I kinda want to hear the story about 37 five-year olds now, actually. Did he imagine a mob of small wannabe Bacchantes, an aborted attempt at reenacting Suddenly Last Summer?
It's probably a reference to the question of how many five-year-olds one could take in a fair fight (they get a day of training, and you can choose one weapon, but they all get an instance of that weapon type as well).
That's how I took it, and was pleased to note that it seems to have wide cultural currency.
Though I don't remember anything about weapons in the original.
Lifeguard: I can see that.
Was he being sarcastic?
I don't think the original thread referenced weapons. That would substantially change calculations.
Right, the weapons bit was my mistake.
In other news, B's kid just called me.
He said I'm an "asshole."
I totally rest my case on the parenting thing.
Off to swim!
I had shoulder surgery so I have a nice scar.
I need a better story than a bike accident.
I read it with the Lifeguard being a woman.
Is "Lifeguard" the same character as "Lifeguard 1" or "Lifeguard 2"? Or a distinct, third lifeguard?
Ogged:
Do you swim by yourself or with a Masters team?
If you go with a weapon too heavy for the 5 year olds to lift (sledgehammer?) the number may go to infinity.
15 -- I'm having trouble seeing how Peter Gabriel would be put to good destructive use against 5-year-olds.
17: He could sing them to sleep. And then, the reckoning.
All infinity of them? Not even the genius that is Peter Gabriel could sing a song so powerful. Or could he?
He said I'm an "asshole."
Did you tell him at least your mom doesn't make you wear girl clothes?
He said I'm an "asshole."
Did you ask him if he was drunk?
22 - Yeah, Ogged wears them because he likes it.
Really, Ogged, you should maintain that your scar was the result of your heroic rescue of a small child trapped in the back of a burning vehicle - that broken windshield you had the crawl through, that tiny body you had to shield with your own, escaping mere seconds before the car exploded.
Have you no sense of the dramatic? At least pretend it was a motorcycle accident during a stint as a stunt man. Or as a private courier, delivering an organ for transplant, who had to limp the final few blocks to the hospital after dumping the bike and falling to avoid running down a stray puppy.
I mean, hell, after three knee surgeries, I just tell people I fought a duel with a very short Heidelberger. Tho' I'm considering getting a tattoo for the scar on my ankle; climbing roses would work nicely.
2,3, etc: wow that's a really weird question. Especially with the weapons. I'll have to hang out with a few more five year olds to come up with my answer. I like the Sledgehammer one though.
A friend of mine recently posed a bunch of us the question of a duel-to-the death: some tough, fierce, implacable, and serious about a duel to the death challenges you to a duel. The circumstances are such that you cannot possibly decline or escape. It has to be a contest of physical, violent exertion--no calculating square roots in your head--but you get to choose the weapons, time, and place. You basically want to choose so that either a) they balk and withdraw their challenge or b) you might actually succeed in winning. (You can be merciful if you want; they will not.) Unfortunately, you don't know much about this opponent's skills.
My hapkidoist friend picked 4 pm, bare hands, packed earth. I said that since this hypothetical opponent sounded pretty awful I would not choose something that might backfire--the weapons being the two femurs of their most loved person--but would instead choose a duel by blunt arrow over a gorge over a certain amount of time--they either have to bruise me to death or tire trying, and I bet I could dodge faster anyway. A third friend picked one that might appeal to ogged: six months from now in two parallel canals release a pair of hungry crocodile twins---when the first person gets bit, the seconds shoot the crocodiles. (The six months is for my friend, the ertwhile college swimmer, to get back into shape.) After a fourth friend, a pacifist woman, growled that this question was all about dick-waving, I noted that if the two duelists were both men, and the challenger was known to be straight, a dick-only fight might be in order.
The original scenario apparently involved one near sighted Sir William Perry, challenged by on Sir Hierome Sanchy, and Perry said a dark cellar with enormous carpenter's axes, and Sanchy withdrew.
but would instead choose a duel by blunt arrow over a gorge over a certain amount of time--they either have to bruise me to death or tire trying, and I bet I could dodge faster anyway.
But this assume non-symmetrical goals (they want to kill you, you just have to doge until time runs out). Shouldn't the rules imply that both contestents have the same objective and one has to complete the objective. Otherwise you could just say arrows across the grand canyon or jousting across Australia (you get a horse and a lance, and if you can find me then you can kill me).
Perry said a dark cellar with enormous carpenter's axes
I've heard a version involving a challenge to Ben Franklin, and his choice being "buckets of shit at dawn."
And the version I've heard is "hand grenades in a clothes closet" with the alternative offered when that gets rejected being "Champagne corks at 20 feet."
Davy Crocketts, Houston Astrodome, pay-per-view.
"Champagne corks at 20 feet."
Isn't that a Larry Niven anecdote?
31: Knew it sounded familiar.
Found it in Playgrounds of the Mind - LACON, 1972. Niven used a couple of friends as basis for a character in a short story without permission. It was champagne corks at four paces, not twenty.
"Don't argue about the weaponry," Ben said. "Remember, Russell Seitz is the world's sixth nuclear power!"
Ooops! It was true. As one of the Board of Trustees of a Boston museum, Russell had built a Titan II missile from parts he acquired from junkyards for under a thousand dollars.
...
I twisted the wire open. Worked it off. Peeled away the foil. Went to work on the cork with my thumbs. Easy does it, don't want to break the cork.. looked up, and Russell was ready.
He fired past my shoulder.
I went back to work. Ease the cork loose. Russell was standing at attention, expressionless. The cork was easing out... faster than I thought. I fired through his hair.
And we drank the propellants.
Whoops, imagine more italics in 33.
27: probably, but in the problem as posed to me we were all ourselves, and the circumstances were merely as described. You don't want to have the same objective--you've been challenged, and are trying to get out of it.
26 reminds me tangentially of some of Titanic Thompson's proposition bets (particularly his claim that he could hit a golf ball 500 yards if he could choose the time or place -- when someone took him up on it, he sent the ball skittering across a frozen lake in Minnesota).
I read the 36 story in a Harry Andersen (of Nightcourt fame) book that I loved very dearly as a child. In case anyone else shared this cultural reference point with me.
22, 23: No, he laughed and laughed.
And PK was kinda drunk--on a nutella crepe. We were in Hollywood, having just seen The Bridge to Terabitha, which is a mediocre movie, by the way. PK liked it, though, because he has no taste.
The five-year-olds thread is iconic Unfogged to me, it has just started when I came across the site and that sucked me in to reading regularly.
The five-year-olds thread is iconic Unfogged to me, it has just started when I came across the site and that sucked me in to reading regularly.
Hey Emir, are you going to be in NYC tomorrow night? Want to get a drink?
42: Next time we have coffee, Ben, let's feed PK a nutella crepe. Then you'll see.
Yes I am, I commented on the "aliens" thread ... just waiting for someone to pick a spot, Becks had suggested combining with the LGM drinks but I don't mind either way. Am logging off here in a few mins but will check back tomorrow. Maybe keep this on that thread to save confusion?
26 -- I've been thinking about this more than I should, and I've decided that I wouldn't want anything that depended on upper body strength or viciousness but that I'm okay with agility, and patience and that I have better resistance to cold than most.
So my choice would be staves on a frozen lake that is recently frozen and that would support either of us walking across it but neither of us jumping up and down on the ice, wearing t-shirts, shorts, and tennis shoes. Starting at opposite ends of a lake that's at least a mile across to allow plenty of room to move. I'd be gambling on my ability to avoid falling in before my opponent.
Nerf broadaxes, on stage at the Vivian Beaumont Theater.
Baritsu, on the path to the Reichenbach falls.
46: I suppose if you fell in you could use the stave to pull yourself out. . .how resistant to cold are you?
47/48: When the question was posed, Nerfe noodles were given as an example of staving-off-the-challenge via sheer exhaustion. (Remember, if the challenger gives up, you're home free.) That was sort of the idea behind my (not for me) cockbruising proposition--I figured mortification would combine with exhaustion fairly quickly.
49: Nice.
But anyone's who's done any grad school will have an unfair advantage in a solitary confinement duel.
I suppose if you fell in you could use the stave to pull yourself out. . .how resistant to cold are you?
Not that resistant. I think falling in would be bad news. But I was thinking it would be a useful defensive weapon and, even I'm not going to be able to cripple anyone with a staff if I can connect at all it's going to *hurt* in the cold.
Baritsu, on the path to the Reichenbach falls.
Man, I haven't read any Doyle in like 10 years. I need to re-read the Holmes stuff.
Sticks of dynamite strapped irremovably to one's own chest, and lighters.
Surely damp matches would give it that sporting element necessary for the proper duel?
52: Isn't that the point? I thought I was supposed to play to my strengths.
Thanks. Although if I'm back too much, I might have to stop commenting completely again.
Drunk on nutella?
Drunk is the wrong word. Noah gets completely tweaked on Nutella.
Yeah, slowly. I even have a gut now.
Such a transparent beg for sympathy. What was s/he supposed to say to that?
I would challenge my adversary to "Death by Post-Industrial Anomie". rules are simple. Each participant has to move house to Wrexham and continue to live in Wrexham until the other one has committed suicide. I reckon I could last about three weeks, which ought to leave me the clear winner against anyone except Matt M, who probably comes from some Scottish hellhole that would make Wrexham look like paradise on earth.
Yes. Looking at pictures of Wrexham on-line it looks pretty swanky.
[Although, by way of compensation the shitehole I come from had i) a semi-decent secondary school, ii) a quick direct trainline to both edinburgh and glasgow.]
Looking at the crime figures via upmystreet, it wasn't that bad. Except for serious assault, which was, er, 6 times the scottish average. And the scottish average isn't exactly low.
You can get an idea of what Wrexham's like from the amount of photoshopping that they did on the council website in order to get a photograph with enough of the actual town cut out to make it look attractive. Also from the fact that in 2002, they had an anti-asylum seekers riot despite there being no actual asylum seekers in Wrexham and the rumour that there was a plan to send two dozen there was false.
Abraham Lincoln was actually in this situation and chose "in a 12-foot-deep pit, ten feet square, using cavalry broadswords of the largest size". The whole point was a) to make the whole thing seem ridiculous and b) to give Lincoln (who of course was hella tall) an advantage - being in a pit with Lincoln and a broadsword would have been like being dropped into a blender. The challenge was withdrawn at the last minute.
http://www.failedsuccess.com/index.php?/weblog/comments/abraham_lincoln_duel
I'd go for "the mid-Atlantic, on board patrol boats armed with Harpoon anti-ship missiles". Unless I'm really unlucky my opponent won't know how to operate a Harpoon any more than I do, so it boils down to "who can read the instruction manual faster" and I'm quite a fast reader.
On reflection, a better venue might be the East River in New York: I think you'd have a good chance of the police arriving to break the duel up if you started threatening to fight a missile duel just off the shore of Manhattan Island.
Sledge hammers in six feet of water was the story I always heard.
I'd go for any variation of the kiddie hand-slapping games that depends on reflexes. I'm all fast-twitch. Otherwise, I'm with Ajay. As a kid, I had to put my own birthday presents together 'cause my parents had the mechanical aptitude of your average goldfish and I learned Engrish early.
One per thread. One per thread. Go! Go! Go!
67: Lincoln was a sock-puppeteer? Who knew?