The Haunting Of The Old Lighthouse

 

Magpie Tales

Is it a ghost or just the caretaker

that lurks in the corner and jumps out to scareya?

From the ole shut down lighthouse on Albany Bay

Where the kids and their pet mutt are well on their way

 From the ole shut down lighthouse the Mystery Machine

Which Fred, Velma, Scooby and Shaggy have seen

In a darkened old building way off of the grid

Seeking the treasure that ole Bluebeard hid

Though he tries hard to chase them they manage to stop

All the plans and the traps and the haunting he's got

And he would have got away with his desperate bids

If it hadn't been for them darn pesky kids

It Must Be Thursday: The Total Perspective Vortex In Practice

 The ongoing saga of a weekly That-Was-The-Week-That-Was posting.

Commenting on things that caught my attention for better or for worse and left me shaking my fist at the sky and shouting "Whyyyy!!!" 

After all: until science brings us a better use for Thursdays - what else is there to do?

 

There's always that temptation to believe that we are the exact centre of the universe, isn't there?

When you think about it being human is a weird thing - we live in a world entirely of our own making, where we can never have any perception of how the others around us see and experience things and, in fact, as far as we know other people could be little more than robots that go back into their boxes for storage when we are not there.  How much better the world might be then if we could only see and experience things that others do - maybe then we'd be more tolerant.

Anyway: have you ever found yourself in a situation, maybe at work or in some social group, perhaps at your local church or speakers club, where you find yourself becoming the "reliable one": the one that everyone turns to in order to get something done, feeling under more and more pressure to be there and unable to turn away feeling that if you step down then no one will offer themselves to take your place?

Or perhaps you've known someone at work who either you or they were convinced without whom the whole thing would fall apart?  Someone who marched into the manager's office believing themselves indispensable and demanding more salary, only to walk out again without a job?

Well: I'm going to let you into a little secret and that is that one of the hardest lessons in life is that no one, and I do mean no one, is indespensible

In one of the Hitch-Hiker's Guide To The Galaxy Douglas Adams talked about a machine called the Total Perspective Vortex into which subjects would be put so they could finally see their place in the universe - the effect of which was insanity or death.  Sometimes working for a big company can be like that too - you can feel like a grain of sand on a never ending beach.

But here's the thing: it's ok to be dispensable.  It's perfectly fine to let go and to walk away.  The weight of the world does not sit on your shoulders and nor should it have to.

If you want to take on more responsibilities at work, at leisure or at home then do so - but you should never feel that you HAVE to do so and nor should you feel under pressure to keep on doing something when those around you just shrug their shoulders and say "ah but you do it so well" - because ultimately the world will keep on turning and there will always be someone, somewhere who can do it too.

It Must Be Thursday: The Age Of The Train?

The ongoing saga of a weekly That-Was-The-Week-That-Was posting.

Commenting on things that caught my attention for better or for worse and left me shaking my fist at the sky and shouting "Whyyyy!!!" 

After all: until science brings us a better use for Thursdays - what else is there to do?



PIXIE: Hi yes, I'm trying to make an inquiry about season tickets

Incomprehensible Member Of Staff (IMOS): Yerrs, where were you heading

PIXIE: From my home to Central Smokey.

IMOS: Ah yes, you can buy two tickets from there, Ticket A the £Modestly rip-off price or Ticket D the £Extremely rip-off price

PIXIE: It's actually the two prices inbetween I'm trying to find out about - my search result on your site came up with Ticket B: £100 more than the Modest rip-off and Ticket C: £100 more again, but still less than the £extreme rip-off

IMOS: Ah yes, but Ticket B requires that your journey goes through or changes at Timbuktoo, whilst Ticket C requires that you go through change at Outer Mongolia

PIXIE: Well, yes - but that's what i'm trying to work out you see - because I was hoping that you could define "goes through" for me.

IMOS: Your train has to go through there

PIXIE: Yeeeees.....but here's the thing - There are two routes that I can see from my house - the Extremely Slow Train Company (ESTC) or the NeverHadSex Company (guessing that readers will probably work out who this company is).  Now ESTC takes about 2hrs to get to Central Smokey, but if I change at my nearest city for NHSC then i can get there in just over 1hr.  So: the NHSC route takes it THROUGH Timbuktoo, but it doesn't stop there - does that count

IMOS: Your train has to go through the station for the ticket to be valid

PIXIE (Slightly frazzled now): Yes, but can you define "goes through" - the train DOES "go through" the station - it just does so at 100 mph - does the train have to stop there, even if i remain on the train, for it to count as going through?

IMOS: No

PIXIE: No it doesn't?

IMOS: Yes, it does

PIXIE: So it does, or it doesn't?

IMOS: The train has to go through the station for the ticket to be valid

PIXIE: OK let me try a different tack then.  Ticket price A only allows me to go on ESTC routes and nothing else - therefore it is the cheapest price yes?

IMOS: Yes

PIXIE: Great, finally some clarity.  B-UT Ticket Price B allows me to get on any train SO LONG AS it goes via Timbuktoo - whatever that actually means - right?

IMOS: Right

PIXIE: AAAH, but you see - the only train that will go through my local stops and stop at Timbuktoo is the ESTC, and the only connection i can get from there to Central Smokey is also run by ESTC - so what you're effectively telling me then is that I'm paying an extra £100 for the privilege of catching exactly the same train, yes?

IMOS: The train has to go through the station for the ticket to be valid

PIXIE: You know, i used to have a toy talking robot dog as a kid that had more stock phrases than you do.  OK - so ticket price C means I have to go via Outer Mongolia, but that otherwise I can catch any train yes?

IMOS: Yes

PIXIE: But the problem here is that the only train to Outer Mongolia won't get me to Central Smokey till nearly midday and has to change at three other locations - so now you're expecting me to pay £200 extra for an even more useless ticket?

IMOS:  The £extreme rip-off train ticket does allow you to catch any train

PIXIE: Yes, but that's over £300 more per month than the ESTC for what, with changes in service, is effectively a 15 minute time difference in journey per day.  Which is why I'm trying to get you to define "goes through" for me.  If it means "must stop at" then it should say "must stop at" so that people with second languages can clearly understand what is being said.  Buuut - if it means "goes through" - IE merely has to pass through the station but doesn't actually have to stop whilst in the process of doing so - then I can have the option of switching to the NHSC service and save myself some time - so please, for the love of God, can you just tell me does the phrase on your website "must go through" translate as "must stop at" or not???

IMOS: The train has to go through the station for the ticket to be valid

Cue sounds of muttered, but still copious, swearing and the sound of a disconnect

It Must Be Thursday: Hot With A Hint Of Frostbite

The ongoing saga of a weekly That-Was-The-Week-That-Was posting.

Commenting on things that caught my attention for better or for worse and left me shaking my fist at the sky and shouting "Whyyyy!!!" 

After all: until science brings us a better use for Thursdays - what else is there to do?

 

It's the first day of May and the sun is out.  Both cats are in the garden enjoying the sun.

The sun is drying the washing on the line and summer is wearing her skirt and showing her legs for the first time this year.

And me: sitting in the front room, working from home: the room that never gets any sun and, as such, is a good 10 degrees colder than the rest of the planet

Sitting with heater plugged in , with a jumper on and a hot drink in my hand to stave off the shivers

Roll on summer.

It Must Be Thursday: Peaks And Troughs List O Fives

The ongoing saga of a weekly That-Was-The-Week-That-Was posting.

Commenting on things that caught my attention for better or for worse and left me shaking my fist at the sky and shouting "Whyyyy!!!" 

After all: until science brings us a better use for Thursdays - what else is there to do?

 

 Any one who has ever held a job for any length of time will know the gut-wrenching feeling of depression that comes with looking at your watch and knowing that there are still three hours until hometime.

Sure: there are days when our jobs whiz along like the proverbial bullet from a gun, but then there are the days when no one else is about, the systems are slow and you have that thing that you are doing in the evening and the day just can't go fast enough.

Much like the above picture of a bra in the road (or possibly two eggs on toast) there are peaks and troughs in a day.  For instance: it seems impossible to get from 2pm to 5pm and then finally once you get to 3 or 4pm you get into the downhill section where you can take your weary feet off the pedals and allow gravity to do the work as you slide down the bannister of your office stairs and leap like a gazelle into your waiting car.

So for old time's sake and because its been a while - here's a list of 5 things you can do to pass the time

#1: Tea Tennis
Find an unsuspecting member of staff - someone who will sometimes say yes to a proffered cup of tea, but will sometimes say no. Then, and without telling them what you are doing, take it in turns to offer a lovely brew.  If they say yes then you score a point, if they say no then your opponent scores the point - NB: this game only works until the victim realizes what you are up to at which point (assuming you haven't finished a match) whoever is in the lead wins

#2: Radio Bingo
If you are allowed to have a radio on in your office tune it to a local radio station.  Local radio stations, at least in the UK, seem to come off a production line and are identical.  The set up is: A male (main) presenter who is about 5% as funny as he thinks he is, accompanied by a female (support) presenter who is 95% more intelligent than she pretends to be on air (but has to play the idiot for the job)

The play lists of these stations vary little from day to day - so the trick is to write a list of artists that you think will be played on a specific day - and the first to tick them all off wins

#3: Imaginary Shot Drinking
I don't drink alcohol very often - I've had a bottle of wine open for nearly two months now and its not finished yet and I certainly wouldn't advocate drinking at work, but I have a colleague who has a habit of saying the same phrase quite frequently and so I recently tried to imagine downing a shot every time they used the verbal crutch.  Just as well I didn't do it for real as I would have been inebriated in under ten minutes and dead within twenty

#4: Lunctime Walk Bingo
I actually went as far as to create some rules for this one before realizing that I see the same things far too often.  For instance:
* a single abandoned shopping trolley would gain 5 points because just seeing one alone is so rare, whereas for every additional trolley you see would cost you a point
* A freshly broken window would get you a point, but you can only count it again if it hasn't been mended after 3 months
* A speeding car that fails to indicate would be minus points as its so frequent

#5: Scanning Cricket
A bit out of date this one as scanning documents is so rare now - the rules were that you gained runs until the scanner malfunctioned and then were "out" - you could probably devise a modern equivalent that counts emails with attachments against without

#6: Word Of The Day
This one is courtesy of Argent who was once challenged to try and get the phrase/word "Babycakes" into a meeting with a client.  The rules, then, are clear - pick an obscure or made up word and challenge your fellow workers to work it into a conversation or meeting without anyone questioning it.

The prize in each of the above is a cup of lovely tea (or possibly coffee if you're that way inclined)

It Must Be Thursday: Mother Of Invention

The ongoing saga of a weekly That-Was-The-Week-That-Was posting.

Commenting on things that caught my attention for better or for worse and left me shaking my fist at the sky and shouting "Whyyyy!!!" 

After all: until science brings us a better use for Thursdays - what else is there to do?

 

It's easy to laugh about the mistakes of the past isn't it?  We look back at the surgeons who snubbed the idea of germs, the explorers who expected to fall off the edge of the world and anyone who ever thought Frankie Goes To Hollywood were a good band - but often its only with hindsight that we realize how little we knew

Take Thomas Midgley Jr.  A worker at General Motors who was one of the key figures looking at creating a solution for the knocking of engines in cars and came up with tetraethyllead (leaded petrol) 

Of course the difference in his case was that it seems from the wikipedia entry that General Motors knew full well the impact of lead in petrol: their factory workers experienced hallucinations, depression and a high suicide rate - none of which stopped Midgley from pouring the petrol on his arm at a press conference and inhaling it to prove there would be no ill effects (he had to have 12 months medical treatment as a result, which didn't make the papers)

Despite the closure of the factory amongst health concerns leaded petrol continued to be sold until just before the end of the 20th century, polluting the streets and causing unknown levels of illness and damage and Midgley kept his job, moving to the fridgidare section of the company

It was here that he worked on and helped develop Freons - the first of the CFCs.  

Apparently not content with polluting the streets he had inadvertantly helped destroy the ozone layer and added towards global warming.

But hang on a minute before you condem him - as i said at the start: we don't always know when we're wrong.  

How many of today's must-have gadgets and ways of life may in time prove to be harmful?  There has long been some feeling that mobile phones and power lines can be bad for the health - what if one day we discover that we have, all along, been destroying the planet?

The one thing we can say about today is that we now know beyond any reasonable doubt that the earth has finite resources and that at the rate we are using them we will surely exhaust them sooner rather than later: and yet how many of us would go without our gadgets?  Even if we would - with third world countries rapidly coming on line is there anything we can realistically do?

Over the course of his career Midgley was granted over 100 patents - does that mitigate for the harm of a few?  The harm that CFCs were doing was not discovered until decades after his death

His story does not end well, I'm afraid - in later life Thomas Midgley suffered from poliomyelitis and struggled to move around.  He actually went so far as to invent an intricate system of pulleys and wires to get him out of bed - which he got trapped in and strangled to death

Now that really is an example of an invention gone wrong

Magpie Tales: Sawad Daze

A Magpie Tale

ROGER:  Ew Evangeline
EVANGELINE:  Eww Woger
ROGER:  Ew Evangeline
EVANGELINE: Ewww Woger
ROGER: Evangeline...I have a tewwible, tewwible secwet
EVANGELINE: Is it the eating disorder?
ROGER: What eating disorder?
EVANGELINE: The wone where you take the food and shove it...
ROGER: No No: that's pewfectly undwer control as long as I take the tablets
EVANGELINE; Is it the skin condition?
ROGER: No, no - as long as I cover myself in goosberries for half an hour a day it's fine
EVANGELINE: Ew Woger, don't tell me its the job?  Don't tell me you're weally a politician
ROGER: No: I really am a coal miner
EVANEGLINE: So wot is it Woger?
ROGER: Well, the thing is...the truth is...well...
EVANGELINE: Well?  Spwit it owt Woger!
ROGER: Well: the thing is you see - I'm not really a man.  I'm really a woman
(PAUSE)
EVANGELINE: Oh is that all!
ROGER: What do you mean, is that all?
EVANGELINE: Well...I mean...you see...as it turns out I'm weally a man