h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

It's coming up to midnight and I'm writing the news (or at least I should be).

What are you up to?

Playing games...Caught me, didn't you? (I'm supposed to w*rk..)

What sort of games? Like Tag and Hide & Seek? Solitaire or Minesweeper?

Or perhaps you mean "playing games" as in "manipulating men's minds and toying with their emotions"?

Oh, that too...

We call it the JFK game because Kennedy liked to play it .
It's quite simple. Take a blank piece of ruled A4 paper and write the letters A through Z vertically down the left side. Then write any letter sequence vertically next to the alphabet until you have 26 pairs of letters -- write your name, for example, or the title of a book, whatever it takes to make 26 pairs of letters.

Now treat each pair of letters as a set of initials and try to think of famous names bearing those initials.
It's quite catching..

Sorry it took so long, telephones and such)

Telephones? What, were you ordering pizza?

There were a few games JFK enjoyed playing, Clinton was quite fond of them too.

Been working on a new entry about the Hanging Gardens of Babylon too.
Sort of couldn't stop after the Colossus of Rhodos entry...
And that again made us to finally make up our mind to where to go on holiday...

Talking about pizza, I'm hungry..
*Goes to fetch a bowl of taramasalata and some bread and olives.*
Help yourself, just dip the bread in.
Should have some Retzina with this.

Funny how concentrating on something else for a while can help you reach conclusions on a central problem.

When I was an art student I actively employed this technique to solve conceptual problems or develop new ideas.

I'd gather a number of books together, and take a line of text at random from each (usually about 6 lines total). Writing down each line one after the other, I then attempt to relate these new thoughts to the problem at hand.

By confronting one thought with another forces it to go in a certain direction. Ideas, thoughts and problems treated this way seem to take on a life of their own, resolving themselves in wholly unexpected ways. Kind of like providing a trellis for a plant to grow around - you're merely providing a framework of thought, the idea will follow its own path.

It requires a certain high level of speculative interpretation, but I found it fun. (no doubt as JFK found his game fun too)

Maybe I should use that method with my problem d'jour. I'm stuck on the new VAT rules. Appearantly there's no VAT on education, but there is on career related education... Great. And there's no VAT on consultancy related to education unless it's more consultancy then it's education....Yess, we are having fun...!

The Norwegian Govt and the Australian Govt seem to have a lot in common. The Australian Goods and Services Tax (GST) has a number of similar problems. It could well signal the defeat of current administration.

Hmmm, a NZer living in NZ discussing Australian and Norwegian tax structures - I think it's time I called it a night.

It's election time again, the Labour govt. are in an alltime low, 21% in the polls. They have absolutely no idea of what they've done wrong (stupid sods..). The extreeme (Norwegian scale) Right are squabbling among themselves, loosing voters left and right, though mostly left... The moderate Right (Høyre) seems to be the winner, so far. Still weak on woman issues, but they have time to fix that.
Early days yet...
I've deceided to fix up the livingroom. We've got four weeks before we're going on holiday, I hope I'm finshed by then.

What's wrong with the living room?

And what's the likelihood of a coalition? (In the Norwegian govt, not your living room)

Everything's wrong with my livingroom!
I am not one who's doing things by halves, so I'm going to tear down the inner walls,
and the ceiling, rip up the floor, and start from scratch! Heat insulation, fireproof
materials and soundproofing is the new motto. (My gods, what have I let myself into!)
I'll spend the rest of the day on the phone, searching for the best prices on materials.

Coalition. As It looks now it will be one between Høyre (mod. conservative) Venstre (which means Lleft but is actually center) and Kristelig Folkeparti (moderately christian conservative). Unless Høyre gets a few more votes and stands alone. There's a posibilituy for that, though a bit small.

Three way coalition? I think most Kiwis would have a fit of apoplexy at the mere thought.

In recent local political news, a 1999 referendum voted overwhelmingly to reduce the number of MPs from 120 to 99. A select committee has just come back this week unable to reach a decision. The funny thing is people believed that reducing the number of MPs would "make them behave better".

Is it just me or are the majority of people complete frickin' morons?

Speaking of which, are you thinking of having your living room foolproofed?

If I remember rightly, we've 165 MP's (Stortingsrepresentanter) The threeway coalition have been used before, sometimes it works, sometimes they make an outright mess of it. In a way it's better than when Labour ruled alone. More democratic anyway. The old tops in Labour had a tendency towards dictationship. ("Some of us have had a word....")

Foolproofing will have to wait, it's too expencive..

Just don't any NZ TV production companies about it or they'll make it into a half-hour home improvement show.

"It takes longer to do things quickly,
It's more expensive to do things cheaply,
It's more democratic to do things in secret."
-Yes Minister

Dictationship - so many cool new words I'm learning from you.

Ah, one of the many linguistic flowers I spread on my way...
Hopefully I'm not as bad as the Japaneese. (Do a Google search on "Engrish" )

The Simpsons make constant light of Japanese to English grammar. Damn, it would be so cool if could remember some of it...

Grmpf. I've missed Simpson altogether. The drawback of not having cable.

"The flowers are blooming pretty.
The Garden has homey feel about it.
Shall we refresh with open air?"
Hug & Kiss

Whenever and everywhere, we can meet our best friend-nature, take a grip of steering!

Hug&Kiss? Why, Bumblebee, I hardly know you...