Greetings Mr Magpie. One for Sorrow….

So we all know* the “One for Sorrow” Poem in one of its many versions.

*Well I am assuming we all know. If not, Where have you been people!!!!

The one I grew up with is most common one :-

 

One for sorrow,
Two for joy,
Three for a girl,
Four for a boy,
Five for silver,
Six for gold,
Seven for a secret never to be told.

Now. Growing up I was ignorant of the side rule of what to do if you see a single Magpie. I was only illuminated on the subject when I finally asked my sister why she kept saluting magpies.** And she informed me that a single Magpie (Which equals bad luck) can be countered by saluting it.

**For the first fifteen years of my life I just assumed my sister was insane,

Sounds fishy right?

Well Over the years I have looked it up, and It seems to be be a valid superstition. In fact there seems to be many ways of dealing with the evil of a lone magpie. Some of them are :-

  • “Hello Mr Magpie” “How is your wife/where is your wife?”, “Good Morning/Evening Sir” This apparently both counters the bad luck and adds an imaginary magpie to the count making it “Two for Joy”
  • Say the phrase “I defy thee” seven times.
  • Spit three times to avert ill luck.
  • Pinch the person you are walking with. If alone pinch yourself
  • Salute the Magpie

Well, What I want to know is. What happens if you respond to the single Magpie by hitting it with your car. While its flying (That should give bonus points right??)

Calm down dear its just a blog post!!

The Magpie was not hurt. It was eating on the road when I was driving at it. It took off in one direction, changed its mind and headed towards me, then changed mind again meaning it had not gained hight or distance and its tail-feathers slapped against my cars windscreen.

so if a salute changes bad luck to good luck. does hitting a bird flying in the sky change it from bad luck to AWESOME LUCK

ERRR. just asking for a friend.

Dear Cold-Callers. Please STOP……….It’s Hammer Time!

Thanks to a push on PPI miss-sales, and attempts to get you to switch service providers (Phone, Internet, Electric, Gas, Water, Etc) plus the usual ones trying to sell Mobile Phone contracts, con you into insuring Sky etc, My incoming phone calls are 90% Cold Callers. This really annoys me because they keep interrupting me and I have added my phone number to the Governments “No cold callers list”, So I’ve now given up all pretense of being a nice polite person who politely turns down their sales pitch.

No my current method of dealing with these drones, (Which I started after the same person phoned me four times in one evening supposedly from two different companies) is to let them start their sales pitch, wait a minute then play a sound clip of

Stop Hammer time

Every time you see me that Hammer’s just so hype
I’m dope on the floor and I’m magic on the mic
Now why would I ever stop doing this
With others makin’ records that just don’t hit
I toured around the world from London to the BAY
It’s Hammer go Hammer
mc hammer yo hammer and the rest can go and play
U can’t touch this (oh-oh oh oh oh-oh-oh)
U can’t touch this (oh-oh oh oh oh-oh-oh)
U can’t touch this (oh-oh oh-oh-oh)
Yeah u can’t touch this

Then after all that’s played, I return to the phone with a polite “Sorry about that, it was Hammer time”

So far only one cold-caller has remained on the line to hear my response, and she was pissing herself laughing, and i heard her speak in the background “Best call EVER!!“.

I’m hoping MC Hammer can help me cut down on the callers.

 

Reflections on the Rapture

So the weekends over, and we have all survived. Well I assume we have all survived, there has been no news articles on the Zombie Apocalypse, no reports of missing people in their masses. So I can only assume that the End of Days (2011) aka The Rapture (V2) was a no show.

Now I should quickly explain what I am on about for those of you who may have been living in a cave for the last month and be unaware of the Rapture. Although you do raise a new question of why do you have the internet in your cave? anyway The Rapture….

Rapture

Basically some bloke called “Harold Camping” said he had calculated the secret code hidden in the bible, and was 100% the world would end on September 6, 1994.  Some point shortly after then, when the world was still going strong Harold admitted he made a slight mistake and had forgot to carry the one and the correct day of the rapture was May 21st 2011. On this day Jesus would return to earth, the chosen holy people who followed the laws of Christ would ascent to heaven, and the long forgotten dead would rise forth from their unhallowed graves and the end of days would be upon us.

My biggest problem with any of these beliefs is one of simple logistics. The holy get to go to heaven. Who is holy? If you follow the laws of Christ will you be allowed in? Which branch of Christianity do you need to follow since they are all different? What about the rules, once you could not eat fish on a Friday, but that rule was revoked, but did God approve the revoking? If you have to follow every rule there ever was to be 100% valid, then I do not see anyone being saved.

Anyway Rapture came and went without anyone noticing. So was it all a miscalculation again (Not everyone can do math) Or is it as some blogs are stating that the chosen were raptured, and the rest of us just have to wait the five months till the world ends? So all we can do is watch this space.

Secret Government Base?

This morning on my way to the Insane Asylum I had to stop off at a small garage (Gas Station) to fill up my vehicle with diesel. Nothing special about that, It happens at least once a week, or more commonly twice a week due to my superstition about filling up my tank in one go (Which I may explain at some point in the future). Now the reason I’m blogging about a common, normal everyday activity is  the following.

I pulled into the strangely busy Garage forecourt, which normally has one or maybe two cars parked to either fill-up or use the shop. I once saw it on a particularly busy day with four cars there. This morning, including my car there was one vehicle at every pump (So eight in total) with a further nine parked at different parts of the small forecourt. Seventeen Cars, SEVENTEEN!

Now as I filled up, I was the only person in sight. All the cars were empty, and no one was walking about. When I walked into the Garage itself (which I should point out is a small room, with a counter, and a small office/toilet at the back which you could fit maybe three people in if they were “very familiar”) One man walked out. There was also one person behind the counter serving, So with myself three people to account for seventeen cars? SEVENTEEN? where were the other fourteen people? there was no way they could all be in the back room. In fact the only way they could be in the building at all would be if there was some sort of secret government facility underneath the garage.

Well I guess, Zombie outbreak?, Mass murderess who kidnap customers and throw them into an empty underground fuel store “It puts the lotion on its skin, else it gets the hose again!“?, Alien abduction? are also possibilities, but I tell you this now, I for one will not be using that particular garage again unarmed.

One More than the Queen of England

Weird post title right? What I am referring to is birthdays, The Queen of England has two birthdays a year, Myself I have Three. So if you will sit down comfortably dear Reader, I’ll explain, mostly because its become a FAQ.

A few years ago a friend offered to do one of those astronomical charts for me, One of the larger complicated ones that show your personality, and long term fortune, etc. So I gave my friend the details I had, Date of Birth, and Location of Birth. Both of which are required for accuracy. I was then informed that if i wished a more accurate chart then they would need my time of birth, because when it comes to stars that take a millennium for the light to reach us, knowing what minute you were born makes all the difference. So I asked my parents for the time of my birth.

I think I’ll jump ahead here to the conversation with my friend later, for pure comedy affect.

F=Friend, M=Me

F:So, you got the time of your birth?

M: Yes, Nov 1st

F:no the TIME? if you don’t know the exact time you can narrow it down to morning, afternoon, evening, night. it will still help with accuracy

M:Nov 1st

F:No, can they narrow it down a bit?

M:They did, they narrowed it down to Nov 1st. Apparently no one made a not of when i was born, and they latter could not work out if it was Oct 31st, Nov 1st, Nov 2nd. so the narrowed it down to the middle one, Nov 1st

F:You just can’t do anything normal can you? you even managed to mess up and complicate getting born!

It turns out that it was a very long and painful labor, and I was a home birth (a uncommon occurrence at the time). Also the Midwife was not that good, and forgot to fill in the forms at the time. She also banged my head repeatedly against the bed, but thats a different story. So basically everyone was tired, exhausted, and under belief that the midwife did her job. It was only later when it came time to register my birth they realised they were unsure of the date. My father, Mother & Nian (Grandmother) all believed different days.

They settled on the middle day of the range, since it was central and my mothers vote (well she did have the pain so its only fair). Since then a few people have stated I’m more suited to a Halloween birth than a All Saints Day birth.  The upshot is that since I was born on one of three possible days, I think to play safe I should celebrate my birthday over the full three day period. Its the only way I can be sure I have got the right day.

Darwin Award Entry Suggestion

So we have all seen in the news the “incident” with the Gaza flotilla. We’ve seen both sides blame the other, there’s videos and photos proving both sides correct. Now I am not going to get into which side was in the right. What I would like to ask is.

Which Idiot thought it would be a good idea to fill some ships with activists and try and run a military blockade in a security hotzone.

Seriously, whoever came up with the idea could do with having a psychological check-up.  I’m not saying the blockade is fair, or right, or anything like that. Its just the madness of the idea.

What did they think the Israelis would do? I mean if someone stood in front of me with a gun and said, no one is allowed to walk past me. I would not think it would be a great peaceful hoot to walk past him and expect him to do nothing.

Update:

Ok, so now a video has come to light where the captain of the lead ship is swearing he will be a martyr, and that all the people on the ships shall be martyred for Allah. So maybe it was a planned frackup to split Israel off from its allies, and not just a really stupid idea.