Thursday, June 16, 2005

Three of a Kind

It is a fundamental rule of public speaking that one should always have THREE MAIN POINTS. Oddly enough, there are THREE GOOD REASONS for this:
  1. Your audience is unlikely to remember anything more complicated
  2. You are unlikely remember anything more complicated and will foul up your speech or lose your thread
  3. Errmm.. Can't remember the third, but I'm sure it was a good one.

Anyway, one is always on the look-out for conflations of three related incidents of a given topic. Rather like buses.

Today, it is the bizarre, if not profoundly disconcerting, mixture of animals and - curse this modern lexicon - sexuality.

Thus, we have:

  • This, which purports to divine the secrets of the mind from the manner in which you choose to draw a pig. Nothing that a few cruel years at any minor public school couldn't sort out;
  • This frankly extraordinary story, which rehearses the inevitable outcome of a clash between the madness of the Thames Valley Police on the one hand and irreverent student behaviour on the other. Mind you, what can one expect from that collection of losers and airheads that is the alumni of Balliol College?
  • This. I'm not quite sure what kind of animal this is, but clearly it is not human.
    Michael Jackson's lawyer said today that the singer will no longer share his bed with young boys.
Pardon?

6 comments:

Anonymous said...

At least my College was not an annex of another...
There were a few incidents similar to the Gay Horse episode: rescuing a current MP from the Thames Valley police after they stopped him on his bike in the Cornmarket; leaving Exam Schools to be met by riot police; and, failing to prevent the arrest of another friend who after succesfully outrunning the police back to Balliol acceeded to their request to "step outside" and was promptly detained...

The Pedant-General said...

As I suspected: no strangers to the long arm of the law, this lot.

And rife with pinkos, stalinists and recruitment agents for MI5 at that.

;-)

Boeciana said...

(The college-guessing game, always fun for the audience. Can't figure this one out yet...) So the Balliol Effortless Superiority complex arises merely from Woosterian defiance of the law? Hah!

The Pedant-General said...

Boeciana,

"Woosterian defiance of the law" is a very interesting choice of words in this context. To be honest, I fear that Mr Seat's alma mater is more sinned against than sinning:

A v good chum of mine very nearly got himself sent down for painting a pink maltese cross on the grass in Balliol's front quad following a riotous Worcester college bumps dinner....

Anonymous said...

Other episodes... The Balliol Harry Lime Society (dedicated to having fun at the expense of Trinity) bought a flock of sheep at Bicester Mart, painted them (lime) green and released them into Trinity's Gardens; and, dismantled a Mini and rebuilt it inside Trinity's dining Hall.
In my first year Trinity took its revenge by mailing all Balliol freshers sample bottles and asking them to leave urine samples outside their Tutor's study, whence they would be collected as part of a College exercise...

berenike said...

so not teddy hall . . .