Notes from a game of 'Balderdash'

In the wake of a game of 'Balderdash!' - which I love as the best of party games - there is always a selection of inexplicable false definitions, initialisations, and laws for numerous topics. On this occasion, here is a vainglorious selection of my most random from the last game with the prompts removed to avoid game spoilers:

- Word: A primitive water driven lathe;
- Initials: Short Freaky Actor;
- Law: ... illegal to throw mule traders into jail without the governor's approval;
- Person: The inaugural winner of the World Endurance Origami Championship;
- Person: Sailed paper airplanes off the Eiffel Tower on its opening day;
- Word: A Finnish tragedy, usually involving a reindeer in some small way.

Oh, if only this hadn't been quite a mild game. On occasion we all elevate up into the atmosphere of the barely sane and astonish even the clouds themselves. Fear us, world! The interesting thing about 'Balderdash!' is that it is one of the few party games where you are required to be imaginative rather than descriptive. It's highly unusual in that respect, and in fact I'm having problems thinking of any others like it.

Being an apparently random person, I succeed only inconsistently in 'Balderdash!', just as in writing the story segments on the Quirky Muffin. It's amazing that some people write professionally and consistently, amazing! I hold my hat in tribute to them while muttering under my breath. This week will be an especially hard week for writing, disrupted as it is by that wonderful and unexpected interview. Even now I should really be preparing the presentation but instead a Quirky Muffin is being slowly condensed from the aether of procrastination. Hmm. Sometimes blog posts do condense from nothing, fantasies drawn from nature and prose from the ground beneath us.

Imagination; It's a curious thing. I have been slowly working my disordered way through the twelve serials of the seventh Doctor as played by Sylvester McCoy and have been wowed by the amount of imagination and competence that went into that era of the show. The very idea of a television series lasting into it's twenty-fourth, twenty-fifth and twenty-sixth seasons is alone beyond belief, but to engineer a renaissance so late? Unfathomable! While 'Star Trek' is by far the more positive and enjoyable concept in its original forms, there are eras of 'Doctor Who' where the actors and writers fit so exactly that it comes close despite being far more pessimistic. The McCoy era is one of them, and it comes right at the very end! To compensate a massive original 'Star Trek' trawl is very close at hand!

And now, the presentation can no longer be denied, or at least the sleeping in preparation for writing it properly tomorrow. Finally, after weeks of interruptions, 'Explorers' is running and relaxation is at hand. This interview trip will go well, and in the process perhaps a trip to Nottingham will allow some baggage long left untidy will be stowed in the mental lockers. Oh, 'Explorers', you're a great film! I may be regressing at an unforgivable rapidity!

O.

Note: Apparently I picked out the idea of dream communication from 'Explorers' so I can claim much less originality on that story. However, I do similarly have no ending so the inspiration is on multiple levels!