Pizza order
is a cry
for help
A CODE is developing unofficially in America to surreptitiously call for police help against domestic violence by pretending to order a pizza.
In Oregon City, Ohio, a girl used the code when her mother was being abused. The cops came and the culprit was arrested.
This tactic for subtly calling the emergency services has been internet lore for years, according to Huffington Post, but this is a rare confirmed case of its being effective. It's not guaranteed to work, as police dispatchers are not trained to recognise a pizza order as a call for help.
Here's a transcript of the call to dispatcher Tim Teneyck:
Teneyck: "Oregon 911."
Caller: "I would like to order a pizza at …"
Teneyck: "You called 911 to order a pizza?"
Caller: "Uh, yeah. Apartment …"
Teneyck: "This is the wrong number to call for a pizza..."
Caller: "No, no, no. You're not understanding."
Teneyck: "I'm getting you now."
Later she found creative ways to answer Teneyck's yes or no questions about how much danger she and her mother were in.
Teneyck: "Is the other guy still there?"
Caller: "Yep, I need a large pizza."
Teneyck: "Alright. How about medical, do you need medical?"
Caller: "No. With pepperoni."
Should we not develop something similar here? But if the police don't answer their phone? Easy. You just phone the local pizza parlour.
PP: "Allo. Luigi's Pizzaria Italiana."
Caller: "I want 10 Big Policemen. My address is …"
PP: "Ah senora, I senda pronto da 10 Be-e-eg Pizzamen, zey giva da fella da klep in noz …"
SAA quandary
INVESTMENT analyst Dr James Greener turns his attention in his latest grumpy newsletter to South African Airways.
"Pity poor Tlali Tlali, the spokesman for SAA. He has had to trot out all the usual guff about turnaround strategy to steer it out of the financial quagmire and bleeding cash because of fierce competition, not to mention cash flow challenges.
"Nosy journalists armed with calculators keep on pointing out that SAA's main problem is simply that there are far too many people working for the airline and that it's unsurprising that staff salaries in November are expected to be paid late.
"It's not been revealed which banks have been talked into lending 'working capital' of R3.5 billion but the fine print suggests that we taxpayers have issued some sort of surety.
"This really won't end well. Are the unions about to learn a long overdue lesson in economics?
Time traveller?
IS GRETA Thunberg, the Swedish teenage climate change activist, actually a "time traveller" from another century, come to save us from our foolishness?
The idea comes from a photograph taken in 1898 of three children operating a sifting machine during the Klondike gold rush, in the Yukon territory of north-west Canada.
The little girl on the left of the photo bears a striking resemblance to Greta Thunberg. The photo is in Washington University's Special Collections Archive.
Somehow it got onto the internet. That's where people recognised Greta. It's caused quite a stir.
"Greta's a time traveller from the future and she's here to save us," one Twitter user wrote.
If the internet produces much that is hallucinatory, this surely is in the harmless category.
Tailpiece
WHAT do you call a dog in jeans and a sweater?
A plainclothes police dog.
Last word
The best time to plant an oak tree was twenty-five years ago. The second best time is today. - James Carville
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