Category: Wild Card

As this is apparently the first rule of mass media broadcasting, who am I to argue? Not that I broadcast to anything like masses but anyway. Requests have been made to begin a series of “…silly yet fun debate[s] each week to keep [you] all entertained…” in the fashion of the great Coffee Vs. Tea debate of April. Even I have to appreciate that it gained the most comments of anything so far despite the post consisting of no more than 26 words. So here goes; this week (as promised/threatened) will be a fight to the finish between cats in the blue corner and dogs in the red.

I actually like both. We had a cat called Kippy up until I was five and we moved to Welland. Kippy was Dad’s Mother’s cat and she was passed to Dad when her owner passed on. My parents hate cats with a passion; there exist no pictures of Kippy anywhere and they used the move as an opportunity to get shot of old Kippy. Last year The Parental Units asked me to get hold of a Super Soaker-style water canon to blast away any cheeky moggies that venture into the garden as Mum is fed up with nasty surprises when she is gardening and all the hapless birds and mice that are slaughtered every year in the name of feline ammusement. I know that Rob, Lemur Girl and Liam will have strong feelings on this subject as all of whom are firmly rooted in Camp Cat having been brought up in Felis catus loving environments for as long as I (or they, probably) can remember. I also love dogs having co-existed very happily with Topsy and Meg for most of my life (they were fab in every sense). But enough of my Swiss-style fence-sitting, over to you; empirically, which is the superior species as a companion for us human types? I expect you to fight like cats and dogs! What’s the matter, cat got your tongue…?

Too bad that April Fools Day falls on a Saturday this year, isn’t it really? All those thousands of possibilities for office and other workplace practical jokes and scams and hoaxes that will never happen because most people are at home performing practical jokes and scams and hoaxes on friends and loved ones instead. Of course there is always the opportunity to put in a well-timed call to colleagues and persuade them that actually they do need to pop in to the office because of that thing with the stuff, but only if your partner hasn’t hidden your mobile or coated the land-line receiver in Araldite.

Did a bit of public service yesterday in quashing someone’s poor attempts at hilarity or scaremongering. The warning about an ‘Invitation’ virus has been rehashed so that you now ought to be on your guard lest you receive an Olympic Torch forward from one of your friends. The person who had sent it to my mum’s boss obviously hadn’t checked it out first before sending it to everyone in their address book. A quick check on the major news sites, McAfee and then a trip to trusty ol’ Snopes reveals that they were had by a hoaxer and not even a new one as the same gag has been around since 2000. I then felt obliged to write to everyone on the forward and put them straight.

What I don’t understand is how the source of this kind of trick gets anything out of stunts like this? Is it just designed to ‘shake things up a bit’ in a sad display of frustrated angst or do they genuinely believe it’s funny? Twats.