So anyway…

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A clever person shared this with me, regarding my post about men with big hoses:

Here’s my thoughts- the whole premise was “the most passionate lovers are the men with big hoses.” Based on the two descriptions, a firemen vs. a gardener, I’ve come to the following conclusion: a gardener offers entertainment to almost everyone who wants to take a peek whereas a firemen is offering help to those in need…. which do you think would be the better?

An interesting thought. And lest we forget D.H. Lawrence and his infamous and often-banned Lady Chatterley’s Lover (in which the hunky gardener’s hose is never mentioned specifically, though it’s strongly implied that Lady Chatterley is quite enamoured of the gardener’s equipment).

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Andrew and I generally keep open a chat window during the day, as we’re both online for most of the day (no, his employer doesn’t care). Sometimes, we share amusing or interesting spam titles that turn up in our spam filters. This is a conversation we had today on that very topic.

HE: The most passionate lovers are the men with big hoses.
ME: Firemen?
HE: You heard it here first, folks. Sexy firemen.
ME: Or gardeners?
HE: Firemen have bigger hoses.
ME: Some gardeners have big hoses. How do you know so much about the size of hoses, anyway? The gardeners at the Royal Botanical Gardens have very big hoses, indeed.
HE: They’re mostly buried, I’d think. Actually, no. They would be pipes. Firemen’s hoses are much thicker when they’re working.
ME: Andrew… is there something you want to tell me?
HE: Yes, honey. I’ve seen a fireman’s hose. I’ve even touched one.

Can you see why we’ve been together as long as we have? Also, I’m jealous. I’ve never touched a fireman’s hose…

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Buy Gold & Silver
Get the key to Pharaoh’s Tomb
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maybe you need it
I hope this is what you want.

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I just finished reading a book called Julian’s Cell:The Earthly Story of Julian of Norwich by Ralph Milton. It’s a delightful read for anyone who enjoys historical fiction, and particularly good for those who have an interest in Christian mysticism and/or mystics of the Middle Ages.

The book is an imagined account of the life of Julian of Norwich, the Medieval Christian mystic who was the first woman to ever write a book in English. Her writings are still read, hundreds of years later, though the Medieval language can be difficult to cope with. Happily the same author has also written a book called The Essence of Julian: A Paraphrase of Julian of Norwich’s Revelations of Divine Love, and while I haven’t read it, I fully intend to. This is a very good writer, so I’m sure the book will be as good as Julian’s Cell.

Anyway, as much as I enjoyed Julian’s Cell, I spotted a couple of problems with it. They incredibly minor, and show exactly how much of a history geek I am.

Julian of Norwich lived in the late fourteenth and early fifteenth centuries. She was an anchorite, and lived for decades in a cell (room) attached to the church of St Julian in Norwich. Part of the job of an anchorite was to counsel pilgrims who came seeking advice. And the first error I spotted lies with a recounting of one of those visitors, a woman, who says her name is Beatrice. Beatrice! A woman born in the fourteenth century who was named Beatrice?!

What’s that? You don’t know why that’s a problem? Well, allow me to ellucidate! The name Beatrice, like Jessica, Miranda, Juliet, Ophelia, Olivia, Regan, Portia, Bianca, Audrey, Silvia, Celia, Charmaigne, Cordelia, Imogen, Marina, and several other names that I didn’t mention, was coined by William Shakespeare. That’s right! As a name, it didn’t exist in the English language/culture until Shakespeare invented it and used it in a play, and Shakespeare was doing his bit in the very late and early seventeeth centuries. So a Medieval Beatrice? Not bloody likely, mate!

You can roll your eyes now, if you want. No, go ahead. I’ll wait.

Next error I spotted was a reference to Joan of Kent, who was, at the the book takes place, the widow of Edward, Prince of Wales (known to history as The Black Prince) and she the mother of the prince who became King Richard II. In the book, the author refers to Joan of Kent as “the Queen Mother”. Ack! No! No, Joan of Kent was the Princess of Wales! In fact, she was the very first Princess of Wales, and furthermore, the title “Queen Mother” was actually invented in the mid-twentieth century by Queen Elizabeth, the mother of HRH Queen Elizabeth II. The Queen Mother, as she became known, was Queen Elizabeth by virtue of being married to the King and her name being Elizabeth. When her daughter, Princess Elizabeth, became the queen, the Queen Mother didn’t want to be known by the more traditional title of Dowager Queen Elizabeth, so she invented the title Queen Mother and that’s the end of that. There is no way anyone would have thought of Joan of Kent, i.e., the Princess of Wales, as The Queen Mother (which is a slightly ridiculous title, anyway, if you ask me, but nobody has).

Ah HAH!!! You see the useful things history geeks know and can pontificate about?!

Another book that I read long ago (a historical romance set in England in the time of King John, but I can’t remember the name of the book now) had the heroine draw a bath and scent it with eucalyptus oil. Eucalyptus? Like, from eucalyptus trees? Which are native to Australia, which wasn’t settled until the eighteenth century, let alone had anyone in Europe pressing oil from exotic native trees? Hmmmm…..

Yes, I know. White and nerdy, that’s me. And a brain filled up with strange historical trivia, too. Thank goodness I’ve got a blog where I can express these things, eh? Eh?

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There’s a guy in a bar, very drunk and getting drunker. He’s obviously agitated and keeps muttering to himself. Eventually, he throws his head back and shouts at the top of his lungs, “All lawyers are ar$eholes!”

In the back of the bar is a man in a nicely tailored suit who has been nursing a drink for a while. When he hears the drunk’s outburst, his face turns red and he puts down his drink and gets up and walks over to the drunk.

“You take that back right now!” the man demands of the drunk.

“Oh, yeah?” the drunk answers. “Why? You gonna sue me , lawyer boy?”

“Hey, I’m not a lawyer!” the guy shouts back. “I’m an ar$sehole!”

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Found this excellent rendition of Charpentier’s Prelude to Te Deum on YouTube. It really made me smile. It was Andrew’s and my wedding processional, and we did have a pipe organ with excellent acoustics, but also a piccolo trumpet. Very regal. Anyway, enjoy this great piece of music. I personally recommend it for walking down the aisle.

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Melbourne developers are at it again, and this time the target is none other than the historic Windsor Hotel. In a nutshell, they want to gut it, leave the facade and a handful of “heritage rooms”, tear down the attached corner building, and build a huge glass tower. All I can say is, “UGH.”
I’m absolutely NOT anti-change or anti-progress, and I do understand that, sometimes, historic buildings need to be repurposed, refurbished, and otherwise altered, even completely taken down in some cases. I get that. But what they want to do to the Windsor is shocking, in my estimation.
The National Trust is also not very happy about this plan, and have set up a website to try to Save the Windsor.

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Okay. I haven’t done much research, but it’s becoming clear to me that there is some sort of service or software that allows people to “auto-follow” anyone who posts a tweet with some specific keyword(s) in it. Three times in the past twenty-four hours, I’ve been suddenly “followed” by some random user who certainly would normally have no interest in my twitter feed, obviously responding to some key word in a tweet.

I know it’s automated because they don’t even bother to see what the tweet was about (for example, I was being critical of a specific legal team in the post that used the word “lawyers”, and yet some service to find me a lawyer suddenly started following me, and in another tweet I passed on a link that had the words “Ayn Rand” in the title in a derogatory way, and yet some author who has written an Ayn Rand book wants to follow me now).

It’s annoying, and it’s irritating, but I’m thinking of playing some sort of game with this. Like, I’ll make tweets that have specific keywords or phrases and see who turns up to follow me (and then I report them as spammers, if there’s evidence to suggest that this is what they’re doing).

Feh. A curse on your computer networks, you spamming losers.

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Seriously. After my last two posts, one of which had the word “lawyer” in the title, got posted to my Twitter feed, I got a notification that I was being followed by a Twitter user whose name is something like “You Need a Lawyer” (that’s not it; I’m not giving them any damned publicity, though).

How weird is that? Mention the word lawyer, suddenly they’re following you…. CREEPY. I don’t know what more to say about that. I wonder what would happen if I posted a tweet with the word “botox” in it. Do you reckon I’ll suddenly be followed by plastic surgeons? I’ve tweeted about dying my hair before, and never had a beautician suddenly start following me…

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