Saturday, July 30, 2011

"Don't Tell" by Karen Rose and "Now You See Her" by James Patterson and Michael Ledwidge.

On Friday the 29th July I read "Don't Tell" a 2003
novel about a woman married to an abusive man, who
is also a policeman.

After he pushes her down the stairs and almost
cripples her she is forced to secretly undergo
physical therpy (she does this herself as he
forbids her to go back to the hospital.) It takes
her two years but when she is capable of running
she takes their nearly 7 year old son and runs.
She sinks the family car in a lake and goes to a
woman's shelter where she takes on a new identity
and raises her son as a single mom. Skip ahead 7
years and she is almost finished her college degree
after which she intends to become a lawyer. She
becomes involved with a college professor just 2
weeks before the car is finally discovered and her
husband realises that she and the child were not
abducted and killed but she ran. Can't say any more
or will ruin the story for others who may want to
read it.

On Saturday I bought the newest James Patterson
novel. The story is about a woman married to a
cop. She finds out after 2 years of 'perfect'
marriage that her husband killed his first wife
when she became pregnant and he wanted her to have
an abortion and she left him instead. Jeanine finds
that she too is pregnant and realises she can't just
leave that he will track her down and most likey
kill her too.

There is a serial killer loose in the area. The
Jump Killer so named as he uses parachute rope to
tie up some of his victims.

She makes it look like she was taken by the Jump
Killer and goes of to New York where she raises
her daughter as a single mom. Skip ahead 17 years,
she is now a lawyer assigned a pro bono case.
The Jump Killer is on death row and will be
executed in ten days. But when she looks at the
picture of the man she is shocked to find that he
is black. On the night she ran away she did
actually come face to face with the Jump Killer
and he was WHITE. She HAS to GO HOME and save
this innoncent man. Will her husband Peter
see her and kill her? Can't say any more
otherwise will ruin the ending.

However, at this stage I was having real feelings
of deja vu. Not only were these two stories
similar but they reminded me of the film
"Sleeping With The Enemy" with Julia Roberts,
which was actually based on the 1987 novel of
the same name by Nancy Price. Where a young woman
secretly learns how to swim in order to fake her
death by drowning, to get away from her abusive
husband. She ends up in another town where she
becomes involved with a college professor.

I am not saying that there is plagiarism involved.
Just that the story lines are very alike. A woman
fakes her death to get away from a deadly spouse.
In two cases there is a child involved. In two
cases a college professor. In two cases the
husband is a cop. In two cases the run away wife
studies law. In two of the cases the wife secretly
undergoes 'training' to effect her escape.

I guess it is true that there are no new stories
only repeated ones with variations.

By the way both stories were good reads otherwise
I would not have finished them in one day!

Friday, July 29, 2011

The Closer

On Wednesday 13th July I watched an episode of "The
Closer" on Gem at 9.30 p.m. to say I was shocked at
the mistakes in the show is putting it nicely.

It is the episode which starts out with two mounted
policemen in skid row finding a young man in a suit
sitting on some boxes smoking a crack pipe.

They dismount and pat him down, one the front and
one the back. The one in front takes the crack pipe
and finds a baggie in his top left hand jacket pocket.
The cop at the back finds a car key on a ring, with a
black leather fob and a half eaten pack of chewing
gum in his right rear trouser pocket.

The cop at the back proceeds to handcuff him then
reaches down and scoops up the key and pack of
gum from the roadway, and wedges them back in the
trouser pocket, then grabs him by the left arm and
drags him to a POLICE CAR THAT MAGICALLY IS
THERE WITH ITS REAR RIGHT DOOR OPEN.

In the interrogation room, the cop who hancuffed
himtells the young man to empty his pockets. He
does,but all he has is the pack of gum. The cop
goes back to the alley where they found him and in
the leaf ridden and paper strewn gutter he finds
the missing car key. He insists that tha young
man must have thrown it away.

Now I want you to put your hands behind your back.
Pretend they are hancuffed. They are in the
middle of your back. Now as someone grabs your
left arm and pulls you, try to reach your right
hand into your rear right hand trouser pocket to
throw away a key. You have less than 5 seconds
to achieve this. IMPOSSIBLE, I have tried and I
have asked three other people to try this and
they all said they couldn't do it. That was the
first big mistake.

The key turns out to belong to a car reported
stolen.The car was being driven by a young lady
who did notcome homee but the father could not
report her missing, just the car.

The young man's story is that at about 11 p.m.
he walked out of a rehab center where he had
been staying for a month to six weeks. He had
scored himself some dope when he was mugged
by a street guy called "The Veteran" who preys
on the crack heads. "The Veteran" held him up
at knife point, wiped his bloody hands on the
young mans' shirt, and took his wallet. When
"The Veteran" had taken the knife out he had
dropped the car key.

The police pick up "The Veteran" and he has
bloody and skined knuckles on his right hand.
He has a knife and the young man's wallet. We
are not shown if he has anything esle in his
possesssion.

The police find the car and there is a young
dead female in the boot. It is the friend of
the owner's daughter, who is still missing.

The police find A.T.M. video surveillance,
showing a man in a blue hoodie forcing the dead
girl to the A.T.M. She manages to push him away
and tries to run for it but the man grabs her
and procees to beat the living crap out of her,
with his right hand. The man then takes a knife
and stabs her repeatedly. The ME's report said
she had both cheek bones broken, a broken nose
and a broken jaw.

I was reading a medical journal last month.
A Dr. said that T.V. has knuckle fighting all
wrong. The hand is the most delicate part of
the human body and the skin on the back of the
hand is very thin. Thus fighters wear all that
bandaging before they put on boxing gloves.

One punch to a human face with the bare knuckle
will at the very least cause scraped knuckles
and bleeding. If in punching a bone is broken
on the other person then is every likehood you
will also break at least one of the small bones
in your hand.

The young man is sitting in the intergation room
and Brenda Lee is holding his hands. Both of
which are lily white and look as soft as a babies
bottom with nary a scrape or mark on them. This
is the next big mistake. If he was guilty of
beating and killing the girl he would have had
some marks on his knuckles.

Yet he goes on to confess that he did indeed kill
the girl. He also gives the location of the
missing girl. The police find her alive, chained
up (with a lock, that they cut off, was it lucky
that they had a tool with them that they could
do that?) WHERE IS THE KEY TO THAT LOCK?
It was not on the young man. The hoodie that
we saw in the surveillance tape is in the
shipping container with the girl. It is soaked
with blood. Why would the young man be wearing
a hoodie when he was wearing a suit jacket?

At this stage I am thinking that the young man
in his drugged stupor has seen "The Vetran"
kill one girl and chain up the other and in
his confusion he thinks he did it and that
when the girl sees him she will exonerate him.
But we learn from another detective that in fact
she has said "He is the ONE"!

At the end of the show there was one thing I
knew for certain that based on the "evidence"
in the show the young man DID NOT do the
beating and killing.

I thought "Well next week we will see that it
hasbeen a mistake." But the next week's episode
was another case!

I can't believe that this episode when through
editing and NOONE picked up all the errors!

Saturday, July 16, 2011

Boo Hoo Karen.

Every Friday night the Traralgon R.S.L. has a member
ship draw. It starts at $500 and goes up every week
by $50 if the member called is not present to accept
the money.

I am a "the glass is half full" kind of person so am
positive that one day my name will be called out.

Thus I go every Friday night.

Last Friday the 15th July, Cliff was on the pokies
and I was at the table packing up our stuff waiting
for the last member number of the night. They call
3 numbers each Friday, one at 6.40 p.m. one at 7.10
p.m. and oneat 7.40 p.m. The member whose number is
called has 3 minutes to come and claim the money.
If the prize is claimed no other numbers are drawn
for that night. The man called the number and then
went to check to whom it belonged and announced the
winner to be Karen Roberts.

Karen is my son's ex and the mother of his three
younger children. She lives one block from the R.S.L.
I instantly rang her, but it took her twenty seconds
to answer the phone. I just said "If you want $550
get your butt to the R.S.L. now." I went over to the
man and he was announcing that she was not here. I
said "She still has over 2 minutes, so give her time
she'll be here."

I went out side and waited about a minute then I went
and told Cliff what was happening then headed back
out the front in time to see Karen and her eldest
daughter hurrying into the club. I pointed out the
man she had to speak to and he said that she was too
late. I reckon that it would have been a close thing
as though they say they give you three minutes it is
really more like a minute and a half.

People don't realize just how slow three minutes is!

So Karen missed out and I missed out on getting the
$150+ she owes me.

Friday, July 15, 2011

My Birthday 2011

Monday 11th July, 2011, my 62 birthday. Not one of
the bigies, but still MY BIRTHDAY!

Saw an episode of "Big Bang Theory" last week and
Leonard is having a Birthday and says that he has
never had a birthday party or celebration as his
mother did not think that being pushed out of a
birth canal was any sort of achievement on the
child's part.

So I guess birthdays are in the eye of the beholder!

But if I thought I had a crappy Mother's Day that
was a picnic compared to my birthday.

Firstly Monday morning at9 a.m. I had to contact DHS
as Kath told me on Sunday 10th "That any day now,
they were going to take Kirsten away and put her in
a foster home."

Was relived to find that this was not quite right
and that sometime in the next two weeks there will
be a family conference to decide what is going to
happen with her.

On Sunday 10th Puppy (A.K.A. Shandy, whom is 14
years old) started having trouble voiding her bladder
and was shaking badly and seemed to be disorintated.

So 8.45 a.m. Monday morning, both Cliff and Ross took
her to the vet. Of course I could not go as I had to
wait to make the calll to DHS.

They came home at about 9.30 a.m. and the vet had put
Puppy down. They had both held her and patted her as
she went to sleep. Of course they could not give her
words of comfort as she was deaf. But I'm sure she
understood.

I had tried to organise to have lunch on Sunday the 10th
for my birthday but Kath said that she had Nan Player's
birthday on that day as "REMEMBER, her birthday is the
day before yours!" But her birthday is the day AFTER
mine and she had a dinner at Toss's house on the Tuesday
night with the family.

Donald said that he had Soccer. Cliff said that it
would have to be at 1 p.m. because of the Market.
So then I tried to make it for the Saturday and Meg
said that she would be at netball and Kath said that was
the day she had arranged to have Ryley's birthday party
(his birthday is 27 June!). Cliff said "NO way, I'm not
missing the races."

I suggested at night time and everyone could do that
except Kath who did not want to bring the kids out on a
cold winters night!

So I ended up DOING NOTHING! Cliff said why don't we
just have tea at the club before we play cards so I
went over to book in and found out that on the 11th
the dinning room was going to be closed as they were
putting in new carpet and the slowest day was a Monday!

I saw Meg as she had taken the day off so that we could
go up to Yallourn Nth and see Kirsten. I had stopped in
and seen Karen and Donald's kids before coming home.
They had run up to me and given me lovely hugs and
kisses and wished me Happy Birthday. Sam said that it
had been on Facebook, and as it is school holiday time
they are on Facebook a lot. Of course I had seen Kath
and her kids when Meg and I went to see Kirsten.

Donald had popped into the shop on Friday the 8th and
said that he would ring me for my birthday and I said
"I'm still waiting for my Mother's Day phone call so I
will believe that when it happens." Of course he never
rang! I have not heard from him yet and it is the 16th
today!

Saturday, July 9, 2011

Brickbats to Channel 7 and Prime!

On Thursday 30 June after "No Ordinary Family" Channel
7/Prime boasted that NOW they had "No Ordinary Family"
on twice a week, Monday and Thursday at 7.30 p.m. but
on the following Monday, the 4th July, at 7.30 p.m. the
big announcement was that "Border Security" was back
tonight and starting NOW.

I don't know if it was on Thursday night as I was in
Melbourne and had forgot to set the tape to record!

I think it is about time that these channels got their
programing and advertisng of such correct! After all
we live in an age of computers! How hard can it be to
advertise that a show will be shown and then to show
that show!

Saturday, July 2, 2011

Grass Cutting, Don't to This In Winter!!

I never cut the grass in April. I usually do it
once about the end of April and then start again
in November. So it was a bit long. Well we have
had a perfect week of lovely sunshine but the
grass really did not dry out though the soil was
not sodden but quite firm. Well I cut half the
back lawn and it was real bitch to do as the
grass was really wet it would not "throw" to the
back of the catcher but just stayed clogged up
at the catcher's mouth and under the mower itself
so that I had to keep stopping it every three
minutes to pull all the wet grass out from under
the mower.

I had barely started on the second half of the
lawn when the mower just stopped dead. I could
not get it started agiain. I checked that I had
oil and petrol that there was no grass clogging
up the blades and still it would not start. So
I never even got to do the front nature strip
that is begining to look rather ragged.

On Saturday when Cliff dropped me off I got him
to try and start the mower but he could not get
it going either, though at least with him it made
the right sounds I had got nothing out of it.