Unintended consequences

Head Rambles Posted on by 6

Have you heard of Steven Anderson?

I know I hadn’t until the other day.

Our Glorious Minister for Justice has apparently banned Mr Anderson from entering the country, using a law for the first time since it was introduced twenty years ago.

So what has Anderson done to be accorded such an historic privilege? Well, apparently nothing. It’s not what he has done but what he may say that worries our Minister. Forget freedom of speech – we are well into the realm of freedom of thought.

It seems that Anderson has a reputation for anti-LGBTQWERTY rhetoric? So fucking what? He hates Gays. So do a lot of people but that is entirely beside the point. Personally, from reading about him I have no time for him or his prehistoric beliefs. He’s a bit of a cunt but that is all beside the point. What is to the point is that having heard about him and the banning order I took a bit of an interest, which is something I would hardly have done if I hadn’t heard about him. Thank you Minister for the publicity.

The point is that if he came he probably would have had an audience of a couple of hundred people. Now that he has hit the headlines he has an audience of thousands, or any multiple thereof. And any one of those new readers are free to look up Anderson on YouTube and listen to his bilge.

The Mister has obviously not heard of the Interweb? Or maybe he has and maybe he just wanted to give Anderson some free publicity?

Nice one, Minister.

The Night of the Living Dead

Head Rambles Posted on by 8

My CCTV is still going strong.

Except when it isn’t.

When it works, it’s brilliant but occasionally for no reason whatsoever the camera apparently disconnects from the Interweb and then it isn’t so brilliant. Sometimes I can reset it just by repowering it but sometimes it needs a full reset which involves reconnecting it to the Interweb and then waving bar codes at it. When I do the reset, a disembodied voice announces its progress – “This device has been reset” or “Connecting to WiFi” or “Connecting to Internet“. I don’t know what the neighbours think.

The voice gave me an idea though.

The other night it was Halloween which is time for all the kids to turn American and do their “Trick or Treat” shit. They come ringing my doorbell and I have to traipse the length of the Manor to open the door to tell them to fuck off [having made sure they weren’t the neighbours’ kids].

But why not try out my CCTV setup?

I enabled sound on the camera. This allows me to hear what’s going on in the front garden but also allows me to use the speaker. All I had to do was keep an eye on the screen to see if there were any strange kids coming in. As soon as they entered the garden it was party time! I’d switch in the laptop’s microphone and put on my best Vincent Price voice – “Hellooooo leeeetle cheeeeldren. Welcome to the House of the Deeeead”. I didn’t need to go any further as the kids had already reached the next parish.

That camera kit was a brilliant investment.

It is all so predictable

Head Rambles Posted on by 12

I have been idly watching the Vaping Wars for a while now.

Twitter is alight with people frantically trying to stem the tide of anti-vaping rhetoric which started with the deaths in the States. Quite frankly I am amused at the whole affair because it was so predictable.

When electrofags first came into prominence, Vapers were very quick to jump on the anti-smoker bandwagon. Think of all the lives that will be saved [a billion?!] they screamed. Electrofags are the answer to dirty filthy cigarettes they roared. They hoped that they could ally themselves with the anti-smokers to drive people off cigarettes onto electrofags. However they should have realised there was something wrong when the anti-smokers gave them a very tepid welcome at best.

There are many obvious reasons for the current war. First and foremost Anti-Smokers have a pathological hatred for anything to do with Nicotine [apart from their paymasters in Big Pharma, of course]. They had their eye on electrofags from the outset, but their problem was that they could find nothing wrong with the devices and could only muter about “passive vaping” and “the long term effects”. When the first hospital admissions were announced in the States, this was a godsend. At last they had an excuse to attack electrofags. The deaths were the icing on the cake. The fact that the deaths were mostly in a specific area, all involved THC and all in the States meant nothing, as Anti-Smokers believe in propaganda, not facts.

So now Vapers are drowning in the tide of Anti-Vaping rhetoric sweeping the world. Electrofags are lethal – just look at the deaths! The fact that vapers are reverting to smoking cigarettes is irrelevant, except of course it means greater tax income for the countries. Cigarettes are familiar territory for the Anti-Smokers whereas Electrofags are a threat and an unknown. Also removing vaping removes an enormous threat to the paymasters in Big Pharma.

I doubt that Vapers can win this battle. Anti-smokers are experts at propaganda and at twisting, distorting and ignoring facts. They have the bit between their teeth now and have the ears of the lawmakers. They won’t be happy until vaping has been driven off the scene and they can just concentrate on torturing smokers.

Welcome back to my world!

A way to go yet

Head Rambles Posted on by 6

I’m just back from visiting Doc.

He seemed a little surprised to see me and had assumed I had kicked the bucket by now. That explains why he only gave me two month’s worth of prescriptions last time. I did wonder. Apparently he had reckoned that my weeks in the Torture Room would have finished me off.

I consoled him that indeed, bits were beginning to fall off quicker than I can bolt them back on again. That seemed to cheer him.

So anyhows he checked my heart [still beating] and my lungs [still breathing]. He asked about the side effects from the loads of tablets I take. I told him how my fingers were constantly a shade of either blue or purple but that I wasn’t worried as I couldn’t feel them any more anyway. I showed him how the back of my left hand is beautifully coloured like an apple that has gone bad inside. He said he had just assumed that was dirt [fucking nerve!]. He agreed they were all side effects and that if they didn’t ease off that I should get a pair of mittens like the pair that Fagan wears in Oliver Twist. He seems to believe in lateral thinking.

He cheered up a bit further then as he remembered the Flu Jab that they are now pushing on an unsuspecting public. I normally pass on that one but he ranted on about how I was very high risk because of my age and my “recent medical history”. I conceded in the end but he probably gave me dose to treat bovine mastitis or something.

Before I left, I asked him for a repeat of my prescriptions.

He gave me four months worth.

Obviously my prognosis is improving?

Droning on and on

Head Rambles Posted on by 16

What is it about drones?

For a long time I have been inundated with spam trying to persuade me to buy a drone.

I have little interest in them. If I had one and decided to abide by the law I could only fly it over the Manor and then only to the height of a couple of hundred feet or so. What the fuck use is that? Google Earth can give me a reasonable idea of what my gaff looks like from the air. I’m more interested in what the place looks like from ground level, and I don’t have much interest in that either.

They try to tell me that I can capture all my amazing adventures, presumably to bore the arse off people on YouTube. What fucking adventures? Most of mine are behind me and I can’t imagine any pending visits to Machu Picchu. I actually investigated one of the machines they were pushing at me, using a Google search [I NEVER click on spam links] and it turned out that their machine was a rip-off of a better model that had a cheaper price-tag so they could go fuck themselves anyway.

There is only one good thing about those drone spams. They make a change from the Ashley Madison ones, the cure for Tinnitus that doctors don’t want me to know about and the ones that promise to make Herself scream all night.

I can manage that last one all on my own, thanks.