The Official Nonsense Thread

[Caspin]

Oh good grief, the gardeners are here. Immediately the air is filled with petrol fumes from their ridiculous grass-destroying power tools. I just saw them cut straight through a load of beautiful flowers because they're too lazy to bend down and move a branch away from the edge of the lawn. How I hate this gardening company! Hope they finish soon and leave - I want to open the windows!

[Caspin]

I shouldn't be here. I should be at yoga, but I had such a bad headache by the end of work today that I didn't feel up to going. Headache is starting to clear now. Probably just the high pressure and sky-high pollen count but I felt really rough for a while and needed to be in the dark.

Got to feel better tomorrow for going to see Arthur Miller's "The Crucible" at the Old Vic. I'm particularly looking forward to it, not only because it is a great play but also because they have converted the Old Vic's interior to be in the round. I think it could be tense and intense. I definitely need a clear head. And there'll be no passing out, I promise!

[Minty]

"A FART ON THOMAS PUTNAM!"

Soz about being a bit quiet, but internet access has been very poor because the local junction box has been crappy since the World Cup started, cutting off the mo' the games start.

I'd been passed from pillar to post along with everyone else in the street over this for nearly a month, but a guy called Dave from the Swansea office (whom I assume I got through to because the Manila and Mumbai customer service call centres were overloaded) took one of my many complaint calls by chance, read what had been going on & did his nut. He promised he'd kick some ass & would phone me to confirm matters were in hand come his next shift - which he duly did, at 8am!

Yesterday they had the senior techie outside & two punters pulling up all the cables to replace them. I got talking to Mr Techie & he said some Motorola part had to be replaced as it was 20 years old & failing (it looked pretty new for a 20 year old part I thought) & this would have been sorted months ago had people done their jobs properly in the first place as there had been 57 visits to the box since the year started.

[Caspin]

What is it with these phone/internet boxes? There's one right outside the flats here and it is constantly in peril from squirrels chewing through cables, plus it leaks and fills up with water during heavy rain (such as the rain falling right now!). There was one occasion 8 or 9 years ago when I lost cable internet and it turned out that the Virgin engineer who had been sent to hook up a neighbour had simply pinched my connection because he couldn't be arsed to put in a new one for them! I was a non-chuffed person. Anyway, I hope Dave from Swansea fixes you up.

"The Crucible" was brilliant the other night. I had forgotten what a long play it is - I didn't get home until after midnight and felt slightly wrecked the next day, but wouldn't have missed it. Their Reverend Hale was magnificent. You could really feel his despair and regret by the end. The whole thing being done in the round with a small, very bare (puritanical!) stage was great and they took everything really slowly, which built up the suspense and made you feel terribly on edge. Great stuff.

[Minty]

Your problem with cables being swapped is a common one & one of the main moans amongst the Virginmedia engineers (so they told me). If you sign up for a new package or change your existing one, an outside contractor (often self-employed) does it. But if there's problems, it is Virginmedia field staff that deals with it, including repairing the faults.

You can see where this can go wrong. To give his customer a guaranteed faultless connection first time, the contractor pulls out someone else's cable rather than use one of the unused connections (as he has no way of knowing if any of those have been reported faulty) & shoves the existing one any old where in the box without bothering to check if it's working or what the power levels may be on that connector. Job done, & if this has messed up someone else's service, by the time the other poor customer realises their TV/broadband isn't working (when they come back from work), most times they've long gone to cause chaos elsewhere.

The other problem is that if 3 people within a one mile radius phone them, it is automatically escalated into an area fault without taking into account local geography. If 3 near neighbours are all having broadband problems, common sense tells you the problem will be a stones throw away, not the main junction box serving their half of the town. But instead the engineers are instructed every time to fix the main box, without being told the addresses of the complaining households & trusting the engineer to use their own intelligence to solve the problem. End result: a month of hassle for a technical support system that doesn't work.

Back in my school days I played Parris (press-ganged would be nearer the word, but never mind) during one of their idiotic attempts to make us all more cultured. The way they all said "Goody" in the play always made me laugh. The play is much better than the film version, although the latter does include the condemned saying the Our Father on the scafford as they're about to be hanged (witches were supposed to be unable to do this), the turning point in the whole madness although too late to save those on that day.

At uni, the trend in academia at that time was to blame it on mass hysteria caused by hallucinations brought on by fungus spores on local crops. Personally I think the world was so mentally screwed up in that period in history it didn't need naturally produced LSD to make everyone mental.

Sad to hear about Custom Sims 3 closing. I'd considered joining there once but never got around to it. I suppose they had their reasons, but still sad.

[Caspin]

I had so many problems with Virginmedia. I could fill a page ranting about their ineptitude. It's a shame, because I really liked having cable, but that incident of the stolen connection was the final straw and I've used other providers ever since, with far greater success (although more expense).

(28-06-2014 01:06 PM)Minty Wrote:  At uni, the trend in academia at that time was to blame it on mass hysteria caused by hallucinations brought on by fungus spores on local crops. Personally I think the world was so mentally screwed up in that period in history it didn't need naturally produced LSD to make everyone mental

I suppose hallucinations caused by spores is a reasonable explanation. However one thing that the play made clear to me last week was that a bunch of adolescent girls can quite easily whip themselves up into mad frenzy with nothing more than spite, jealousy and hormones to fuel it. At a time when strict belief in God and the supernatural (or unnatural) forces were the norm, it's easy to see how things could escalate out of control fairly easily once people start flinging around accusations and fear builds up very quickly. I mean it still happens today with African/voodoo priests/shamans accusing little children of being possessed and doing all sorts of horrific things to exorcise them.

At the end of the trial the girls pretended they could see Mary Warren's spirit and they all started repeating everything Mary said as though possessed by her. I just thought about how all kids do that just to annoy you - keep repeating what you've said until it drives you crazy. Or when they just keep asking "why?" no matter how much you explain, not because they want to know more but because it tickles them to wind you up. Little buggers!

I think you should all call me Goody Caspin!

Edit: wowsers, it appears that internet failure is spreading as I am now being intermittently affected by this. Grrrrrr!

Edit part 2: spent this evening with one eye on the football and the other reading about Salem. One thing I had not appreciated while thinking about this earlier today is that a lot of the fear in the Puritan community at the time was exacerbated by the ongoing war with the Native American population. They praised their god for anything "good" happening (such as smallpox obliterating the Native Americans) and blamed the devil for anything bad (sick child, bad weather etc). The first peops who "confessed" to being witches said that they'd agreed to be in cahoots with the devil in exchange for protection from the natives. I am hooked on this now and have ordered a book to learn more. Also been reading a bit more on Arthur Miller and McCarthyism. Do you ever feel as though one lifetime is wholly inadequate to learn everything interesting? Sometimes I feel like it is a race against time.

I'll be off to York tomorrow morning. There is meant to be wifi but I don't know how good it will be. If I disappear for a few days, enjoy the tranquility and don't make too much mess!

[Caspin]

Here is a pertinent cartoon

[Caspin]

So here I am, back in York. Today I accomplished my goal of walking round all the old city walls in one go. It hardly took at time at all! Sadly it would appear that you no longer get a certificate for completion, but perhaps I will make my own.

Stopped off to see that crown that they've made for Richard III's re-burial. I took a picture.




Quite garish isn't it!

I also have a great many pictures of me trying on medieval armour but you'll just have to imagine those. One is quite funny as I was captured mid-falling over after being toppled by a particularly heavy helmet. How people walked onto the battlefield in those outfits, never mind wielded a weapon, is beyond me. They certainly had stronger necks than mine.

[Minty]

I don't think Richard III would be very happy with his bling, looks like they bought it from Argos or got it from a giant Kinder egg.

It is boiling hot up here. That didn't stop the weather forecasters predicting rain yesterday. They even swore it was raining on BBC weather when I was out watering the garden in shorts & with half a mind to turn the hose onto myself & sod the plants. Today was even worse, & with the school's now off there's screaming brats everywhere, making trips into town dreadful.

The worst part at this time of year is realising I must be one of the few people left without a tattoo. A few years ago when one of my cousins visited with her brood, I found myself arguing with the father of her 16 yr old daughter over her getting a tattoo - me arguing it would cost a fortune to remove properly if she changed her mind (as kids do) & besides which they look awful, her dad arguing you had to keep with the trends & they look smart.

Hello? Someone swapped the scripts here? Wasn't I supposed to be playing the happy-go-lucky "you're only young once!" uncle against the stuffy protective dad here? When I was in my teens, I envisaged myself in the future as being the sort of George Melly type of uncle of the family line (if for no other reason it would put the bar stewards off from visiting me!). Instead I've found myself Victor Meldrew far too soon before getting anywhere near Victor Meldrew's age.

Belgium vs USA beckons

[Caspin]

The BBC knows nothing (Jon Snow) about the weather. It changed today's forecast here three times in the time it took me to eat my toast!

I am a little tired of these boring World Cup matches! So many 0-0 after the 90 minutes. A bit yawntastic. Hopefully things will improve once we hit the quarter finals.

I don't have any tattoos but I do actually quite like some. Only some, mind, I would agree that most are not good additions and probably much regretted. Being super cool Aunty Caspin, I would probably have given your cousin's sprogling a henna version of her desired tattoo, so she could see how she liked it without committing to anything permanent. Yes, I know, I am mind-bogglingly cool (where is Ollie - he should rush in and confirm that I am at least 1000 times more cool than his mum)!

Went for a walk alongside the River Ouse today. Really needed to burn off a few calories to justify eating ice cream.