4684/17343
I spent the morning preparing for tomorrow’s RHLSTP, though it felt like a long time since I’ve done these and my brain was a bit rusty. There isn’t loads about either guest (Stuart Goldsmith and Diane Morgan) on the internet, so I was trying to come up with some new emergency questions, though most of them were about the ethics of placing your penis in a dead animal mouth, which probably has a limited life span.
I got distracted by online gambling, hoping that Spurs can get back into a run of 2-1 victories and make me a millionaire. Using an offer at William Hill I was able to put a £10 bet on the score and get two free £10 bets which I used to cover myself with Spurs losing 2-1 (as it seemed pretty unlikely that they’d win and York City winning 3-2. If the latter bet came in I’d win over £400. Easy money. As it happens I got everything very wrong and my £10 was lost, but no matter as I also visited the casino and banked over £100 (my third straight win in three figures, though the last time was ruined by the stupid Ladbrokes unbeatable bonus rules - William Hill offered the same deal which I avoided this time - take care gambling idiots). The internet has come a long way and these online casinos now run with actual people spinning the roulette wheel and dealing the cards, who chat with you and mention your name when you win. They are dressed in pseudo-glamorous clothes of the evening, slightly revealing spangly outfits for mild titillation and they make half-hearted attempts at friendly flirtation, which might work in a real casino, but is hard to keep up in this virtual one, where the customers are sitting at home alone in their dressing gowns (I know I was) some of them half-heartedly masturbating (I know I wasn’t), whilst throwing their money away because their lives are so lonely and sad that they have come to this (not me, I was winning - in a sense). The modern world is deeply weird.
Working in a casino must be soul-destroying enough, watching a lot of sad and desperate people throwing their money away, but working in an online casino is something else again and however much these croupiers tried to remain jolly and friendly, whilst talking in a second language (they were all European, presumably because it’s cheaper to set up this virtual row of gaming tables in the east of our continent), you couldn’t really miss the deadness in their eyes. There isn’t even the pretence of glamour of an actual casino (even though that’s a pretty think veneer) and with that stripped away and your customers invisible, but their tragedy palpable, it’s almost like an art exhibit set up to the stupidity of the human race.
Still £100. Not bad.
A few years ago, depressed and lonely, I spiralled into online gambling a bit too heavily (mainly poker) and lost a bit of money, because in honesty I wasn’t really trying to win, preferring the perfect nihilism of proving how bad my life was going by deliberately throwing away money. Like most things gambling can be a pleasurable thing if kept in small doses, at a level where you can manage your losses, but it’s the second most slippy slope (after online pornography, because you add to the slopes slippiness whilst using that) and it takes a certain kind of person to want to make their living from taking advantage of the weaknesses of others, in an industry that is mathematically weighted in your favour and in which you can’t actually lose. I don’t know how I would feel if that was how I made my living (not talking about the croupiers here - they’re just doing a job for, I am guessing, a tiny amount of money). I suppose in much of life our rewards and pleasures come at the expense of someone else, but never quite so brashly and obviously as in gambling.
Anyway I escaped the spiralling vortex that threatens to destroy me and my family life and go out to an afternoon birthday party, where I didn’t know too many people, but because I now have a baby I was able to chat freely with strangers. If only I had a baby when I was alone and shy in my twenties I could have been quite the party animal (though it’s a terrible Catch 22 where you have to overcome your timidity to have a baby). I met a man who works on Bake Off and who gets to taste all the food and take it home for his wife to try. He said how much it added to the experience to be able to taste the food, as sometimes things that look amazing taste quite ordinary, but some contestants are masters at combining flavours which adds a new dimension to it. Until Willy Wonka Tastovision is invented, I wondered if the BBC should set up some kind of food delivery system where for £30 a week, Bake off viewers could pay to have a tiny portion of each bake delivered to their home so they could try them themselves. It wouldn’t be that hard to organise - obviously they’d have to make up big batches of the food based on the contestants’ recipes- and could be a huge money-spinner for the BBC and plus viewers would have a whole new layer of enjoyment. Come on Ian BBC and Ian Bake-Off. Get this sorted for the next series. You could probably also of an Apprentice delivery where people got some of the stupid things that those idiots invent on there. You can probably think of an angle with every programme - Dr Who, a Dalek turns up and exterminates your uncle. This is real 3D TV. We can save the BBC!
Frame 64 of Me1 vs Me2 snooker is now up in the usual places for those still bold enough to be listening. Remember you have to start from the beginning if you want to join in.
