Posted by A semi-regular feature in which we ask Prince Prefab about cricket – even though he hates cricket. We are in bold. Prince Prefab is not.
Is Tim Bresnan a bit of a bellend?
Never particularly struck us as one. Why?
Saw him interviewed on the news wearing shades and a cap and he looked like a colossal bellend.
Was he in the UAE? To be honest, cricketers wear shades and a cap most of the time. He may even be contractually obliged to wear the cap when he’s not on the field. Dunno.
I don’t think it was an official cap but I may be wrong. It’s just, you’re on the news, it doesn’t look bright, you’re talking to a camera and a person and they’ve not placed you directly in front of the sun. Don’t be a bellend and take your sunglasses off.
I hate people who wear sunglasses unless absolutely necessary. In my life it has been necessary twice. Once in France with you when it was so bright my eyes hurt, once when I was driving into a setting sun. What’s wrong with squinting?
You can achieve a lot with squinting.
There’s a photo of Steps walking into a hotel yesterday where the press pack were waiting for someone more famous. All of ’em wearing shades. That sums up it up for me. Sportsmen and shit people wear sunglasses. (People with eye conditions are exempt.)
Tim Bresnan has a serious eye condition.
That must make life as an international cricketer tricky.
Bressy Lad wishes he were still an international cricketer.
Who’s doing the interviewing here? Is young Prefab getting ideas above his station or what?
When we ask him questions, we’re only prodding around trying to find the kind of thing he asks us about anyway – the latter is what’s more interesting to us.
The whole point is trying to see cricket and cricketers as a non-cricket fan sees them.
For example, apparently Bres comes across as ‘a bit of a bellend’.
Fascinating insight behind the lens there. That’s exactly what I’m trying to do, in a new feature I’m calling ‘I don’t like ‘I don’t like cricket, I hate it’, I’m fairly indifferent to the whole thing anyway’.
In other news, one of your Lancy old boys seemingly now a rider for young political upstart rockers Cabbage: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kyle_Hogg
Prince Prefab has succumbed to heuristics and biases, quite common amongst normal human beings.
In short, this is a classification problem, best explained with a few well-chosen sentences and a venn diagram – link below. We haven’t had one of those around here for a while, so this is overdue.
Tim Bresnan is not a bellend.
However, he does wear a cap and shades.
Most but not all people who wear a cap and shades are bellends.
There are also people who are bellends for reasons other than wearing a cap and shades.
The blue circle in the following venn is the universe of bellends. The green circle is the universe of cap and shade wearers.
The intersection between the two sets is far and away the largest area, but there are plenty of people in one but not the other, such as Tim Bresnan and other people I won’t refer to by name.
http://ianlouisharris.com/kc-bell-end-venn/
I do hope this helps Prince Prefab with his understanding of cricket, bellends and Steps.
Truly a valuable service. And a most-welcome Venn – as if there’s any other kind.
I never wear sunglasses, I squint and people think I’m angry. I don’t understand how anyone can dislike Tim Bresnan. I read something somewhere at some point about people wearing sunglasses in interviews so you can’t see the tears in their eyes, and what a terrible thing it is to do, but I doubt that was the reason in this case.
“if you have tears or fears then Raybans © are the shades for you” If you’re skint then squint.
if you wear sunglasses then the world looks quite dark and if you do not wear sunglasses the world looks too bright and everyone sensible agrees with me that the world looks better when it is dark than when it is light especially stupid interviewers who would look better in the pitch black if possible though actually usually it is not possible because this may create suboptimal lighting conditions for a broadcast interview so in that respect it would be best to do with the interview with your eyes shut as this creates a top-notch subjective simulation that it is pitch black really but that kind of thing is not allowed either because it makes it look like you are asleep during your interview and a wally and your interview must be so boring that even you are asleep in it suggesting to the viewers at home that they should also be bored and asleep in it which does not count any “award-winning audience-grabbing tv” that advertisers like to sell their crap during so that leaves the only rational possibility of wearing sunglasses and maybe even shutting your eyes while wearing them because then nobody can see but you can probably keep your eyes open too because the darkness of the sunglasses will erase most of the pain of looking at the interviewer who you don’t really want to be looking at though in fact you can be looking at something completely different and nobody would know because who can see where your eyes are actually pointing so since all sensible people agree that wearing sunglasses is the best solution and actually tim bresnan is a sensible person then he can actually wear sunglasses if he actually wants to and no causal inference can be drawn over whether he is bellend actually
It’s hard to argue with that kind of reasoning.
In other news…
…a lot of beer and biscuits in KC’s contre-pseudonymous Twitter column today…
http://www.espncricinfo.com/magazine/content/story/1089354.html
…has Nandos gone out of fashion?
True story this. Back in 1987, when I was doing A-level physics, I studied nuclear science. I loved my classes. I had a crazy teacher who wore dark glasses. Things were going great, and were only getting better. I was doing alright, getting good grades. The future was so bright, I had to wear shades.
The teacher in question was called Mr Sparks (no, really), and actually he was my maths teacher. Nuclear science was taught by Mr Brown, an equally appropriately named individual. Sparks was a properly eccentric old-fashioned teacher – wild hair, wild arms, wild tweed jacket – and was one of those teachers who could teach you without you noticing, and who you remember with deep fondness your entire life. He invented Triominoes, or so he claimed, and we had no reason to doubt him. I have a note in my book that he dictated concerning the Quadratic Formula – “To be permanently inscribed on the inside of my brain, lest Mr Sparks tries to inscribe it from the outside, with a chisel.” And indeed, minus b plus or minus the square root of b squared minus four a c all over two a.
The sunglasses he wore were reactolite lenses. You remember reactolites – when it was bright they turned dark, and when it was a bit dull or you were inside, they stayed dark. Tweed jacket, indoor sunglasses, maths, a hint of madness, a song in the charts that could have been written for him. We thought he was a bit odd at the time; now I doubt that I have ever met anyone quite as cool.
Anyway, the point is that the wearing of sunglasses indoors does not of itself signify bell-endedness, although I will admit that it is an indicator to look for other evidence.
I had a chemistry teacher who wore the same shades, but not the tweed. We didn’t think he was cool, though we assumed he had to be clever because he had a PhD (like half the chemistry staff did, so we didn’t assume he was exceptionally clever, but we did wonder why someone with a degree in philosophy was teaching chemistry). Then we got another chemistry teacher with a PhD who was genuinely cool – even had a chemical named after him as a result of his studies, so he claimed! That’s the way to impress the kids, get a chemical names after you.
For second best, Mr Waters suggests you can name yourself after a chemical instead. Miss Potassium-Permanganate and Dr Vanadium V. Oxide concur.
Incidentally, there is no such thing as Bresnanite, so perhaps Mr B is a bit of a bell-end after all. On the other hand, Jimmy’s fine the chef’s fine, Ben Stokes is doing okay too.
Further research indicates that having a mineral named after you is not conclusive evidence of nonbellendedness, however.
I’ve now got ‘This Town Ain’t Big Enough for the Both of Us’ by Sparks in my head – thanks for that, Mr Sparks.
I didn’t realise those reactions lenses were around in the 80s, a teacher of mine had the more successful version in the late 90s/early 2000s.
Yes, I’m younger than Bert.
I thoroughly recommend the entire album, Kimono My House, by Sparks (from whence “This Town” came..
One of my all-time favourite albums.
Thanks for supporting my classification analysis, Bert.
If it ever gets high enough up my list of priorities, I’d like to add Mr Sparks to the list of examples of those who wear shades but are not bellends (currently only containing Bressy-Lad).
That’s not likely to happen soon, but the many Venn enthusiasts around here might like to return to that Venn diagram periodically, just to see if I have got around to improving it yet…
…or just for the sheer sartorial pleasure of having a Venn diagram of such beauty on their screen.
Reflecting yet further on Bert’s story, I recall my own physics teacher from school, Mr Marvin. We nicknamed him Hank. (What is it with Physics teachers and names of pop artistes from 18-20 years earlier?…)
Hank did not were shades. But he did tell me that I needed to find Jesus, otherwise I would go to hell, for all eternity, when I died; something that he didn’t want to happen. I found this rather unconvincing and subsequently found physics (as taught by him) less convincing, as I was wracked with doubt about Hanks grasp of metaphysics and physics.
Anyway, I decided that the Venn diagram really did need updating with both Bert’s and my scholarly examples. So here is the improved Venn:
http://ianlouisharris.com/kc-bell-end-venn-sparks-marvin/