Priorities
Posted: Thu 12 March, 2009 Filed under: Cynicism, News, Thoughts, Weirdness Leave a comment »Yesterday, wasn’t it interesting how the shooting of ten people in Alabama in the USA suddenly stopped being mentioned once the news of the shooting of fifteen people in Winnenden, Germany started to break?
It was as though the media decided that people wouldn’t want to know about both shootings, so the nearest and/or most recent one took precedence, and the other one could just kind of fall off the news cycle.
Hub Caps
Posted: Fri 27 February, 2009 Filed under: Driving, Travel, Weirdness 2 Comments »In the last month, I’ve somehow managed to lose all four hubcaps from my car. I know one went when I had the blowout, and another one disappeared soon after.
But I’ve lost the other two in the last three days. I haven’t hit anything, gone into any significant pot-holes, haven’t heard or noticed anything of them coming off. There’s no sign of them along my route to work. They’ve just disappeared.
Fortunately, when I had the blowout I’d ordered a couple of replacements from QuickHubs, and ended up getting a set of four as that cost me the same as two individual hubcaps. So in this case it’s fortuitous, as I now need all four – I’d have been mightily narked if I’d paid for two, and now needed two more, as that would have doubled what I’d paid.
At least now all four will match.
And I’ll be attaching them with plastic cable-ties as well, so they should stay put this time round…
Safe Sex Advert
Posted: Thu 5 February, 2009 Filed under: 1BEM, News, Thoughts, Weirdness 1 Comment »This story really should be used as an advert for safe sex.
Just something like “Going on a One night stand? This could be the result”
As I’ve said before, there’s no horror movie around that can outdo what people do to each other anyway.
Barmy driving
Posted: Tue 3 February, 2009 Filed under: Driving, Thoughts, Weirdness Leave a comment »Yesterday’s snow (which has all disappeared here now, thanks to a dollop of rain last night) brought out a bundle of bizarre driving habits along with it.
Fortunately none were as dodgy as this bell-end who took his 1300cc bike up to (at least) 122mph with his son riding pillion and said “But it had started to rain and I pulled back the throttle”. Yes, it had started raining, so he sped up to twice the speed limit. Way to go, dickweed.
Yesterday I got to see several idiots though – particularly (as I said at the time) drivers of four-wheel-drive vehicles with still no idea how to handle the weather at all. There were also (as always) several people driving with foglights on (yes, it’s one of my particular bug-bears, I know) during both snow and the evening rain. Now first of all the visibility wasn’t that bad at any point yesterday that it needed foglights on – but also foglights aren’t (as these drivers seemed to think) a Magic Talisman Of Road Protection™®, so I don’t understand the mental equation that says “I think the visibility is so bad that I need to put my foglights on, but I won’t slow down and I’ll still whack along this dual-carriageway at 80+ mph“.
All told, a very strange day on the roads.
But one good thing was that because of all the media rubbish about bad weather etc., there was virtually no traffic on the way home from work – I think I made the best time yet…
Norfolk Place Names
Posted: Sat 24 January, 2009 Filed under: Domestic, Travel, Weirdness 2 Comments »One of the things that’s pretty much guaranteed to drive you crackers when moving to Norfolk (and I’m sure the same is true of many other counties – it’s just that with being here, I notice the Norfolk ones more) is the sheer randomness of the pronunciation of some of the town names.
For example, how would you pronounce Wymondham ? I’m pretty sure it wouldn’t be Windham. (win-dom)
Other examples I’ve recently fallen foul of include :
- Happisburgh – hays-bur
- Tacolneston – tackle-ston
- Stiffkey – stookey
- Garboldisham – garble-sham
There’s plenty of others too, and locals invariably look at you like you’re some kind of weirdo when you pronounce the places like they’re spelt.
Mountains out of Molehills
Posted: Fri 23 January, 2009 Filed under: News, Thoughts, Weirdness Leave a comment »It’s weird, but in the last couple of days there’ve been two stories I’ve noticed in the media where a small argument or action has exploded into a murder.
First there was the row that started over the name of a kitten, and ended up with one person stabbing the other.
Then there was the man who murdered his estranged wife because she changed her Facebook status to ‘single’.
Now, I know – and freely admit – that sometimes I let stupid little things build up until I get pissed off, but then it all goes out and job done. I can’t see that those things would ever build up to me killing someone. Maybe that’s why these stories are (to me) so very, very strange.