Ooh aah Tominaga

I was rather hoping for a super-rare European win at the world othello championship, but despite the best efforts of Stéphane Nicolet, the trophy goes back to Japan again. Still, it looks like it was a great tournament. I would write more, but it's late at night and I'm typing in between rounds in a somewhat smaller-scale othello tournament on kurnik.

It's quite staggering to realise that it's December, though.

Have cards, will memorise

I finally got round to buying two new packs of cards today, to bring my total of useable packs back up to 36. Maybe I'll have a go at memorising the whole bally lot of them in an hour tomorrow. I doubt I will, knowing how useless I've been at the whole training thing just lately, but you never know.

Other than that, I can't think of anything to write about tonight. Or rather I can, but it's all about subjects I would never sully this blog with, like the latest entertaining developments in the latest political scandal, or the fact that I was mentioning Christopher Biggins in this blog before he was cool, or the fact that the fourth-most-emailed story on the BBC News website is about a puppy that got its head stuck in a watering can but is okay now. So I'll just leave it at that.

Now, it is beginning of a fantastic story!

I've become worryingly addicted to Bubble Bobble. I dug out the old Sega Master System a couple of days ago and played it, and I've been hooked ever since. I've been semi-hooked on the game ever since I bought it back in, um, 1992, probably. That kind of time period, anyway. But I've usually had other things to do with my time to keep me from playing it all day and all night...

I have done some things today, though - I've been practicing memorising cards and then reciting them immediately, in preparation for Blue Peter. I'd rather not make a total fool of myself on such a big show. And I'm persisting with the swimming thing. Let's see if I've lost some weight by mid-December, shall we?

In other news, the World Othello Championship is underway, and it looks like it's going to be a close contest - you can't really identify any favourites to reach the semis yet, although Matthias Berg seems to be doing very well, Ben Seeley's obviously still on form despite being out of practice, Anon Hongthong, who I've never heard of before today, seems to be beating everyone he meets, all the French seem to be looking dangerous, and check out Geoff on five out of seven, including some really good wins! Which reminds me I haven't emailed him my transcripts from Cambridge like I was supposed to, but never mind. He won't pester me about it till he's back from Greece...

But if you've been bad, he will kill you

It's that time of year when everybody's thoughts turn to a silly song on an episode of Maid Marian And Her Merry Men from nearly twenty years ago. So I was very pleased to find that typing "Father Bloopy" into YouTube not only gives me the song itself, but also enlightens me as to the existence of a band who named themself after the song. And not only were they genius enough to call themselves Father Bloopy, they also did a cover of Dragostea Din Tei live in Miami Beach, in which they more than make up for any shortage of musical talent with raw enthusiasm. This is my kind of band, and I'm going to find out whether they've got a fan club and join it.

Never work with children or animals

Next Tuesday I'm going down to London to watch footage of the Japanese memory monkeys (well, chimps, but I'll take alliteration over accuracy any day) and offer my expert opinion on their thought processes for that documentary. Then I'm staying in a hotel overnight at the BBC's expense yet again (it's a shocking waste of licence fee money, it really is) and on Wednesday I'm memorising information about an assortment of children Blue Peter have dragged in off the street.

[Please ignore the following observation, it's unworthy of an intellectual non-lowbrow-political-observational-comedy kind of blog like this one, but it came into my head when I typed that last sentence: If Revenue and Customs had also asked me to memorise information about children instead of putting it on two disks and losing them, they wouldn't be in the mess they're in right now.]

I've also been working on How To Be Clever a tiny little bit! I'm starting to be in the mood to actually do something with it, for the first time in ages! I might just be able to crank out some kind of finished product after all! But this enthusiasm seems to have come at the expense of practicing actual memory stuff - I haven't done a real training session for ages. I'm feeling all unmotivated right now, and I really need to keep in mental shape if I'm going to win the WMC. I've been doing speed cards quite regularly, but nothing else, and it's the long disciplines I really need to work on. I wish there was a competition, even a little tiny one, some time soon.

Seriously, who ARE these people?

I don't know who Ziggy and Chanelle are. I keep seeing one or the other of them on the front of trashy magazines, apparently describing the intimate details of their breakup, but I honestly do not have the faintest idea who they are or why they're famous. What am I missing? In fact, don't tell me. I'm actually quite proud of not knowing. It shows that I live on a higher plane than the kind of people who care about these, um, celebrities (if indeed they are celebrities).

Anyway, I really genuinely am a celebrity, and I can prove it. All you have to do is watch Blue Peter on Wednesday December 5th. Woo! I'm not supposed to write about exactly what's going to happen, for some reason, but I think I can safely promise that it'll be an unexceptional and by-the-numbers routine episode of the long-running show that will go down in history as one that doesn't get mentioned in the history books, ever. But it'll have me in it.

Ow ow ow ow ow ow ow!

I've just spilled a kettle full of hot water over my left hand while filling my hot water bottle. Ow!