believe me good will come

Foux Da Fa Fa (English translation):

I would like a croissant.
I am delighted.
Where is the library?
Here’s my passport.
Ah, Gerard Depardieu.
A baguette! ah ha ha, oh oh oh oh

And now the trip to the supermarket.
Grapefruit
Pineapple
Orange juice
Beef
Soup of the day
Camembert
Jacques Cousteau
Baguette!

Hello.
Hello.
Hello.
Hello, mister.
Hello my small foreign currency exchange office.

How are you doing?
I’m doing okay.
How are you doing?
I’m doing okay.
Voila! A conversation in the park!

Where is the book?
At the library.
And the dance music?
At the dance club.
And the dance club?
It’s here, baby!
One, two, one, two, three, four!

Where is the swimming pool?
Pardon me?
Where is the swimming pool?
Uh…
Splish splosh
Uh…
Eh…
I don’t understand.
Do you speak the French?
Eh?
Do you speak the French?
Uh…no.
Hmmmm.

courtesy of http://www.scribblevillage.com/?p=651

Members of an Australian TV comedy show, one dressed as Osama bin Laden, drove a fake motorcade through two APEC security checkpoints on Thursday before being stopped one block from the Sydney hotel where George W. Bush is staying.

http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2007/09/06/2026442.htm
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/20620312/
http://www.brisbanetimes.com.au/news/national/11-charged-over-chaser-motorcade-stunt/2007/09/06/1188783379963.html

Male drivers who paid US$5 for a topless car wash in New York state ended up getting doused with disappointment. Scantily clad women held up signs along a motorway advertising the car wash and telling the drivers where to go. But hidden behind a blue tarpaulin were shirtless male firefighters who were washing the cars for a charity fundraiser.
“A little bit of a bait-and-switch,” assistant chief firefighter Donald Prince admitted.
Female drivers did not seem to mind. Male drivers, though, felt short-changed.
– The Dominion Post, 22/8/07, p. B3.

On Nine to Noon this morning there was an interview with American professor Hasan Elahi [you can listen to the interview on the Nine to Noon site]. The FBI detained Elahi in 2002, suspecting him of hoarding explosives in a Florida storage unit. After months of interviews, culminating in nine back to back polygraph tests, Elahi was finally cleared. As a frequent traveller, he feared it was only a matter of time before he got hauled in again. The FBI agents had given him their phone number, so now he calls before every trip he makes. He also documents nearly every waking hour of his life on his website/art project, TrackingTransience. He carries a GPS device which reports his real-time physical location on a map. The site also details his debit card transactions, showing what he bought, and where and when he bought it. He regularly uploads photographs – of the airports he passes through, the meals he eats, the bathrooms he uses. He hasn’t been detained again…

If you can’t be friends with famous people, you can always hang out with people who look like famous people:

Monty Python:

An unsolicited email I received from Victoria University: 

Hello Mark,

I’m writing to let you know of an exciting new course being offered by the Centre for Continuing Education and Executive Development. 

‘Achieving Personal Excellence’

Presenter - Dr David Keane

Friday 25^th May, 2007 or

Friday 22^nd June, 2007 or

Friday 7^th September, 2007

Cost - $795 (less 5% if booked three weeks prior to course i.e. by close of business on 4^th May, 1^st June, 17^th August)

The cost includes a personal coaching session with the presenter which would normally cost you $250

This unique workshop was created to address the needs of people at all levels within organisations to help them develop a sense of purpose in their lives and to align personal and business goals. Many people feel stressed as a result of not prioritising projects, tasks and activities and focussing on urgent but ultimately unimportant tasks. This course consists of a one-day workshop followed by an individual coaching session with the presenter.

Firstly, they clearly have no idea who I am. Secondly - Wow!…a whole one-day course for only $795…’Achieving Personal Excellence’ reminds me of the ‘Montgomery Burns Award for Outstanding Achievement in the Field of Excellence’. This is so stupid you may suspect that I have just made it up. Nope. Visit the web page for the course.

Course Content

• Secrets of working effectively - What do effective people really do? Based on a detailed study of effective people, we can recognise certain patterns and learn from others.
• Living by choice, not by chance - The workshop will introduce the concept of being proactive. Proactivity is about choice and about how much we choose to exercise our choice. Being proactive places us in the driving seat of our own lives. It pervades every other aspect of life, inside and outside work. It involves taking the decision to lead ourselves. This is a choice critical for our performance. Being proactive applies to each of us regardless of the role we are in.
• Tools and techniques that really work - We explore a number of ways of managing yourself, your time, and your work environment to ensure strong alignment between what is important and what you actually do.
• Making it happen - In preparation for the coaching session, we provide the opportunity for you to plan what will work for you.

They say that given a hundred typewriters and enough time, a hundred monkeys will write Shakespeare’s complete works.

To test this idea, a team at the University of Plymouth, England, got a (PndStlg)2000 grant from the British Arts Council, shut six Sulawesi crested macaque monkeys with a computer keyboard in an enclosure at a Devon zoo for a month, and filmed what happened.

The alpha male bashed hell out of the computer with a stone and the other monkeys did little else but urinate and defecate on the keyboard. Nevertheless, the monkeys did produce the equivalent of five pages of type with a predilection for the letter S. One researcher said that proved the monkeys were not hitting the keyboard at random, so were part of the way towards literacy.

- Full story here