Thursday 13: Nay Sayings

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This week, a list of thirteen proverbs and sayings that don't really stand up to rigorous analysis:

1. A Stitch In Time Saves Nine

I could snarkily point out that while the current scientific view of the universe allows for the bending of time, it does not currently entertain the notion of the stitching of it, but let's not be picky. This proverb basically says that if something needs stitching, then you're best doing it at the start when it will take a single stitch to fix it, because later on the tear/hole/whatever will just get larger and you'll end up having to do nine stitches. Now, let's be realistic; if you're too darn lazy to do just one stitch, there's no way you'll ever get around to doing nine of them, is there? No, best to just see it as an excuse to throw the thing out and go on a shopping spree for a replacement. The proverb should really read, A Stitch In Time Robs You Of A Shopping Trip.

Also, in its wider sense, this is a warning about procrastination but I think my analysis of that aspect's best left for another day.

2. A Trouble Shared Is A Trouble Halved

No, it isn't. You just get the other person worrying about it too, and maybe gossiping about it to other people, and then things escalate and you wish you'd just kept quiet. Possibly more accurate would be A Trouble Shared Is A Trouble Squared, which at least has the grace to rhyme.

3. It's Always Darkest Before The Dawn

Well, at a wild guess, given the way the Earth rotates, and not dragging any reflected light from the moon into things, it'll actually be darkest about halfway between dusk and dawn.

4. A Bird In The Hand Is Worth Two In The Bush

I wasn't sure about this, so I did the following rigourously scientific experiment:



Score = 24



Score = 23

As you can see, A Bird In The Hand wins, although it's a close call, and it would have been an easy mistake to make in those pre-Scrabble times.

5. Let Sleeping Dogs Lie

Hardly the most insightful of sayings. What else can you let a sleeping dog do. It won't bark, it won't play fetch, it won't chase its tail; pretty much all a sleeping dog can do is lie, and possibly play dead.

6. Don't Count Your Chickens Before They're Hatched

With the advent of X-rays, surely that's no longer the case. Also, with counting them before they're hatched, at least you're fairly sure of the maximum number, whereas if you try and count that plethora of chicks running around everywhere you're bound to lose count or miss one.

7. You Are What You Eat

But surely that would make us all cannibals. Ick.

8. Accidents Will Happen

Well, duh. If they didn't happen, there'd be no need to mention them, would there?

9. Two Heads Are Better Than One

Well, call me picky, but I'm far happier with just one. Having two would just get people staring and pointing at me. Two Heads Are Better Than None would be more accurate, since I'd far rather have an additional surplus head added than have my current one removed.

10. An Englishman's Home Is His Castle

Actually, mine's more of a junkyard.

11. A Watched Pot Never Boils

Oh yes, it does. You've just got to be patient.

12. Laughter Is The Best Medicine

Not if you've got a sore throat, it's not.

13. Money Doesn't Grow On Trees

So, dollar bills are made of paper, and paper comes from trees... Yeah, someone's not quite thought this one through.

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Thursday 13: The Future's Bright, The Future's Apple

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Don't you just hate it when you have prophetic dreams about what Apple are planning following the successes of the iPod, iTouch and iPhone? I know I do. Anyway, I had one such dream last night and here, verbatim, are the 13 future items that I saw on one of their top-secret hush-hush executive memos (to tell the truth, there could have been more than 13, or maybe it just said "Stuff" - it's all a little hazy now):

1. iSay

It's been said that television has killed the art of conversation, and indeed the same accusation could be levelled at the iPod (although we of course wouldn't hear it with our volume cranked way up high). Anyway, to redress the balance, and to help the conversationally-stifled, we have the new microsocopic iSay which lodges in the eardrum and, whenever it detects a deafening silence, will provide the user with an apt quotation or a deep insight that the user can then utter (or, if the user remains silent, its telepathic shuffle feature will cycle through some alternative responses). Due to Digital Rights Management, the user can then repeat the said utterance to up to five listeners, although any further repetition will naturally cause the iSay to self-destruct, thus handily leaving the user needing to buy another one.

Of course, even if they don't upgrade their iSay due to its self-destruction, they'll no doubt prefer to be thought of as funny rather than profound, and so will want to upgrade a year later to the subsequently-released third-generation iSay-iSay-iSay which will provide them with numerous witty ripostes to help fill any vacuum of silence, which the user can buy in numerous comedy stylings to suit their taste (observational, surreal, droll, sarcastic, witheringly sarcastic, childish, puntastic and classic).

Of course, when faced with such wit, some might just want to fling epithets back at the speaker, which is where yet another version, the iCarumba comes in.

Naturally, none of these will be made available to the UK market, where instead they'll be supplied with the iOfTheStorm which will provide users with suitably uninteresting things to say about the weather.

2. iMax

Following the success of the iPod nano, it's time for the other extreme of the iMax, a giant iPod of immense proportions. With enough hard disc to hold every movie, song and television programme in existence (and then some), its massive high resolution screen, taller than the tallest skyscraper, offers the ultimate audio/visual experience. Even when it's not showing anything, its screen rotates its pixels through all their near-infinite possible combinations at speeds too fast to take in, so that in its downtime, in a matter of seconds, amongst all the static, observers will see every image possible - every event that there ever was, is, will be, might have been or can never be (plus numerous subliminal advertisements for the other products listed here).

Naturally, the iMax isn't portable, but that doesn't matter because it's so big you can see it from everywhere. Of course, there's no obvious place where the owner could keep it, so instead they'll be placed into orbit, where the screen will still be clearly visible. Yes, it's THAT big!

3. iOfTheTiger

Tests carried out by Apple have shown that pets don't like their owner's music; indeed when dogs might appear to sing along with music they are, as their sounds suggest, actually howling in pain.

That's where iOfTheTiger comes in - an iPod for pets. Now pets can listen to special pet-specific music (available exclusively from the iTunes store).

4. iClaudius

Claudius, the most famous stutterer in history, gives his name to the latest iPod which can do automatic scratching of any music on it to give it that '80s hip hop sound.

5. iGore

Since teens love horror movies, this version of the iPod adds additional blood to any movie, not to mention an ever-increasing eerie baking track to any song being played, until eventually the singer's voice is distorted into screams.

6. iCandy

While the world's not quite ready yet for the iRobot (as market research disguised as a Will Smith movie showed), a more human robot is planned. iCandy is her name and she's been shown by market research to be man's new best friend. Not only does she come in the desired anatomically-incorrect proportions, but she can cook, clean, run completely silently and, most important of all, she gets all the sports channels.

7. iStillHaven'tFoundWhatImLookingFor

Having trouble finding music, movies, car keys? Whatever, you lose, the new iStillHaven'tFoundWhatImLookingFor, using advanced search engine technology to search reality itself,will find it for you.

Unfortunately, while development's complete on this, we've mislaid the prototype.

8. iBelieve

A new iPod that analyses the world's music preference to deliver only the most heavenly tunes to the listener. Available in cloud white, angelic white and whiter than white.

9. iPredict

Using data gathered from iPods all over the world, this gadget analyses the current state of the universe and extrapolates it to show you the future.

Work has been slow on this, especially with the development teams constantly leaving as they found themselves winning the lottery, but we finally got a large city-sized working version. Using that we saw what they did in the future to shrink its size, stole that future technology, and now it's reduced to its optimum shape, that of a magic 8 ball.

10. iFive

It's an iPod! It's a glove! It's a glove and an iPod! Driven by hand gestures, the iFive will play appropriate music for every occasion, whether it be hardcore rap for the more colourful gestures, or the Theme from Rocky when you make a fist. Finally, thanks to this revolutionary technology, blind people will get to play Rock, Scissors, Paper.

11. iCanDoAnything

The ultimate gadget, brought to us years ahead of our time thanks to the power of iPredict. It would have been called the iGod but that was dropped after it didn't quite do it justice.

Yes, the iCanDoAnything can, as it's name suggests do anything, perform any feat, answer any question. For what it's worth, Douglas Adams was right with 42.

Available for a limited time only, until it takes over the world.

12. iiCaptain

Not just an i- prefix, but an ii- prefix, as this gadget takes charges of all your other Apple gadgets, keeping them running at their maximum capacity, along with maintaining a log of everything that's happening.

To the end user, this gadget should be unobtrusive, and it might appear to the casual observer that it isn't actually doing anything that important. This is indeed the case, so we'll charge an exorbitant price for it to convince everyone it must be doing something important.

13. iCanCountToThirteen

Surveys have shown that people seem to have trouble finding the thirteenth item to add to a list. This gadget automatically generates one for you. How invaluable is that?

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Thursday 13: Pitches

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Several weeks ago, buried in my list of thirteen excuses for not doing Thursday 13 the previous week, I mentioned my trip to Hollywood pitching a movie. To tell the truth, I actually pitched thirteen other movies while out there, so here they are:

1. Since Enchanted has sort of stole Shrek's thunder in the fairytale mickey-taking stakes, I proposed a sequel to Shrek where the green ogre, along with Fiona and Donkey, find themselves transported out of their computer-generated landscape and into the real world of New York City. It's called "Shrek's In The City".

2. Superheroes meet Harry Potter, as a stray spell at Hogwarts creates havoc by producing four super-powered pizza-eating Moaning Myrtles, in "Teenage Mutant Whinger Myrtles".

3. A sort of Gremlins-meets-Chucky scenario as a Furby takes on a life of its own, slaying people and then repeating their final screams. It's called "Furby Goes Bananas".

4. Everybody knows that all good movie franchises come in trilogies (Lord of the Rings, Back To The Future, and, hey, look what happened when Star Wars decided to add a fourth film), so how about a sequel to the Kill Bill movies. Now the main problem with this is that the Bride slayed all of her enemies (and then some) in the first two movies, so most of the characters from the first two movies are no more, but we'll get round this by using some voodoo to bring them all back. That's right - a Kill Bill zombie movie where all of the Bride's victims are raised from the dead to get their revenge. It will of course be called "Kill Bill Vol. 3" (sorry, got to stick to the winning formula. Bet you thought I was going to say "Bride's Dead Revisited") .

5. Speaking of Kill Bill, how about a Disney sequel, ripped off ever so slightly from the former, in which the kick-ass heroine travels to France to avenge her family, and finally ends up stained red by the blood of all of her opponents. It's called "Mulan Rouge".

6. Sticking to the Disney theme, I pitched a TV spin-off in which some cooks, desperate to win a restaurant of their own, compete with each other in a kitchen, in a race against time to prepare a meal for two, all under the watchful eye of a monstrous chef with unkempt fur who keeps growling at them, and with the added disadvantage that sometimes the clock they use to time things suddenly performs musical numbers along with their cooking utensils. It's called "Belle's Kitchen".

7. Steve Guttenburg, Tom Selleck and Ted Danson wake up to find their little lady's all grown up and considering gender realignment surgery in "Three Men and a Maybe".

8. Snake Plisken's back, but this time, thanks to state-of-the-ark 2D graphics, he's trapped in a two-dimensional terrorland, in John Carpenter's "Escape From Flatland" (or maybe that should be "Snake's on a Plain").

9. Ben Stiller plays a milkman (not just any milkman, mind you, this is a high-concept movie where he's a man quite literally made of milk following being bitten by a radioactive cow). Anyway, he falls in love with Cameron Diaz, only to discover that she's lactose intolerant, in the romantic comedy "There's Something About Dairy".

10. Following the success of High School Musical comes a musical based on Smallville. It's called Super-Kal-El-Lionel-Chloe-Lex-Pete-Lana-Lois.

11. No doubt the upcoming Star Trek film will reinvigorate the franchise, but, if not, here's a Plan B. To appeal to the teen market, how about a Starfleet Academy movie that drifts into American Pie territory. Since no one wants to see Kirk going around being successful with women, let's focus on Spock and McCoy, on the eve of graduation, desperate to go where they've never gone before, before they get sent off on their five year mission. Anyway, while Spock's going through Pon Farr and McCoy's overdosing on cordrazine, they hatch a desperate plan - with the aid of their incomprehensible Scottish pal - to use a replicator to create duplicates of Kirk's sexy latest squeeze Carol Marcus. Unfortunately, some of Spock's Ponn-Farr-imbued DNA gets mixed up with the DNA they steal from Carol Marcus, and they end up creating two new sex-crazed Carol Marcus clones, and hilarious hijinks ensue, with the red-hot twosome threatening to give tribbles a run for their money. It's called "Doc, Spock and Two Smoking Carols".

12. A follow up to The Bourne Ultimatum (hard to see how they resisted calling that one Bourne Three). This time around, in a fourth-wall-breaking Truman-Showesque twist. the former amnesiac finds that he's not actually Jason Bourne but just a Hollywood actor playing Jason Bourne and in disbelief has to resort to expletives. It's called "I'm %£!$ing Matt Damon".

13. Jason Vorhees turns to memes in "Thursday The Thirteen".

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Thursday 13: Boulevard of Broken Memes

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Since everyone loves memes, here's a list of thirteen potential memes covering all the days of the week (for the sake of giving credit where credit is due, I should point out that the better ones have been provided by Blog In The Rough).

1. Make-A-Blog Monday

It's the beginning of the week, so what better time to start a new blog. Participants create a new blog from scratch, pouring their heart and soul into it, using the ideas they might have had for their own blog but never got round to, using a different blog creation site (for the learning experience and just to make it that bit different from their current site), creating what they consider a must-read blog.

Anyway, once that's finished, and the participants have created a site, posted some posts, commented on other people's new blogs, and maybe learned ways to improve their current blogs, it's time for the final act as the blogs are abandoned, never to be returned to. The excitement and the heartbreak of blogging, captured in a single day.

2. Monkey Monday

In this meme, based on the infinite monkey theorem, everyone types a post by just hitting keys at random (a method I tend to favour anyway). Sure, most of them will be unreadable junk, but if enough people get involved then a masterpiece is bound to come along sooner or later.

3. Tumbleweed Tuesday

A fun meme where you post something so lame that all the readers are reduced to silence. This finally gives you an excuse to posts the posts you consider to be too mundane, too unfunny or just too strange; posts that would either have the readers abandoning you, scratching their heads, or pulling their jaws up from the floor. The great thing is that when nobody comments on it, you know that you've succeeded.

4. Takeover Tuesday

On Monday, numerous heartless types abandoned their fledging blogs. Now's your chance to take one of those, mold it, shape it, and make it the greatest blog of all time.

5. World Hunger Wednesday

Every week the might of blogdom concentrate their collective powers on solving a major problem affecting the world. It could takes weeks, years, maybe even decades, but eventually this meme would no doubt lead to a utopia.

6. Weeping Gorilla Wednesday

Well, in a vague attempt to be topical, with the opening of Watchmen this week, here's a meme based on writer Alan Moore's Weeping Gorilla Comix which featured in his Promethea series.

For those unfamiliar with the Weeping Gorilla, it was a gorilla who'd weep (you'd probably guessed that part) while thinking a sad thought. Seems to me, that with the number of bloggers liking animals, this could be a natural, as each week the bloggers produce a picture of a weeping gorilla - either by drawing one (not just swiping as I've done here, that's just lazy), modifying a stock phot of a gorilla, or, for those lucky bloggers with gorillas as pets, taking a photo of it in one of its melancholy moments - and then adding a pithy caption to indicate what's saddening the simian. Who knows what pathos and profundity would result?

7. Thoughtless Thursday

It's time to admit to all those thoughtless actions you did to others and repent, or maybe tell us about the thoughtless things done to you, or maybe just leave the blog for that day because you've got no ideas and just wile away the hours conversing with the flowers. To be honest, I haven't really given this one a lot of thought.

8. Theatrical Thursday

Memes - the natural enemy of just telling the readers what's happening in your life. However, this meme combines both meming and diarying into one, as the participants tell the readers what they've been doing recently, but doing it in an overly-theatrical manner. Thus, even those of us with the dullest of lives can verily wax lyrical, canneth we not, about how on this day in this year in this century, verily did we arise from the grip of Morpheus and go about our lives and sat before a distorted mirror of finest rectangle that reflected our thoughts and our fingers tippety-tapped against the glyphs beneath them, producing something spectular, nay, spectacularly spectacular and the whole world rejoiced upon reading the outpourings.

Something like that, although obviously far better and with way more name-dropping.

9. Feedline Friday

A fun meme where people think up interesting things that I can say when I reach a converational impasse while chatting online. Think of it, you'd be providing a service for me, providing me with chat material, while also getting to exorcise your messianic tendencies knowing I'm a puppet voicing your words (well, maybe that's more your ventriloquistic tendencies, albeit a ventriloquist whose dummy types rather than talks).

10. Filibuster Friday

Participants type a really long post, discussing something at bizarre length, going on and on, way into the night, until their fingers no longer work, their eyes are getting blurry and the readers have fallen asleep. Oh, wait, sorry, wrong meme; I was thinking of Thursday 13.

11. Sick Saturday

For all the hypochondriacs out there, and the genuinely sick, a chance to discuss whatever ails you. Share your problems and worries with others, and hey, with the power of suggestion, they'll start to feel the same symptoms, and soon, thanks to the internet, the whole world will be sick; which is a bit of a waste really, when you're probably off work for the weekend.

12. Super Saturday!

A meme so super it's got an exclamation mark! Who cares what it's about, it's got an exclamation mark! Isn't that exciting enough!?

No? Okay, well as the exclamation mark indicates, the participants have to answer some questions with unbridled enthusiasm, regardless of any disinterest, finding some reason or other to find the whole thing super! Isn't that super?! What's that you say? It sucks? Wow, you'd be lousy at this meme.

13. Sarcasm Sunday

Just one meme for Sunday - after all, it is a day of rest - but what a meme, undoubtedly the greatest meme of all time. It truly is phenomenal.

No, it isn't; I was being sarcastic. Unfortunately, until they invent an emoticon for sarcasm, it's not always obvious when that lowest form of wit is present. That's why we need a day for unbridled sarcasm, where it's obvious where people are being sardonic about the questions they answer. Needless to say the comments on these posts can also be sarcastic, just to mess with the participants' heads as they worry because they're getting such nice comments.

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Thursday 13

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Well, after last week's no-show, it seems only fair that this week I offer thirteen very feasible excuses as to why I didn't do the Thursday 13 last week:

1. I was abducted by aliens. Fortunately they returned me on Friday morning at one minute past midnight, but by then I'd missed the deadline.

2. I was staring at my screen, waiting for inspiration to hit, when I fell asleep and had a ridiculously-convincing dream where I'd written the greatest Thursday 13 of all time. Anyway, I woke up the next morning, not realising it was a dream, thinking I'd already written it (and thanks for all the nice comments I dreamed you left on it, by the way), and it was only when I looked back this week, and noticed that it wasn't there, that the truth dawned on me. Needless to say, dreams being what they are, I can't actually remember the contents of this greatest Thursday 13 of all time, although I'm fairly certain it didn't comprise a list of excuses.

3. I pushed the Publish Post button, but my internet connection is so incomprehensibly slow that you'll not see it until next Thursday.

4. You know how sometimes the brain can protect itself from traumatic situations by repressing memories. Well, that's what yours has done with last week's Thursday 13 of mine. I suspect if you look back you won't even see it - isn't the human mind an amazing thing?

5. Following my previous Thursday 13 about my favourite numbers, I was being held hostage by some militant mathematicians, incensed that I'd omitted their favourite of ninety-nine, a number that conjured up images for them of red balloons and bottles of beers on the wall. When I pointed out that I'd also had to miss out seven, despite it being magnificent, they finally let me go.

6. I was going to post a Thursday 13. Indeed, I'd spent ages working on a list of my favourite months, but then just at the end I saw the horrible flaw in my plan. As a result, at the last minute, thinking on my feet, I switched to discussing my favourite signs of the Zodiac. D'oh!

7. I had to abandon it since, despite hours working on it, it failed to reach the stringent standards of quality control required for my blog (i.e. it still consisted solely of the words "Thursday 13").

8. I did actually post it. It was a list of thirteen conspiracy theories, which blew the lid off just about everything. But as soon as I posted it, THEY removed it.

9. I posted it, but then it turned out to be exactly the same as the first person's Thursday 13, word for word. Thinking I'd be accused of plagiarism, I typed up another 13, but they matched the second person's. So I did it again, and they matched the third person's. At this point, I think you can see the pattern emerging.

10. Sure, I wrote it, but I didn't think you could handle it. Maybe next week.

11. At the last minute, I realised that if I did post it, then this week's Thursday 13 wouldn't make any sense.

12. Okay, my most faithful reader, I'll tell you the truth, but you're sworn to secrecy (don't worry about the other readers; I'm using clever HTML so that they're actually now reading something different and far more funny). I was out in Hollywood pitching a movie, hoping to get it greenlighted. It's yet another entry in the "Look Who's Talking" franchise, but this time with the high-concept twist that instead of having the adventures of a baby voiced by Bruce Willis, I turn things on their head and have the adventures of Bruce Willis voiced by a baby. It'll be called "What You Talkin' 'Bout, Willis?"

13. All of the above

Honest, that's what happened. Would I lie to you?

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