Unintentional voyuerism....its the best

While I was off work for our Europe holiday, some of my work was sent to our other office in another city. Unfortunately even in this day and age, some work must still be done on paper, and cannot all be done electronically.

Personally I think the solution is a touch screen, a stylus, and being able to scribble your notes directly onto the screen.

Oh and a system that is 100% failsafe so you never have to worry about backing up on paper.

But I digress.

So when I got back from holiday the girl that had been doing some of this work, shipped all the paperwork back to me again, the day before she left to go and get married.

I was sorting through it all, as you do, really just getting ready to file it since there was nothing I needed to DO with it. I'm not sure how I came to notice it, but one of the documents was particularly thick, whereas they're normally only 4 sheets of paper, this would have been a stack about 5mm. Noticeably different.

Obviously she has the same environmental guilt as I do in an office environment (pun?) and she'd recycled some paper to print this document.

Normally if I'm printing out personal shit though, I either keep it for the reason I printed it, or I shred it, so no one else can see the silly stuff I print.

Not so in this case. This particular document was ALL her personal stuff, all 5mm of it. Some, was a business that her and her husband must be starting/running, as it was business cards in her new married name, with DIRECTOR on them. (Either that or she's secretly running a multi-national company on the side)

Aside from the fact I think its a bit wanky to list your title as "Director" when potentially the company only "employs" two people, she'd demoted her new husband to Assistant! HAhahaha

There was also a resignation letter for a second job she's had as a Vet Nurse (which begs the question if she's qualified to do that she must be on bloody good money with my company because this job is no peach)

The really strange thing however, was she'd printed out the run sheet for her upcoming wedding, and their vows and poems and what to say when they exchanged rings!

It was fascinating reading, and I couldn't help but devour it all whilst I sat! It was bizarre!

I do feel a bit bad, I mean essentially thats a pretty personal thing for someone like me to be reading, someone who doesn't really know her at all. But HELLO! How could you then recycle that paper into WORK stuff!!!!! The whole point of printing these work docs out is to archive them for the requisite 7 years!

~~~~~~~~~~

In other work news, we're being sued by another girl, with another bogus claim, and the timing is ridiculous. Clearly she was waiting for the first girls case to settle to see how much she could go for before bringing her suit, the whole thing just stinks.

Its a lovely day today

Had one of those bizarre, do I know you.... moments this morning at the Post Office of all places. I locked eyes with this guy, pleasant surfer looking fellow, and thought where do I know you from....hmmm before moving into the line. I kind of got the vibe he was thinking the same thing....I couldn't stop wondering, and am still wondering where I've seen him.
I didn't ask him where I knew him from as I'm fairly certain he works somewhere I frequent, and we don't "know" each other for me to feel confident in asking where I knew him from.

Aha! As I type, I have figured it out. And I'm REALLY glad I didn't ask him where I knew him from now, as I was right, and I DON'T Know him at all, he's the bartender at the pub near work, where I have lunch once a fortnight.

*sigh* so glad I figured that out.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Been CRAZY busy at work this week. My boss has popped off for a quick holiday before I take me leave for Europe, and its just exploded here. And its all the regular stuff, not even "I want to get X, Y, & Z done before I leave" its just the normal everyday work. Eeesh.
Not that there aren't things I need to do before we go, there are, but if I don't get to them, it will only be me thats disappointed, no one else cares.

This morning, in addition to my work, I had to
- Go to the Post Office (for work)
- Ring our airline and lodge my frequent flier membership. Spoke to someone who acted like I was mad, when the website says to notify them!
- Get M to ring and lodge his membership, mad conversation redux.
- Organise to get a postal vote ballot sent to me, and M, for the Local Gorvernment Elections that will be on whilst we are away. And annoying, you can't vote overseas for Local Govt. Grr
- Ring and organise for two Australian Will Kits to be sent to me, hopefully in time for us to fill them in before we fly out.
----As property holders and married people, I thought it prudent to organise our wills before we leave, just in case anything should go amiss (touch wood it doesn't of course. I can't see you doing it,  I SAID TOUCH WOOD! Do you want something to befall us?)

So sorry if I've been a bit quiet : )

Ghost ships and other maritime mysteries

I love stuff like this.

This is a picture from the Kaz II, which was found floating, empty, off the coast of Northern Queensland in April 2007.

The three man crew have not been found, nor their bodies recovered. They simply...disappeared.

Today's article on news.com.au at the Coronial Inquest details the feeling of the first rescuer on board

"It was eerie," Benson yesterday told the inquest in Townsville investigating the baffling disappearance of the crew of the Kaz II....


"I didn't know what I was going to find," said the crewman who was winched to the water in rough seas and swam to the back of the boat. "My biggest fear was being attacked by somebody who did not want me on the boat. I was 160km out to sea with no back-up.


"I didn't know if someone was going to burst through a cupboard and go at me with a knife.

 Items found on board included

a half-empty coffee cup. Clothes and a towel were piled on a bench. The engine was running - in neutral. Knives were strewn on the floor: but no sign of blood

Its fascinating. Perhaps the men staged their own deaths. Jumped on a tinny and rowed away. But then someone would have seen them leave Airlie Beach, their last known whereabouts with a second boat. Again if they'd scuba'd away, they would have needed to get oxygen tanks from somewhere. Someone had to have seen that.

The greatest Maritime mystery of all, is of course The Mary Celeste : not to be confused with the fictional fantastical version penned by Dr Arthur Conan Doyle in 1884, Marie Celeste.

The 'Mary Celeste' had sailed from New York on November 7th bound for Genoa with a cargo of 1701 barrels of American Alcohol, value approximatly $35,000 the purpose of which was to fortify wine.

On the Afternoon of December 5th 1872 half way between the Azores and the Portuguese coast .... Captain Morehouse recognised as the 'Mary Celeste'. He was puzzled to see the ship yawing, coming into the wind and then falling off, she was out of control. He knew Captain Briggs to be a good seaman.

There were no distress signals, and after watching for two hours and hailing her and getting no reply they set off in a small boat and duly boarded her. 

The vessel was found to be in good seaworthy condition and the general impression was that the crew had left in a great hurry. They had left behind their oil skin boots and pipes. Captain Morehouse's explanation was that they had left in panic thinking the vessel to be sinking. The sextant and marine chronometer were missing. The last entry on the ships slate showed she had made the island of St Mary in the Azores on November 25th.

Source Maryceleste.net

The only lifeboat appeared to have been intentionally launched rather than torn away, suggesting the ship had been deliberately abandoned...

The cargo of 1,701 barrels of alcohol was intact, although when it was eventually unloaded in Genoa, nine barrels were found to be empty. A six-month supply of food and water was aboard. All of the ship's papers, except the captain's logbook, were missing.

Source Wikipedia

 Theories as to the real story of course abound,

One theory, aired by Flood in the admiralty court proceedings, is that the Mary Celeste was the victim of an act of piracy by the crew of the founding ship, who murdered those on board and then fabricated the story of the ghost ship with the aim of securing the salvage rights.

Of the theories consistent with the account given by the crew of the Dei Gratia, the most plausible are based on the barrels of alcohol. Briggs had never hauled such a dangerous cargo before and did not trust it. Nine leaking barrels would have caused a buildup of vapor in the hold.

Historian Conrad Byers believed that Captain Briggs ordered the hold to be opened, resulting in a violent rush of fumes and then steam. Believing the ship was about to explode, Briggs ordered everyone into the lifeboat, failing, in his haste, to properly secure it to the ship with a strong towline. The wind picked up and blew the ship away from them. The occupants of the lifeboat either drowned or drifted out to sea to die of hunger, thirst and exposure.
First put forth by the ship's owner, James Winchester, this theory is perhaps the most widely accepted explanation for the disappearance.

 Source Wikipedia

 
There is also the mystery of The Waratah in 1909. Billed as Australia's Titanic, she disappeared with 211 people on board, with no trace of wreckage, survivors or corpses. Built in Scotland, she was meant to be a passanger and cargo liner between London and Australia. After several uneventful voyages, she set out from Melbourne bound for the South African ports of Durban and Cape Town. She landed fine in Durban, according to reports,

...left Durban on 26 July with 211 passengers and crew. On 27 July , it passed the Clan McIntyre. On the evening of the same day, the Union-Castle Liner Guelph passed a ship and exchanged signals by lamp, but was only able to identify the last three letters of her name as "T-A-H."

The Waratah was expected to reach Cape Town on 29 July 1909. It never reached its destination, and no trace of the ship was ever found.

Initially, it was believed that the Waratah was still adrift. The Royal Navy deployed the cruisers HMS Pandora and HMS Forte (and later the HMS Hermes) to search for the Waratah. On 10 August 1909, a cable from South Africa reached Australia, reading

"Blue Anchor vessel sighted a considerable distance out. Slowly making for Durban. Could be the Waratah."        

Source Unexplained Australia

 The ship is still missing to this day.

I too, like email

HAD to post this one, its too bizarre! (I'm on page 49 of 99 pages of archives....)

A Woman Of Few Words

Information Technology (University) | Midwest, USA

(I was in our technology support office when a housekeeping staff person, Donna, stopped by. There was no preamble to the dialog below.)

Donna: “Dr. Franklin gets e-mail in his office.”

Me: *nods*

Donna: “Alicia says she can check her e-mail in the office.”

Me: *nods*

Donna: “I like e-mail.”

Me: “Nice.”

Donna: “Nice?”

Me: “Not nice?”

Donna: “I like e-mail.”

Me: “I like e-mail, too.”

Donna: “You don’t have it?”

Me: “I do.”

Donna: “I like e-mail.”

Me: *biting lower lip, uncertain what to say or do*

Donna: “I like e-mail.”

Me: *glancing at the clock on the wall*

Donna: “I like to have e-mail.”

Me: “I like having e-mail, too, and I check it all the time.”

Donna: “Can I have it? I like to have e-mail.”

Related:
The Art Of Ambiguity

Bindi Irwin Doll

I just cannot get on board with this marketing  exploitation of Bindi Irwin. Her mother has defended the action by saying its Bindi' choice to carry on her fathers work. She's TEN guys. She's about to have her tenth birthday. Doesn't anyone else find it twisted? I know it could be worse. Her father could have been Dame Edna Everage I guess.

So I think the idea of her being made into a doll revolting. Because at the end of the day, merchandise is for one thing, To make money. To choose your Bindi poison, here's a list of all the merchandise offered by Bindi - Full Merch list 

Actually a Bindi Sparkle Wallet doesn't sound too bad....

ummm, just me that thinks this is weird?

photo.jpg, originally uploaded by Ríona.

Face washer swans anyone? Its like taking the cute toilet paper triangle to a WHOLE new level! (And check out the paper cups in the background, wrapped in plastic? Sealed for your peace of mind?)

Also -hilarious, can you imagine a resort in Australia called "Gaylord Palms"?

Thanks to Ríona for this pic, from her recent business trip to Gaylord Palms.
(Sidenote, Ríona works for Google, how awesome would it be to tell people that was your employer? It would also be ultra cool to have a google domain work email address LOL.)
{Ok maybe that's slightly nerdy.}

We've been had....

And not in the fun-and-sexy kind of way. In the, you've-been-duped kind of way.
Thanks to *A* for bringing this to my attention. Unfortunately it appears that the Undiscovered Tribe is not quite so undiscovered after all.

Yahoo Buzz details

As it turns out, the story is only half true. The men in the photo are members of a tribe, but it certainly ain't "lost." In fact, as the photographer, José Carlos Meirelles, recently explained, authorities have known about this particular tribe since 1910. The photographer and the agency that released the pictures wanted to make it seem like they were members of a lost tribe in order to call attention to the dangers the logging industry may have on the group.

I did kind of know this I guess, the part about trying to find evidence of them to prevent logging. I didn't however, know about the 1910 part. Hmmm.
Oh well. Nothing is as it seems on the net hey....

Lexophiles; come close

The longest word in the English dictionary is pneumonoultramicroscopicsilicovolcanoconiosis, which Wikipedia helpfully provides as

a 45-letter word which refers to a lung disease contracted from the inhalation of very fine silica particles, specifically from a volcano. Research has discovered that this word was originally a hoax. It has since been used in a close approximation of its originally intended meaning, lending at least some degree of validity to its claim

How wonderful is that? You can make up a word, and it might still count. There's hope for us plebs yet.

The longest recognised place name, Taumatawhakatangihangakoauauotamateaturipukakapikimaungahoronukupokaiwhenuakitanatahu

(88 letters - Wiki Entry here)And of course you can't talk about really long words without mentioning our old favourite, Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious (34 letters- Wiki), but its not a real word and is only included in dictionaries as a Proper Noun, the name of a song.

(Funnily, Blogger's built in Dictionary recognises Super..... but not the two official words above...)

Ella..ella..ella

This is my favourite song at the moment. I had a major jones a while ago for Mika's song, Happy Ending, and now its Rihanna. SO ANNOYING, this song has been released but isn't on her album, which I already own. They're going to Re-Release Good Girl Gone Bad, with this song included as a bonus track. I really hate when record companies do this, and it happens with DVD's also. By releasing the same thing with added features, essentially they're punishing the :suckers: (me) who were stupid enough to buy the first version, which ipso facto, MADE THE ALBUM POPULAR ENOUGH TO RE-RELEASE IN THE FIRST PLACE!
How stupid do they think consumers are! Its frustrates me no end.

Gah! *breathe*

Also, when you watch it, look toward the end, is she wearing a lace leotard/body stocking?

I don't like this clip. Looking for it to post here was the first time I'd seen it, and I'm terribly disappointed in it. She looks mannish for most of it.
I really liked her haircut for Umbrella, but this version I think has overstepped that oh-so-careful line of edgy/manly. And I think she looks too thin, unhealthy, whereas in Umbrella, she has quite the hippy silhouette, and I was rejoicing the return of the curve. *sigh* she has fallen victim to celebrity thinness though.

Another thing I noticed in this video is Rhianna has a tattoo on her neck. I quite like it!
I know another girl who has the Southern Cross tattooed on her neck, not quite in the same place as this one, more under her ear, and larger than this, say thrice the size.
I'm not a fan I must say. I think the Southern Cross is way over-used in Australian culture, I've seen that many tattoos of it.

I still kind of want a tattoo. Friends of ours, the girl wants a tattoo, and she was thinking of having her son's name and birthdate done. But it sets a dangerous precedent doesn't it? All your children deserve real estate on your body somewhere then don't they? And what do you tell them? "Sweetheart Mummy doesn't have your name because she was a giant wuss and it hurt too much after the first one"

I just couldn't decide what to get. My sister recently equated the pain of a brazilian wax to a tattoo. Her argument being, if you can put up with the torture of having your lady garden ripped out piece by piece, surely you can endure a red hot needle jabbing you repeatedly. I just don't know, she hasn't actually had a tattoo so.....

Perhaps LadyLou can shed some light for us?

I remember being in high school and for a period it seemed all my friends were getting tattoos (if she jumped off the Harbour Bridge...). More to the point they were all getting great tattoos. Relevant, suited-them-down-to-the-ground type tattoos that they were unlikely to regret. At the time I was kind of into spiderwebs, I would doodle them often, and they became a (admittedly very small) trademark for me. So I was actively encouraged to get a spiderweb....somewhere.

In retrospect, I'm very glad I didn't because it would be so irrelevant now. The only thing I keep coming back to for an idea is my star sign, Libra, as I know that's never going to change at least.

(here's that Google Image Search. Tattoo image searches certainly are fraught with danger aren't they? Look for the woman with the breasts....)

Oh well. :)
*text colour edited

TSSH? Never heard of it, til now....

DISCLAIMER
I have no new or firsthand information regarding this matter, see here for updates.

Like a million other office workers who trawl the interwebs every day, I am a creature of habit. I visit the same bunch of sites every day almost. I do try to stretch myself however, and I do like to follow links to find what's beyond the looking glass, so to speak, its not always fruitful, but sometimes...

Its interesting that the blogosphere, and websites in general, have no real directory. You can go to Google with specific search terms of course, and there's Technorati as well, but I'm a paper person. Give me a choice* between the actual printed Yellow Pages, and the online version, and I'll take the printed version (*as long as I don't know what I'm looking for)
Its hard to just sort of browse the Internet, like you would flicking through a magazine.

Last week, I stumbled onto a really weird site. Even though I blog, I don't necessarily think of myself as a "blogger". The term "blogger" for me, conjures up people like Samantha Brett, Sam de Brito and Tim Blair. People who get paid to blog. I, clearly, do not get paid to blog LOL.
Interesting piece on whether "bloggers" even exist anymore at The Local

Being that I'm not "a blogger" I've never followed the politics of the interwebs, and they, like any other community, exist. A site I stumbled onto last week, details the rise, and now fall, of a blogging duo called "Caz" and "The Hack". Apparently they were quite nasty to some bloggers they didn't like, and outed them on their own site, "The Spin Starts Here"{TSSH} (no hyperlink available as the site has been taken down, the inference one assumes to be that the nasty things they wrote are indefensible now) naming names and threatening to take legal action when their behaviour was criticised. So it is with apparent glee, that a site called "The Lulz Start Here" has been created, devoted to naming and shaming "Caz" Caroline Hamilton, a Victoria Parks PR employee, and "The Hack" James/Jamie Duncan of Australian Associated Press.

Yes, this is Australian! The Age has even picked up the story, I can only imagine because an AAP staff member is involved, and because said staff member starting legal proceedings against the wrong person, then retracted the complaint, making for the beginnings of a tawdry tale indeed.
It's a very interesting read, and I couldn't help but bookmark it, even though I wasn't around to read "TSSH", though it was apparently quite popular in its day. Check it out, to see how horribly badly "anonymously" picking on people can come back to bite you.

No...this can't possibly be real...

Left Click on Pic to read the article
Or, click HERE, where the original article is.

Like many people who've seen this forward, I immediately dismissed it as fake.

But it appears to be real! I don't know if thats better or worse quite frankly.

At least, it appears to be real, the program referred at the end of the article screens in the UK, and you can find the Closer Online website here.

Music = Foregone conclusion? Or reflection of intelligent process?

Do you think music was destined to exist?
Music can be viewed as a mathematical construct, with notes and beats and rhythm. So if Mathematics is an intelligence, is music?
Think how basic music could be, a simple as bashing the ground with a stick.
Now think of a song on radio, how much more complicated music is, and it made me think whether music was destined to exist. Do you think humanity would have found its way there eventually, as a foregone conclusion? Or do you think Music is an intelligent construct?
I was sitting at the traffic lights, and I suddenly wondered whether a different race would recognise music for what it is, or if aliens came to earth, would they switch on the radio and think "what the hell is this"?

Reasons NOT to drink at work

1- End up trawling Facebook.
1.1 Which leads to....
1.2 becoming nostalgic about old School friends and trying to find them on Facebook
1.3 starting dialogue with old high school friend who just got engaged. (this is ridiculous as if I passed her at the shops I would avert my gaze and pretend not to have seen her)
1.4 Looking at profiles of people you went to Primary School with, and reminiscing. Should I add them?
1.5 thinking about whether I should have been less of a bitch to School Friends, after School finished
*whines* why don't I have many Facebook friends?

Oh that's right, I hate all those people.
Damn wine (from wake next door)

2 Cousin calls, try to monopolise her time with idle chit chat.
She is not interested as she's seeing me tomorrow. Probably can tell I'm pissed. After I tell her. Politely palms me off.

1.6 Still considering trying to find Year 10 crush. Has annoyingly foreign surname though, if I spell wrong I could be here for hours trying.

1.7 Ha. Just found Year 7 "boyfriend".

1.8 Goodness, this girl has almost the entire year as her friends.

1.9 Resent ex friend, she appears to be friends with loads of people

1.10 When did I become such a cow. Was it organic? Or did I hate everyone right away

Are you worthy of your name?

Way back before I got married, I googled my name to see if anyone of my new name existed. I knew Google didn't have anything on my full maiden name (not even anything on me, having not done anything terribly meaningful in my life), so I was curious to see what I was becoming. I was rather surprised then when someone DID pop up with my soon-to-be name.
She was quite successful in her chosen occupation too by the looks of it.

We actually joined a new bank not long after we married, went into the branch to sign everything etc. They typed my name into their system with a perfunctory "have you held an account with us before" (no) and there on the next screen was about 8 women with the same first and last name as me. Difference? Every other woman would have been born in or before the 1950's. Oh and that was just accounts opened at THAT branch of this large bank.


Anyway, today I read a post on Splat! , a blog I read fairly regularly on News.com.au about "the most Famous Person with Your name". As these things happen, he decided to try and guess who the most famous "Evan" would be on Google. He was wrong, but called for everyone to give it a go with your first name only.

So I tried it, top entry was my names origin in Wikipedia, and the rest were all personal websites. I actually found on the first page, other than one lawyer, all the entries were for artists! Whether with paint or photography, I suddenly feel like I'm not living the life my name should suggest.

How about you guys? Are you living up to your names potential? Should you be pursuing a life of bird watching instead of pastry cook?

Can you guess the most famous person before you do the Search?

Freeze!

A while ago I got this awesome email containing the link below where over 200 people all seemingly normal, freeze at the exact same moment.




Today I found out that its a whole group/movement called Improv Everywhere and they do things all over the world like this. I still think the one above is one of the best, but this ones good too!


More of their experiments are their website.

You can get your kit off over in that corner near the mustard

I bought this ultra cute shirt dress on the weekend. (At least I hope its cute, and I look decidedly less Asian that this woman in it).
I bought it at Paddy's Markets in Haymarket, and I think it looks pretty darn good on me, and it even comes with a pleather belt.

Hilariously though, because I got it at the markets, the changerooms were a bit....odd... and as I bent my G-string-ed bum over to take me jeans off, I had to contend with four other girls doing the same thing. They only had this large communal dressing room, with a strange slanted roof consisting of strung up fabric, complete with photos on the "walls" like the one to the right, with models all looking fabulous in the clothing items, and off kilter mirrors showing my less-than-fabulous-ness.

The good thing though, was that once I had said dress on, and snapped all the buttons back up, at least I could turn around and ask a couple of girls sharing the changeroom if they thought it looked ok on me. They said yes, and I felt confident they weren't just trying to shut me up so they could stop looking at clothes and move into the power tool section.

It made me muse however, yet again, whether I was the weird lady asking the 17 year old girls how I looked so I could still be hip. Am I hip? How do you determine whether you're still hip??? Does it fall off in little sprinkles until one day I am deviod of hip and yet I still feel fully hipped?
I heard someone say on the radio the other day "No one ever told me I'd feel exactly the same no matter how old I am. No one said when I was 35 that I'd still feel 18, and I do".
Perhaps this is the answer.

Transgender man/woman pregnant

Whoa this story is bizarre. Just......I don't even know....

Pregnant Man Due in July

A man is reportedly pregnant with a baby girl.

US man Thomas Beatie and his wife were expecting their first child in July, according to US news service TransWorldNews.

Beatie, from the state of Oregon, was born a woman but had a sex change in which he had chest reconstruction and testosterone therapy, but no change to his reproductive organs, TransWorldNews said.

He stopped taking testosterone injections to get pregnant, Beatie reportedly wrote in an article for The Advocate, a magazine for gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender readers.

Doctors had refused to treat Beatie, including one that sent him to "the clinic's psychologist to see if we were fit to bring a child into this world and consulted with the ethics board of his hospital" , the article said.

Beatie admitted his situation "sparks legal, political and social unknowns", TransWorldNews said.

Slave? Crazy? Love?

Is it just me, or does this story in today's paper- Woman Stuck on Toilet for 2 years

US authorities are considering charges in the bizarre case of a woman who sat on her boyfriend's toilet for two years - so long that her body was stuck to the seat by the time the boyfriend finally called police.

Ness County Sheriff Bryan Whipple, in Wichita, Kansasn said it appeared the 35-year-old woman's skin had grown around the seat.

She initially refused emergency medical services but was finally convinced by responders and her boyfriend that she needed to be checked out at a hospital.

"We pried the toilet seat off with a pry bar and the seat went with her to the hospital," Whipple said. "The hospital removed it."

Whipple said investigators planned to present their report Wednesday to the county attorney, who will determine whether any charges should be filed against the woman's 36-year-old boyfriend.

"She was not glued. She was not tied. She was just physically stuck by her body," Whipple said. "It is hard to imagine. ... I still have a hard time imagining it myself."

He told investigators he brought his girlfriend food and water, and asked her every day to come out of the bathroom.

"And her reply would be, 'Maybe tomorrow,'" Whipple said. "According to him, she did not want to leave the bathroom."

The boyfriend called police on February 27 to report that "there was something wrong with his girlfriend," Whipple said, adding that he never explained why it took him two years to call.

Police found the clothed woman sitting on the toilet, her sweat pants down to her mid-thigh. She was "somewhat disoriented," and her legs looked like they had atrophied, Whipple said.

"She said that she didn't need any help, that she was OK and did not want to leave," he said.

She was reported in fair condition at a hospital in Wichita, about 150 miles southeast of Ness City. Whipple said she has refused to cooperate with medical providers or law enforcement investigators.

Authorities said they did not know if she was mentally or physically disabled.

Police have declined to release the couple's names, but the house where authorities say the incident happened is listed in public records as the residence of Kory McFarren. No one answered his home phone number.

The case has been the buzz of Ness City, said James Ellis, a neighbour.

"I don't think anybody can make any sense out of it," he said.

Ellis said he had known the woman since she was a child but that he had not seen her for at least six years.

He said she had a tough childhood after her mother died at a young age and apparently was usually kept inside the house as she grew up. At one time the woman worked for a long-term care facility, he said, but he did not know what kind of work she did there.

"It really doesn't surprise me," Ellis said. "What surprises me is somebody wasn't called in a bit earlier."

AP

Remind anyone else of the moveie Secretary? For those of you unfamiliar, the main character played by Maggie Gyllenhaal, in a bid to prove her love, sits chained to her Boss's desk for three days, even urinating in her seat.
(If you haven't seen this movie, there's SO MUCH more to it, than this tidbit. I recommend it-good movie.)

I admit, the woman in the story above was at least a little more practical. I wonder if this is a similar circumstance, or whether in fact, she's just bat-shit crazy.

The 185 Manly-City

Have you ever noticed the way people arrive at a bus stop, and they check the timetable in this really ultra casual, not really checking, kind of way? As if to say, oh yeah, I catch buses all the time and stuff, I'm just you know, re-confirming really that the bus will be coming when I expect it.

Its like everyone is trying to impress all the other bus patrons already waiting that they're worthy of catching the bus.
Or maybe that they're secretly being filmed, and that they're pretending they're not really catching a bus at all, and they'll jump on at the last minute.

Man stabbed -Obama v Clinton

If only we were ALL so passionate about our politics......

A US man stabbed his relative after an argument over the presidential credentials of Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton.

Brothers-in-law Jose Ortiz and Sean Shurelds were arguing about the fiery contest for the Democratic nomination for president at their Pennsylvania home when the dispute escalated into violence, US broadcaster CBS said.