Well, I’ve always liked it, and I know some other people that do to, but now I have official confirmation that Jim Goar from Can Of Corn likes Samuel In Dolgnwot, describing it as “high grade cartoons”.
I must say I’m flattered, I never really thought my drawings were “high grade”, I always liked them, but I never thought an outsider (somebody who isn’t me) would like them that much.
With the support I am receiving for the Samuel In Dolgnwot series, I might just have to draw another series, maybe.
I don’t think so, and seeing as Barry Jeffries, the latest croc victim, isn’t alive I think it is proven.
So then, why do Queensland Parks & Wildlife insist on shooting a crocodile that is suspected of being the one that ate Mr Jeffries? I think it might be a propogranda campaign…perhaps they think that by shooting a croc, the rest of them will become terrified of humans and won’t try and eat them again…maybe…haven’t seen any proof of it working though.
To be fair though, the water hole that Mr. Jeffries was canoeing in was croc infested, and if a croc is hungry and sees “Floating human in a container” at the top of it’s territory, what do you expect it to do…call the local takeaway?
I just don’t see the point in shooting this crocodile, they have no proof that it is the right croc, and it’s not going to prove anything (excepct perhaps that QLD P&W are gun mad lunatics who need to shoot stuff), apart from which, surely it is the croc’s territory, not ours, and when we enter the territory of hungry wild animals we are taking our lives in our own hands.
Just imagine for one moment, it is 4pm and you are in a bank, their was a robbery at this bank at 10am and they have since reopened, the police arrive and arrest you for being the bank robber and their only proof is that you are in the bank at a later time, you wouldn’t be very happy would you?
QLD P&W have done the same thing, they have shot a croc which was in the same waterhole at a later time, yet, just like a bank which is “human infested”, the water hole is “croc infested” by QLD P&W’s own admission…the more I think about this the more I think QLD P&W are gun mad lunatics who feel a need to shoot stuff….I have one sentence of advice for those planning a Queensland holiday….don’t take the crocodile suit!
Quite possibly the answer is yes. Without a doubt, City News is the worst newspaper in Canberra. In fact, it is hardly fair on the newspaper industry to call City News a newspaper, in truth it is a glorified freely-distributed glossy advertorial nonsense device.
Lets take a look at a typical City News edition. It is divided into three sections, City News, Canberra Review and City Property.
The news section is really just a bunch of press releases and ads that are presented as news stories. It often features an unimportant story about a beauty competition, the colour of the City Hill flagpole or some other related nonsense, which is almost always derived from a press release. The only semi-substantial component of the news section is the editorial by some anonymous person calling themselves “The Whip”, who “Doesn’t necessarily represent the views of the paper” and generally provides a fairly generic semi-relevant rubbishing of the news.
The second section, “The Canberra Review” is a fairly bland commentary on the upcoming artistic events of the week. It is filled with press releases and reviews by people who really don’t seem to know what they are talking about.
The third section is an upside down (literally) section about Canberra real estate. It contains stories about whatever expensive properties are up for sale in Red Hill and surrounds (which seem to be written by the real estate agents), and a bunch of real estate ads. In this case, “bunch” means multiple pages of nothing but real estate ads.
Over time, City News has had a range of dismal columns by exceptionally boring people on topics that don’t matter or don’t appear to interest the writer, they all seem to have failed, possibly because the writer bored themselves, or City News sold the space to advertisers. Either way, it was dismal.
In fairness, the competition aren’t exactly brilliant either. The Canberra Times has gone downhill since Rural Press bought them. Editor Jack Waterford has tried to maintain some credibility, but has ultimately failed. The Canberra Times has really lost the plot, it’s local news is fairly poor, and it’s coverage of national and international news…well…buy The Australian…you won’t find much of use in The Canberra Times.
For a broadsheet, The Canberra Times is fairly disappointing…so much paper, so little content, what a pity.
The Chronicle is the local tabloid weekly and a subsiduary of The Canberra Times, it is distributed to homes all over Canberra and surrounds for free, and is very good at covering major local stories in detail. Unfortunately, it only covers a handful of newsworthy stories, preferring snippets and “Who won gardener of the week!” type stories. The Chronicle manages to fill most pages with ads, gardening tips, and recipes. Good reading when you are bored, not very good for news though.
I can’t honestly think of a worse newspaper than City News, it doesn’t seem to have any particular purpose. For local news you have The Chronicle, for national and international news you could buy The Canberra Times, but you would be better off with The Australian. If you want to waste time, well, City News is good for that!
City News is without a doubt the worst newspaper in Canberra, and probably the nation.
Now, somebody is surely going to ask me “If you think all these newspapers are bad, then where do you get your news from?” I’m glad you asked, I generally have the radio tuned to Talk Radio 2CC at various times throughout the day, which provides me with most of my news, I also get some news from The RiotACT, ABC Online and Google News.
Perhaps one day these newspapers will get better, but I’m not holding my breath on that one.
This week’s award goes to Credence Clearwater Revival.
I can remember quite clearly a few nights when I was listening to Radio 2CA when they went off air and the backup tape kicked in with “Bad Moon Rising”, but it often got cut off after a few seconds and started from the beginning all over again (blasted computer noise), this happened on quite a few nights, and hearing the first few bars, followed by silence, followed by the first few bars, more silence, half the song, silence, the first few bars and more silence and then the whole song and half the next song, followed by silence and then this song again did get quite irritating.
Suprisingly though, it has become one of my favourite songs, and so I have chosen it to be the featured song for this week’s Musicians Of The Week, Credence Clearwater Revival.
I see the bad moon arising. I see trouble on the way. I see earthquakes and lightning. I see bad times today.
Don’t go around tonight, Well, it’s bound to take your life, There’s a bad moon on the rise. I hear hurricanes ablowing. I know the end is coming soon. I fear rivers over flowing. I hear the voice of rage and ruin.
Don’t go around tonight, Well, it’s bound to take your life, There’s a bad moon on the rise. I hear hurricanes ablowing. I know the end is coming soon. I fear rivers over flowing. I hear the voice of rage and ruin.
All right! Hope you got your things together. Hope you are quite prepared to die. Looks like we’re in for nasty weather. One eye is taken for an eye.
Don’t go around tonight, Well, it’s bound to take your life, There’s a bad moon on the rise. I hear hurricanes ablowing. I know the end is coming soon. I fear rivers over flowing. I hear the voice of rage and ruin.
Don’t go around tonight, Well, it’s bound to take your life, There’s a bad moon on the rise. I hear hurricanes ablowing. I know the end is coming soon. I fear rivers over flowing. I hear the voice of rage and ruin.
Well, we have reached the double image finale of Samuel In Dolgnwot. With the gold supply in Dolgnwot having run out, Samuel decides it is time to return to his home in Canberra in his futuristic truck.
Here, for the first time, we see his truck in it’s entirety. At the front (left) is the driver’s cabin, followed by the gold storage container, the gold digging and sorting machine, the living quarters and the horses living quarters. The horse is of course visible in the first and second episodes of Samuel In Dolgnwot.
The second image shows the teacher (Mrs. Brophy) left a tick on the accompanying page, which is a very good way to end the series.
Clicking on the pictures will show a larger version, you can also find them on the photo gallery.
Samuel’s Artwork will take a short break now and will return in a few days with new and exciting pictures.
Today we have the second last episode in the Samuel In Dolgnwot series In recent days, the amount of gold that people were able to find was getting smaller and smaller, and today the newspaper reports that there is no gold left. Naturally Samuel isn’t terribly pleased about this, but he spends some time deciding what to do.
Tommorow we have a special double image finale to the Samuel In Dolgnwot series.
Clicking on the picture will show a larger version, you can also find it on the photo gallery.
Alrighty then, another episode of Samuel In Dolgnwot Today sees the return of the working pens, yep no more pencils, as I recall the black pen ran out of ink, and it took me a few days to get some more pens.
On this particular day, Samuel visits the assay office with the masses of gold he has collected, and just happens to find a rather high gold-to-money conversion rate. A little bit later on, his mum drops by to congratulate him.
It looks like Samuel left his arms at home today.
We are now 2 episodes away from finishing the Samuel In Dolgnwot series.
Clicking on the picture will show a larger version, you can also find it on the photo gallery.
The title explains the answers. When I plugged in my flash drive a few moments ago, I had Windows Media Player minimised, and as soon as I plugged it in, Media Player decided it had to ask me if I wanted to scan it for media files ten times.
My answers, well, I’ll read the title of this post to you: “No, No, No, No, No, No, No, No, No, No”
Thankyou to the lovely loony monkeys typing code for Microsoft, you have made my life so much easier…now, what did I plug in my flash drive for in the first place?….Blast, I forgot, and I think it was important too….
Today’s Samuel In Dognwot is not brought to you by any sponsors, but if you want pay me I won’t refuse. Today Samuel is watching Wheel Of Fortune, and is supporting the person in the middle yellow space, who is currently on $200.
As you can probably tell, this was before I spotted the comments from Mrs. Nash, and before I got a working pen.
We are now 3 episodes away from finishing the Samuel In Dolgnwot series.
Clicking on the picture will show a larger version, you can also find it on the photo gallery.
Samuel In Dolgnwot, Double Image Special. As time goes by, these images are becoming more and more abstract, and more and more faint, in this one I didn’t even have a working pen to use when I was drawing it.
Today’s first image sees Samuel singing the start of “Rock Around The Clock”, which really has nothing to do with the goldfields, but he was obviously enjoying himself.
According to the caption, Samuel is “singing to a CD”, which is obviously another one of those bits os futuristic technology for 1857. On this occasion, Mrs Brophy wasn’t marking the diaries, it was Mrs Nash, and she was quite annoyed at the lack of goldfield related entires, she was often annoyed about something, but she was especially unimpressed by this. “Samuel, I would like to read your ideas & thoughts about the goldfields. Please try to keep to the task.”
I didn’t notice her comments right away, which will probably be evident tommorow.
We are now 4 episodes away from finishing the Samuel In Dolgnwot series.
Clicking on the pictures will show a larger version, you can also find them on the photo gallery.
The Australian Capital City Radio Ratings were released yesterday or the day before, and I am happy to be able to announce that John Laws increased his Sydney market share by 16% (from 9.4% to 10.6%) whilst afternoon presenter John Stanley increased his market share by a whopping 41% (from 8.2% to 10.5%). John Stanley has a very entertaining show, and it is good to see people in Sydney are listening to it.
On a related note, here is a picture of the cake that 2UE presented to John Laws before he went to air on Monday morning, the day of his 70th birthday
Notice the golden candles? Well, it would appear that when 2UE move down the road later this month they will be presenting Lawsie with a new golden studio desk.
The microphone on that cake doesn’t look golden, maybe it would have been too obvious what they were planning if they borrowed his microphone just to take a photo of it.
This afternoon at work, we were discussing pie’s (the charming Indian boss who had never heard that word thought we were talking about “pine”, which really isn’t as tasty and often leads to tooth damage), and after following a link to a pie recipe, I noticed an ad telling me I had won something. Normally, I would not click on one of these ads, but on this occasion, I quite simply couldn’t help myself.
After clicking the link, I was presented with a page that had a strange little animation “calculating” my reward, which turned out to be $1101, the page also presented me with a timer telling me I had three minutes to call the number on the screen, which just happened to be an Australian free-call number, I printed the page (it had the claim number on it) and went next door to the office, which has the phone.
Upon dialing this free call number, I was transferred (at the advertising company’s cost) to a US call centre indentifying themselves as the “prize claim hotline” or something.
I told the girl who answered the phone that I had just won $1101 and she seemed to become excited (I don’t think many people ever ring the number, maybe she was happy to hear another person) and she proceeded to ask me for my claim number, which I gave her. She then went and asked me a few strange, although suprisingly understandable, questions about my holiday habits, how long has it been since my last holiday, what credit card to I prefer to use etc. She also asked for my name and phone number (office phone).
She then went on to tell me about this prize I had won, she was pretty much elaborating on what I had on my printout, a holiday to various places, I didn’t really care whether I was going to see a beach near a rollercoaster or not, but I pretended to be interested. She went on and on and on and on and on, until eventually she made the scam a little bit clearer, I was getting this fantastic holiday, I had to take at least one other person with me (which makes the per person cost seem much lower), and the third & fourth person is free. The total cost of this amazing holiday was a mere $1699. Naturally I had my $1101 discount, so it was only going to cost me $598, on credit card NOW and I can take my holiday whenever I want for the next 18 months.
During this entire performance, she was telling me information I was supposed to write down, names of places I could visit, and her name which, just on the off chance she is real and wants to google herself or you speak to her, was Shirley Mathis
She then had a recap of this amazing holiday, and then wanted my email address, she didn’t say why she wanted it, so I asked her: “Are you going to spam me?” to which she replied “I’m sorry, I couldn’t hear you” I asked her a second time and she froze, after a silence of about five seconds she said she was transferring me to her supervisor who “would be able to handle my enquiry better”.
I placed them on mute temporarily while I updated my surrounding co-workers on the status of this bizarre call (it was originally on speakerphone, but Shirley couldn’t hear me very well, so I picked up the handset), after a brief time on hold, an American man who never identified himself answered the phone and started blabbering more repeated details of this holiday before asking me for my email address, I asked him whether he was going to spam me, to which he replied “I’m not going to stand on you!” so then I said “No, Spam…SSSS-PAAAAM” He paused, and seemingly went into shock, and after about five seconds said “Oh, no, no, no (chuckle) we just want to send you a verification code so you can see your prize again.”
He didn’t bother asking for my email address again, and instead went on to a postal address, I started with a number, and had to spell it out to him, then I had to spell out the worded part of the postal address….twice, at which point one of my co-workers burst out laughing and rolled on the floor for a while, which I told the man on the phone, he seemed to ignore that, and as soon as we were finished with that he went and told me (for the third time) that once he was finished with me he would put me through to a tape recording from the legal department which would ensure that I knew what I was receiving (as if they hadn’t told me enough times already). I was beginning to suspect that he was a tape recording himself.
He eventually got to the “I want your credit card details” section of the conversation, and I made an excuse, I told him I had left my credit card at home today, and he said that people usually tell him that when they don’t believe the holiday deal. He suggested that I should call home “Put me on hold and call home!” I couldn’t argue with that logic, so I said I was putting him on hold, couldn’t find the hold button and pressed mute instead, I obviously wasn’t going to ring home as I had no intention of giving them my financial details, during the time I had them on mute I discussed the progress of the call with my co-workers and heard Shirley saying something to her supervisor about me, which sounded derogatory, it also sounded like she was saying something along the lines of “I think we’ve got this one”. I’ve always wanted to listen in on people who are on hold, it can prove to be entertaining, my wish came true today.
I waited a few more seconds before taking them off of the muted hold, and continued to play their game as if I hadn’t heard anything. Samuel: Are you still there? Shirley: Yes, I’m here Samuel: Oh, ok, your supervisor said I should ring home to get my credit card details Shirley: I know, I was standing right here
At this stage I was thinking “But you said you were transferring me, how many other people are listening to this, perhaps you are in a small office and the other call centre voices are just a recording.”
The call continued Samuel: Well, I tried, but nobody is home.
And the banter went on for a but longer, she started to sound disappointed, and told me about my holiday again, what came next really caught me off guard.
Shirley: You should borrow your bosses credit card…he can take it out of your pay cheque! Samuel: (Laughter) I suppose, but he isn’t here right now He was actually less than four metres away at his desk listening to me talking, but I wanted to finish this call politely, maybe they would let me have the bogus holiday to secure the scam…but alas, Shirley reached the stage where
Shirley: Well, I’m not going to be able to process your order without a credit card, I’m really sorry, I really wanted to help you out, I always look out for the people who sound like they need a holiday, and you sounded like that, and I really wanted to help you… Samuel: Well, with the rate that your ads keep appearing, I’m sure you will be able to give it away to somebody, it is a pity, I would have liked the holiday, it sounded great, I guess it’s just not my day. Shirley: Well it will go back into the system, I really wanted to help you, but I’m so sorry I can’t, maybe next time.
And that pretty much ended the call. I went back to the computer to find the three minute timer had changed to “Call Now”, I refreshed the page, and got the same claim number, the same prize, and another three minutes to call.
The call itself lasted for 24 minutes and 17 seconds, all of which was paid for by these lovely scammers.
Now if you have some spare time, and want to make those scammers pay, give Shirley and her supervisor a call, the more people the better, just use the details from my printout.
Ah yes, the fun that can come from those internet ads.
Here we go, more Samuel In Dolgnwot! Another one of those days where Samuel feels like singing. Actually, a few people were blessed with Samuel’s singing today, one of them described it as “Wolves Crying”.
If you have been watching the series unfold you may have noticed that, as the series has gone on, the pencils have been getting lighter.
We are now 5 episodes away from finishing the Samuel In Dolgnwot series, which reminds me, tomorrow we have another double image special.
Clicking on the picture will show a larger version, you can also find it on the photo gallery.
As you may recall from the last post about Lawsie’s birthday, John Williamson and Pixie Jenkins dropped in to sing happy birthday to Lawsie, you can hear them singing a birthday song and a couple others (Skinny Dingos, Mozzies) for Lawsie as well as having a little chat at http://www.johnlaws.com.au/sound_JL/WILLO.mp3.
