Musings and Random Vitriol

Or, A Farewell To Indy Cat

The downside to getting a kitten (or puppy, or … you get the idea) is that you’ve started yourself on the inexorable continuum from the fluffy excitement of “Aww, cute” to the guilt-inducing heartbreak of “Sorry chum, but now we have to kill you”.

Indy Cat has been part of our lives for just under 13 years. Despite more than his fair share of (admittedly largely self-induced) set-backs, he fought through it with more resiliance than I would have managed. Luckily, he was born with a huge stock of cattitude, and I’m fairly sure supplemented his traditional nine lives with some extras blagged off his friends. Read the rest of this entry »

The voice dial function on the phone is hugely useful, and hugely impressive. No training required, just activate, say “Call [Person]” and suffix with home, work or mobile to get the right number, and (most of the time) it works it out perfectly.

So it really shouldn’t bug me that it mis-pronounces some of my friends’ names. But it does. It bugs me immensely.

I don’t mind that it gets them wrong the first time. After all, they’re my friends, the phone doesn’t know them. It just seems plain rude, however, that after I’ve said their name clearly, on more than one occasion, the lady in the phone still hasn’t worked out how to say it properly.

She recognises it and dials, but she can’t say it. That’s just plain rude that is. Can’t she put a bit of effort in? She wouldn’t like it if I persisted in saying her friends’ names incorrectly.

And what’s worse is, I know I’m a little bit mental for letting it get to me, but it still does.

When leading a spontaneous prayer for Christians Against Poverty, don’t change your mind part way through the first word from saying their name in full to just using the acronym CAP. This is not conducive to an appropriate atmosphere. Hypothetically speaking.

So, the other night I’m sitting there looking at the cat. He’s curled up snoozing on “his” cushion on the sofa. I’m casually pondering mortality and Life (man) whilst watching crap TV.

I then had one of those thought processes that is both strangely satisfying yet leaves you even more bemused than normal. It ran something like this …

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As I have no idea who reads this, I want to say at the start that this isn’t meant as a  piece of polemic, or an attack on anyone. Nor is it angry, emotional, crusading, righteously indignant or smugly superior. It’s just some calm, intellectually dispassionate thoughts that are rattling around the old noggin following some tangential teaching in a recent sermon I heard. If you know me, then potentially there will be at least one individual you can identify from this – I love them, and I respect them, and I’m not having a pop, even where I disagree with them. I’m just musing without vitriol, random or otherwise …

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