Not much to report

So, what's news? Not much really. I've been working hard and not doing much else. It's DnD tonight and I'm looking forward to that. I'm currently a feat down and I'm thinking of taking "Leadership". I'll have to speak with Al.

My Dad just phoned me and told me that the insurance company have decided to pay out for most of the value of my camera, so I'll be able to get a new one, yay! I'm looking forward to that.

Here are some interesting articles.

spit traders

santa's little helper

fake jagger

beheading sends guy to jail

My comments: If you get TB because you're buying and ingesting TB infected saliva so that you can pretend to have TB and qualify for a grant you deserve it. Why do you give Mick Jagger free drinks? Because then he stays in you club and the patrons can say they partied with ol big lips himself, if it turns out that he's not actually jagger so what, the clients don't know the difference! And good on ya for scoring with dumb groupies!

here is a picture of a giant squid! A picture of bigfoot will be posted next week.



I'm seriously considering buying the Atari Flashback. This console has all the old games that made Atari famous on it. It's only R299 form Makro, well if I save up this month maybe I can afford it. I bet I'll get more playtime outta it than I do my PS2. Me want

that is all.

Political Machinations

Ok so does it surprise you to hear that the ANC councillor that tried to break up a fight and ended up being beaten half to death has been suspended. Well it didn't really surprise me. Let me just explain a few points.

The fight apparently started when a Provincial Executive Committee (PEC) member demanded that the task teams for some of the local wards be disbanded and new interim teams be established. When arguments became verbal tirades and abuses a supporter of the PEC member began to throttle the wife of one of the councillors. So this guy and another step in to help the women out and he gets severely beaten!

Ok, well if you haven’t been following intra-party politics lately I don't really blame you, but here is an update on the salient points. The Western Cape Premier Ebrahim Rasool has been ousted as party leader in the western cape, that means that while he is still the leader of the western cape government he no longer has any clout within the party, effectively neutering him.

The ANC in the Western Cape has been polarised by this, with supporters of Rasool claiming that this has happened because his policies were not african enough. The ANC has so far denied that this is the case and has also totally denied even the existence of a split in the party.

Well by definition if the alleged split existed the PEC member would, by definition, support the new leader of the ANC in the Western Cape and the teams he was demanding were disbanded were full of supporters of, yep you guessed it, Ebrahim Rasool.

So now, after the fight The PEC has suspended the two councillors that were involved (not really caring that their involvement was trying to break up the fight and getting severely beaten trying to stop violence against woman) and dissolved the team that they were from. Hmm sound familiar? Well it's not a galactic republic, but the politics are still Palpatinian!

Finally, an update!

Zombies rocked

A big thank you to everyone that actually came through and made an effort, it's really appreciated. Everybody's been thanking me for organising it but really I didn't do very much, you are seriously the folks who deserve thanks, without you making that effort there would have been nothing. Thanks guys.

All that being said I'm kinda bumed by the way that the pictures turned out. While the difficult lighting in Canal Walk hid a multitude of consuming and make-up sins it also made taking the pictures very difficult. Very few of them came out and as you can see they really don't do justice to the costumes people were wearing.

Also a big thank you to Nu Metro and The One Ring for supporting our efforts, it was really appreciated. Moonflake should have beaten me in the best zombie voting thing, I’ve watched the videos and she totally stayed in character the whole time, chewing on that hand! man.

On saturday I was realty sick, ingesting a total of zero net calories after loosing my breakfast. I still dragged myself off to help Alex out with his HCI project, something I was really looking forward to. Unfortunately his partner didn't pitch and I couldn't make the next day's session. I'm disappointed that I missed that.

Other than that my weekend rocked. I watched some cool movies and a bunch of episodes of Desperate Housewives. That program is actually really cool. And again I put off preparing my tax return, so now I'll have to do that on wednsday night because it has to be in on friday! Also, on sunday I bought a copy of the original Night of the Living Dead on DVD. Cool.

here are some news stories:

PUSA's (of peaches fame) new video has been shot entirely on cellular phones.
Click here if you want to know more

An ANC councillor was beaten half to death with weapons including a steel pipe and a brick at an ANC meeting. Obviously these people are completely rational!??!!?!
Click here if you want to know more

Japanese scientists have caught the first footage of a live giant squid, apparently an 8m specimen! Maybe now they'll discover that bigfoot an nessy exist too.
Click here if you want to know more

In New Zealand a dog has been registered as a voter. The owner said he did it to protest bureaucracy.
Click here if you want to know more

That is all citizen, call back soon.

Tonight: ZOMBIES!!!

Yes I'm excited, and yes tonight is gonna rock.

I've organised almost everything just a few more details. Everybody should meet between 19:00 and 19:20 at the nu metro in Canal Walk.

see you there

I'm leaving work to shave my body and aply latex. mmm kinky

schpat

Kenyans: Still really fu**ing Dumb!

All I can say is "what a fucking joke"

Kenya is having a referendum to determine if they should adopt a new proposed constitution. The new constitution deals with issues like presidential powers, Muslim courts, women's rights and same-sex marriage. So what do you do when a significant portion of your voters are illiterate? Well obviously you tell them that a banana means yes and an orange means no. It's that simple!

Let me explain further. The powers that be have decided that because a bunch of the voters can't read they will make voting easy by assigning random "neutral" symbols for each of the stand points, this effectively enables those who can't read "yes" or "no" to vote. My question to all Kenyans out there is: "If they can't read how do they know what the proposed constitution says? And if they don't know what it says how can they form an opinion?"

Well the answer to that is really easy, who cares? That's right the issues don't really matter, all that matters is that the "democratic process" is "free and fair". Democracy is apparently the right to cast a ballot, it doesn't even matter if you know why you are voting. Political parties are seriously campaigning that their respective fruits are better than the oppositions because they have higher nutritional values! My god! People should not be allowed to vote unless they demonstrate an understanding of the issues in hand, they should definitly not be voting because they enjoy bananas more than oranges!

"It's not that bad" I hear you say, "it's only Kenya, and we already know Kenyans are dumb!". Well the most worrying thing is that apparently this is "a common practice by electoral authorities across Africa". W-T-F-???

Msanii, if you still read this blog I'm sorry to attack your country again, but I would like to know what you think of this situation.

Zombies in the morning make me happy
Zombies in the evening make me sigh
Zombies at the movies are so happy
Zombies almost always make me smile

Ah well it was a poor attempt to rip off a John Denver song, but I think you get my point.

But anyway, zombies is happening on friday night! Yay! So far the things that have been organised are my costume, my props and my make-up. Also the prizes! I got confirmation that Land of the Dead t-shirts have arrived at Canal Walk, Yay!!! Prizes!!! I've spoken with the manager and organised to pick them up after the movie!.

Things not organised yet: tickets. Yes, we really love the people at Nu Metro, but their software systems and processes suck. I had to phone the head office just to find out what time the movie started because this information is only available to the cinema on a thursday! Also I couldn't book for the movie because computicket had not been updated yet either.

Here's the plan so far:

The movie starts at 8:00pm. Everybody should sort out their own tickets, Computicket's number is 0861 100 220. Arrive at about 7:15 and begin shambling around the movies! Meet and greet new zombie friends!

Cool, see you all there
schpat

Well, what was in the box?

The weekend was great, I was surprised by Mexican food and Zombies and I got to sleep late on Sunday. Mmm good.

I went to Sue Farmers Costumes and got a wig for my zombie outfit and also buried my clothes and had my brother drive over them with his car. This costume is going to rock. I played around with latex some more and I've decided what works best. Peeling bloody flesh! So I'm going to get some more latex and a bucket of blood and I should have everything I need. Well almost, I still need some colour type make up.

My brother told me about a dodgy thing that happened at Yu Gi Oh. One of his friend's card file was stolen about two weeks ago. On saturday another kid arrives with a file, the contents of which bear a remarkable resemblance to the one that went missing. Anyway, when confronted the kid tells them that he won some of the rare cards and he dad gave him money to but the rest on the internet. Now we're talking a whole bunch of really valuable cards here, like the equivalents of Black Lotus and Moxe's. My brother did some digging around and found out that the place where the kid claims to have won the cards never had those cards as tournament prizes. Also one of the cards only comes with a Yu Gi Oh computer game that is not available in this country. Anyway, the kid, about 15, eventually gets scared and hands over the file, and two hundred bucks so that my brother and his friends would keep quiet.

At this point one of this kid's friend's parents finds out and comes over and flat out demands that the cards be returned to the kid saying that my brother and his friends are bullying the kid. My brother and friends handed over the cards. Now the thing is I can see my brother being intimidating and not altogether reasonable so tonight I'm going to help him sort the problem out. I'm going round to see the kid's parents to see if we can work through the issue and clear up the misunderstanding. Wish me luck.

So what was in Zenstar's box, wouldn't you like to know? Well actually it was a bunch of stuff, mostly useless, but highlights included: Sweets, Paper Clips, A Mysterious Web Address, A Bent Straw, A Coffee Loyalty Card and all the cash he would have won.



Anyway, enjoy your day!

Web Cartoonists Do Good

General

Well folks, I'm as busy as ever, there probably won't be a SchpatDope again this week, but I'll do my best to get it out early next week. Everything is proceeding well. I still don't think massive amounts of explosives are the most humane way to euthanase a whale, but probably just the most cost effective humane way.

I'm looking forward to role-playing tonight, Al's game is also getting interesting.

In other good news my gout is acting up. "Good news?" you ask, well yes the incredible pain in my foot is giving me a lot of practice for shambling like a zombie, and just in time for next friday, although I seriously hope it's over by then.


Zombie Party update:

So not having a reply from the woman ant Nu Metro in almost a week I decide to phone her. She tells me that she has decided to give us some t-shirts and things and has asked her assistant to handle getting the stuff delivered to Canal Walk. So I spoke with her assistant and she knows nothing about it! I hope they can sort this stuff out.

If you haven’t seen it yet you can download the poster for the party here. Print it out and stick it up where you live, work and play!


Zombie costume tip for the day:

While make-up is important to your costume, it's not the most important thing. The most important thing is who you are as a zombie. By that I mean create a character, not a costume. We went along to the Dawn of the Dead release party held at "the doors" in edenvale last year, we didn't know that there was going to be a zombie contest or one of us would easily have won. Anyway at this lammer jo'burg costume thing the people that got dressed up only worried about make-up and not the whole picture. So many of them were heavily wrapped in bandages that one had to wonder if they had all died while in hospital. Basically they just looked really goth, not very creative now is it? Here's the thing, in the middle of walking dead epidemic people from all walks of life tend to die, choose something unusual and go with it. Develop a back-story for your character, decide who they were and how they died. This will lend an authenticity to your costume. Zombie construction workers, zombie nurses, zombie aerobics instructors, zombie mechanics and zombie policemen all make much better costumes than an arbitrary zombie in black with some bandages.

Comics Help out with Hurricane

There are a bunch of webcomic writers that are doing a telethon to raise money for hurricane relief. Check out their site, there are actually a lot a good comics, but unfortunately some really pants shit too. They've raised about $26K. I did get to see all sorts of comics that I don't normally read though and now there are six things I can tell you:"

1: Girl comics suck. They almost always involve cats and feelings! Now I've got nothing against cats, in fact I love them, but my god I don't care how cute your cat his or what profound thought he inspires in you he doesn’t even know about the fucking hurricane!

2: political comics double suck! I like my comics with a punch line, so a political comic that is a joke is cool, but one that just sentimentally shows scenes of hurricane victims and says the government is bad is pure kak.

3: sentimental comics suck, well this point is really just an extension of the previous two. Don't draw two people hugging and put a caption of "we will survive" on
and expect me to like it.

4: In case you haven’t realised yet: make your comic funny!

5: Art IS important. If your art sucks I probably won't even start reading the damn thing. Colour is not essential, but does help.

6: You are allowed to disregard all of the above, they are only my preferences.

Like I said I like humour in my comics, and it's even better if they are clever and topical. Here are two of my favourites from the telethon.







1000th visitor

Well Zenstar has chosen his prize, he's going for the box. I'll be delivering it to him tonight and I'll post pictures of what's in it tomorow for the rest of all y'all to see.

that's it, back to work.

Buckets of Blood

Folks I'm really sorry if blogging only happens sporadically for a while, I'm really busy and blogspot is treating me badly from work so I don't have time to type blogs and fight with the internet to get them posted.

Yesterdays role-playing was very cool. It took a while to get into it again, but towards the end there was a great confrontation involving four characters, two of us almost died. This incident is sure to keep people on their role-playing toes. Enough with the chatting I wana play. On that note I really tried to stay focused yesterday, but it was hard with so many distractions. I think this character tension will help though. Also Yancke, you're forgiven for not inviting me to Pancho's, that dbl cheese burger roxxored.

Check out this story about a guy who chased a thief while naked. I've got a lot of sympathy for the poor sod, it happened to me to. Now if you have the toned and firm body structure of Hercules and Adonis you're fine, but my greek god body type is Dionysus! Not a pretty sight!

On the good news front I've visited the costume shop down the road from work. They have almost everything that you could possibly need for your zombie costume. They have liquid latex in 100ml (17.90) and 1000ml (89.00). I bought a small bottle to try out some stuff with textures and layers, I'll let you know how that went. At the moment I'm just dabbing it on my arm and playing around with it, it's cool! They also have the stage blood stuff, in more varieties than you could imagine, The stuff that we used last time is available in small tubes, 1ooml bottles and 1000ml bottles. The 1000ml costs 189.00 really expensive, but worth it if you want a good gory effect. I'm probably still going to buy a wig and some other stuff, but this costume will rock. They also have nose putty and spirit gum and all that good shit! If anyone wants me to pick some stuff up just let me know and arrange to drop of the cash.

On the point of costuming for the zombie outing, please remember the practicalities of the outing when designing your costume. You actually have to sit in the cinema and watch the movie, so no matter how cool a gaping oozing football sized wound on your back may be, Nu Metro may get upset when the oozy gooey stuff ends up on their seats. Also remember that props have to be kept with you the whole time.

Tomorrow I'll post some tips on zombie costuming.

zenstar: Way to sneak in three questions, but I'll answer them anyway. You'd have to pay more than R55 to get the stuff, unless a game of swing-sock was involved. Not all of it. Some of it. There you have it. I expect your answer by thursday so I can deliver the prize!

schpat

Another Long Break

Well, again I hate it when work interferes with my social stuff like blogging. Sorry to have taken so long between posts, I know that all of you just can't wait to know what's happening in my life ;)

The weekend was great I got to spend a lot of time with Elisabeth just doing cool stuff like driving around and having breakfast out, it was a lot of fun and very relaxing. The best weekend in ages.

A lot of people have mentioned how nice Pancho's was, damn I missed mexican food! Even though I was busy I'm still disappointed, I love mexican!

I did watch "Flight of the Phoenix" on saturday though. This movie had real potential, one of the high points is the best performance ever from Giovanni Ribisi. Unfortunately a bad egotistical director and not one but two rappers trying to "out-act" each other ruined the movie. I wonder if the fact that the rappers were playing self confessed losers occurred to them.

The Zombie Party
Well it's still on. Preparations are currently underway. The posters have been printed and circulated. They are also available in PDF and if you want a copy for yourself or to stick up in your area just mail me at schpat@gmail.com.

Did anybody else notice the slug like performance of the internet yesterday afternoon? It was really bad, and a whole bunch of sites, including blogger, were practically unavailable. Now apparently this is because of a giant power failure in Los Angeles. So much for the internet being able to survive anything! Admittedly It did survive and wasn’t totally destroyed, but it was severely crippled.

Well That's about it.

Zenstar: No.

schpat

The Dead Walk!

Hey Folks,

As you no-doubt know the fourth and probably final instalment of George A. Romario's "Dead" series is being launched in SA on the 23rd of September, it's called "Land of the Dead".

George A. Romario is the godfather of zombies. His work on night of the living dead popularised the modern horror genre. In honour of this much awaited fourth installment a special launch party is being planned.

The idea is to arrive at Canal Walk, to see the 8pm show of Land of the Dead, dressed in full zombie costume. After the movie there is an afterparty at The One Ring (79 Lower Main Rd, Observetory) that has been organised in conjuction with Nu Metro. There will be prizes awarded for best zombie and hopefully some spot prizes.

A few people did this last year when the remake of Dawn of the Dead was released, it rocked. Canal Walk security had no idea what was going on and followed us while we shambled around. If I can I'll post some video footage.

This is an awesome opportunity, how often do you get to legitimately dress up as a zombie and go out in public? Also the more people the better. Tell your friends, tell your family, tell people on the internet, tell people you work with, tell strangers in the street. You don't have to get dressed up to get in the act, but it is cool.

SPREAD THE WORD ANY WAY YOU CAN

Oh and zenstar: no, but some of it could carry a static charge.

schpat

Work almost stops blogging

Man it's been a long time since I posted here, it was almost at the point where if I didn't post something I probably would loose interest and not post ever again, but where would that leave you my loyal readers?

So why are we in this situation? Well, on Thursday morning a whole bunch of "emergency" work landed on my desk. This work took until Monday afternoon to sort out and has pushed my normal work back significantly. I've just gotten my head above water so I decided to tell you about all the stuff that's been going on.

I was up until really late on Friday night/ Saturday morning. Work had had a party (which I didn't go to) so I managed to pilfer snacks and beverages for my long night of work. By the time I finished work and had done last week's SchpatDope I was pretty wasted, but had had nine Red Bulls. Being tire led me to making a rather embarrassing mistake on the SchpatDope, if I had followed my notes better I would have gotten the calc right, but that would also have been just a mistake because until last night I didn't really know the difference. Thanks to Jason and Michelle of the SchpatDope Science Advisory Board for helping me out.

After that my weekend was pretty much screwed. I did end up watching Hell Boy and Buffalo Soldiers and they were both pretty decent.

As you know by now Zenstar won the prize for 1000th blog reader, and I gave him an option to take the money or receive a mystery prize. Well because I'm not a total heartless bastard, or maybe because I am, I've decided to allow him to ask three yes/no answer questions. One question should be asked at a time and questions requireing subjective answers will be disallowed. So go zenstar!

Big News Here

I was also informed that George A, Romario's latest "Dead" instalment is to be released here in South Africa on the 23rd of September. I want to organise mass zombiage down to Canal Walk for the friday night show. After that a party over at The One Ring. That's right folks, this is your opportunity to get zombied up and aimlessly wander around a mall. I've spoken with Antonio, the proprietor of The One Ring and he is happy for us to do it. He will even supply a prize for best dressed zombie. I'm also in negotiations with Nu Metro for some promotional gear. I'll be posting more details later, right now I need you guys out there to start spreading the news. Tell your friends, your family, your co-workers and really even just strangers in the street. I did this with a couple of friends last time a serious zombie movie was released, it really was a lot of fun. I'll post some pics tomorrow.

schpat

3:27 AM and I'm hopped up on Taurine

Well, I'm still at work, but about to leave. I've litrally been drinking Red Bull the entire time since about 6. Hopefully I'll post more details on Monday. Oh yes the SchpatDope is out.

cheers
Schpat

What's in the box, what's in the box?

Congratulations zenstar! As the person who this time actually got the 1000th visitor picture you have won exactly half of my blog earnings for the month of August. Well I earned $12.50 over at CrispAds before they stopped serving SA, and I've earned $6.40 with GoogleAds so that's a total of $18.90. Divide that by 2 and multiply be the Rand/Dollar forex rate for yesterday (6.35 thanks to hurricane Katrina laying waste to some of the US's oil supply) and you get to R60.10! Well done, but I have another offer for you.

On the left you will see a pile of cash that could be yours, and on the right a box containing a mystery prize. So what's it to be, the money or the box?

You other folks at home can help him decide by leaving comments. I'll accept his final decision two weeks from today on the 17th of September. That should give him some time to flip-flop a couple of times.

Other than that I don't have much to tell you. The SchpatDope topic is decided, the research has been done but final experimentation using scientific methods is yet to be completed. Because of emergency work that I wont bother you with I'll probably only get round to this after the work is finished, so look out for a SchpatDope by about 3am on Saturday! Oh and by the way, join the SchpatDope Mailing List to receive updates on columns. I won't be posting the updates to the Cthfucia forever.

Ten second round-up: Life is generally good, work is stressful, RPG was good this week, weekend is soon, will be working late tonight!

cheers
schpat