Friday 3 October 2008

Wildlife documentary

I spent 2 hours yesterday afternoon in the company of 60 or so of my colleagues, all intelligent people (I'm generous today), debating issues that no sane person could care about. Yet we talked, we listened, we paid attention, we considered, all with an elaborate politeness that was indistinguishable from pomposity, and we voted on a proposal. Then it turned out that half of us thought the proposal meant one thing and half of us the opposite, so we had to do it all over again. After that, we moved on to an even more absurd subject, and finally went home satisfied that we'd done a good day's work.

That evening I got busted out too early in a holdem tournament. I got all my chips in the pot at a point where I was 2:1 favourite, but my opponent caught an ace on the river. So ordinary.

So what is the point of this post? I'm sorry, there is none, I'm just venting my disgust at the banality and squalor of my life. Honestly, a bunch of primates foraging for celery would have organized themselves more efficiently, and wouldn't have put themselves in a position to be rivered by a miserable ace.

9 comments:

Gorilla Bananas said...

We wouldn't waste our energy foraging for celery - not enough calories to make it worthwhile.

xerxes said...

Then what is it that you see gorillas eating on David Attenborough's show? It sure as hell looks like celery.

Gorilla Bananas said...

But did they forage for it? One often finds these vegetables underfoot while going about one's daily business.

xerxes said...

Aah. Thanks for the correction. So how about "a bunch of primates tripping over a celery stick would have organized themselves more efficiently...". More vivid and, gorillanically speaking, more accurate.

I'm not too sure about gorillanically, I must say. What adverbial form of gorilla would you advise?

No Good Boyo said...

Do you work at Kafka & Co? Sounds like a job of satisfying futiity. Buddhists come in delegations to gaze in wonder.

xerxes said...

Buddhists, are they? We're always told they're tourists.

Kevin Musgrove said...

They're Zen tourists, Ryanair's favourite kind: wherever they end up is their intended destination.

Mrs Pouncer said...

Oh Kevvie! You are ON FORM tonight. Where've you been? Carousing?

xerxes said...

There's rather a good book on Zen and poker, as it happens: Zen and the Art of Poker, by Larry Phillips. He is unsound on luck, to the point of being totally wrong, but he expounds, for example, the idea of an alert indifference in a way that I find useful.