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Coincidences

@Nosmo King posted this on the Flatulence thread -



This bit caught my eye:



I remember reading that very bitter reply, which is from so long ago it was first printed in the newspaper rather than online, and was for some reason thinking about it a few days ago.

It had stuck in my mind because I used to work as a Royal Mail night sorter in the late '70s, though not in Leicester, and there was indeed a culture of competitive farting. Poor R. C. Draycott was not amused.

Never thought I'd read it again. :chuckle:

Quoting myself 'ere -

Reading about farting, and there's a R4 item about Burger King trying to reduce emissions by feeding cattle a lemongrass preparation.
There's even a song about it.

(The programme is Green Inc: Activist and satirist Heydon Prowse unpacks the green repackaging of the food and drink industry.)
 
Just now Techy was watching The Matrix and I brought in a couple of little desserts. Waved them at him and said 'You choose!'

He chose and I said 'I suppose you want a spoon now!' and he and the Chinese boy said together 'There is no spoon!'
:omg:
 
Everyday I turn down a street with the same surname as one of my late husband's friends from squash playing days.
Earlier this week I thought about his friends and their wives as I turned down into the street.
Today I had an email from another of his friends saying that the wife of the one with the same name had died.
 
Last night we were watching a TV series that's set in an area we know. It has the usual long-distance landscape shots and I put it on again this morning in the hope of picking out places in the view.

Froze the screen and thought 'If I knew what that tower was I'd have it!' and glanced at Facebook. A friend (met on'ere many years ago!) had posted a photo of that exact structure. I thought 'Of course!' and it's set the whole view in perspective.

Told him he's a spooky so-and-so. He'll like that. :wink2:
 
I was just driving and warming the car up (-10C currently). I had the radio playing, as I always do, but not really listening. I knew the person on the radio was talking about barghasts.


Then as I was just thinking that it was kind of an odd reference for a Canadian program, a runaway husky ran in front of my car. Thank goodness I was not travelling fast (in town) nor was there any other traffic because it ran across 4 lanes. And I or someone else would have hit it.

I come up to the next intersection and turn right. And just maybe 500 ft ahead, a small funeral procession pulls out in front of me.

What should I take from all of that? I guess I should keep my wits about me!
 
Saw this t'net -

Hazel O'Connor: Punk singer placed in induced coma after bleed on the brain


Actress and musician Hazel O'Connor, who rose to fame in the 1980s with hits such as Eighth Day and Will You? is recovering in hospital after suffering from a bleed on the brain.

The star of the 1980 punk musical Breaking Glass was found at her home in southwest France on Sunday and rushed to hospital after what her family described as a "serious medical event".

O'Connor, 66, was placed in an induced coma for 24 hours, but is now said to be responding to treatment.

Seems she is responding to treatment and hopes are high for her. Fingers crossed, eh.

Coincidence: I'd glanced down from t'tellybox where Six Feet under was playing, the scene where a doctor informs a patient about a bleed on the brain.
:omg:

Like @brownmane's dog/funeral thing. I thought hmmmm!
 
Saw this t'net -

Hazel O'Connor: Punk singer placed in induced coma after bleed on the brain




Seems she is responding to treatment and hopes are high for her. Fingers crossed, eh.

Coincidence: I'd glanced down from t'tellybox where Six Feet under was playing, the scene where a doctor informs a patient about a bleed on the brain.
:omg:

Like @brownmane's dog/funeral thing. I thought hmmmm!

Hope she gets better.
A really talented singer-songwriter and a genuinely nice person.
Had a lovely chat with her after a gig once.
 
"Bleed on the brain" sounds so strange to me as a non-native speaker. It feels more like an insult than a medical diagnosis.
It means, as you no doubt know, an intercranial haemorrhage. There are four types of intercranial hemorrhage with different treatments: epidural hemorrhage, subdural hemorrhage, subarachnoid hemorrhage, and intraparenchymal hemorrhage.

'Brain bleed' covers all that.

How about an actual 'insult to the brain'? That was the official cause of death of the poet Dylan Thomas; an alcoholic 'insult', or injury.
The 'insult' was the huge amount of alcohol he drank before collapsing.

He is now thought to have died of pneumonia, hastened by inappropriate treatment including injections of morphine which would have slowed his already difficult breathing patterns.

'Insult to the brain' - what an informative expression. :cool:
 
"Bleed on the brain" sounds so strange to me as a non-native speaker.

This is a largely-outmoded British idiomatic/folk medical expression, a style which has nearly disappeared.

I may not have heard or seen this form used, since last century, until reading it upon this page (I say that a lot, here: but I still might not be wrong).

Bet you I now hear it twice tomorrow, and three times before the weekend...

cf
"water on the brain"
"water on the knee"
"blood on the elbow"
"fluid on the lung"
&c
(note "on", not 'in')

ps the contemporary verson of the expression is really, I suppose, 'brain bleed'.....
 
I know I've mentioned my life sized pony project on here before, and I've been buying tack for it when I see it going cheap on ebay.

I NEEDED:
stirrups (translation for the non-horsey people; the metal things your feet go in)
stirrup leathers (the straps that hold the stirrups onto the saddle)
and a girth (the strap that holds the saddle on)

I WANTED (because part of the point of this project is to give me tack to take apart, clean and reassemble, I find it relaxing, so the more bits and bobs I have the better!):
an extra pair of reins, as I purposely bought a bit (the metal thing that goes in the horse's mouth) that needs two reins rather than the usual one, but I wanted narrow ones (traditionally, the top ring has a normal rein, and the bottom one has a narrower one)
a running martingale (attaches to the reins to stop the horse throwing its head in the air), but I needed one that doesn't attach to the saddle, as my saddle doesn't have the D rings for one.

So, I was browsing ebay, and I found this bundle of stuff;

tackbundle.jpg

The description was "horse girths preowned With Leather Strap Stirrups (incl Damage) Incl Head Collar" Amazing! All the things I needed in one lot! The postage was pricey, at £10, but I won the auction for 99p, so that was a bargain :D

What's NOT in the description is that interesting little tangle of leather at the top right of the pic... and any other equestrians might spot those two metal rings... that look EXACTLY like the two rings on a running martingale :omg:

Well, I just got my parcel, and it IS a running martingale, AND it's the right kind!

And you'll never guess what... in that tangle of stuff, there's the martingale... AND A PAIR OF NARROW REINS!!!

EVERYTHING I needed AND wanted, all in one parcel, OMG, the universe loves me today, I'm SO HAPPY :yay:
 
Just started reading that book One Two Three Four about The Beatles. Now I'm seeing Beatles references everywhere. I've been ten minutes on this forum today and already seen mentions of both Lennon and McCartney (separately).
 
This book, I dunno... I woke up with the Siege of Mafeking (the phrase) going round my head, and wondering, what was that, then? (My history knowledge isn't great). Then today I'm reading the Beatles book and the first chapter I read mentions the siege of Mafeking (describing the screaming Beatles fans).
 
Saw this t'net -

Hazel O'Connor: Punk singer placed in induced coma after bleed on the brain




Seems she is responding to treatment and hopes are high for her. Fingers crossed, eh.

Coincidence: I'd glanced down from t'tellybox where Six Feet under was playing, the scene where a doctor informs a patient about a bleed on the brain.
:omg:

Like @brownmane's dog/funeral thing. I thought hmmmm!

I'm in this Hazel O'Connor vid

She was very friendly and not up herself at all.

 
Wreckless Eric, little known post punk pop artist, popped into my head earlier today. Can’t remember the last time I heard him played on the radio. Just a few hours later I find his ‘Whole Wide World’ used in a tv holiday ad. One of the few two-chord songs.

It apparently featured fairly recently in Stranger Than Fiction but since I’ve never seen that it didn’t come from there.
 
Wreckless Eric, little known post punk pop artist, popped into my head earlier today. Can’t remember the last time I heard him played on the radio. Just a few hours later I find his ‘Whole Wide World’ used in a tv holiday ad. One of the few two-chord songs.

It apparently featured fairly recently in Stranger Than Fiction but since I’ve never seen that it didn’t come from there.
I think the Expedia ad was shown in this year's Super Bowl interval - I'm embarrassed to say I'd forgotten why I loved Wreckless Eric so much in my youth until I heard the chords of Whole Wide World again. His first LP was the only picture-disc I owned (maybe still own if I hunt under the bed).
 
Speaking of gods being mad;

I might be the anti-george bailey. Not that my life sucks or I made it worse for those around be but just as a butterfly in China causes a hurricane a week later I've always suspected that if any single thing in my life had gone differently I'd have died or otherwise ceased to exist. Even the tiniest little change like killing a butterfly and -poof- I'm a goner.

If I could live my life over I'd be stillborn.
 
Just glanced at the obituary page (opposite the puzzles) and noticed that one woman pictured was wearing a shirt that looked familiar—it's identical to one I bought about 4 years ago from a used clothing store in a different state. The photo was probably taken about 20 years ago judging by the age she looked in the photo and what age she was when she passed. Not creepy, just odd.
 
Yup, flat. My hearing is very good so I'd expect to notice sounds that Techy doesn't.
Two options come to mind. The first is a switched-mode power supply with poor stability causing magnetostriction in a transformer or inductor and the second is the same instability causing a ceramic capacitor to 'sing', that is, the variation in voltage across the part causes it to flex in sync, and if that's in the audio band you'll hear it all right.

(Recently debugged this issue in an audio product where it was so loud customers sent stuff back – it’s usually the feedback network causing an unwanted phase shift at the switching frequency.)
 
Just glanced at the obituary page (opposite the puzzles) and noticed that one woman pictured was wearing a shirt that looked familiar—it's identical to one I bought about 4 years ago from a used clothing store in a different state. The photo was probably taken about 20 years ago judging by the age she looked in the photo and what age she was when she passed. Not creepy, just odd.
And creepy.
 
I’m just watching Series 9, Episode 6 of one of my favourite telly programmes: The Repair Shop.

On comes a woman with a toy chimp in need of repair. Damn me, but it’s the twin of the one my parents bought me as a toddler in Gibraltar in 1957!

I was thinking nostalgically about getting Jacko down from his shelf of honour in the book room, when Jay Blades asked the woman what her chimp was called.

Jacko”, she replied...

maximus otter
 
I’m just watching Series 9, Episode 6 of one of my favourite telly programmes: The Repair Shop.

On comes a woman with a toy chimp in need of repair. Damn me, but it’s the twin of the one my parents bought me as a toddler in Gibraltar in 1957!

I was thinking nostalgically about getting Jacko down from his shelf of honour in the book room, when Jay Blades asked the woman what her chimp was called.

Jacko”, she replied...

maximus otter
o_O
 
I’m just watching Series 9, Episode 6 of one of my favourite telly programmes: The Repair Shop.

On comes a woman with a toy chimp in need of repair. Damn me, but it’s the twin of the one my parents bought me as a toddler in Gibraltar in 1957!

I was thinking nostalgically about getting Jacko down from his shelf of honour in the book room, when Jay Blades asked the woman what her chimp was called.

Jacko”, she replied...

maximus otter

A quick Google reveals the brand name of toy monkeys (and chimps) back then was, you guessed it, "Jacko". Must have been something in the air...
 
This afternoon I was boring my wife by talking about the sadism in traditional puppet shows and how there were many interpretations of that. (We had just passed the Rotterdam children's open air puppet show, in full progress, this one free of sadism, but featuring farting babies "one day fresh".)

Now I'm reading a book and it says:

The serial killings in the “Punch and Judy” plays for children are so enjoyable because the puppets are of wood and the beaten skulls sound so wooden and insensitive. Nevertheless this enjoyment is certainly the harmless “abreaction” of the cruel urges of infancy.
 
I should not have been all that impressed by my multiple “close encounters” with serial killers. By the time I met the first of my serial killers in 1979, a US president’s wife had met her serial killer, when John Wayne Gacy as the director of Chicago’s annual Polish Constitution Day Parade hosted President Jimmy Carter’s wife, Rosalynn, in May 1978.

At about the same time, Jimmy Carter’s vice president, Walter Mondale, was meeting his serial killer, the teenaged Jeffrey Dahmer, who arranged a spontaneous visit for himself and some classmates with the vice president as a prank during a high school trip to Washington, D.C. (having failed in his attempt to secure a visit with President Carter).

And in 1977 the governor of California Jerry Brown was not only encountering his serial killer but was dancing with and hugging her. Dorothea Puente, the “Death House Landlady” who buried some of her nine elderly victims in the rose garden of her Sacramento, California, boardinghouse, bought tables at political fund-raising events, at one of which she met and danced with the governor.

Serial killers were even making appearances on TV. The same Rodney Alcala appeared as a contestant on The Dating Game in 1978 (and won), while serial killer Edward Wayne Edwards, who murdered at least five victims, appeared on two game shows, To Tell the Truth and What’s My Line?, even though he was a convicted felon. (More recently, the British necrophile serial killer Stephen Port, the “Grindr Killer,” appeared on Celebrity MasterChef UK, making meatballs, while at the time he was killing and then raping at least four male victims.)

By now serial killers were even randomly crossing paths with other serial killers. The Chicago satanic-cult serial killer Robin Gecht, later linked to the gang rape/mutilation/cannibal murders of seventeen female victims, was employed as a laborer by John Gacy, neither aware of the other’s serial killing.

Adolph James “Jimmy” Rode, aka Cesar Barone, claimed he was personally “tutored” by Ted Bundy when he was briefly jailed with him in Florida.

And then there was the ultimate! A case of one serial killer murdering another serial killer, when Wayne Henley shot Dean Corll (the “Candy Man”) in 1973, after the two of them had together tortured, raped and murdered twenty-eight male teenagers in Houston, Texas. Corll threatened to make Henley his twenty-ninth victim; Henley struck first and Dextered Corll.

This is from:
Names: Vronsky, Peter, author. Title: Sons of Cain: a history of serial killers from the stone age to the present/Peter Vronsky. Description: New York : Berkley, [2018]
 
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