Posts by Public Servant on a tea-break.
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>'See that guy? Stay away from him'. Worked like a charm.
I bet you he was good looking to begin with.
That tactic can only work if the chap was good looking to begin with, and he had at least a halfway decent follow-through in conversation. If the bloke trying it was not that good looking the girls simply would stay away.
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>To be fair, it wasn't just the women who seemed unable to spot the dickness of their partners.
Completely true: some of my mate's girlfriends were just dreadful, and as were (eventually) some of mine...
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>The thought that quite possibly I was a dickhead at that age didn't occur to me until much later......
True. It was relatively late in my university career that I realised that my tactic for attracting woman by being all masculine, mysterious, and silent near a woman I fancied actually didn't work. It would have worked if I had looked like Michael Praed, but I was a bit shorter than he, and saddled with a fair-haired, and freckled boy next-door look. That tactic worked out to be an invitation for a woman to ignore the short chap with a tendency to burn who had some sort of chip on his shoulder.
Turned out, copious conversation, some jokes, and the general demeanour of being pleased to be in the company of the woman did work. It worked to such a degree that girls even ignored my vehicle of the time, an Austin Allegro.
Who could have guessed?
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>I see your Robin Hood and raise you a Dennis Moore
Oh, a game of spot that reference!
Monty Python.
Do I win?
>Fortunately for everyone, the two handsome men from 'good' families I tried dating were both jerks.
You know, the funny thing about university for me, was the time that it took apparently intelligent and attractive young women to spot they were going out with complete dickheads.
Mind you, this failure of taste it might have only been obvious to me. On reflection, I was probably sad and bitter about this failure of taste for, oh, at least my under-grad degree. You see, my plan to meet a young woman at university seemed to be stymed at every turn by women determined to make the fore-mentioned dickheads into something that wasn't an immature jerk.
These schemes generally didn't work.
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>I thought so too but immediately on reading who he was, remembered the very beautiful Maid Marion...
Now you mention it, she was pretty damned gorgeous. What I remembered, when I found out what Michael Praed was in, was a shot of Will Scarlet, played by Ray Winstone, climbing up a ruined castle’s wall. Because of where the camera was, Will Scarlet was revealed to be wearing a pair of Doctor Martin’s boots, generally considered by those archaeological circles to have been rather rare in Medieval Sherwood.
That, and how I had to hive off to the spare room to watch it on the old telly, because if I tried watching it in the lounge my Dad would wander through singing the theme song to the old Robin Hood series:
“Robin Hood, Robin Hood,
Riding thorough the glen,
Robin Hood, Robin Hood,
And his Merry Men…”Which was a tune that Clannard, oddly, didn’t go with for their album.
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>Robin of Luxley...
Oh, that's who Michael Praed is, it's been bugging me, but I thought Wikipedia would be cheating.
So, does that mean you still own a Clannad album?
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<And a question for the group: Don't you think it's a wee bit arrogant to assume that the human race couldn't be wiped out by a virus without our help? The Bubonic Plague took a good hack at Europe in the middle of the 12th century; and the so-called Spanish Flu did even better 560 years later. And that was in the age of sail and steam, when it took weeks to travel from Auckland to London -- not hours.>
Hi Craig: as you have possed a question for the group.
Europe’s population decline from the Black Death took over a century, with incidents of the plague re-occurring every 20 odd years. Essentially, it re-emerged when a new generation, who had not previously suffered the scourge, and was vulnerable, had emerged. This triggered a slow impact on society. As up until this point Europe had been over-populated, there were people to lose.
So, in spite of everything society adapted and continued. Governments continued to wage war (like, the Hundred Years war) in their normal inefficient manner. The church still claimed spiritual superiority, money still circulated.
What the Black Death did was add to the background uncertainty of Europe during a notably crazy period, giving it a helping hand. Relative social power of different groups changed not just because of the plague, peasant rebellions broke out because of multiple social causes, and weird world hating Christian cults gained currency, however they only questioned the Church's authority, they did not overturn it. All this was played out over a period of decades. Whether the people of the time blamed this slow upheaval on the plague more than say, the fact that there were two or three popes trying to lead Christendom at the same time for much of the period, is up for debate.
So, if a writer wants to describe a society collapsing utterly from one viral outbreak, it better be tougher than the plague, the world decimated in one hit, not over multiple hits. Such a disease needs very high levels of transfer, very good number of possible vectors. So inevitably, as such a disease is presently unknown; the writers turn to saying it came from a lab. And are quite reasonable to do so.
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I'd like to thank the Public Address regulars who have commented on the "American Spectator" article. If that is what passes for informed comment in the U.S. - I shudder.
As for Ohariu: I was told that the Labour candidate, Charles Chauvel was making ground, but I didn't realise how much until 8 November. Given Peter Dunne's public statements on the Greens, I'm surprised more of that party's support didn't vote tactically for Chauvel. They may chose to in 2011 though, now it has been shown to be obviously possible to remove Dunne from that seat.
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Hi Raymond
You are right, the four year term was put to the public, I think in 1990, or near that date, and it was rejected.
Although I can't speak for the rest of the electorate, this was under First Past the Post; and to my eye, the question was asking if I would like to decrease my say on government by about a third. Given I had almost no say to begin with (although, being in a bell-weather electorate was an advantage, it wasn't much of one), my instinct said 'No way Jose!'
Perhaps other members of the public agreed with me.
Under MMP, I don't feel as powerless, and the idea now seems to have merit. But I wouldn't die in a ditch for it.
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Stephen
<I often thought that if you were culturally (if not religiously) a non-drinker then constant exposure to your boozed mates at the end of the night would certainly reduce your temptation levels.>
You're right, it does, believe me. It is pretty hard to argue against the evidence that alcohol has a social downside when you get to carrying a drunk, and obnoxious, girlfriend out of a party, where she has just spent the last hour making an enormous arse of herself.
Then comes the following afternoon. When you try to convince same girlfriend to get out of bed, in the face of a wall like hangover, and hammer-like flashback memories of stupid things said and done.
More than once, much more than once, with different girlfriends. Occasionally, the girlfriends felt that the night would be more complete by lipping people, including the police, whilst on the way home...
Special times.