Magpie 46

Touch.

Loving hands,
soft skin,
bare for me.






More poems and stories at magpie tales.

Mastercard=Servantcard?

I decided today to move my current account away from Mastercard in protest at its decision to stop dealing with Wikileaks. Reportedly, Mastercard was pressured by the US Administration, as was Amazon and others to cut ties with Wikileaks, despite no evidence it had broken any law in any jurisdiction.

I think it is outrageous that administrators of a constitution that guarantees freedom of speech, one that has been so loudly celebrating Nobel Laureate Liu Xianbin’s ‘leaking’ of Chinese ‘secrets’, should abandon its principles as soon as its own secrets begin to be revealed. Voltaire said it all and we cease to protect those principles of free speech at our peril.

As we are so often urged to, but rarely do, I am thinking globally and acting locally.

Jingle Poetry. 'Reflections'.

Top spot.













So many dynamos.
We few,
deified.

I saw I was I,
never odd or even.
Level.

.......................

Pic borrowed (cropped) from here.
Prompt by Jingle Poetry.

Prologue to IXL’s little chill truck ad.

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This looks nothing like IXl's little van. So, to the confused... go back a bit.

Henry of Inverell rang and declared he ‘must have that vehicle’ so I informed him of all the little faults and idiosyncrasies, but he insisted he wanted ‘it regardless’ and ‘the money’s in the bank!’

So apart from a final clean up today, I am ready to move on. Henry arrived on time to take delivery, so we marked the occasion with a little celebration as he took the wheel of the little Toyota and drove off into the rain, marking the end of our working life.

We invited the people we know.
To come to our “Transport Art Show”,
And so, out they came,
Despite teeming rain
And gathered to see the Van Go!

Sorry, I promise in future to behave no better!

I wish you a merry Christmas, I wish you...

Celestial Teapot Blessing.













May all in your world remain rosy
While into the future you mosey.
And where you take tea
May it stay tea-bag free,
And every tea pot have a cosy!


Tea cosy picture borrowed from Queen of the tea cosies, my fried Grand Purl Baa! (Take the scenic route via her amazing blog).

Prompt by Magpie Tales.

Kevy and Hillary are leaking.

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Prompted by breathless reporting of Wikileaks revelations of what (Australian Foreign Minister) Kevin Rudd said to Hillary Clinton (in secret).













Psst! Your Gravitas is (Wiki)leaking!

Political bullies, nefarious
Find Wikileaks quite deleterious.
But verbal diarrhea
Has undone them I fear.
They now seem so Rudd-y Hillary-ous!

Glossary of terms:
Ruddy:
• Red of face as in ‘ruddy complexion’.
• Mild expletive, substitute for more offensive swearword, ‘bloody’.
• Epithet used in Australia. Eg, Shane Warne = “Warnie”,
Alan Jones = “Jonsey”, Kevin Rudd = “Ruddy”, Silvio Berlusconi = “Shitbag”, etc.

PS. I mean no offence to Rudd nor Clinton. My personal view is, I think they are both dedicated to serving their countries and are doing better than most on the world stage.

Caught with their pants down.

While Julian Assange remains incarcerated in London awaiting extradition to a foreign jurisdiction, where there may be a law he might have broken, major newspapers publish (carefully chosen) diplomatic cables that are embarrassing diplomats, ministers and politicians around the world.
None of those newspapers have had injunctions placed on them nor has any editor or owner been arrested. But more to the point, officialdom is falling over itself to not face up to the fact that the leaked diplomatic cables are telling us what our governments are really saying and doing in secret in our name! What is really going on here? I leave that question hanging to tell you a true story.

Many years ago a person I know well was invited to help ferry a yacht to Sydney. It was owned by a teacher from his wife’s staff, so she came along with their two children. A few hours into the one-day voyage, the owner’s wife and the two children became sea sick and were put to bed.

For his two hour watch, he was alone at the helm and although he felt something was amiss, because the ship had no Autohelm, he had no choice but to continue hand steering until he was relieved. But she was a lovely old ship and he was enjoying himself alone with the wind, the sails and the sparkling sea surging by the gunwales, fully occupied at the wheel way past his allotted time.

Some days later, a mutual friend told him that his wife had boasted to her, that while he was busy steering, she was ‘downstairs fucking the captain’ ha ha ha!

So what did he do? The friend believed it was better all round for the truth to be known. So although we all knew she often put a ferret in a burrow to watch the rabbits scurry out as it were, he thanked the friend and confronted his wife. She was recovering from breast cancer, so he constructed reasons why she might be driven to test her attractiveness and although devastated, he was not angry and calmly asked her to decide what she wanted to do, to go or to stay and repair the damage.

But if he had taken his lead from shrill pronouncements coming from certain political mouths, that Wikileaks founder Assange ‘should be assassinated’, he would have killed the friend and ignored the infidelity! Your turn.

This came in this morning’s mail and I invite you to have a look.

Magpie 44

Practicing for the Winter Olympics.


















Out on the snow I'm hot-doggin’
My Flexible Flyer toboggan.
Downwards I hurtle
Until I turn turtle
And land upside down on my noggin!

Much more sensible contributions can be found at Magpie Tales.
Pic borrowed from here.

Ask for thousands, get millions!

Yesterday morning I took out an ad on line to sell IXL's refrigerated van. $15,950 (negotiable).


Response was quick. I know it is a rare little unit, being able to refrigertate as it goes along and has a second unit that runs on mains power so it can be used as a cool room, but the following e-mail was unexpected. So, I share it with you so you can join in the mirth and wonder that anyone would take it seriously. Some must or why would they bother!! It is educational too. Before today, I was unaware the US army had Panzer Divisions!

Here it is in its entirety.


'Capt, Matthew Crowe.

Hello,

Thanks for the details and information about your vehicle history .It seems you are a sincere person. I want to inform you that i will buy your vehicle at your given price, but I have a business proposal for you.

I am Captain Matthew Crowe of United States of America Army, presently in Afghanistan as UN Intelligent and Instructor on peace mission, I served in the 1st Panzer Division in Kabul. I have been deployed to come and work in your country's military base soonest. Our mission is to help beef up terrorist targeted states, mostly the United States and Europe/Asia on the war against terrorism.

On the other hand I want to inform you that I have in my possession the sum of 9.6 million USD. Which I got from crude oil deal here in Afghanistan.I deposited this money with a Red Cross agent informing him that we are making contact for the real owner of the money. It is under my power to approve whoever comes forth for this money.

I want to invest the money in your country as soon as I am deployed into your country for a good business, you will advice me on that since I am not a business person. I cannot move this money to the United States because I will be in country for about 3years, so I need someone I could trust. If you accept, I will transfer the money to you where you will be the beneficiary because I am a uniformed person and I cannot be parading such an amount so I need to present someone as the beneficiary.

I am an American and an intelligence officer for that so I have a 100% authentic means of transferring the money through diplomatic courier service .I just need your acceptance. Please if you are interested in this transaction I will give to you the complete details you need for us to carry out this transaction successfully. I decided to find someone that is real and not imaginary and that is why I went to a secured vehicle site where I can be sure that the person is real.

I believe I can trust you. Where we are now we can only communicate through our military communication facilities which is secured so nobody can monitor our emails, then I can explain in details to you. I will only reach you through email, because our calls might be monitored, I just have to be sure whom I am dealing with.

If you are interested please send me your personal mobile number so I can call you for further enquiries when I am out of our military network. I am writing from a fresh email account so if you are not interested do not reply to this email and please delete this message, if no response after 3days I will then search for someone else.

I wait for your contact details so we can go on. In less than 7days the money should have been noted on your account and I will come over for my money. I will give to you 30% of the sum and 70% is for me. I hope I am been fair on this deal. Get back to me with your full information:

YOUR FULL NAME.........
YOUR FULL ADDRESS.....................
YOUR DIRECT TELEPHONE NUMBER.........

Regards,

Capt, Matthew Crowe'

(E-mail address available if it does not self-destruct in 7 days)

Wikileaks. A few thoughts.

We rejoice that Iranian and other suppressed women are gathering power for change through the net. We applaud Chinese dissidents who expose human rights abuses and other ‘embarrassments’ through the net. It is now an irreversible fact that networks, independent of governments, nations, ethnicities, and religions are mushrooming all over, to the concern of all regimes and bringing (sometimes violent) reaction from some.

Just imagine the ‘good old boys’ of the diplomatic club remembering what they once wrote to a ‘person with shared opinions’ in confidence, and we must remember we are talking documents here, not two half pissed old blokes in a bar… “Haw, haw, haw! Wait til I tell you what Hillary said to me in the plane! Haw, haw, haw!” They must be shitting themselves!

Wikileaks is a threat to world order. But maybe we no longer want the old world order of secret deals and conspiracies, the guts of most ‘alliances’. Maybe we can embrace this opportunity for unprecedented transparency. It takes imagination, but complete transparency has the potential to put an end to clandestine plotting of real or imagined conspiracies, fear that has sown the seeds of so much distrust and violence. But there is something far more important happening here of which Wikileaks is merely a symptom. Ordinary people are feeling empowered to demand to know what is really going on.

But, and it is a big ‘but’, as things stand, unless someone cracks Chinese, Korean, Russian, Israeli, Saudi, Pakistani (etc) and Vatican secret files, it is lopsided and dangerous. However, having said that, there are several dangerous flash points awaiting a spark of insanity, so I am not sure this break with tradition isn’t better than nothing.

We are, for the first time in the history of Man, becoming privy to what really happens in the secret, manipulative world of domestic and international politics. At last we can be all grown up and be told the truth. It may be that our survival as a species depends on it!

Magpie 43

Empty nest.





In grey dawn,
snow smudged steps
that nobody uses.

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