Shit a brick

That's a phrase that's been going about for a while; things get thrown, my face implodes on itself, and I find myself back in Bristol. Goodbye Bagpuss, my obsession is finished.

(Maybe it will recommence. That is what I need).

The point was: there is a misspelling in the URL of this blog (because I can't type oculardexterity, the thing I type more than any other singular thing) which caused me to flip and not write any more of it. Plus that job was killing me. But I don't have it any more.

So that's the end of this blog, which might start up again, properly spelt, when my life becomes interesting again.

Richard.

p.s. hello Bagpuss.

Why the human race is doomed

I was making some scribbled additions to a hand-drawn map of Paris - the 14th Arrondissement - when I added a very large label stating (rather imprecisely):

DON'T GO HERE
KILLER DUCKS

This fenced-off community, if we are to trust this drunked rambling, is round about Avenue de Maine. Only a bit later did the full logical implications of my action strike me.

Should a human read the sign - as was the context in which it was intended - they would be informed that this enclosure was the abode of killer ducks and would steer well clear. However, there is also the possibility that the sign would be intelligible to killer ducks, who would not go there on the basis that the sign told them they were not allowed. Of course, there's also the chance that only the ducks could understand the sign, because the humans were having a bad day. If we go as far to systematically analyse the possibilities, the conditions that lead to human survival in this case are few and far between. Allow me to demonstrate the logical underpinnings.

Either,
1) The sign is intelligible just to humans;
2) The sign is only intelligible to killer ducks;
3) The sign is intelligible to both humans and killer ducks; or
4) The sign is intelligble to neither.

1) In the first case, the humans would read the sign, and not go to the place because they are told that the killer ducks are there. However, the killer ducks can't read the sign, so some of them will go to there, where they will be no harm to humans. However, that is no reason to suggest that they all will (maybe killer ducks like to distribute themselves widely). In that case, no where is safe to the humans and they will get killed by the ducks.

2) If the killer ducks can understand the sign, they won't go to the place because they think they are not allowed. In this case, the only safe place for humans is in the place - and as they can't understand the sign then some of them might make it to the place, where they will survive the killer ducks. Some might even work out, if they are lucky, that this is a place with no killer ducks (but they would have to work that out for themselves without help from the sign, because they can't understand it). But probably there will be quite a few who don't do this, and they will get killed by the ducks.

3) If the sign is intelligible to both, neither parties would go to the place (humans because they think the killer ducks are there, and the killer ducks because they are not allowed). The humans would all be in the surrounding areas, where there would also be all the killer ducks, which would kill all the humans.

4) The sign has no effect, which means the humans and the killer ducks can both go where they wish. In this scenario there is no safehaven, and all the humans get killed by the killer ducks.


As this demonstrates, it is only in a special case of scenario 2 - the one where the humans work out for themselves that this place is where there are no killer ducks - do any humans survive. Statistically, this presents at most a 25% chance that humans will survive, with, of course, the possibility that all the humans could be killed. Let us say that half the people escape to the place from the killer ducks: that leaves an 87.5% mortality rate.

This depends, as I have said, on the intelligibility of the sign, and in three out of four initial scenarios, total human destruction is assured.

For this reason alone, no such sign should ever be written.

Richard.

(p.s. I got a job. Thanks Bapuss for reminding me of this fact)

Omlette

I had a quiet day in today, which explains why I haven't written anything.

What do you lot want to know, the contents of my shopping? Ok, you do. Here it is. I went to Franprix and spent 10 euros and 81 cents on:

Jar of pesto
Some sausage
A bottle of shampoo
A bag of fairtrade Peruvian coffee (the one from Honduras disagreed with me)
Six eggs

With that I made a four-egg omlette, because two of the eggs were broken in the box, and then I contemplated things about life, just stopping before I would consider myself pretentious.

In other news, Richard got a job yesterday, which he told me by way of Skype because he was too tired to trawl all the way across town. Then, by all accounts, by the account of some Facebook stalking, he got a bit drunk and talked about ducks all night before dissolving in a fit of giggles.

He does this a lot, like the time we first met, and lots of other times according to some of his friends.

I'm sure he'll tell you all about it.

More of this fun tomorrow.

love Bagpuss

I'm hung over

I'm as it says in the title.

Richard went to the party on his own -- actually with his flatmate and a couple of others I'm only vaguely familiar with -- and I stayed in his flat and finished Guinness whilst considering how life is treating me at the moment. I came to the conclusion that life is a waiter. One who's a bit slow taking your order, calls your coffee eXpresso after the desktop publishing software and brings it when it's just a bit too cold. He gets a tip, but not a huge one. He brings you a mint.

I was sipped the last of the Guinness and I confess I smiled at the thought, especially the chocolate bit. I even went round the corner to buy a bar of something Cadbury and English, couldn't get back into Richard's flat so went home.

Sleep came over me before I could get round to writing a riposte -- by which I mean Richard's life story, or the alternative version, by which I mean the truth, of how we met -- but, yes, sleep came over me. And now I just can't focus on anything, especially something like this that requires such a literary treatment (only then will you get to grips with the guy).

Instead I flicked through the Guardian's Comment section and cross-referenced it with The Times. Neither of them like Nick Clegg, and, well, neither do I. I'm torn between old school Labour and new-wave Tories. But Richard loves the Lib Dems. I was flicking through his computer and I found he's on their mailing list. He said "I've got an e-mail from Nick Clegg", and there was a little satisfied grin. Smirk. Whatever.

Still, he's probably in a worse state than me, otherwise he would've pre-empted this post and criticised me for not going to the party.

Well, that's my creativity for the day poresweated out of me. I'm offto set up a Facebook account now, because there'll probably be amusing photos from the party and various artistic gatherings.

Hope you had a chilled Sunday, and that it was as boring as mine.

love Bagpuss

Hello

Well thanks Bagpuss.

So yeh, hi people. As the point of our blog has now been explained (I used that italic as emphasis, not to suggest that it was written by Bagpuss), I won't bother.

This afternoon I staggered slowly to an interview, legs motivated in the absence of working muscles almost entirely by the song Karmacoma (a Massive Attack song from my coloc and my notoriously low-volumed playlist at a soirée artistique at the Pompidou centre). I was late, but only because I couldn't find the door. Do I really want to have a job organising taxis for 60% American tourists? My bank does, and I answer to him exclusively at the moment.

Then I get home, hack up some old bread and smear it with sun dried tomatoes, and wait for Bagpuss to come round so we can collaborate on our first blogpost. I don't even get as far as logging in: one look and I found my trivial old references to the actual bagpuss had been removed, and that interview where Thom Yorke says he likes actual bagpuss too. In its place is the post you've all undoubtedly read by now. As I made this blog, formatted it and even got that picture of Bagpuss and his reflection in a deep puddle and made it the header, I think it's a bit unfair of him to hack into my gmail account and write our first blogpost all on his own.

Undoubtedly you agree with me (you, Bagpuss, obviously you don't). What's more, I'm still waiting for him to come round with cans of Guinness to drink before we go to some houseparty or other.

So, let me tell you a few things about Bagpuss Nailor. He's probably on the metro right now so he can't log in and change it. That was another rule of this blog... No Editing Each Other's Blog, but you... he... hasn't respected the only other agreement we had so far. Whatever, he'll probably get a good portion of revenge when he writes about me.

Anyway, I met Bagpuss Nailor in Paris when I arrived. He was sat there in the café opposite the hostel I lived in for what felt like months before I found my flat, head buried in some Kerouac or other. Indeed, he probably thinks he is Kerouac (one day in his flat I found some home made beat poetry hidden under the wardrobe). Well then we got talking, probably about how I read On The Road over one night in Italy, wearing my old and now defunct black-n-white striped scarf. Then we got drunk on Guinness, and spent the next three days migrating between the hostel and his flat. Like me, he is still largely unemployed. Which is why we've decided to write this blog.

So that's that. Patrick "Bagpuss" Nailor, do your worst.

Have a fun evening, everyone. I'm going to a Science Po party.

Richard Hadden

New blog

New blog new blog newblog nublog nooblogg nueblogue.

Yes ladies and gentlemen, persons and persons out there. I have a theory with blogs, which I shall now elucidate.

"The meanderings of one person's life, however interesting it might seem to them, really isn't so much".

I put that in quoth marks to make it seem like I read it in a book, or copied it off Jacques Cousteau or someone submarinal like that. So the solution to this grand problem my friend Richard Hadden -- he lives fifteen minutes and thirteen metro stops from me in Paris -- and I came up with is to write each other's blogs. And to put them on the same blog. I'm Patrick Nailor by birth, Bagpuss Nailor after an obsession Richard's got with bagpuss. (He calls everything bagpuss, especially all cats -- even the ones he's allergic to).

Yes, yes yes. The other solution I hear you say is that we should just not write a blog at all. But what would be the fun in that, given that in this grimmold state of hyperreality and Web 2.0, no one can afford not to have a blog. Even if no one reads it, it's an hour of the day spent somethinging rather than nothinging. I put my spare time to not much use, and Richard has nothing but spare time, and writing a blog is better than writing Poetry, even that grand old beat poetry.

So to make things clear, I'm going to write in ITALICS -- that's the slanty writing -- and Richard, when he writes stuff, which he probably will get round to eventually, will write in NOT-ITALICS (which will look something like that, I guess).

We had planned to write this first blog together, introduce ourselves and our fun life in Paris. Mine is spent sitting on city metro trains listening to American old time blues music, and occasionally I go out with friends to bars and stuff. Richard is writing a novel and he'll tell you all about that when he staggers back from his job interview. So yes, though I said we would write this together -- promised, actually, I did (that man's got serious editorial control issues) -- I pre-empted him, asked his housemate to look up the password for this blog on his computer, and wrote this.

Hope he won't be too angry.

So, welcome.

love Bagpuss Nailor

(postal correspondence to:
15 rue Bagnolière
75010, Paris
France)

By the way, this is Richard's blog, and those "ARTS", as he calls them, are stuff he thinks is, like, well cool. We disagree on this point.