Someone’s threatening Ranger and his soon-to-be-married army buddy, so he hires Stephanie to help with security for the bride.
What I Liked
Stephanie has some of her worst experiences yet and only once turns into a cupcake. The rest of the time, she’s rocking and rolling — missing patients, a Hawaiian tiki god, and a Yeti barely faze her. And when it’s all said and done, she’s like a machine wrapping things up.
What I Didn’t Like
The storyline with the guy after Ranger ends a bit quickly.
The Bottom Line
If you make Plum wear pink, it ain’t going to be pretty.
While on a flight back from a trip to Hawaii with both Ranger and Morelli (it’s complicated), Stephanie’s seatmate gets whacked during a layover and everyone thinks Stephanie knows something.
What I Liked
While the lighter side of the Plum series is the main draw, it is nice to see that once in awhile it goes a bit darker. Stephanie has real bruises and knife nickmarks, and Morelli and Ranger had a knock-down drag-out fight, with Stephanie doing the dragging (it is only told as a past event, but still good even if you don’t actually “see it”).
What I Didn’t Like
As always, there are a few too many incompetents running around, and too many coincidences.
Way back when I was at law school at the start of the 90s, the school did a skit night once a year. Normally, this would be something I would abhor and run the other way. For some strange reason, I decided I would not only support it, I would perform. I have no idea what I was thinking.
I decided to do it like Saturday Night Live, and do it as a “Weekend Update”, divided into two segments — one for local news (i.e. Begbie’s Update for the name of the law school building) and one for international news. I confess when I did the first joke, there was dead silence for about a second while they figured out what I said and where I was going with the humour, and then huge laughter. I managed to gather some of the largest laughs of the night, which from the material below you can tell there was little competition. I became instantly famous with several of the “targets” who had no real idea I existed before that night. But that second of dead silence was the longest week of my life.
I have no idea why I’m sharing it, and I don’t have all the final copy (I thought I had a joke in there about one of the professors being run over by a big yellow bus, his favorite tort example, but I deleted it on the night as everyone was doing that joke in one form or another).
Good evening, I’m Paul Sadler, and welcome to Begbie News Update. At the top of the hour, we start with U.S. politics.
U.S. Vice-President Dan Quayle visited B.C. this past week and it was obvious right from the start that diplomatic relations were somewhat strained, with the VP trading jibes with the Premier. VP Quayle berated the premier for the Columbian Drug Traffic into the U.S., while Premier Harcourt complained that VP Quayle was only visiting Vancouver for the first time, yet lives in Washington, and Washington is so close.
In other U.S. news, the parties are gearing up for the upcoming Presidential election. Many candidates have previously announced, but political experts are still watching Senator Edward Kennedy for his decision. What asked if he would consider running, Teddy was quoted as saying, “When I returned, Mary Jo and the car were gone…”.
In business news, a surprising lawsuit this week involving Zeller’s and business owners Saatchi and Saatchi. Richard Posner is suing them for attempting to exert powers beyond normal commercial powers with their new ad slogan, “The lowest price is the law.”
Begbie made the front covers this week when second-year couple Jamie Mills and Kathryn Maclean were arrested by the FBI while vacationing in Las Vegas. They have been charged with organized crime, racketeering, and running illegal sports betting operations. In a shocking twist, Mills agreed to turn state’s evidence against Maclean, claiming that he actually knows very little about sports or gambling, and he was just acting as a frontman for Ms. Maclean.
In entertainment news, the longest trial in history concluded today with a not guilty verdict for a Marcel Marceau impersonator accused of committing murder in a convention hall full of mimes. The trial lasted for 12 years, with over 3000 mimes testifying. While the not guilty verdict was appreciated, the accused is still stuck in an invisible box.
The arrogant among us had reason to celebrate this week with a probate court ruling overturning an earlier ruling. The will has been successfully contested, and the meek will no longer inherit the earth. Appeals are being considered, if the applicants feel worthy enough to apply.
***
Welcome back, I am Paul Sadler, and this is the local news.
Rumours were flying earlier this week that Professor Waters had announced his upcoming retirement this year at the age of 237. Rumours of his retirement have floated every year since he started, but there was a slight bit of truth this year. Professor Waters will no longer be teaching Property Law to keen first-year students. Instead, he is going to be appointed to the history department to teach world history. No change in course content is expected.
Begbie was also the home this week to some exciting medical news. First-year students Jasmine Ahmad, Neva Beckie and Rhonda Maines became the first people to undergo an attachment procedure to become so-called Siamese triplets. Now they literally are inseparable.
It was a confusing week for constitutional law professors Ted McDorman and Hester Lessard who were both arrested but in separate incidents. Professor McDorman was arrested on Monday for badly impersonating Socrates, and announced his intention on Tuesday to prove the charges were complete fabrications only to plead guilty on Thursday.
In a separate case, Professor Lessard was arrested while protesting a ban on wearing love beads in the office. During the trial, Professor Lessard successfully argued freedom of expression, not for the love beads themselves, but that being placed in handcuffs at the time of arrest prevented her from being able to communicate. After the decision, Professor Lessard was quoted as saying (accompanied by elaborate hand gestures), “I feel liberated but I still feel the courts were being incredibly formalistic.”
It seemed like happier news would come from the maternity ward this week, but alas, it was not to be. Wendi from reception is facing jail time for the illicit selling of student code names that were actually easier to remember. Evidence of a Swiss bank account was quite compelling, but she will be allowed to retire quietly. In related news, when she does eventually deliver, in order to prevent any inequality amongst students, the sex of the baby will not be released to upper-year students until approved by the Dean, and then only from the front desk at reception.
We have a sad update to share. Search parties are still looking for the third-year class, missing now since September. If anyone can help us find them, please volunteer your time. Efforts are being hampered due to the fact that no one is completely sure what a third-year looks like, although there have been many false sightings over the past few months. Many theories abound as to the cause of their disappearance. Some believe they were Shanghai’d by April, forced to join her co-op commandos on assignment in Ottawa. Others believe they have been watching reruns of Star Trek and have simply just lost track of time.
We conclude tonight with a summary of the week’s action at the Supreme Court of Canada. It was absolutely thrilling for anyone who is an avid Supreme Court watcher.
On Monday, God was appointed to the Supreme Court.
On Tuesday, civil rights advocates picketed outside the Supreme Court building arguing that God’s presence was a clear violation of the need to separate church and state.
On Wednesday, NDP leader Audrey McLaughlin applauded the addition of another woman to the court.
On Thursday, centralists were fighting with the provincialists…not about the appointment, they just like to fight.
On Friday, the Liberals put forth the strongest case against God’s appointment, arguing that it violated the pith and substance of the 10 commandments as well as the Charter, amounting to nothing more than patronage of a strongly conservative influence.
The NDP argued that they were in favour of anything resembling a miracle, particularly around election time.
On Saturday, a conference was organized by prominent women’s groups of “GodGate”, and demanding to know God’s views on morality, sex education, abortion, creation science, and women’s equality under the law.
In a surprising turn, God announced he was resigning his controversial seat, and returning to private practice, after a long rest at the Kennedy estate in Florida.
That ‘s all the news for this hour. Remember folks, I don’t make up the news, I just report it.
Plum’s got her latest assignment, no problem. She just has to bring in Ranger, a suspect in the death of a wanna-be gangster, the son of an arms dealer.
What I Liked
As with most things Plum, there’s a lot going on … Grandma has moved in, she gets stuck babysitting a wild dog, and there’s a killer running around who likes Stephanie. Plus we get to see an old high school pal, Moon Man, who is frequently fun since the elevator doesn’t go all the way to the top floors.
What I Didn’t Like
The whole sub-story with gun-runners and missing money, and Ranger being “wanted”, gets a little ridiculous after a while.
One of the downsides of running a website (or 5) with comments enabled is that bots leave spam messages. The goal of the spammers is to leave something that might look enough like a regular comment to get through, and then once approved, to spam you at will (most sites have default if the user had a comment approved earlier, future comments get pre-approved — I block this feature and approve everything manually). One way to control spam is through plugins, and I do have several anti-bots that take the suspected spam and move it to a spam folder, just like most online email programs do. But I also review the spam folder just in case a legitimate message got through.
That wouldn’t normally sound like fun, but it is. There are some that come through as “great blog, love it, blah blah blah” and then say “here’s my site, check it out” (I don’t, obviously). But the approach up front is often intriguing:
You have packing, either mashed potatoes or sweet potatoes or both, rolls, sweetened cranberry sauce and then it’s topped off with pumpkin pie.
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Often they will do it as a question that looks and feels like a legitimate question from a user:
I do not know if it’s just me or if perhaps everybody else encountering problems with your blog. It appears as if some of the text in your posts are running off the screen. Can somebody else please provide feedback and let me know if this is happening to them too? This could be a issue with my web browser because I’ve had this happen before. Thanks
And while some probably approve it, if you look at the spot where they can put their email address or website in the comment field, it’s a very obvious spam title like “*** SATISFY YOUR WOMAN ***”. Caught by their own desire to spam.
Some are text that are legitimate sentences but have nothing to do with anything:
This involves vacuuming off the dust which may deposit in crevices. You need to initial use white wine to assist dilute a red wine stain. Stay Away From Overused Language ‘ Be Original: Being ‘down-to-earth’ may be great, but do not mention it. School uniforms can be kept together, while work slacks must be in another place. You do not have to live with the blots and ground-in dirt on your carpeting.
Others are WTF moments:
WOW just what I was looking for. Came here by searching for skin issue.
It must be the key words I use like “skin”, “dermatology”, “treatment” when writing about HR or something computer-ish that drove them to me! 🙂
Others are just row after row of links to spam sites. But my all time favorite is the person who hasn’t configured a one-stop SPAM solution that says things like:
I really {like | love} your {site | blog | post | article | website}. You are very {smart | creative | well-regarded | intelligent | good at writing}.
For those, I actually am serious about them being my favorite…the comments are about 2 pages long, and are basically a form letter-style spam that us pretty well done. Highly generic, decently written, and obviously sold as a turn-key spam solution but the person buying it and implementing it is so stupid that they haven’t bothered to tailor it properly so it shows all the fields rather than the properly generated message the originator intended. In addition, the seller obviously intended for them to use one or two of the paragraphs, but instead the stupid newbie spammer has used 10-15 paragraphs. An excel spreadsheet with a random number generator would do just as good a job, and I’m almost tempted to program one to see if it can generate text for things like thank you posts, PFOs, etc. just to try it. It’s an interesting program solution but they did a good job in the design, even if the implementers are two bricks shy of a full wheelbarrow.
I await new spam, but in the interim, I have useful warnings like the following:
Hi there, just became alert to your blog through Google, and found that it’s really informative. I’m going to watch out for brussels. I’ll appreciate if you continue this in future. Many people will be benefited from your writing. Cheers!
