General Discussion Thread

[Antillanka]

  File photo of mr_plinkett at work

Bwahahahha!

[Purple Wyrm]

Fingers crossed my phone line is now fixed. I haven't heard anything from the phone company but I started getting a dial town yesterday afternoon and was able to place and receive calls, and was able to get online this morning. The dial tone does sound weird though, so I'm not 100% sure it's completely fixed.

Cheer up, Wyrm, at least you won't get telephone salespeople!

I am one of those rare and lucky individuals with a landline number that has always been unlisted, and hence get a total of three or four telemarketer calls per year!

Wait, why should I do things differently just because YOU have issues?

Oh quiet you!

[Róisín]

You are lucky! Even though we are supposed to have a silent number, we are still plagued with telemarketers -I think Telstra just sells them block lists of numbers.

Still, could be worse. Years ago I lived in a sharehouse, in which one of my housemates was a distant relative of a famous television personality, and had the same unusual surname and the same first initial. We got calls at all hours, everything from declarations of undying love to whistleblower calls on an astonishing number of scandals. They wouldn't take no for an answer, even when we repeatedly explained that no, the person who lived here was the wrong gender, and he was a traditional musician rather than a current affairs reporter, and we didn't even own a television set. The responses tended to "Yes, yes, I know you have to say that, but this is really important, so just tell her that....." . It got very annoying.

[urbicande]

[Purple Wyrm]

Still, could be worse. Years ago I lived in a sharehouse, in which one of my housemates was a distant relative of a famous television personality, and had the same unusual surname and the same first initial. We got calls at all hours, everything from declarations of undying love to whistleblower calls on an astonishing number of scandals. They wouldn't take no for an answer, even when we repeatedly explained that no, the person who lived here was the wrong gender, and he was a traditional musician rather than a current affairs reporter, and we didn't even own a television set. The responses tended to "Yes, yes, I know you have to say that, but this is really important, so just tell her that....." . It got very annoying.

He wasn't named J. Wendt by any chance was he? (First person that sprung to mind!)

On a completely different subject, here's someone else's take on militarised felines...

Feline Special Operations Squad

[Róisín]

Wyrm: Heh, yes, he was. He is many years dead now, but that was the one. And she had an unlisted number, probably for just these reasons.

And the cats are amusing.

[Iceea]

Ahh, the memories of group house (sharehouse) living. One of the housemates I lived with was a model. The real deal, absolutely gorgeous, but a down to earth person and a real sweetheart. Occasionally she'd get hired to be a booth babe at a trade show somewhere. When she'd come back she'd put this list of names on the phone board saying if any of these guys call, you don't know me, never heard of me, must have a wrong number. And some times one other name saying if this guy calls get his number!
Another housemate's sister was married to one of the Starsky & Hutch duo from the TV show of the same name, I forget which one. Occasionally he, the brother in law - TV star, would call and ask to speak to Peter. You'd recognize his voice from the show instantly but Peter asked us to be very cool and treat the call like any other. So we would but, there was some catch phrase from the show, which I also forget, that would have been perfect to end the conversation with. Maybe like, "sure thing Hutch" or something like that. I always wanted to say it but never did.

[Fauna]

According to the servers at work I am now nicknamed the milk man.

Yey

So, is your milk the regular kind, or the exploding dream kind? I hope it's not fortified with what the world wants.. or what it deserves.

[MR_PLINKETT]

So, is your milk the regular kind, or the exploding dream kind? I hope it's not fortified with what the world wants.. or what it deserves.

My milk is what the world deserves, but not what it needs right now.

[Purple Wyrm]

Tim Minchin has just posted this wonderful take on Australia's idiotic, non-binding, Same Sex Marriage postal/vote/survey waste-of-time-and-money-when-they-could-just-join-the-21st-century-with-a-simple-vote-in-parliament thing.

https://www.facebook.com/timminchin/videos/10155430722376826/

[Róisín]

Wyrm, that's delightful! Hooray for Tim Minchin!

[Purple Wyrm]

Some genius has created a website to chronicle the... issue... that regularly occurs at the end of my street 

[JoB]

Some genius has created a website to chronicle the... issue... that regularly occurs at the end of my street 

ONLY eight hits so far?!? Cologne's "Idiots' Bridge" is at 100+ and counting ...

[Iceea]

There's a number of bridges like that in the US. Storrow drive here in Boston was designed only for cars so anytime a truck or bus tries it, crunch! There was one batch of pictures on You Tube of an underpass some where. Short videos actually. And what I thought was really great were the big campers that would shear off all the AC units and other stuff on the roof but leave the roof proper untouched, and just keep on driving, not stopping.

"Dear did you just hear some noise?" "hunh, no I didn't hear anything."

[Róisín]

Funniest thing of that kind I've seen was at the Aldgate railway bridge in the Adelaide Hills. Big shiny tourist bus, full of tourists, drove under it and stuck, jammed between the bridge and the road. Panic ensued. People were running around trying to organise a crane, permissions to partly dismantle the bridge (which were not forthcoming both because it is an heritage bridge and because the main Adelaide-Melbourne train line runs across it). Finally some genius had the idea of letting down the tyres of the bus, and it was able to creep out from under the bridge.