With malice

 

 

Ring ring, ring ring (my land line)

 

 “Hi, Lou here”

(Mature woman’s voice) “Whoever you are, stop ringing me”

“Sorry? Who is this?”

“My name is (bleep bleep) and I keep getting missed calls from this number on my cell phone with no messages left.”

“Oh. It’s just me and my kid living here – wait a minute; I have a teenage son, any chance you have a teenage son or daughter that he might be trying to reach?”

“My children are grown up. Stop ringing this number or I’ll call the police. I will only warn you once. I’m filing an immediate complaint with Telecom about the malicious calls.”

..and hangs up. Hard.

Total over-reaction to a wrong number I think but as I don’t have caller ID on my land line, I don’t know if Rory has been calling her number for some reason.  He’s at his dads tonight but I’ll figure it out when I talk to him tomorrow.

I’ll be checking the next phone bill that arrives. Weird. 

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------

I always want to say ‘have a great day’ or some such at the end of my posts but I can’t as a couple of you are reading at the end of the day straight after I post while others are reading at the end of the previous day and still others of you are actually reading earlier on today (I think that about covers all 5 of you who visit)

It’s  a life long mystery actually, I’ve never fully gotten my head around the concept that the Antipodes have already finished the day when the other side of the planet is just starting out – surely we down under should be able to take advantage of this situation somehow - it just seems plain ungrateful to squander a God given head start.

Auckland, NZ    

Good night. Good day.

Disorder in the Court

These are excerpts from a book called -

Disorder in the Court: Great Fractured Moments in Courtroom History

by Charles M. Sevilla

No offence intended to any lawyers out there, these just made me laugh. 

ATTORNEY: What was the first thing your husband said to you that morning?
WITNESS: He said, "Where am I, Cathy?"
ATTORNEY: And why did that upset you?
WITNESS: My name is Susan!

____________________________________________
ATTORNEY: What gear were you in at the moment of the impact?
WITNESS: Gucci sweats and Reeboks.

____________________________________________
ATTORNEY: Are you sexually active?
WITNESS: No, I just lie there.

____________________________________________
ATTORNEY: This myasthenia gravis, does it affect your memory?
WITNESS: Yes.
ATTORNEY: And in what ways does it affect your memory?
WITNESS: I forget.
ATTORNEY: You forget? Can you give us an example of something you forgot?

___________________________________________
ATTORNEY: Do you know if your daughter has ever been involved in voodoo?
WITNESS: We both do.
ATTORNEY: Voodoo?
WITNESS: We do.
ATTORNEY: You do?
WITNESS: Yes, voodoo.

______________________________________________
ATTORNEY: Now doctor, isn't it true that when a person dies in his sleep,  he doesn't know about it until the next morning?
WITNESS: Did you actually pass the bar exam?

___________________________________________
ATTORNEY: The youngest son, the 20  year old, how old is he?
WITNESS: He's twenty, much like your IQ.

___________________________________________
ATTORNEY: Were you present when your picture was taken?
WITNESS: Are you shitting me?

_________________________________________
ATTORNEY: So the date of conception was August 8th?
WITNESS: Yes.
ATTORNEY: And what were you doing at that time?
WITNESS: Getting laid

____________________________________________
ATTORNEY: She had three children, right?
WITNESS: Yes.
ATTORNEY: How many were boys?
WITNESS: None.
ATTORNEY: Were there any girls?
WITNESS: Your Honor, I think I need a different attorney. Can I get a new attorney?

____________________________________________
ATTORNEY: How was your first marriage terminated?
WITNESS: By death.
ATTORNEY: And by whose death was it terminated?
WITNESS: Take a guess.

____________________________________________
ATTORNEY: Can you describe the individual?
WITNESS: He was about medium height and had a beard.
ATTORNEY: Was this a male or a female?
WITNESS: Unless the Circus was in town I'm going with male.

____________________________________________
ATTORNEY: Is your appearance here this morning pursuant to a deposition notice which I sent to your attorney?
WITNESS: No, this is how I dress when I go to work.

____________________________________________
ATTORNEY: Doctor, how many of your autopsies have you performed on dead people?
WITNESS: All of them. The live ones put up too much of a fight.

_________________________________________
ATTORNEY: ALL your responses MUST be oral, OK? What school did you go to?
WITNESS: Oral.

_________________________________________
ATTORNEY: Do you recall the time that you examined the body?
WITNESS: The autopsy started around 8:30 p.m.
ATTORNEY: And Mr. Denton was dead at the time?
WITNESS: If not, he was by the time I finished.

____________________________________________
ATTORNEY: Doctor, before you performed the autopsy, did you check for a pulse?
WITNESS: No.
ATTORNEY: Did you check for blood pressure?
WITNESS: No.
ATTORNEY: Did you check for breathing?
WITNESS: No.
ATTORNEY: So, then it is possible that the patient was alive when you began the autopsy?
WITNESS: No .
ATTORNEY: How can you be so sure, Doctor?
WITNESS: Because his brain was sitting on my desk in a jar.
ATTORNEY: I see, but could the patient have still been alive, nevertheless?
WITNESS: Yes, it is possible that he could have been alive and practicing law

Off to never never land (poll results)

Unsurprising really, it appears that bloggers don’t sleep as much as the general population.

Whilst I accept that my poll may not, statistically speaking, stack up with its + or - error margin of 37% and while I also  know that gut reaction is not usually the best fit with statistics, I do in fact, feel  that these results may reflect a valid indication of the sleeping habits of genus homo bloggeris.

Poll results are as follows;

• 15% of the 19 respondents (3) to my poll say they sleep less than 5 hours a night
• 47% (9) have between 5 hours and 7 hours each night
• 26% (5) have around 8 hours and
• 10% (2) have more than 8 hours every night

My analysis is as follows;

1. No zombies responded to my poll
2. Most respondents (62%) sleep less than 8 hours a night*
3. A minority (36%) sleep 8 hours or more
4. Non bloggers on average sleep longer than bloggers (see the trusted and reputable Science Buzz site) and therefore it can be said that bloggers are more physically active and therefore fitter – doesn’t sound quite right but we can’t argue with the facts. Stats are always right!
5. 14 of my so called ‘followers’ didn’t bother voting humph!

*Or is that this group are more likely to respond to polls – perhaps there’s a causal type relationship that I’m not fully considering? Are they voting on polls later into the night and therefore have less sleep time available?  This poll is generating more questions than answers – how frustrating for us scientifically minded folks!

Mr Sandman

Well that’s that for what it was worth. Thanks for reading. Call by again sometime. Vote next time :-)

 Ps. New poll published today

 

Unexpectedly available

Well my day has not gone to schedule (see twitter update on side bar) so I am unexpectedly home which is actually a major treat for 10.30am on a Monday morning.

Downside though is that it does put me badly behind with my project at work. A couple of final decisions were due to be made today so I could be prepared for project kick off on 1 April…the best laid plans and all that. I have renegotiated the start date to Monday 6th and have booked couple of crucial meetings for tomorrow via video conference instead – I hate video conferencing,. I feel super self conscious. I am alone at my end usually so I try and sit as far away from the camera as I can. Sometimes I also forget that I am ‘sitting’ at the head of the big conference table at head office (enormous flat screen LCD on their wall) and I start sending sneaky texts or day dreaming, very embarrassing when I realise that everyone is staring at me.

Anyway that’s boring shit and not in fact, what my post is about at all…

Whilst I buggered around this morning trying to get on another flight (well actually when I was sitting having coffee and updating twitter after getting too pissed off with the whole process) I heard two women talking about the seal photo on the Whitehouse website. Now I have never even looked at Whitehouse.gov but I just checked out it and there really is a seal photo taken in NZ in yesterdays blog (so I promptly nicked the pic to put here naturally). Sleeping in sun. Cute. But again I digress…

The primary point of today's post is actually about something I heard on the car radio as I drove home from the airport.

Warning: read on only if you are brave. Do not interpret this to say that I am fan, let alone a  member of PETA (People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals) because I am not. I do strongly agree that animals should not be mistreated (though I am a carnivore and leather shoe/belt/bag lover) but I don’t buy into PETA’s violent brand of radicalism, not by a million miles!

Well, Ingrid Newkirk is the woman who started PETA and she has today published her last will and testament on the PETA website. I am not going to publish the whole thing here as anyone who is interested will click on the link and investigate themselves but here is the gist of it:

d) That one of my eyes be removed, mounted, and delivered to the administrator of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency as a reminder that PETA will continue to be watching the agency until it stops poisoning and torturing animals in useless and cruel experiments; that the other is to be used as PETA sees fit;

f) That my liver be vacuum-packed and shipped, in whole or in part, to France, to there be used in a public appeal to persuade shoppers not to support the vile practice of force-feeding geese and ducks for foie gras;

et cetera, et cetera ad nauseum.

Gruesome to the max but I do have to reluctantly admit that this is a woman who is PASSIONATELY committed to her cause. I  give grudging kudos to her for that.  That will takes guts.

Tweet bloody tweet

OK twitter review coming for any of you who are even slower than me at looking at such developments. Please note this post may contain spoilers so continue reading at your own risk.

I have spent the day signing up, creating a profile, finding a couple of people to follow and another couple to follow me. I have linked twitter to my blog, I have figured out how to correspond privately with people I know, how to update publicly and how to get twitter to update my Facebook status at the same time.

Overall it seems kind of cool in a fairly unsophisticated way. Cute design backgrounds etc but I’m just not sure that’s it’s actually something that I need.  Most people who I’d want to update on my doings throughout each day are on Facebook anyway and anyone else doesn’t need to know. In fact no-one needs that much detail surely? Not of my life anyway as nowhere near enough happens.

I have serious reservations if you want to use twitter to hold private back and forth conversations. It’s cumbersome having to link your comment to your addressee every single time. It feels precarious if you know what I mean. Like something could go wrong and my ‘private’ comment could be inadvertently sent to my blog sidebar and to the top of my Facebook wall. It feels slightly uncomfortable.Perhaps that IM type conversation is not really what twitter is meant for? I don’t know. Who does?

I’m not yet sure if  the record of the private conversation(s) will automatically trash when I log off later or whether I’ll need to manually delete as I go, I might have to try and find some info about that somewhere too – lots to learn. Boring. 

I’m not sure I’ve ‘gotten’ the point of twitter but I’ll see if it sticks over the next couple of weeks. If not it’ll be gone.  My life is cluttered enough.

Keeping our kids in line

…plus the chores get done so it’s a win:win all round.

Don’t forget to turn off your lights for Earth Hour 

8.30pm Saturday night your time