Posts filed under 'Bizarreness'
That was the title of some very abstract spam, which contained a filler story so vague and impossible to follow that it beat the Gmail spam filter.
all. “Well, you didn’t expect me, eh?” said Stepan Arkadyevitch, getting out of the sledge, splashed with mud on the bridge of his nose, on his cheek, and on his eyebrows, but radiant with health and good spirits. “I’ve come to see you in the first place,” he said, embracing and kissing him, “to have some stand-shooting second, and to sell the forest at Ergushovo third.” “Delightful! What a spring we’re having! How ever did you get along in a sledge?” “In a cart it would have been worse still, Konstantin Dmitrievitch,” answered the driver, who knew him. “Well, I’m very, very glad to see you,” said Levin, with a genuine smile of childlike delight. Levin led his friend to the room set apart for visitors, where Stepan Arkadyevitch’s things were carried also–a bag, a gun in a case, a satchel for cigars. Leaving him there to wash and change his clothes, Levin went off to the counting house to speak about the ploughing and clover. Agafea Mihalovna, always very anxious for the credit of the house, met him in the hall with inquiries about dinner. “Do just as you like, only let it be as soon as possible,” he said, and went to the bailiff. When he came back, Stepan Arkadyevitch, washed and combed, came
Unfortunately I have no idea what they were selling, as the embedded image selling whatever it was they were selling wouldn’t load and I was left with that rather baffling story, which had absolutely nothing to do with early birds, second mice, worms or cheese.
Samuel
May 30th, 2006 at 09:48am
Remember the loonies who took offence at my opinion of Summernats? Well they seem to have long memories.
Yesterday afternoon I was returning to work at the end of lunch, and walked the long way back in to the office (as I was a tad early) which involved walking around a corner on to the footpath on one side of Northbourne Avenue at a busy major intersection (this did not involve crossing the road). The vehicles travelling southbound on Northbourne were stopped at a red light, which meant they had plenty of time to see people walking, and potentially recognise them.
Anyway, as I was getting closer to my building, the cars travelling southbound received the green light, and as such, started moving, it was around this time that I started to hear a rather rowdy noise eminating from one of the vehicles…I turned my head to take a look (I was walking in a southbound direction) and could see somebody yelling from one of the cars, as they got even closer and passed me it became apparent that it was actually a tirade of expletives and excessive use of the word “nerd”. It also became apparent that it was more than one person yelling from the car, and that the tirade was directed at me, as one of them pointed directly at me.
You’re probably wondering what makes me think that this was the aforementioned loonies…well quite simply it was a group of young males in a “hotted up” vehicle exhibiting similar behaviour to what the loonies did last time, with similar language.
I have to wonder why they continue this nonsense…after all the last time they were of any concern as a “hot topic” was February, and it is now May. Are they really that far off the planet that they think yelling expletives at me will make me change my mind or give up blogging? Do they really think that the ten or so other people in the area were looking at them favourably? Perhaps they would have liked to take a closer look at the looks they were getting from the other people in the area.
I do have a message for them (although I fear the above text may be too much for their puny minds and they may miss the message as a result), next time around I will be taking a note of your registration plates, a description of your vehicle, the language that you use etc, and I will be pressing charges of harrassment (or whatever the legal term for it is). I will also (more than likely) have a number of witnesses, especially where I was at the time of yesterday’s incident…so if they would like to try it again, they have been warned.
In related loony news, I received an email yesterday afternoon from one “Sam Granleese” (his samgranleese@mac.com address didn’t bounce, so it might be legitimate) who said
Dear Samuel,
As we both share the same name, I thought it was my duty on behalf of other Sam’s and Samuel’s around the world to give you a good talking to.
Are you a mental patient? If so, please start taking your medication again. If not, please unplug your computer, take a deep breath, and call ‘000’ on your phone. Do not attempt to tune into 2CC whilst you wait for the ambulance to arrive, and if possible, please put on your spare straight-jacket which is surely still lying around the house. This would be very considerate.
Many thanks,
Sam
Was Sam having a bad day and just wanted to vent on somebody? Perhaps…I felt like venting on him after the previous loonies, but I refrained from doing that and instead sent him a polite email to which he is still yet to respond.
Sam,
You provide all these solutions, but you don’t identify what they are
there to solve. What exactly are you trying to acheive?
Samuel
In further related loony news, the Queen’s birthday long weekend is coming up, which means that local loonies get to blow things up for a while (and continue doing it when they aren’t allowed to). I’ll have another editorial on that subject in the coming weeks.
Samuel
May 26th, 2006 at 09:12am
Over at John B1_B5’s Place, John B1_B5 has added to the “Voice Of Reason” confusion by giving himself the title.
John B1_B5 is now the third voice of reason in Canberra, after 2CC declared that John Stanley is the voice of reason, only to be trumped shortly after by a promo for John Laws which touted Lawsie as the voice of reason.
So, is anybody else here also the voice of reason? And if so, please state your credentials for the job, we need to get to the bottom of this controversy ASAP!
Samuel
May 5th, 2006 at 01:52pm
I’m pleased to be able to announce that yesterday when I went in to Supabarn I received a receipt printed on receipt paper much more suitable for a Supabarn checkout.
If we zoom in on the text between the ads we see this:
On Sunday I received Big W paper from Supabarn, so it looks like Supabarn either received a shipment of corrected receipt paper late last week and finished off the Big W paper over the weekend, or they received a shipment of corrected receipt paper yesterday. Either way, well done to Supabarn and Magnus Advertising for fixing the issue, and a special congratulations to Andy Vaccaro, store manager of City Supabarn for taking notice of my letter and doing something about it, and especially for having the courtesy to reply to it. Well done Andy, you are leading the pack, and there are plenty of other managers out there who could learn a thing or two from you.
I’m glad the issue has been sorted out, I believe that it was the result of a minor data entry accident, and it is good to see that it was sorted out in a prompt manner (once they knew about it).
Samuel
May 2nd, 2006 at 08:38am
You might recall the story from Tuesday about Magnus Advertising sending the wrong receipt paper to Supabarn. Well it just got a bite more interesting.
Yesterday another person in the household visited Supabarn (EFTPOS transaction blurred by Samuel).
The back of the receipt looked about the same as last time…
Except for one small difference…see that up the top:
It looks like Magnus print destination stores on the receipt paper, which probably means that somebody made a data entry error prior to printing, and the Big W receipt paper was assigned to the wrong client. Whilst these errors will happen from time to time in automated environments, it is a pity that nearly a week later Supabarn are still using the incorrectly addressed Big W batch, as this probably means nobody picked up on the error until it was far too late.
It is probably too late for either Magnus or Supabarn to do anything about it (after all Supabarn need receipt paper), but I have written letters to both of them bring the matter to their attention. I only got around to posting them late last week, so I’m not execting a reply until early to mid this week, and even then I wouldn’t be surprised if they say that there isn’t anything they can do about the error.
I do want to make something very clear here. I am not trying to criticise Magnus, Supabarn or anyone else for this, I just want to make sure that the people involved know about the problem, and the rest of us can gain some entertainment from it, and learn a bit more about the receipt advertising industry in the process.
Samuel
April 23rd, 2006 at 12:40pm
The people at Behind Big Brother have been kind enough to remove my photo and mention that I am not a contestant, however they have also gone and called my request that they remove my copyright image a “legal threat”.
Interestingly, a threat is defined as “An expression of an intention to inflict pain, injury, evil, or punishment” by answers.com…but take a look at the email I sent to them overnight and see if you think it was threatening.
Dear Sir/Madam,
As per my most recent blog post, I am not going on Big Brother, and have no intention of ever doing so. I’m used to my name being thrown around for various reasosn, and I’m not fussed about this.
I would, however, like to point out that in your article “Rumoured Housemates” you have used a copyright image of me, from my website, without my permission. Please either remove the image or request permission to use it. You have also called me “Samuel Stewart”, I’m not terribly fussed about that, I just thought you might like to know that “Gordon-Stewart” is my proper last name.
Regards,
Samuel Gordon-Stewart
Looks to me like I asked them to remove it or request permission to use it…I can’t see a “legal threat”…can you?
Samuel
April 21st, 2006 at 03:49pm
ACT Chief Turnip Jon Stanhope has been in the news a bit lately, one of the many reasons is a possible plan to close some schools, and the ABC had a rather interesting article about that yesterday.
The article featured this baffling quote from the Chief Turnip
We cannot continue to sustain a government school system where there are, in the context of the level of expenditure, which we make or investment in education and maintain a school system at that level of under use.
Even if you change a few words it still doesn’t seem to make sense, and as such it is impossible to work out whether or not there is a typo in amongst that. I decided to send a copy of the quote off to the Plain English Campaign, and nominate Jon Stanhope for a Foot In Mouth award, which is awarded for “a baffling quote by a public figure”.
Shortly after sending an email to the Plain English Campaign, I received a response from Dave Smith. (We previously met Dave on Samuel’s Persiflage #1.) Dave said
This certainly deserves a nomination for the foot-in-mouth award and I will see that the judges get it.
He also went on to say that
The judging for the awards will take place in October. I will let you know if your nomination wins in November.
It will be interesting to see if our Chief Turnip wins this prestigious award or not, it seems like the kind of award he could be very proud of.
Samuel
April 20th, 2006 at 08:49am
On Sunday afternoon I was doing a spot of grocery shopping in City Supabarn, paid for the few iems which were required, got my change and receipt and left.
A short time arriving back at home, I checked the back of the receipt paper to see if there were any useful deals on the advertisements.
Did you spot the error? Lets take a closer look.
Yes, that’s right, Magnus Advertising sent Big W’s receipt paper to City Supabarn. Seeing as the only Big W store in Canberra is based in Woden, I wonder if they got Supabarn’s receipt paper?
Samuel
April 18th, 2006 at 12:32pm
This is the question I was left asking myself after Monday’s show, in which the following was the final story.
On the other hand we had hoped to tell you about an ongoing legal matter involving the ABC, but late today Media Watch was directed not to broadcast that story.
The director of ABC TV Kim Dalton said
“It is not appropriate for the ABC to comment on a matter before the courts in which the ABC is involved where the perception may arise that the ABC is attempting to influence the outcome of the court’s deliberation.”
Until next week – good night.
The story in question is one Media Watch covered the previous week.
The Packer family’s Bulletin magazine carried a lengthy discussion on the future of the ABC two weeks ago.
Communications Minister Helen Coonan had this to say.
“It won’t be the same ABC it is today in a year’s time – we are in for some very exciting changes.”
— The Bulletin, 21st March, 2006
And boy, she meant it. Talk about moving fast!
“Restructure of ABC Board
The Board of the Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC) will be restructured …
The staff-elected Director position on the ABC Board will be abolished and legislation to give effect to this change will be introduced as early as possible.”
— Senator Coonan, Media Release – Restructure of ABC Board, 24th March, 2006
The election for a new staff director is already underway. The nominations are in. The Australian Electoral Office is gearing up.
So the government has to let that process continue. But once ABC staff have voted – the government will axe the position.
Now that’s forward planning! So where will that leave the board?
The staff elected director will go. A permanent replacement for the managing director is yet to be chosen and it’s not clear whether Chairman Donald McDonald will be re-appointed.
That leaves just four board members whose tenure is secure. Senator Coonan has promised to appoint two new board members soon. ABC staff will meet later this week to discuss the changes.
We’ll keep you posted.
Good night.
Up until now, the ABC has made Media Watch look like an independent 15 minutes of airtime, something over which management take no control over, and is free to do as it pleases, including scrutinise the ABC. With this image, surely there was no problem with Media Watch looking into the story, but instead management have come along and destroyed this image in order to prevent Media Watch from talking about the story. This also makes me wonder what Media Watch found out that management wanted to hide?
Samuel
Update (3:50PM 7/Mar/2006): It turns out that the story in question was NOT about the staff-appointed director fiasco, but instead about a woman who is suing the ABC for a breach of privacy. Whilst this still raises questions about the impartiality (or lack thereof) of Media Watch, a report in yesterday’s The Australian newspaper casts a different light on it, with host Monica Attard and executive producer Peter McEvoy threatening to quit. You can see the article on The Australian’s website by clicking here, or read on for my “archived for historical purposes” copy (naturally The Australian retain copyright over the article, and any request they may make for me to remove the article from this website will be honoured).
Media Watch resents ABC gag
Amanda Meade
April 06, 2006
MEDIA Watch host Monica Attard and her executive producer Peter McEvoy issued an ultimatum yesterday to ABC’s new director of television, Kim Dalton: stop meddling or we will quit.
The staff at Media Watch are still fuming over the removal on Monday night of a story from the program’s line-up. It is believed to be the first time management has interfered significantly in editorial decisions since the program started in 1989 with barrister Stuart Littlemore as its first host.
Attard and McEvoy believe the story was removed not for legal reasons but because it was not in the corporate interests of the public broadcaster.
After seeing the Media Watch script late on Monday, acting managing director Murray Green and Dalton further consulted legal advisers and directed the story be dropped.
The censored item was about a Melbourne woman who is suing the ABC for breach of privacy.
In two radio bulletins broadcast on the ABC in 2002, the victim of a rape was identified, which is against the law.
The victim, whose husband was convicted for the rape, is suing the ABC for breach of privacy and seeking compensation and aggravated damages.
The woman told the court after the broadcasts she felt as if the “whole world knew” she had been raped.
The national broadcaster’s media watchdog was going to make the point that a legal precedent may be set if she was successful, which could affect media reporting.
Although the story had been cleared by in-house lawyers, Green and Dalton said it may be seen by the magistrate hearing the case as the ABC exerting pressure on her.
Monday’s program reported on the internal tension.
“We had hoped to tell you about an ongoing legal matter involving the ABC, but late today Media Watch was directed not to broadcast that story,” Attard told viewers before reading out a statement provided to the program by Dalton: “It is not appropriate for the ABC to comment on the matter before the courts in which the ABC is involved where the perception may arise where the ABC is attempting to influence the outcome of the court’s deliberations.”
Sources insist, however, that the item was not a comment on the case but a simple report of the facts in the case, which were of significant interest to the media industry.
Last night sources told Media the meeting with Dalton was lengthy and constructive and no one was threatening to quit the program. However, if Dalton takes a heavy-handed approach to the program, he may find himself with a fight on his hands. Media Watch was axed by previous managing director Jonathan Shier and then reinstated by former director of television Sandra Levy. Although she was a hands-on director, Levy did not meddle, former presenter David Marr has said.
April 7th, 2006 at 12:12pm
This occurred to me yesterday, and it has me stumped…
If CFCs (Chloroflurocarbons) used to be in fridges, and CFCs make the ozone layer thinner, why do we have a hole in the ozone layer above Antarctica, where you don’t need a refrigerator?
Samuel
March 26th, 2006 at 12:13pm
As regular readers would be more than well aware by now, I read some of my spam when I feel like a laugh.
Take a look at this email which, on the surface at least, is a simple nigerian scam.
From: isa_frank23@yahoo.co.in
Subject: call me asap
Phone: +234-802-554-9993
pls reply to this box-isa_frank34@yahoo.co.in
Hello My Friend,
I am the chairman of the contract award committee of the National Petroleum Corporation here in Nigerian, for security reasons, I may not wish to disclose how I got your email address for now.
After due deliberation with my partner, I decided to forward to you this business proposal, we want you to assist us receive the sum of Twenty eight million, six hundred thousand united state bills(us28.6m) into your account. This fund resulted from an over-invoiced contract awarded by us under the budget allocation to my ministry and the bill was approved for payment by the concerned ministries. The contract was executed, commissioned and the contractor was paid his actual cost of the contract. Now, we are left with the balance of us28.6m as the over invoiced amount, which we have deliberately over estimated for our own use. Please note that the law forbids civil servants to operate or own foreign accounts hence this contact, we have agreed to share the money in the following percentages: 30 for you, 60 for us 10 for tax as may be required by your government.
Note that this transaction is very much free from all sorts of risk hence the business was carefully planned before it was successfully executed and we the officials involved in the deal have put many years in service to our ministry. We have been exercising patience for this privilege for so long not until the presidential announcement last week, that all foreign contractors owed be paid forthwith, this will enable the presidency reconcile our debt ratio with the outside world and to most of us, this is a lifetime blessing we cannot afford to miss. Upon indication of your interest to fully co-operate with us, a payment application/information form will be sent to you via email for completion.
Be informed also that the above mentioned formV when properly completed by you and return via email, will enable us seek/secure approval of the fund from the concerned government quarters/ministries within 1-2 banking days.
As soon as we confirm receipt of this money in your nominated bank account, my partner and I will come over to your country to arrange for our own share and possibly invest part of this money in your country.
Let honesty and trust be our watchword throughout this transaction. I shall furnish you with some details about myself. Your prompt reply will be highly appreciated.
Best regards.
Adams I.S.A
Alright, got that? Did you notice anything odd about it? Here is the bit that caught my attention.
This fund resulted from an over-invoiced contract awarded by us under the budget allocation to my ministry and the bill was approved for payment by the concerned ministries. The contract was executed, commissioned and the contractor was paid his actual cost of the contract. Now, we are left with the balance of us28.6m as the over invoiced amount, which we have deliberately over estimated for our own use.
It is quite interesting that they go on to say
Note that this transaction is very much free from all sorts of risk
Errr, we have a national monopolistic wheat board and a related government being dragged through the mud with the real possibility of being prosecuted for this exact behaviour. They might not have kept the excess money for themselves, but they did play a part in the fiasco, the extent of which shall be decided by the Cole Inquiry.
In releated news, the spammers have been having trouble with their latest spambots not parsing silly sender names correctly, and instead leaving “[%from_name%]” as the sender’s name. Those that are sending names correctly are continuing to make up silly names, with an exceptional example coming in last night…for that very reason I say hello to a certain “Spoilers U. Poliomyelitis” who was kind enough to send me useless information about his online pharmacy, and the following bit of information
When the cat’s away the mice will play.
Much laughter, a little wit.
Children and fools tell the truth.
I have too much fun with my spam sometimes, which incidentally is currently on 1408 emails for the last 30 days…and Gmail filtered them all!
Samuel
March 26th, 2006 at 07:31am
I could have been certain that I’ve written about CIT charging “Student Association” fees, how horribly wrong it is, and how it should be illegal under VSU (Voluntary Student Unionism) before, but I can’t find any record of it, so I’ll provide some background.
CIT (Canberra Institute of Technology, for those of you who have been wondering) has a student union called “CITSA”, or “Canberra Institute of Technology Student Association”, they also charge all students a compulsory CITSA fee, without forcing anybody to join CITSA. From memory, this fee is around $60. I can’t remember the exact details of the VSU legislation which was passed by parliament last year, but I know that students are no longer allowed to be forced into a student union, the thing I’m not 100% sure about is if educational institutions are allowed to charge a student union fee, I think they can’t, and I’m 95% sure that they can’t, but as I said, I can’t recall the exact details of VSU.
If, for some strange reason, VSU does not cover this, then it is an outrageous loophole, and one the legal teams who drafted the VSU legislation should have picked up on very early in the piece. VSU is very important as it means I don’t have to be a part, by connection, of some strange angry chanting mob taking over Civic with five dozen different campaigns at once, most of which I would disagree with. I would be more than happy to pay a bit extra for food or drink in exchange for not giving a student association a lump sum every six months.
On this topic, I overheard some CIT (possibly CITSA) officials talking in Cafe Yala the other day. Whilst I didn’t catch every word, and didn’t want to appear to be eavesdropping, I did get most of it, and the basic message of their conversation was:
- CIT is the only educational institution in the country to charge a compulsory student union fee
- The legality of it is unclear, and if possible would only be through a loophole
- They have already received at least one complaint by phone
- One complaint to a federal MP would probably be enough to bring the whole sordid little scheme crashing down
The officials in question saw me standing there near them waiting for my coffee, looking somewhat distant and focussed. It is surprising that they had that conversation at a reasonable volume in public and in front of, when I am known to carry a recording device with me, especially during lectures. The fact that I appeared to be concentrating on something else does not alter this, as I was nearby for plenty of time before I looked like I was concentrating on anything.
It is a pity that I didn’t turn on my digital notetaker as I would have loved to record that conversation, alas it didn’t really last long enough, and I didn’t want to scare them off by searching through my bag for any length of time, which would probably have made it harder for me to hear the conversation anyway.
Samuel
March 24th, 2006 at 08:00am
Here we have an unusual object which I have dubbed the “Scarecrow Laundry Robot”.
In reality it is a basket on wheels, designed to hold a laundry basket so that you can just wheel the laundry basket along with you whilst hanging washing on the washing line, it has been moved whilst its normal location gets cleaned up a bit, the rake was also from that area. It is currently holding some wire and some wood.
Samuel
March 23rd, 2006 at 06:36pm
Credit to Media Watch for finding this one.
The photo you see there was part of an article about John Howard’s 10 years of prime ministership, Media Watch said this about the caption on their TV show.
Paul Howard?!
Come on Shepparton it’s been 10 years.
Media Watch seem to think this was a mistake, but did they consider the possibility that Shepparton News may have uncovered John Howard’s secret identity…perhaps Paul locked up John many years ago and assumed his identity…or maybe not.
Samuel
March 18th, 2006 at 11:51pm
In the last 24 hours I have noticed a trend where the spammers are moving away from the tried and tested (and blocked very easily by spam filters) method of using short bits of random text, to having long extracts of weird and nonsensical stories. Here is the one that came in this evening, and is undoubtedly the best one so far.
same thing happened. ‘Are you trying to get in my way on purpose?’ screamed Ivan, infuriated. ‘ You’re the one I’m going to report to the police!’ Ivan tried to grab the choirmaster by the sleeve, missed and found himself grasping nothing : it was as if the choirmaster had been swallowed up by the ground. With a groan Ivan looked ahead and saw the hated stranger. He had already reached the exit leading on to Patriarch’s Street and he was no longer alone. The weird choirmaster had managed to join him. But that was not all. The third member of the company was a cat the size of a pig, black as soot and with luxuriant cavalry officers’ whiskers. The threesome was walking towards Patriarch’s Street, the cat trotting along on its hind legs. As he set off after the villains Ivan realised at once that it was going to be very hard to catch them up. In a flash the three of them were across the street and on the Spiridonovka. Ivan quickened his pace, but the distance between him and his quarry grew no less. Before the poet had
Samuel
March 13th, 2006 at 11:10pm
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