The Dead Pool
The news of John Peel's sad passing caused strange ripples in the office yesterday. Having spread like a virus through the email system, until it landed with a flourish on our Discussion Board, little enclaves of people became quiet as they realised the effect this modest man and his love of all music had had upon them.
And our thoughts turned to all the CDs, vinyl and cassettes that we'd bought/made/borrowed on the strength of one man's eclectic taste. John Peel had the biggest record collection in the world (he must have) and he took great joy in sharing every item he stumbled across to our waiting ears.
But we're only human, and we must take comfort in our own mortality by recoiling from the news of someone else's death by laughing at it (poking death in the eye with a pointy stick, so to speak). Hence, not 60 minutes after the fateful news had been picked up from the BBC News website the talk had turned to which celebrity would be next.
As everyone knows, they always come in threes.
I spilled the beans about Rodney Dangerfield, the news of his leaving his mortal coil behind last week came as a surprise to most everyone. However, he apparently doesn't count because:
A) he's American, and
B) that was last week already.
So we sat and pondered from which field the next death would be from. Sports? Films? Politics? Soon after was mentioned the Dead Pool; that document of bad taste which lingers at the back of everyone's mind as a good idea at the time (there's a few back there, take a look). Yes, who will be the next famous person to 'pop their clogs'?
Maybe you've have seen the dodgy Clint Eastwood movie (featuring an early appearance of Jim Carrey), if you're lucky you haven't. Basically everyone taking part makes a list of 3-5 famous people, to which certain criteria can be applied (it depends how anal you want to be with the rules). Money is collected weekly until someone listed dies. Whoever pointed the finger gets the pot, it's as simple as that.
Thus I found myself looking at the pile of crap on my desk I barely (if ever) go near for the rules of the old Dead Pool. Haphazardly organised after a drunken lunchtime beer some years ago (the document was written in WordPerfect 5.1 so that's a clue to its age) I found the rules to stuck to a photocopy of the RTE Guide (just don't ask).
I don't know what I'd been drinking when I wrote them, but they had the smack of a real legal document (with some sub-Python quips spattered here and there). Ultimately though they were too damn fiddly to deal with, probably the reason why the Dead Pool they were written for lasted no more than two weeks (come to think of it, I don't recall it lasting even that long).
So, as with all things, our jovial idea came to nought. Maybe it was the fiddliness of the rules, maybe it was the realisation that such an idea was in very bad taste. Whatever it was, as lunchtime faded away and the afternoon's work took our minds back to installations and problem solving, all thought of the Dead Pool died away.
Which, all things considered, was probably for the best.
And our thoughts turned to all the CDs, vinyl and cassettes that we'd bought/made/borrowed on the strength of one man's eclectic taste. John Peel had the biggest record collection in the world (he must have) and he took great joy in sharing every item he stumbled across to our waiting ears.
But we're only human, and we must take comfort in our own mortality by recoiling from the news of someone else's death by laughing at it (poking death in the eye with a pointy stick, so to speak). Hence, not 60 minutes after the fateful news had been picked up from the BBC News website the talk had turned to which celebrity would be next.
As everyone knows, they always come in threes.
I spilled the beans about Rodney Dangerfield, the news of his leaving his mortal coil behind last week came as a surprise to most everyone. However, he apparently doesn't count because:
A) he's American, and
B) that was last week already.
So we sat and pondered from which field the next death would be from. Sports? Films? Politics? Soon after was mentioned the Dead Pool; that document of bad taste which lingers at the back of everyone's mind as a good idea at the time (there's a few back there, take a look). Yes, who will be the next famous person to 'pop their clogs'?
Maybe you've have seen the dodgy Clint Eastwood movie (featuring an early appearance of Jim Carrey), if you're lucky you haven't. Basically everyone taking part makes a list of 3-5 famous people, to which certain criteria can be applied (it depends how anal you want to be with the rules). Money is collected weekly until someone listed dies. Whoever pointed the finger gets the pot, it's as simple as that.
Thus I found myself looking at the pile of crap on my desk I barely (if ever) go near for the rules of the old Dead Pool. Haphazardly organised after a drunken lunchtime beer some years ago (the document was written in WordPerfect 5.1 so that's a clue to its age) I found the rules to stuck to a photocopy of the RTE Guide (just don't ask).
I don't know what I'd been drinking when I wrote them, but they had the smack of a real legal document (with some sub-Python quips spattered here and there). Ultimately though they were too damn fiddly to deal with, probably the reason why the Dead Pool they were written for lasted no more than two weeks (come to think of it, I don't recall it lasting even that long).
So, as with all things, our jovial idea came to nought. Maybe it was the fiddliness of the rules, maybe it was the realisation that such an idea was in very bad taste. Whatever it was, as lunchtime faded away and the afternoon's work took our minds back to installations and problem solving, all thought of the Dead Pool died away.
Which, all things considered, was probably for the best.
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