I've decided against buying a private jet

That should take care of my contribution to fighting global warming.

Shh... nobody is to mention....

Tiger Woods

Beckham's Wellington game confirmed - Stuff.co.nz

the days of my 30 sec jug skull through a straw are over

And I thought I'd seen it all!

This is about the word "skull" used to denote quaffing back a drink. Skull is wrong. I used to think that people probably meant "scull" because drinking games are sometimes referred to as "boat races".

Now I think the word is "skoal", which is a Scandinavian word for drinking a toast.

Anyone got any other ideas? Why isn't Brewer's Dictionary of Fact & Fable online anyway?

Sensing Murder Returns!

Ohmigod, I saw the end of sensing murder last night & I was stunned by the powers shown by the psychics.

All they were told was that two guys were strangled & thrown off a ship, their bodies were later found & the coroner deemed they'd been strangled & thrown off a ship.

Armed with only that information, two psychics divined that these two guys had been strangled & thrown off a ship.

Further, they were probably murdered by someone else on the ship.

I'm convinced.

Apprehension

We have lots of lawn at SunnyO. Lots & lots of lawn. We have formal lawn - there's a picture below with a home made croquet hammer - we have informal lawn, we have orchard, we have lawn that has very little grass & a lot of weeds.

It takes, apparently, 5 hours to mow the lot.

We have 20 litres of lawn weedkiller in the shed too. In the past, I've spot sprayed with Roundup. I've also been threatened with castration if I ever do that again, it leaves hubcap size circles in the lawn. Crop circles!

So I fired up a big sprayer with the lawn weeder stuff, and I set to in the orchard - on the grounds that this is the very, very informal lawn & munging it will not result in minor surgery. I did this about a month ago.

And it worked well, weeds just shrivelled away & grass took over.

SO last week it was the turn of the informal lawn outside the house, which is the picture below showing a deck & polyanthus & roses, and the citrus/magnolia area (below).

The next day, I decided to spray the very few weeds in the formal lawn. I did so, liberally, covering maybe half until I needed to refill.

I refilled the sprayer, then I noticed.... shock! Horror! I'd filled the tank with Roundup. Luckily I spotted it. I changed it to lawn stuff.

But... did I fill the first run, with which I sprayed half the formal lawn, with Roundup or Lawn spray?

Only time will tell. Only time will tell.

This weekend's photos

Visiting friends - one horse was looking at us over the gate. Another 3 in the distance saw us & thundered down the drive. Then we had to inch forward to make them back away from the gate. Much the same but in reverse when we left. Except they were all by the gate waiting for us.











What I made on my team building day.... entirely by hand, with stone age implements & a home made lathe.

Bugger, I missed Blokie & Roundie

That's the problem with watching sod all TV, I never know what's on until someone says "Did you see Logan & Brown cooking kingfish with macadmia nuts?"

Episode 1 - Kingfish & Macadamias | TV ONE PROGRAMMES | TV ONE | tvnz.co.nz

No, I didn't. I wonder, can these things be downloaded from somewhere?

Maggie Gyllenhaal in lingerie

Um. I thought about a snappy headline, but that kinda says it all.

Maggie Gyllenhaal's steamy Agent Provocateur campaign revealed | the Daily Mail

Related story here

Team Building

So. A Team Building (TM) day is on tomorrow. This means a (slight) sleep in, then I'm packing the dog, the cat & other stuff including beer & wine into the Beast (our major contribution to Global Warming) & heading into the barbarian suburbs to pick up colleagues.

Then, any number of us will congregate someplace about an hour & 15 minutes north (after dropping off the cat at SunnyO on the way - the dog will participate in the frivolities), spend half the day doing team building theory type things, and the 2nd half of the day solving fun problems & participating in as yet unknown activities.

I know that there are lakes. And stuff. Including various items of everyday machinery which have been amended slightly, so that they do unusual things...

I've attended Team Building days before, and pretty nuch the only thing I protest at these days is that stupid exercise where you get up on an oil drum, close your eyes & fall off. A circle of colleagues theoretically will catch you.

WTF does that teach you anyway? I refuse to do it anymore on the grounds that a drama teacher at college used to make us do it & anything with that much vintage has got to have been superceded by something sensible (much like electro shock therapy has given way to drugs - well probably not much like that, but we can hope).

Anyway, even though I don't know what's in store, I am prepared. I'm assuming that when presented with any task or problem, we are free to use whatever tools are at hand...

In my case what will be onhand, indeed, upon & around my person, will be a Swiss Army Knife, a small but very powerful torch, a cordless drill, 20 metres of river rope, a camera a flare gun, GPS phone, sun hat & pepper spray. As I've said, I've done these things before & if I have to blag my way out at the end of the day, I will. I will survive.

There is no "I" in "Team".

Too bad.

Sleight of Hand

We watched both the Prestige & the Illusionist in the weekend. The former injvolves a years long feud between two magicians (Batman & Wolverine) at the top of their games, the latter only has one, but he's got a years long feud with a Prince.

Not THE Prince, you understand, not the little short singer guy. A prince.

Anyway, I was disappointed with both, The Prestige resorts to science fiction, and a plot twist that was so cunning I didn't notice it until I read a few reviews days later. Maybe I was drunk or something. I was especially disappointed because Christopher Nolan also directed Memento, which was fantastic. Anyway, The Prestige is OK, but no more. Good performances though. And it's based on a novel, so presumably Nolan's not to blame for the plot.

The Illusionist is much more straightforward, it has Edward Norton trying to score back his childhood love (Jessica Beihl) from an evil prince (Rufus Sewell). What really disappointed me about this is that they resorted to CGI to perform some of thr tricks. Oh well.

Slight of hand.

It's all about misdirection. And Red herrings.

The Raspberries are a maybe.

I was going to prune 60 or so trees this weekend. In the end I pruned none. But I did at least mow the orchard. And it was tough going.

But Mrs Llew finished pruning all the roses but one. And that one escapes for now because it's STILL flowering.

In other pruning news, Mrs llew pruned all the berry plants in the berry house. Yes, we have a bird proof berry house, in which reside strawberries (fruiting up until a month ago), blackberries, black & red currants, & raspberries.

Exhaustive notes were left for the pruning of these, and a book - the Berry Book - for all ancillary information. One problem was struck, in the notes, under the heading "Raspberries" the instructions were "Consult the Berry Book".

In the Berry Book, it says that there are two types of raspberries, those that should never be pruned, and those that should be shorn to ground level. There is nothing to indicate which type we have.

After some deliberation, Mrs Llew cut them just above ground level.

We've alerted the whanau that bulk raspberries may not be on the menu for Christmas. We'll see.

And we had a moment of alarm when we briefly thought a wind had stripped the nut trees of their just appearing flowers - they're brown now, but will change over the next month or so to a mix of white & pink, and I'm told the sight is quite something to behold.

Anyway, yesterday we were showing my mum around & she asked what were all the little flowers littered all over the ground. They hadn' been there the day before & we momentarily thought that it might be all over for next year's crop. They did look like macadamia flowers... But I discoverd some scrappy old trees in the neighbour's place, not nuts, goodness knows what they are, but they've shed their flowers all over my orchard. Good mulch.

Where was this photo taken?

Rhetorical question. Funniest photo I've seen in ages. The captions are mostly iffy though.

Kiwiblog » Blog Archive » Thursday Caption Contest

Ye Olde Shoppekeepers - Read this morons.

I knew it was right. Hat tip to some probably dead Old (not Olde) English lecturers - something stuck.

Ye Olde - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

The short precis is - there is no such word as "ye" and there never was. Fuckers.

Let the sign burnings begin.

Whodunnit?

New Zealand cartoons by Garrick Tremain, Tom Scott, Murray Webb and Jim Hubbard on Stuff.co.nz

Priceless.

Is 47 too old?

Heh heh... Someone who shall remain nameless just sent me this link, with that question...

Scarlett Johansson wants to adopt a child - Stuff.co.nz

And it reminded me of a time when I was single, in my own home, and I briefly considered seeking a housekeeper, or "nanny" to clean house for me, care for the non existent children, and er... basically be at my beck & call with a variety of um... services.

But it was an idle thought only.

It reminded me of a boarder I had there for a while though - over those years I had a variety of people stay, an artist friend, who left me a few of his paintings & soon may he become famous!, a couple of women, who didn't clean that well but made themselves useful in other ways, and a colleague, who lived in the Hawkes Bay in the weekends, but in Wellington during the business week.

And it is he we will address in this post.

He was a contractor & paid by the hour. He worked late & generally availed himself of the staff canteen for $10 dinners & he'd come back to my place purely to sleep. He'd give me a lift to work though.

On those rare occasions he ate at home, he was a great pains to buy the meal's ingredients. He was generous like that.

He also refused to accompany me to the supermarket on the grounds that two men pushing the same trolley would be construed as gay.

I told him that chicks really dig gay men. But he wasn't swayed. Lucky for him, I'd have put my arm around him the moment a hot chick so much as smiled at us. Heh heh.

He was astonishingly candid also, so that periodically he'd get home & announce "I've just seen a hooker!" He kindly gave me her name & number too, she was local, but I never availed myself & so cannot report back on her charms & service - I'd moved on from the idea of hiring a nanny to keep all the knobs polished by then.

He was an interesting character though, he had a teenage son. And the son & the mother came & spent a weekend with us once. The story was that they'd had a one night stand many years before & a child ensued. The deal was that they acted for all the world like a family when together, but he made sure he worked elsewhere most of the time.

I do remember that in thanks for letting them stay she cleaned the place better than it'd ever been cleaned before! Maybe I should have been looking for a real housekeeper...

Phillip Alford - Where is he now?

Isn't the Internet amazing? It's brought us all so close... group hug!

Phillip Alford played one of Atticus Finch's children in the very classic movie To Kill a Mockingbird.

Last year, someone cruised this site with a google search string wondering where he is now. I posted that someone was curious as to the child star's current whereabouts.

SunnyO: Google Searching

And Phillip visited that post a long time afterwards & told us what he's up to.

So for any future fans curious...

Yes, still alive and in the construction business...I travel extensively doing Military construction...It's nice to know people are still interested in my whereabouts.

Phillip Alford

How cool is that!

Now... thus inspired...

Nastassja Kinski - where is she now?

What's with Telecom at the moment?

I went to their website a week or so back & enquired via a form about linking two voicemail inboxes (they can do it, but they charge double, defeating the purpose) and broadband for SunnyO.

They sent me a reply with some information & asking me some questions. So I answered the questions & replied to the email - telecomsupport@custhelp.com. Messages to this email address bounce.

So I tried emailing the name of the person who replied - victoria.fitch@telecom.co.nz.

Messages to victoria also bounce.

And there is no phone number in the message.

Limbo.

And feeling really confident that telecom can meet my needs... (NOT!).

Yay! About time.

Now for cinemas & theatres

Cellphone calls in prisons to be blocked - Stuff.co.nz

NBR Beneficiary list

Amusing topic here lifted from the comments of Kiwiblog. In response to the NBR publishing their annual rich list, commenters are calling for someone to publish a list of the top 10 welfare beneficiaries.

Kiwiblog » Blog Archive » NBR Rich List

I may be alone, but I find that idea hilarious.

Poor rejected lamb

A couple of touching reads here - Minty the Massive pregnant sheep, who gave birth to two lambs, a boy & a girl, and then rejected the boy.

Your Place - Minty the Massive: good news and bad news

Minty's owner recounts attempts to re bond the two. Great pictures.

Your Place - Minty and family - mothering on progress

Glad I don't have to worry about this sort of thing anymore.

Warning for young or nervous viewers - there are graphic descriptions of what was happening to Minty's rear end at the time, and some gooey photos of new born lambs.

What if Toshiro Mifune, Clint Eastwood & Bruce Willis

All made the same film?

Wouldn't you have to see them all in the same day to do them justice?

Vern reviews Yojimbo, A Fist Full of Dollars & Last Man Standing.

The Circle of Life

Or something - I haven't ever seen the Lion King.

Check this out! Amateur footage of feeding time at the watering hole. 8 minutes long - 2 minutes in the action starts.

Lions pounce on a hapless buffalo calf. It all looks pretty black for the little one. Then a crocodile attacks one of the lions & grabs the hind of the calf. It now looks blacker. A tug of war ensues.

Then, the buffalo herd that scattered, returns & takes on the lions who managed to free the calf from the croc.

Happy ending alert in case you were worried. One day I'll figure how to embed these thngs.

YouTube - Battle at Kruger

Heh heh... kiss the rest of your day goodbye.

Fiendishly addictive & impossible quiz.

The Impossible Quiz, free trivia games - Presented by AddictingGames

We await developments with interest.

"This man's neighbours are convinced that the guy living rough in an old Land Rover with a cat and a pet possum is Lucan."

Elusive British peer alive and well in Marton? - Stuff.co.nz

Sheesh... un-frickin-believable

Teen's fiery death described to court - Stuff.co.nz

Izzat Steve Crow in this picture?

Auckland's mayor in waiting?*

Silent protest a success say organisers - New Zealand news on Stuff.co.nz

* Heh, lets see if Aaron Bhatnagar still reads this blog :)

Last night.

Last night I encountered a guy I know - a labradoodle owner who, at the place I came across him, had his labradoodle off the lead & two kids rolling manically around on bikes. There was no-one else there at the time & I don't consider that a problem.

He asked me though, what did I think of the latest spate of dog attacks on children, and the PM's comments that further breeds may be outlawed. And what did it mean for us?

I told him it meant that we should keep our dogs on leads when out in public, especially if we own a staffordshire or pit bull terrier.

He solemnly agreed.

Then in the darkness we heard some people attemting to descend a steep & treacherous path. I clipped my dog up, his began barking & running up the path to meet the visitors.

The two people were talking as they came, seemingly oblivious to our presence.

My friend ignored his barking dog on its way to confront these people, he walked in the other direction.

A voice piped out of the darkness above "Shit. There's a dog!" Then more plaintively, "Is this dog OK?"

His owner called out "Yes" and then a high pitched exclamation came over the incessant barking, "Oh hello dog!"

And my friend is a lovely chap, but I couldn't help thinking to myself "Weren't you listening?"

New Zealand Dog News

Posthumous award for brave dog - on Stuff.co.nz

Altogether now: AWWWWWWW....!!

Posthumous award for brave dog - New Zealand news on Stuff.co.nz

In breaking news, the Gummint announces all dog breeds except Silky Terriers & Jack Russells (because we have a soft, er, Spot for them) are banned.

Someone tell her please

Kerry Prenderghast called & wants her haircut back.

Posh, Britney in restaurant spat - Stuff.co.nz

Dog seized after biting two people

I wonder how many more posts I'll get in on the subject before something happens? How many more today even?

Anyway, part of the problem is this:

Miss Clark said she had "stronger views" on dog laws than most people, but every time there was a call for a tougher regime there was "pushback" from responsible dog owners and breeders.

That is because Prime Minister, your "tougher regime" has so far targetted responsible dog owners & breeders - microchips? Whatever for?

As soon as you start targetting the irresponsible dog owners - the unregistered, un-neutered dogs, and the so called "dangerous breeds", the rest of us will lay off.

It's simple, destroy or at the very least desex all unregistered dogs - local authorities know where they most of them are. I'm not all that keen on bans, but I'd probably not complain if the bulls (mastiffs & terriers) were outlawed - all the current registered ones desexed, all the unregistered ones destroyed.

Hmmm... I'm not convincing myself. OK - let's just say - start enforcing current dog laws & the problem may not disappear, but it'll sure reduce.

Dog seized after biting two people - Stuff.co.nz

Oh - and more while I'm at it. Ms Clark also said:

The issue for me is whether that ban goes far enough and the breeds that are specified. The dog that mauled the small child in the park just in recent days was not on that list of banned breeds.

And would it have helped this child if the breed was on the list? I think not. There already IS a law against any breed of dog wandering. Enforce it.

The death of existentialism

I thought hard about that title. (Click on it & it may take you to a lemon meringue pie recipe - who knows?)



Hat tip to (and flogged from) Perry at the site below.

Your Place - Not A Good Omen

Spring is coming

I just noticed something... click on the titles of my posts & you'll go all over the web! There is a (n inadvertent BlogThis) reason for this behaviour, I'd just never noticed it before.

But onto the business at hand - Spring is coming, and I mentioned in the linked post below that I'll be spraying trees for fungus & caterpillars in October, after the nut trees start flowering.

SunnyO: By the way

And it's the flowering I wanted to mention - apparently the orchard goes berzerk (nuts?) with mostly white, but some pink flowering trees peppered through them.

And for the spraying, I have a 12 volt battery powered, boom spray on a little trolley. Haven't tried it out yet, but I've sourced gloves, & glasses which are rated for use with chemical sprays, I just need to get a suitable mask now. And I'm in business.

And I'll post pictures of the flowering orchard when the time comes.

Here we go, here we go, here we go...

I was going to say that I'm expecting an official announcement on the fates of certain dog breeds any time now...

Heroic action saves tot from dog - Stuff.co.nz

But by the time I got around to it, there were some developments.

But just to get in ahead of anyone with the bright ideas - microchipping is not the answer to any other question than "Is this my lost dog?"

Nuts & avacadoes off the menu

One of the reasons I missed the Hustle for AUtism last night was that I spent a reasonable amount of my evening with meh dog at teh vet's. Just her annual checkup, but they were running really late.

And she's generally fit & well. Excepting that she's 4 kg too heavy - which I directly attribute to her cleaning up all the avacadoes that have fallen off the tree. From now on I'll cruise the area first with a bucket.

Her other problem is that she's cracked two teeth chewing macadamia nuts. She sneaks out to the orchard, grabs a mouthful of windfalls & finds herself somewhere quiet to take them apart & eat them.

Her teeth are OK at the moment, but any more damage and & not only will it become uncomfortable for her, but it'll be seriously & financially uncomfortable for me!

So plans to demolish the rotten fence that borders the orchard are on hold. I'll repair it instead.

Fecking dogs!

In good company

David Lynch joins the celebrated few.

peterquixote: Medallion of Quixote awarded to DAVID LYNCH

My medallion's around here somewhere.... maybe I shopuld put it at the top.

By the way

Did you know that by eating between 10 & 20 macadamia nuts each day you can reduce your cholesterol by up to 7%?

And did you know (Martha guessed) that you can eat as many macadamias as you like & you will NEVER put on weight?

I read that in the weekend, while looking up when to spray, & with what, the trees. (October, after flowering, for caterpillers & fungus).

Hustle for Autism

Tonight, San Fran Bath House in Wellington. Details at the end of this link.

Public Address | Speaker

Amongst the goods at auction will be 5kg of SunnyO Macadamia Nuts. In order to vary the tone of my comments on various random threads (They're selling my NUTS!)...

I'll be planting melons for next year.

Miscellaneous recent photos

Immigrants

Normal transmission is resumed

Broken cable. Which is good, we rescued the 50mb of taped shows & movies.

Learned heaps about the box from the techo too. Next time I reckon I could fix it myself.

Crap driving from the Spare Room

The first two are laugh out loud funny.

Spare Room » Blog Archive » And You Thought Auckland Drivers Were Bad

Jamaican R18 Hedonism resort - Google Search

Number 1!!

Woohoo - imagine all those All Blacks who have vistited SunnyO looking for the source of Kelleher's happiness (until it all fell apart).

Jamaican R18 Hedonism resort - Google Search

Goodness, Colin Meads would not approve.

"Arty" Rugby World Cup promo from Paris. Work safe. Unless you work with Colin Meads.

Hat tip to TracyMac at PA System for posting the link in a comment.

BDDP & Fils

And this too.

And Spare Room beat me to it by a day - here's their take & some amusing comments.

I don't understand this.

Does Paris Hilton deserve her inheritance? Turns out 79% of respondents to this Stuff poll think she doesn't.

I voted yes, but I was concerned slightly by the question - does anyone "deserve" an inheritance? Can they earn one?

What I don't understand is why anyone even wants a say? (I said "yes" :). Surely it's the decision of the guy leaving the money. And as she's a blood descendant, should he decide to leave her anything, then yes, I suppose she deserves it.

Anyone voting "no" must be doing it out of spite, surely?

Stuff.co.nz - Poll Results

Paris see, I'm on your side, should the tide of public opinion turn from here on in, that's 5% of whatever the old bugger bequeaths, right?

Oh hell, I'm not greedy, make it .005% I'm sure I can manage on that.

Third World Country - Us?

Get this - our MySky decoder refused to start up at around 6pm Sunday - atmospheric conditions. And it was hosing down so I thought it might be credible.

Next day - clear skies were posing atmospheric problems apparently. So I called Sky & reported it. I've had great service from them in the past. And I daresay I may get great service again this time, just not very fast service.

Silly me having a problem the very same week they're cutting over to a new satellite (and no way that could be related is there?). And all their technicians are busy.

But they may be able to send someone round to check next monday. Yes that's right, a week away from the very time I reported the fault.

Good news is that we won't be paying for the days we have no TV reception, bad news is that we have shaky free to air reception at best (and even shakier programming on those channels), and nothing we've set to record will be recorded.

So it's gonna be a lot of DVDs between now & next week. Perhaps I'll have me a Sherlock Holmesathon.

Jeremy Brett IS Sherlock Holmes

That's what it says on Volume 1 - Collectors' Edition of an otherwise untitled DVD Box Set.

5 stories, A Scandal in Bohemia, The Dancing Men, The Naval Treaty, The Solitary Cyclist, and - hang on tight folks - The Hound of the Baskervilles!! Yay!

Jeremy Brett - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

There are many movies & series that I think to myself - I'll snap that up if it ever appears on DVD! But I usually don't.

This time I did. Reading the wikipedia entry on Brett, who without any trace of irony or hype really WAS Sherlock Holmes, I am surprised to find that not all the stories were filmed before his death. I wonder which they didn't get to?

In the late 80s, I used to sit around a sharebrokers' boardroom table (while ostensibly waiting for backups of a computer system to finish) drinking wine, scarfing leftovers from the kitchen & chatting with a bunch of youths stuffing letters into envelopes - Brendon, Andrew, the lovely Sue Abernathy, and some other guy, watching Brett as Holmes on TV, while I lauded the series and its star to these ignorant folk.

I daresay I changed their lives.

To quote Fox Mulder

I know of only one man who's successfully faked his own death..... ELVISSSSS!!!

That said, this is a fascinating story. Although the sense of faking your own death in New Zealand & thinking you'll never run into someone you know does seem rather questionable. And it was.

The man who faked his own death - Stuff.co.nz

Big Grills Don't Fry

I'm working on my barbecue obsession (heh! Summer is COMING!!).

But in my defense, even Harry Belafonte had to leave a little grill in Kingston Town. And Frank Sinatra was very taken when the grill from Ipanema went wokking. Indeed, inspired!

Anyone else having problems posting?

New posts get published, but don't seem to appear on the site - until I republish several times.

How could you doubt a face like this?

I notice they leave such announcements till after lunchtime these days. Wonder why. "Gone by dinnertime" doesn't really have the same ring.

Minister faces sack after change to his story - Stuff.co.nz

Update (11.52am):

What would I know? He's gone...

For those who need to know

One of the most enjoyable books I've read in the last few years has been The Time Traveller's Wife, by Audrey Niffenegger. It's a bit of a chick-lit novel, although it is funny & action packed. And I unashamedly recommend it.

Briefly, it's about Henry, a man with a genetic disorder that causes him to travel through time at random intervals. He doesn't know when he'll go, where he'll go, nor how long he'll stay.

When Henry is in his thirties, he meets Claire, who is six. Henry visits Claire often from the future & even tells her that they will be married.

When Henry is 28, he meets Claire for the first time (although she's known him nearly all her life), she is 21.

And so it goes. An older Henry from the future even has to step in for his younger self at his own wedding. No-one is impolite enough to ask why the groom is suddenly dishevelled, unshaven, and looking 10 years older than when he left the room.

Anyway, I mention this purely because a movie is in production. Claire will be played by the awesome Rachel McAdams, Henry will be the equally awesome Eric Bana.

I think their days are numbered

United Future? Hah! Yes!!

But I mean pitbull terriers.

I have some sympathy for the owner in this case, the dog was tied up (and presumably registered) and a little girl ignored her mother's instructions & tried to pat the dog. Which was not receptive to the attention.

Pitbull bites chunk out of little girl's lip - Stuff.co.nz

And as for the statement that "You don't see labradors running around constantly attacking people."... aren't labradors responsible for most of the dog attack statistics in NZ? (I have heard this, but I do not know if it is true). If it is, it's probably because there are more labradors than any other breed.

More than likely if this dog had been a labrador it wouldn't have been reported anyway.

But I do like the point made that responsibility for such events does not rest solely with the dog owners. People should not approach strange dogs (special dispensation for the Reserve Bank Governor - he can go for his life, I'll supply the pitbulls.)

Suckypoo.

I have a headache today. Vaguely nauseous too, and I'm tired. But I've been worse.

I think we'd finished our normal nightly quota of wine by the end of the first quarter during the netball last night.

SO of course, we kept going till the last grisly act of a grisly game was played. Too many mistakes.

Suckypoo!

Thank goodness for the All Blacks.

In other news, we've been watching a Canadian film called Atanarjuat: The Fast Runner. An all Inuit tale of love, betrayal, murder & revenge. It's set hundreds of years ago, so you can do worse that admire the workmanship of the snow glasses some of the characters sport.

The scenery is breathtaking, the details of Inuit life are fascinating, and the dogs really take a hammering (we haven't yet seen the end credits to see if any dogs were harmed in the making of this film, but I'm guessing they won't attempt that disclaimer. Nor a similar one for seals...)

I'm not sure, but I believe director Zacharias Kunuk's latest film, the Journals of Knud Rasmussen features in this years film festivals. Be worth seeing I imagine.

This may not be true, we're still here

Maybe they not only have to appear in the same "news" story, maybe they have to like, meet.

Posh says no to friendship with Paris -Stuff.co.nz

So I joined

Facebook. And I've got two friends already. And I've checked out all their hot friends too (Damian Christie wonders if there is a word for that - I think it is probably "sad".).

Facebook

What now?

Update:

Well it's all on now, seems Facebook has invited everyone in my contacts list, including the guy I roasted a while back for poor service.

Er... hi!

The knowledge.

OK, I think I have it all* worked out now.

The world will end when the two behemoths of current affairs stories collide. Yes. When a story involving both Posh AND Paris makes the front page, I suggest you duck & cover. Quickly.

LOLPosh: She's Alive! - Jezebel

* Yes, everything.

Meanwhile, is it just me? Or does Jezebel look like Addison from Grey's Anatomy?

Non-story of the day

WARNING! Loud shirts through the link may be disturbing to young or nervous viewers. Discretion is required.

Fer Feck's Sake, the ship was damaged in a storm! It's unfortunate but hardly avoidable, surely?

Couple high and dry after cruise scuttled -Stuff.co.nz

Maybe P&O got wind of the shirts they were planning to bring & engineered the whole thing...

Invitations

In just the last week, I've been invited to sign up to or join:

1. Linkedln
2. Pownce
3. Facebook

Hey, thanks for the thoughts everyone (and a special hat tip to Mike, who over the years has invited me to sign up to dozens of services of one sort or another. Probably none of which I have taken up)

Now a question - what are all these things? (I mean, I could look I suppose, but I have a history of looking & not seeing the point anyway, so 25 words or less on what these are & why I need them might help. I mean, I'm just not an early adopter of new gizmos, like some people I know.)

But if it means more txts, notifications, or emails...

The things you see

When you're out without your camera.



Look carefully at the first three pictures. When we caught sight of the beach that day, I said something like "Look how clear it is! I forgot the camera so I guess this'll be the day we can see clear through to Ruapehu.



Look carefully at the space between the two groups of walkers. The phone doesn't do it justice at all.



Click for a bigger image if that helps.

Scenes from SunnyO

The Pumphouse. Mrs Llew calls it the Boathouse for some reason.

The saddest Google search string EVER!

peter firth from double deckers email address - Google Search

You may remember Mr Firth from here.

Swiss Army Flash Memory Stick

Brilliant!

Victorinox Swiss Army - MultiTools - SwissMemory Laser 1GB

Then again...

It wasn't so bad after all! Mental note: only shop where the sales staff are hot & keep bending over so you can see down their top. Shopping as spectator sport.

Not that I looked of course!

But it was Rodd & Gunn, I tried on everything, including trousers. Everything looks quire different from out of the artificial light. Once I'd chosen I said:

"Do you mind if I wear the jacket out? I made some poor clothing choices this morning"

So, one moleskin jacket (poor moles, god knows how many I'm wearing right now), one pair of tan trousers to wear with them, and one pair of hush puppie shoes, which were ridiculously cheap, so who knows how long they'll last.

"Hush puppies? Lemme look - do they have animal tracks on the tread & a hidden compass?"

"What?" said the not at all hot, spotty youth from the shoe shop.

"Pah", I snorted, "things have gone really down hill with these shoes since I was 6 years old!"

"Um... yeah"

"Ok I'll take 'em, do you mind if I wear them out of here? I made some poor clothing choices this morning"

"Knock yourself out, animal track dude."

SunnyO: Hole in my shoe

Hole in my shoe

HOLE IN MY SHOE

I looked in the sky where an elephant's eye
Was looking at me from a bubblegum tree
And all that I knew was the hole in my shoe
Which was letting in water (letting in water)
(letting in water)

I walked through a field that just wasn't real
With one hundred tin soldiers which stood at my shoulder
And all that I knew was the hole in my shoe
Which was letting in water (letting in water)
(letting in water)

(Narration: I climbed on the back of a giant albatross
What flew through a crack in the cloud
To a place where happiness reigned all year round
And music played ever so loudly)

I started to fall and suddenly woke
And the dew on the grass had soaked through my coat
And all that I knew was the hole in my shoe
Which was letting in water (letting in water)
(letting in water)

Traffic - 1967
Neil -1984

Dude, who knew this song was so spaced out!??

Anyway, I relate. The time has come to get some new shoes because all of the existing ones (except for the completely waterproof Skellerup Hikers I bought last week) are letting in water.

Indeed, I checked the shoe stash last night - that's where I put all my slightly damaged shoes until I get desperate & take them to be repaired. Or if it was last night, I realise they're shot & chuck 'em.

Then in the morning, I carefully hop around all the puddles on my way to work.

But enough is enough! The Skellerup Hikers don't look too swish with a suit, so hard, cold cash will have to be bartered for something at least vaguely corporate.

And I need a new jacket too.

The issue is, I can't be arsed shopping, well not for clothes anyway, I can spend ages in hardware, barbecue & farming stores. Shoes & jackets do not excite me. Mind you, neither do cold, wet feet, so something is about to give!

HOLE IN MY SHOE

Oh, and apropos of nothing - I just noticed my title for this post said "Home in my shoe". Now corrected to save any confusion.

We interrupt...

Our self styled "No Paris Stories" embargo briefly, to bring you this, the lovely story of a woman who inherited Paris Hilton's discarded mobile phone number.

Calling Paris? Student inherits Hilton's number - Stuff.co.nz

Reminds me of friends, whose flat in Thorndon inherited the number from an old brothel...

Winter Harvest

Brilliant! We harvested 4 mature trees, all, apparently, the same cultivar. I mention this because you'd expect the same cultivars to produce similar amounts, but one tree yielded 25 kilos, while the one at the lowest end of the range gave up only 5.2 kg.

There's also quite some difference in the size of the nuts produced by each tree.

The total? 49.9kg.

Didn't quite crack 50, but these will hang in the drying room for 3 months now, losing more weight.

And we saw a live rabbit! I can report that even if I'd been standing there with a loaded shotgun, pointing at the exact spot the rabbit bolted from, I'd have missed.

And Borat brought our mower back. Well, he looks & sounds like Borat, although his real name is Sebastian. And I'm guessing he's Swiss. But he'll always be Borat to us now. And bonus, Borat has fixed the mower, so that it picks up the mown grass & leaves.

He checked out the derelict farm trike too, which has never worked. And he huffed & he puffed & in a burst of oily smoke, the trike came to life. Borat nearly went the other way, as he stumbled from the smoke filled stable.

He showed us how to use it, which is academic, because after he left three of us nearly threw our shoulders out trying to start it again. We've given up. I'll take it back to Borat & have him fix the electric ignition, sod these broken pull start devices.

Oh, and even in 3rd gear it goes about 5 kph. Woohoo, watch the bend!

Harvest time.

We're gearing up for the first nut harvest of the year.

I've mentioned it somewhere before, but we have some trees that drop their nuts (a phrase that causes much amusement for the teenagers in the family), and some that jealously hold onto them.

In addition, some trees are harvested around July, and some around October or November.

As far as I can make out, we have 4 trees ready to harvest & they're all droppers.

Oh, and they are biannual apparently, they have high & low years. This is a low year & so we're not expecting a huge crop. Which is fine, since we're new at this.

Funny, we've alerted the family & friends, and suddenly everyone is busy. "WTF? SInce when are you having surgery this weekend? Knee replacement? That shouldn't stop you!"

But what will happen is:

Large drop mats will be laid around the base of the tree (one tree at a time since it seems, nuts from different trees should not be mixed up). (And I digress at this stage to mention something that has just occurred to me - I have left the one & only orchard ladder that we owned at a property that was recently sold. Bugger.), then we send child labour up into the branches to bring down all the nuts which have not yet dropped.

Then, someone will drive (dodgy electric ignition allowing) a mower with a trailer attached to it into the orchard. We will fill the trailer with nuts, and then we will convey them to the dehusking machine.

There may be variations on that last step, if there are not enough nuts to warrant a trailer, child labour will carry the nuts in buckets to the dehusker.

The dehusker is a noisy & dirty machine, which looks like it was put together by a one armed chimpanzee with a mechanno set, but it does work.

The nuts, will then be dried in ovens for a couple of hours at a very low heat, bagged in mesh onion bags, and hung out to dry. I have no idea how long they need to hang after that.

Then we start on another tree & repeat.

Probably won't get to it this weekend (because I probably won't have them by then), but I'll be installing at some stage, a Gnome Village, probably in the orchard, but maybe not... something to surprise & delight any younger visitors we have.

Not that I encourage young visitors, but sometimes they do sneak past the hounds.

Er... why?

$10m in bid to keep Team NZ afloat - Stuff.co.nz

FFS - spend it on something useful, like a bypass through wellington or something.

God knows the last one was such a success.

Jump back around 5 years

The previous owners of SunnyO made a silly mistake in my opinion. They looked around their property, and noticing a half acre paddock with 7 mature macadamia trees in it, they thought, "Let's plant 50 or 60 more! Then we'll buy a husking machine, a cracking machine, several ovens, and we'll build a processing plant & drying room!" Brilliant, then we'll watch the money roll in because macadamias sell for $55 a kilo!"

First mistake - $55 per kilo. I dunno about that, all I know is, I can order a kilo over the web for $8.

Second mistake - if they'd turned around, they'd have noticed the mature avocado tree, which produces heroically all year around, and whose fruits merely need picking & packing.

I just cannot believe that they didn't think "Sod these nuts which are about as tough as cannonballs & require a huge capital investment, let's plant 50 of these avocado trees!"

Oh well.

Transformers - the movie.

I don't get it.

This begs the question...

Who will play Lindsay?

Lindsay to play Paris? - Stuff.co.nz

Anyway, on the pest front, the most interesting development was that rats managed to gnaw through the container, and ate all the rat poison.

World's longest single word domain name.

www.llanfairpwllgwyngyllgogerychwyrndrobwyll-llantysiliogogogoch.com

No, I can't pronounce it & see very little reason to learn. But hey, get along there & there're all sorts of interactive, fascinating things to do.

OK, I'm exaggerating.

And anyway, if it's a single word, what's that hyphen doing there?

Update:

It is possible to send emails from "yourname@Llanfairpwllgwyngyllgogerychwyrndrobwll-llantysiliogogogoch.com

What fun!

Further update:

Yes, if you got a plea from help from Elvis, stuck in Llan.. Lla... that place for the last 30 years... it was me.

But you know what really strikes me though, if this place is so neat, how come after you've visited the site & sent an email from elvis... it takes you to a page where you can book your holiday... in France!!

I'll take a punt then, that the site is funded by some local council:

"Hey, let's get a website for Llanf... but since its such a shithole, we'll use the site to peddle cheap hols in France. Brilliant!"

Woke up this morning

Got myself a gun...

Well not quite. I did go & look at guns today though, just airguns. I have wats & wabbits on my mind. I'm told that an airgun that exceeds 1000 feet per second is good enough to bowl a rabbit or a possum. There is a recommended brand called Gano, or something, cost around $500.

I was sorely tempted.

Then it occured to me that while I clearly have a pest problem, I have yet to actually see live rats & rabbits... which is probably a prerequisite for shooting them.

So I'll mull on it.

But on the other hand... does anyone know where you can buy decent crossbows?

Meanwhile, these shots were taken with my phone & do not do this morning justice at all, the sky was on fire.





And this one was taken a few weeks ago.

This deserves a wider audience!

Well... not that I'm providing it...

But hey there, it's local body election year & the bypass has just been implemented to delay traffic through & into the city (they didn't say that was the reason for it, but a city planner I met assures me I don't know what he knows & so I deduce from that that they did it on purpose. Wankers.) so why are the council luring cars into the city with cheap parking & putting up public transport fares all the while telling us we're becoming carbon neutral!??

WellUrban: How not to go carbon neutral

I have a question...

Watched the netball finals over the last few weeks, was very pleased to hear a new male commentator, didn't catch his name, but the point is, he knew the rules, the players, and seemed to be able to read how the play was going.

Then, for the final, Brendon Telfer was back.

What gives TV1? Does Telfer know where the bodies are buried? Because he knows jack shit about netball.

MPs to set strict rules on photos that poke fun at them - Stuff.co.nz

Please! That's Mr Retard to You.

Job website labels client 'retard' - Stuff.co.nz

There were rats, big as blooming cats

I know Alan will sympathise...

We have rats. At least I presume they're rats, haven't seen them yet, but I have seen their signs.

Actually, that's not true, Wilma found a dead rat last month. It was really big too!

Their sign (RatsRUS - no just joking), include hundreds of macadamia nuts with little holes gnawed in their shells, and gnawed apples, and avacadoes... and actually, I owe the birds an apology, I thought it was them pecking at the avacadoes. Now I think its the rats.

And in our "tack room", whatever that is (horsey people will know), which is traditionally where (before the drying room was built) nuts were left to dry, and where I had left 3 buckets of nuts, our practise run which I have kept separate from the commercial crop, there were nutshells all over the place, up high in recesses in the wall, down low in the very difficult to get corner behind the spa pool... the rats have been helping themselves!

And so I took those 3 buckets, and I dried the nuts in the ovens (over-dried them actually, I have probably ruined them, but anyway, they were the practise run), and hung them in an onion bag with last year's crop.

I also tripped down to Mitre 10 & bought a truckload of ratbait, some of it is stationed out in the orchard now, in a pet proof plastic thing, some of it is pushed into hard-to-get-at places in the tack room & stables.

War is declared on a big scale.

I suspect this will be an ongoing war & goodness knows what else in the way of pests will come to well, pester me. The carbaryl (wasp poison) in the shed may be a bit of a clue.

Oh, and explorers this weekend, found the legendary source of Lake SunnyO. Yes, about 18 inches down in the ground underneath the avacado tree is a T intersection in the white PVC piping that runs through much of our property, which has lost its tail. A plumber will have to be summoned.

BTW, somewhere I have photos, when I come across the camera again, in due course, I will upload them.

bicurious female librarian - Google Search

just leave your name in the comments, my procurer will be in touch.

bicurious female librarian - Google Search

Bwahaha! Excellent.

WellUrban: A subtle message

Note to the BBQ Factory

I do expect your junkmail to have more barbecues in it than spa pools.

Note to self: find a No Junkmail sign pronto.

SunnyO: Some Grills Will

Glancing at the Stars

Matariki Festival, Te Papa, 16 June - 1 July.

Glancing at the Stars | the wellingtonista

You Want Closure?

Spoilers for things that never happened (probably). I like the winning mashup - it explains the ginger cat.

Sopranos endings you can live with. - By Timothy Noah - Slate Magazine

Some Grills Will

Some Grills won't
Some Grills need a lot of loving &
Some Grills don't

Following up on the last story of home renovations (somewhere below), let me share another!

A couple of years ago, we decided to get a car deck built (the trials & tribulations start somewhere near the beginning of this blog, if I were any sort of host, I'd provide links. But who ever said I was any kind of host?). First there were the architects' drawings. Then there was the builder's quotation. Then there were the amended drawings, and more quotes.

Then, bulldozers came in & removed our front garden. Then there were the complications, and builders started on the virgin site some many months later. And many more after that the deck was nearly finished (it'll never be finished, but it's close enough).

Anyway, back at the beginning, when the garden was removed by bulldozer, I remembered at the last minute to save our letterbox. This sat on top of our gas meter for some time, until the deck & a new fence were built.

At this stage, the intention was to get a new letterbox. But you know how it is, the old one, looking like a delapidated birdhouse, sat tacked to our garden fence for more than a year. Once or twice I retrieved it from down the road, presumably having been taken by passing students. A couple of times the wind just blew it to pieces...

Then, recently, I bought a new one over the internet. It arrived in pieces, a slot, a mailbox to be installed into the fence, and some street numbers.

Because our existing letterbox now only consisted of a base, two sides and a No Junkmail sign, some urgency was placed on istalling the new one.

Complications arose when I discovered that my skillsaw was somewhere else. But resourceful as ever, I hand sawed a recess with a Swiss Army knife. It only took most of the day. But now we have a lovely & discreet, working letterbox!

But it doesn't have a No Junkmail sign. A situation I have frowned upon for the last month or so - but I haven't yet found the "right" sign.

Although yesterday, I paused for thought about the No Junkmail... you see they delivered a glossy brochure all about the new BBQ factory in Lower Hutt. And if there's one thing to get me all excited... it's the new season's barbecues.

I'll keep you posted.

Meanwhile - do catch this clip before it gets pulled (lame pun). It's priceless.

Spare Room » Blog Archive » Cheeky Darkie Pulled On Holmes

A Headline you probably won't see in the newspaper.

Good news is no news, as they say.

Dog aggression hits all-time low - New Zealand Dog News

Wheelchair man gets highway ride

Would have been a remarkable sight, no doubt.

BBC NEWS | Americas | Wheelchair man gets highway ride

Grey Day

What was with the Skyline last night?

There are two superior locations for restaurants in this city. One is the Band Rotunda at Oriental Bay, the other is the Skyline complex in Kelburn.

Yet for some reason there has never been a decent restaurant in either location.

However, the Skyline does get used for private parties now & then - July 4th for example, I predict that the cul de sac end of Upland Road will be packed to the gunwhales with limos & sports cars, many of which will sport diplomatic plates, on Independence Day next month. That's what happened last year, residents had to stop & ask chauffeurs to move forward a few metres so they could park in their own driveways. I passed through & idly suggested to one of the policement on diplomatic protection duty that he should get a booze bus in for later on. he told me that there was no point, since the chauffeurs were all gathered outside, smoking, but not drinking.

But last night... I was shambling up Salamanca Rd, when an SUV coming in the opposite direction stopped in the middle of the road & a lady with a mid european accent asked me if I knew where the Skyline was.

I gave her directions "U turn, straight ahead, turn right up past the University, turn right at the roundabout, at the top of the hill, turn right again & there you are."

What I should have said was, "Give me a lift & I'll show you", because what she did was: a U turn, and the "turn right" must have stuck because she turned right immediately into the Met Office & disappeared over the hill.

I caught up with her a few minutes later, just before she descended to the Treehouse & main gardens in Thorndon & went through the directions again.

And this time, just as I walked past the Skyline, she turned up. Gave me a cheery wave, and turned into the carpark which was the fullest I have ever seen it!

And there were limos, and chauffeurs again, and a BMW Roadster, license plate DC501 (I think, possibly 5501), parked across our driveway. No police this time though to have a bleat about useless diplomats to.

And I rang Mrs Llew & told her not to exercise her road rage option when she got home & couldn't park on our car deck, because the diplomats don't care! But as it happens, by the time she got there, it was gone.

And so... anybody know what was going on there? Oh, and if you're wondering what's so cool about the Skyline spot, all the photos of the harbour that get posted here are prety much taken from beside the place.

Random link - borderline disturbing photo from the fieldays.

Bachelor farmers strut their stuff - Stuff.co.nz

Nothing to do with Sinatra, nor Santa.

MiramarMike: Sanatravious - your word of the week

I'll be trying to use it every 10 monutes or so.

meanwhile - Is Tony dead? Whacked by a sinister restaurant patron? Best theory I've heard is that Jamie Sigler (Meadow) tripped over the power cord on her way in.

If this makes no sense... tante pis!

Blue Day

Earlier today...

Very early.

Crossblogging Again - Pruning With The Stars.

Pruning With The Stars! Sunday 17 June | the wellingtonista

Augie - Auer & Out

Probably just coincidence that the day after the death of Augie Auer, weatherman & global warming denier, is pretty much the coldest day so far this year.

Weatherman Augie Auer dies - Stuff.co.nz

Man's Inhumanity to Dog

Which if memory serves, is a phrase stolen from Charles Schulz.

Dog starved, hanged from tree in Manukau

Bastards.

What do they call the guys..

At the front of pipe bands? The guys who swing a long stick with something metal on top. Actually, they don't seem to contribute much. Maybe they own the rest of the band.

Anyway.

There're a shitload of kids marching past my window behind the aforementioned pipe band at the moment. They're dressed in fluoro orange & wearing matching orange dunce hats.

I surmise they're celebrating school patrols & promoting road safety...

...which is pretty ironic actually, given they're marching down the middle of Lambton Quay in the middle of a working day. Watch out for those buses!

And now, a carbon-neutral* gag:

Exactly one year ago today, Wim Binliner was an unknown 18 year old Swedish tennis player.

Today he's 19.

* 100% recycled from a Not the Nine O'Clock News calendar from decades ago.

Who in the world is Gilda Kirkpatrick?

Must be an Auckland thing.

The name "Gilda" evokes for me this 1946 Rita Hayworth/Glenn Ford classic film noir.

IDLE VICE: Trashion

So in 25 words or less, can any Aucklander tell me WTF* she is? And what on earth was Ian thinking?

*this has been a google-free post.

While we're on the subject

I guess if you're Sir Paul, you can persuade Natalie Portman to get jiggy in your video... and I don't suppose that was supposed to look like a lapdance... ewww...

Rock Town Hall - Minute-by-Minute Review of Paul McCartney's Memory Almost Full

WARNING!!

Um... conmsider yourself warned.

The Long & Winding Road

For reasons too silly to mention, I found myself embarking on a 2.5 hour round trip to SunnyO yesterday afternoon, to pick up a cat & bring him back to town.

There's nothing at all interesting in this, save I was planning to use the reflection time driving, to dream up some proverbs for NZBC. Sadly, the muse was absent.

Happily though, I had one of those wonderful bogun moments, having stopped briefly at New World Waikanae, having travelled thus far listening to Jim Mora & some boring guests, I was turning left back onto an oddly deserted State Highway One, when Jim, brightly announced "And here is Alice Cooper".

And it must be that I haven't heard No More Mr Nice Guy since the 1970s. Yet I remember every lyric (except the name of the preacher that punches him in the nose).

And I blasted North in my Euro Planet Muncher (TM) bellowing:

I used to be such a sweet, sweet thing.
Till they got ahold of me,
I open doors for little old ladies
I help 'em find a seat.
I got no friends 'cos they read the papers
They can't be seen
With me, and I'm feeling real shot down
And I'm, gettin' mean!

Honestly, Marilyn Manson is a wannabe.

But from the sublime to the ridiculous, just a little earlier, navigating the borderline chaos that is Centennary Highway, Mora was pleasant enough to treat us to Paul McCartney's new single, which (have you been reading Doonesbury recently?) was launched yesterday in every branch of Starbucks in the world. Non stop Macca. In fact, non stop very mediocre single song Macca.

This in itself is unremarkable, I'm sure Sir Paul has churned out many, many songs that are not destined for the greatness of some of his earlier work. The strange thing is that I heard this one.

What IS remarkable though, is that later last night, we chanced upon a biopic of John Lennon on Rialto. We missed the first few minutes so I have absolutely no idea who played the main roles, nor what the film was called. They looked kind of like the Beatles if you squinted. Although whoever played Astrid Kirchher looked JUST like Sheryl Lee, who played Astrid in Backbeat.

Well. Maybe not THAT remarkable. All I'm saying is it was poignant, seeing a dramatisation of the glory days, juxtaposed with a boring ditty released that very day. Wonder what Lennon would be doing if he was still around?

Oh, and the biopic played no actual Beatles music, not even when they got to the bit where they were making their own.

Maybe Michael Jackson would only give them the music rights if they let him play Astrid.

Anyway, after all that, skip the Rialto movie, watch Backbeat.

Men With Fire

What I love about all YouTube-like movies of people being stupid with fire, are the little touches, like the slow-mo replay of the very moment that the rubber meets the road, or more accurately, the flame meets the accelerant. That "You dumbass" moment that someone funnier than me coined, which is the moment that you realise that you're standing in the middle of high explosive, about to flick... the BIC.

Spare Room » Blog Archive » How To Make A Fireman Very Angry

I also love how, at the end, the very concerned mate approaches, one hand in pocket, the other clutching a pint. It must have looked like a close one.

:)

Hat tip to the Spare Room

Bwahaha!

Seems I got flayed somewhere for suggesting KD Lang resembles a young Robert de Niro.

Guys! Watch Salmonberries before you comment.

kennedyflairs k.d. page

RIP Simon Lindsay

AKA Dodderyoldfart at Rest Area 300m

I posted this earlier hoping you'd comment that reports of your demise have been greatly exaggerated.

Oswald Bastable's Ranting: RIP

But it is true.

Go well. We'll miss you terribly. Our thoughts are with your family & friends.