EEbEEs arbitrary comments (...¿...)

Beware the nut factory

2011-04-19T10:38:00.006+02:00

This really got to me:

I bought a pack of peri-peri cashews from a local supermarket yesterday and made the unfortunate mistake of reading the packaging. Here's what it said>>>

"Nestled in the fertile valley of the Langeberg Mountains and refreshed by the waters of the Keisie and Kingna Rivers, lies the idyllic town of Montagu. It is here, in the this abundant green haven, that we've packed the tastiest dried fruits and nuts and brought them to you to enjoy time and again."

While reading that little story my imagination was taken on a journey through these amazing mountains, diving into cool clear mountain streams and... hay wait a sec, did they say "It is here that... we've packed the tastiest dried..."???

I must investigate, why would they say 'packed' when they could use awesome words like harvested, plucked, nurtured... that single word threw me off. So I picked up the packet and examined it more carefully before I noticed the horrific truth. There in font size 2 next to the bar code at the bottom corner of the pack "PRODUCT OF TANZANIA / VIETNAM"!

AHAAAAAAAA!

Deceiving Bastards! You've described the idyllic and pristine location of your FACTORY. The depot in Montagu where all the trucks carrying imported goods (from third world, war stricken, human rights abuser, child labour driven countries...) which arrive for repackaging and distribution in South Africa! An even bigger slap in the face is the fact that they confess they are running an industrial operation in such a naturally beautiful "haven". Why not stick your factory in a designated area within a city? It's rather suspicious... I could go on, instead I suggest printing this label:

"Chugging smoke and pollutants into the fertile valley of the Langeberg Mountains and poisoning the fresh waters of the Keisie and Kingna Rivers, lies our Nut packaging factory. It is here, in the this abundant green haven, that we've decided to build our evil empire by importing the tastiest dried fruits and nuts and selling them to you at ridiculously high prices to fund our weapons of mass destruction project."

So there...

A pair of great tits

2011-03-31T12:44:00.003+02:00

Parnus major

(You pervert...)

Photo:http://www.nundafoto.net/gallery/photo/479-mesange-charbonniere-parus-major

So what’s the deal with donkey and dragon?

2011-03-25T21:58:00.003+02:00

I always thought the makers of Shrek went a step too far when they thought it would be a good idea for donkey to get it on with dragon. Reptiles and mammals, eggs and fur, massive and tiny no No NO that will never do. People say all babies are cute but the mutant spawn created by the pairing of a donkey and dragon are most definitely not. Every time I see them I find myself waiting for the scene to end. You may be thinking “Geez EEbEE take it easy, it’s just a fantasy movie getting some laughs. Give it a break!” after listening to my initial rant. Bear with me, there is a point to all of this…

Honestly!?

…and here it is!>>> I honestly think that some things should be left alone and not turned into a cheap love story. The good writers know when to stop; J.R.R. Tolkien for example, didn’t see a need for a Mrs Gollum! So many good stories/episodes/series have been utterly ruined by these canned bean romances.

Harry Potter, I don’t care which girl Harry hooks up with and how they struggle to admit they love each other because they are young and innocent… just friggin point your wand at random shit and say funny made up words that make them spontaneously combust. Okay, that isn’t a riveting plot but it would sure as hell make for more interesting reading than Harry blushing and running away every time he sees a girl he likes!

The Big Bang Theory was the biggest let down. Here was a show that got laughs the clever way in season 1 and half of season 2. After that it just became a soapy about tactics nerds use to get laid. Currently I would estimate that around 95 percent of the humour is the same old “…that’s what she said” crap you can find on Hanging with Mr Cooper. They even found Sheldon Cooper a ‘girlfriend’! WTF! He was the only reason I still watched the show and now he too has a cheap, meaningless and humorless relationship with a secondary character.

House and Cuddy should never have hooked up in the first place. The episodes they are together are too wet to be classified as part of the series. For the first time since the series began, Wilson was funnier than House! Save the background love story for Dr Chase (sp?) isn’t that what the guy is for?

(I could easily go on but each new example urges me to delete everything on my hard drive.)

Seeing as I consider myself a fair guy, I will now dispense advice on how to rectify the cheap love story disease plaguing television of today (only assholes complain all the time without suggesting a solution).>>> I realise that writers are put under tremendous pressure to produce shows that are interesting, original, funny… and that after 15 episodes their imaginations are exhausted. Instead of turning towards the path of soppyness I implore them to watch some Japanese anime. There is something about those manga/anime dudes, they have the formula for a great show. Just the right proportions of humour, violence…romance to keep you glued to the show. I’m not one for soppy love stories (would you have guessed?) but anime has showed me that there is a time and a place for everything. Aweful, uninspired writers should get off their lazy arses and stop taking advantage of loyal fans. They should learn how to keep ratings up by providing good quality shows as opposed to milking inappropriate themes and getting away with it because walkover fans simply want to get their weekly fix of series X for routine sake. Screw that!

Supermarket Detective Agency

2011-02-20T22:13:00.003+02:00

There I was, minding my own business in the local supermarket. I grabbed a trolley, you know, one of those miniature ones designed to carry baskets for lazy people who refuse to use basket handles… in any case I proceeded in my usual manner, making my way to household cleaners (before shelf food items and then finally fridge/freezer items… if you don’t do this you are weird, so there). I should mention that things were not going so well for me this day as I had accumulated quite a lot of common cold symptoms. To be more specific; groggy voice, coughing and sputtering, red droopy eyes and a snotty nose to top it all off (just keep that wonderful image of me in your mind for now).

Back to the story, I had already placed an item or two into my trolley before I decided to make a quick trolley-less dash into a crowded isle to pick up some soap. I legged it through the masses of smelly obese ladies buying beauty products to the soap section hauled a couple bars of Protex into my arms and legged it back through the ambulating wall of lard. When I emerged (unscathed) I was greeted by an empty space where my trolley once stood.

GONE!?

What…? Where could it…? WHO TOOK IT!?

It had only been a few seconds, a half minute at the most. The rational thing to do would be to go back to the trolley section fetch another one, reselect taken items and get over it. Alas, my mind was not of a rational state at the time and my thoughts followed this path instead:

“The Bastard! I don’t want to have to get another trolley! Why should I? I distinctly remember putting a green basket at the top and a black one at the bottom, I can find this trolley snatcher and get my vehicle back! They can’t have gone very far and they will only have gathered a few items (if any) in the interim.”

I scan my surrounding through red eyes (how about that one…) before:

“There! Old lady pushing identical trolley with few items at 3 o’clock!”

I’m ashamed to say that I didn’t even think twice before walking up to her and asking her to return my trolley. I tried to sound friendly but my voice let me down and I ended up growling out a statement punctuated falsely by involuntary coughing.

“So *cough-cough* You’re the *cough* lady who *sputter-cough* took my *swallow phlegm* trolley!” I said, trying to smile after her eyes greeted me with some confusion and a bit of fear I guess.

“No.” says the old lady softly “I got mine from the front, but you can take one of my baskets. I’m checking out now”

I coughed my way though an apology before humbly (or at least as humble as a deranged coughing, snotty, psycho with a trolley fetish can possibly appear) accepting the offer and taking an unused basket from her. As I walked away, thoroughly embarrassed and ashamed, I spotted ANOTHER trolley that looked exactly like mine. Like an eagle fixing its gaze on potential prey from a distance, I locked onto to the trolleys driver (pusher?). An unattractive pudgy middle aged woman seemed a likely suspect for trolley theft as dastardly as had befallen me, especially so as she was wearing clothes that were at least 2-3 sizes too small for her (YUCK!). Only someone too lazy to carefully select proper clothes sizes so they can be comfortable would stoop so low as to steal someone else’s trolley to save a few measly seconds at the trolley stand!

I homed in on her and said “Hey! You took my *cough-cough* trolley, I was using that.” I was so sure! She looked at me, shook her head and said “No, I got this from the front”. Deflated, I apologized and decided to give up.

So, so sure… she MUST have been lying.

This chicken licken ad had me in stitches

2010-12-25T20:26:00.001+02:00

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UdhiQs29zgs

Life in the bundus

2010-12-23T05:49:00.003+02:00

So I’ve moved back to my home town after 8 years of studying. I always knew I’d come back so I’m not THAT surprised. I love the country life. Sure, cities have their plus points (friends, services, convenient shopping…) but then there is also peak hour traffic which, I’ve noticed, extends noticeably into non-peak hours of late. I’d prefer Chinese bamboo torture over driving in bumper to bumper traffic behind a taxi covered in WWE wrestler stickers and blasting kwaito (music which is local, homegrown, ethnic and also utter trash!).

Country life should be chilled out. Wake up early go to bed early. Farmers in straw hats ferrying loads of cabbages to market in beat up old Toyotas. Fishing and fresh food. Home baked cookies and unsliced rusks. You get the idea, all rustic like…

Where I live, things are a tad more exciting though. Just yesterday a gang of armed robbers held up a local shop. Police in the area actually coordinated a road block and nabbed the bastards in a surprisingly well oiled operation. Well, when I say ‘nabbed the bastards’ I really mean ‘chase them into the mielie fields and shoot them to pieces’. If I was a criminal I’d definitely decide to lay low if I lived hereabouts. In fact some of SA’s most hard core criminals come from around here. ATM bombings and mall robberies in Johannesburg (who robs the mall!?) have links to rural Kranskop. Not to mention old Jacob Zuma’s posse down the road in Nkandla (which has recently overtaken Dubai as the world’s fastest growing city in the middle of nowhere).

Yes things do happen out here in the bundus. The best part of it all… NO TRAFFIC!

New on supermarket shelves in SA

2010-11-24T16:40:00.005+02:00

I was in Pick 'n Pay today when I noticed this product on the shelves for the first time. Why did Kellogg's think it would be a good idea to name a breakfast cereal 'Smack' (unless said cereal contained a certain 'secret ingredient')! I mean honestly! do they think people will need their fix of smack in the mornings? Does the name guarantee a long term customer from a particular segment of buyers?

I'm not so sure... The frog/lizard thing seems to be very excited about the whole deal though, suspiciously so in my opinion. Have you ever seen a cereal box character with as big a smile???

Stay well away from this one friends, it gives me the heebee djeebeez

The most fun I had today

2010-11-10T14:54:00.005+02:00

Ever had one of those days where the most fun you've had was watching all the red bars on your de fragmenting hard drive turn blue?

I'm having one of those days right now. I've been endlessly working on my theses, correct here, edit there, cut out here, paste there, type here, delete that, find references for this... AAARGH!!! It's so monotonous that I look forward to any break or possible escape from the hellish cycle. I found some relief staring at my defrag for around 5 minutes before realising how desperate I was and watching half an episode of Top Gear to regain some sort of sanity.

Writing up is far from easy, even if you have everything you need in front of you and all you need to do is assemble bits and pieces into one sensible paragraph. If I could just work my way around these mental blockades I could probably finish off the rest of my thesis in two days! Instead I have budgeted two weeks to complete the work.

Wish me luck fellow strugglers/stragglers

People I fail to get along with

2010-11-01T08:57:00.000+02:00

I've met so many people who think like this. I usually pick it up after one or two in depth conversations. These people probably never perceive themselves in this way. It's a sad life in which the closest friend they can keep is their own reflection in the mirror. This however, doesn't seem to bother them in the least...

If, perchance, I too fall under this category please tell me so I can perform brain surgery on myself crossing fingers that I will lop off the right portion and become a worthy human being again.

In case you were wondering, this is just a general post aimed at finding out if I am (have become) what I hate. If you think you know who I am leave an honest comment (I can take it !!! *crushes an empty appletiser can onto his forehead*)

Proof that Facebook Marketplace is bollocks

2010-10-20T15:57:00.004+02:00

Click to enlarge

Bad case of mistaken identity

2010-09-23T11:51:00.004+02:00

I hate it when people get offended for no reason (I can't seem to get this image to show properly. Click to enlarge)

How to solve the rhino horn saga

2010-09-22T12:44:00.004+02:00

It being Rhino Day and all...

You think you are living in a modern world, a world where people are finally beginning to understand the way things work. Using science, logic and technological advances to solve problems is the norm.

No it isn't.

Some crazy backward bastards go and ruin everything by believing that a rhinos horn has medicinal value! According to 16th century pharmacists (yes, 16th century!!!) the magical horn is said to treat fever, rheumatism, gout, snake bites, hallucinations, typhoid, headaches, carbuncles, vomiting, food poisoning, libido, being possessed by the devil... but rhino horn does none of these things. These people may as well treat their condition by eating their own hair and nail clippings. Heck they may as well drink a glass of water, it's far more useful medicinally.

Thereafter, a group of even crazier money hungry sods go and harvest horns from live animals to meet the demand. A win win situation? I think not! Armed with aforementioned technological advances, poachers have become devastatingly efficient at harvesting horns. Rhino numbers are declining and so on and so forth...

THE SOLUTION

Okay it's pretty easy and I can't imagine why it hasn't been tried yet. You see the horn has tremendous value, it must have if poachers are able to form well organised armed teams in helicopters (!!!) to harvest a few (dozen maybe) horns a month at the most. Horns are also very scarce which drives their value up, this is logical. So what if...(let me put this into perspective)... what if authorities were to flood the market with fake rhino horn. If it is traditionally dispensed in a powder form simply drown the black market in fake product (it'll be just as effective, medicinally, as the real stuff).

Brainless customers will be happy because they could get their product cheaply.
Poachers would stop hacking rhinos to bits because selling chickens wings on the black market would be far more profitable
Rhino extinction probabilities would be reduced significantly
Hippies would stop their endless moaning on the subject (they'd find something else but we can be happy in between complaints)

Oh my God she is stupider than I ever imagined!

2010-09-20T11:53:00.004+02:00

I saw something strange on Google news this morning, let me share.

Below is a picture of some meat. Okay the meat is sort of arranged in a manner that represents an item of clothing. A form of protest perhaps? Animal rights groups bringing awareness to the plight of animal lives we, as humans, so shamelessly exploit.

Think again, this item of ‘clothing’ belongs to someone. It isn’t a museum or exhibition piece either. This person actually wore the meat. I’ll give you one guess...

Yup you guessed it. Lady GAGA!!!

How the hell can she wear something like THAT (look at the hat and boots… *sigh*) and STILL walk around looking smug with that ‘I’m so original and popular’ look on her face!? She defended the meat dress by saying "If we don't stand up for what we believe in, if we don't fight for our rights, pretty soon we're going to have as many rights as the meat on our bones" (I interpret that as “I’m fighting for my right to be a crazy woman, if sane people have rights so should us crazy lot. VIVA CRAZY VIVA, PHANSI SANITY PHANSI!”). Remember, this is the same woman that said she refused to have sex because her creative juices would be sucked out of her vagina!

Gaga went on to saying something along the lines of “It’s the same as wearing leather…” (and I say “Listen Gaga, it just isn’t… you’re a complete nutter”)

Do you use lotion? Read on if you do...

2010-08-25T14:49:00.003+02:00

So there I am, minding my own business typing at the pc. I get a bit uneasy after a while and adjust my seating position to find a new comfort zone. Suddenly it strikes, an itch attack of a magnitude only achieved on the driest of winter days. It feels as though a hundred fleas materialize onto each of my forearms and simultaneously feast off my cells.

Emergency lights and alarms go off in my head. It is time for me to dig out the lotion and apply it as a last resort. This bottle has lasted me 3 years and is still pretty much full. Guys don’t use lotion unless their arms are about to fall off you see. We’d sooner scratch our legs till we bleed (Done this before guys, haven’t you?) than simply squeeze out some lotion from a tube and painlessly massage the itching away within seconds. If you’re a guy and you haven’t done any of these things you are either a mommy’s boy or a homo. So there…

There is a point to all this rambling. You see after applying the lotion to get rid of 200+ fleas on my arms I started wondering about the contents of said lotion and how those work to eliminate itching and dry skin. So I take a gander at the ingredients on the label.

· Cucumber

· Aloe vera

· Honey

· Buttermilk

· Mint

· Palm oils…

…the list went on and on naming these ingredients, which would probably make a good light meal on their own, each sounding more soothing and cool than the previous. After the list of recognizable ingredients came a bunch of chemicals, and this is where the average person would stop reading. No, not me, I had started reading and wanted to get to the very end of the list of ingredients. So I tried (in vain) to recall some of my first year chemistry as I slowly pronounced the names of each compound. That’s when I spotted it! There! Between Dihetrasulphoxychlorisomthing and Hydramethdoodyvonphospholux…

It said very quietly in Arial font, size 0.5

Urea

UREA!!!!

WTF!!!???

Those bleddy, dishonest, deceptive, backstabbing, lairs! I’ve been lathering myself up in urea whenever I get all itchylike. That’s just not cool. Laxatives in chewing gum is alright, but urine in lotion crosses the line! I wish people were honest about their products. Sure you wouldn’t sell much lotion if you call it “Cool Aloe, Cucumber and Urine” flavour but that’s not the point! You need to exclude mixing in random excreta with your products!

Why, oh why, do you have Urea as an ingredient in any case? Is it some sort of joke? Do employees just relieve themselves in the mixing vats to have a laugh? Who was the guy that decided it would be easier to just make urea an ingredient as opposed to firing the employees involved in taking a dump in the lotion?

I WANT ANSWERS DAMN IT!

Oily disastrous death of DOOM!

2010-08-23T14:34:00.007+02:00

So I’ve been keeping half an eye out on the Gulf of Mexico oil spill news. In fact, ‘oil spill’ is putting it lightly. It’s the single largest environmentally destructive man made force EVER! Surprising then that the worldwide media has sidelined the whole affair in favour of Lindsay Lohan’s jail sentence for violating parole… or some such rot. I don’t care if some juvenile lesbo has to spend TWO WHOLE WEEKS in jail for being an idiot. The only time ‘Li-Lo’ deserves to be put in the papers ahead of an environmental disaster of this magnitude is if they found… a cure for HIV AIDS made from a paste constructed primarily of her dried crushed bones, organs and brain matter.

I’m drifting…

In any case I thought I would summarise the whole oil spill and the way it was managed by those clever guys at the ‘BP science, engineering and brainyness’ division. Why, you ask? It’s just that I found looking at individual pieces and media reports gave a somewhat hazy and incomplete picture. Putting all those bits together will help us average people understand the steps BP have taken to ensure nothing but the best (or least worst) results from this whole ordeal.

April 20 2010: Blowout preventer on an oil rig in the Gulf of Mexico fails resulting in… a blowout>>>

BP Engineer 1 “Hey Chuck, one of our deep sea rigs had a blow out in the Gulf of Mexico.” BP Engineer 2 “Erm, yeah we shoulda realised something would happen after Jay took apart the old blowout preventer for a valve he needed to fix his mom’s Studebaker.” BP Engineer 1 “So what are we going to do about mate?” BP Engineer 2 “This needs some thought… I’ll get back to you”

7 May 2010: Oil leaks out at a rate of approximately 60000 barrels a day for 17 days before>>>

BP Engineer 1 “Hey Chuck, we could lower a huge box over the leak.” BP Engineer 2 “That’s a great idea Dave, that way we can minimize our losses by harvesting and selling the spilled oil!” BP Engineer 1 “What about the excess oil that leaks into the ocean?” BP Engineer 2 “Meh, it has to go somewhere…”

9 May 2010: The box-funnel idea failed and eco-warriors put pressure on BP Engineers to come up with environmentally friendly solutions>>>

BP Engineer 1 “Hey Chuck, maybe the oil will stop spilling out if we shovel dirt into the hole” BP Engineer 2 “Hey, yeah Dave, I recon that will work. When I was I kid we used to hide stuff by shoveling dirt onto it…” BP Engineer 1 “Heck and getting rid of dirt is environmentally friendly too, EVERYBODY wins!”

11 May 2010: After failing to stop the leak (which has since grown to a maximum of 800000 liters a day) by dropping sand bags filled with dirt, golf balls and bits of old tire onto it (!!!) BP engineers need to find another new solution>>>

BP Engineer 1 “Say Chuck, what if we were to use a big old submarine to go down there and plug the leak?” BP Engineer 2 “You is genius Dave! But what to plug the leak with?” BP Engineer 1 “…Concrete?” BP Engineer 2 “Doesn’t that need air to dry and cure?” BP Engineer 1 “Heck no, how do you think they build them bridges in rivers…”

10 July 2010: Shoving concrete into the leak fails. The oil spill, now visible from outer space, destroys all life in its path. BP Engineers finally come up with a solution>>>

BP Engineer 1 “So Chuck I noticed this morning that the water in my bath was prevented from escaping using a solid plug like device to cover the outlet hole.” BP Engineer 2 “What exactly are you trying to say Dave?” BP Engineer 1 “Well, if a plug can stop water from going down a drain surely we could use a similar device to stop oil gushing up from a hole” BP Engineer 2 “Hmm, a radical idea Dave. We would have to reverse engineer this ‘plug’ device to function the other way around but it sounds crazy enough to work.”

15 July 2010: The main sources of the oil spill are finally stopped after BP engineers effectively shove a plug into to hole really REALLY hard! A permanent solution to the oil spill has YET to be found but is expected to be in place by September. In the mean time the CEO of British Petroleum maintains that the amount of oil that has spilled into the Gulf of Mexico is a tiny tiny tiny amount relative to all the water in all the oceans on the planet Earth.

Phew! Thank goodness for that…

(Image http://3.bp.blogspot.com)

Rant about headlines

2010-08-12T22:18:00.002+02:00

I’m really surprised at the shocking headlines I’ve seen recently in the news. Either desperate measures used by journalists to attract the attention of stupid people or stupid journalist not thinking about what they write while they are going about their business…

Let me explain:

Earlier this week there was a news headline with the following

“Corpses left to rot underground!”

I mean REALLY, do they honestly expect us to react something along these lines “How horrific! How could someone possibly have stooped so low as to leave corpses to ROT! UNDERGROUND!??? That evil son-of-a-femaledog. I hope he/she burns in hell for carrying out such an inhuman act. IN HELL!!!” Give the people some credit I say. How odd would it be if we didn’t leave corpses to rot underground… “Look honey, the neighbours dog died, judging from the smell and maggots it must have kicked the bucket around 3 weeks ago. I really wish he’d scooped it up and left it at the corpse pile on the corner of 5^th and Cathcart.”

Nay, the person that originally thought of burying corpses was a genius… a headline like that should be followed by picture of a man with a spade standing triumphantly at the side of newly covered grave.

The next headline was quite recent news on the radio (today if I’m not mistaken) “Miners shot by security guards after found digging for gold”. That’s a raw deal in my opinion, the last time I checked digging for gold was part of the job description. Were they innocently working before some trigger happy guard came along and shot them to pieces or were they hiding nuggets up their asses?

A few weeks back there was even a report of a Boeing 767 crash landing at Harare International Airport. The world looked on in panic as people started pointing fingers and checking flight details of family members… all until we read the full report (a day later) detailing a 767 crash-land TRAINING EXERCISE!

These sorts of things can so easily be taken the wrong way. If it’s all about getting people talking and making a fuss over stuff that ends up being really trivial, I don’t think it’s worth it at all. In my opinion, if ones story is boring, being vague and lying about it to be popular is rather juvenile. People that write news reports in this manner should be forced to swallow broken lightbulbs.

So there…

Stop abusing Mandela!

2010-07-16T17:13:00.004+02:00

How could one stoop so low as to insult this man!

I gave up listening to the radio a few years ago. Things were getting pretty bad and I couldn’t take it any more:

All the good DJ’s were being canned and replaced with nauseating teens (or adults with teen temperament)
Advertisements ruled the air. I’m sure 90% of the time between rambling-nutter teenage DJ’s was just a swarm of insurance, Coca-cola and CTM tile ad’s.
The other 10% of the time was filled with the monotonous banshee like droning of Rihanna, Beyonce, Shakira, Natasha Beddingfield…

I was quite content listing to my own CD collection and MP3 compilations for a while after I left radio. Then one day I got bored of music and turned on the radio to look for something with which I could drown out the tyre roar from my Corsa on long distance trips. I found SAfm, talk radio. Awesome stuff (apart from the daily soap and Sunday preaching) minimal adverts (the occasional reminder to pay your TV license) and an occasion track from a local band (outdated yes, but familiar and enjoyable most of the time).

I was really pleased with my new FM companion till Nelson Mandela day started encroaching on us. For those unfamiliar with the event:

“Mandela Day is a call to action for people everywhere to take responsibility for making the world a better place, one small step at a time, just as Nelson Mandela did.

Nelson Mandela spent more than 67 years serving his community, his country, and the world at large. On Mandela Day people are called to devote just 67 minutes of their time to changing the world for the better…”

Sure I have no beef with the principles behind Mandela day, It’s a great way to get people to be helpful and blah blah blah… There is one thing that did get to me though. Quite a few companies have seen this as yet another opportunity to take advantage of good natured people by using Mandela in their advertisements. I call these deceitful ad’ campaigns Black Mandela Ops (or BMO’s).

For example

A normal CTM tile advert: “Come to CTM for high quality imported tiles at low low prices. CTM More than you expect for less than you think!”

A BMO’ed CTM tile advert: “2 million children DIED from cold last year because of poorly insulated homes. We at CTM will donate one tile to these children for every 100 tiles that YOU buy to make a difference to their lives. CTM, we care about children, just like Nelson Mandela does. DO YOU?

Example number 2

A normal KFC advert: “The Colonel made sure he always used the finest secret spices and chickens to make KFC. We carry on that tradition with our new rounder burger with a hexagonal bun! KFC, it’s Fickin’ Good.”

A BMO’ed KFC advert: “Nelson Mandela reared chickens when he was a boy growing up in the Transkei. He loved those chickens, they provided eggs and nuggets on the cold winter days when he and his dear old mum were hungry. In fact if it weren’t for chickens Nelson Mandela might have starved to death as a young boy. Imagine a world without Nelson Mandela! We at KFC would HATE to live in THAT world. Thankfully we provide chicken to prevent such a catastrophe from ever happening again in the future. Buy KFC, do it for Madiba.”

Even the Blood donor notices have been BMO’ed: “…Donate blood, or Nelson Mandela will hate you…”

I can’t stand it! Even talk radio has been infiltrated by Black Mandela Ops. The whole 67 minutes thing… I bet there is some red eyed profit monger behind the entire ordeal. People should be nice to other (deserving) people all the time. Not just for 67 minutes for one day every year! I hate that Mandela’s good name is being used for promoting all this rubbish. People have lost the plot!

Oh NO! Facebook Spam!

2010-07-15T15:01:00.004+02:00

Today I got this message from Jessica (Who the heck are you woman!!!???) Marie on facebook.

Quote

____________________________________________________

Subject: heyy :)

hey, im jessica and my friend jenny and I were just browsing profiles and we found yours.

we liked what we saw ;)

you should add us on yahoo so we can all chat, the sn is Blahblahblah@yahoo.com

Unquote

Okay, so from what I gather these girls like browsing through facebook profiles till they find one that they fancy. They then proceed to PM you and try get you to join their silly flirt chat room or something.

Seeing as this is my profile picture!!!!

I can only come to the conclusion that:

A – I’m being stalked by a Simpsons character (one that likes bearded fat bald men!)

B – Facebook is now a haven for Spammers!

AAARGH I HATE SPAM!!!

and another thing! Are there REALLY guys out there that want to 'permanently increase the length and girth' of their penis 'forever'? If so will they trust a man named Sultan Happy to carry out the procedure!!!??? STOP SPAMMING! NOBODY CARES!!!

Good news everyone!

2010-07-07T15:25:00.003+02:00

It isn’t everyday that one’s favorite TV show goes back on the air a few years after it was cancelled (in fact I’m pretty sure that has never happened to me before). Pleasantly surprised was I when I found out that Futurama has been given another chance! Yes mortals, ‘Planet Express’ delivery service has been re-issued with a license to fly in Futurama season 6.

"With my last words I curse ZOIDBERG!" Prof. Hubert Farnsworth

The more fanatical of you (but not fanatical enough) will be asking about season 5? Where did it go? Did we all miss it? Was it skipped? No! In fact season 5 was never aired in South Africa (and our 56k internet wouldn’t hear of us downloading such insanely large 100mb+ files! I mean imagine the length of the phone call!!!). No, season 5 was actually made up of four Futurama movies which Fox decided to hack into 20 minute episodes and label ‘season 5’. Season 6 picks up where the last of the movies ends off.

For those unfamiliar with Futurama: It’s the year 3000 in the city of New New York, we find ourselves here after Fry, a pizza delivery boy, got mistakenly cryogenically frozen while delivering a pizza to one Mr. I.C. Wiener on New Year’s Eve 1999. Fry thaws and begins his new life in the future. Space travel, Aliens, Lasers, hover-thingys and celebrity heads preserved in jars ensue in this Simpson style parody of pretty much every science fiction plot out there. In short, this show is by nerds and geeks, for geeks and nerds; a triumphant series by Matt Groening and the brilliant David X. Cohen.

I'm Soo EXCITED!

That's just stupid! These people are idiots!

2010-05-25T00:41:00.005+02:00

I have the ‘How to…?’ page enabled on iGoogle. It basically puts up 3 random ‘how to’ questions and if you are interested you click the link and learn something new (hopefully)… you get the picture.

I would estimate that 30% of the ‘how to’ topics are worth reading, 69% are pretty uninspiring and 1% are utter trash. Today for example, one of the topics was ‘How to win an eating contest?’

I can answer that in three words “Eat the most.” So I was curious to see if there really was more…

This is the unaltered first paragraph of the article (with my personal views in brackets):

Be in good physical and mental shape. It is important to ensure that you're healthy and fit before trying an eating contest (Being a lard ass will probably also help…). Consult your physician before the contest and get their advice (they will advise you NOT to enter a stupid eating contest…). Make sure that you aren't on medication that shouldn't be taken with food (wow… someone actually did that!). Check with contest officials that EMTs and an ambulance will be present in the event of choking or allergic reactions (because you thought it would be a good idea to shove 70 hotdogs into a space designed to fit 2 hot dogs… and still somehow forgot that you were allergic to hotdogs!!!???), or third-degree burns on the roof of your mouth from searing hot taco beef (Contestant>>>“Hi honey I’m home, sorry I can’t kiss you today, I have third degree burns on my palate from eating too much searing hot taco beef”… “no, I did it on purpose, I thought that because they had a medical team and ambulance on site I would be immune to the effects of scoffing 180degC food. Boy was I wrong.” Spouse>>>”I want a divorce”).

I think we can safely file this ‘how to?’ topic under the ‘utter trash’ category. Anyone with half a brain would know that eating contests are stupid and people that enter them are stupider. It just gets worse and worse. I couldn’t believe what I was reading, so I read on (Does this happen to anyone else?) only to find out that people interested in eating competitions can join the MLE (Major League Eating) or the AICE (Association of Independent Competitive Eaters). They’re turning eating into a sport!

Sigh…

We have finally run out of words

2010-05-06T10:29:00.005+02:00

I was cooking up something in the kitchen the other day while listening to background MTV. Well to be honest, someone else was watching MTV while I was cooking. The reason I don’t want to say that I was listening to MTV is because these days it’s quite an embarrassing place to be caught channel surfing. Think about it, most of the music is complete and utter rubbish. Advertisements make up around 50% of the broadcast content (you know the channel content is bad when you actually look forward to the advertisements… like SABC). As for moral values… well you can throw those out the window what with Beyonce constantly filling the screen with her… junk. I’m drifting; the point of this post is modern pop music.

Back to the kitchen...

There I was, innocently cooking a meal when I heard this terrible groaning noise accompanied by loads of uncoordinated bass tracks (seemingly put together by a ravenous three year old slamming his fists onto a jelly tot encrusted keyboard hooked up to cheap electro composing software…or Justin Timberland). I HAD to investigate, so I bravely left my meal prep to sneak a peek at the screen. Who could possibly make such an awful din (only worthy of an MTV line up)?

Well, the answer believe it or not, was Janet Jackson. I thought the groaning was perhaps a form of tribute to her late brother, you know, a sorrowful and mourning sister expressing her grief through the medium of agonizing vocals… I peeked for a few seconds longer to try making sense of the whole thing from the music video.

This was a very bad idea.

Mine eyes were greeted by a pair of bodies writhing against a wall. One Janet Jackson, the other, some scantily clad sweaty black dude…and no they weren’t mourning. This ‘music video’ was actually just a sex scene and the lyrics to the ‘song’ were basically Janet having an orgasm for four and a half minutes. What was the reason for this? All I could do was assume that the music industry had finally written and made several cover versions of every possible combination of words and lyrics for commercial gain. The options currently available to song writers at the moment:

1. Make up words (Rihanna and Nelly Furtado have taken this path)

2. Distort existing words so much that peoplebarely recognise them (Shakira and Lady Gaga seem to have this method down)

3. Just make random noises with your vocal chords to accompany music (Janet Jackson, above)

4. Distract viewers so much with raunchy music videos they won’t even realise your lyrics and music are complete shite (Pussycat Dolls and Madonna… just make me want to barf, it’s a miracle these tracks even get aired on the radio)

It seems as though song writers around the world have been hit by this phenomenon. There are no current tracks that appeal to me. None, nada, zilch… gone are the days of meaningful, emotive and moral music. A small part of me died as I copy/pasted the final track from my ‘New Music’ folder into the ‘Oldies’ folder.

I think 'American Pie' would be an apt song to describe days like this (by Don McLean not Madonna's treacherous cover version)

The art of presentation, Japanese PechaKucha

2010-05-05T11:51:00.003+02:00

I have recently been exposed to a new form of speed presentation. PechaKucha is a Japanese presentation method wherein the presenter assembles a collection of 20 pictures to accompany a talk on… well any particular subject of interest (http://www.pecha-kucha.org/). The presenter is limited to 20 seconds per picture/slide and so concludes the presentation after... (Math YAY!)… 6 mins and 40 seconds (or at least about that long).

So I downloaded and viewed a random example to see what it was all about. Unfortunately the topic was on safety and structural integrity of modern ‘fancy’ architecture (not something I care a great deal about). The presenter droned on for 6 odd minutes about how important the designers job is and how so many lives depend on the success of his/hers structure… boring shite okay…

The amazing thing about all this though is that I remember everything he said, my brain made the links between those pictures and the words he said so easily that I could probably give his exact talk after viewing his presentation just once. It normally takes me all of 30 seconds to blank out and start thinking about dinner when someone is giving a talk that I am not remotely interested in.

I guess what I’m saying is, PechaKucha is an amazingly effective form of speed presentation. It’s like force-feeding geese to enlarge their livers for extra profit, except the feed is information and the enlarged liver is your mind! …did that make sense just now?

Image (www.toothpastefordinner.com)

Have humans peaked as a species?

2010-04-15T16:01:00.003+02:00

Having recently refreshed some Natural Selection theory, I started wondering about how humans fitted into the whole big picture. You see there are basic rules to the process of natural selection. Let me summarize:

Natural selection is effectively the recognized process by which living organisms on a species level are able to improve and optimize traits they posses to allow them to be more competitive both with other species and their own kind. This kind of specialization and adaptation doesn’t simply happen; it requires a particular set of circumstances to initiate and develop into something that translates into a physical/behavioural change that increases an individual’s fitness. I’ve listed the particular set of circumstances below:

Variation – change cannot happen unless there is some sort of background variation between individuals (outliers kick ass…)
Fitness consequences - that background variation needs to give some individuals the edge over others (never complain about life being unfair).
Inheritance - a favourable trait must be passed on to the next generation to be of any use (don’t keep secrets).
Limiting resources – basically you can’t win if you don’t have anything to fight for (so the ideal world is one where we are running out of everything… who’d have thought).

We often perceive ourselves (humans) as the most influential living force on the planet. Quite a naïve view considering the only real power we have is an amazing ability to wipe out all life on Earth in the space of a few hours... It doesn’t take a genius to realize that our lifestyles at the moment are not sustainable. In order to restore some form of balance we could use a healthy shot of natural selection…

…Or couldn’t we?

Let us see how humans fare under those ideal natural selection circumstances mentioned above:

Variation - I think it’s fair to say that humans are quite diverse. As long as there is room on this planet for people like Steven Hawking and Julius Malema or Sarah McLachlan and Lady Gaga… I’ll give this a YES, MOST DEFINITELY (consider them opposite sides of the scale).
Fitness consequences – Hmmm, a tricky one considering basic human rights and upholding those rights (ahaha!)… Theoretically we should all be on par with regards to fitness consequences. Of course in an equal society some are always more equal than others. Then again, there is always the pattern suggesting that lower class society tend to have more children compared to middle/upper class society. In terms of natural selection, these should be the individuals with lower fitness that should be weeded out. In fact modern advances in health care have provided our unfit individuals ample opportunities to continue existing (it would be rather immoral to castrate all men before administering diabetes treatment or having mandatory hormone replacement therapy for women without 20/20 vision). Fitness consequences could theoretically work in human populations, I’m not too sure the whole “live your life but don’t have kids” idea will appeal to the flawed masses. Of course we could just as easily create a super race by starting an Olympian breeding program…just a thought.
Inheritance – I’m pretty sure we can once again blame modern health care for giving flawed humans more opportunities to breed than are absolutely necessary. This unfortunately leads to a future wherein the majority of humans rely more and more on artificial means of survival. Are we cultivating a future society of medicated wieners? Perhaps, we are already at that stage…
Limiting resources – I don’t think we have a problem here. Humans will fight over something as trivial as a rugby ball. We are so trigger happy that we will even go to war over petty meaningless speculation. People are rarely happy with what they have these days so the successful pursuit of wealth and material could be an excellent way to develop traits. Wait they have a word for that, it’s called capitalism.

The Verdict!!!

Humans are nature’s rebels. We are perfectly aware of and acknowledge the existence of natural selection yet we do all in our power to avoid the process. One could argue that if we want to do what is best for our species in terms of sustainability and improvement over generations, we would need to do quite a lot of unethical weeding or immoral rule implementation w.r.t. breeding. On the other hand, if we continue down the path we are currently on, we will more than likely end up a society constructed from a bunch of materialistic, capitalist, idiot druggies…

…so there

The quest for flawless science

2010-04-12T15:58:00.004+02:00

As a junior scientist studying living organisms I am constantly in pursuit of the holy grail of our field.

A perfect study!

The one where you’ve considered all the factors, taken every precaution, sifted out all the nonsense and analyzed every ounce of information from your precious data. All of your hard work and effort pay off after you handed in that manuscript and it returned just as clean. Finding out that your best effort was not good enough is quite possibly the scariest thing that can happen to our kind. We’d sooner give up entirely and become bartenders in the UK (or pack fish in Alaska…that’s quite a popular one) than continue down a path where we were certain we’d be dishonoured.

Why all the talk of uncertainty you ask? Well today I read through some old text books and realised something. It seemed little at the time but after some thought the significance of what I had come to realise seemed quite epic. In my pursuit of perfection I had forgotten about one of our most sacred rules in biology.

Don’t be an idiot!

Let me explain. I started thinking about how flawed my motives and study could potentially be after reading this sentence “If one attempted to study adaptation simply by measuring survival and reproductive success, one would reach the vacuous conclusion that those that survive and reproduce are those that survive and reproduce” (Scriven, 1959). GASP! I was so obsessed about eliminating external factors to find out about sugar preferences in avian frugivores that I had inadvertently shot myself in the foot. My theoretical approach to the question I had asked had focused solely on isolating and studying a single factor. It would have been more appropriate for me to try mimicking my test subject’s natural environment to learn something more useful and applicable to the real world. Now (3 years on) all I can do is predict vague trends, much too shallow and universally applicable to actually be meaningful and contribute significantly to my field of study.

Oh, FishSTicks!

Of morality and brains

2010-03-05T06:39:00.003+02:00

Just read some headlines… it seems as though 40 000 prostitutes will be entering SA for the World Cup in June this year. Let me assure you, the first thing that hit my mind after I read the title was not “I wonder why prostitutes like football so much?” No it was something else…

…more along the lines of “wait, hold on, this is South Africa, HIV/AIDS capital of the world. Why, oh why, do analysts predict such a great surge in the sexworker industry? Surely a wealthy man, rich enough to afford a lengthy stay in SA to watch his beloved home team kick a bouncy thing on a field for 80 minutes, would have a vague idea of what could happen if he… made rude with a prostitute here. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not condoning prostitution in countries with lower HIV prevalence. It just doesn’t make sense to me. I guess it’s because of my assumption that people with material wealth are also in possession of intellect (how would they accumulate said wealth without more than a handful of functioning brain-cells otherwise?). Anyone with an ounce of intellect should know that one needs to behave when one visits the HIV/Aids capital of the world.

There is a reason SA is Toxic green with a skull and crossbones on this HIV prevalence chart…

The more I think about this the less it makes sense, unless of course, these individuals had acquired riches the easy way (gambling, or selling some oil they siphoned from their back yards perhaps…). Let us do some math together to try clarifying the situation.

(EXITEMENT!).

We assume that 90% of 2010 World Cup tourists manage to get here by saving up hard earned cash (as opposed to dumb luck and easy earnings). The World Cup is predicted to bring in about 4.5 million soccer tourists. So roughly 450 000 of our soccer tourists got here the easy way (i.e. probably don’t have the intellect to realise how much at risk they are of contracting a deadly virus by using local sexworkers). Assuming one third of those are married/in a relationship and have come with their spouses (eliminating 2/3 of our 450 000 leaves us with around 150 000). I’m guessing that single men would make up about 2/3rds of what is left (call it the hypothetical football fanatic sex ratio…). So we are down to 100 000 potentials.

In terms of sexworkers (or steelworkers as spellcheck prefers to see it…): Offshore sexworkers wouldn’t bother coming here if the local sexworker industry was enough to cater for the event (so let’s say that the local prostitutes …’servicing’ tourists, number around 50 000). Media reports that the 2010 WC will also create a large amount of opportunistic sexworkers (let’s say 10 000). This leaves us with 100 000 sexworkers…

OH MY GAS! Do you realise what this means?!

If my estimations are correct, EVERY male soccer tourist (or female with a strange soccer fetish) that gets here the easy way will have an enormous horn and a teeny brain. I would steer well clear of these immoral fornicating baboons if I came across them come June.

And another thing about school...

2010-03-03T17:12:00.002+02:00

Back when I was in grade 8 we started a new subject at school. It was called Counseling. For those unfamiliar with the subject, it’s basically one of those useless ‘voyage of self discovery’ subjects that us scholars listed under the broader ‘Fartarse subjects’ category. It didn’t take much for a subject to fall into the fartarse category, the criteria were simple:

1- No studying required 2- Walkover teachers (the kind you …well, walk all over…) 3- No exams 4- Lots of group work 5- Minor contribution to ones report card

A few other subjects that I considered fartarse were religion, history of art, computers, art and sports (all sports… no exceptions). I’m drifting… in any case back in Counseling classes, we were encouraged to think out of the box. In scenario X your preferred response would be ‘______’ (insert well thought out answer here). We’d answer a whole bunch of random questions after which our scores would be tallied and we were placed into categories similar to the fashion in which a farmer would grade his… potatoe crop for sale to different markets (hmm… struggling to think of a nice analogy here).

These magical categories were supposed to give you a better idea of the carrier path you wanted to take. For example, Jane scores xxx points! Well done Jane you are an Eagle/Ant/Fish/Dungbeetle. You should become a Doctor/Accountant/Social Worker/Plumber… Good luck with that! Byebye!

WTF!

It just pissed me off. Who was the arrogant piece of kaka that came up with this system and why did this person think that they could predict and guide the life of a 13 year old towards success by asking random questions and scoring us on our answers! We were kids, we had dreams, we had something to look forward to and that was already the best incentive for working hard and reaching our goals! Everything was going fine till we took your Satan spawn questionnaire and some A’hole decided “No, you wouldn’t make a very good aircraft pilot, maybe consider working 8 to 5, six days a week behind a desk in a small office counting stuff…”. GRRR!!!

Go AWAY! Just LEAVE! …and take your stupid questionnaire with you sadistic, dream shattering Hitleresque commie’ bastard!

If you are a kid reading this post (or adult that has fallen for that commie’ bastards trickery) take my advice: You have a brain! Just do what you want to and don’t let other people (especially those who haven’t a clue who you are) have an effect on your life decisions. If you don’t know what it is you want, simply pursue the truth… the rest will follow.

The Reiki has landed

2010-02-16T13:31:00.003+02:00

Having recently gotten to know someone who is a ‘Reiki doctor’, I felt I needed to look into this practice to see what it was all about.

What is Reiki? After a quick Wiki I managed to gain some fundamental understanding of this form of healing. Spiritual healing to be precise, and if you asked me to define ‘spiritual healing’ in reiki lingo I would fail hopelessly. There is no scientific evidence to support the existence and manipulative healing effects of human ‘ki’. Ki is simply described by those familiar with it as ‘mysterious atmosphere’, ‘spiritual energy’ or ‘life force’. After reading those definitions the scientist in me screamed “ARRRGH! Hippies!!!” After hearing about so many reiki success stories the scientist in me shrugged and said “placebo effect…the dumbasses”.

I read further and came to the conclusion that reiki would theoretically work… it’s basically a method of getting your mind to communicate with your body. Too often in modern society do humans push themselves to the limit, their minds always want to achieve more but their bodies simply can’t cope with these ambitious targets and start degenerating as a consequence. In simple English “Stress can and will kill you”.

My relatively uneducated opinion is that when and if reiki does work, it’s because it manages to get high strung and generally stressed out folk to unwind. Simply telling these people to “chill out and stop stressing” won’t work because they have zilch intention of actually listening to you. Now, bring in a reiki doctor to lay them down on a comfy table and wave hands over them for 90 minutes whilst placing colourful “energy charged” crystals/rocks onto their head, chest, genetalia… add a bucket load of frowning, thinking and intense concentration and something DOES happen. The patient will start to BELIEVE. Once this is achieved the reiki doctor has basically done their job. A change in mindset is often all that is needed to overcome the toughest of obstacles.

Reiki hand positions...

hmmm...

I have no doubt that many people will disagree with my views (…most of them reiki practitioners and their patients). But they have to realise that I’m not slating the reiki business. Quite the opposite in fact, reiki is genius! If you could get someone to overcome their weaknesses and illness without actually doing anything or prescribing any drugs (abandoning he usual expenses, side effects and such) then by all means do so.

Queue analogy:

It’s like watching a good movie, nobody was thinking about how 90% of the battle sequences in The Lord of the Rings were computer generated images while they were watching (if you were, Congratulations! You are officially the biggest party pooper on the planet). If something is done convincingly enough, our minds perceive it to be real (even if for a short while… (Why is Frodo Baggins wearing shades and killing people in Sin City!!! The Ring! He MUST have… Oh… wait… nevermind…)).

Needless to say, when my acquaintance offered to do a quick reiki session on me I thought “Hmmm, what the hell, let’s see what comes of this” before placing my outstretched palm under hers. She frowned and thought for a little while. I really was expecting something profound after seeing those facial expressions… “Your Ki is unhappy, you need to bath under the waterfall of a clear mountain stream…” or “Your midi-chlorian count is low, you need to eat less junk food”. Heck even an uncertain “It’s difficult to say, your spiritual energy is blocking me out…” statement would have done the job.

Nope…

The reply I got surprised even me:

“Hmmm…” she said after a short while “You are not constipated”

(silence)

That’s it!!! Not Constipated!!! I could have told her that! She looked into to my Ki! Invaded my personal mysterious atmosphere! And all she could comment on was the passage of excrement through my anus!

Then I laughed… and brought my first ever reiki session to an abrupt end…

Just leave Zakumi ALONE!

2010-02-08T20:32:00.007+02:00

This is a tale about Zakumi the leoperd. He is an official mascot for the largest tournament on the planet. Even I, a person that would rather watch a Mama Mia weekend marathon over saying the dreaded ‘C’ word, think the little guy is C- c- cu____ …(urg!) cute…

It just makes me sick seeing how soulless companies exploit cheap and under age labour forces by making them work under appalling conditions (or so I’ve heard) for something like R20 a day to manufacture Zakumi dolls (which Fifa will sell for R360 each)! Even the local heroes in charge of COSATU have called for the South African public to boycott the c-cute little mascot saying that these should be manufactured in SA so that we locals can benefit from the money. Cosatu even go so far as to say that they WILL NOT allow these dolls to be sold in South Africa and should manufacturing contracts not be awarded to SA companies “We will stop any FIFA or World Cup related event in this City (Cape Town)”.

Way to go Cosatu! Ransoming the slice of pie you have already been given to get the rest of the pie is pure genius. This “If I can’t have EVERYTHING I want NOTHING!” attitude is really going to pay off because the world knows that without South Africa the game of soccer would be DEAD and all happiness would be sucked out of everyone’s lives initiating a set of events that would bring about the apocalypse!

…the Dumbasses…

Now don’t get me wrong, I’m not condoning the way Fifa operates or Chinese ethics. I do, however, end up with the impression that the exploited Chinese work force has kind of been sidelined in all of this. These humans are being used (yet again!) to draw attention to a matter (in this case manufacturing contracts). After the whole affair gets milked by the media I noticed that the product off all the reasoning was not “How can we improve the quality of life of an exploited group of people” but instead “Money money money money money money money money money money money money money money money MONEY!!!! CASH, dong, $$$$ money money money money money money money money…”. That’s all they care about! That’s all they EVER cared about!!! “They have it, we WANT it, screw everybody and everything else”.

In other news, South Africa received a consignment of 30 000 Chinese made Zakumi dolls. The products were made so cheaply that buyers could not resist placing an order for 70 000 more!

Also, I have tickets for the world cup (3 tickets to be precise)! I don’t particularly like soccer… and I really didn’t put much effort into getting these tickets. Heck I’m not even sure which teams I will be watching! I can truly say that I DON’T deserve these tickets. Especially when I consider how many people I know that LOVE the sport and haven’t qualified for just ONE ticket. It goes to show how badly the whole event has been organized if undeserving people like me can get tickets and rub them in the faces of those who WANT tickets. I admit, this is a huge amount of fun (for me), but it’s plain unfair...

I could go all Indian and sell them off to someone else… but I’m going to be patriotic instead.

I’ll go to all my matches, I’ll shamelessly join the crowd when they cheer and boo even though I won’t know what’s going on. I’ll buy some big yellow Niknaks man glasses and construction helmets with “sharp sharp” and “peace” scribbled onto them with black marker. I’ll make the utter most of this opportunity because I know I’ll probably be too old or dead before I get another chance to attend a soccer world cup in my country.

Here’s to Bafana Bafana, I won’t mind if you totally arse up your matches and get knocked out in the first round 'cause if one team doesn’t deserve a win, Bloody hell it’s you lot… I’ll still support you till the end though.