The Queen of Dunces

This is why I don't deserve a gall bladder:

I have just attended a "party" (staff morning tea).  I meant to bring my own cakes to this party for my own purposes - cakes baked without butter, dairy or gluten, and therefore quite safe for consumption.

I forgot to bring my stuff, so instead I ate what was there.  I had a shortbread biscuit (Moron!  Those things a full of butter!), an apple teacake thing (Covered in cream, you idiot!) and a mini pavlova (More cream?  What is wrong with you?).

Any single one of these things is probably enough to trigger unpleasantness with my gall bladder in it's current state - and I ate all three.

Because something in my head said "oh, go on, you haven't had anything nice for a while and it is a party after all", and somehow that counted more than the other voice in my head that said "your gall bladder hates you, and it hates all of this stuff, and it will have its revenge".

I am, indeed, the Queen of the Dunces.

And, of course, now that I've actually eaten that crap and know that pain awaits me, I'm smart enough to know I should have made better choices.  Not smart enough to actually make those choices, just smart enough to know that I should have.

My project for this year:  make better choices.

Pitched

Those of you who have been regularly keeping up with my various online outpourings may have noticed I've become mildly obsessed with baseball in the last few months.

Having managed to get myself hooked by watching several games in a row while home during the day and in a state of mild delirium, I spent the rest of the regular season and the post season following the fortunes of my beloved Pittsburgh Pirates* and trying to understand what everyone was doing.

I'm still largely confused by most things.  I only recently discovered that, when two teams play each other for four games in a row, those games each count as individual games.  I thought the whole series of consecutive games was tied together somehow, but I could never work out how it worked.

However, I'm currently in a state of mild annoyance.  The MLB has wrapped up for the year, but I've discovered there's an Australian league I can follow.  It's called, funnily enough, the Australian Baseball League.

I've nominally opted to follow the Brisbane Bandits (they're the team for my state, and they have "Bandits" in their name - which is almost like "Pirates")...  but I haven't been able to watch a single second of game time.

The American games were screened live on free-to-air Australian TV, but the Australian league (actually co-owned by the MLB, so I don't know why they haven't finagled some sort of TV coverage) can't even manage a "replay" at 2am.  They have some sort of weird "live" screening happening on the internet - which is about as useful as a cheeseburger to a drowning elephant if you can't (or would rather not) arrange to be sitting at a computer for those exact two hours.

Computer viewing is for snippets of things and things you can pause.  It is for watching a five minute recap (which you stop halfway through for some random thing and then eventually remember to come back to later).  It is not for live sports coverage.

Live sports coverage is for TVs located somewhere in the vicinity of comfy furniture (like your lounge) or replenish-able beverages (like a bar/pub).

Why don't they have clips from the games, so that you can watch them later in a suitably asynchronous manner?  Why don't they convince Ten or SBS or something to screen the games on the TV (so that we could watch the live games in an appropriate manner, or tape them and watch them at a convenient time)?

It's 2013!  Surely they know that we a) don't have an attention span longer than 30 seconds when we sit at a computer and b) have no sense of real time?

Oh, well.  At least they have play-by-play recaps, so I can read the games.

Yes, I read baseball games.

That's not weird, is it?


*I've seen them play at least three times, and they have the word "Pirates" in their name.  That's good enough to make them my team, so I've been reading their games on a semi-regular basis.

Why are journalists so bad at their jobs?

I'm just curious.

I keep finding articles in newspapers (mostly News Ltd, it must be said) in which the journalist in question clearly doesn't know how to use Google, as they failed to mention some really basic information (which would take any two-bit researcher two minutes to unearth).

Or, alternatively, they'll  write an article about something "amusing" (like, say, TV or sport) and get some of the facts flat-out wrong.  It's as though the fact that it isn't a hard-hitting news story means little things like research and fact-checking become irrelevant.

Call me crazy and old-fashioned (go on, I'll wait), but I thought journalists were supposed to find out stuff and report on what they have learnt.

So, why do they a) not bother finding out stuff, and b) report on things they clearly know nothing about?

Yes, I am intolerant

This is the content of an email I probably should answer, but don't want to:

help apprec tku Mary-Anne this is journal i I am trying to access.. please advise .. I hv found journal but cannot open..this is it: Publication title: Capital & Class Coverage (any format): Spring 1991(no. 43) - present Show format availability Full text available ISSN: 0309-8168‎ Subjects: Business And Economics ; Political Science

"Mary-Anne", by the way, is the name of the person who wrote the email - not the name of the person it might be addressed to.

Here's the thing.  I know what this person wants.  It is in my power to decipher the convoluted reference she has given me (copy and paste from one of our pages, but taken way out of context) and help her find an accessible version of this journal.

But I really don't want to.

I just feel compelled to punish her for clearly forgoing any attempt to think about what she wants to say before writing and submitting an email.  The point of written communication is that you have the opportunity to say "could this be better?" and make some improvements before forcing someone else to read your poorly constructed writing.

I want to punish her for not taking the time to say "my name is Mary-Anne" or "I'm Mary-Anne", but thinking anywhere in the "sentence" is an appropriate place to throw in her name.  I want to punish her for using two full stops at the end of every half-formed sentence (why?  Where is this something people legitimately do?).  I want to punish her for assuming she doesn't have to spend time on making her meaning clear, because I will spend my time filling in her gaps and working it out.  I want to punish her for thinking this is an appropriate way to ask a complete stranger for help.

We don't write emails like this.  It's obnoxious but forgivable when used in chatrooms and discussion boards, because chatrooms and discussion boards are full of people who are too busy/lazy/stupid to think and type and the same time.  You, "Mary-Anne", are a university student who has written to a librarian for help with your research.  Take the extra minute to think about what you want to say before you hit send.