At first I wanted to strangle him. But since he doesn’t have a neck, nor lungs, it would have been rather pointless. And I would have probably come off worse in such a tussle. Then a Chinese friend offered the perfect solution – chop him up and fry him. I am of course referring to my initial reaction to the correct prediction of the psychic octopus.
“What bloody psychic octopus?!” I hear some of you cry. Well for those of you who are not aware of all the fuss, Paul the psychic octopus, who is based in a German aquarium, has rather ridiculously correctly chosen the winners in all of Germany’s world cup ties. While some of the results, Germany v Australia or Germany v Ghana, might have been expected, German victories over experienced England and a skillful Argentinian side were surprises that flew in the face of the pundit’s predictions. It could be said that the cephalapod is not psychic and has merely preferred the colours of the German flag! Maybe octopuses like such colours?! Who knows what’s going on in their misshapen heads? But Paul’s supporters point to his prediction that Serbia would beat the German side, a shock result considered a football freak. Sounds like bollocks? Well it should be in all honesty. I mean, why am I even talking about this? As some people have pointed out, why would an octopus care about the outcome of world cup games? Hasn’t an octopus got more important things to do? Like being all stretchy and sticking to things and looking weird and alien-like?
How does he do it? Well two transparent cubes are lowered into his tank, each containing a mussel. Whichever cube he feeds from first is taken to be his prediction. Scientifically this is of course, a load of old horse shit. But he has got 5/5 correct so far, a 100% hit rate! He got 70% in the European Championships 2 years ago too, a very significant rate of success statistically. I’m going to run through the possilities of how he might be able to do this.
1) Coincidence
He could just be lucky. But with a 1/32 chance of randomly picking all the right results, he’s one lucky octopus.
2) Conditioned response
Perhaps he ate from the German container the first time and remembers there is food there and so each time returns to the German cube for his reward. But what about the Serbian choice!? Random again?
3) He always chooses the same side
I heard about this from a friend of mine, that he always goes for the flag on the right. But the England and Argentinian flags were not on the same side. So this is out too!
4) The octopus is psychic!
There are no tricks or coincidences and the octopus can see into the future. The oracle can correctly forecast the winners of the German’s world cup matches using his psychic powers…
Well who knows. Unlike his swift pick over England, he did take 45 minutes to pick the Germans over the Argentinians and this was taken to mean a tough and close game, extra time and maybe even penalties. That didn’t happen though as the Germans trounced the Argies 4-0, utterly pissing on them. I reckon that maybe when he was gazing into the future, looking through the mists of time, he didn’t recognise the rarely worn black away German strip and had to watch the first half of the game before he recognised a few players and could then reject the blue and white Argentinians! Maybe when he only saw the close up shots of the players walking off at half time and German flags being waved with joy did he realise who was who.
The latest is that he has picked Spain to triumph over the Germans in tomorrow’s semi final, leading to dismay throughout his adopted homeland (he was British born). This time the pundits are backing in form Germany, flying in the face of the famous octopus once again. Funny thing is, that he got the result wrong when both of these teams met in the Euro championships 2 years ago, and the Germans are banking on him having a blind spot for the Spanish again. They are praying that he is wrong. We shall see very soon if he is incredibly correct for the 6th time in a row or if his winning streak finally runs out…
Semen Simon
*****UPDATE*****
The octopus was right . Spain beat the Germans 1-0 to make it to their first final!