In Which I Am Forced to Develop a Gambling Problem

Still with me? So D and I were watching an episode of the Crystal Maze, more or less chosen at random. Here is an explanation of the Crystal Maze and its rules. The thing about D is, if it can be bet on, he will bet. He is an idiot in this regard, because although he has an unnatural prescience in tennis, he'll bet on all manner of things that he's got no idea about. If we're watching a football game he has to bet on it to "make it more interesting". It certainly seems to send him into an unusual mental spriteliness. You might be able to see where this is going. "Right, the order that our competitors will run is _____________." "What?" "Whoever has the ____ challenge has the _____ and _____ and  so on." (I can't divulge our supersexysecretsystem.) "Are you going to make me-" "Yes, we're betting." "W-" "Most crystals wins." "What i-" "If your challenger is locked in you lose a crystal, regardless of whether they're bought out again." "How m-" "50p." "Fif-" "Alright, two pounds." "How do we determ-" "Toss of a coin, heads you go first, tails I go first." "You know what we're doing here is betting on something that's already happened? WE'RE BETTING ON THE PAST!" "Yeah, but we don't know the outcome." "What, so you're saying this is some sort of Schrodinger's Crystal Maze?" "What?" "...Doesn't matter". The actual order we'd worked out is probably the fairest as it spreads the automatic lock ins about. It also means that it's the most likely way that we'll have even male and female challengers- this is very important for D as he's a massive mysogenist. The coin was tossed... And drama occured. I won't bore you with a blow by blow account of the whole show, though you can watch it here if you want:

 
The upshot is, the team managed to get a measly total of crystals. Who won the £2? I probably wouldn't be blogging if it wasn't me (I have been curiously quiet about our more recent trips to the driving range), and let me tell you it was a heavy loss for D. I can't stress enough how frustrating it is to watch utter idiots fail simple challenges, and that frustration rises exponentially when those idiots are your horses, so to speak. I suspect D wanted to break their legs so he had an excuse to shoot them. "Millions of years of evolution produces THIS? Die in a fire" was my favourite of the many nuggets of abuse that he shouted at his challengers. The amount of times his face went as red as his hair when his guys got locked in was more than none, and the amount of smugness on my face as my guys breezed through was palpable. D finished on a score of none, which was quite impressive. I pointed out that he had initially offered a stake of 50p, but then effectively quadrupled his debt. This was met with a measured response of "FUCKTHECRYSTALMAZEWE'RENEVERWATCHINGITAGAIN".

Just to give you an idea of how frustrating it can be watching idiots from the past who you have bet on, watch this:

 
D'you see? Even Richard O'Brien, who is normally a placid fellow is driven to drag the man back into the room, which NEVER happens, and point out to him that he is a biological wonder as he has three types of chromosomes- x, y and fuckhead. D had understandably started crying blood by this point, so I suggested we watch another episode from another series, but if you'll remember from yesterday's blog, D doesn't "have the mental capacity to pick a series." So I pointed him in the direction of Deadliest Warrior. This is a series even D has the mental capacity to cope with. Essentially some history buffs compare two fighters (or two teams of fighters) from history, working out their weaponry and demonstrating how it could explode/slice/crush through flesh. They basically talk a lot of bollocks and one side of expert talks smack with the other side for about forty minutes. The programme culminates in a re-enactment with a decent budget (an enactment, actually, because the point is that these two sides have never battled each other) based on who a "supercomputer" (which is essentially a glorified excel spreadsheet) said would win. The first episode we saw was The IRA versus The Taliban. Again, I know what you're thinking. D was practically frothing at the mouth, screaming

"WEHAVETOBETONTHISWE'LLTOSSACOINHEADSIGOFIRSTTAILSYOUGOFIRSTLET'SDOTHIS!!!"

I had to lie at this point, and say "D, we can't do that for this episode because I've seen it and I know who wins." He was upset, but wanted to see the episode to see if the next one was worth betting on, and he reckoned it was (of course he did, it's a thing, and things can be bet on). So why did I lie about having seen it? Well, D gets quite enthused about his bets and I really didn't want people in adjoining houses listening to him screaming "Come on the IRA! Fucking kill those sons of bitches! Yeaaahhhh! One nil, to the IRA..." So we watched another one, Viking vs Samurai. The toss of the coin meant that I got Samurai... I won't bore you with a blow by blow (quite literally) account of the whole show, though you can watch it here if you want:

http://clips.team-andro.com/watch/e5ee2f3b311fe4f145ae/deadliest-warrior-viking-vs.-samurai

The upshot is, it was very close but my Samurai stabbed his Viking into a state of non-being-alive-anymoreness. I suspect this is because it was one of those second rate Danish vikings rather than a deluxe Norwegian viking. Anyroad, D was more graceful about giving me my winnings this time because he had thoroughly enjoyed the show. "We will have to bet a lot more on this." There are three serieseses of this so my wallet may well take a hammering if I'm unlucky, and we've seen who is pitted against each other in the first series alone. Spartan versus Ninja? Pirate versus Knight?!?

Today's Muthafuckin' CHOON