Now, where was I? Oh yeah...

My "friends" send me these emails
All sugary and sweet
Cutesy pics and loving verse
That they think are such a treat
To make me think they care a lot
To fill their lazy gap
Yet they send them to everyone they know
I'd like to tell them where to shove their crap.

The advent of the email chain letter has been a real eye opener in lots of ways. The chain mail itself has mutated, changed and evolved into something which most people seem to see as some sort of "personal" greeting, missive or communication, a particularly ubiquitous and insidious form of expressing that they have fooled themselves into thinking that they are thinking of you. Even when they bulk forward them to 500 other poor recipients.

How personal is the forwarding of an email full of cutesy pictures and/or enlightening verses full of positive affirmations and loving phrases and other assorted stomach-turning garbage to everyone you have an email address for with no individual message for even one recipient, when that's the only communication you can be bothered having with them?

End Rant.

~~ A diplomat is someone who can tell you to go to hell
in such a way that you will look forward to the trip. ~~

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Now, where was I? Oh yeah...

My friend drowned in a bowl of muesli. He was pulled in by a strong currant.

Our ice cream man was found lying on the floor of his van covered with nuts & hundreds and thousands. Police say that he topped himself.

What do you call a fish with no eyes? A fsh

Two fish are in a tank One says to the other "I'll man the guns, you drive".

A man is like a pack of cards. You need a Heart to love him, a Diamond to marry him, a Club to smash his f...ing head in and a Spade to bury the bastard.

A man walks into doctor's office. "What seems to be the problem?" asks the doc. "It's... um... well... I have five penises." replies the man. "Blimey!" says the doctor, "How do your trousers fit?" "Like a glove."

I went to the butchers the other day and I bet him 50 quid that he couldn't reach the meat off the top shelf. And he said, "No, the steaks are too high."

I went to buy some camouflage trousers the other day but I couldn't find any.

Deja Moo: The feeling that you've heard this bullshit before

A guy walks into the psychiatrist wearing only Glad Wrap shorts. The shrink says, "Well, I can clearly see you're nuts."

"Doc, I can't stop singing 'The green, green grass of home"." That sounds like Tom Jones syndrome." "Is it common?" "It's not unusual."

Two aerials meet on a roof, fall in love get married. The ceremony wasn't much but the reception was brilliant.

A man walks into a bar with a slab of asphalt under his arm and says: "A beer please, and one for the road."

A dyslexic man walks into a bra.

A sandwich walks into a bar. The barman says, "Sorry we don't serve food in here."

Two fish swim into a concrete wall. One turns to the other and says "dam".

Two cows standing next to each other in a field, Daisy says to Dolly "I was artificially inseminated this morning." "I don't believe you," said Dolly. "Straight up, no bull!"

Two cannibals are eating a clown. One says to the other: "Does this taste funny to you?"

Two blondes walk into a bar - you would think one of them would have seen it.

**yawwwwwnnnnnnnn**

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Now, where was I? Oh yeah...

Funny concept, coincidence. I mean, how often do you say to someone that something happened by coincidence? C'mon, 'fess up, everyone does it. But what is it? Is our world really so small that these things can honestly occur naturally?

The dictionary isn't really very helpful, you know. All it says is what we already know;

Main Entry: co·in·ci·dence
Pronunciation: kO-'in(t)-s&-d&n(t)s, -s&-"den(t)s
Function: noun
Date: 1605
1 : the act or condition of coinciding : CORRESPONDENCE
2 : the occurrence of events that happen at the same time by accident but seem to have some connection; also : any of these occurrences.

So, what the hell happened in 1605 to suddenly trigger this thing called coincidence? Didn't anyone experience coincidence before 1605 and was it merely a coincidence that it occurred in that year and not 3 years before?

You know, this is seriously starting to fuck with my head.

I have just started reading a new book - I know, you are rivetted to your chair now waiting to hear all about it, so I shall not disappoint you, dear and gentle reader.

The book I have just started isn't new and I have read it before, many years ago; it was published in 1977 and is a New Zealand book, or just as precisely, a book about New Zealand. It's called The Governor and was written by Keith Aberdeen. It deals primarily with the 1840's onwards in colonial New Zealand, the Maori Wars and Governor George Grey, the most controversial of figures of our not so very distant past.

The book opens with a preamble by Keith Aberdeen about an incident that occurred the year before the book was published, in June 1976 when he was still in the planning stages of his next project, writing a book about George Grey. He was sitting in a pub in a small backwater village called Rahuia Junction west of Huntly in the Waikato, having a beer and preparing to head north to Auckland when he was approached by a very elderly Maori man who he had never seen before. This distinguished gentleman introduced himself as Aporo and proceeded to advise him not to do it, not to write about Governor Grey - bad things would happen. Some time later, they were joined by a young Maori man whose name was apparently Joe. Joe was a bit under the influence and at one point blurted out that the old man was the great grandson of George Grey. The old man left abruptly and, when Keith Aberdeen was preparing to drive away a short tiime later, approached him in the carpark. He told Aberdeen that, if he must tell the story, to tell it truthfully and perhaps it would protect him. He said no one had ever told the truth before. Then he walked away.

A few short hours later, as Aberdeen was approaching Auckland, he heard on Radio Hauraki (yeah, Hauraki still rocks 27 years later hehe) that there had been a fire at the Rahuia Junction Hotel and it had burned to the ground, killing three people. The next day, he discovered that one of those who died was named Joseph Tamati Grey. He says he knew it was Joe.

Now, even if that was merely the product of an overactive literary brain, it would make good press. Somehow, I think maybe it really did happen.

Now, how do you explain that sort of coincidence? Or do you simply just accept it as a normal twitch in the Fabric of Life and not question it at all?

I don't believe in coincidences - I believe in Fate and Destiny. I feel that every person, occurrence and situation was a distinct possibility (or maybe probablity) from the Time before Eternity existed... in fact, it's probably all happened because Zaphod Beeblebrox stole the Infinite Improbability Drive. See? Now there is another coincidence - Hitchhiker's Guide was written by Douglas Adams... he might be my long lost second cuzzie 39 times removed :-) . Shame he died before we got to really know each other...

I feel like a carrot now. Lucky I bought some today, isn't it. You could even say it's a coincidence.

Simon Sez:
"Bathing led to nudity. Nudity led to promiscuity. So believed the colonial lawmakers of Pennsylvania and Virginia. Philadelphia was especially strict in those early years. You could be jailed there bathing more than once a month."

Dirty, dirty bastards...

~~ It may be that our role on this planet is not to worship God, but to create him.
- Arthur C. Clarke ~~

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Now, where was I? Oh yeah...

Some silly computer humour I felt the need to liberate from the Net, just cos I'm sick of bloody computers this weekend...

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At least once per day, without fail, my computer, like every computer I have ever owned, has some kind of emotional breakdown. It simply stops working -- often when I'm not touching it -- and it puts a message on the screen informing me that an error has occurred. It does not say what the error is, nor where it occurred. For all I know, it occurred in New Zealand, and my computer found out about it via the Internet, and became so upset that it could not go on.

When this happens, I have to turn my computer off and start it up again.
When I do, my computer puts a snippy note on the screen informing me that it is scanning its disks for errors, because it was shut down improperly.

``But I DIDN'T DO ANYTHING!'' I shout, but my computer ignores me, because it is busy scanning its disks. You just know that if it finds any errors, it's going to blame me, even though I don't even know where its disks ARE.

While my computer is busy, I scan my wart. I have a wart on my right leg. It has been there for many years. I call it Buddy. I keep an eye on Buddy, in case his appearance changes. I've read that it's a bad thing, medically, when a wart suddenly changes appearance. If I ever look down and see that Buddy has turned green, or he's wearing a little pair of Groucho glasses, I'll know it's time to take some kind of medical action. Such as quit drinking.

But my point is that because of computer weirdness, I regularly see an entire morning's work -- sometimes as many as 18 words -- get blipped away forever to the Planet of Lost Data. Needless to say, I use Microsoft Windows. I've been a loyal Windows man since the first version, which required you to write on the screen with crayons. Every year or so, Microsoft comes out with a new version, which Microsoft always swears is better and more reliable, and I always buy it. I bought Windows 2.0, Windows 3.0, Windows 3.1415926, Windows 95, Windows 98, Windows ME, Windows RSVP, The Best of Windows, Windows Strikes Back, Windows Does Dallas, and Windows Let's All Buy Bill Gates a House the Size of Vermont.

My computers keep having seizures, but I keep buying Windows versions, hoping I'll get lucky. I'm like the loser in the nightclub who keeps hitting on the hot babe. His shoes are squishing from the piña colada she poured on him, but he's thinking: ``She's warming up to me!''

I bring this all up because now Microsoft has a new version out, Windows XP, which according to everybody is the ``most reliable Windows ever.'' To me, this is like saying that asparagus is ``the most articulate vegetable ever.'' But still, I am tempted. ``Maybe this will be the one,'' I say to Buddy, as the two of us wait for the disks to be scanned.

If I do get Windows XP, I won't try to install it myself. I no longer mess with the innards of my computer. The last time I tried was a disaster, even though I enlisted the aid of my friend Rob Stavis, a medical doctor who is the most mechanically inclined person I know. Rob can disassemble and successfully reassemble a live human being. He and I recently spent an entire weekend trying to solve an allegedly simple computer problem. We wound up at the computer store, talking to guys who were trained by the Monty Python Institute of Customer Service:
US: So, what do we need to make it work?
THEM: You need a model FRT-2038 expostulating refrembulator.
US: And that will make it work?
THEM: No.

Finally, I hired a guy named J.C., who is a Microsoft Certified Technician.
He was in my office for the better part of two days, most of it on the phone with Technical Support. It was fascinating for me, a layperson, to hear the technical terminology that J.C. used to get the information he needed:
``DO NOT PUT ME ON HOLD, DO YOU HEAR ME? DO NOT PUT ME ON HO... HELLO?
HELLO?? YOU (very nontechnical term)!''

In the end, J.C. solved the problem. So now I'm thinking about hiring him again. Because the more I think about this Windows XP, the better it looks, sitting over there by the bar, drinking a pina colada. All I have to do is make my move, and I'll have what every guy dreams of: computer reliability!

I worry about who will take care of Buddy.

~~ Do ya suppose The Dark Ages was caused by the Y1K problem? ~~

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