bizgirl

A sad farewell to Will of Oxford, England, whose tales of singledom have been keeping me in various states of amusement, horror and vicarious frustration (and sometimes all three at once). His blog of romantic exploits is to be drawn to a close, as he's got himself a 'proper' job...

Since march I have been unemployed and have been living off my savings, but last week I was offered an amazing job. Its the start of a whole new exciting career for me. I'm not going to tell you what it is though!

The bad news is that it means I have to stop blogging. I know article 8 of the European Convention on Human Rights guarantees me the right to a free and private life but integrity is stressed as an essential requirement for my new job. So I think its best I stop blogging.

His last bout of romantic endeavour was with a long-time female friend called Caroline, and, thankfully, he at least leaves us with this conclusion to that story...

So one last titbit. I am not going to pursue a relationship with Caroline, its just not going to happen. For me, the start of a relationship should be really happy and exciting. Caroline is just laying down rules and is too obsessively worried it will fail. And that is exactly what WILL make it fail.

He never did tell us if he got a shag after his latest date at the fancy restaurant though. Perhaps the integrity required for his new job that precludes him from blogging won't stretch to having him have to stop making comments on other people's blogs (eh Will?).

Normally we play our indoor soccer games at Wellington's Queen's Wharf Events Centre on the fast and hard wooden surfaces that also get used for Basketball and Netball league games (and the occasional big international gig, garden show, or Lord of the Rings party. Actually, click through to that Events Centre link if you're just time-wasting, they've got some excellent 360 degree views of the inside of the Centre which show how they set the place up, although, though, not always for simultaneous soccer and volleyball, as they seem to be getting ready for in the example photo).

Anyway, that's where we normally play. The company that run the indoor sports side of things have been gradually converting some of the old sheds on the wharves into purpose-built indoor soccer pitches, with that nasty artificial turf stuff as the surface. We played in one of the shed's this week for the first time in an age, and spent most of the time tripping over - the astroturf seems to nearly grip the ball at times, as opposed to skimming off the polished wood they have in the Events Centre. Very frustrating. Still, it does make it easier to dribble (it gets away on you so easily on the wooden floors), so I tried a few extravagant moves through the middle tonight, and was very (very) pleased to have a hat-trick inside the first five minutes.

First goal was a one touch off a decent long goal-kick from Christine that left their goalie flat-footed, second was one where I just nicked the ball from the front of a defender's foot, pushed it right, then slotted it home, and the last was a dribbling (although my team-mates told me it was more like "falling gracefully, for a long time") effort from half-way where I'm not entirely sure as to how the ball got into the back of the net. There it was though. Hat trick!

Sally conspired to let them back into the game with her patented 'put-your-back-to-the-attackers' style of goal-keeping, which handed our opponents at three goals in her short stint in goal, but, once we got her out of there, the game was won, with Janey in particularly rampant mood, spurred on perhaps, by her home country's unfortunate outing against Portugal last week. Final score: 11-4.

But, yes, my knees! After last week's battle, I already had a couple of minor scrapes from tumbling onto the wooden floor of the Events Centre. Tonight, after a couple of falls onto the astroturf at high speed, my knees look like so much raw meat. It's horrible. And they bloody sting. I've washed them out with Savlon, so, hopefully the pain will go away, but there'll be no more short skirts at the library for me for a couple of weeks (not that I'd be wearing them in this weather anyway, but it's having the option that counts).

Still, I'm vaguely proud of my skinned knees - it makes me feel young(er) - like one of the kids who come in each day with equally bashed up knees and elbows. I'm quite looking forward to one of them complaining about taking some random knock in the children's area so I can console them with my own tales of pain: "You think that's bad? Take a look at this!"

I was traveling home on the bus on Friday evening, stuck in traffic around the Basin Reserve, when, after a couple of minutes of as-per-normal bus silence, the driver suddenly took the opportunity to have a rant about the health system.

"You don't have to listen to this if you don't want to!" he announced, as if those of us in his captive audience without headphones had any choice. He then gave a short, politically obscure disclaimer to the obviously shocking story that was to follow, which eventually started with ...

"I'm now going to tell you about our Health System! I went down to the A&E this morning with a stabbing pain in my eye. I waited for two hours before I saw a doctor! And when I saw him I was told...."

Cruelly, I was near the back of the crowded trolley-bus, so when we got around the Basin Reserve bottle-neck, he throttled up and the whine of the engine drowned his spoken word medical drama out. All I got down Adelaide Road was...

"...two months..."
"...hole in my retina..."
"...had to go and see a specialist..."
"...all day..."
"...laser surgery!"

At which point I think he took out a couple of rear-view mirrors of cars parked illegally in the rush hour clearway, and just about rolled some SUV who had been stupid enough to think this mad (and vision impaired) bus driver was going to let him overtake and get into our lane before the lights. Straddling both lanes of southbound traffic, the bus barreled on towards home, and I got off at the next stop ('Good luck with the eyes!' I yelled as I leapt out the back doors) and did the last 2km on foot.

God, the team we played at indoor soccer this week must have been using the English Rugby Team as their role models. They were out to maim us. First minute in, I got a pass down the wall from Louise, planted my foot to let the ball go past so the girl coming at me from behind wouldn't get a shot at it, and then next thing I know my supporting leg is kicked out from under me, and I get shouldered into the wall. Ouch. She's all 'sorry about that' when I get up to take the free kick, but 'sorry' said in a 'take-that-you-slag' sort of way. Bitch.

And it was like that the whole game. Last time we played this team I was away and we got beaten (you can make any assumptions you like there), so the rest of my team were keen to make amends, and we were up 2-1 after 5 minutes or so. At that point our opponents went into killer overdrive, and Louise, whose a fairly solid specimen of the female species, got totally taken out in a terrible tackle (elbows into the back of the head, knees into the ass) by their most belligerent (and that was saying something) player. Louise clattered into the wall, and then leapt up, actually shaping to take a swing at the offender! Lou! The most mild-mannered teacher of hearing-impaired children you'd ever meet! The ref stepped in to calm things down, but failed to send off the tackler, which meant the rest of them thought it was open day for any old piece of niggly illegal play they could conceive of. Which was plenty. My shins were shattered by the end of the game, and poor old Louise and Tamara were on the end of a continuous stream of some nasty verbal slagging. Thanks to some inspired play from Janey (who wasn't taking any shit from anyone, as she rarely does), we got a good buffer up of about 3 goals, after which we stopped going for the 50/50 balls so hard, and just frustrated them into stupid play that netted us a couple more goals on fast breaks. We ended up winning 8-2. Hooray! A sweeter victory hasn't been had for a long while.

Nearly as nice, although the sheen was taken off it by the Simon Shaw sending off, was the All Blacks win over the 'World Champions' England in the weekend. If you missed it, fear not as plenty has been written about the game. My favourite (non-try-scoring) moment was the actual sending off of Shaw - the look of total disgust on Lawrence Dallaglio's face was priceless, but nearly as good was Tana Umaga, who was obviously as delighted as Dallaglio was disgusted. Tana gave it the big 'hooooo boy, off!' (by the looks of it), and that was pretty much the end of the game as a contest. Dallaglio spent the rest of the game whinging about every decision that went against them (despite the fact the All Blacks got hammered in the penalty count), and generally doing his best to reinforce the English rugby-boy stereotype of being a big strong and talented player who feels the need to cheat and whine incessantly. And he's the captain! Lead by example man! Oh, I suppose he did.

And how is it that the All Black backs are so lovely (Dan, Tana, Doug, Carlos, Mils -- all lovely examples of masculinity), and the English backs (with the notable exception of Ben Cohen actually) are, um, not? Do men not use moisturiser in England or something?

1. defenestration
2. serendipity
3. onomatopoeia
4. discombobulate
5. plethora
6. callipygian
7. juxtapose
8. persnickety
9. kerfuffle
10. flibbertigibbet

The top 10 most popular words as voted by visitors to the Merriam-Webster online dictionary. I'm pleased to note that I use 6 of the top 10 on a semi-regular basis (italicised those ones), with onomatopoeia rolling effortlessly from my tongue on saturday when I was discussing 'noisy' children's books with someone.

Yuck, 'juxtapose' though - I watched one of those dreadful Living Channel shows on Friday night, and some guy (who I'm sure had based his entire persona on Derek Zoolander, and in a non-ironic way) was a big fan of 'juxtaposing' furniture around the houses he worked on. Maybe I'm just being persnickety.

Tales from the "Liberry" is just about my favourite library blog. Every day there's a new story that makes me go 'ooh, yes, that is so true.'

Here's a link to one of my favourite recent entries: "Where do you keep your paper system?"

ME: Can I help you?
PATRON: Where do you keep your paper system?
ME: Our paper system?
PATRON: Yeah.
ME: (Thinks for a moment, not understanding the question. Decides to repeat question again.) Our PAPER system?
PATRON: (Growing frustrated.) Yeah. The place where you file away and store papers?

Oh god! It's funny because it's true! Continues here....

If this tickles your fancy, then also check out Mr. Kreskin Strikes Again (parts One and Two), and The Purple Nun (parts One, Two and Three).

ohh, it was too good to be true. I spotted a classic meanderthal moment at Wellington Central on Saturday morning. He was standing at the foot of the escalator coming down from the 2nd floor, looking up, and had that look of 'lost-in-the-library' about him. I should have helped, but it wasn't like I was on duty, so I just dawdled at a nearby display stand to watch his efforts.

A couple of people came down from the top, and he has to take a step back to let them off. He waits. Another couple of people came down, and again he has to take a step back to let them off. Now he looks around a bit, then quickly taps the bottom step with his foot. He looks up, and then shifts across to take a closer look at the escalator down to the ground-floor. He takes a tentative step forward towards this one, but then veers slowly off to the left, casually wanders around a magazine rack, and circles back, when he finally spots the up escalators which are opposite the central steps, and which had so far eluded him. He carefully strides forward, and steps on. Another triumph against adversity! Meanderthal man lives!

Thanks to Ms. Behaviour for the heads up on some excellent new words being 'popularised' over at WordSpy.com. She lists these particularly handy gems...

Retrosexual (ret.roh.SEK.shoo.ul) n. A man with an undeveloped aesthetic sense who spends as little time and money as possible on his appearance and lifestyle.

Heteroflexible (het.ur.oh.FLEKS.uh.bul) n. A heterosexual person who is open to relationships with people of the same sex.

Mucus Trooper (MYOO.kus troo.pur) n. An employee with a cold or the flu who insists on showing up for work.

We regularly get Mucus Troopers in at the library, and sometimes (school classes usually) a whole mucus troop. Also spotted by myself while surfing the site were these words I'll be dropping casually (and pertinently, mind you) into conversation soon...

Meanderthal (mee.AN.dur.thawl; th as in thin) n. A person who walks particularly slowly and aimlessly.

Again, we see a few of those coming through the doors at work. And this new phrase is especially resonant...

Information Environmentalism n. The movement that seeks to reduce information overload and its effects on people's lives.

...mostly because I spend so much time in reference helping people purge the 20 books they've decided to get out on one topic to the two or three books they actually need to complete their homework/assignment/whatever (these people usually being meanderthals). I wonder if noizyboy's information enthusiasm will get a mention at some point?

I love Amazon. I spend far too much time randomly browsing the book sections, adding stuff to my wishlist to be bought later (when I win Lotto, or some long-lost Uncle dies and leaves me a colossal inheritance - or something)...

Anyway, Sheila Chilcote-Collins (Ardent Seeker Of Oddities) has tracked down what she thinks is the top 25 odd things you can buy from the Amazon store. I'd be inclined to think she's on the right track - included in the list are Natural Skunk Scent, Human Torso (Large), Boogers Are Blessings (a book), Pork Chocs ("Pork rinds dipped in your choice of milk, dark, or white sugar-free chocolate. Pork Chocs are even Atkins Diet Approved!"), and my favourite (and rightfully #1 on the list): A Christmas Story: 40" Leg Lamp.

The BBC released a list of the UK's 100 best loved novels. Since then, it seems, the list has been circulating the blogosphere as an ever-evolving 'books-I-have-read' list, with people adding three extra titles onto the list as they go, which means the list has ended up being over 400 entries long, further meaning I just can't be bothered going through them all and ticking them off. Here then is the much more concise top 100, in its original form.

Rules...

Bold those you've read.
Italicize started-but-never-finished.
Underline those you own but haven't gotten to yet.
Add three of your own.

Post to your livejournal.
1. The Lord of the Rings, JRR Tolkien
2. Pride and Prejudice, Jane Austen
3. His Dark Materials, Philip Pullman (read one of three)
4. The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, Douglas Adams
5. Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire, JK Rowling
6. To Kill a Mockingbird, Harper Lee
7. Winnie the Pooh, AA Milne
8. 1984, George Orwell
9. The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, CS Lewis
10. Jane Eyre, Charlotte Bronte
11. Catch-22, Joseph Heller
12. Wuthering Heights, Emily Bronte
13. Birdsong, Sebastian Faulks
14. Rebecca, Daphne du Maurier
15. The Catcher in the Rye, JD Salinger
16. The Wind in the Willows, Kenneth Grahame
17. Great Expectations, Charles Dickens
18. Little Women, Louisa May Alcott
19. Captain Corelli's Mandolin, Louis de Bernieres
20. War and Peace, Leo Tolstoy
21. Gone with the Wind, Margaret Mitchell
22. Harry Potter And The Sorcerer's Philosopher's Stone, JK Rowling
23. Harry Potter And The Chamber Of Secrets, JK Rowling
24. Harry Potter And The Prisoner Of Azkaban, JK Rowling
25. The Hobbit, JRR Tolkien
26. Tess Of The D'Urbervilles, Thomas Hardy
27. Middlemarch, George Eliot
28. A Prayer For Owen Meany, John Irving
29. The Grapes Of Wrath, John Steinbeck
30. Alice's Adventures In Wonderland, Lewis Carroll
31. The Story Of Tracy Beaker, Jacqueline Wilson
32. One Hundred Years Of Solitude, Gabriel Garcia Marquez
33. The Pillars Of The Earth, Ken Follett
34. David Copperfield, Charles Dickens
35. Charlie And The Chocolate Factory, Roald Dahl
36. Treasure Island, Robert Louis Stevenson
37. A Town Like Alice, Nevil Shute
38. Persuasion, Jane Austen
39. Dune, Frank Herbert
40. Emma, Jane Austen
41. Anne Of Green Gables, LM Montgomery
42. Watership Down, Richard Adams
43. The Great Gatsby, F. Scott Fitzgerald
44. The Count Of Monte Cristo, Alexandre Dumas
45. Brideshead Revisited, Evelyn Waugh
46. Animal Farm, George Orwell
47. A Christmas Carol, Charles Dickens
48. Far From The Madding Crowd, Thomas Hardy
49. Goodnight Mister Tom, Michelle Magorian
50. The Shell Seekers, Rosamunde Pilcher
51. The Secret Garden, Frances Hodgson Burnett
52. Of Mice And Men, John Steinbeck
53. The Stand, Stephen King
54. Anna Karenina, Leo Tolstoy
55. A Suitable Boy, Vikram Seth
56. The BFG, Roald Dahl
57. Swallows and Amazons, Arthur Ransome
58. Black Beauty, Anna Sewell
59. Artemis Fowl, Eoin Colfer
60. Crime And Punishment, Fyodor Dostoyevsky
61. Noughts And Crosses, Malorie Blackman
62. Memoirs Of A Geisha, Arthur Golden
63. A Tale Of Two Cities, Charles Dickens
64. The Thorn Birds, Colleen McCollough
65. Mort, Terry Pratchett
66. The Magic Faraway Tree, Enid Blyton
67. The Magus, John Fowles
68. Good Omens, Terry Pratchett and Neil Gaiman
69. Guards! Guards!, Terry Pratchett
70. Lord of the Flies, William Golding
71. Perfume, Patrick Susskind
72. The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists, Robert Tressell
73. Night Watch, Terry Pratchett
74. Matilda, Roald Dahl
75. Bridget Jones's Diary, Helen Fielding
76. The Secret History, Donna Tartt
77. The Woman in White, Wilkie Collins
78. Ulysses, James Joyce
79. Bleak House, Charles Dickens
80. Double Act, Jacqueline Wilson
81. The Twits, Roald Dahl
82. I Capture The Castle, Dodie Smith
83. Holes, Louis Sachar
84. Gormenghast, Mervyn Peake
85. The God Of Small Things, Arundhati Roy
86. Vicky Angel, Jacqueline Wilson
87. Brave New World, Aldous Huxley
88. Cold Comfort Farm, Stella Gibbons
89. Magician, Raymond E Feist
90. On The Road, Jack Kerouac
91. The Godfather, Mario Puzo
92. The Clan Of The Cave Bear, Jean M. Auel
93. The Colour Of Magic, Terry Pratchett
94. The Alchemist, Paulo Coelho
95. Katherine, Anya Seton
96. Kane And Abel, Jeffrey Archer
97. Love In The Time Of Cholera, Gabriel Garcia Marquez
98. Girls In Love, Jacqueline Wilson
99. The Princess Diaries, Meg Cabot
100. Midnight's Children, Salman Rushdie

...and my three...

101. Meg - Maurice Gee
102. The Vinter's Luck - Elizabeth Knox
103. Not Her Real Name - Emily Perkins

Phew. [via chicken]

Ok, two particularly interesting things I've stumbled across on the web in the last few days - one disturbing, the other, uhhh, also quite disturbing, in a different way...

1) Web friend conned into murder bid.
A 14 year old boy (14 years old!) created a bunch of fictional online characters, one of whom was a middle-aged female spy, and after several months and 50000+ words (50000!) of online correspondence and chatting, convinced a 15 year old to kill him (the 14 year old that is). In other words, he created a massive web of deception in order to get himself killed. Amazing. This from the BBC news item...

The 14-year-old boy, dubbed Boy B in court, created a series of fictional characters in chatrooms, one of which ordered Boy A to murder him.

Boy A, a 15-year-old, stabbed Boy B twice, but he did not die.

Boy A admitted attempted murder and Boy B has admitted incitement to murder.

...which, as they also pointed out over at metafilter, made me think of one of those old maths puzzles - "Boy A and Boy B leave different cities heading toward each other at different speeds. When and where does Boy B's caboose enter the Spy C tunnel?"

2) Exploiting Peer-to-Peer Networking.
This is hilarious, but, again, a little on the sick side. Tom, having a bit of a mp3 downloading session, decided to see how many hits he might get on an mp3 track if he named it to some crazy porn title. He thus created "Naked boys dancing and eating cake" and watched as 130 people downloaded the file, only to be disappointed (one assumes) that the file was nothing but Led Zeppelin performing "Dazed and Confused" in front of a live audience. Tom decided he was onto something, and continued with...

• My Ex-Girlfriend mowing the lawn naked. [the song "Ozone baby"]
• Elephant cock horse. [Billy Idol's "White Wedding"]
• Grandma Bingo Sex. [Something by Joan Jett]

All of which racked up the downloads. Lots of them. But the real coup de grace was this...

• Enraged Baboon fucking a nipple factory. [Pink Floyd]

As Tom himself points out...

No way in hell would this get many downloads. Who could possibly type in any or all of those keywords? I guess people like seeing sweaty red-ass baboons, nostrils flaring, banging their chests like Marky Mark in the movie "Fear", having sex WITH each other in a factory that produces baby-bottle nipples. Imagine what those children would look like. One hundred seventy two people typed those magic words into Limewire, and got a hot steaming pile of monkey love. Well, it was Pink Floyd, but a man can dream, cant he?

This could all seem very disturbing. My final experiment, however, made me dizzy as my precious sack retreated into my pelvis. ...THREE PEOPLE...three disgusting, drooling, perverted, fucked up people, wielding a box of Puffs Plus and a tube of Vaseline Intensive Care Lotion, bright eyed and bushy tailed, wanted to see "An emu taking a vicious dump." How does one take a VICIOUS dump and how does an EMU take one, for that matter?

It's a scary world, on the weird wide web.

Cyndi - milliseconds from disaster

I was a big Cyndi Lauper fan when I was a little girl - she was the epitome of strong female attitude, combined with a crazed penchant for dress ups. Or, at least, that's what I think now, at the time, I thought she was just, you know, so cool.

So I figured Cyndi had faded off into some sort of pop retirement many years ago, but no, a recent news report that caught my eye indicates she's still she-bopping around the place. I figure that given the recent trend for getting aging pop stars over to New Zealand for the annual Mission Estate Music Concert (B52s, Belinda Carlisle, John Farnham), there's a good chance we might get to see her again.

Or perhaps not, given that the Mission Concert is an open air event. For poor old Cyndi, doing an outdoor concert in Boston, striving for a high note, mouth wide open and head held back, ended up with a gob full of bird crap, deposited in a million-to-one shot by a no doubt highly amused passing bird. Yuck.

The paper reports...

Lauper delicately turned away from the crowd and wiped her tongue on her shirt - and finished the set.

What a pro.