I sent the following, last Saturday afternoon, to the Police Complaints email address I found on the website of my local Police force. It's self expananatory:
"Earlier this afternoon, at about 1.30pm, Saturday 17/5/08, I was waiting to walk across X Parade., a few hundred metres west of the intersection with XXX Terrace. There was quite a lot of traffic queued facing east at a red light and, at a break in the centre island on X Parade. A police vehicle facing the opposite direction was waiting to do a U-turn, but this was obviously not being facilitated with as much ease as the driver wished as there was no break in traffic to allow this manoeuvre.
So on came the flashing lights atop the vehicle, causing other vehicles to stop as they approached to let the police car turn and then, with lights still flashing, vehicles were persuaded to either pull aside or close up to others in front of them to create a big enough gap for the police vehicle to cross 2 lanes and enter a car park to their left. I watched, assuming they were going to cut through the car park to avoid the lights and carry on down XXX Terrace about some business, but no. The vehicle was then parked and a uniformed officer got out and went into the Subway takeaway to order himself some lunch!
I was left wondering about the legality of this sequence of events. Surely the flashing lights are meant to be used in emergency situations and the power to make other vehicles get out of the way is something that should be reserved for some sort of police business, not to speed up entry to a takeaway to buy a sandwich. Consequently I took note of the registration of the police vehicle, which is XXX-XXX, and decided to bring this matter to the attention of some appropriate authority.
To be honest, I'm getting a bit sick of this sort of thing. It feels like bullying, throwing weight and authority around unnecessarily. As a resident of XXX Terrace I quite often witness police vehicles travelling up the road in the wrong direction (ie. on the wrong side of the traffic island opposite the X Hotel) for something like 20 to 30 metres in order to perform nothing more important than, again, access the Subway store across the road there, but this usually just causes me to laugh, being fully aware that should they see anyone else do exactly the same thing then the driver would be pulled over and fined. The use of the flashing lights to facilitate the same objective, however, seemed one step too far for me to be amused by it.
Regards,
Justified Ancient of Mu Mu"
I got an official letter in the post today, informing me that my complaint had been referred to the "Internal Investigations Branch" and that I would soon be receiving a phone call from an officer to initiate a "conciliation process".
I'm scared!
Wednesday, May 21, 2008
Wednesday, April 09, 2008
What moron invented money?
Every day there are dozens of things that annoy me. They start first thing with the alarm clock which just shits me on principal, reminding me every morning that we as a species are completely fucked. What other animal sets up their civilisation in such a way that nearly all freedoms of the individual are voluntarily given up? I’m not talking about ants or bees, they don’t really function as individuals in the first place and besides, they have the simple, basic, shared purpose of survival to take care of. We humans are perfectly able to look after ourselves as a hunter/gatherer species and yet we have chosen to delegate those tasks to others in favour of each pursuing a single, self chosen task for the purpose of acquiring small rectangles of a paper-like substance that we exchange for the goods and services we can no longer acquire or do for ourselves because we’re too busy doing the crap thing we decided to do for the rest of our lives. Whose bright idea was that? What fucking idiot thought that life would be better if we shared tasks and exchanged money to balance out everyone’s efforts? That person was wrong. Yes, civilisation as a whole benefits, we progressed, and we get a bigger, brighter, more complicated choice of stuff we can have, and I love stuff more than most, but it’s a pretty rubbish system from a personal satisfaction, enjoyment of living perspective. Take me for instance. I work on a computer and will happily admit that, as a task, this is a hell of a lot easier than building my own shelter, growing my own vegetables, hunting the occasional wild animal and trying not to to get myself killed in the process, but I can’t help feeling that life would be a lot more interesting and fun that way. The biggest challenge I face each day is heaving myself unwillingly out of bed each morning, cursing the moron who invented the concept of money and who is responsible for each of us having to be up and dressed and off out to our daily job at a set time every day. Cunt.
Saturday, March 29, 2008
Earth Hour
Bah Humbug. I've been shopping for spotlights and power boards this afternoon and at 8pm my intention is to light my house up like an airfield. Landing lights, that's what I need and lots of 'em.
Fucking hippies.
Fucking hippies.
Nano Silver Technology????
They're making this shit up. What the fuck is Nano Silver Technology? No idea. It was just on an ad I saw on tv, for something... no idea, again. I was too distracted by the magical sounding words, Nano Silver Technology. It might have been a washing machine although, having now searched for the term (yes I "Googled" it but I prefer the more generic term "searched") I've discovered that this alleged "technology" is being applied to everything from wet wipes and cosmetics to food storage and, as mentioned, washing machines. It does things to bacteria they say.
Hmmmmmmm. Sounds like crap.
Hmmmmmmm. Sounds like crap.
Saturday, March 15, 2008
Tuesday, February 26, 2008
I am NOT an ineffectual idiot!
OK, things go wrong. I know that. The interweb is a complicated thing full of plugs and sockets and wires and chips and hardware and software and general manifestations of the latest advances in technology that I have no understanding of, or interest in. I know that too.
Still...
INTERNODE I FUCKING SMITE YOU TO HELL!!!!!
I'm not happy. I go through the hassle of getting our Web Host to change the whole server thingumy to one that allows a forum to function (apparently it's complicated and requires database whatsists), spend most of a weekend, until 2am on Sunday, making it work and look pretty. I tested it all day Monday and on Tuesday I send out a launch email to almost everyone I ever received an email from, asking them to go forth and play with it, and several do immediately. They join as members, plug their businesses and generally do exactly what I hoped they would... then Internode crashes out our server for three hours and, when it starts working again, the database ends up reset to where it was the day before. New members gone, their posts deleted as if they never existed.
One step forward, two steps back. Grrrrrr...
Still...
INTERNODE I FUCKING SMITE YOU TO HELL!!!!!
I'm not happy. I go through the hassle of getting our Web Host to change the whole server thingumy to one that allows a forum to function (apparently it's complicated and requires database whatsists), spend most of a weekend, until 2am on Sunday, making it work and look pretty. I tested it all day Monday and on Tuesday I send out a launch email to almost everyone I ever received an email from, asking them to go forth and play with it, and several do immediately. They join as members, plug their businesses and generally do exactly what I hoped they would... then Internode crashes out our server for three hours and, when it starts working again, the database ends up reset to where it was the day before. New members gone, their posts deleted as if they never existed.
One step forward, two steps back. Grrrrrr...
Tuesday, December 11, 2007
The Planet's fine. Leave it alone.
Hello.
Hi.
Have you got a minute for Greenpeace?
No, it's too nice a day for an argument.
Why would we have an argument? I just want to answer any questions about Greenpeace you might have and explain how you can help to save the planet.
Oh God, we are going to have an argument aren't we?
Why?
Well because, for a start, the planet doesn't need saving. It's just a huge compressed mass surrounded by molten rock with a crust on top. It's fine, been fine for billions of years and will continue to be fine for billions more. It's the environment that surrounds the planet that's in trouble and, quite frankly, I don't consider it worth saving.
Um, oh. What?. Why not?
Look, Greenpeace and almost everyone else takes this incredibly narrow view of things that says that what we have is worth saving. I don't. You know of the thing where you compress the entire history of the planet into the timescale of a single year? Earth somehow magically appears on the instant of New Years Day, becomes habitable somewhere on Christmas Eve and Human Beings don't show up until a few minutes before midnight on News Years Eve at the end of the year. The entire recorded history as we know it covers only the last few seconds and each of our lifetimes last less than the time it takes to even think about blinking, let alone carry out the action. And Greenpeace seems to think that these last few seconds are all that matters. As I said, I don't agree.
But what about the animals? What about the rainforests which mankind is wiping out at a rate of...
Sorry but I'm not interested in your statistics about how the rainforests or the animals are doing. They are doing badly, I know! Everyone knows. I simply have a different way of thinking about this that tells me that it's pointless trying to clean up the mess. It's a waste of time taking actions under the expectation that mankind will somehow stop fucking everything up. We won't! As far as I'm concerned, mankind is a virus. A virus with a finite future and the quicker we destroy everything in sight and make the environment unlivable, thereby making ourselves and, admittedly, everything else extinct, the better. In a million or so years from now everything will be fine and lovely again with a whole new set of, hopefully, more viable species than the lot we currently have running around killing, eating and flattening everything in sight. THEN the environment will no longer be under threat and the planet, which will have been fine throughout this whole process, can continue to be so without the need of Greenpeace going about telling everyone it's in danger when in fact it never was in the first place.
*The sound of a Greenpeace volunteer walking away*
Hi.
Have you got a minute for Greenpeace?
No, it's too nice a day for an argument.
Why would we have an argument? I just want to answer any questions about Greenpeace you might have and explain how you can help to save the planet.
Oh God, we are going to have an argument aren't we?
Why?
Well because, for a start, the planet doesn't need saving. It's just a huge compressed mass surrounded by molten rock with a crust on top. It's fine, been fine for billions of years and will continue to be fine for billions more. It's the environment that surrounds the planet that's in trouble and, quite frankly, I don't consider it worth saving.
Um, oh. What?. Why not?
Look, Greenpeace and almost everyone else takes this incredibly narrow view of things that says that what we have is worth saving. I don't. You know of the thing where you compress the entire history of the planet into the timescale of a single year? Earth somehow magically appears on the instant of New Years Day, becomes habitable somewhere on Christmas Eve and Human Beings don't show up until a few minutes before midnight on News Years Eve at the end of the year. The entire recorded history as we know it covers only the last few seconds and each of our lifetimes last less than the time it takes to even think about blinking, let alone carry out the action. And Greenpeace seems to think that these last few seconds are all that matters. As I said, I don't agree.
But what about the animals? What about the rainforests which mankind is wiping out at a rate of...
Sorry but I'm not interested in your statistics about how the rainforests or the animals are doing. They are doing badly, I know! Everyone knows. I simply have a different way of thinking about this that tells me that it's pointless trying to clean up the mess. It's a waste of time taking actions under the expectation that mankind will somehow stop fucking everything up. We won't! As far as I'm concerned, mankind is a virus. A virus with a finite future and the quicker we destroy everything in sight and make the environment unlivable, thereby making ourselves and, admittedly, everything else extinct, the better. In a million or so years from now everything will be fine and lovely again with a whole new set of, hopefully, more viable species than the lot we currently have running around killing, eating and flattening everything in sight. THEN the environment will no longer be under threat and the planet, which will have been fine throughout this whole process, can continue to be so without the need of Greenpeace going about telling everyone it's in danger when in fact it never was in the first place.
*The sound of a Greenpeace volunteer walking away*
Monday, December 10, 2007
Tis the season for mass murder, fa la la la la la la la lah
A man went berserk in Woolworths today when a shopper apparently hindered his access to the Whiskas Tuna & Mackeral Bites in Aisle 12, pet food.
Having previously meekly pushed past a woman who was conversing with her friend in the vicinity of the Vine Ripened Roma Tomatoes in the marvellous Fruit & Veg Spectacular section, Mr. J. Ancient, of Mu Mu, later impatiently reached in front of a man quietly devoting his hours to choosing the exact packet of 6 Free Range Chicken Drumsticks he required.
Within minutes Mr. Ancient rudely shoved aside a shopping trolley carefully placed at exactly 90 degrees in the extensively stocked International Foods section, startling it's owner, Mrs. I. Dullard, who was talking to her 10 year old daughter Caitlan about the dangers of picking up packets of noodles from the shelves at the time.
Ancient later menacingly growled the word "move" to 4 staff employees who were conducting a long discussion as to whose responsibility it was to tidy the Ploughman's Loaf Bread rack of the non-aligned loaves therein.
Mrs P. Granny, interviewed later at the scene, said she spotted Mr. Ancient heading purposefully towards the knives section of the Kitchen Implements department, where he chose the largest of the range and placed it in his basket.
Mr F. Bastard was quietly contemplating the relative peace of aisle 12, surrounded by numerous attractively packaged, and excellently priced, boxes and cans of cat food, when Ancient killed him. Security camera footage appears to show the attacker speak to Mr. Bastard, walk away, put other products in his basket, return and speak again, wait and, just as Mr. Bastard acknowledged his presence, stab him violently in the head.
No motive has been discovered to date. Police have detained a suspect.
Having previously meekly pushed past a woman who was conversing with her friend in the vicinity of the Vine Ripened Roma Tomatoes in the marvellous Fruit & Veg Spectacular section, Mr. J. Ancient, of Mu Mu, later impatiently reached in front of a man quietly devoting his hours to choosing the exact packet of 6 Free Range Chicken Drumsticks he required.
Within minutes Mr. Ancient rudely shoved aside a shopping trolley carefully placed at exactly 90 degrees in the extensively stocked International Foods section, startling it's owner, Mrs. I. Dullard, who was talking to her 10 year old daughter Caitlan about the dangers of picking up packets of noodles from the shelves at the time.
Ancient later menacingly growled the word "move" to 4 staff employees who were conducting a long discussion as to whose responsibility it was to tidy the Ploughman's Loaf Bread rack of the non-aligned loaves therein.
Mrs P. Granny, interviewed later at the scene, said she spotted Mr. Ancient heading purposefully towards the knives section of the Kitchen Implements department, where he chose the largest of the range and placed it in his basket.
Mr F. Bastard was quietly contemplating the relative peace of aisle 12, surrounded by numerous attractively packaged, and excellently priced, boxes and cans of cat food, when Ancient killed him. Security camera footage appears to show the attacker speak to Mr. Bastard, walk away, put other products in his basket, return and speak again, wait and, just as Mr. Bastard acknowledged his presence, stab him violently in the head.
No motive has been discovered to date. Police have detained a suspect.
Saturday, December 16, 2006
The Drug Eluting Stent Trial Checkup Story
In earlier stories I described the heart attack that got me into hospital and the Angiogram and Angioplasty procedures that fixed me up, and now, 9 months later, it's time for another Angiogram to see how things are going. Grrrrrrrr.
As I said in The Coronary Procedure Story, an Angiogram is one of the most unpleasant experiences I've ever had. It was scary and I really Really REALLY wasn't looking forward to having another one... especially as it wasn't something I actually needed. I was doing this basically just for the advancement of medical science, and, well, fuck medical science! What has it ever done for me? OK, lots of things probably, especially this particular stent thing I guess.
It IS amazing that they can shove stuff up your arm and fix a blocked artery. It is also excellent that the type of stent I agreed to have reduces the odds of having it block up again within the first year from 20% to 5%, in theory, and it is a new thing and they do need to test new things to see if they are working and, apparently, they don't have that many candidates who are eligible or willing for the trial and therefore any results they can get through the cooperation of the few who were would be extremely useful and blah blah blah. I just didn't want to go through it again, but I did.
I'd like to say I did it for altruistic reasons but really I just did it because:
A) It would be personally useful to find out if the thing isn't blocking up, and
B) I hate conflict and am too big a poof to tell the trial people I wasn't going to.
So at 7.15am (IN THE BLOODY MORNING!!!) I checked myself into hospital as requested and was led upstairs to the cardiac ward with a group of 4 other people who were also having various heart related procedures that day. One of them was a girl named Michelle, somewhere in her 20's, who has Downs Syndrome and who seemed to find me fascinating. Every time I noticed her she was staring at me, so I would smile and she would laugh, and I figured that wasn't a bad game to distract both of us from what we were going to be doing that day, so I did it some more.
The day was marred by two things. Firstly, as a good thing, the doctor said he would go in through my wrist and not my groin. That was great news but unfortunately, after about 10 minutes of unsuccessful and painful shoving and pulling it was decided that it wouldn't work. I was informed that after my earlier Angioplasty, that artery now had too much scar tissue to allow them to use it again. That's not very encouraging. Now I have fears of THAT blocking, causing my arm to die and drop off! They didn't seem too alarmed and everything they said indicated that this was fairly normal but at no stage did anyone actually say that my arm wouldn't die and drop off later. I guess I should have asked someone.
Now they shifted focus to my groin, gave me a quick shave and injected a local anaesthetic that made my right leg go hot. They also decided to give me some happy juice into my IV or whatever the needle thing in my left arm was called. It didn't exactly make me happy but I was fine. More blood thinners was also added to my system.
Last time I'd been in there I was looking at everything on the big bank of monitors above me but this time I just lay there and closed my eyes until it was over. After a while I was told, gratifyingly, that the stent was "as clear and shiny as the day we put it in". A success. Hurrah!!
Soon enough the doctors were finished and a collagen plug was inserted into the hole they'd made and I was wheeled back out to a holding bay, where a nurse disturbingly declared me to be "oozing". I was to hear this word a lot for the rest of the day.
It was about 11am when it was decided that I should have a heavy sandbag put on the groin to hold the plug in until I stopped oozing. At 2pm I hadn't, so a new plan was launched into action that involved haphazardly shaving more of my groin, half of my belly and a large portion of my upper leg around to my right buttock. A large length of bandage was rolled up and placed over the troublesome ooze and a 60cm length of non stretchy, very sticky, bandagey tape stuff about the width of toilet paper was stuck tight from my waist, across the groin and around the back of my leg to hold it tightly in place. An hour later I was still oozing.
When I asked why this was happening, especially as the other people I'd come in at the same time as had all gone home, including Michelle who had spend a good hour staring at me in bed before she left, even though I wasn't smiling back at her very much, I was informed that I must be "especially sensitive to the blood thinners". Great.
The tape was removed... actually, removed doesn't do the process justice. Ripped off would be more accurate, taking a good deal of hair with it and causing me to, alarmingly (judging by the shocked expression on the nurses face) scream in a blasphemous manner. Then the whole contraption was recreated with new materials and I was left to wait until I stopped this inconvenient oozing, which I did, thankfully, about another hour later, and I was allowed to leave. Mind you, I had to lie to do so!
The rules are that I wasn't allowed to leave alone. Someone had to collect me and had to stay with me overnight at home, I was told. No, I couldn't leave and phone my friend, Bronwen, to come and get me outside, she had to physically come to the ward and fetch me and she had to convince them that she would stay with me that night. By now it was about 4.30pm so I phoned Bron and she came and collected me and drove me home, which was nice of her. Then she went home, because I didn't actually want anyone around. I'd had enough of people for one day.
So that is my Drug Eluting Stent Trial Checkup Story. All good news. Yay!
As I said in The Coronary Procedure Story, an Angiogram is one of the most unpleasant experiences I've ever had. It was scary and I really Really REALLY wasn't looking forward to having another one... especially as it wasn't something I actually needed. I was doing this basically just for the advancement of medical science, and, well, fuck medical science! What has it ever done for me? OK, lots of things probably, especially this particular stent thing I guess.
It IS amazing that they can shove stuff up your arm and fix a blocked artery. It is also excellent that the type of stent I agreed to have reduces the odds of having it block up again within the first year from 20% to 5%, in theory, and it is a new thing and they do need to test new things to see if they are working and, apparently, they don't have that many candidates who are eligible or willing for the trial and therefore any results they can get through the cooperation of the few who were would be extremely useful and blah blah blah. I just didn't want to go through it again, but I did.
I'd like to say I did it for altruistic reasons but really I just did it because:
A) It would be personally useful to find out if the thing isn't blocking up, and
B) I hate conflict and am too big a poof to tell the trial people I wasn't going to.
So at 7.15am (IN THE BLOODY MORNING!!!) I checked myself into hospital as requested and was led upstairs to the cardiac ward with a group of 4 other people who were also having various heart related procedures that day. One of them was a girl named Michelle, somewhere in her 20's, who has Downs Syndrome and who seemed to find me fascinating. Every time I noticed her she was staring at me, so I would smile and she would laugh, and I figured that wasn't a bad game to distract both of us from what we were going to be doing that day, so I did it some more.
The day was marred by two things. Firstly, as a good thing, the doctor said he would go in through my wrist and not my groin. That was great news but unfortunately, after about 10 minutes of unsuccessful and painful shoving and pulling it was decided that it wouldn't work. I was informed that after my earlier Angioplasty, that artery now had too much scar tissue to allow them to use it again. That's not very encouraging. Now I have fears of THAT blocking, causing my arm to die and drop off! They didn't seem too alarmed and everything they said indicated that this was fairly normal but at no stage did anyone actually say that my arm wouldn't die and drop off later. I guess I should have asked someone.
Now they shifted focus to my groin, gave me a quick shave and injected a local anaesthetic that made my right leg go hot. They also decided to give me some happy juice into my IV or whatever the needle thing in my left arm was called. It didn't exactly make me happy but I was fine. More blood thinners was also added to my system.
Last time I'd been in there I was looking at everything on the big bank of monitors above me but this time I just lay there and closed my eyes until it was over. After a while I was told, gratifyingly, that the stent was "as clear and shiny as the day we put it in". A success. Hurrah!!
Soon enough the doctors were finished and a collagen plug was inserted into the hole they'd made and I was wheeled back out to a holding bay, where a nurse disturbingly declared me to be "oozing". I was to hear this word a lot for the rest of the day.
It was about 11am when it was decided that I should have a heavy sandbag put on the groin to hold the plug in until I stopped oozing. At 2pm I hadn't, so a new plan was launched into action that involved haphazardly shaving more of my groin, half of my belly and a large portion of my upper leg around to my right buttock. A large length of bandage was rolled up and placed over the troublesome ooze and a 60cm length of non stretchy, very sticky, bandagey tape stuff about the width of toilet paper was stuck tight from my waist, across the groin and around the back of my leg to hold it tightly in place. An hour later I was still oozing.
When I asked why this was happening, especially as the other people I'd come in at the same time as had all gone home, including Michelle who had spend a good hour staring at me in bed before she left, even though I wasn't smiling back at her very much, I was informed that I must be "especially sensitive to the blood thinners". Great.
The tape was removed... actually, removed doesn't do the process justice. Ripped off would be more accurate, taking a good deal of hair with it and causing me to, alarmingly (judging by the shocked expression on the nurses face) scream in a blasphemous manner. Then the whole contraption was recreated with new materials and I was left to wait until I stopped this inconvenient oozing, which I did, thankfully, about another hour later, and I was allowed to leave. Mind you, I had to lie to do so!
The rules are that I wasn't allowed to leave alone. Someone had to collect me and had to stay with me overnight at home, I was told. No, I couldn't leave and phone my friend, Bronwen, to come and get me outside, she had to physically come to the ward and fetch me and she had to convince them that she would stay with me that night. By now it was about 4.30pm so I phoned Bron and she came and collected me and drove me home, which was nice of her. Then she went home, because I didn't actually want anyone around. I'd had enough of people for one day.
So that is my Drug Eluting Stent Trial Checkup Story. All good news. Yay!
Sunday, July 23, 2006
Laziness
I'm one of the laziest people I've ever known.
It's been months since I've written anything for this thing and, although I'd like to say it's because I've been screamingly busy, I haven't. I think it's because I like instant reactions to stuff and, well, nobody but me even knows this page exists, so nobody is reading anything, so what's the point of writing it?
Telling people about it might be a good start but that'd be cheating! This is sort of like an experiment to see internet osmosis in action.
So I shall start writing more and posting more pictures and just sit back and watch...
It's been months since I've written anything for this thing and, although I'd like to say it's because I've been screamingly busy, I haven't. I think it's because I like instant reactions to stuff and, well, nobody but me even knows this page exists, so nobody is reading anything, so what's the point of writing it?
Telling people about it might be a good start but that'd be cheating! This is sort of like an experiment to see internet osmosis in action.
So I shall start writing more and posting more pictures and just sit back and watch...
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