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#53912 01/28/02 07:05 PM
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a little honey soy all around.

nummer 174? who ordah nummer 174?


#53913 01/28/02 07:37 PM
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nummer 174? who ordah nummer 174?

No me, Wun Hung Lo. I order nummer 69 and food arrive nummer 10.

Actually (and this is a little bit scurrilous and Max will probably remember it, too), a Chinese girl was kidnapped in Oamaru (in the South Island of Zild) about ten years ago. The kidnappers (one of whom I happened to know; he was the twin brother of one my near-neighbours) intended to hold her for ransom on the grounds that her father was a wealthy market gardener and should be able to come up with what was a small amount of cash, really, in no time flat. They only asked for a few thousand, probably figuring that's all a daughter would be worth, I suppose! But these idiots didn't bargain on their resourceful 14-year-old captive loosening her bonds, breaking out of the house she was being held in and just going home ... where she arrived before the ransom demand did, if I remember correctly.

I forgot what Phil George and his crony got for that one, but I think the judge went light on the grounds of terminal ineptitude.

Anyway, the point of this is that Gloria, the girl in question, gained the nickname "Chinese Takeaway" (this being an extremely popular form of food in Zild). She went from being unnoticed among many other Chinese kids of her age at her high school to being very well-known and rather popular. She was interviewed a few years later - I think when the doo-lally duo were released - and she'd grown into an extremely self-confident and articulate young lady. She was laughing about the experience.

All's well that ends well, I suppose ...



The idiot also known as Capfka ...
#53914 01/28/02 07:40 PM
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Perhaps Anu is peeking in on us? The quote he used for Today's Word seems more than coincidentally fitting, and so very, very true:

So many gods, so many creeds, So many paths that wind
and wind, While just the art of being kind is all the sad
world needs. -Ella Wheeler Wilcox, poet (1850-1919)






#53915 01/28/02 08:00 PM
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Dear CK: the only kidnapping I every thought laughable was fiction: O. Henry's The Ransom of Red Chief.
It sounds to me as though the Judge was a stupid bleeding heart to let the perpetrators off lightly just because they were inept. It is the amateurs who often panic and kill the victims. I wonder if the victim's being Chinese made the crime seem less serious.


#53916 01/28/02 08:11 PM
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It sounds to me as though the Judge was a stupid bleeding heart to let the perpetrators off lightly just because they were inept. It is the amateurs who often panic and kill the victims. I wonder if the victim's being Chinese made the crime seem less serious.

Bill, you take some things far too literally. No, the judge didn't go lightly on them. In fact, he threw the book at them, but, again from memory, there was a legal catch - since the young lady wasn't actually a captive when the ransom was demanded, it wasn't kidnap, it was something like "depriving her of her freedom". The legal eagles will know the one. I think they got the maximum for that. If it had been kidnap, they'd probably still be staring at a cell wall.

And the only funny aspect of it was their stupidity, and I though I'd made that quite plain. The fact that Gloria was able to shrug it off and get on with her life impressed the hell outta me.

One final point: There is a very large Chinese population in Zild, especially in that area of the country. Believe me, justice in New Zealand isn't always applied justly but when it misfires it's not on the basis of race or creed.



The idiot also known as Capfka ...
#53917 01/28/02 09:11 PM
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belM says: You have evidently been around for a while since you know how we interact on this Board, you know how we kid around and you know how we welcome strangers. YET you post under a stranger's title and name.
For some reason I am very uncomfortable with that.


Right on, belM, I agree. Especially since, but not only because, one of his/her () few posts was a direct attack at me (not that it has stopped me--I've dealt with way worse and I love this board ).


#53918 01/28/02 09:20 PM
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Bringing this again up to the top, yes I agree, mav. Let's get on with the fun stuff. The "why-we-are-all-here-stuff."

Hey~ run into any double dactyls lately?


#53919 01/29/02 12:33 AM
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i'm with stales... at first i kept looking for the punchline, until i realized that you are all serious. to those that have chosen to depart (keiva, wordwind...are there more? i'm so far behind on posts that i don't even bother to *try to read them all anymore), i'm truly sorry you didn't find what you were looking for here. FWIW, i've enjoyed much of what each of you have offered to this Board, and i'm sorry to see anyone go away feeling ripped offcross-threading a bit

i would like to offer this observation, as an 'outsider' who is reading all of this with a bit of detachment (i've only been alerted to this thread quite recently, and i don't really know most of the folks involved, and as such i have the advantage of not being inclined toward a 'knee-jerk' reaction): it seems to me that this call for a lynch mob is a bit illogical. after all, some of you are decrying the "vicious" and "cruel" things that were said in private to some other folks, and in the same breath you are admitting that you don't even know what was said, by who, to whom. as keiva would be the first to tell us, this is what we'd call hearsay, and it wouldn't be admissible in court well, except if it's a dying declaration, which is an exception, but as mav pointed out, things haven't yet progressed that far. it just seems like an ugly mutation of the telephone game to me.

can't we all just talk about words now?[/rodneyking]


#53920 01/29/02 01:15 AM
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I see that Annastrophic and Caradea want to change the subject. Getting a little hot in here?

It's been said before: if you don't find the subject to your liking, don't read it. But don't try to censor us.

#53921 01/29/02 01:37 AM
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(Are you sure you didn't set us up for this deliberately to see if anyone would bite?)

And who the Dickens are you?

Sorry. I always knew I would get into hot water some day for saying something only because of the wordplay involved, but after reading the Jeepers exchange above I couldn't resist ;-)



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