Hell of a day...

...but it's all turned out fine in the end.

First up, a telephone conversation:

Me: "Hey, you okay?"
Other person: "No, my hands are shaking and they won't stop, and I feel faint."
Me: "Look, do you want me to come up to campus?"
Other person: "No, I'll be fine. If you hear a thud though, that's just me dropping my phone."
Me: "Heh heh. You sure you don't want me to head over?"
*thud*
Me: "Are you there?"
Third voice: "Are you alright? Go and get a first aider."

Cue hanging up and phoning again, to make sure the samaritan knew what the situation was, and frantically bussing it up to campus. I'm within about thirty feet of the ambulance before it pulls away. So, I use the other half of the return ticket to get back to the RLI, and sit in the A&E department waiting room for an hour, trying to ignore the self-titled 'Glorious Goodwood' that's on the TV there.

Did you know that one third of A&E visits are alcohol-related?

Eventually, the patient recovers and I get home. I check LiveJournals, and notice something on Aethelthryth's blog that I hadn't spotted the last time I read that particular post: "If you live in Sheffield you will know the most recent events of my life but I don't want to post them on here for legal reasons."

Cue an email, asking for an explanation of the legal reasons. Get told to phone at 5pm. Do so. The conversation, which I won't go into here, for the same legal reasons, comprised mostly of me saying, "Fucking hell," "Fuck," "Jesus," "Seriously?" and "Jesus fuck..." But overall, it seems like things are looking up for Aethelthryth (God, I hate typing that name - I can never get it right, bloody Anglo-Saxons...).

So, two dramas in the same day, and both of them resolve themselves. The day could have been worse.

Oh, and I've started talking to myself.


P.S. Does anyone else think it's fucking rude to get rung up by a telemarketing firm, only to pick up the phone and realise that it's a recorded message, saying that they'll put me onto one of their operators?

Fuck you. If you're going to call me, out of the blue, in the hope that I'll pay attention to a word you're planning to say to me, you fucking making the effort to show me some fucking courtesy! The default state for someone who's been cold-called is, "No, sorry, not interested." The telemarketer's job is to turn that into a, "So, what's it all about then?" You're not going to get that if, when I say, "Hello?" all I get is a recorded voice. Fuck you. If you're not going to put the effort in, you can fuck off.

Oh my god, I'm turning into Warren Ellis...

Angry at how fuckwitted some people are.

I'm feeling angry right now.

An innocent man, Jean Charles de Meneze, was shot dead by the police on the London Tube.

I'm not angry at the police for shooting him five times in the head at point blank range.

I'm not angry at him for running away from the police when they challenged him, thus confirming (in their eyes) the suspicion that it was actually a suicide bomber they were tailing.

I'm angry at the fuckers who are bandying around the word 'murder' to describe what happened on that train.

If a terrorist was spraying machine gun rounds at a crowd of people, and the police shot him, would that be murder?

Here the police had (or believed they had) a terrorist about to detonate a bomb on the London Underground, two weeks after over 50 people were murdered in exactly the same fashion, the day after four more suicide bombs failed to go off (hey, that's eight in two weeks guys, even Israel gets a little concerned at a rate like that). A police officer fired shots intended to destroy the 'suicide bomber's brain to prevent a detonation.

That officer was preventing mass murder, not committing a murder.

He and his colleagues made a dreadful mistake. That doesn't make them murderers.

Sigh...

I just watched a clip from an interview with Bill Clinton, about the London attacks and the ongoing War on Terror.

It was just depressing. He was stating his opinions, reeling of stats and lists, just like that. He had instant gravitas that demanded respect.

The world would be a very different place if there was someone like him in the White House.

Dammit, so long as he could keep his dick in his pants and his money where it was legal, that guy was an excellent statesman.

(I heard that only two US former-presidents have ever taken advantage of the right of an ex-president to receive daily CIA security briefings, Bush I, and Clinton. And of course, Bush I used to be the head of the CIA during the Reagan era, so it's hardly surprising in his case.)