Monthly Archives: January 2019

Internet Hell

Posted on by

Back in June last year I posted a blog entitled Internet Purgatory which was all about a strange “Friend Request” I had received on Facebook, purportedly, from an old girlfriend of my brother Henry; odd indeed as the lady had died over four years ago! At the end of my humorous account (my husband Chris and his quips!) I had added a few photographs and two funny cartoons which had originally come to my attention via social media. 

Bloggers beware! Apparently, some people are deliberately putting out material that is likely to be picked up and used innocently – and without any financial gain or stolen glory – by bloggers such as myself. For what purpose? To extort money from the unsuspecting blogger on the grounds of stolen copyright. They frighten you with emails and letters threatening to take you to court unless you pay up over £200 (taking the little cartoon off your post is not enough – they want recompense for the several smiles that may have resulted when some of your readers clicked on the image). Then you phone them (PicRights.com who represent CartoonStock Ltd) and tell them that you’re just a poor blogger sharing a laugh and not benefiting in any way from the use of the precious image, and a nice lady agrees, and is quite sympathetic – she can see you are telling the truth – but she is powerless to stop her employers from taking you to court because, strictly speaking, you have broken the copyright law. She can accept no less than £60 to resolve the matter and “think yourself lucky” – after all, it could have been so much more!

So, if any cartoons come your way over the Internet, do scrutinise with a magnifying glass for the CartoonStock Ltd logo and avoid like the plague. Or if you are really unscrupulous, and an artist, and you want to make some easy money, draw some vaguely comical cartoons and place them in the hands of CartoonStock Ltd. They are doing a grand job of causing Internet Hell.

Dry as a Bone

Posted on by

What could be as dry as a bone? The grass in Brisbane? No, not at present. A reformed alcoholic? No, but maybe. My friend Val’s sense of humour? Yes, but no, that’s not what I was thinking of….

Actually, I had a bit of a problem this morning when I opened my new Revlon Eyeliner of the Violet Black variety (for a change) which I bought yesterday at the Discount Chemist in Beenleigh for the princely half-price sum of $13.95, which I had mistaken for the whole price yet to be halved, and which I wouldn’t normally dream of paying… but I was at the checkout and didn’t feel like making a fuss, and, after all, it was Aussie dollars not English pounds (the hardest to take off). So, after struggling for five minutes working out how to take off the clear cellophane wrapping, at last I found the little gold tag and zipped the Violet Black Eyeliner free; I pulled off the clear plastic lid and scrutinised the head of the eyeliner stick – it was a piece of firm sponge shaped like a bullet – and I soon had the eyeliner stick sweeping across my upper eyelids.

“Violet Black isn’t very dark,” I said to myself, then I put my glasses on and inspected more closely in the mirror. Not a sign of the Violet Black.

“I wonder if I need to wet it?” I asked myself, spitting on it and spinning the dark blue sheath at the other end, in the hope that the blue eye make-up would work its way to the sponge end. Still nothing.

“It’s as dry as a bone,” I thought to myself.

 

Some hours later, as I was returning from my brother Bill’s house, I made a short detour…

“This half-price Revlon Eyeliner of yours, which I bought yesterday (showing the receipt), is as dry as a bone!” I said to the middle-aged lady behind the counter.

“Ooh, it is dry, isn’t it? Did you try wetting it?” she agreed bemused.

I felt a bit guilty as the queue was growing and still we could not fathom the problem. Another, younger, member of the counter-staff was passing by at that very moment and my lady held the eyeliner stick out as you would hold a dry old bone.

The twenty-year-old eyed the eyeliner stick and smiled knowingly.

“This head is for smudging,” she said and paused long enough for the penny to drop.

“Ah, so it’s at the other end…”, (she nodded), “and the blue sheath that goes around is the cap?”

The girl laughed, the older woman laughed and all the ladies in the checkout queue guffawed; you could say there wasn’t a dry eye in the vicinity!