a Trivial Pursuit Gem? We haven't had one in such a long time...

I'll be honest - it feels like Julie does invent her own method of communication on many occasions. As to whether it is an improvement or not, I couldn't say. It is, however, usually far more entertaining and interesting than plain ol' Standard English.

Found on http://www.toonpool.com/

As for the correct answer, I am not too sure now, but a cursory glance through various biograpaphies leads me to believe he may have enjoyed the French language.

The placing of the platypus

Once more, we return to the veritable minefield that is Trivial Pursuit. And to what is apparently becoming the signature beastie for Julie's Gems - the platypus.

Just when you thought the pesky thing couldn't cause us any more trouble, up pops its leathery beak. In all fairness though, the problem isn't due to our mighty monotreme. Instead, it's human hearing all the way. That, and the serial misunderstandings that begin once Julie asks me the question...

Now, why does Abbott & Costello come to mind...

For those of a curious mind, here's where Tasmania happens to reside.

Letters discuss the RSPB.

There is a charity based in the UK known as the RSPB - the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds. In 1891, a few societies with similar aims merged to become the RSPB, and the aim was to prevent birds from being killed simply so ladies could have feathers for their hats. Later, the society's remit was extended to protecting birds and their environments, as it was clear that so much of birds' existence is dependent on the places where they live, feed and migrate.

In case you're wondering, the bird in the logo is an avocet.

More recently, it became painfully obvious that the RSPB needed to widen their focus even further; a neither birds or the flocks exist in a vacuum. Any locale is so much more than the sum of its parts; everything depends on almost everything else. So it is that the society now campaigns for the protection of animals, plants and environments in general, alongside the original focus of our feathered friends. In fact, they recently looked into whether they should change their name to reflect the widened aspect of their interests. However, it was decided that they would keep their name - partly out of nostalgia, partly because they felt it would show potential donors that they are not simply another environment charity, and partly to reflect their moderate emphasis on - guess what? - birds.

That said, and bearing in mind that the RSPB, along the RSPCA (Royal Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals), is one of the biggest animal-related organisations in this country, pretty much everyone knows what the initials stand for.
So, when the question arose in a game of Trivial Pursuit, I was expecting Julie to rattle off the correct answer pretty smartly.

Silly me.

So Julie. What do the initials stand for?

Indeed.
To learn more about the RSPB and its work, visit their site.
Oh, and my humblest apologies for the terrible pun in the title.

Good guy Uruguay?

Staying with Trivial Pursuit from Wednesday, here's a Gem that ticks a great deal of the boxes; Geography, a quiz game and that wonderful ability to blag an absolutely daft and improbable answer with humour and aplomb.

Generally, trying to explain some geographical concept to Julie is rather awkward. Not so much for the question or any lack of ability to understand the answer, but more the timing. Why is it that Julie tends to ask something that generally requires some visual aid to explain when we're in the car - or sat on the sea front, with a frustrating lack of flip charts and black markers.

On the other hand, if you don't know the answer to a question in a game and you're just having a bit of fun for a change, then just throw caution to the wind and make whatever your 'guess' may be a highly entertaining one.

Bwahahahahahahaha! Good answer!

What a lot of wotnot!

We decided to cheer ourselves up the other night by playing a game of Trivial Pursuit. It was... entertaining...
Part of the problem was that wave both been ill recently, with a combination of heavy colds and a virus picked up from Julie working in the hospital that made sure we didn't stray too far from a toilet. As a result, we were mumbling fairly often and our concentration was shot to pieces. And thanks to the cold, both of us had a mild tinnitus going on, which meant that we had a little trouble hearing things.

Of course, you also need to bear in mind that Julie (and, occasionally, myself) can find difficulty with some of the questions at the best of times. Admittedly, there are some which are pronunciation problems, but they're something that doesn't really affect us that much. Generally, though, it's simply Julie's approach to the game that wins through; if you don't know the answer, bluff it. Big time. Over-egg the pudding, spoil that broth and go the whole hog.

But, whatever you do, please remember what makes you you. Julie does. Even if she doesn't have the wherewithal to say so...

Now, that's what I call honesty. Facing up to your own shortcomings and turning them into strengths. It's amazing how much work a 'wotnot' does...

Bosom buddies have bad memories, apparently.

Acronyms - they can be handy, they can be confusing (anything official, or a series of space saving measures in a newspaper article, for example). Some acronyms are just letters (RAC), but others form actual words and often have been contrived to do so ('The man from UNCLE', anyone?). Sometimes, these 'words' can be inadvertently offensive, and sometimes they can be offensive by design, even if only for humour's sake. If you have seen the CLITORIS scene in one of the Red Dwarf episodes, you'll know exactly what I mean.

With that in mind, I dreaded what a boozed-up (ok, she was just a bit tiddly) Julie was going to make of this question...

BAFTA, of course, stands for British Film and Television Awards, but you probably worked that out, right? Julie knew, but but the lure of an opportunity to muck things about proved to be something of a siren call.

And now, as a special treat for you, have a CLITORIS.

Tata for now - tune in tomorrow for the finale to this week's Trivial Pursuit bonanza. And yes, it's going to be a good one.

No man is an island, however...

Usually, if I ask Julie a question in Trivial Pursuit (or another quiz) to which she does not know the answer, then her knack for coming up with a reply that is off the wall and out of the window will usually come up trumps. During this game, though, the wine consumed was taking its effect and snappy answers were becoming a tad rarer. Don't get me wrong, my wife was still apt to verbal shenanigans, it just took a little longer, that's all.
All the same, I was caught wrong-footed by her answer to this question. I mean, I bet I can imagine the answer some of you could come up with...*

In light of the alcohol consumption, I did wait a little while for Julie to complete the word 'mountaineer', but was ultimately forced to facepalm...

In case you were wondering, the answer was 'during take-off', because John Glenn was an astronaut.


*Jogging, of course...

Warning! Alcohol may cause eyestrain!

This week, as you may have noticed, is a full week of Gems, all resulting from a single game of Trivial Pursuit. You may also recall that said activity was assisted - for Julie, at least - the consumption of a glass or two of wine. A half-decent Shiraz, as I recall.
To begin with, any oddity was purely down to my wife's generally wonderful nature. After a while, however, the wine did begin to take effect. Not that Julie was slurring her words. No, it was more that Julie's brain was actually being slurred.The mouth was fine; I could understand every single word that was spoken. It was just when you put the words together as Julie did that your own brain began slurring in sympathy...

Apparently, this quirky little epithet meant that Julie's eyelids were feeling heavy as a result of the wine she had drunk.
Yes, love. It's totally obvious, now that you mention it. -.-

Getting personal with a planet

In case you are unfamiliar with the board game Trivial Pursuit, Allow me to shed some light on the matter. Essentially, it's a pub quiz for the family to enjoy within the comforts of their own homes. There are six categories for each player or team to answer questions on; Geography, History, Entertainment, Art and Literature, Science and Nature, and Sport. Here's a sample of one of the question cards.

Now, the thing is you can't help but look at and read at least one or two of the other questions on the card. Even if you are only supposed to read the brown question, you are likely to have more than a glimpse at the first question and the two on either side of the proper one. And if something catches your eye, then this is going to be even more applicable.
I can't recall what question Julie WAS supposed to be asking me, but it's largely irrelevant, in the light of her inadvertent discovery of the science question elsewhere on that card...

There's not a lot I can say to that. Did I mention (yesterday) that alcohol was being consumed?

Warning: Cheats will be crucified.

It must have been because it was my birthday - Julie suggested the other day that she bought some wine and we had a night of games - a choice of Scrabble or Trivial Pursuit in our case. Since wine was in the equation, that meant my suggestion was to have some fun with questions and answers. As a result, you lucky people can now look forward to a week of alcohol-soaked Trivial Pursuit-related Gems. That's a whole week, so don't think you have nothing to look forward to on Tuesday or Thursday... or the weekend, come to that.

To start off with, I thought we'd reference some popular culture, to wit the film which consistently tops the (British) polls for the best comedy film ever; Monty Python's Life of Brian. It has always astounded me that Julie simply does not 'get' Monty Python - or The Goons either. I mean, when you consider how anarchic she can be and how supremely surreal (a term I had to explain to her, bizarrely enough), you would have thought she'd be able to quote the films and programmes with the best of them. But no. I will be almost literally falling off my chair with laughter as Michael Palin's Pontius Pilate discusses the apparent hilarity of his friends name with his uncontrollable legionnaires. Julie will be staring at me with a baffled expression. That's if she's even in the room.

So, when Julie pulled out the card to ask me a question, she groaned as she read it.

This was going to be a long game...

By the way - fancy a blast of fwankly wisible humour?

Ships sounding out a physics fail

Every now and then, you'll come across something that causes a sea-change in the way we perceive the universe and its workings. Einstein proved that Newton didn't have it all covered. Darwin showed us there was no cosmic watchmaker. And Julie now tells us that hitherto indivisible physical concepts can actually be separated out.
See this piece of string?

What do you have if you cut it in half? Instead of one piece of string, you have two smaller pieces of string.
What don't you have if you cut it in half? You don't have two half  pieces of string.

Odd, isn't it? If someone rips a piece of paper in half you have two pieces of paper, not halves. On the other hand, if that swine rips up a twenty-pound note in front of you, then there will be two halves of a note. And a mad scramble for a roll of sticky tape. It seems it's only when things become more specific and defined that you are allowed to half, quarter, fifth (etc) them.

The same principle applies to noises. If someone whistles, then it's a whistle, even if they are suddenly cut short. On the other hand, if you talk about it musically, then our friend with the pursed lips can be said to have tweeted a minim, crotchet, or whatever.

See?

That said, some things are still indivisible. A hole is a hole is a hole. You can't prise apart a clap.* And a bell peal is a bell peal, regardless of length.
Until now. Fancy another Trivial Pursuit question? Of course you do.

Tell me; what's the weath... physics like on your planet?

*Death of Terry Pratchett's Discworld would beg to differ with this statement.

On the Casablanca Choo-choo

WORLD BOOK NIGHT 2012 UPDATE

On Saturday, Julie and myself repaired to the Central Eating cafe in Eastbourne, in order to hand out the majority of my copies of Good Omens. Unfortunately, the weather was against us, being rather wet and certainly blustery. As a result, not many people turned up, nor were they interested in stopping. Fortunately, I wasn't verbally abused, as was one of my WBN compatriots. Amazing - you try to give stuff away and get an earful for your troubles. Fortunately, the cafe is a somewhat bohemian place - I LOVE the people it can list among its regulars - and were at the very least politely interested when I had the temerity to approach them at their tables. In the end, I returned with only two of the books, and I'm sure I can find a home for them...
In the meantime, don't forget that the free draw ends this Sunday, so get those entries rolling in to juliesgemsuk@hotmail.co.uk

We now return you to our normal fare of baffling blogs, wherein we reveal the fact that Julie and myself partook of a certain boardgame of questions and of answers. And yes, alcohol was consumed, as proved when Julie tried reading a question....

"... oops - did I get it wrong?"
Uh-huh.

Shaft - can you dig it? Well, yes, actually.

Iiiiiiit's Trivial Pursuit time again, folks! And this time, it's t'pits.

Poor old Moses - he'd turn in his coal bed.

Mount Improbable, meet Mount Incoherent

Happy Friday folks. I don't know if you have much planned this weekend, but I'm hoping we can fit another game of Trivial Pursuit in. Or maybe a few chats about literature. Why literature? Well, I'm trying to get some short, snazzy quotes from Julie so I can get some bookmarks made up. Not many, just a few. You know, to give away to a few lucky folks, perhaps..

Anyway, back to the Gem and, indeed, back to Trivial Pursuit.

In case you didn't know what Julie did or didn't know, it's that she had a possible answer on the tip of her tongue. Unfortunately, the correct answer must have been hiding on another part of her tongue...

This conversation is a real no-know.

Every now and then, Julie will ask me a question about something, or else the conversation will have just... happened, as they sometimes do. Unfortunately, these conversations also have a habit of getting away from themselves. Either we'll stray far beyond the original topic, or I'll forget myself and go into what Julie calls my 'Teaching Mode'. I'll try and explain things in too much detail and in an almost condescending manner, and Julie ends up either bored, lost in details or utterly confused by the terminology (sorry, love! I know I do it!).
When we're playing Trivial Pursuit, there's an obvious danger of this arising, and so it was to prove the other day. I have no idea what the question was or what we were talking about - for some reason, Julie's answer crowded out all that boring detail...

See what I mean? By the time I had managed to work my way through that sentence, everything that had gone before was not even a distant memory. What gets me is that it is all perfectly correct as far as grammar and internal logic goes; it's just that you lose track of where you are in the sentence each time you try and analyse it...

Surely a Titanic tin of dog meat?

Fabulous Friday to you all!

Once more unto the breach, dear friends, the one I shall now plug with a final Trivial Pursuit-related Gem. Since this is technically 'Julie's Gems', I thought it best to return the spotlight to my darling wife. I had to choose between two Gems today, because there were two questions which Julie answered in her own inimitable style. The other may be posted tomorrow as a Saturday bonus... if the fancy takes you that way, that is.
Back to today. Here, I'm asking the question of Mum or Dad (I can't quite remember which), but Julie buts in with her own answer. To be honest, it's much better than the one on the card...

(a little note for our international friends; In case you didn't know, Pedigree Chum is a popular brand of dog food over here in Britain. Unfortunately, things change and it seems the company had the temerity to streamline their name to the mono-worded 'Pedigree'. Boo, hiss etc etc. There's a pic of one of the original cans below as proof.)

ps... the real answer, as you probably know, was 'Icebergs'.

Northern England; that last bastion of Communism...

Hello and welcome to Half-way Day!

Once again, we will be revisiting that weekend that was only a couple of days ago in reality but is already apparently a distant memory... Well, a distant memory to most, but we have a few reminders of a great little weekend, courtesy of Julie, Dad and a game or two of Trivial Pursuit. Julie isn't involved this time, it's just me, Dad and Nadia Comaneci. Stop it! It's nothing like that at all - in fact, I had to Google the name, just to make sure I had the right person in mind when I was typing this out. I'll tell you what; I know I had this mental image of her as a successful Olympic gymnast, but blimey - that's LOT of gold medals... (take a look at the Wiki page to see for yourself). Actually, some of the stuff Nadia has done more recently is more impressive to me, especially the charity work regarding muscular dystrophy.
Anyway. We're not interested in any of that are we? Of course not; all you lot care about is how such a talented woman fits in with me and my father... Hmm... I could have phrased that better, couldn't I? Oh well, the best thing to do is just jump right in with the Gem and see how we progress from there. I'll ask the question, shall I?

My reply to this was, "No, it wa.. wait, what??"
Obviously, Ms Comaneci was born in Romania. Well, I say 'obviously', but Dad seemed to have been a little confused. Or perhaps he was just being a little silly.

(by the way, I phrased the question as I did because the questions were printed in 1985 and I wasn't sure if Ms Comaneci had passed away since then.)

How the Dodo really went extinct.

We had my folks down to say this weekend gone and had a great time. Lots to catch up on, things to discus and talk about generally. Food was eaten, both at home and in a restaurant, and that too was very enjoyable.
However, all this pales into insignificance when we get the board games out.
Long-time followers of this site will know that the combination of Julie and the games Scrabble and Trivial Pursuit are particularly good for providing us with entertainment beyond the original intent. Then too, if you include my father AND alcohol... Well, now.
With that in mind, this week is going to be mining the rich vein of Gems found during the course of this weekend, and we'll begin with a question asked by my father.

Imagine the scene; Reading out questions can be thirsty work. I have just finished asking my mother a series of long questions and am rewarding myself with a nice long gulp of refreshing water (yes, water). It's my turn to be asked a question, so Dad pulls a card from the box and reads out the following...

Seeing the question has provoked an entirely unexpected response, Dad breaks off. By this time though, I am having serious trouble breathing, let alone actually swallowing the water in my mouth, my mother is laughing hysterically at me (so much for sympathy there...). Julie, on the other hand isn't quite sure what's going on. Something's not quite right, but she can't put her finger on it...
Eventually, I manage to swallow the water and, after some deep breathing, establish that Dad had actually meant to read out 'much-lamented'.
Who'd have thought that the poor Dodo hadn't been hunted to extinction after all, be had been mass-killed by a fleet of steam rollers?

Mind out for that stea... oh...never mind...

I always thought he looked a bit thin

Julie is, now and then, quite baffling. 

Then again, there are occasions where she's razor-sharp and more pointed than a sharpened pin. If nothing else, the previous post will have proved that more than adequately.

When we play Trivial Pursuit, there is a rough split of 60:40 in favour of 'baffling' over 'zinger' However, it does have to be admitted that the alleged zingers here are a result of Julie not knowing the answer and opting for a pithy put-down. The balance between the two states is fairly well established, but it's a fragile state; with the addition of some wine the ratio of 'baffling' to 'zinger' rockets to a heady 95:5.

Obviously, things are never as clear-cut as the figures I'm guesstimating make out. Many things can conspire to alter the state of play and the biggest such factor is sheer, bloody-minded chance. I mean, when you're playing a quiz game, wine has been imbibed and Julie is asked a question in a topic with which she is unfamiliar, you're going to be expecting something along the lines of 'baffling'. Or, at the very least, utterly incomprehensible. What you DON'T expect is an answer that melds all that is best in both 'zinger' and baffling'.

Seriously, I was expecting Julie's answer to have been rather rude, crude and definitely unfit for reproduction in this blog.

Playing games with votes and letters

As a family, we're a little different to many. Yes, there is a television, we have a computer and even an Xbox (an original one, second-hand. We're not made of money, you know). However, when we get together, our favourite pastime centres around a couple of board games. Followers of this site will already know that these games are Scrabble and Trivial Pursuit. There are a couple of others, but we always return to these tried and trusted friends.
In the case of me and Julie specifically, Trivial Pursuit is always a good choice on several levels. First and foremost is the fact it's not Scrabble. I'm not doing down Scrabble in the slightest, but it does have to be said that it's not exactly fully interactive; one person has a think, plays a word and a score is jotted down before the next player takes their turn. Only one person is involved at any one point in the game. Sure, it stretches our vocabularies nicely, but for getting everyone involved and interested, there's nothing like a good old question-and-answers session for stimulating discussion - all the more so when you have questions that sound vaguely risqué. Here's an example;

"What sport are you playing if your balls are black and blue?"

The answer, of course(!), is Croquet. (OK, gents, you can uncross your legs now.)
Naturally, when alcohol is introduced, the daft questions magically become utterly hilarious, as do the answers given. Especially when people get so caught up in the game they forget just whose turn it is. Don't they, Julie?

That was a good night; I only managed to get the one Gem out of the two games. Partly because I couldn't keep up with the free-associating banter between my wife and my father. Mind you, the three large glasses of red wine may have had something to do with it to. Oh gods... never again (please bear in mind my alcohol intake is generally limited to a pint a month. If that).

Well, I say 'never again', but it was totally worth it. Especially since Dad won the second game - it made up for him not winning a single game of Scrabble in the days he stayed with us. He's no slouch when it comes to words, not by any stretch of the imagination. However, when the opposition is my mother, he's fairly used to 'winning silver' as he puts it. It's now a family in-joke that he begins each game with "Bagsy coming last!"
Mind you, it doesn't help that he has a rather desperate approach to making words up. At least the rest of us tend to apply a certain logic when we consider alternatives. Another regular feature of family games is Dad playing a word which is met with the chorus of, "What? What the hell's that?" Another problem is that a certain leaning toward jazz-inspired music and comedy may be all well and good when it comes to listening to Stan Getz or The Goons, or meeting Julie on her own ground, but it's not hugely useful when it comes to using the alphabet. That said, it is useful when it comes to describing his inability to make a word out of the (admittedly awful set of) letters on his rack.

See? Witty, knowing and superbly pithy. Shame he came last again though...