Disordered Thoughts and Curmudgeonly Ramblings
OK, here’s a multiple choice question for you. You’re a Police Officer out patroling the streets of your city with your partner in an unmarked car. It’s several hours till the end of shift and you’re getting a bit bored. Do you…
A) Grit your teeth and bear it until knock off time.
B) Stop at a coffee shop, get a couple of lat
How’s that for an attention grabbing headline? I just about choked on my stir-fry when it came up in the news panel of my email program. A few seconds of consideration revealed it was sports, but still. Actually it puts a whole new spin on that spam I received last week “Important news about your colon” – maybe that was sports too.
Anyway I came online to post an important piece of advice – won through great personal suffering and pain. I share this with you all now, so you won’t have to learn it that hard way like I did. DO NOT, I repeat DO NOT under any circumstances attempt to sing along to I Held Her in My Arms by the Violent Femmes while shaving! Trust me on this one people!
‘Nuff said 🙂
So much controversy, so little time! (Well, effort really, but it adds up to the same thing.)
So, Robert Mugabe has pulled Zimbabwe out of the Commonwealth. I’m tempted to say good riddance to bad rubbish, except for the fact that the place is in such an unholy mess and maybe the Commonwealth could have done something about it. Mind you they hadn’t managed to yet.
Mark Latham is the new leader of the Labour party. Well that’s a shock, I expected Beazley to get back in. I don’t know if giving the reins to Latham is a good idea or not. This the guy after all who got a bit peeved with a taxi driver a few years ago and broke his arm. But then maybe that’s what we need in a Prime Minister 🙂
Seriously though, I was thinking he might be a much needed breath of fresh air, until I saw him interviewed on The 7:30 Report last week. He’d just been to see the American ambassador to apologise for some *ahem* unfortunate things he’d said during the war in Iraq, then held a press conference in the Labour caucus room – complete with American flag. His defence of this inclusion was some spiel about John Curtin’s founding of the Australian-American alliance during WWII, with repeated mention of Curtin’s portrait hanging on the wall nearby. It was frankly the least-convincing attempt at an explanation I’ve ever seen, particularly after he repeated it about five times.
But then on the other hand he’s pledged that if elected he’ll reverse the Government’s higher education reforms, apologise to the Stolen Generations and do a whole bunch of other cool stuff too (it’s naive to assume he’s actually do even half of this if he got in, but at least he says he will, which is refreshing). So, maybe things are looking up for once in Federal politics. Or at least different, which is something.
And while we’re on Federal politics, what is up with the Democrats? Are they trying to self-destruct? Because they’re doing a great job of it. Their leader (who’s name momentarily escapes me) in a surprising show of trans-party amicability went to a Liberal Christmas party last week – and stole five bottles of wine (allegedly). Then, when asked about said bottles of wine while in Parliament he (allegedly) threatened the (female) senator asking him about it and injured her arm. We can perhaps forgive him slightly for this – after all he wasn’t in full control of his faculties at the time, being drunk (allegedly). Way to go Democrats!
Right, I think that’s most of the controversy dealt with for now, so onto completely irrelevant stuff 🙂
This evening (inspired by the Thanksgiving episode of Friends that was on a few months ago) I decided to see how many American states I could name off the top of my head. I got 47, which considering I’m not an American is pretty good (for the record I missed – OK, I’ll hide these against the background so as not to give anyone trying it for themselves any hints – Iowa, Minnesota and Missouri). I suppose I’d better try the American state capitals next, I somehow doubt I’ll do anywhere near as well *g*.
Oh, and I successfully walked home today as planned. Physical fitness, riches and the adoring love of women here I come! Or at least the first one ;-D
OK, I’m going to shut up now. Probably just as well 🙂
And talking of adds, how disgusting is that Sultana Bran one that mutilates Marvin Gaye’s Heard it through the Grapevine? Blasphemy! That’s the only word for it! Hrumph!!
Well, I said I’d write more yesterday, but I didn’t. This was because I thought I’d be too busy today cleaning up for the rent inspection I’ve got on Tuesday – then, realised yesterday afternoon that the inspection isn’t until Tuesday of next week. So I decided to be all lazy instead and played Civ III 🙂
Mind you, when I say lazy I wasn’t all that lazy – I’d done a shopping trip earlier in the day which involves a three kilometre round walk, the second half of which included carrying $120 worth of assorted groceries. The temperature was 30
OK, I had a busy, tiring week so I’m in no mood to make a proper entry, but I just have to complain about that add for Scary Movie 3 that’s running at the moment.
It’s the usual mismash of tiny little clips suggesting the film is absolutely hilarious (which it almost certainly isn’t) with an extremely happy voice over man at the end telling us all to go and see it because it’s great. What’s so bleeding annoying is that as part of this tired spiel he says something along the lines of…
…come and celebrate this third sequel…
EXCUSE ME? Third sequel? Call me pedantic but wouldn’t Scary Movie 3 be the second sequel by definition?
It amazes me that such an obvious error should slip past all the people who must have looked over the script for the add. Or is everyone in advertising these days only semi-literate? (actually that wouldn’t surprise me at all).
*sigh* I’ll write more tomorrow. Probably 🙂
Whoops. The link now works. I’m really at a loss as to explain how that happened, I usually check all the links in my entries as soon as I post them. Oh well, even professional web designers (uh… on second thought let’s just say people who do web design for a living – the prospect of being a professional anything is way scary 🙂 are allowed to screw up now and then I guess 🙂
Intransigent DNA Influenced Cute Woman of the Week: The Guardian is coming back soon hence they’ve started playing adds for it – How cute is that… um… well I don’t know the character’s name, but the woman Simon Baker’s character is always getting all worked up about. Yeah her. How cute is she!? 🙂
Ya gotta love episodes of CSI where Sarah makes a pass at Grissom, and he either doesn’t notice or stands there with a look of consternated annoyance because he can’t think what he should do next 🙂
Hmmmm, reminds me of me *g*
Greg also got blown up in last night’s episode, although not seriously blown up, just lie-around-in-a-hospital-bed-for-a-while-making-faces blown up. Sarah also got a little bit blown up, but only needed a few stiches. Then she kicked open a door and pointed a gun at a dangerous suspect and followed up by asking Grissom out to dinner, which is a bit of an odd reaction I would have thought. Oh well, what do I know about the way they do things in Vegas? 🙂
Anyway what you don’t gotta love are sudden train strikes, like the one that caught me (and thousands of other commuters) out yesterday night. I was annoyed at first, although not overly so as the number 28 bus runs from Subiaco railway station almost to my front door. So I lined up and caught it, expecting to get home just before six.
Unfortunately I’d figured without the massive road congestion caused by 15,000 or so stranded train users calling up their friends and family for lifts, and the complete breakdown of the bus service under the load of the other 15,000 commuters that suddenly jumped onto it. So it was 6:00 before the bus even made it into the city. Happily though most of the lemming-like hordes alighted here, leaving just a handful of us to enjoy the trip out to Mount Lawley.
Unfortunately it turned out that (no doubt planning ahead to make my life hell) Transperth decided to change the route of the 28 bus about three weeks ago, “deleting” the part of the route that goes anywhere near Mount Lawley, or indeed out of the city at all (and naturally they hadn’t quite got around to updating the maps at the bus-stops yet). I learnt all this courtesy of the bus driver, who no doubt noticed my “Grissom-hit-on-by-Sarah” look in his surveillance mirror when the bus totally failed to turn north.
He was quite nice about it really, he even let me off between stops.
Anyway, so there I was stranded in the barren wilds of East Perth (just outside the old Mint) at 6:15 in the evening. I had two options. Number one – walk back to the bus station and fight the thousands of other commuters for a place on a bus that may or may not have been going where I wanted it to. Number two – walk home.
I walked home. It took me 45 minutes.
The greatest indignity of it all was just as I got to Mount Lawley railway station a train full of happy commuters rumbled past, the drivers having decided to go back to work just too late to assist me in any way.
You know, there are days it’s difficult to believe that the universe isn’t out to get me.
I was planning to write about cutting my hand on a packet of ham today, but then I checked my email and it turns out I have something else to write about. So, without further ado…
WOO-HOO!!!
Big congratulations to Helen and Rob 😀
Of course on a more personal note I suppose this means Helen and I won’t be going out on that date. Hmmmm, drat *g*. Ali, you interested in stepping in? 🙂
I probably had more stuff to write about, but this way takes precedence. Ummm, let’s see – missed this morning’s partial solar eclipse, saw Andrew’s Las Vegas pics last night, actually managed to get a GURPS game in Saturday before last – although Jean is being deported back to Canada by the evil government so Natalie played his character instead and didn’t seem too freaked out by what Michael gets up to with his geekish friends, bought the special collector’s edition of The Two Towers complete with Gollum statue and watched it (the movie not the statue), spent some time messing around in photoshop combining the most attractive facial features of various highly attractive celebrities because I was bored and I could *g* (the resulting photo-fit was dissapointingly nowhere near as freakish as I expected), and it was the 40th Anniversery of both Kennedy Assasination number one and Doctor Who over the weekend, hooray hooray. I think that covers it.
(I may or may not blog about any or all of these things in greater detail later in the week 🙂
Intransigent DNA Influenced Cute Woman of the Week: Oh who cares! 🙂
Boy did they screw up on Who Wants to be a Millionaire the other week.
The question – Which English county used to have a unique Celtic language?
The answers….
Now, the answer they wanted was of course B: Cornwall, but the point is that Cumbria used to have a unique Celtic language too!! There’s a famous (and almost certainly spurious) linguistic anecdote about it being used for counting sheep for crying out loud! Hrumph!
Happily the guy answering it got it “right”. Otherwise I would have been on the phone to Channel 9 so fast! I don’t know who they’ve got doing their research, but they should be shot (then they can hire me instead 🙂
Continuing with inane commentary on TV, is Monk awesome or what? Sort of like what an American Jonathan Creek would be like if they got that guy from Ghostbusters II and Ally McBeal to play the lead. Ummmm, Peter McNicoll? Something like that. They’ve moved it to Thursday nights too, so it’s on tonight. Yey!
Going to work now. Got more properties to add to Seasideholidays. Arrrgh! It never ends! 🙂
Had a very busy week and weekend and I should therefore have tonnes to write about, but I’m just not in the mood. How about that then?
As a stopgap measure though I thought I’d post this, which I stumbled over a few days ago and found rather amusing. I should add by the way that I was not actually searching for that (even if delightful Ms Lawson does have eyes that I could happily drown in). No one will believe me of course, but I think the point should be made just the same :).
You know the ironic thing is I am actually watching Jamie Oliver? Not nude thankfully, he’s cooking Japanese food and all that hot oil could be quite dangerous I expect. Hmmm.
On a completely different subject CSR’s website and email system seem to have totally collapsed over the last 24 hours. This means that Rebecca has presumably not got my email identifying a song she asked about. I would post the name and artist here, except that there’s every posibility it’s one of those that she downloads from Kazaa because she’s too embarassed to go into a music store and buy it *g*. So I won’t publically humiliate her – not after having a great lunch over at her and Dom’s new place yesterday anyway. Roast beef with salad and roast vegetables. No milkshakes though ;P
OK, I ran out of antihistamines on Monday night and haven’t been able to source any more, so I’m suffering from severe pseudoephindrine withdrawal and better go before I write anything really stupid. It can only get worse from here! 🙂
