Chris Worfolk's Blog

Good news girls, Norm is back on the market.

Discussing last night with my housemates I mentioned everyone had bailed on me at Nicola’s party (because they’re all rubbish). What I didn’t know is that Liz hadn’t actually home last night but had instead gone over to Oli’s despite having a taxi waiting to take her home.

Perhaps some context is required. Being back on closes last night I had work in the afternoon which due to the fact nobody turned up for work yesterday, took far longer than it needed to and I didn’t end up getting out until about 2:30.

Having finally got away I headed over to Nicola’s party which was still loving along with about ten guests or so remaining. I was a little too sober to really join in the festivities at this point though and given everyone else had left, I went home after about an hour. I did get the amusement of watching Zoltan try to play Twister however 😀 .

Having packed everyone into cars for the post One Life festivities we headed over to West Park Place for a Halloween party.

With the decks and sound system out we blasted our music until the early hours and I like to think everyone had fun. Things kept going until about 4:30 when the last of the festivities came to a close. Good times.

I was slightly worried about turnout initially given we had a whole eight people confirmed on Facebook, compared to the 54 that Nicola had confirmed to her house party. We ended up having well over 20 of us there though which is apparently about inline with the turnout to Nicola’s party so maybe we’re not that unpopular after all.

Last Friday saw another session of One Life come and go, this one on rights and responsibilities. It got off to a rather shaky shart – at five past seven nobody had turned up! But by the end of the session we had 15 of us which is more than a respectable number, especially given it was Halloween.

As predicted the session degraded into a big argument about speciesism which interesting enough seemed to produce positive results. Paul having made a massive rant about it prompted Zoltan to later suggest that maybe the whole speciesism argument didn’t make that much sense after all. So maybe we’re one step closer to thinking rationally about it 😀 .

BBC News have an audio clip of Russell Brand’s show the week after the infamous Jonathon Ross show. In it he apologises for what he said to Andrew Sachs but points out that The Daily Mail are a bunch of simple minded racists who supported Hilter and thereby vicariously killed millions of Jews.

Fantastic 😀 . This couldn’t show how silly this whole situation is. I haven’t heard a word of complaint about this but make some amusing phone calls and you’re done for. Have a listen.

Because I need to write to them.

They are now on what, 30,000 complaints? The stats for that are everything. But how many people have written in and said “you know, what Russell Brand and Jonathon Ross said was really, really funny! Keep this kind of content up!”

Firstly, the idea that the BBC got 30,000 complaints about the incidient isn’t even close to true. Because day by day the number went up. So most people clearly didn’t actually here the show, they just decided to complain when The Daily Mail wrote a story about it. It’s Jerry Springer: The Opera all over again.

Secondly, if we want to talk about inappropriate, let’s talk about the fact The Sun then went and interviewed Andrew Sachs’ granddaughter. I mean, what is the need? It’s not just mean right? That is just stirring up trouble?

The important issue though is that what was said was not really beyond the line. It certainly wasn’t fire everyone in sight and suspend those you pay too much to fire. It was a bit on the edge, but nothing you really would think “wow, can they really say that” given it was on late night radio. I leave people those kind of voicemails all the time. Not exactly like that but if you don’t turn up to something you should be at, expect an abusive voicemail. We handed out plenty of abuse to Norm for bailing on the podcast in the most recently recorded shows.

Have you read the interviews with Andrew Sachs? He wasn’t even that offended. An apology from Russell and Jonathon was enough as far as he was concerned, he didn’t want to take it any further.

The real jem in this story though is the fact that nobody at the BBC thought it was past the line. It wasn’t like it was a live show that they suddenly blurted out the comments on before anyone could stop them. It was a pre-recorded show that has to go through editors and producers before it is broadcast. All of which seemingly gave the green light.

If you haven’t had a listen yet, head over to YouTube and check it out.

Tonight’s Halloween party provided an excellent if flimsy excuse to get my decks out in preparation for the festivities. It’s been quite a while since I’ve really had them out as I don’t have space in my room anymore so it was cool to get everything tested last night.

Having said that, when I got my old laptop out to boot up, the hard drive was missing.

I mean, it was still physically there. But the computer couldn’t see it 🙁 . Might have to try hitting it until it works again.

I delivered my first proper talk of the academic year last night, the ever popular debating the theists. It went down very well from the people I spoke to in the pub afterwards though I did end the question with “none of this constructive criticism BS, just positive adjectives please” so who can really say.

We got around 25-30 people to the meeting and most stayed for the social afterwards which continued on until about 11:30, just in time for us to get to The D afterwards which worked out well. London is now sold out too so that is going to be an amazing weekend. As ever, things are looking up.

I didn’t do any work on Sunday. Well near enough anyway.

And I didn’t do that much work on Monday either.

It was really weird. I spent most of Money sitting around feeling guilty that I was only doing a bit of work. But I recon if I could get rid of that feeling I could really enjoy days off once again.

Myself, Norm and Michelle went for lunch at the Deer Park which was good. Not just because you can never, ever go wrong with a mixed grill but also because it was a re-discovery of the ability to just go for a pub lunch in the middle of the day, something we used to do like every day but never really do anymore. Or, if you will, back in the day.

By last Sunday that time of year had rolled around again so we headed out to Nando’s for a meal Sunday evening. It being Sunday night and all with a lot of people having work Monday morning, turn out was limited to those really hardcore people, a select group of myself and 18 of my good friends.

We arrived at The Light at 7 as planned to find that Nando’s had in fact run out of food.

I’m not kidding.

Apparently, they were closing for a week to refurbish so rather than maintain a sensible stock level and transfer any remaining food to a different restaurant they just let it run out. So we headed down to the one at the bottom of Briggate. I like to think of it as a surprise party as we didn’t tell them we were coming.

Having got down there they said it would take us an hour to get a table and to come back then. They also asked for an exact number of people, which I gave them based on how many people we had there at the time. After that, we headed off to the Hog’s Head around the corner for a quick drink while we waited.

Problem was, people started turning up faster than they could seat people. By the time we had got back we had another two people and by the time they had found seats for those two we had another two people! Needless to say the staff at Nando’s were not amused. But I was 😀 .

The food was excellent as usual, although we did find a chicken brain in Kate’s meal.

Afterwards, we headed up to Bourbon which was of course closed – it’s like an A-Soc event all over again. So we ended the night at the Cuthbert Broderick next door drinking until kick out time. Good times.

So, apparently Nando’s do chicken brain now. It worked out quite well with me having my new camera as we could get good photos.

Our resident neuroscientist Rosie says she can’t say for sure if it was indeed a brain but it sure looks like one and having spent hours researching it she assures me it definitely isn’t a liver or kidney and Oli points out that the reason it doesn’t quite look like you would expect is that it would shrink during the cooking process.

Nando’s remained defiant it wasn’t a brain although the manager admitted it was in the end (after saying, well if you wish to believe it’s a brain to which I of course replied “yes, yes I do”) so who can say. The important thing is Kate got a voucher because that’s really what you want after finding a brain in your chicken 😀 .