I don't know - I never answer it!

Ducks Stadtpark 

Well none of you answered the question as to why I get so many unusual followers. So people pick me from the BoN list and follow me – for no particular reason. So it is a mystery that remains unanswered.

           

None of them appear to be homicidal and I am effectively invisible. As far as I am aware I am not in any phone book or directory in the known world so I defy anyone to track me down.

We do have a landline (is that what you call a fixed telephone line in your apartment?) which came with our package when we moved in. We had a TV/Internet/Telephone Package. (Nothing is in my name.) Now here is a challenge for you esby! See if you can find me!

We got high speed Internet plus 100 odd channels of German TV. But it does include BBC World News and a couple of other useful things in English - and a telephone landline which we have never used.

I have no idea what the telephone number is. I have never given it to anyone. Cate did give it to her brother and he is the only person who has ever called and been answered – by accident.

Now it does ring – every day in fact. In the early days I used to answer it – but people used to speak to me in German so I would say – in English  ‘I don’t speak German – can you speak to me in English’ and they would hang up.

So I assumed that they were selling the usual crap that people sell the world over. ‘Hi my name is Gertrude and I have a very special offer for you today Herr… may I ask what your name is…?’

So after a couple of calls I stopped answering the telephone altogether.

I have not answered it now for more than three years.

So each day or night when I get home I see that there has been a call or calls and that a message has been left – because the light is blinking.

I imagine that it has been Gertrude or Traudi or one of her colleagues who has a special offer for me and would like me to call her back.

So I reset the phone until it does not blink – until the next time.

But – I hear you ask – does it not sometimes ring when you are there? Well – it probably does – but I have the ringer set so low that I cannot hear it. 

So Cate leaves tomorrow for her voyage of discovery. She will actually be back in Vienna on a couple of occasions – for 4 hours on Saturday so we can have a cup of tea together and she can brush the cats – before she flies to Istanbul and then for about the same amount of time next Wednesday before she flies to Delhi or (shudder) Mumbai.

There are valid reasons for her doing this and I know what they are and they are to do with clothes and flight schedules and tides and phases of the moon, stuff like that. 

I am on strict instructions to be on my best behavior. But I am going out on the town on Friday night with my friend Yum Cha.

Molly was supposed to come from Paris to look after me but this has turned into one of those Goat things. More of that tomorrow. 

Who are you all?

Now up until I was given an undeserved and untimely award of ‘Blog of Note’ last April I had about – I think – 70 followers.

This ‘award’ is one of the worst things that has ever happened to me because I now have a full spam box every day of my life.

But it is bad spam. Spam I cannot read. Spam in foreign languages. I can recognise some as being in Thai and some is in Chinese (I am not sure which dialect) but what it says is of course beyond me.

But it comes in avalanches. Some have pictures and I can see that they are trying to get me to come to hotels and restaurants in far flung lands. Someone in a town in Thailand wants me to use his car park – for fuck's sake. I should fly my car there?

There are others without pictures and I assume like most of the others in English that they are trying to make me rich – or bigger my dick. Actually some of them are now using English translators and they say you can grow your dick six inches in six weeks. (It actually said gwow but I know what they meant)

(Now I would like you to stop briefly – look into the distance and see if you can think of anyone you know who would send money to anywhere to buy pills to increase the size of his penis by six inches? Neither can I. But people do it so there must be a market - as evidenced by the amount of mail in my spam box.)

And after this award there was a brief increase in my numbers of followers. This was a real increase of people who found my blog interesting or amusing - or something and signed on and this brought the number up to - I think - about 130. Most of these have since moved on – as people do. Times change.  

Now I have attached the statistics showing the number of visitors and page views which is probably consistent with what one would expect. My average visitors each day are now about 80 – sometimes a few more – sometimes a few less. You can see all this by clicking on the thingy on my blog. 

What is scary is that my followers creep inexorably ever upwards – for no reason whatsoever. Sometimes I collect three in a week. Often I am the first blog they have ever followed. Often they created their blog within the last few days.

Scarier even still is that the followers – almost without exception – have no reason to follow me. I invite you to look at my most recent follower thenextdarklord. We do not seem to have a lot on common. But then……

My question to you is – What the fuck is going on? There is clearly something that I do not understand here. Is there a game being played where you collect points for following blogs. Are there more points for following Viennese?

Perhaps – as has been hinted by many – including my kindergarten teacher – I am indeed the Antichrist – and the Rapture is at hand.

There is something sincerely scary going on here and I wish to put an end to it. Please help.

As the thenextdarklord says:

Well, then. I am Marielle (I cannot emphasise this enough), and I am a worthless human being. People don't like me, and I have an outstanding ability to not give a damn. Eminem and Morgan Freeman are my spirit animals. THIS is my other blog. And yes, I am the next dark lord. I also think I could be Hannah Montana. Life isn't fair. We part ways now...

Holy shit.

You just cannot hear the music without them

Jerusalem

You can buy these beautiful sleek fitted covers for MacBook Airs – they fit them like a glove - and I did this when I bought my MacBook Air a while ago.

It was just for travelling because I take a backpack and my MacBook Air is so light and delicate that I worry about it getting damaged.

But one day when we were in a hotel room somewhere and she was going to a meeting Cate said she needed a cover for her notebook computer for the day - so she would take mine. What?

It won’t fit I said (alarmed) – it’s designed specifically to fit mine like a glove.

No it will be OK she said – and I watched in horrified awe – as she proceed to cram her large rectangular computer into the glove-like case designed for my sylph-like slim and gorgeous Mac.

She found it tough going at first and the glove put up a fierce struggle but – like a python engorging a rabbit – after the first two thirds – the last third was a lot easier. I covered my ears to avoid the noise of the stretching and groaning fabric.

At then end of the day she gave the remains back to me.

It is one of those cases that holds its shape remarkably well. Sadly - the shape it holds is the last one it had - so it looks like it last contained two armadillos who fought to the death inside it.

I could now fit three MacBook Airs into it and leave room for a Big Mac and a Lime Slurpee.

So I gave it to her. And I have bought myself a brand new one from Amazon. I have attached a picture of what it looks like. The other one no longer looks like this.

She has that – together with the snazzy leather iPhone case I once had – and any number of iPhone headsets that she uses both for her iPhone and her BlackBerry.

She does things to iPhone and iPod headsets that the Apple engineers would not believe. I have looked closely at her ears – when she is asleep of course – so as to not arouse suspicion – and they look normal – but you would not think so if you see the wrecks of headsets that she presents to me with the plaintive cry – ‘Can I have another one of these please – this is broken!’

Broken hardly describes what she does to headsets. They are jumbles of parts held together by fragments of wire. It’s astonishing.

So I keep many spares handy – particularly when we are travelling – because she needs them for work - and my bitter experience has been that no matter how close you hold your ear to an iPod – and no matter how high you turn up the volume - you cannot hear the music unless you have headphones.