Alphonsin

Okey doke, it'll work something like this. You choose 13 candidates. Points are awarded not by reference to the age of a hit, nor cause of demise etc -- instead, simply by the combined number of words their death prompts in the obits pages of The Times, The Telegraph, The Guardian and The Independent. And that's pretty much it. Clearly I need to flesh out the details -- such as that it'll go by the print edition of each paper, rather than online; editorial remembrance of a hit will not be counted along with the obit proper; headlines, straplines etc won't be counted; etc, etc -- but I thought I'd mention it now to give anybody interested in entering some time to think about. It'll start on Jan 1, before which time I'll sort out a website etc etc. If people are interested in the idea, I think it'd be fun to inject a cash element. Players can choose whether or not to indulge in this element of the game, but will be invited to pay £13 into a prize pool. That pool will then be divided up among the cash-subscribing winners at the end of the year [perhaps 50% for 1st place; 30% for 2nd; 20% for 3rd etc -- depending how many people decide to play it could be structured less steeply, paying out the top ten or whatever]... Oops, I'm not wanting to get sucked into details just this second. So anyhow, that's the idea. A deadpool based on obit wordcounts. A cash element for those that would like that, but which won't exclude those people who want to play just for kicks. Any thoughts appreciated. If the idea gets at least a luke warm response, I'll get cracking with putting things together.

Including "horsemen" etc, I get... All The Dark Horses The Trash Can Sinatras All The King's Horses Aretha Franklin Aria of Vanya - The Poor Horse Fell In The Field Glinka Black Horse And The Cherry Tree KT Tunstall Bring On The Dancing Horses Echo & The Bunnymen Coachman, Spare Your Horses Rada & Nikolai Volshanino Country House (Do You Want A Horse Riding) Tycoon Tosh Dark Horses Piano Magic Dead Horse Robin Holcomb Dirty Horse Gram Rabbit The Dogs & the Horses The Divine Comedy Fast Horse Tori Amos Fine Horseman Anne Briggs For The Horse Of Pharaoh Bostridge, Chance, Gritton, Varcoe; Cleobury: King's College Choir, Cambridge The Four Horsemen Aphrodite's Child Four Horsemen The Clash Four Horses Hockey Fetwell Gift Horse Black Box Recorder Gillian Was a Horse Damien Jurado His Rocking Horse Ran Away Betty Hutton Hollow Horse The Icicle Works Horse 'n' Boogie Abe Lyman Horse and I Bat For Lashes Horse Drawn Carriage Sixtoo A Horse In The Country Cowboy Junkies Horse Latitudes The Doors Horse Tears Goldfrapp A Horse with No Name America Horseheadedfleshwizard Devendra Banhart Horsepower Rave Signal Horses The Be Good Tanyas Horses Bonnie "Prince" Billy 'Horses Champing At The Bit' - Alfio, Chorus O'Neill, Miricioiu, Joll, Montague, Bainbridge; Parry: Geoffrey Mitchell Choir, London Philharmonic Orchestra Horses In My Dreams PJ Harvey Horseshoe Man Neil Young Horseshoes And Handgrenades Green Day Horsey Hem I Chose Horses Mogwai I've Gotta Horse Billy Fury If Wishes Were Horses Lucinda Williams Judy And The Dream Of Horses Belle & Sebastian Little Seahorse Bruce Cockburn Looks Like We're Shy One Horse Colourbox The Masks / The Hobby Horse Paul Giovanni Monkey Heart And The Horses' Leg Preston School Of Industry Nail And Horseshoe Dolukhanova (Mezzo-Soprano), Svetlanov (Piano) The Next Horse I Ride On Vesta Victoria No More Workhorse Blues Bonnie "Prince" Billy On My Horsey Moloko Pantomime Horse Suede Part One Song #1 From Iron Horse Philip Glass Part One Song #3 From Iron Horse Philip Glass Ride A Cock Horse Various Artists Ride A White Horse Goldfrapp Seven Horses Deep The Icicle Works Sun Smog Seahorse Mark Eitzel They Shoot Horses Don't They? Racing Cars Whipping The Horse's Eyes Calexico White Horse Taylor Swift The White Horse Various White Horse Inn Selection Harry Fryer And His Orchestra White Horses Cerys Matthews Who's Gonna Ride Your Wild Horses U2 Wild Horses Karen Souza Wild Horses The Rolling Stones A Wooden Horse British Sea Power Wooden Horse (Caspar Hauser's Song) Suzanne Vega

I've only just recovered. I only had about eight pints during the evening, but I hadn't had a drink for a week or two so the 2 litres of WKD and most of a bottle of wine right at the end landed me with a hangover on a scale that I haven't experienced for a long time.So apologies for my absence from the further festivities the next day, but I really couldn't do it. It was a pleasure to meet some of the people I'd met at DC1 and, of course, to meet those who hadn't been at the inaugural meet-up. Next time I'll ensure I'm there earlier in the day. My bicycle transported me very swiftly to the Indian. Fortunately, Westminster cops have better things to do than the bored City of London police who have an irritating habit of arresting cyclists they deem to have enjoyed themselves too much. So there was no repeat of the incident that I regaled/bored delegates of DC1 with re a brief stay at Bishopsgate Police Station and my trying to convince the arresting officer that, despite being tipsy, I could perform more or less *any* task, still more ride my bicycle and, anyhow, couldn't they simply rough me up a bit and just send me on my way?... Heigh ho. Until next time...

Oops

Oops, silly me! I'd put the wrong date in my diary. No harm done, as I'd planned to be in the area earlier in the day and I had a wander around instead. But the place really is awful, hence my assumption that people had been there a few hours and decided to move on. If one visits in in daylight, it might not appear *too* terrible, but once it's dark elsewhere you can really see how much like a motorway service station -- including being brightly lit like one -- it is. Additionally, while there were complaints last year about how expensive the place was in its former incarnation, I expect that it's now still more expensive. So... I for one will be lobbying RA that we meet somewhere else in the same vicinity. I have a good place in mind which I'll PM him about and which with luck he will agree is better. A more genuine boozer, cheaper and plenty of room but no more than 4 minutes' walk from the original place. The first place had an apt feel for DL-Con, but now that it's bright and cheery (and generally rubbish) I think it would be silly to stick with it just out of some kind of sense of tradition. Hopefully others will agree*. Alphonsin *Also not a traditional thing on this forum, I know.

Well, that was a fcuking waste of time. Perhaps it had finished by five? Because surely *somebody* might have had the initiative to leave some kind of message if things were moving on so early. But given how shti the newly done-up bar was, why even bother starting off in a place like that? Particularly when somebody had pointed out it'd gone crpa. Heigh ho...

I expect the above is tongue in cheek but, regardless, I should humbly acknowledge that your English is far better than any of the foreign languages I try my hand at. Your non-native grammar is, more or less, to be applauded so don't feel slighted by my earlier post. And I'm sorry if if you did. The intertubes were designed pretty much for just two reasons: a) for people to let their friends know whenever they ate an orange or had a poo (via Twitter, etc) and for people to argue about whether it's "Achilles' heel", "Achilles heel", "Achilles' tendon", "Achilles tendon", and so on [the first and fourth are, of course, correct]. Thus grumps like me find it difficult to engage usefully with people like your fine self who concern themselves with putting forward constructive posts. (Particularly since my job means that it's not a matter of my putting on proofreading glasses or not — the lenses have become cauterised to my eyeballs*.) Aaanyway. This was just a fleeting visit to the site, I think, for now. I may resurface properly in December when I've got a certain project out of the way. But I couldn't let Godot's passing go unremarked. (I shall hound him in the real world, however.) Vaagheid, if you make it to Deathcon III, I look forward to buying you a pint. Aw, and Tomb Raider, you know I don't claim to be a know-it-all. There are lots of things I don't know. I expect. I've just yet to discover what. Which, er, proves my point . I can't be bothered to trawl through the thread on Deathcon III, so may as well just mention the following in this post: If there's anybody who's thinking of travelling from afar for Deathcon III but is put off by problems of accommodation (too broke for a hotel or whatever), my bachelor [but, um, straight and fulfillingly exercised] existence is such that I can put somebody up on my sofa or in my study [that term makes me laugh, given that the only things I study nowadays are bus timetables] if they want. Obviously, only somebody that others can vouch for on the basis of chat room conversation or whatever. (And clearly any relative newbie would want to ask around some of the old-timers as to whether I'm an axe-wielding maniac or just a maniac). Just a thought, but however. * Although, yes, I'm sure I've typed lots of mistakes here.

Maybe I should post on some Dutch forums and destroy their, um, beautiful language. Oops, the South Africans have already done that. Yes, yes, I know that the guy is Dutch. But the moment DL gets fluffy and kind at the expense of rigour is the moment... that one of its finest posters, Godot, sods off. (But he'll be back, I know it. DL is like herpes — a present/ce for life...) So, anyhow, Vaagy: I'm sorry I missed your birthday. I hope it was a wonderful day.

Mmm, OK. Here's some constructive advice [with a "c" as I, indeed, mean the noun, rather than the verb advise]. Learn the difference between "too" and "to". Learn what a comma splice is and why it should be avoided. Learn the difference between "your" and "you're". Learn the difference between "a" and "an" [while we're there, I'll point out that anybody who says "an hotel" *and* pronounces the "h" in hotel is a dickhead]. Learn to appreciate that caps have a value that is degraded by idiotically capping things like "hot topic". Learn that as often as not instead is preceded by a comma rather than a full point; and that, if you choose to start a new sentence with the word "instead" you'd still do well to stick to the convention you hopefully learnt as a child of starting every new sentence with a capital [which that one wasn't, anyhow.] Learn that only morons use the words "random" and "randomly" without really thinking about whether the thing or action they're talking about really is "random". edit: And, jeez, "oftenly"...? I'll hold fire before I start looking at any other things you post and spend the rest of my week clearing up your interwebs mess...

I hope I didn't mislead by saying I'd definitely turn up but not doing so -- I *think* I probably indicated that I was definitely looking forward to it but that I might not manage to make it. As it was, the events of the 24 hours from about 6pm on Friday onwards would have prevented me from getting there even if there was free money on tap [an odd image] or, better still, the promise of chatting with Windsor about, um, whatever crazy thoughts were going through the boy's head. So I hope I don't fall into the "suddenly-gone-quiet" camp. However, the fact that several of the people who *did* make it journeyed from afar suggests that maybe an out-of-London venue might work fine. Perhaps the casualness of the M25 area people would have been offset if they'd had to go to the lengths of getting a Ryanair flight etc. But, yes, I generally feel the same about people not showing up to things they've said they would. [insert here 1,500 words of Banshees-style idiotic rambling about how I've just realised I'm a hypocrite after the above (but that the realisation is "real", albeit given our "reality" is only "real" to ourselves...) and.... Jeez... I should sleep.]

I really hoped to make it but a slight disaster -- involving an unfortunate combination of girlfriend issues, alcohol and transporting a piano across London -- made it impossible. A real shame [for me, if not for those present], as I'd been very much looking forward to it. I'm glad, though, that it was a merry bash, despite the lowish number of people who managed to attend, and look forward to the next opportunity.

Would you? Or would you prefer it if this thread weren't shut yet? Guest Conditional Tense, I assume you know that there's no such thing as the "conditional *tense*". Actually, I assume you don't, as you're evidently a moron. Getting a life is clearly beyond you, but hopefully getting an English grammar textbook might not be. A

I don't think BS is bright or resourceful enough for the kind of skulduggery that might erode my edge. I don't feel anywhere near strongly enough for a fight in the car park [although I'd give myself pretty good odds on that, too]. I'd happily open a book on such a good old fashioned scrap, though, if anybody else fancies some hand-to-hand with what I imagine is a pretty scrawny and anaemic sample of half-masculinity. [um, how did I get drawn into all this....? ]

I haven't voted. BS, I have a suggestion. Some while ago you posted -- or tapped out in a chatroom conversation -- some drivel about being a bigshot winning poker player. You later PM'ed me with the suggestion of playing some hold 'em online, having made some big win or other. I replied with the suggestion that we play a series of games, perhaps at $100 a pop or something like that, but heard nothing back about it. I don't know what your motivation was with the whole deal [maybe you are indeed a sharp card player and reckon that playing me would be financially +EV, or maybe you're happy to make a losing bet in the hope of getting lucky and getting some minor ego kick out of it], but however. As I made clear, I'd be happy to play you. But we could make it a little more fun than it just being for cash. How about we play a series of games sometime over the next few weeks. I'd like it to be somewhere in the region of ten [but an odd number, of course] games or so at, say, $100 a game (and certainly no less than $50 a game, as I might as well otherwise being doing a paper round.) Of course, we could just sit down once for a grand or whatever, but given that I consider myself the likely more skillful player, I'd like to iron out the [fairly high, since I'd only give myself a 60-40 edge (feel free to disagree, natch)] probability that you just get lucky in one game. So anyhow, the fairly predictable addition to this game would be that the losing player undertakes to leave the forum. If that seems too much of a wrench, we could settle on an undertaking to leave the forum [and chat rooms, of course] for, say, six months. What do you reckon? We could play a game an evening [uS time, UK time, I'm not fussed] over 11 days or so sometime towards the end of next month. (I'm fairly tied up with things just for the next while). It could also provide some minor entertainment for any DL'ers who, for want of any paint drying in their vicinity, might fancy watching online. Cheers, A

Not yet quite "I told you so", but it's looking likely that the mother was, indeed, fibbing. Her body language and, more importantly, the odd things she said in press conferences while Shannon was missing, really didn't ring true. We'll see.. Edit: Shannon's mother charged

Dith Pran, photojournalist and refugee whose story was told in the film The Killing Fields [one of my favourite films, despite ending with Lennon's Imagine], has died of the pancreatic cancer mentioned recently in the "possibilities" thread.

Take a sobriety test in Southern Spain.

Er.....we know! *whispers* He has his own thread and he's hit number four.... Yikes! Silly me. I'll go and join the festivities on that thread...

Arthur C Clarke has died, according to the BBC News website ticker.

What a weirdly written obit. The last par [well, penultimate if you count the "he is survived by... etc"]: Burke was an avid runner who competed in five New York City Marathons and three Boston Marathons, his son said. But later in life he rode his bike quite a bit.

I was going to post on this thread to try to impart a little wisdom to BS. But, indeed, the the thread is not about that, so ... Aw, f**k it, I'll address that and then move on to Robert Mugabe. Banshees, I don't quite understand why you need to hijack so many threads and turn them into threads about you. I'm not quite a sympathetic enough person to say that I think you're a nice guy. I do think, though, that while you make rather an arse of yourself often [i don't read the forum enough to know, perhaps, the extent to which you do] you probably don't mean to do so. You're an idiot, but you have enough intelligence, I think, to change that. So much of what capacity for that you have is channelled into reinforcing your idiocy; if you diverted some of the enormous stretches of time spent thinking about yourself into thinking about yourself a little more constructively you could, I think and hope, become a far better and more interesting person. This forum is one of the best available on the intertubes for at least two reasons. First, it is populated by bright people who are united by an interest in something [the, to some people, tasteless pursuit of trying to identify people soon likely to to die] that marks them out as interestingly different from the hoi pollloi (yes, I know that the "the" is tautologous bearing in mind the Greek). Second, though, most of the posters here are clever, wise and kind enough to realise that a young person like yourself may be an idiot but is not beyond redemption. I hope that the "young" reference is not too patronising, but it is a fact that your posts demonstrate a lack of experience of the world and a lack of self-awareness that comes with that. Take it as a compliment that I believe that your intellect [don't get carried away, here, though; I'm never expecting you to win a Nobel prize] will allow you one day to rise above yourself. But, regardless, people here engage with you despite thinking you offensively moronic. Real life is not often like that. Be grateful for the opportunities, and look for them here, to take advice about how to think more intelligently. I'm not going to make a cheap shot about your seeing a therapist regularly. It's great that, if you feel you need or could benefit from help from a professional about that way you feel about the world, you have that opportunity. But one thing I would suggest is that perhaps you consider the idea that you simply need to decide for yourself that you should be less of a dick and then simply engage with the world on that basis. Therapy can be a very self-indulgent hobby. If somebody is inherently self-indulgent and feels that the world ought to indulge their idiocies more, I think therapy can worsen that. My feeling is that this applies to you. Obviously, I am not a doctor/shrink, however. But can I suggest something? Can I suggest that, even just as an experiment, you try to view the world as centring less around you but perhaps accepting that you are a little part of a far, far more interesting picture and that while you are not worthless your worth is partly contingent on you dealing with others? And perhaps your dealings with DL can, for you, be a little experiment in this regard? Try to lessen your sense of self-importance on this forum and see what the result is. My feeling is that people here will like you more, and you may realise that by stopping being so self-obsessed you will find yourself happier. I could be wrong. I'm often wrong in lots of different situations. But maybe try it. And maybe try more to bear in mind that this is a forum where while, although most people think you're a W**ker, those people continue to engage with you. That says a lot about them, and you may take that as encouragement to try to change. That sounds horribly patronising; I'm sorry, but I'm honest. You don't need to play around with a thesaurus as it appears you do [i may be wrong, but your basic grammatical mistakes sit oddly with some of your linguistic structures] Just be yourself and maybe, a little, improve yourself by stripping away your defensiveness. In other forums you will find people less accommodating. You once made some smartarse remark about poker such that I challenged you to a heads up match. My offer remains. I'll happily play you in a match for anything up to a thousand quid or so online. The fact that I'm aware you were all mouth and no trousers and that I'm happy to let this pass [though, Jeez, I'd be really grateful of the opportunity to fleece you, if you fancy] is, I think, reflective of the general view of this forum. That people are forgiving and open to the possibility of change. I'm sorry if I sound like a patronising W**ker. This is a public message rather than PM because I want others to see that my view [which is worth nothing] is that probably, at heart, you're an OK person. Perhaps I'm wrong of course. Maybe you're just a C-word. But if you are an OK person, which I like to think you are, you will find that the people around on this forum [i believe] are a good bunch of people that will very, very happily and with great pleasure see your metamorphosis into the rather more interesting person you ought to be. You don't need a therapist for that. ..... .... .... Now on to Mugabe. Nothing here interesting, either, really, except to say that a distant South African psychologist cousin of mine who I stayed with in 2000 before I visited Zim said that her professional opinion was that, judging by his physical appearance/movements Mugabe had a condition along the lines of Parkinson's etc. Had my energy not been sapped by my ramble above I'd have gone on to a rant about Mr M. But it's all gone. Another time...

Dead! The Grim Reaper's Greatest Hits http://www.yousendit.com/transfer.php?acti...ncG91YlBIRGc9PQ Get 'em while you can... [Max 500 downloads over next 14 days]

Not sure that Shannon Matthews, the missing 9-year-old Dewsbury girl, merits her own thread so I'll tack this to discussion of another girl that was murdered by one or both of her parents hasn't been seen for a while. There are a few things about the Shannon story that make me think that the mother may very well have ... ... um, so what's the deal with DL [strike-through notwithstanding] and libel law? Er ... The England-France game today was good. Regan's foul was awful, though. Um, weather forecast for South-East England OK for tomorrow morning, but rain expected later in the day...

Bit of both mate! For what it's worth*, my view was that RA gave forum readers the credit for not being too stupid to use Google if they could be bothered. * i.e., not very much.