Conversations with Myself

I thought I had it sorted.

I was going to have all of my intros for the quarter-finals written ahead of time by using the reviews of old quarter-finals from the past eight years.

Paxman used to describe the format of this stage in very silly over-the-top ways and I was going to go through my old reviews and reference his melodramatic metaphors (Kafka-esque, Byzantine complexity etc...).

However, in my reviews from the 2018/19 series, I didn't write anything about Paxman's comments, which scuppers my plan somewhat.

There weren't any from the 2017/18 series either, but last week I managed to bodge something together from my old intros. I'm going to have to do the same thing this week, and hope that there is more Paxman content to mine from the 2019/20 series for next week.

This intro, below, is from Episodes 33&34 (a double feature) of the 2018/19 series and is yet more evidence that I've been posting the exact same content the entire time.

I was going to start this by saying it had been a while since I’d last had to do a multi-episode post, but I just scrolled back and it was apparently only a few months ago, so I guess I can’t. I was also going to open with a bit about how, if I wanted to use this blog as an example of my writing prowess to any prospective employers, it would be like putting down as a reference your boss from that bar job where you’d fallen asleep midway through pouring a pint and caused a mini lager-flood.

Pretty sure I did have a link to this blog on my CV when I was applying for jobs. Maybe I even discussed it at the interview for the job I did get.

But I said that last time as well, so in addition to showing up my inconsistent posting schedule I’d also be outing myself as an uninspired self-plagiarist. 

I love talking about how I'm plagiarising myself.

It is obvious, both intuitively and from the brief period when I actually did manage to upload a few hours after episodes were dropping, that the only way to grow my engagement and readership is to get my blogs online in that short window immediately after the show when people are in that sweet, sweet UC headspace.

This might have worked in the olden days, but if I post a link on X these days then my post gets nerfed, so what can a blogger do?

Thats how the internet works, you move too slow and you get left behind. So why is it that I’ve allowed myself to postpone my self-imposed deadline by a week, so that I write the previous week’s blog just before the current one should be due?

Still, it would probably be better to post the link on the day of the episode, which I haven't done for a while. Maybe I'll try that with this post (I didn't)

Why is it easier to distract myself from the same focus-scattering effects of Twitter and YouTube that I should be trying to counteract by getting the work done right away after a seven-day interval has passed?

Not sure what I'm trying to say here, a typically difficult-to-parse UC Review sentence, but six years later and I still lose lots of time to Twitter and YouTube.

I can’t answer those questions, but I’m trying to get the point where I can by sleeping with my phone in the other room and reading my 12 issues for £12 Economist when I wake up instead (all the podcasts were right, its like a collection of really long tweets, but without the hashtag wars). 

When we moved to Scotland, I read four weeks of the Economist back to back on Press Reader and never felt like I remembered anything. It was almost as much of an addiction as Twitter, albeit one which was far easier to kick, I haven't read a single article since.

One advantage of the fact that no one reads these anymore is that I feel less obligation to not go off on solipsistic tangents before I’ve even started (not that the obligation ever stopped me before).

You're never going to stop me from going on solipsistic tangents, here's your first starter for ten.

Darwin's Whitaker has nineteen starters to his name from their opening two matches, but he negs the first question to put his team on minus five. UCL can't capitalise and his teammate Willis kicks things off with Koch on the following starter. They take two bonuses on calculating devices, which add another ten points to their score.

A neg for UCL's Mandel is picked up by Whitaker for his twentieth starter, before Mandel made up for his error with Eames to get UCL off the mark. They miss one of the bonuses by giving Puli instead of Puyi, but take the last with Manchuria.

Another for Mandel, and a hat-trick on the picture bonuses, ties the game at 35-each. Whitaker's second of the night puts Darwin back in front, and a bonus set on film (he is doing a PhD in film) sees them take a hat-trick of their own. He takes a third, then Stewart gets in on the act with fourth floor and Darwin are flying.

No one identifies Miles Davis on the music starter, and indeed neither team even guesses a trumpet player, tricked perhaps by the fact he is playing with a mute.

UCL trail by more than a hundred points and will really need to get going if they are going to stage a comeback, but Whitaker won't let them build any momentum, buzzing in with yet another brilliant answer of Ngũgĩ wa Thiong'o.

Willis takes her second starter by correctly adding the number of cranial nerves to the number of pairs of ribs (in humans), twelve plus twelve.

The second picture round is on film which plays right into Whitaker's hands, and he duly takes the starter with Orson Welles and Rita Hayworth.

Only now, when UCL are 165 points behind, do they manage to string together a series of buzzes, taking four of the last five starters (the other, of course, going to Whitaker, who ends with eight)

UCL 120 - 225 Darwin

A huge win for Darwin, who I thought might struggle with their over-reliance on Whitaker, he having taken 19 of their 20 starters over the first two rounds. He remained very impressive, but his teammates chipped in with three starters this time which were very useful.

If they can perform like that again they'll be very tough to beat.

UCL will have to dust themselves off and go again - comprehensively outbuzzed in the middle portion of the match.

If you want more UC content, I'll have another Patreon review from the 2012/13 series out later this week.

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