Logic has been diminished

When I started writing these Gems down, I never gave a thought to context. All I committed to paper were the exchanges, divorced from the events that led to and followed them. This wasn't much of a problem to begin with, but now I have a small box full of scraps of paper and filled notebooks, I find myself looking at a set of almost unintelligible scrawls, with no idea of what prompted them.

All this means that I am now faced with two options. I can either fake a backstory, and hope I can get it as true to life as possible, or I waffle on, filling the post with a series of side-stories and unrelated topics.

No idea who did this, but it belongs to the surrealism art school.

...er ...perhaps not that unrelated...

Forcibly dragging the post to something resembling order, the only background I can provide to today's Gem is that me and Julie were discussing her ability to entertain with verbal slips (and spot-on bon mots). Very often, Julie will do herself down, claiming she is thick, slow, and dull.

That's one thing that is pretty much guaranteed to anger me and anyone else who knows Julie. Just because I remember lots of useless titbits of information, that does not mean I am more clever than the next person. When Julie talks about her work, I generally sit there while my eyes glaze over and the conversation flies so far over my head that it attains near-earth orbit. The reverse is true wen I begin discussing the intricacies of playing Magic: the Gathering.

However, there is one aspect of my psyche that would enforce such a self image. I can be very picky about some things. I like things to be correct and will attempt to correct people - including myself - when I believe them to be wrong. Since I spend a lot of time with Julie, this means that I do nit-pick at things she says. And trust me when I say I have got into trouble about doing this. Right, sis?

That said, may I present this legally-themed Gem.

Yes, I am fully aware that 'grounds of diminished responsibility' is a defence tactic, not an accusatory one. But - it was fun to roll with it, right up to the final brain crash.

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The two cartoon images come courtesy of an anime game series known as 'Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney', although some people, mostly in the West, will know them from the series of parody videos, Phoenix Wrong. These videos cut together parts from the games and then overdub music, quotes from movies, and classic comedy sketches, all punctuated by a banged gavel and a cry of "Objection!" Take a peek at this example.

(Bull)dogged

"British Bulldog, one-two-three!"

That phrase should bring a small wave of nostalgia to many of you (mostly Brits, obviously). British Bulldog is a game played by many children (and adults, on occasion), normally in the school playground. It did go through a dark phase during the 1990s, when political correctness and the imported culture of litigation meant that many schools banned the game as being too dangerous.

Bollocks.

I'm a physical coward, and I LOVED playing B.B. I was useless, granted, but I had fun anyhow. What's a scrape or two to a kid? Nothing. Yes, I will admit that there could be - and has been - the odd serious injury, but you cannot and should not stop children from having some energetic, social, spontaneous fun.

For those of you unfamiliar with the game, here is a graphic for you.

Image from BBC News site http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/magazine/7592648.stm

Now, because of said political correctness shite, I haven't seen or heard of Bulldog being played for a long time. However, on an evening walk with Julie and Roxy, I saw a youth activity group getting into a game of Bulldog. As I say, I had been a long time since before schools were banning Bulldog, and Julie was never too keen on it in the first place. So when I commented on what game was being played, I had to remind Julie of the rules. It didn't take much for a connection to be made and Julie was nodding her head in recollection. It seems she had had it confused with another popular schoolyard game...

...Oh well.

Pay (lots) to play

Anyone who knows me knows that I have an inordinate fondness for facts. Whether they be relevant to something in my life, or just useless trivia, I will usually read about it and think, "well I never." Among the Giles annuals and Pratchett books in my own personal library, there are a number of non-fiction books. Many are to do with natural history, but others will stray out into other sciences, language, history and even mathematics.

Yes, I am a word nerd.

For our wedding, we bucked a few trends; we made our own table centrepieces (with hedgehogs, of course), we insulted the registrar (link), and we made our own wedding favours, to be opened as the meal began. Intended to be something to help relative strangers strike up conversation with each other, we included, along with the ubiquitous sugared almonds, a few chocolate coins, a cheap toy such as you may find inside a Christmas cracker - and a folded piece of paper, upon which was written the following; a joke ("Two fish were in a tank. one said to the other, 'how do you drive this bloody thing?'") and a factoid, a little snippet to make people wonder.

To that end, books like this were invaluable.

Crammed with all sort of useless cra.. uh, information, this and others like it are fun reading. Especially when you are stuck in the smallest room in the house for a while...

I don't know which book it was, but one of my trivia books had a section on words that have been adopted into English from various other languages. And then proceeded to give us a literal translation of said word. For example...

Ba-dum TISH!

OBJEC...tion...?

I'm a bit late today, so I'll get right to it.

Today, Julie gives us an insight into a possible career change. One which would make Franz Kafka proud.

And before you say anything, no, I did NOT make a mistake in writing that down. It's just Julie thumbing her nose at Physics once more.

Distinctly different

I'm sat here, typing this out and a neighbour - a few houses away, actually - is noodling on his guitar. I would say 'playing', but it's jazz. In other words, a random mess.

I don't like jazz. Can you tell?

This is not to say, however, that my neighbour is a poor guitarist. Far from it. We have heard some lovely music, usually blues-based, coming from his house. Normally,  it's just noodling though. Practice.

One day, some time ago, we were sat in our front room, reading quietly. After a while, I realised I could hear our neighbour playing his guitar. Only just, though. He must have had his windows closed - or the breeze was blowing the wrong way, carrying the majority of the sound with it. As I said, it was a very soft noise, far from intrusive. In fact, when I commented to Julie that our neighbour had begun his guitar practice, she was surprised. In fact, even when I drew her attention to it, it still wasn't registering.

Zing!
Well, I lost that one. Not only was I confusing, Julie also managed to fit in a truly apposite pun. In the meantime, perhaps Julie could use these to boost her hearing...

Bloomin' unholy

We don't have much of a garden. Similarly, I don't have much of a green thumb, and nor does Julie. Since we have limited resources and abilities, we try and make sure everything we plant is as easy as possible to grow and maintain.

Unfortunately, there is something of a running battle with the local cat population and since Julie is actually rather fond of cats, my subconscious desire for an automatic machine-gun nest has to remain that way for now.

..uhhh... whoops...
Oh well.

Because of the cats, much of what goes into the garden needs to be pretty hardy. Stuff like shrubs and trees. Well, I say that, but they've done a bang-up job of killing my lovely yellow fir tree by spraying against it. Little bastards. By contrast, the fuschia appears to be immortal and the bay tree unstoppable. Both, however, pale in comparison to the buddleia in the front garden (read as 'strip of earth between house and pavement'), which has to be butchered to the ground annually and trimmed and bound at least twice throughout the growing season. I love it, and so does the insect community.

Meanwhile, there are a couple of pots in the back garden with some lilies, chosen by Julie, which also contain some of her mother's ashes. This year, however, there are a couple of intruders...

I checked (good ol' Google image search) afterwards and found the flowers were indeed snapdragons, which much have self-seeded from somewhere else.

Pretty, aren't they? We tend to call them 'rhubarb-and-custards'.

Touchy about temperatures

A little while ago, we decided to have Chinese food for dinner. In order to save a little money, we bought some ready meals at Tesco, and rounded it off with a pack of spring rolls. When it came to cooking the food, later that day, we found that while the spring rolls needed to be cooked in the oven, the meals and rice had to be done in the microwave.

With a little planning, we worked out the order in which everything needed to be cooked and set it all off.

A short while later, we took the tray of spring rolls out of the oven so that we could follow the instruction to turn them half-way through their cooking. Yes, we have tongs in the kitchen, but we couldn't be bothered to get them, so we just used our fingers instead.

That cartoon's not strictly accurate for the events. Partly because nobody cried tears (let alone what appears to be urine), but mostly because it was not me, but Julie that was wincing as she gingerly flipped the rolls over. Smiling slightly (I know, cocky bastard, or what?), I took over, nonchalantly turning each roll over, taking my time. Yes, I could feel they were hot, but they didn't seem to burn me, nor did I feel any pain.

Julie couldn't believe it, blaming it on some kind of machismo thing.
"Nah," I said, "I've just got asbestos fingers."
"What?" Julie exclaimed.

I explained:

Wait... so you want not hot heat...?

Cause and effect overturned

Julie likes to enter competitions in the magazines she buys, the sort where there are loads of puzzles and prizes of varying worth. I'm not condemning this, not at all. I enter prize draws whenever I can myself. The main difference between our habits is that hers come from printed magazines and mine are generally found online.

We haven't won any holidays yet, although we have both got some decent prizes. I have won a fair few books and Julie got various games. My personal best was a brand new blender and a month's supply of Greek yoghurts. The yoghurts were rather tasty, although after a month of them, I was glad to see the back of them. My sister was a happy camper though; she had just moved into a new flat and called dibs on the blender. As we already had one blender, one which didn't see much in the way of action, it made sense for me to pass the blender over to a suddenly cheerful sibling.

Julie, in the meantime, stayed with the gaming theme for her top prize - a Mario Kart Nintendo Wii box set. Sweet. It's not my wife's cup of tea, but I was most definitely chuffed to bits.

Some time after Julie's big win, her brother came round for a visit. It didn't take long for the subject of the win to be raised. Never mind the pride and excitement, it's a little difficult to cover up a gaming console when it's attached to the front of the TV...

Colin, Julie's brother, was properly pleased for her, and asked how she had managed to win it. Julie then explained that it was one of the many contests she played for in her magazines. In this case, a sudoku puzzle magazine. As we chatted about the contests, we both had to admit that while we had had a few wins, it was more often the case that we didn't win anything. In fact, Julie has yet to win anything from any magazine other than the sudoku one. It's a little frustrating, as there are lots of decent prizes in the other periodicals. However, as I have pointed out a few times, it's all down to how many people actually enter the competitions. The sudoku puzzles are very specific, which means the fewer people chancing their luck have better odds. It hasn't put Julie off them though. As she says, you have to be in it to win it.

Well, that's not strictly true. What Julie  actually said was this:

I'm not sure, but beneath the loopy language, I have a feeling Julie just violated the laws of time and space...

Unsure, to be sure

Picture the scene; Julie and me will be having a chat. Suddenly, a wild Gem appears. Julie uses Baffle! It's super-effective!

OK, Pokemon-style shenanigans aside, I will often have to override that little trip-switch in my head so I can get my thoughts together enough to be able to write the Gem down. Following that, we will often talk about the Gem or what was going through Julie's mind while the mouth was off doing it's own thing.
That's the point, you see; Julie has said this to me often enough, and I am quite prepared to believe it; her mouth has a mind of its own and doesn't like to take instructions from the brain. Unfortunately, this is often just as confusing for my wife as it is for anyone she might be talking to at the time.

And, to be perfectly honest, it doesn't help when Julie's mouth decides to chip in when she's trying to explain herself. Seriously - it's like she's having an argument with herself. Don't believe me? Try this Gem for size...

You know, I don't think I was part of this conversation...

An unnaturally natural explanation

Here's the thing: Julie does have her Little Moments. Those times when the only hope anyone talking to her has of making it through alive is by riding the wave, so to speak. Just let it wash over you and then come bobbing back up like a seabird on a rough ocean.

Well, that's not strictly true. In my case, I'm generally in a desperate hurry to write down everything Julie is saying before my pen spontaneously combusts...
So, there I was, notepad at home, but a scrap of paper dredged from my pocket and pressed into service. Smoke was starting to emerge from my pen, as Gem overtook Gem, when - BAM! Julie decided to engage in a little self-analysis.

Do excuse me - I think my brain just exploded...

You couldn't make it u... oh - she did.

OK, so we were playing Scrabble, which is a word game. However, today's Gem is - to me, at least - very much a definitive one. Yes, there were doubts as to what Julie was trying to play for her turn, but I still maintain what she said as a defence is more than equally applicable to her whole approach to life.
Now I have strung things out by repeating myself with polysyllabic terminology, all that remains for me is to draw back the curtain and present what I feel may become the slogan for our blog.*

'nuff said.

*Previously, we had considered using the phrase, 'Julie's Gems - the best website this side of the table'. However, I think we should drop it in favour of the above Gem, as the new one goes some way toward explaining a bit more about who Julie is and what she does.
What do you think?
Either comment below or send us an email to juliesgemsuk@hotmail.co.uk

Longer doesn't mean longer.

The passage of time is a very subjective experience. Poor situations seem to make the day drag out interminably. Conversely, if you're enjoying yourself, you're bound by the laws of conversational narrative to utter the immortal line, "what, already? I just started! I don't know - just where does the time go?" As the author Terry Pratchett has also noted, your perception of time already elapsed will vary too. You may look back on a work or school day and lament how it never seemed to come to an end. However... wait, what? We've just had the longest day of the year? I could have sworn it was February yesterday! Or, as Sir Terry has it...

Of course, you don't need any such mundane approach to time dilation when Julie is around. If nothing else, after a few Gemmed-up exchanges with my wife, you'll have only the vaguest idea as to what century you're in. What I wasn't aware of, however, is that even Julie is affected by her in-built temporal distortion field. Even more oddly, Julie can turn this field on by having a nice lie-in.

I'm not a morning person, never have been. Unfortunately, being Gemmed later in the day means my brain is awake and then ties itself into knots trying to figure out the meaning behind what the ears have just fed it. So, there I was, mug of tea raised partway to my mouth and an expression of terminal bafflement on my face. Julie saw my confusion and decided to help me out.

Well, that's nice. Do you think you could find the time to explain it to me?

Saturday Bonus - Dead in Bed

I was trying to explain the expression Julie usually manages to evoke from me. You know, it's The Look.

It's a little self-contradictory, as it's an expression without much expression. To put it in one word. 'Deadpan'. Julie, however, seems to have a little trouble with mastering The Look.

There's only one possible response to that.

A demonstrably inexplicable lack of thought

It's Friday once more, and I thought we'd lead you into the weekend with a double dose of bafflement.
There's not really much background to these Gems, especially since they could have taken place any time and anywhere. In fact, they often do. It's just they also happen when Julie is feeling especially reflective or rueful about her ability to produce Gems. Along the promenade, in a cafe or our front room, we've had similar conversations on many occasion. Mind you, on most of those occasions, I have been too confused to remember precisely what was said in order to write it down.
This time, Julie had been trying to get something across to me and it simply was not happening, possibly due to an overuse of the word 'wotnot' in place of various verbs, nouns and adjectives. As a reason for her failure, Julie offered this up;

I'll be honest here; if anyone can er.. explain this one to me, then I'll be truly grateful.
Then again, Julie did try to justify why she had said this and will continue to say more things like it.

Hear that? That's the sound of my brain reaching overload.
I think I'd better leave you to it and bid you a very good weekend - tata for now!

The council for the defence advises you to avoid confusion

On Wednesday, we were talking about a situation that arose when we were looking into things to ease my sciatica; specifically, something that my boss had recommended. Julie was looking at the list of other ailments this gadget purported to ease and stumbled - heavily - over the word 'Spondylolisthesis'. As I admitted in the post, it was a very understandable response, something I repeated yesterday. Unfortunately, Julie then had to begin the following little conversation.

Oh, dear, love - you were doing so well, too...

Bonus fail - MC Escher gives instructions

Well, it's either graphic artist MC Escher or Julie. I found this picture over on My Confined Space, which is well worth a look-see. To the sign - you want to be able to leave the building in a safe manner if there's a fire, don't you? In that case, clear instructions for keeping the staircases clear are essential, aren't they? Just a pity this isn't going to help matters...

Really? Do you really, really think so? Because I don't.

In remembrance of memory.

As you all know (and those who deny it are either lying or have forgotten they have done so), it's all too easy to put something down and then, seconds later, completely forget where it was you left it. In extreme cases, you may even forget what it was that you put down - or even that you put something down at all. You wind up stood there like a prize pillock, with a vague feeling there's something you should be remembering. I don't know about you, but when that happens to me, people ask all those really useful questions like, "where did you leave it last?" and, "well, if you can't remember it, it can't have been all that important can it?"
Yeah. Thanks for your help, now go away.

Of course, remembering where you left some things should be easier. A mobile phone (cell phone to non-Brits) left on charge is pretty much a no-brainer. All you have to do then is remember to pick it up before you leave the house. Mind you, some people seem to have trouble remembering if they should be remembering something or not. Confused? So was I...

In all fairness to Julie, I have to own up to having a brain like a sieve when it comes to remembering to do some things. The current one, something that has really, REALLY annoyed Julie, is my forgetting to switch the washing machine on before I leave the house. It's all loaded up and ready to go. All I have to do is remember to press a certain button before I go to work, and not when I'm at work... Sorrysorrysorrysorrysorry!!

The curious application of lottery logic

I'm going to admit right away that this isn't much of a Gem. Unless you happen to be what is popularly (and usually inaccurately) known as a Grammar Nazi. That is, the kind of person who will be annoyed by the sight of a sentence containing "an hotel", or when faced with a double negative, will invite a roughing-up from someone who really couldn't give a monkey's about double, triple or quad negatives and will show you just how negative it can be to prissily correct someone who happens to be taller, wider and was probably weaned onto bricks as a baby.
(breath in, Spike, breath in!)
That said, a lot of Julie's Gems are not wrong, per se, but there will often be that niggling sense that something isn't quite right, even though you have got the meaning clearly enough. Take, for example, the following Gem.

By the way, the square parenthesis [...] indicate a word or phrase unsaid but implied.

See what I mean? You got the sense of what Julie was meaning to say clearly enough, but a moment later, you stop and think, "...hang on a minute...". What we have here, ladies and gentlemen, is either a failure of logic or a most ingenious paradox....
...hmmm...
Time for a video clip...

An economy of speech

I'm often to be found feverishly trying to scribble down something Julie has said. Either that or trying to decipher my crabbed scrawl.
The other day, Julie saw the notepad in which I write her various verbal meanderings and felt a little put-out at the quantity of Gems I have collected. I'm not sure why; she usually laughs harder than anyone else when she reads them back. This time, Julie felt compelled to defend herself.

There wasn't much I could say to that. Well done, love.

Paraprosdokians, part 3: Invulnerable to logic

I love comics. Always have. Single panels, strips Brit-style comics and US-style comic books. I love the art, I love the writing and, with panels and strips, I love the humour. My all-time favourite cartoonists is a single-panel merchant. Or, was, I should say. Giles died some years ago and the world is a poorer place for the lack of his cosy, biting wit. And his art. Seriously, the guy packed in so much stuff into his panels (they were editorials, so basically half a tabloid page), it was incredible. You could go back to most of his work and marvel at his textures, his ability to draw weather and yet another incidental gag you hadn't seen before.

These days, of course, you have webcomics. I have a great deal in my bookmarks list, but I still like to have a printed book, so I do like to get a compilation of some I can afford, as and when, but the truth is, I go back to them pretty much every day and check for updates.
One of my favourites is The Abominable Charles Christopher. This strip follows the adventures and journeys of self-discovery made by a naive sasquatch who lives in a forest. Generally, it's not played for laughs and there's a strong ecological and moral theme. Some strips also feature some his woodland companions, and these are where the humour comes in.
Take this one, for example:

Click here to see the larger version on the original page.

I literally laughed out loud when I read the punchline, and my laugh brought Julie in to see what the fuss was about. I showed her the cartoon and waited.
And waited.
Julie, bless her, hadn't got the 'in' gag. However, it seems that there was a good reason for her not finding it funny...

That one got her the look. The blank-faced, are-you-kidding-me look. Surely logic could have helped her work thi... ah, yes... logic...
Nevermind.

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It's Devil's Dictionary time again! From the Ps, we have the following definition, one which conforms to the rules of a paraprosdokian (ie, everything goes normally, until the final part wrenches it aside). Of course, this being from the Devil's Dictionary, it's very, very cynical. And accurate.

Present, n: That part of eternity dividing the Domain of Disappointment from the Realm of Hope.

Oh, wow... what a downer...

I like it though... perversely, it cheers me up to know that others feel the same way about the world as I do...

BUT WAIT! I haven't forgotten the big news I've been promising - you'll just have to wait for another hour or so before I can set up another blog for you...