schpat

Service Delivery or Emotional Baggage

2009-05-26T10:39:00.000+02:00

Today I'm commenting on a M&G article that you can read here

http://www.mg.co.za/article/2009-05-22-zille-takes-issue-with-anc-land-transfer-in-w-cape

And another here

http://www.mg.co.za/article/2009-05-23-anc-zilles-land-conspiracy-just-more-hot-air

Some of the land transferred and ear marked for development is in affluent areas and has an extremely high value (particularly the land in Constantia).

It boggles my mind why such land would be used for low cost housing. The biggest issue in providing low cost housing is budget, why not sell the expensive land to property developers and use the proceeds to build even more houses in less affluent areas.

This would also have the effect of increased stimulation of the building industry. Instead of having "x" low cost homes built in the affluent area they could build "x" with the original funds and "y" low cost homes with the proceeds from the sale, as well as the property developments in the affluent areas paid for by investors (call them "z"). "x" + "y" + "z" = more jobs in the building industry then "x" alone. Not to mention that "z" are larger and would result in more jobs than the low cost homes.

So, in conclusion selling the expensive land and building more houses on cheaper land results in more houses and more jobs, two problems being addressed.

The only reason I can think for not doing this is the emotional argument of "why do only rich people get to live in Constantia?". Obviously that's worth more votes to the politicians than more houses and more jobs!

Oh My Fuck

2008-06-26T12:54:00.002+02:00

This is unbelievable, actually it's not really.

The following are extracts from two IOL articles:

In dramatic action on Wednesday, more than 400 protesting metro cops blocked the M2 highway that rings the city, bringing thousands of peak-hour motorists to a standstill

Shooting erupted when SA police in riot gear arrived with metro police (JMPD) using live ammunition and police firing rubber bullets.

On Wednesday, motorists watched in amazement as, around them on the M2 motorway, police took on police, trapping civilians in the crossfire.

The gunfight came after hundreds of protesting metro police blocked both lanes of the M2 highway going east and west.

But it all turned ominous when the SAPS arrived. They brandished shotguns and wore body armour. Some were clearly game for a scrap.

They were taken aback when they noticed the metro cops were armed and loaded.

"We've also got guns," was the chant, which didn't sound good.

Just after 6pm, SAPS officers clad in riot geared moved in and tried to get the JMPD officers to disperse. They refused and forced the two dozen or so police officers to move back.

Minutes later, a Nyala rolled towards the chanting protesters. A policeman popped his head out of the vehicle and threw a stun grenade. Police then opened fired, using rubber bullets.

Scores of metro cops drew their service weapons and shot back while they fled. As stunned motorists hit the ground, some rolling under their stranded vehicles, the shooting continued, with SA police driving back JMPD officers.

On Wednesday night SA Municipal Workers' Union organiser Vincent Vena, speaking from metro headquarters in Loveday Street, said there would be no metro police on duty on Thursday.

"Obviously it (the stayaway) will hit the public hard, which is not our aim," Vena said. "Nobody will die on the roads if the traffic officers are not there."

Asked what effect this would have on crime fighting, he said: "Whether we are on the streets or not, it won't deter criminals from their wrongdoings."

You can read the full articles here and here

All I have to say is WTF? Protect and Serve?

What was, is, and might have been

2008-05-29T18:41:00.000+02:00

A few days short of a year ago I was getting ready to play in Africa's biggest poker tournament, I was going to be there because of a mistake.

You see I'd been told that there were plenty of people interested in going through to the AAPT that would gladly jump at the chance to win a seat for a considerably smaller sum than the actual buy-in (in poker we call this a satellite). Now because seating for this event was strictly limited and in very high demand I ponied up the R20k upfront about three months before the time.

Then when I tried organising the event no one was interested. It totally sucked, here I was with 20k that I'd invested looking to turn a small profit and it looked like I was going to be out of pocket. To add to my misery demand for the seats was at an all time low with the organisers still sitting on more than a few and no waiting list to gobble up my unwanted ticket.

20K was a lot of cash for me back then and it still is now. For nine rather interesting and highly unusual months over the past year 20k didn't mean very much to me, but that's a story for another post.

So what to do? Well I thought I could sell the seat if I offered it at a heavy discount. I contacted a few people in the poker community but either they were waiting to see if they would win an online Sat or they were waiting to see how low my price would eventually drop.

However, during that period I played some spectacular poker and cashed in every single live tournament I played. I was on fire and hitting it like a mofo. I made enough cash to cover the cost of the seat and, in moment of ecstatic hubris, decided that I was well capable of playing with the big boys. I took the plunge and set in motion event that would change my life.

The full extent of said change is still to be determined, but I live in hope.

<><><><><><><><><><><><>

Why am I reminiscing about this now? Well I about to play live poker again, something which hasn't happened in more than three months. It's a ten player R150 buy-in single table tournament, far cry from the 120 players with more than R4m in prizes. Baby steps.

Well Done Ryan

2008-05-22T15:03:00.000+02:00

I loved "Jaggered Little Pill" when it was first realeased. Alanis rocked, hard. Here was a chick with great talent who took shit from nobody. The tone of the album was angsty and very, very angry. Alanis became a sensation and an instant star.

Then it all went to shit, big time.

Obviously fame brought cash, friends and love to Alanis because all the rest of her music has been crap about going to fucking India and loving your brother. Watery whimisical shit. I commented to people all the time that what she really needed was a good disapointment and some real anger to reproduce her earlier greatness. Well thanks to Ryan Reynolds this is now a possibility.

Not only is Ryan a great comedic actor but apparently he is responsible for putting pain and suffering back into Alanis' life. Thanks Dude!

I don't know if it's going to be enough to pull Alanis out of the pit of soppy goo her music has becom, it might be too little to late. But I'm willing to give it a go,

Mother's Day

2008-05-09T15:01:00.002+02:00

Mother's Day is this Sunday and it's going to be pretty hard to beat last year's gift, a large black dustbin for my mom's kitchen.

So I've decided not to give a gift this year and rather cook a three course meal for my family. This is the menu that I have planned.

Starter

Welsh Rarebit on Home Made Bread

Main Course

Toad in the Hole

Pea Fritters

Butternut Batons

Desert

Queen of Puddings

As you will no doubt notice I've gone with a traditional British theme. While I've done variations on all of the above I've never actually cooked any of it before, with the exception of the batons. I'm really looking forward the Queen of Puddings. It's a crème-moulée based base with a fruit compote layer topped is soft meringue, mmm yummy!
Wish me luck.

Entertainment Non-Existant

2008-05-08T14:05:00.002+02:00

If you're like me then you've been waiting for shows like Prison Break, Lost or Heroes to continue after the impact of the WGA strike. And you're also quite upset about the cancellation of a couple of shows because of it.

Well when those episodes do finally become available you'd probably better savour them. Currently the Screen Actors Guild is in negotiations with major studios, and they've just been broken-off.

So who know what the next batch of mind numbing reality tv is going to be.

The Internet's Funniest Streamed Movies

2008-05-07T13:06:00.000+02:00

Last night I watched one of the poorest shows ever screened on South African television, and I'm including Madam and Eve and Vetkoekpaleis in that list.

The show in question was "Clipz" screened at prime time on M-Net last night. It consists of short clips downloaded from the internet and presented by a host in much the same way as "America's Funniest Hove Videos". Except that instead of Bob Saget, who could sometimes pull off an amusing one-liner, you get a local comedian blandly telling you what's up next, and instead of a live studio audience (in an actual studio) you get a blue-screen virtual studio with crappy graphics.

Advertised as this weeks funniest clips from cyberspace, I'd seen at least a quarter of the clips before and some of them as long as five years ago. And funniest? Admittedly at least half the clips were really amusing and I understand that not everyone has the same sense of humour, but I defy anybody to pronounce that a montage of giggling babies is the height of human hilarity! Seriously, wtf?

The quality of the clips was understandably crap, there was even a warning from the host to this effect. There was also at least five minutes of shameless plugging for M-Net's own "web portal" where you can get short films and funny bloopers from local shows. They showed half of a ultra-short film and one of the aforementioned bloopers. The blooper was of some actor unable to deliver his lines due to fits of suppressed giggles, if that was an example of the funniest blooper on the site I'm glad I took no notice of the URL.

Is this what it has come down to? I mean I totally understand that with the costs of bandwidth in this country most people don't have access to these clips but this is just the height of laziness in television production. This is the kind of programming I expect from e-tv, in fact if this were an e-tv production I'd think it was a great idea for the free-to-air broadcaster. But getting it from M-Net is actually insulting. People from around the country are paying a substantial sum in subscription fees and M-Net is offering this in return?

In general I do enjoy the service provided by my multichoice subscription, otherwise I'd just cancel it, but until there is some serious competition this is unfortunately the kind of bullshit I'm just going to have to put up with.

Divine Right to Rule

2008-05-06T09:55:00.001+02:00

Well it seems that Jacob Zuma, as president of the ANC, belives in that organisation's Divine Right to rule South Africa.

Speaking in Khayelitsha on Sunday Zuma was quoted as saying:

"Even God expects us to rule this country because we are the only organisation which was blessed by pastors when it was formed. It is even blessed in Heaven. That is why we will rule until Jesus comes back. We should not allow anyone to govern our city (Cape Town) when we are ruling the country,"

Wow, if that doesn't scream megalomania I don't know what does.

It makes me wonder what is really going on here, is JZ simply trying to recruit support from the masses by outright lying or does he actually believe this shit.

What is really scary is that apparently the general population belives it. Good luck to us all!

Now for a display of how politics really should work read this article.

Man, I love stupid criminals

2006-10-03T15:47:00.000+02:00

There's a story on IOL today that I found funny but really sad.

http://www.iol.co.za/index.php?set_id=1&click_id=13&art_id=qw11598609609
65B265

(I'm not sure the link will work because I'm sending this in via email)

Four armed men attempted to hi-jack someone on Sunday, but the dude got
out of his car, pushed them away and stole their getaway vehicle and
drove it to the nearest police station. One of the hijackers then went
into the police station to report his car stolen when a woman who was
there to report that she had been raped recognised him as her assailant.
That's karma!

But what's actually really sad is that a hardened criminal feels
comfortable enough to walk into a police station to report a failed
crime. It's also really sad that so many woman are raped in South
Africa every day that this unlikely coincidence was likely simply a
statistical probability. Man, the more I think about it the more this
country sucks. You hear stupid criminal stories all the time, but
mostly they deal with petty thefts and other misdemeanors, but here in
South Africa we apparently do everything better.

Oh, btw, they caught all the hijackers. Sterling police work there. As
long as all criminals walk into the cop shop while their accusers are
standing right there the crime problem could be over in a couple of
months.

In other news

http://www.iol.co.za/index.php?set_id=1&click_id=139&art_id=vn2006100213
4257666C429293

(again, not sure if you'll get the link)

The "Homeless World Cup" was held at Grand Parade here in Cape Town over
the course of last week. The irony was that homeless people in the city
couldn't afford the tickets to enter the grandstand. However, that
didn't stop them from thronging to the city centre to generally hang
around and make a nuisance of themselves. Over the last week I've seen
some truly amazing specimens of crazy and drunk, sometimes both at the
same time.

I have absolutely no problem with homeless people. I can understand
that they've found themselves in an incredibly bad situation with very
few options. In a lot of cases disability or mental illness plays a big
part those situations and limits the options even more, but there are
always options.

There's one guy who stands at the robots going out of pinelands in the
mornings collecting rubbish from people's cars for their spare change.
When I first saw this idea about 3 years ago I thought it was absolutely
brilliant, inspired in fact, and used the service as often as possible.
Since then every beggar at a robot has a bag, as if to say "I'm not
lazy, I'm here working". This guy in Pinelands is different, he really
takes his "job" seriously and acts in a professional manner. He's even
started an added value service telling me about the road worthiness of
my car, "that tire's a little flat sir" or "your back indicator isn't
working". I really hope he does well. I'm stoked every time I see him
just because he's trying to do something.

There's this other homeless dude that I see quite a lot around work.
He's always around, sometimes sitting in the sun, sometime sheltering
from the rain and sometimes digging in the trash for food, but he's
always smiling and never asks anybody for anything. That's a big deal
to me. He probably sleeps at a shelter and spends his day's doing what
little he can to make his life bearable, he seems to be making the best
of his situation. Sure he's not actively trying to improve himself but
he isn't asking for a handout either, he's found a zen state that works
for him, and I totally respect that. I've got this agreement with
myself that whenever I win big at poker I give some money to somebody
less fortunate, I figure that I've gotten lucky and somebody else
deserves to share in my luck. This guy is my dude of choice, it may
take a couple of until I see him again, but when I do I give him some
cash. The first time he was a bit apprehensive and when I told him to
get some food he asked if he could buy some clothes instead. The
important thing here is that even though I've given him substantial
amounts of cash, substantial to him anyway, on a number of occasions,
he's never every even approached me, not even for a cigarette.

Another homeless person I should mention is John "The Bergie". I first
met John outside Tokai library when I was still in varsity. He was
selling a "newspaper", hand written and photocopied, outlining his views
of current events that were important in his life. He had such an
awesome sales pitch that I just had to buy one. I've since seen him all
over Cape Town with his duffle bag and "newspaper" in hand. He landed a
Job with FHM magazine as a product reviewer in a column called "Ask a
Bergie". Last time I saw him he was proudly telling me how he gets keep
all the stuff he reviews. I also bought a copy of his "newspaper", a
bumper 16 pages with covers hand coloured in crayon. His email address
and website were listed under editor.

I suppose my message is "Don't be a victim". These three guys are
making the best of their bad situation, not simply relying on others for
a hand out, and getting really upset and aggressive when you refuse to
give them something for doing absolutely nothing.

Speaking of aggressive beggars. Last week while I was having a smoke
break outside I was handed a flyer about the new nuisance laws that the
city is trying to pass. It showed photographs of the various offences
and listed the applicable fines. Examples are: Hanging clothing to dry
on a public fence - R40; Touching other peoples property without
permission - R400; Roadside vehicle repair (other than emergency repair
- R400; Selling goods in public without a license - R100; the list goes
on. I was really impressed that the city was making people aware of the
new law, until I actually read the flyer. It as in fact from a bunch of
bleeding heart organisations that felt that the rules were unjust and
infringed on the rights of the poor. These guys seem to think that it's
fine for folks to hang washing on fences and touch your property without
permission. They were actually wanting people to contact their
councilor and get them to scrap the bill. What fucktards. Yes people
have rights, and those rights are the ones being protected by the law.
I don't want people touching my shit because they just want to, I don't
want some dude fixing cars on the side of the road and taking business
away from my dad who is a legitimate tax payer and I especially don't
want beggars harassing my wife and becoming violent because she refuses
to give them money for doing nothing. Pass the god damned law already!

On the lighter side

http://www.iol.co.za/index.php?click_id=29&art_id=qw1159797781160B214&se
t_id=1

(again don't know about link)

A woman's silicone implants saved her life when they acted as airbags in
a car accident. Funny stuff huh?

Am I blogging again? Maybe.

Domo Arigato Mr Roboto

2006-08-04T17:08:00.000+02:00

Cool, A <a href="http://www.iol.co.za/index.php?set_id=1&click_id=31&art_id=qw1154668321444B215&newslett=1&em=34538a6a20060804ah">life sized Gundam</a>. Hmmm, 1.5m tall? Only in Japan.

Excuse me, WTF!

2006-08-04T16:56:00.000+02:00

Dr Motsoko Pheko, head of the Pan Africanist Congress has demanded that white South Africans apologise for supporting apartheid and colonialism. Seriously, I kid you not.

That's right according to Dr Pheko the blame for the current state of the nation falls entirely at the feet of each and every while South African. I'm not even going to get into the whole debate about current troubles all being blamed on a set of laws that were effectively repealed 16 years ago. I mean the wikipedia article on apartheid even lists it as the major causes of the HIV epidemic in SA.

Well Dr Pheko I've got news for you. I will not apologise for something that was effectively over by the time I was 12. I am sorry, ie I feel saddened, that thousands of native South Africans suffered terribly under a minority regime, but I will not apologise, and in so doing accept blame, for something I was not even vaguely a part of. Oh, "Sins of the Father"? Fuck that Shit.

Seriously get you shit into gear and actually do something about the problems facing South Africa. Stop ensuring support for yourself by barraging your supporters with smoke and mirrors intended to distract them from the real issues at hand. Get down to it and set an example for other political parties in South Africa by attacking unemployment, lack of education, AIDS, corruption and crime. But I realise that you'd prefer your supporters to remain mindless zombies that are easily bent to your will. You and your ilk represent all that is fundamentally wrong with politics.

I understand that this is exactly the kind of response that you are hoping for, you'll be able to misrepresent it perfectly to show how unrepentant white South Africans are and how important it is that people follow you blindly in order to rid this country of them. Go ahead, I don't care

schpat out

Who said this:

2006-07-10T13:14:00.000+02:00

"Nxamalala has already spoken, saying words of wisdom, telling the initiates they have graduated from boyhood to manhood and they would be expected to behave like men. They are expected to act responsibly as leaders of tomorrow."

It was Mini Gabavana of the Dosini clan at a celebration to mark the initiation ceremony of the king-designate of the AmaMpondomise tribe. Who was he quoting? Of course it was that paragon of virtue Jacob Zuma, "Nxamalala" is his traditional name.

What is old JZ on? He's just finished a rape trial where it was found that at the very least he had sex with an HIV positive woman under dubious circumstances, never mind his more than casual attitude to dealing with the worst pandemic in human history. At the end of the month he'll be standing trail for corruption with regards to a multibillion dollar arms deal, and he's still campaigning! Is he crazy, does he think the South African voting public are idiots that will ignore this kind of conduct? The unfortunate answers to these two questions are "Yes", and "Yes". The really concerning issue however is that he's probably right!

In a country internationally touted as a paragon of modern democracy it is in our leaders' interests to maintain a level of ignorance amongst the voting public. Dissembling, obfuscation and misdirection are the tools that keep them in power. This is by no means unique to South Africa, governments the world over have employed similar tactics to ensure blind fervor from their supporters, however elsewhere it doesn't always work.

In South Africa the public at large is told what to think. You might think I'm being a little melodramatic or making bold, unsupported statements, but here's a quote from another article to back me up. Sasco president Mandla Seopela said the students would stand by the ANC national general council's resolution that "he must be supported on the corruption issue". In this case "he" is JZ.

Now Thabo Mbeki is making statements that the arms deal was all conducted above the board with absolutely no government wrongdoing. This claim seems to exonerate JZ and it would be interesting to see what would happen should he be found guilty later this year. In all likelihood Thabo's proclaiments are simply a way to placate JZ and his followers leaving him outs no matter what the outcome of the trial. Sneaky huh? Well it's politics.

Recently JZ has lodged a civil case against the media for character assassination. I think political cartoonist Zapiro summed it up perfectly when asked how he felt that JZ was suing him for damaging his reputation. "What reputation?" he asked.

schpat out

Why haven't I been blogging?

2006-07-07T15:03:00.000+02:00

Well not much has been happening, but that's never stopped me before.

Work has basically blocked all access to message boards and forums (this includes blogs) and also blocked the emails of my rss feeds. Being isolated from the blogosphere has kinda made me lose interest in the whole thing, but that's not the only reason I haven't been cranking out my usual monster posts. The other factor is that I was very disappointed with the response to my blog contests. Altogether only five people entered (when you count both contests) and I only received a total of ten votes, these were hardly encouraging results. This left me disappointed and a little depressed that my effort to provide amusement and entertain was mostly ignored. It was The Schpat Dope all over again, and it reminded me of another project that, while very close to my heart, was generally underappreciated by the intended audience. I speak of course about SchpatCON.

You see I've always been an organiser. From as far back as I can remember I've been a person that gets things going. People want a party? Sure, I'll sort it out. Varsity is boring! Lets watch videos, I'll get the TV. Varsity is still boring! Let's get totally shit-faced and have ice fights and puke and pass out on the couch, I'll get the hooch. Ok, that one seemed like a good idea at the time. It could very well just be an intense need to be the centre of attention stemming from a poor self image and the fact that I wasn't breast fed as a baby, but I doubt it. You see I like to make people happy, and I like to do cool shit. That's the major reason I came up with the idea of SchpatCON in the first place. It was a cool way for gamers who were no longer at varsity, and involved with CLAWs, to stay active in the scene and also to give the CLAW committee a chance to take part in an event without having to organise it themselves.

SchpatCON was first held at Tokai Library, a venue with a bunch of fond memories of the war gaming club I had a major hand in organising, and other things too. I put hours into the event writing modules and organising prizes, of course I had some help with module writing. The turn out was twelve people, the organisers had put in twice as many man hours as all the participants put together. I was disappointed to say the least, but I decided to run another one in 2001. That time we had a few more people, but nobody was very enthusiastic. In fact everybody had left before it was even time to hand out the prizes. To this day I still have R200 in Outer Limits gift vouchers floating around to remind me of my failure. That's how I've been feeling lately, and probably the reason that there's been no news about SchpatCON this year.

Then last night a conversation about old times and past experiences reminded me just how much fun things used to be, and you know what, things in general weren't very different back then... but my attitude was. I've realised that SchpatCON is not a failure. By 2002 I was working with a team of people that are were so good that their enthusiasm energised me and made the whole thing worthwhile. Together we've gone on to organise three of the best gaming events that I've ever attended, and I've had so many good times. The general epiphany was that I just need to get off my arse and get on with things. So I've started blogging again and "SchpatCON VII: Deadly Sins" is in the works. I'll give out some more information about it at a later stage but for now just keep September 22-25 free in your diaries.

I'll be blogging again, but it probably won't take the same form as as before.

WBT

2006-06-05T22:12:00.000+02:00

I have registered to play in the PokerStars World Blogger Championship of Online Poker!

This Online Poker Tournament is a No Limit Texas Holdem event exclusive to Bloggers.

Registration code: 6165065

They wanted this in the sidebar, but it was just too dang wide. I'm looking forward to it.

schpat out

Ask a ninja

2006-06-01T15:12:00.000+02:00

I was up late last night finishing off the latest installment in A Song of Ice and Fire by Geroge RR Martin, this after the poker. The poker was great, I made good decisions but went out when my opponent hit an three outer on the river, bummer but these things happen.

I'm not going to blog much today, I'm pretty tired, but for the benefit of your amusement I present: A Ninja!

For more of these great little shorts check out AskANinja.com.

schpat out

Where's the Ninja

2006-05-31T12:50:00.000+02:00

It's Wednesday, where's the Ninja? Rest assured he's here, you just cant see him! I have it on good authority that he'll make an appearance tomorrow. But beware, this ninja's main purpose in life is killing, just because you can't see him doesn't mean he can't see you.

In the meantime, wish me luck for the poker tournament tonight, it's going to be tough and see that I didn't get very much sleep last night it might be even tougher.

schpat out

Return of the A game

2006-05-30T16:23:00.000+02:00

This is a poker post, if you have no interest check back tomorrow when I might introduce you to a funny ninja.

Last night after catching up with LOST I fired up the poker machine for a game or two, you know, for practice. I stuck to the $3 + .40 single table SnG's and my B game put up a helluva fight in A's absence. In the first game a bubbled (that's finished one off the money) when I made a move with KJc and was taken out by A4o. In the next game I finished in 6th when JTh ran into A7, my J paired on the flop but my opponent stuck around (against the odd mind you) to suck out with a runner runner gut shot, but that's poker. I decided that if I lost another one I'd have had more than enough practice at losing, so one last game it was.

In the first hand I was dealt KK in the 6 seat. I bet 4xBB and got one caller. Exactly what I'd hoped for. The flop was KQQ rainbow, a fucking awesome flop giving me a full house. The only hand I was worried about was QQ for four of a kind, but as two time world champion Doyle Brunson says, you can't worry about four of a kind. I wanted to show weakness so I lead in with a small bet hoping to be raised by AK. AQ, KJ, QJ or even KQ or AA all of which were possible holdings by my opponent, hell it's internet poker he could have been holding K3o and would still have called. He did in fact call, not what I wanted, but ok. The turn was an 8 and I lead out again with a half-pot bet, he called, the pot's now up to about T$800 and the river is an J. sweet mother of Jesus I think, if he just paired his J I'm gonna score big, there's almost no chance he'd have played AA like that. He's called all the way so far so I pump on another half-pot bet of T$400 for value, he calls. What do you think he showed? That's right QQ. I paid him almost two thirds of my chips just to see four of a kind, thanks Doyle. Honestly I wouldn't have done anything different, The chances that he had that hand were so small the odds I was getting on my bets were great, incidentally he played the last street badly, with the nuts he should have bet out at me, I probably would have called and he could have won a lot more money. Doyle also says that big pairs are dangerous hands, either you win big, or you lose big. Thanks for stating the obvious.... never worry about four of a kind... grumble.

So I'm down to like T$600, out of T$1500, and looking like a complete schmuck, what am I to do now? In burst those mercenaries A game in tow with a sack on his head. The wasted no time tying him to a chair and beating him with rubber hoses until he saw the error of his ways and agreed to start playing again. Hell I even think the mercenaries got in on the action a little bit showing some real aggression. Within the space of ten hands I was chip leader, I rode that all the way to the end of the game, $15 cash, woo-hoo.

That game was over pretty quickly and I decided I needed more practice winning so I signed up for another. A game was really excited to rediscover how much fun winning was again. I had to make a few tough calls, like calling a all-in pre-flop with KQc, but ended up winning that one too. Total of $30 won for the night and a 120% ROI for the night.

I now have enough frequent player points for a cap.

I hope A game sticks around for tomorrow night, I could certainly use it. I want to get some more practice in this evening but I've got to get a good nights rest before the big game.

Tomorrow: a ninja.

schpat out

Dance Dance Revolution

2006-05-29T14:53:00.000+02:00

I had a great Weekend. Saturday was spent with family, some German cousins are out in South Africa and we had a get together to say hi. It was a lot of fun to see people that I only vaguely remember form my childhood, they're good people. There was also awesome food. On Sunday I took Elisabeth out to the market at Green Point Stadium to buy african curios for her brother in Alice Springs Australia, I wonder if he likes egg on his pizza. We had breakfast at the News Cafe and then a really late lunch at the Tibetan Tea House in Simonstown. I had a sweet potato and pea curry with much ginger and it totally rocked. We also watched more LOST.

On the poker front, I took my solid B game to the tables last night to feed off the chum left after the weekly $1M on PokerStars. Lots of people pay $220 for the chance to win the $1M but most of them are really sucky players that drop out in the first hour, the ones that drop out in the first few minutes are the worst. These are they guys that are sitting around still wanting to gamble that I like to tackle in the micro stakes SnG's. I say me B game because my A game seems to be on holiday on some tropical paradise and not responding to the urgent voicemails I've left it. Still I played 4 games last night and cashed in 3 of them, two thirds and a second, for a total profit of $7.40 or a 54% ROI. Not too bad. I'm thinking of hiring a bunch of mercenaries to find my A game and bring it back kicking a screaming before my minitournament on Wednesday night.

There is so much fucked up shit in the news at the moment that I'm not even going to mention it here. If you're interested go check it out a IOL.

During my internet foray over the weekend I did come across this very funny video. It's only for people with large pipes, but extremely funny. Who say's white men can't dance?

Also, Fisherman's Friends are awesome, thanks to the guys at role-playing for suggesting them. I loves me the strong mints.

schpat out

Crazy SA

2006-05-26T16:33:00.000+02:00

So you need more reasons to mistrust the police? Well here are two very good examples.

Firstly there's this story about a school girl that was forced to participate in group sex by two policemen while they recorded it on a cell phone. Later they distributed the footage via the internet and now are being charged with child pornography. They're freaky looking too, you can check out their pictures at the link above.

Secondly, remember how the cops caught the perpetrators of a major cash heist at JHB International about a month ago? Well in a robbery much like the "Lufthansa Job" portrayed in the movie "Goodfellas" some criminal scum robbed an aircraft full of foreign currency. Unfortunately they weren't as cleaver as Henry Hill and Jimmy Burke and got themselves caught. Brilliant work from the police department, what am I complaining about? Well their evidence safe was raided on Wednesday night and a very large chunk of the cash was stolen. Go guys!

Seriously I totally mistrust cops. The vast mast majority in this country are ill educated folks desperate for a job who will do anything, including putting their life on the line for very little remuneration. The salaries that South Africa offers our law enforcement officers is laughable, no wonder we can't attract superior level individuals into the job, and no wonder so many of our policemen become corrupt. If I was ever detained by the police I would make very sure someone I trusted knew exactly where I was. Although I could probably bribe my way out with a can of beans and a loaf of bread, and they could possibly be convinced to through in a stolen gun to sweeten the deal.

In other news:

Telkom is resistant to ICASA's demand that they get rid of monthly connection charges for ADSL lines. Telkom has threatened to simply raise other prices to make up for the shortfall. Note that that would only be a shortfall in revenue, it is estimated that of the R 477 charged for a 512K line the cost is only R39. Also remember that this "connection" fee is above your normal telephone line rental. Well I suppose that's what a monopoly can do for you.

Roy Bennet, a white Zimbabwean opposition member accused of trying to overthrow the Mugabe government, has been denied asylum in South Africa. The department of home affairs has not released reasons for denying him asylum but has pointed out that he is free to appeal. It's plainly obvious to anyone following the situation that should he be sent back to Zim he would undoubtedly suffer torture and even the death penalty. The only reason I can think of why asylum would not be granted is because the government wants to stay best buddies with good ol' Bob. Human rights aren't that important.

Ok folks enjoy your weekends and have fun, don't get caught by the cops!

schpat out

Not a rant

2006-05-23T15:37:00.000+02:00

Man I was going to rant about the Da Vinci Code and how so many people are cashing in on the CONTROVERSY!!11!!. I mean people writing books to confirm or debunk the book are just the beginning. The strangest cash in I've noticed is the J&B ad, that's right somehow J&B have linked the "mythical number phi" (maybe they mean number with mythical myths and stuff) witch is one of the things mentioned in Brows best selling work of FICTION!!!1!! But I'm not going to rant, everyone's doing it and I don't feel like conforming today, so just the minirant you got above then..

Here's something interesting stuff for you folks out in blog land.

A bunch of people in Port Shepstone, on the South African east coast, have spotted a UFO flying into the sea. Nobody has actually said "alien craft" yet but you know it's coming. Divers called off the search for wreckage because of rough seas, or because they are afraid we'll discover too much. ArchAngel is this true?

During my net trawling I found this site with an interesting way for you to market your company. With charity, models and nudity how the heck could it go wrong?

Here's an idea for a shirt that tucks itself in. What happens when it becomes uncomfortably tight? huh?

An interesting story of "boer maak 'n plan", that's 'farmer makes a plan' for non-south africans, this farmer dude created a warless network in a valley unserviced by any telecom company to provide his friends with internet access. Unfortunately in South Africa this is totally illegal. Wanker govt.

If you didn't thing your school outings were very exciting check out this one, where the entire class got sent to jail.

The security guards are still on strike and now the Labour Minister, Membathisi Mdladlana, has been asked to intervene. In a complete mutilation of the english language and of logic the minister said: "People are constantly calling on the minister to intervene in criminal activities. What do they mean when they say intervene? The only problem we have is the flexibility of the law," I'm not sure what he mean or if he even means anything. Wanker.

That's enough for today

schpat out

Totally Bitchin

2006-05-22T13:39:00.000+02:00

It was Elisabeth's birthday on saturday and we were out the whole day doing stuff, we ended up having super at the Starlight Diner, man that place rocks. And it's open 24 hrs a day as zenstar found out on thursday night.

Also a comment made by Elisabeth months ago prompted me to bake her a special kind of cake for her birthday. It was one of those barbie doll cakes where the cake is decorated to look like a ball gown. For my first attempt at baking and my first attempt at decorating a cake I think it turned out pretty well. The final product was ready at about 23:30 on Saturday, just before the end of Elisabeth's birthday. We ate it with ice cream and chocolate sauce, mmm yummy.

Other than that I didn't play any poker but I did watch an interesting movie. "Waiting..." is an independent film about a group of people working in a chain restaurant. It stars a couple of C list actors and involves a very "interesting" game. The film reminded me of Clerks, but only about a quarter as cool. Still a quarter of infinitely cool is still pretty fucking cool!

I also finally got to see the last three episodes of Desperate Housewives Season One, meh. I think that exposure to Lost has ruined serialised drama for me. I hear Prison Break is pretty cool but compared to Lost it'll only be a fraction of infinitely cool.

I did read a couple of stories this morning that I felt were newsworthy enough for me to mention here:

The first is that an "unauthorised" biography on Thabo Mbeki was pulled from air at the last moment when it was discovered that "internal approval processes were not correctly followed". This was supposed to be part of a series of "unauthorised" documentaries about prominent South Africans. Is it just a coincidence that the one about the most powerful person in the company was not aired? This is after even Cosatu has admitted that too much power rests in the presidency.

The second is a story that outlines one of the many reasons I don't trust the police. Read the whole story for all the details but basically a guy was accused of stealing some coke by a security guard when leaving a shop. Even though the guy had handed his coke (purchased elsewhere) in at the parcel counter and could produce a receipt the security guards physically detained him and cuffed him to a pole outside the shop while they waited for the police. That evening, after urinating on himself and being mocked by the security guards, the police had not arrived and he marched off to the station where the police refused to inspect his receipt and he was thrown in jail until a magistrate freed him the next day. Fucktards. All the evidence was there in front of them, but they just couldn't have given a shit. Wankers! The due also lost his job because he failed to turn up for work and when he explained what happened the boss he was fired for having had a run in with the police. BTW this all happened a year and a half ago and now he's suing the government.

schpat out

Friday Afternoon Blamestorming

2006-05-19T17:17:00.000+02:00

It's friday afternoon, everybody is ready to go home for a nice relaxing weekend and suddenly a hereunto unnoticed ELE springs up out of nowhere and ensures that people frantically run amok trying to put things to rights.. These issues are invariably impossible to resolve in a completely satisfactory manner and the hastily implemented resolutions usually result in further complications that nullify any actions taken.

Where do these problems come from?

Well that's an interesting question, but the real question should be how can this happen with such alarming regularity that it becomes predictable?

I have a theory.

Magic. That's right folks magic. You see, there is no way that people (and its normally the same people) only notice the signs of impending doom at 14:30 on a friday afternoon, this mysteriously happens three weeks out of every four. These "big" issues are "sold" to anyone that will listen until panic and frenzy are built up to sufficient levels that people will do anything to resolve the problem and I do mean anything. The normal rules and predefined processes are tossed out the window in the mad rush to fix "the problem", no regard is taken for the ramifications of the solution and the actual implementation of the solution is normally left up to either myself or a colleague.

So how does this relate to magic?

What's really going on here?

Well it takes one of two forms, but in both cases it's an illusion. Most often the problem is no problem at all but the frenzy makes the "Magician" (the guy that notices the issue) look good, and feel important. Furthermore a plethora of minor issues will be forgiven during the course of the next week and written off as they were "caused" by the hastily adopted fix for the "big" issue. The other, and more insidious, form of the illusion is when the "Magician" is unsure of the outcome of a decision he has made. In this instance the "Magician" approaches the "Volunteer" (that's either me or my colleague) and tells us that our implementation of an operational solution we have prepared based on his decision is fundamentally flawed and then proceeds to go home for the weekend making it impossible to fix. If all goes well with the operational solution he looks good because despite the "Volunteer's" incompetence his brilliant idea prevails, and if it goes badly he looks good because his brilliant idea would have worked if it wasn't for the incompetence of "Volunteers".

In both cases, and there are many subcategories, the "Magician" is distracting the "Audience" (the bosses) while he saws the "Volunteer" in half, literally.

But when I started this blog I promised not to mention too much about work, by the way my blog is one year old as of yesterday. If I think about that I started the blog because I was exited about seeing SWIII I've come a long way. 365 days, 133 posts and 4059 hits. I'm happy with what I've achieved here.

Anyway, enjoy your weekend

schpat out

It's never good when they run

2006-05-17T13:46:00.000+02:00

"..certain splinter groups broke away from the main group and ran through the side streets of the CBD causing havoc as they went. The current situation calm and there is no evidence of splinter groups in the area.

We have been informed by the CCID that there is relative calm in the CBD..."

You'd be forgiven for thinking that the preceding was the latest news from the streets of Baghdad, but you'd be wrong. This is part of an actual email that I received from Campus Management at 15:30 today in the wake of the Security Worker protest in Cape Town. My God, what are things coming to.

And the winner is (drum roll)

Moonflake with quote A by a landslide.

Out of his Mouth: “Because he's hiding." —George W. Bush, responding to a reporter who asked why Osama bin Laden had not been caught, aboard Air Force One, Jan. 14, 2005”

In his Head: “And I haven’t finished counting to 100 yet anyway.”

Moonie, let me know where you want your gift certificate from and I'll make sure you get it soon.

When I say landslide I mean 3 votes out of five, the other two went to C and F, with F receiving many honorable mentions in two other votes. Due to general lack of interest I don't know when I'll e running another blog contest, I will run one again, but probably not soon.

Again I have amassed hits on at least 6 of the seven continents, and probably Antarctica too. Go me.

Anyway, other than having tried to poison my wife nothing much has happened this week, life is boring.

schpat out

Ooh Ooh, there might be a Thurteem collaborative blog starting up soon, that's exciting.

This was yesterday's post btw

Friday's Post

2006-05-13T07:55:00.000+02:00

I didn't really have anything much to blog about today but something has come to my attention that needed mentioning to the general public, however I'll save that for last (I do have other less interesting things that happen to me you know!).

Firstly, Celery is the devil's putrid vegetable. I mentioned this to a colleague at lunch and he disagreed that the honor belonged to Aubergine. We did however agree that if they ever came together in an Unholy Aubergine & Celery Salad, it would be an evil not even Pope Benedict could fight.

Secondly, I ordered pizza from the Canal Walk Panarottis on Wednesday night. Elisabeth and I were in the mall but wanted a supper that we could take home and enjoy in front of the TV, so I phoned an order in to them for collection later. Now Elisabeth and I have a very standard pizza order from Panarottis, she has a "Rib rack" with half the normal amount of cheese (those damn kilojoules) and I have a "Burger Pie" with ribs instead of mince and extra cheddar (those wonderful kilojoules). After speaking to the moron on the other side of the phone for what seemed like an hour and having to repeat myself over and over until he understood we went to pick up our nosh half an hour later. When we got there I recognized the idiot manager who took my order (but I'll get back to that) and had to wait at the counter while he went to fetch the pizza.

While I waited an eternity the two teenage girl employees "hanging out" at the counter sighed restlessly and rolled their eyeballs as if to let me know that they were very put out by the fact that I'd interrupted their gripping conversation about how hot their respective teenage boyfriends were, how big a slut each of them hoped to be and the color of their vaginal discharge*. When the idiot manager returned the full enormity of the disaster that was my panarottis experience became apparent, the order had been fucked up. On Elisabeth's pizza they'd only put on half the cheese, but it was all on one side pf the pizza! And there were three burger pies, one large, one with ribs instead of mince and one with extra cheddar. WTF? Is there some kind of "One alteration per pizza" rule or some shit?

On confronting the manager he told me that the order was exactly as he'd taken it. I calmly explained that was most definitely mistaken, his head towards the kitchen he said: "oh, they probably made some mistake", nodding . At this point the hormone infested teenagers looked a little more bored and a little more put out by the fact that I was making issue with their pimply-faced overlord, I could sense that they wanted nothing more than for me to leave so that they could throw him down on a heap of pizza flour and pleasure him with the full extent of their sixteen year old sexual experience***. Me, very calmly: "Dude, you fucked up. Normally if you'd been apologetic and tried to sort the situation out I be more than happy to wait, but because you're being such a dick and trying to pass your mistakes on to people below you, you can keep your damn pizzas." I turned and walked out as he stood gaping and the teenagers reached for their birth control****.

But you know what made this fuck up the sweetest thing that happened to me all day? The idiot manager was the one who told us to move away from his restaurant because our zombie costumes were bothering his patrons, oh sweet sweet irony.

*pamphlets in the pharmacy** led me to to believe that that was what teenage girls talk about.

**don't you find pamphlets about all day feminine freshness and douching mildly offensive, what about literally hundreds of posters wallpapering your pharmacy?

***I may have read too much into it at this point though.

****again I didn't actually see this but I'm sure it happened.

Thirdly, I'm hoping on playing some 180 player poker tournaments this weekend, wish me luck.

Fourthly, vote in the bushism blog contest. The hard work of the entrants deserves to be rewarded.

Fifthly, and this is the one you've been waiting for. This dude in the states has dire need for you to visit his website. You see he needs 10 million hits very desperately. Why does he need that many hits you ask, well because if he gets them his girlfriend has to take part in a threesome! It all started with her calling him an idiot and a claim that there was no way he could create a website that would get ten million hits. It turned into a bet and he now has about 6 million. www.helpwinthebet.com

Suspecting treachery I googled and found another site,www.helpwinmybet.com, this time apparently needing 74 million bets to win. According to the second site the first one is copy cat and has nothing to do with him. It sounds like it's nothing more than a hype machine used to dispense ads, there are surprising few of these though, but what ever it is I'm always happy to help a young man achieve his goals. Go check it out.

schpat out

It's been a week

2006-05-09T08:56:00.000+02:00

Hey folks, it's been a week since I posted the semi-finalists for my Bushism blog contest, now I finally have the six finalists for you to choose from. You'll get them later in this post. Why haven't I been blogging? Well actually I've been too bored to blog (2B2B). I'm not by any means a writer and this blog is merely an outlet used to give folks an insight into what I'm thinking and why, and if I have a particularly exciting experience I'll let you know about it here. Well no exciting experiences in the last week, and only the same old boring news that I'm sure everybody has heard and is totally disinterested in.

Ooh ooh, I did get a new bed! It's king-size and stands 72cm off the floor, 80cm if the new down duvet is on!

See, that currently passes for exciting.

Work has a lot to do with this funk, one of my colleagues has been on leave and I've had to pick up the slack, and the flack. I've been busy and not had much "amuse myself" time.

Anyway, enough about why I'm bored, let's get onto something I instituted to relieve boredom, the BLOG CONTEST.

That's right folks, about once a month I'm hosting a contest on my blog where one lucky person wins an actual prize. This month folks were tasked with letting us know what GW Bush was actually thinking when he uttered some of his more moronic statements. Three people entered and each gave an impressive sampling of their comedic wit. Alas there were just too many funny ones and so I asked for each of the three to choose two to be put to the vote. Here they are in no particular order.

(A)

Out of his Mouth: “Because he's hiding." —George W. Bush, responding to a reporter who asked why Osama bin Laden had not been caught, aboard Air Force One, Jan. 14, 2005”

In his Head: “And I haven’t finished counting to 100 yet anyway.”

(B)

Out of his Mouth: "We are fully committed to working with both sides to bring the level of terror down to an acceptable level for both." —George W. Bush, after a meeting with congressional leaders, Washington, D.C., Oct. 2, 2001

In his Head: "My daddy always told me to aim for goals I can reach and not to seem too keen. Besides, if I say I will bring the level of terror down to zero they will all know I am lying"

(C)

Out of his Mouth: "Because the—all which is on the table begins to address the big cost drivers. For example, how benefits are calculate, for example, is on the table; whether or not benefits rise based upon wage increases or price increases. There's a series of parts of the formula that are being considered. And when you couple that, those different cost drivers, affecting those—changing those with personal accounts, the idea is to get what has been promised more likely to be—or closer delivered to what has been promised. Does that make any sense to you? It's kind of muddled. Look, there's a series of things that cause the—like, for example, benefits are calculated based upon the increase of wages, as opposed to the increase of prices. Some have suggested that we calculate—the benefits will rise based upon inflation, as opposed to wage increases. There is a reform that would help solve the red if that were put into effect. In other words, how fast benefits grow, how fast the promised benefits grow, if those—if that growth is affected, it will help on the red."—Explaining his plan to save Social Security, Tampa, Fla., Feb. 4, 2005

In his Head:
"...

did i leave the gas on?

..."

(D)

Out of his Mouth: "You believe in the Almighty, and I believe in the Almighty. That's why we'll be great partners." —George W. Bush, to Turkish Prime Minister Recap Tayyip Erdogan, Washington, D.C. Dec. 10, 2002

In his Head: "You like ham burgers I like ham burgers...no no, thats not going to work, the ham thing. Um...You like beer , I like beer..oops, nope...um what else do I like , um dont think he knows the hungry caterpillar, um God yes God, but he doesnt call him God, something with an A..um..um o yes!..."

(E)

Out of his Mouth:"I think we are welcomed. But it was not a peaceful welcome." — Philadelphia, Dec. 12, 2005, on the reception of American forces in Iraq

In his Head: "but it SHOULD have been a peaceful welcome - don't these arabs watch fox news? EVERYBODY watches fox news!"

(F)

Out of his Mouth: "I know the human being and fish can coexist peacefully." —Saginaw, Mich., Sept. 29, 2000

In his Head: “I mean, look at mermaids…That’s proof right there.”

Ok readers, now it's your turn to decide who wins the R100 gift certificate, send your votes, by letter, to schpat@gmail.com, you have until start of day tuesday the 16th. The entrants have put a lot of thought and work into this one, show them a little raspect, aaight!

Contest Semi-Finals

2006-05-02T13:58:00.000+02:00

Well, my long weekend was great! On friday night I had cooked a very nice supper, grilled salmon and roasted peppers stuffed with spiced rice, and watched a bunch more of LOST. On saturday I drove around and ran some errands, had lunch at the spur (where I get Vegas style treatment) and watched more LOST with Elisabeth. On sunday I played in a poker tournament in Milnerton, but more on that later. Monday was quite relaxed, rearranged my furniture to accommodate my new couch, did some general housework and watched more LOST. It was a good weekend.

Also I got the final submissions for the Bushisms contest, one lucky person will be walking away with a R100 gift certificate but you'll have to read until the end to find out how that's going to happen. Don't skip anything, I'll know!

THE POKER

Dude, absolutely fucking off the map hawsomeness. After a few problems with directions I met up with Roo and and we found the Italian "Club" where the day's festivities were due to get underway. Apparently we weren't the only people who had trouble with the directions because we started late to give people a change to find the place and there were quite a few no-shows leaving us with a starting field of 76. I was seated at table C with about four people I recognised from the last tournament one of which had actually been at my table of death and had to rebuy twice before only just outlasting me, and another who'd played in the satellite last week. Everybody was stopping by my table and greeting the people I didn't know and saying stuff like "ooh, though table" and "unlucky all you guys sitting together". I thought it was just the usual trash talk but I was wrong, as I was later to find out.

I played very tight, and very aggressively. I didn't win very many pots but those that I did win were big enough to keep me in the tournament. I was in the BB and was dealt AJc, there were a couple of limpers and I raised 3xBB and got only one caller, the guy who rebought twice in the last tournament. The flop was 963 with one club, he bet I called. The turn was a Q, he bet 1xBB and I called the very weak bet. The river was another low card, he checked and so did I because I thought he was trapping me. When he showed a set of 3's I knew I was right and that if I had bet he would have pushed me all in and I would have gone out right there. I thought I had lost it with my A high but somebody else at the table pointed out that I'd caught two clubs on the turn and river for a runner runner nut-flush. I was floored to have made such a stupid mistake. I could have trapped the trapper and won a huge pot, but I had lost concentration and because of that ended up not winning as much as I could have. It wasn't the worst mistake I could have made, but it's pretty unforgivable.

That was right before the first fifteen minute break, and as it turned out, the last break for the day. I berated myself for being so dumb, and chatted to Roo. Roo had also lasted to the first break but seriously only had enough chips for two BB left. I went back in with slightly above what I stated with but way below average because by this stage about half the field had gone out. That really surprised me because our table had only lost one player. The next break was scheduled for three hours time by we never got there because by then it was time for the final table, which I was on!

Leading up to this a few more people had gone out at my table, and a few had been moved to other tables to balance the numbers, but the core of players had stayed the same since the beginning. The last level before the final table was hectic. I was down to 1xBB in chips and managed to double up quite a few times so that when I got to the final table I was only the third smallest chip stack. Of my starting table no less than four of us had made it into the final, that's when I realised that it really was a scary table. I won a few hands and stole a couple of blinds but the levels were going up and I just couldn't keep up. Two of the final ten had gone out when I found myself on the BB with AQd two people had limped in and I pushed hoping for a miracle. One of the guys from my original table called what was a very small percentage of his stack with 88 and I didn't improve. I went out in 8th place with only 7 paying, I bubbled. I was pretty disappointed because at that stage I was only second shortest stack, I had about three times what the shortest did he ended up folding into 4th for R1750. At the time I thought I might be able to fold into the money, but if he won a hand I'd be screwed and I probably wasn't going to get a better hand than AQd, I'd do the same thing again. I was also disappointed that only 7 places paid because the advertised was 10 paying if there were 80 entrants, we were short four of that, or R1200 in entry fees. First place was supposed to pay R10k but only paid R7,2k I really don't understand how it worked, but I'm not going to make an issue of it the tournament directors were really nice guys and I trust that everything they did was on the up and up and that they didn't rip me off.

In the main game I only lost one had at a showdown, and I got through to the final table and placed 8th, and while disappointed that I didn't get any cash even though I'd gotten so close I'm just really happy to have gotten so far and played relatively well. If I'd gone out in say 25th place I'd be ecstatic, and not have as much disappointment, but I did better than that so I just gotta shake it off.

ITALIAN CLUB

After the main game we played another, with a smaller buy-in and fewer players. There was a time limit so we only started with 500 in chips and blinds went up every 15min. It was insane. This kind of speed play really doesn't suit me but I still managed to get through to the final table again going out in 8th, this time only three places paid so there's no feeling of disappointment.

The venue was brilliant, They had a cash bar and a restaurant with waiters milling around the poker tables taking orders. The coffee was brilliant, real Italian cappuccino rocked. During the second game I ordered a pizza, it was massive and used primo ingredients, one of which was real Italian salami, and it only cost R28!

Like I said the venue rocked, the fact that later on a few older guys in pinstripe suits arrived and went through a door marked "Private Card Room" or that Frank Sinatra was playing during the final table was just icing on the cake.

Another thing I have to mention is that the guys I played with were really nice. None of them were complete dicks like I experienced at the last tournament. I saw plenty of those dicks around but didn't play with them for long, when one of them arrived at the table we pretty much took them out quickly. The only reason I mention it is that I think that because we were playing at the Italian club people were a bit more respectful, capice?

THE CONTEST

Wow this is already a long post, and it's about to get longer. I had three serious entrants into the Bushism contest. Everybody made multiple submissions and because they're all really good I'm worried that the votes will be way too spread out to make any difference. For this reason I'm going to pos the complete list here and ask the three people who entered to choose their best two to compete with. Guys, suss out the competition and get back to me, via email to keep this anonymous.

Out of his Mouth: "I can look you in the eye and tell you I feel I've tried to solve the problem diplomatically to the max, and would have committed troops both in Afghanistan and Iraq knowing what I know today." — Irvine, Calif., April 24, 2006

In his Head: "diplomatically: the manner in which a person holding a diploma would act. - see degrematically"

Out of his Mouth: He Said: "If you don't stand for anything, you don't stand for anything! If you don't stand for something, you don't stand for anything!" —George W. Bush, Bellevue Community College, Nov. 2, 2000

In his Head: "If I keep talking in circles they will get dizzy and this wont need to make sense"

Out of his Mouth: "As you can possibly see, I have an injury myself — not here at the hospital, but in combat with a cedar. I eventually won. The cedar gave me a little scratch." — After visiting with wounded veterans from the Amputee Care Center of Brooke Army Medical Center, San Antonio, Texas, Jan. 1, 2006

In his Head: "they'd be even more impressed if they knew how much that stung! mommy had to kiss it better!"

Out of his Mouth: "I know the human being and fish can coexist peacefully." —Saginaw, Mich., Sept. 29, 2000

In his Head: “I mean, look at mermaids…That’s proof right there.”

Out of his Mouth:"I think we are welcomed. But it was not a peaceful welcome." — Philadelphia, Dec. 12, 2005, on the reception of American forces in Iraq

In his Head: "but it SHOULD have been a peaceful welcome - don't these arabs watch fox news? EVERYBODY watches fox news!"

Out of his Mouth: "We are fully committed to working with both sides to bring the level of terror down to an acceptable level for both." —George W. Bush, after a meeting with congressional leaders, Washington, D.C., Oct. 2, 2001

In his Head: "My daddy always told me to aim for goals I can reach and not to seem too keen. Besides, if I say I will bring the level of terror down to zero they will all know i am lieing"

Out of his Mouth:"I mean, I read the newspaper. I mean, I can tell you what the headlines are. I must confess, if I think the story is, like, not a fair appraisal, I'll move on. But I know what the story's about." — Philadelphia, Dec. 12, 2005

In his Head: "dammit! when are they gonna open up 'The Derek Zoolander Center for Kids Who Can't Read Good and Would Like To Do Other Things Good too'?!"

Out of his Mouth: “I'll be glad to talk about ranching, but I haven't seen the movie. I've heard about it. I hope you go — you know — I hope you go back to the ranch and the farm is what I'm about to say." —George W. Bush, after being asked whether he's seen Brokeback Mountain, Manhattan, Kan., Jan. 23, 2006”

In his Head: “Oh Jesus! Why are they asking me this? Do they know about me and Donald Rumsfeld? Quick George, say something to throw them off the scent! Ranching! Yeah, that’s manly! Talk about ranching!”

Out of his Mouth: "I aim to be a competitive nation." — San Jose, Calif., April 21, 2006

In his Head: "i KNEW i could use the word competitive in a sentence!"

Out of his Mouth: “Wow! Brazil is big." —George W. Bush, after being shown a map of Brazil by Brazilian president Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, Brasilia, Brazil, Nov. 6, 2005

In his Head: “Idiot, he doesn’t even know where his own country is. That’s Australia! Brazil’s the little island next to that bit that looks like a boot.”

Out of his Mouth: "I strongly believe what we're doing is the right thing. If I didn't believe it — I'm going to repeat what I said before — I'd pull the troops out, nor if I believed we could win, I would pull the troops out." — Charlotte, N.C., April 6, 2006

In his Head: "okay, i need opposites here. think opposite! i can do this!"

Out of his Mouth: "You believe in the Almighty, and I believe in the Almighty. That's why we'll be great partners." —George W. Bush, to Turkish Prime Minister Recap Tayyip Erdogan, Washington, D.C. Dec. 10, 2002

In his Head: "You like ham burgers I like ham burgers...no no, thats not going to work, the ham thing. Um...You like beer , I like beer..oops, nope...um what else do I like , um dont think he knows the hungry caterpillar, um God yes God, but he doesnt call him God, something with an A..um..um o yes!..."

Out of his Mouth: "If the Iranians were to have a nuclear weapon they could proliferate." — Washington D.C., March 21, 2006

In his Head: "bastard speech writers! that's not a real word!... i wonder where irania is?"

Out of his Mouth: "The truth of that matter is, if you listen carefully, Saddam would still be in power if he were the president of the United States, and the world would be a lot better off." —George W. Bush, second presidential debate, St. Louis, Mo., Oct. 8, 2004

In his Head: "Wouldnt it be fun if Saddam was president of the united states? Then people wouldnt be so quit to tell him that the death penalty is a bad idea would they no.. and all the terrorists would be dead already. Saddam would deffinately be anti terrorism if he was president of the united states!"

Out of his Mouth:"[I]t's a myth to think I don't know what's going on. It's a myth to think that I'm not aware that there's opinions that don't agree with mine, because I'm fully aware of that." — Philadelphia, Dec. 12, 2005

In his Head: "if this is true, then i'm gonna have these people branded traitors and strung up, y'all."

Out of his Mouth: “The relations with, uhh — Europe are important relations, and they've, uhh — because, we do share values. And, they're universal values, they're not American values or, you know — European values, they're universal values. And those values — uhh — being universal, ought to be applied everywhere." —George W. Bush, at a press conference with European Union dignitaries, Washington, D.C., June 20, 2005

In his Head: “God, I hope this isn’t a trick question. Europe’s not one of those Arab countries, is it?”

Out of his Mouth: "I mean, there was a serious international effort to say to Saddam Hussein, you're a threat. And the 9/11 attacks extenuated that threat, as far as I—concerned." — Philadelphia, Dec. 12, 2005

In his Head: "yeah, alright! how'd you four-eyed varmints like THAT?"

Out of his Mouth: "I think it's important to bring somebody from outside the system, the judicial system, somebody that hasn't been on the bench and, therefore, there's not a lot of opinions for people to look at." —George W. Bush, on the nomination of Harriet Miers to the Supreme Court, Washington, D.C., October 4, 2005

In his Head: "If the judge looks stupider then I am I wont look so stupid because every one will think the judge is smart cause they are a judge and if they are smart I must be smarter, HAH!"

Out of his Mouth: "And Brownie, you're doing a heck of a job." — To FEMA director Mike Brown who resigned 10 days later amid criticism over his job performance.—Mobile, Ala., Sept. 2, 2005

In his Head: "heh, brownie. what a swell guy - i love that guy!"

Out of his Mouth: “It seemed like to me they based some of their decisions on the word of — and the allegations — by people who were held in detention, people who hate America, people that had been trained in some instances to disassemble — that means not tell the truth." —George W. Bush, on an Amnesty International report on prisoner abuse at Guantanamo Bay, Washington, D.C., May 31, 2005”

In his Head: “I’m so going to fire this speech writer. He can’t even spell ‘disassemble’. I mean, ‘dissemble’, seriously, where did this guy to college?”

Out of his Mouth: "No question that the enemy has tried to spread sectarian violence. They use violence as a tool to do that." — Washington

In his Head: "imagine if i didn't have my degree! this stuff is just BRILLIANT! i just don't understand why my nobel nomination hasn't come up yet *sigh*"

Out of his Mouth: “Because he's hiding." —George W. Bush, responding to a reporter who asked why Osama bin Laden had not been caught, aboard Air Force One, Jan. 14, 2005”

In his Head: “And I haven’t finished counting to 100 yet anyway.”

Out of his Mouth: "And I want those who are questioning it to step up and explain why all of a sudden a Middle Eastern company is held to a different standard than a Great British company." — Defending a plan to allow a company from the United Arab Emirates to manage ports in the United States, aboard Air Force One, Feb. 21, 2006

In his Head: "what has everybody got against the middle east?? that's not where all the trouble-makers are! damn racists!"

Out of his Mouth: "And I want those who are questioning it to step up and explain why all of a sudden a Middle Eastern company is held to a different standard than a Great British company." —George W. Bush, defending a plan to allow a company controlled by the United Arab Emirates to manage ports in the United States, aboard Air Force One, Feb. 21, 2006

In his Head: "please no one step up and say 'because you said so' pleeease"

Out of his Mouth: "I like my buddies from west Texas. I liked them when I was young, I liked them then I was middle-age, I liked them before I was president, and I like them during president, and I like them after president." — Nashville, Tenn., Feb. 1, 2006

In his Head:
"when i was young" : thinking of himself, young, playing cowboys and indians with other little children
"when i was middle-age" : ditto
"before i was president" : thinking of himself playing cowboys and indians with the people working on his campaign - missing his friends from west-texas
"during president" : thinking of his wonderful friends going off to iraq to fight for him, and looking forward to playing cowboys and indians with them when they get back
"after president" : "hah! i'm gonna be president for life!"

Out of his Mouth: “Do you have blacks, too?" —to Brazilian President Fernando Cardoso, Washington, D.C., Nov. 8, 2001

In his Head: “Do you want some?”

Out of his Mouth: "He was a state sponsor of terror. In other words, the government had declared, you are a state sponsor of terror." — On Saddam Hussein, Manhattan, Kan., Jan. 23, 2006

"why do i keep having to repeat myself??"

Out of his Mouth: “For every fatal shooting, there were roughly three non-fatal shootings. And, folks, this is unacceptable in America. It's just unacceptable. And we're going to do something about it." —Philadelphia, Penn., May 14, 2001

In his Head: “We’re gonna teach people to aim better.”

Out of his Mouth: "Those who enter the country illegally violate the law." —Tucson, Ariz., Nov. 28, 2005

In his Head:

"i can't make it clearer than that - these rats WILL be brought to justice!"

or

"and i AM the law!"

Out of his Mouth: "Because the—all which is on the table begins to address the big cost drivers. For example, how benefits are calculate, for example, is on the table; whether or not benefits rise based upon wage increases or price increases. There's a series of parts of the formula that are being considered. And when you couple that, those different cost drivers, affecting those—changing those with personal accounts, the idea is to get what has been promised more likely to be—or closer delivered to what has been promised. Does that make any sense to you? It's kind of muddled. Look, there's a series of things that cause the—like, for example, benefits are calculated based upon the increase of wages, as opposed to the increase of prices. Some have suggested that we calculate—the benefits will rise based upon inflation, as opposed to wage increases. There is a reform that would help solve the red if that were put into effect. In other words, how fast benefits grow, how fast the promised benefits grow, if those—if that growth is affected, it will help on the red."—Explaining his plan to save Social Security, Tampa, Fla., Feb. 4, 2005

In his Head:
"...

did i leave the gas on?

..."

So guy's, a little bit of strategy before the game is finally over. As soon as all of you tell me your best two I'll open voting for a week and we'll see who wins. Good Luck.

THE REST

This post is already way too long for anything else, and I'm way too busy. See ya tomorrow.

schpat out

A Very Short Post

2006-04-28T16:02:00.000+02:00

I have a love-hate relationship with these short weeks. On the love side I really did getting an extra day off which is really great, but on the hate side it means just as much work has to be done just in less time. Add to that the fact that a large proportion of my frustration at work centers around dealing with the effects of public holidays and also add the fact that there are fewer people in the office on a day like today with more work flowing my way and I think the hate side pip love to the post by a hair.

Anyway, I just wanted to punch out a quick reminder about the Bushism contest. Get your entries in by the time I get to work on Tuesday and you could win a R100 gift certificate for you favorite multimedia outlet. See the sidebar for details.

That Antarctic hit is still not showing up in the damn mappy thingy.

And because I love to bring you news of the bizaar, check out here how David Copperfied used his magical powers to avoid a mugging and nab the crooks.

schpat out

Happy Birthday Mr Meltdown

2006-04-26T15:07:00.000+02:00

As Zenstar already pointed out in his hawsome blog, today is the 20th anniversary of the Chernobyl incident, but I already knew that. Earlier today I was lucky enough to witness a protest march organised by Earthlife Africa. It was a rather comical to see a bunch of hippies, with absolutely no understanding of the actual science involved campaigning, to stop a new nuclear reactor planned by Eskom. Their placards (not Picards) were emblazoned with slogans like "Remember Chernobyl" and "3,5 million are still suffering". That reminded me of an article about how well mother nature had recovered from the incident and that the area is now thriving due to the lack of human interference. Admittedly the article did come out of the ex-world champion propaganda state, they are now totally out-matched by the Bush administration.

The hippies are so amusing, yet all fanatics are dangerous. I have no idea how they arrived at the 3,5 million number, but even Green Peace only estimates that 270 000 cases of cancer will have been caused worldwide by the incident, of which 93 000 will prove fatal. Yet people still believe the erroneously scary numbers and are galvanized against the most efficient form energy known to man. At the extreme of this alternative kind of thinking you'll find people who can justify sabotaging a reactor to cause an incident in order to prove that it can be dangerous. Hell yeah the stuff is dangerous, but it's not particularly difficult to take measures that mitigate most of the risk. If these freaks were opposed to a reactor because they felt that South Africans were too incompetent to reliably manage one I might start to listen. If they claimed that the local industry to too incompetent but put forward a plan to rectify the situation I'd even go as far as saying that they were doing a good thing. However merely protesting for the sake of creating hysteria is very dangerous.

By the way, sabotage has nothing to do with French workers throwing their wooden shoes into the machines, Data had it wrong.

I promise we'll return to our regular format soon.

schpat out

My Excuse

2006-04-25T16:08:00.000+02:00

Andrian, my cat, also known as Andy, Bowsie, Porridge, the child and the C, had to be taken to the vet yesterday. He was limping and it turns out his whole leg is badly swollen and he's got a fever. I'm sure everything is going to turn out fine in the end but I'm actually quite worried. I hate it when he's not feeling well because there's no way for him to let me know and when I do notice something amiss I wonder how long it's been like that and he's just had to suffer with it. At least I can simply pop myself off to the doctor.

Taking him to the vet is a mission in itself. You see we're not allowed to have pets in flats where I live the body corporate is very strict, no animals in the building at all. So I have to hide "The C" every time we have to visit the animal doctor. This process involves sticking him in a cat box, then into a ridiculously oversized cardboard box and stuffing it with towels to muffle any noise that he does make. The I have to carry this huge, but insanely light box to the car. About five blocks away from the flat I take the cat carrier out of the big box and drive with him on the passenger seat to the vet. The whole process is repeated in reverse to get him back in, I don't actually walk backwards though. Needless to say it's quite stressful, more on Elisabeth and I than on him though.

Anyway Andy is at the vet again today and hence the short post, I'll be back tomorrow with more content.

But while we're talking about the Blog Contest. Ok we weren't but anyway. It appears that I made a small mistake by putting the wrong closing date in the sidebar. Well because I want to be fair to everyone I'll keep it that way. You now have until Sunday the 30th to get your Bushism translations in, I've had two entries so far but you still have a decent chance.

Also, if you read the comments you'll see that I've had a visitor from the Antarctic wastes. That completes my collection of visitors from every single continent on earth in one month. Unfortunately it seems that the ip address for the Amundsen-Scott Station is not actually registered in the Antarctic or ClusterMaps doesn't cater for displaying Antarctic hits. So no little red blip for me, but I had the visitor, thanks Blur.

schpat out

T.F.I.F

2006-04-21T15:22:00.000+02:00

Wow, it's been a bumper month for hits. I've gotten hits from six of the seven continents, but I'm working on getting one from that pesky cold one in the south. If anyone in Antarctica is reading this blog, thanks, my badgering has worked.

COMMENT

Yesterday I received a comment from Q.N.I.T.Y about the Brett Goldin. Here it is:

"Does anyone really care about Brett Goldin apart from his friends in the media. Funny thing is that on the same weekend that him and his friend were hijacked...four black men were killed in Nyanga not far from where Goldin and Bloom were killed...I saw a small news report but there weren't any calls for a return to the death penalty for their killers. Makes you think doesn't it?"

Well dude, here's the thing. Brett was a really funny dude and somebody who'd managed to do quite well for himself in the extremely small and tough South African entertainment industry. The fact that he'd achieved some small degree of fame doesn't make his story any more important than the multitude of other atrocities committed in South Africa every day, it simply makes it more newsworthy. Newsworthiness is based almost entirely on how many newspapers the story will sell, or how many people will tune into the television news to see it. Remember that the people running your information outlets are in it for the money, not the greater good of mankind, and just so that we're clear on this issue: there's nothing wrong with that. Brett's story is getting more coverage than the guys in Nyanga because, hell, that's a routine event. It's really sad to say this but that kind of shit happens all the time, everyone is totally desensatised to it, while the execution style murder of two rich white guys doesn't happen every day.

Is it sad that four people having been beaten to death is not that surprising? Yes of course it is, but while our judicial system does nothing to stop this kind of violence it will continue to happen. One of the reasons people continue to commit violent crime is that there is simply no threat of consequence, ever hear of the Ring of Gyges. This goes beyond there not being a death penalty and speaks to various issues on law enforcement and the lack thereof, but lack of adequate punishment is one of the key factors. Personally I feel that all senseless acts of violence should be very strongly punished. And, if you read my blog, I really didn't advocate the death penalty at all, it's way too easy. Put them in high security prisons and force them to do hard labor, no work no food. The excuse often given for lack of any serious prison time is overcrowding, this is also the reason that every year hundreds of prisoners are released before they've served their full sentence. Put them in a fucking hole and make them mine highly radioactive substances, have you seen 'The Fortress'?

[ed note: the term "fucking hole" is ambiguous, in this case it means a hole in the mother fucking ground. Although once they get there I'm sure they'll experience loads of the other kind too]

But Q.N.I.T.Y, saying that Brett Goldin is somehow less important than all the others and that people should be less sympathetic simply because he's getting more news coverage than something which has become almost a routine event is ludicrous. What happened to Brett and his friend was horrible and I feel sick to my stomach that shit like this happens.

Basically it boils down to this: don't make assumptions about how people feel and, if you truly don't care about what happened to Brett and Richard I submit that the problem lies with you.

IN THE NEWS

Here is a smattering of stories I thought some people out there might find INTERESTING.

A farmer is stunned after a chicken apparently had a spontaneous sex change.

Be careful when planning your next cell phone upgrade, you may just have to get a TV license for it.

This old dude in Florida (is that tautology?) went door to door around his local area telling people he was from the local hospital and offering free breast exams. He got caught when he tried to up the ante and move to genital exams.

CONTEST UPDATE

For most of you this will be the last opportunity for you to enter the contest. Entries close when I get into work on monday at around 9am. See the sidebar for details.

MOVIE I WATCHED RECENTLY

The third and final movie I caught over the easter weekend was 'Kiss Kiss, Bang Bang', it was so cool. It's a really original take on the old private detective genre, not a lot of action, a little predictable but really fun to watch. Val Kilmer and Robber Downey Jr give really great performances, also there's a bit of eye candy in the form of Michelle Monaghan. It was really enjoyable and while not a "Must See" an entertaining diversion, and what more can you really ask for.

that's it, schpat out.

Almost Home Time

2006-04-20T17:35:00.000+02:00

I hate finding a way to introduce my blog entries. There I've done it. Onto the content.

Last night I took part in a 45 player poker tournament on PokerStars, and finished third. This was despite going down to T$235 in the second level on a really crappy suck out. If you're interested you can read about that hand later, if not then just skip that section.

I think I played well in that game eventually going out by taking my AQ up against AK in third for a 600% profit.

Remember that poker is happening in the Kramer Quad on middle campus UCT on saturday at around 12:00. Also there's going to be a R35 satellite the R10 000 tournament next week, I'm definitely going to be playing in that.

A FUNNY THING HAPPENED AT THE OFFICE

Yes, this time it wasn't a bottle of granadilla juice that set off a chain of hilarious events, but a crap excel spread sheet with word puzzles claiming to be MENSA test. The puzzles took the form of "26 L of the A" with a solution of "26 letters of the alphabet". It was sent to everyone is my department by this guy who regularly send out crap emails about things like flesh eating banana bugs or weird coincidences that prove the universe is connected in strange and unbelievable ways or even amazing pictures of unlikely real life situations. These kind of emails generally just irritate me and sending back pages from Snopes and telling him to check his sources before sending this crap out.

Not being very good with these kind of word games I cheated a bit, broke the very simple protection on the spread sheet and found the hidden answers. In short order I copied and pasted all the correct answers into the spread sheet and mailed it back. Apparently getting more that 19 of the 30 correct indicated a genius level IQ, so I renamed the file "Imagenius.xls". This all took about five minutes and everybody in on the joke, three people, had a great laugh while this guy sat totally amazed, checking that I'd actually gotten them all right.

Fucking Hilarious

NEWS

There's no news today, this post is being written really late and I've got to go somewhere. Q.N.I.T.Y has made an interesting comment about the Brent Goldin shooting. I promise I'll have something to say about it tomorrow, I just don't have enough time right now.

CONTEST

Well, You've still got until Sunday to get your Bushism translations to me. Mail them to schpat@gmail.com and you could stand a chance of winning a R100 Gift Certificate.

THAT POKER HAND

Blinds were T$15/T$30, my chip stack was T$1275, I was in Late Position and dealt AKo. The player directly after the BB (mdartist) called for T$30 and it was folded to me. I put in a 1xBB raise and made it $60 to go. The SB and BB both call. The flop is

3d 3s Ts

The action is checked to me and being the last one to act I stick in a half pot sized bet of T$120. The reason I do this because I know that the flop has not made anybodies hand. If it had they would have bet, they're not just going to leave a flush draw sitting on the table to suck out on their pair of T's, set of 3's, set of T's. The only hand that they would not have minded getting drawn out on was quad 3's and the with the likelihood of that, they deserve to get paid. The SB and BB fold but mdartist senses a little weakness in the smallish bet and pushes his entire stack of T$830. Now in this guy had been in almost every hand since the beginning, only winning one of the in a showdown and in the last three hands he's pushed all in twice to steal the blinds on the flop. I decided to call him.

He shows 58o, I mean who the fuck shoves their entire hand on 58o with a flop like that and an aggressive bettor. He has no chance of having the high card so he's obviously hoping to make a pair which is a 7.5:1 shot with one card to come and 3:1 with two to come. Even with a 3:1 shot his pot odds where 0.7:1 and implied odds where 2.7:1, that's what he would have got if I'd called. Now if you're playing the odds you make sure that there is an overlay, your pot or implied odds must be greater than your chance of making a hand. Now I didn't work all those stats out in my head then, I just put them together now to show how bad a decision this guy made, he was obviously either gambling or, more likely, trying to make me fold. I suspected as much and that's why I called his bet, I had the better hand and my chances of winning were 75%, it was a good play. That's why it's even more frustrating when the turn came up a 5 and my hand didn't improve on the river. All In Arse Monkey sucked me out.

Well the very next hand I was dealt AKs and pushed, got two callers, including mdartist, and tripled up. I sat out a hand and was then dealt KK, I pushed on the flop and got 3 callers, again including mdartist. Woot Quadrupled my money. Two Hands later mdartist when out when his A6o whent up against AKs, it's just a pitty it wasn't me that took him out. That's what you get for being an AIAR!

Like I said I ended up third in the tournament and won $7 for a $6 profit, rock.

A MOVIE I WATCHED RECENTLY

The second movie I watched over easter was 'Monty Python's Holy Grail'. I know a lot of people are going to hate me for this, but I really didn't enjoy it that much. I've seen it about five times before, so the silliness was just silly and not really all that funny. Even the Witch = Duck didn't crack a smile. If you haven't seen this one, go rent it, otherwise it's not much funnier the second time round. I'd far rather recommend you get 'The Life of Brian' or 'The Meaning of Life'. In case you're wondering 'The Meaning of Life' is the better of the two.

That's about it for me

schpat out

Crazy Monkey Dude Shot

2006-04-18T16:28:00.000+02:00

Well I Couldn't Believe it! On my way into work this morning I heard on the radio that one of the Crazy Monkey guys had been shot. Brett Goldin, the little guy, and a friend were shot, execution style, after a party on Sunday Morning.

It's kinda weird because over the weekend I caught a re-run of a local sitcom that he guest stared in. I watched it lateish on Saturday night, probably hours before this guy, who is younger than me, was brutally murdered.

It seems the cops have suspects in custody, three of them will be appearing in court today. But the worst that is going to happen is that they'll be convicted and get like ten year prison terms.
I know that prison is not a pleasant place, but it's too good for these guys, the punishment should fit the crime damn it. Now a lot of people out there would be screaming to bring back the death penalty, not me. I'm not a big proponent of the death penalty, but only because there is so much worse that we can do. Hard fucking labor for the rest of their natural lives or maybe non-consensual organ donation. Make these people work in a sewage farm, or mine gold in the unstable shafts. Let them work with asbestos and radioactive materials. Send them on dangerous deep sea fishing voyages and walk giant treadmills to generate electricity. In the end they should truly pay for what they have done, not just live in a relative country club like atmosphere. Make them suffer while being forced to perform a useful function for society

IN THE NEWS

Well It seems that this is big news in the UK, but Obs Tattoo has been doing it for ages. Yet another example of a trend being set in Obs.

Iran and the states iran seem to be going to war. Nothing will stop bush if he decides he wants something. Then again talk about having 55,000 suicide bombers ready to go and you may just be getting yourself into some hot water.

So, what'll be new in sex toys over the next ten years? Julia Heiman, director of the Kinsey Institute claims virtual sex experience will be a reality by 2016. Yes folks we're looking into the field of teledildonics. One purveyor of such goods claims that his customers are simply "blown away".

It's good to know that Freak Shows are alive and well. The worlds tallest man and the worlds second shortest man are apparently major attractions at an Afro-Asian Trade Exhibition held at the prestigious Pietermaritzburg Royal Show Grounds.

While this dude undoubtedly has a few screws loose I don't see the big problem. A British ex-paratrooper is trying to walk form the South America to England in an unbroken trip, the only problem is that he didn't get his passport stamped when entering Russia across the ice form Aslaska. I mean seriously?

CONTEST UPDATE

You have all been bad contestants. Loads of you voted for this contest and now that you have a chance to enter, and win R100, you've not submitted any entries. C'mon guys, let's see some funny here.

Also, go out and pimp the contest on your blogs and to your friends. The more interest generated the more fun it'll be.

BLOW BUSH

Well, I thought I'd tie into the contest on this one.

MOVIE I WATCHED RECENTLY

I watched a couple of movies over the weekend but I'm going to spread them out a little. The first one I watched was "Levity". With Big Name actors like Billy Bob Thornton, Morgan Freeman, Holly Hunter and Kirsten Dunst what do you expect? Brilliance. Some people might find it slow, and almost predictable, but it does as good a job as possible to avoid these. Ultimately the main theme is Redemption but I don't want to give too much away. This movie has everything you could ask for in a drama, except gratuitous nudity. The story progression and character development is great. If you enjoy a good drama you will not be disappointed by 'Levity'.

Well that's it folks, don't forget about poker this weekend.

schpat out

Just another Wednesday

2006-04-12T14:59:00.000+02:00

Well, not much happened overnight, but incase you haven't been paying attention I've been married for a week.

I did see this rather amusing comic over at Yirmumah. Check it out. It's about luxuries for prisoners, god that sucks.

IN THE NEWS

Ok, I've heard some doozies in my day but the latest from the SPCA on the destruction of breeding birds on Robben Island takes the cake. Apparently it's carnivorous bunnies and not cats ravaging the avian population of the historical island. Read the story, flesh eating rabbits, lol.

Also, according to a study performed by an African think tank, African Security Dialogue and Research, Africa is not spending enough on defense. Apparently the study comes after some European countries are tell African leaders that they will only increase aid if defense spending is cut. I mean what is this defense spending for? Do they seriously think they can defend themselves from the super powers. Seriously they should subcontract their defense, to the USA. It's a brilliant idea, they pay a small premium every year and if somebody (like a backward African neighbor) fucks with them the USA come and sorts the shit out. Honestly just the threat of the USA on their ass is probably a good enough deterrent for invasion.

Our esteemed minister of health has done it again. Manto is now blaming the media for the failure of her advanced anti-AIDS campaign. Apparently over zealous reporting of how JZ took a shower to rid himself of the AIDS virus is to blame for derailing years of advocating garlic and African potatoes.

CONTEST

Ok folks, I haven't had any contest submissions yet. Do I need to remind you that you can win an actual prize on this thing?

I know that the lack of entries has nothing to do with difficulty finding "Bushisims", and to prove my point here is a list of ten rather funny ones, with references.

10) "Families is where our nation finds hope, where wings take dream." —LaCrosse, Wis., Oct. 18, 2000

9) "I know how hard it is for you to put food on your family." —Greater Nashua, N.H., Jan. 27, 2000

8) "I hear there's rumors on the Internets that we're going to have a draft." —second presidential debate, St. Louis, Mo., Oct. 8, 2004

7) "You work three jobs? … Uniquely American, isn't it? I mean, that is fantastic that you're doing that." —to a divorced mother of three, Omaha, Nebraska, Feb. 4, 2005

6) "Too many good docs are getting out of the business. Too many OB-GYNs aren't able to practice their love with women all across this country." —Poplar Bluff, Mo., Sept. 6, 2004

5) "There's an old saying in Tennessee — I know it's in Texas, probably in Tennessee — that says, fool me once, shame on — shame on you. Fool me — you can't get fooled again." —Nashville, Tenn., Sept. 17, 2002

4) "I know the human being and fish can coexist peacefully." —Saginaw, Mich., Sept. 29, 2000 (Listen to audio clip)

3) "They misunderestimated me." —Bentonville, Ark., Nov. 6, 2000

2) "Rarely is the questioned asked: Is our children learning?" —Florence, S.C., Jan. 11, 2000

1) "Our enemies are innovative and resourceful, and so are we. They never stop thinking about new ways to harm our country and our people, and neither do we." —Washington, D.C., Aug. 5, 2004

So go on give it a try.

FUNNY PIC

POKER UPDATE

Some of you folks would already have read this announcement but for those of you who are not on the relevant mailing list:

I know we were supposed to be playing poker this weekend, but due to many people being unable to make it I've moved it to Saturday the 22nd. I'm not sure what the venue will be but I'll let you folks know next week.

The plan is to play a No Limit Texas Hold 'Em cash ring game. So you can join any time and cash out at any time. Play will probably start at about 12ish or maybe 1ish.

Another large tournament has been announced on www.poker.org.za and is happening at the end of the month (the 30th). The buy-in is R300 and first place pays R10,000. Now R300 is a lot of cash for casual players like us, but we'd still like to get a chance to play for the big money. To try and give people a chance I'm busy negotiating with the organisers so that I can run a satellite for their tournament. If I can work out the details the satellite will be a small tournament for ten people with an entry fee of R35, the winner will get a place in the R10,000 tourney and runner up will get R50.

I'd like to run the satellite later in the afternoon on Saturday the 22nd and depending on feed back I may run two. If you're interested please let me know, places are limited to ten people per satellite. This is a chance to win R10,000 off of a R35 stake, a very tempting offer.

I'd also like to make this month's game a "Bring a friend to Poker" event. So go out and recruit people to join us.

If anybody has any questions just drop me a line

MOVIE I WATCHED RECENTLY

I rented "A history of violence" the other day. The movie had great potential, but ended up predictable and boring. None of the real issues in the movie ever got tackled and from a promising start the movie ended as teh suck. Do me a favor, when you watch this movie get to the last scene with Ed Harris and stop watching, your mind will end the story better than the writer and director did.

Anyway, that's it

schpat out.

Altworld

2006-04-11T13:22:00.000+02:00

Anyway, back to usual blogging goodness for me. Work is quite hectic, thank god it's only a four day week, I don't think I could handle my first one back being five whole days of soul destroying drudgery.

You know, while on honeymoon I had a rather nice massage, from a legitimate therapist dumbass. No, there was no happy ending. That massage left me sore as shit. I couldn't believe how good it felt while the young lady was rubbing her peppermint and lavender oil lubed hands all over my body and how stiff and sore I was the next morning. A day later I felt really super good though. The tension from about a year and a half at work without a decent break had been properly erased by that girls powerful and talented digits.

An interesting aside though. After the massage the wonderfully talented young thing told both Elisabeth and I top drink a large glass of water to dissolve any toxins released during the lymph drainage part. Now I complied with the instruction, but mostly because I was thirsty after an hour and a half of going "mmm", "aahhh" and "OH MY GOD THAT FEELS GOOD!". Then we took a little nap and when we woke for supper we both felt dreadful, Elisabeth was affected worse than I was and felt really shitty. Wow, we thought, they release of toxin thing really did happen, maybe all the other stuff about reflexology, homeopathy and food allergies held a little truth too I thought.

Well that was until a day or so later when I was in the Ladismith computer shop having my memory card copied to CD and I happened to mention how hot and dry it was. "Yes" said the tannie behind the counter, "the drought is so bad that you can't even drink the water!".

"What?"

"Ja, if you don't drink bottled water you'll get sick".

Case solved.

schpat out

PS: Don't forget the contest, entries close on the 30th.

Reports of my bachelorhood have been greatly exaggerated

2006-04-10T17:23:00.000+02:00

Well folks, sorry about the not posting for a week, but I was on leave from work so that I could get married. It was a really wonderful day and my bride, Elisabeth if you were wondering, was beautiful. I'll post a picture or two tomorrow.

I've had a lot of congratulatory calls and stuff but what is most surprising is that people are congratulating me in the comments of this blog. That's surprising in a good way people. It just shows that even though people know me personally and have my email address and my cell number we're all part of this great big blog community. It's cool.

Anyway I'm probably going to get back to proper posting tomorrow but until then I'll announce the winner of the blog contest contest, contest... contest. And the winner is: TotalWaste with suggestion "H"

Best translation from one of george w.'s speeches into "what george was thinking when he said this"

Well done TW, please let me know where I can buy your gift certificate online, or if you're happy to have it handed over to you at the same time as your salty liquorice.

Now that that one is over people you can all go out and find a GW quote and "translate" it. As usual send your entries to schpat at gmail dot com . Any body can enter, that you too TW, entries will be open until the 30th April, winner will be decided by vote and again the prize will be a R100 gift certificate for your favorite multimedia store.

Good Luck All

Schpat Out

Smoke On The Water

2006-03-30T16:25:00.000+02:00

Fire In The Sky

Wow the symphony of fire was really HAWSOME.

We met my family (extended) at the power boat club at around 19:00 after fighting our way through unbelievable traffic and almost impossible parking. We had to act quickly as the tide was going out and the boat wouldn't be able to get out of the harbor during the spring low. The problem was that my parents hadn't quite arrived yet. It was touch and go for a few moments but eventually they arrived and we got under way.

The weather was really great, nice and warm and almost zero wind. We anchored our boat and started the drinking and snacking. Only problem was that nobody had brought any drinks. Through a comedy of errors everybody thought they were bringing the food and the others were bringing the drinks. The snacks were great by the way. We managed to barter some of our excellent snacks for a few cans of cool drink and I had brought four mini bottles of champagne so in the end we got sorted out. Then the pyro show started.

ZOMFG!!!!!

We couldn't hear the music and out vantage point wasn't the best (we were kinda looking at the side of the show so a lot of the effects were hidden behind others) but being out on the open water with loved ones made it all worth while. It was so cool

I took hundreds of pictures, but the long shutter speed required didn't exactly sync well with the motion of the ocean and the overlapping of effects didn't help either. Still, a couple of shots came out really nicely. I personally think that one of my best was when I used the flash which filled the foreground and still captured the fireworks in the background, the foreground was my cousin and her boyfriend sitting on the bow of the boat cuddling while watching the show. It was just perfect, my depth of field was just right and everything was in focus, I even managed to keep the camera still for the 40th of a second the shutter was up and the framing was decent too. The only problem is that my cousin's damn thong is showing something mad and ruins an otherwise technically perfect shot. Total bummer (pun unintentional).

The show lasted for 30 min and got so loud at the end that my ears were ringing, I think we floated closer during the show, so close that the smell of explosives was overpowering. Afterwards we generally floated a bit and had a mini party.

The tide was still to low to take the boat out of the water but lucky my uncle had thought ahead and booked a berth at a fancy floating caravan park.

Here are some of the fancy floating caravans

I'm not joking, it's just like a caravan park, there's a place when you plug you floating caravan in and ablution blocks and everything. The only difference is that the ablution blocks have 2ply tp.

I had great fun and even as I sit and type this it feels like I'm swaying back and forth. It's weird and making me feel kinda sick actually.

IN THE NEWS

The judge in JZ's rape trial says that he can not kick the case out, he has stated that according to the evidence presented JZ will be found guilty if the defense does not put forward a convincing case. In light of the fact the the defense has played almost every card available to them this bodes not well for the exc-dep-prez.

This article reads more like a resume for bachelor number one than a description of the new director general of the NIA. It's kinda weird that they think the fact that he like whiskey and golf are hard hitting news.

In a wild turnaround Cosatu has spoken out in support of Helen Zille's halt on awarding contracts for the 2010 stadium. But Cosatu is famous for changing their minds, especially on the matter of their support for JZ. When you consider that the total bill for the 2010 event is going to be well over R250Bl or roughly half the entire countries governmental budget you've got to ask if we can really afford it.

I don't normally quote whole news stories but this one I just have to.

Berlin - German police discovered a truant teenager at home in bed with her boyfriend after a neighbour spotted a man climbing into her window and reported a burglary, authorities said on Wednesday.

Thinking he had witnessed a break-in, the neighbour called police, who sped towards the would-be crime scene with their siren blaring.

When officers arrived, the girl's mother told them the room belonged to her 15-year-old daughter who was at school.

Further investigation revealed the mother was wrong.

"She wasn't looking at school books, she was in bed with her boyfriend and was presumably learning something else," Frankfurt police said in a statement.

"Further investigation revealed the mother was wrong." and "presumably learning something else" are just priceless lines.

WELL THAT'S ALL

You've had enough pictures and I haven't seen any movies lately so all I'm going to do is remind you to vote for your favorite contest and the leave. Vote for your favorite, at the moment two of the contenders are exactly even with a rather significant portion of the votes, only you guys can change the outcome. Send me your votes.

schpat out.

Straight is the new Gay

2006-03-29T16:40:00.000+02:00

Yep, I said it, you heard it here first, spread the word. Answers.com describes the Retrosexual as : "the antithesis of the metrosexual: a man with an undeveloped aesthetic sense who spends as little time and money as possible on his appearance and lifestyle".

Men are sick and tired of having to worry about their hair and skin. They're giving up learning to be sensitive and know when to cry in movies. Men are reclaiming their sexuality, John Wayne, Jack Palance and Telly Savalace would be proud. Chuck Norris started this thing and we're gona ride the wave to the end.

IN THE NEWS

Is this the end of D-TV? ICASA has developed and released a set of codes to be used by broadcasting and telecommunication providers when providing services to disabled people.

There's more controversy around Helen Zille placing a one week stop to the appointment of consultants for the Green Point Stadium Rebuild. Ebrahim Rasool is upset that she showed "no patience" on the issue, mmm her saying let's wait a week until we see proper financial models, I wonder what that was. Remember that the price tag of R1Bil is the whole of the City's budget for the year, the MayCo was told that the city would have to come up with "creative ways" to raise the cash. I've got a few ideas, and they all tie in with item B on the contest list.

If you want a story about a special kind of crazy, check this out. Johan Huibers is building himself an ark. Yes you read right, he's building a full size, scale replica (I don't get it either) of the biblical escape pod.

In their infinite wisdom the powers that be have declared that next time there is a storm in New Orleans shelters will not be provided. This is in a effort to make it "more attractive" for people to leave than it is to stay. I don't know if this is going to work, there's always the promise of looting.

They've done it again. In a continued attempt to get me to visit Las Vegas another attraction has been added. In addition to awesome shows, gambling, quick marriages and Pink(tm) strip clubs Now they have the largest buffet on earth, and it only costs $7.50 or about R 45. Powers failing, must resist.

In France a cosmetics factory was robbed of 10 000 jars of L'Oreak RevitaLift. The cops are on the look out for a well organised group of hardened criminals, with soft skin.

Ever doubted that there was a market for everything and anything? Well it's true, apparently you can even buy truckloads of raw sewerage. Not in enough shit? Buy some of ours.

YOGA
In India

In Australia

TONIGHT'S FESTIVITIES

It's been confirmed, I'm going to see the Symphony of Fire on my uncle's boat tonight. It's totally going to rock. Snacks, Alcohol and Pyrotechnics how could it get any better? So I gotta leave a little early today to prepare for that one. Coolies

schpat out

Interesting Times

2006-03-28T17:15:00.000+02:00

Tonight I've got my game which I'm really excited about, it'll be really fun to actually get a session in tonight, I hope it happens. I found out that I may or may not be having an interesting evening tomorrow, but details are sketchy so I'll let you know tomorrow.

Well I missed out on the news section last time to here's a real bumper edition.

IN THE NEWS

Telkom promises us that even though 5000 of their workers will be on strike it will not effect their service in any way. Telkom spokesperson Charlotte Mokoena said that it was because "none of them did any work anyway". She didn't actually, but would have if she was being truthful.

Oh boo hoo. Red squirrels in the UK are dying out because North American Grey Squirrels are taking over in their habitat. Disaster! Let me inform my loyal readers of something, squirrels are just rats with good PR. Besides if one species of squirrel wipes out another isn't that just natural selection in process? They are however suggesting that in order to stop the takeover you order a squirrel, that's on a plate. Yes make grey squirrels the new national food of the UK and the reds will survive. What's better, red or dead?

Well luck men living in London, Los Angeles and Las Vegas may be in for a treat. Hot-Rocker-Chick Pink apparently wants to open a string of strip joints that she may even dance in herself. Some reckon that she's turning to stripping to make ends meet but a source close to her assures that it's because she loves erotic dance. You go girl!

Well I don't know if any of you rember Brett Kebble, he was a very rich mining magnate who was killed "execution style" in his car last September. Well guess what, it appears he had leant a metric fuckpile of his shareholder's cash to the ANC. Of course he also "lent" millions to some individual ANC heavyweights much in the same way that Shabir Shiek "lent" JZ some cash. This comes to light after a forensic audit into his affairs.

Room with a view? Well in Brooklyn you could get the same thing, with additional bars. Developers have suggested tearing down an old prison and replacing it with a shopping centre and apartment block, and putting another prison on top of all that. Weird. And speaking of prisons, this one is more of a vacation camp.

Wow, the "Third Force" or "Mysterious Guy" argument is getting a lot of air play recently. First Koeberg and now the bugging of individuals and opposition parties. This is not the first time that the DA have been bugged either. I not sure which is scarier, the fact that the NIA was able to spy on people without the government's knowledge or the fact that they may have been authorised.

Included as part of the above story is the whole hoax email saga. An interesting take on this story is that it provides instant "get out of jail free" cards for anybody in the government ever implicated to anything via email. It won't be long till faxes and letter get the same treatment. If Alec Irwin get's his way television footage will also be discredited. It looks like Billy Masetlha, who was head of the NIA until he was fired because of the debacle, is taking Thabo to court for unfair dismissal, should be fun.

Sleeping with the enemy. JZ has now hired some lawyers to battle against the media. He's claiming that the media is part of a plot to prevent him from becoming the next president. His team is headed by an ex conservative party MP, the man who defended they guys that killed Chris Hani in the 90's. I suppose situations like this can result in strange bed fellows. (just to be clear here, I'm not saying the JZ sexually assaulted his legal team, only that they got into bed together, in a figurative sense).

What do you get when you cross a pig and a round worm? No, not a porker can run a maze (see the SchpatDope), but a rather bacon that's good for your heart. Yes that's right, they've made pigs that produce omega fatty acids.

Even fine art is cashing in on movie tie-ins. A new exhibit if Leonardo Da Vinci's work that will tour across Europe has been launched. do you think it's coincidence that the movie "That Da Vinci Code" is to be released soon?

In a brave move new mayor Helen Zille has stopped further spending on the upgrade of Green Point Stadium until cost and funding issues can be sorted out. While I agree that the city doesn't need a one Billion Rand soccer stadium I think a lot of voters won't see it that way. It's kind of ironic that it's the same people who will benefit most from a billion rand spent on housing and service delivery that will complain the most about not getting a brand new soccer stadium.

What do you do when you crash the Ferrari you are test driving, of course you blame the pretty woman you were trying to impress. Duh.

If you read all this: Pass go, collect Two Hundred.

WHILE WE'RE NOT ON THE SUBJECT

Ok, so you all know by now that JZ's Lawyers are trying to get the case of rape against him thrown out of court. There latest argument is that the victim didn't say no... enough. They seem to have no problem admitting that she told JZ to leave her alone multiple time during the night, they have no problem admitting that she said no when he offered her a massage, but what they do have a problem with is that after he ignored her and performed the massage anyway she did not say no when he stripped her naked and had sex with her. My god people? Maybe she just realised that he was ignoring everything she was asking him to do.

Fuck, since when does a women have to say no multiple times before it actually becomes an answer in the negative? This dude is so obviously guilty that the defense, a highly regarded advocate, has nothing to work with and is simply grasping at straws. And to think that this man could have been our next President.

Unfuckingbelievable.

CONTEST

Votes are rolling in, rember that you only have until Monday morning to make your voice heard. Please show a little love for those that contributed and lets give them some votes.

JESUS KNOWS HOW TO HOLD 'EM

Yes these poker chips actually exist, scary aint it?

WHAT A RIDE

Well I haven't seen any movies lately so I'll tell you about another spectacle I witnessed on Friday night. I had to leave work a little early to run an errand and on my way home, just before hospital bend, I was passed by a bus from the Glendale Home for the Jewish Handicapped. Now that's not a home for gentiles or Judaisticly Challenged, but rather for handicapped Jewish folk, normally of the mentally challenged variety. Ok, I'm going to stop getting myself into trouble and pull myself out of the quagmire of political correctness by pointing you to their website here, and to think that this is all just background.

Anyway I was driving home and this bus full of mentally challenged individuals drove past and they all looked really happy and I thought "wow, that's so cool that people are looking after them and that they are happy", and I waved, and they smiled and waved back. It was really heartwarming and almost a life affirming type moment. It left me feeling quite good, like a movie starring Steve Martin would.

This would be a great story if it ended there, unfortunately it doesn't. About a minute later I heard a almighty screeching of tires as the Glendale bus drove straight into the back of a slow moving vehicle so hard that the impacted car somehow ended up on two wheels driving across three lanes of traffic and back before finally coming to rest against the barrier. This all happened about a twenty meters in front of me and the traffic was moving way too fast for me to stop. I did see in passing that the people in the bus had instantly gone from waving and smiling to crying and sobbing. It made me feel bad in movie starring Adrian Brody kind of way. When I passed the car the driver was slumped over the wheel and not moving, I did all I could and called an ambulance.

Does it make me a bad person for wondering if they had let one of the handicapped drive the bus? No, but making a joke about it would. Shit. In mitigation of my horrible sense of humor I did phone the home and they told me than none of the passengers were injured.

on that downer I leave you

schpat out

Now with title

2006-03-27T17:16:00.000+02:00

Well it's been a really busy weekend. I've gotten up to so much stuff that I can't remember everything. And today's the big day so without any further ado, here is .....

CONTEST UPDATE

Finally, the day is here, I get to reveal all the entries that various people have submitted for the blog contest. It's quite a long list with lots of really good ideas, I was very impressed by the quality of the ideas, and I'm really looking forward to the quality of the entries for the topic chosen, it doesn't matter which one it is, they're all ubercool. Here they are in no particular order.

A) Coolest photo contest where people need to send you the coolest photo of themselves doing something.

B) The most suitable / inventive punishment for badly behaved government officials.

C) People send you the coolest postcard they can find and the best one wins the prize.

D) best usage for cold pizza / burrito / coleslaw / cold coleslaw and burrito pizza.

E) Hawsome invention essay competition where people have to think up a really cool invention and write an essay on what it does, how it works, and what makes it totally hawsome.

F) Most entertaining verifiable personal story.

G) Coolest weblink competition. People have to find really interesting websites and send you the links. the best one wins.

H) Best translation from one of george w.'s speeches into "what george was thinking when he said this"

I) A BlemeSpread competition where people create their own bleme and spread it by pinging only 4 other blogers. Blogger with the biggest bleme wins.

J) Most ______ photo taken with a public monument (the blank is blank on purpose)

Wow there sure are a lot of entries. Ok folks, choose one and send your vote, by letter, to schpat (at) gmail (dot) com. By doing this you'll be helping one of the contributors walk away with a gift certificate for R100, call it your charity work for the week. C'mon folks, show your love.

BROKEBACK BUSH

IN THE NEWS

No news is good news and I didn't have time to gather anything interesting for you today, sorry. With any luck this service will resume shortly. In the mean time I present another amusing picture to keep you amused.

MOVIES

This weekend I was so busy I didn't have any time to watch movies. I did start watching "Girl Interrupted" which looks very cool and I'm looking forward to seeing the rest of it. Other than that I've not got much to say. I may play in a 45 player MTT on PokerStars tonight that I may or may not live blog for you folks to read. If I do play I'll finally have earned enough Frequent Player Points to get myself a PokerStars cap, cool.

schpat out

ps: Oh, I almost forgot. My brother went to the Colab and apparently had a great time. He told me how he was in the front row and James Hatfield said his hair looked cool (bright red mohawk) and afterwards gave him his plectrum. r0><><0r11!!!!111

pss: vote for the contest!

Just a quickie

2006-03-24T13:44:00.000+02:00

Yep, been busy, leaviong early today, still getting something out for my loyal readers.

IN THE NEWS

You know how sometimes I get angry about stuff, well here's a prime example. A four year old boy was fatally beaten for refusing to call his mother's lesbian lover "daddy". The child was so badly beaten that both his legs were broken. What's even worse is that the partner did this in front of three witnesses, two employees and the child's mother, who did nothing to stop her. At first the mother told doctors that the child had fallen in the bath, but experts say his injuries would be consistent with a 2 storey fall. Idiot Fuckers! How can you treat a child like that all because he refused to call you "daddy". If you're having sexual identity crisis that demands you kill four year olds for not doing something confusing and unnatural to them you need to be in a facility. :-#

After failing to enter negotiations with Nationwide Airways It looks like the SA Transport and Allied Workers' Union (Satawu) are resorting to the time honoured South African method for getting your way, they're claiming racisim.

Savanna Samson, a porn star, has recently launched an award winning wine. Critics assumed that the wine, adorned with a rather raunchy label featuring Samson, was merely a gimmick until it achieved a score of 91% from a top reviewer. That's no surprise when you find out about what I think is the more interesting part of the story, she hooked up with the Vatican's vintner to do it. I can see it now, wine for porn stars and popes.

A pair of stupid brothers have shelled out over 180k clams for the rarest bottle of whisky ever. Personally I don't believe that it's all that special, especially if you're not going to drink it. Ok, sorry they will open the bottle if someone offers to buy ten tots (one third) for R600k, madness. A bottle of hooch has no aesthetic qualities, it's value is in the flavour, go ahead... get your money's worth.

A Romanian mayor has gotten himself into some very hot water after hosting a party for women's day. Why so much trouble you ask? Because he hires male strippers to 'entertain' the ladies.

If any of you ladies have a fetish for very big men then get hold of Bao Xishun the worlds tallest man. He's out there, looking for love, much like Larry Laffer.

Wow a country where having an unlicensed dog is a big enough deal that they actually have inspectors to check up on you. It must be nice living in the Netherlands where we don't have to worry about rioting security guards, political sex scandals, government officials abusing the intelegence service to alter the outcome of their political parties succession battle or even our ex deputy president getting off a rape charge on a technicality. It would be nice wouldn't it?

LAST CHANCE TO WIN

Yes, those of you who only have interweb access during the week, it's your last day to get an idea to me for a contest. The coolest idea, as voted by the readers, wins a R100 gift certificate for their favourite multimedia outlet. Get cracking!

Those of you with home access have until monday morning to send me your submissions. send them to schpat at gmail dot com. Go on, you know you want to.

IT'S JUST A MOUSE

Today's pic can is a little risqué. It's not smutty, but looks it! I personally wouldn't like anybody to have just a passing glance at the picture on my screen so I've put a link to it that you can click on when few people, or likeminded people, are around. Enjoy.

THAT'S ME

Well folks, that's me for another week. I hope you enjoyed our time together, be sure to tune in next week for more thrills, spills and chills. Also Voting for the 'Contest' contest starts on monday, be there.

schpat out

Hectic Bru

2006-03-22T16:04:00.000+02:00

Wow work is totally hectic right now. 'Hectic Bru'... that's just the height of lame Cape Town isn't it?

There's not too much in the news that I want to comment about, all's quiet after the public holiday. The Donnald did have another child though, this one by his Slovenian model wife, hopefully the kid gets her hair and not his. Surely his other kids want him to stop, further children simply thin the inheitance pool.

I have a gash on my finger that really hurts, okay it's more of a scratch and not really hurting so much as annoying, but it's a really deep scratch.

CONTEST

Entries are hotting up, you are allowed to enter as many times as you like, your entries should be mailed to me (schpat at gmail dot com) and I'll be posting a full list on Monday. That's right, you have until monday at about lunch time to get your ideas for a contest in, but don't leave it until then you may just forget and miss out on the chance to win a R100 gift certificate. Do the math, it's money for nothing.

AND SPEAKING OF PUBLIC HOLIDAYS

Well I didn't know that 'Human Rights Day' was to commemorate the Sharpeville Massacre, I thought that was June 16 'Youth Day', so I looked it up. Of course I was wrong but I was very surprised to see that out of the 7 non-religious public holidays in South Africa 5 commemorate uprisings and protests, 1 freedom from minority oppression and 1 national heritage. One of the 5 commemorating uprisings is supposedly a day for all of the rainbow nation to reconcile and forgive each other. If reconciliation and forgiveness truly are the government's intention why then do we have so many opportunities for politicians to remind everyone how bad apartheid was, and how guilty white people should feel, scheduled right there on our calendars? It's because it helps keep the population focused on ancient history and united in the same way a common enemy unites people, thus avoiding the actual issues at hand and getting rid of a government that is doing nothing much for them. Hey it worked for the national part too, I'm just pointing the practice out.

FUNNY PIC

No pic for you, blogger is teh su><><0r

ANOTHER MOVIE

Last night I watched "The Prime Gig" a very cool movie starring Vince Vaughn. I'll admit, I love Vaughn, I've checked out his filmography and can't see a single movie I disliked, I think he is terrifically undervalued as an actor. The movie itself is relatively low budget and also stars Ed Harris. Set against a telemarketing backdrop we follow two weeks in the life of a top sales man. Obviously there's more than that, there's conflict and consequence and some really good acting, not all the reviews I've read complimented the movie but I enjoyed it and don't think I wasted my time. If you don't see this movie though you should check out "Blackball", a British movie about lawn bowls starring Vaughn as a overachieving sports agent, it was really funny.

Anyway, that's it for today.

Schpat Out

Monday Round-Up

2006-03-20T18:32:00.000+02:00

Thanks for taking the time to read my miserable attempt at playing in a poker tournament, I'm much too tight and weak, I'm gonna fix that though, here's what you'll find in this issue:

News, Contest, A movie I watched last night.... Read On

THERE SURE IS A LOT OF NEWS

But is it porn? Spencer Tunick, famous for his large group nudes is at it again, this time he's doing in Caracas around a statue of Simon Bolivar, a revolutionary who happens to have one of my favorite cigars named after him. Nudity, Cigars, C[a]rac(k)as(s)? It's porn right?

Wow, proactive Policing in South Africa. Not what we've come to expect but I welcome it.

Have you paid to see Metallica or any of the other major acts at the Coca-Cola CoLab? What a lame name btw. Well you may be disappointed by your concert experience as Big Concerts have been accused of very poor organisation at the Tshwane (another lame name) event. One fan was quoted as saying: "The monumental incompetence of the organisers of this event is stupefying!". My brother is going here in Cape Town one so I hope things are better.

Does what these guys have done make them any better than those they did it to? Discuss.

There's a lot of technical language that I don't understand here, basically it's a story about the big bang and stuff. What I found interesting was that according to them the universe expanded "many trillion times its size in less than a trillionth of a second". Maybe I'm missing something here, but surely that mean that matter travled faster than the speed of light?

So to follow up Dan Brown is still in court. Do you think that's it's just coincidence that the whole Davinci Code thing is getting some more publicity just before the movie is released?

Yet more instances of corruption by senior government officials? I'm not sure, in some cases these could well be oversights, but I'm sure not in all of them. Hey guys, people are trusting you to run a country, you could at least get the small things right! I was going to say "We are trusting you" then I realised that I haven't put my trust in them at all.

Well apparently the arms deal wasn't a complete waste of time. The SA Navy will be ferrying the new rotor for Koeberg from france. So all is forgiven Tony, Shabir and Jacob. Let's just hope the numbnuts don't drop it overboard.

Speaking of Tony Yengeni (he got the free Merc, was convicted of corruption and hasn't gone to jail yet remember). Apparently he was racially victimised by an official at a Cape Town golf course. Tony, did you ever think that maybe when he said: "I told you clearly at the pro shop you must use the first tee, not the 10th - it was clear. What's wrong with you people. You people never listen, do you?" that by "you people" he meant power-hungry corrupt politicians who don't follow the rules? I don't suppose that "blood on the grass" could have been more figurative than literal?

Movie theaters in the States are considering asking permission to jam cell phone reception in their theaters. Obviously this will stop annoying people from interrupting your movie, but what happens in the event of an emergency. Wil Wheaton makes an interesting comment about it in his latest podcast.

CONTEST UPDATE

South Africa's best blogs were recognised in a ceremony in Cape Town on the weekend. I've had a look at the winner and honestly I don't know what all the fuss is about. I think that most of the runners up are better, but I suppose that's how democracy works. The guy who runs this blog won a whopping R20,06 for his efforts.

Now if you want to win almost 5 times that amount all you need to do is submit the winning contest idea. That's right, no need to slave for months hacking out an interesting blog, just one good idea for a contest could win it for you. I've already received a few goodies but you still have until the end of the week to enter. Are you going to let this opportunity for greatness slip though your hands?

I like the idea of a contest on the blog and I'd really like to make it a regular thing, say once a month, but in order to make it successful I'll really need your, that's the reader's, help in making them exciting. It's really boring if only one person ever enters, but you guys can spice things up by all playing along. Also it wouldn't hurt if people spread a little link love out there. I'm going to keep the prize at about R100 for at least the first three months, that excludes this month, but unless we achieve some interest this experiment is going to fail. You Can Doo EEit!

LAZY?

THAT MOVIE

Last night Elisabeth and I watched 'Man on Fire', man that was a excellent movie. It was so much better than I expected it to be. The movie was soo GD cool, the cinematography was hawsome and they even managed to use the subtitles with creative effect, it's a must see for people who appreciate good movies. I was thinking to myself that there must be some way to find out what movies are good even though they look and sound like they're gonna suck. I know we shouldn't judge a DVD by its cover but I'm pretty much too lazy, um busy, to do anything else. For a second there I thought I had it, Dakota Fanning. Yes it had to be it, any movie starring this tiny bundle of brilliant acting had to be double worth watching! Then the bubble burst, she's in War of the Worlds. There goes my theory. Maybe Tom Cruise negates the Fanning Effect.

BEFORE I GO

If you still get this entry on monday, try to catch 'Hustle' on SABC 3 at 21:00. It's a six part miniseries from the UK about Confidence Men. If you liked movies like 'Matchstick Men' and 'Catch Me If You Can' you might like 'Hustle'. It started last week, but all they did was introduce the characters. At this point it's either going to be great or really sucky, tune in tonight and find out for yourself.

schpat out

Live Blog

2006-03-18T01:16:00.000+02:00

Anyway, so no blog from me today. Sorry all. Instead I've decided that I'll LiveBlog a poker tournament for you this evening. Ofcourse if I do something stupid I'll never post it, lol. Here goes:

23:35 I've signed up for a tournament on PokerStars, It has cost me $1 + 0.10 to enter and currently there are 689 entrants and 12 min until it starts. I'm playing in a $3 + 0.30 Sit n Go while I wait. I'll keep you updated on that too.

23:40: Check this movie out, it's pretty fucking amazing. Glad I never played against him in my youth.

23:37: slow playing AA in SNG flop brings nothing, lots of players in, I bet T$50 all by two fold, they check. Turn is blank, I bet T$100, both call. River is a real blank, only someone with a pair of crap in the hole that has hit the board, or two really crap pair can beat me, to get rid of them I bet T$600, one caller, in fact he goes all in, woot, I call. He shows Q8o, there is a Q but no 8 on the board, I more than double up, woot!

23:45; just took two short stacks out in the SNG,

23:46 Play in the main tourney has started, final count is 1381 entrants, wish me luck

23:52 playing in two tables at once is not as easy as it sounds, I hope I win the SNG soon. My stratergy in the MTT is just to hang in there at the moment, and wait for all the chancers to get knocked out.

23:58: got taken out of the SNG is 3rd, it's not too bad. Now I can concentrate on the MTT, My goal is to last out the first two hours.

00:00 only 1104 players left in this thing

00:07 gonna fast play my KK, raise 10x BB, one caller, flop comes AhJh3d giving me an ok chance of taking it, I bet T$100 the other dude calls. Turn is a 6h maybe givng the other dude a fush but I still have a good pair and a nut flush draw, he goes all in, but with only T$230 so I call. He shows a 6x, i get another heart and end up with the flush and I win, woot. It's a small pot though and my stack is still slightly below average.

00:20: I'm curently 430th out of 734 palyers left, about 25 min to the first break.

00:22 I get KK again. BB is T$50 I raise 3x BB to 200, dude goes all in with 975, another dude calls, I've got to call. Flop comes A7A and I semibluf the other caller off the pot. All in dude has QQ, I win again. Now I'm 138th out of 760 with 1.5 average stack.

00:24 Just laid down KQ pre flop, dude before me raised, he had QQ woot, go me

00:46 First break = toilet break

00:47 On the way to the bathroom I noticed that e-TV has porn on, meh. OK, this is how things stand in the MTT. Currently I am 291 out of 504, my stack is T$2825, average is T$4110, I've lost about T$1000 since my last win. If I can last another hour I'll be happy with my performance.

00:52 Tournament started again

01:04 Just had my AK beaten by K2 when the turn came 2, I lost about T$600 ;(

01:16 OK I'm out, Had my KK cracked by QQ getting a Q in the flop, aww well shit happens. I came 320th, it's ok but I'll do better next time.

cheers

Not what I promised

2006-03-16T16:58:00.000+02:00

Last night I was listening to Radio KOL because I was bored with my music collection and wanted something else. RKOL is actually pretty cool and they play a bunch of really good music. The reason I mention this is because song that I really enjoyed was from a band called "Ludo", it was called "Good Will Hunting By Myself" and is all about this guy whose girlfriend has left him and now he has to watch Matt Damon crying by himself. It's a really catchy song and the band sound great, I'm definitely going to see what I can do about getting some of their Music.

THE IRISH

While listening to RKOL one of the DJs (Rudebaber I think) played nothing but Irish music for an hour and a half. It was pretty cool. There was old stuff from like Foster and Allan, stuff from River Dance, the Theme from The Boondock Saints, Irish contemporary rock like The Cranberries and also some very cool Irish Indie music. What was really awesome was that no U2 was played at all, rock on!

While listening to all this music I noticed a few themes that Irish people like to sing about. They are Death, Poverty and Drinking, but drinking was by for the clear winner! I suppose you probably wouldn't notice it unless you actually listened to that much Irish music at once. Sometimes they were drinking because they were poor and sometimes they were drinking because someone had died but the point is they were drinking most of the time. Now I know what Miles O'Brien gets up to when not running the transporter room.

Then an unexpected thing happened. While listening one of the DJs mention a KOL name I recognised which reminded me of someone I really thought was a friend until one day I never ever saw him again. You know who you are and if by some odd chance you ever find yourself reading this then me, and a bunch of others, want to know WTF? Dude seriously we want to know. Some of you may point out that people have run into him by accident quite a couple of times, bullshit, that was a pod person/body snatcher.

IN THE NEWS

Well it's good to know that religious extremists never give up. No time limit has been given on the cartoonist that drew pictures of the Prophet Mohammed. But then what do you expect from a religion founded by a man who ordered someone put to death for insulting him (read the article). Maybe the cartoonists and Salman Rushdie should start a support group.

Speaking of totally fucking over-reacting to an insult, an opposition MP in Zimbabwe has been arrested and may fact jail time for insulting El Presidente Bob Mugabe. What was this heinous insult that has brought the full wrath of the police down upon this politician? He asked some soldiers "Why do you let Mugabe let you suffer?". One of the soldiers reported him to the police and Bob's your uncle, or totalitarian autocrat as the case may be.

I really don't understand what this story is doing in the paper. Must have been a slow news day.

In a new twist on MMORPGs now there's one that lets you be a good little socialist. This is no joke either, it's been built in China, probably with government funding, to apparently 'educate' youths about the liberation struggle martyr Lei Feng.

CAPE TOWN POLITICS

I don't have much to say on the issue, actually I've got plenty to say I'm just lacking in the energy to say it. The DA and it's partners (note there is no coalition) have won power in the Cape Town City Council. Pulling this off has shocked the ANC and the ID who thought they had the whole thing tied up. It was only the honour, convictions and loyalty to the voters of the much smaller parties that allowed the DA to win.

The ID seems to have sided with the ANC despite Patricia Delille's vehement denials of agreements with any of the other parties and statement to the effect that they would be voting for their own mayoral candidate Simon Grinrod. Delille herself actually recently told the Financial Mail she would "under no circumstances" support ANC's mayoral candidate Nomaindia Mfeketo for mayor. Afterwards she said that they supported the ANC because they felt closer on their poverty alleviation and anti-racism stand points. Anti-racism? Wasn't it the ANC deputy mayor who claimed that all coloured people were drunken layabouts with no self respect? I suppose that the ANC's actions around corruption and other illegal activities didn't come into the picture at all.

In short I fell the ID has made a grave mistake by siding with the ANC. People in the Cape voted for them as an opposition party and by abandoning them in favour of the ANC they will have lost all credibility. Patricia, if you need an example just look at the NNP and as Martinus Van Schkalkvyk what he thinks his job prospects are.

Ultimately none of this matters because when floor crossing comes around we all know what's going to happen.

INTENTIONAL?

KISS OFF

Well I promised you a granadilla juice story but you're just going to have to wait for it. Nyah, nyah.

schpat out

Hump Day

2006-03-15T17:04:00.000+02:00

Last night I bailed on role-playing. I feel really bad about it but because of my hectic work schedule I just needed some quiet time with Elisabeth. Reports are still out as to whether or not everybody else actually pitched for the game, my bet is that they didn't but if they did I feel worse. I took Elisabeth out to have supper at the Waterfront at a cool Portuguese restaurant called Tosca De Something. We each had the rump espetada, mmm yummy. After that we went to La Playa for coffee and got the worst service ever, not what I'm used to after last time my table was booked for me by name just because the waitress saw me coming (thanks Erica). Needless to say this one got no tip.

That brings me to an interesting question. If you get bad service does the waitron deserve a tip? I mean do you just give a small tip, or no tip at all. Also what if the service is excellent, do you tip more than the standard? What's the standard tip amount, and what's the standard service? Does a waitron deserve a tip just for pitching up and not being rude? Thoughts people, in the comments, thanks.

On another point of interactivity: don't all email me at once with your contest ideas! No seriously, send some ideas in already. Is the allure of a R100 gift certificate not strong enough to elicit a response from your competitive cortexes (or is that cortexi or collective cortexacopia)? C'mon people. For international readers I can also make it a gift certificate at any major online store, R100 is about $15).

In this issue: news, thoughts on chain letters, amusing pic and another movie I saw recently

IN THE NEWS

Now we're in real trouble. Alex Erwin has stated that there is no national energy crisis. Here's a quote from him: "It is important that we get some sanity back and do not get influenced by inaccurate reports." I wonder what inaccurate reports he's talking about? He also said he didn't want to get into a "semantic debate: over what he said about the sabotage. Hey, Alec, we're not arguing semantics, we're accusing you of lying to influence the outcome of local government elections, get it straight you lying halfwit!

A Greek Orthodox monk's body is apparently completely intact 15 years after his burial. For some reason the the Orthodox church is not wanting to proclaim the man a saint and are instead pursuing medical explanations for the occurrence. Maybe its got something to do with the fact that "Even the monk's soft parts are intact" according to Bishop Nikolaos of the Fthiotida prefecture.

Yesterday yellow snow in Korea and today red snow in Russia. I'm not promoting racial stereotypes here but it seems like they guy deciding on weather is from the cold war. (really bad unintentional pun)

So you want a billion dollars in green and folding? You want it to fit in your wallet? Well, this dude could make it happen for you. I just don't understand where he was going to spend a billion dollars. It's be like that running joke in Leisure Suit Larry II where nobody could give you change so they just kept the large denomination bills. Seriously, what moron would be fooled by a billion dollar note?

A young schoolgirl in the UK broke her ankle while playing with friends, after returning to school she was told to go home because her plaster cast was a health hazard. That's almost as bad as Baa Baa Rainbow sheep!

Speaking of banned, you've got to be pretty annoying to be banned from a whole city, but that's what this woman has achieved. Because of her antics around not paying for restaurant bills she has been banned from the city of Rome.

STUPID CHAIN LETTERS

Do you know what really pisses me off? Those stupid emails that have a list of funny things or coincidences that are so unbelievable that they are funny. Except that I think these things are so unbelievable that they're stupid. You know the ones, like the Darwin Awards and, the one I got today, the Stella Awards. The Stella Awards are supposedly handed out for frivolous litigation by people who were harmed by their own stupidity. Named after the women who successfully sued McDonalds for burning herself with their coffee, they supposedly include stories like

A guy who have sued a family for staving them after getting locked in the garage while they were away on holiday for eight days. How did he get there, he was trying to rob them. or

A dude who sued a dog owner after being bitten by his dog that was chained in his own yard. What had he been doing in the yard? Shooting the dog with a pellet gun.

These stories are so stupid that a simple search of Snopes or even Google will tell you that they are not real. People please check your facts before sending out stupid lists of things that are really funny, but obviously of dubious authenticity.

Things like this do happen in real life, they're just rarely as funny and almost never successful. As with the Darwin Awards, there is actually a site that is dedicated to real life Stella Awards go check it out if you're interested. My personal favorite is this one:

And the winner of the 2005 True Stella Award: Christopher Roller of Burnsville, Minn. Roller is mystified by professional magicians, so he sued David Blaine and David Copperfield to demand they reveal their secrets to him -- or else pay him 10 percent of their lifelong earnings, which he figures amounts to $50 million for Copperfield and $2 million for Blaine. The basis for his suit: Roller claims that the magicians defy the laws of physics, and thus must be using "godly powers" -- and since Roller is god (according to him), they're "somehow" stealing that power from him.

That's some funny shit. I actually hope this guy wins and they show him how they do their tricks. Of course I think he'll have to prove his godly powers first, that should be a hoot.

I've had to deal with so many urban legend emails over the years that all I do these days is "Reply to All" on the invariably infinite cc list and paste the Snopes page for the legend into the mail. Hopefully this embarrasses the perpetrator into either checking his sources next time or preferable not clogging my inbox with spam at all.

INTENTIONAL?

MOVIE I WATCHED RECENTLY

Superman II. This movie is proof of everything I hate about big budget special effects pieces that have no substance. Just like the first movie it was all an excuse for showing off a man in tights flying around and lifting heavy objects. The acting was atrocious and the story moved so quickly that there was no time for any meaningful character development, it just moved from once stunt to another. The slapstick bits in the middle of the main fight scene between Superman and General Zod and his minions were really awful. And don't even get me started on the "removing your powers is irreversible until you want them back" plot hole. Ultimately the movie was very successful in 1980, but because it relied so heavily on special effects for that success it is now extremely dated and, yes, crap. There are so many of these films coming out these days that it almost makes me want to puke, these are the boy bands of movies. Manufactured purely to be sold on hype and after they're watched by the masses and made the producers millions they get thrown on the pile like the fetid garbage that they are. You can read more about my feelings on cash cow movies from my previous post here. It did have Terance Stamp in it, which I'd forgotten.

That reminds me, I still want to popularise the word "brung".

SIGNING OFF

So anyway, nice to dump my mind at you folks again. Be sure to tune in tomorrow for another granadilla juice bottle story, and remember to submit contest suggestions (schpat at gmail dot com).

schpat out

Packed Full

2006-03-14T14:55:00.000+02:00

There are some things about bloging that I hate, well three things in particular. I really love most of the aspects of bloging (the community, the creative outlet, a place to air one's views) but I often have so much difficulty with three parts of the blog that I sometimes don't post at all, The Beginning, The Middle and The End. Nah, just fooling, actually I hate coming up with Titles, Intro's and Outro's. The most difficult of those, that most often affects whether there is a post or not, is the Intro. Notice how I handled that with meta this time? Yeah, sharp!

In this issue: News, teh phunny, competition update and a movie a watched in the last few days.

IN THE NEWS

Afrikaans punk rockers Fokofpolisiekar have brought righteous fury down upon themselves in a very Beatle-esc display of blasphemy. Religious leaders are threatening to withdraw church halls as venues for the Klien Karoo Nationale Kunstefees (KKNK) if the organisers allow the band to perform. Sense of humor failure.

The ANC has proposed constitutional change in order to do away with the official position of "Leader of the Opposition". I'm not sure what the official title allows one to do, but trying to getting rid of the position just shows us what the ruling parties attitude to opposition really is. As if we didn't know.

Sudoku has a new world champion. Yes the addictive logic puzzle is now a thrilling spectator sport probably soon to be televised on ESPN. Apparently it's comparative to Darts in excitement levels. "One Hundred and Eighty, What an Athlete!"

A dumb 16 year old daughter of a NG Kerk Domanie has successfully gotten a court interdict against a man she has never met to stop him from distributing or having in his possession any pictures of her exposed breasts and genitals. How would he have gotten these pictures? Did he place cameras in the school showers? Did he hide outside her room with an obscenely large zoom lens? No, she sent them to him, on her cell phone. Read this one, it's amazing how dumb people can be.

Those German's a crazy. A man was given a €400 fine after biting a waitress on the foot. This transpired after the man spilt beer on her foot and she presented the perambulatory aendage in question and demanded that he lick it clean. When the man bit it, drawing blood, she got very upset and had to take ten days off work. Weird.

Alec Erwin seems to be in talks with Transnet unions about the ongoing mass action by their members. Of course next week we'll find out that there were never any talks, there is in fact no organisation called Transnet and the members were hypothetical. Purely based on a pattern of past behavior of course

A women in Covington, Louisiana, has found a very rare and valuable autographed first edition of Victor Hugo's Les Miserables. This story would be very boring except for two things. The women who found the 17 volume set in some rubbish said that "Jesus told her to take them" and the book store they talk about in the story is called "The Philosopher's Stone Bookstore", that's a bitchslap right there.

It appears that Slobodan Milosevic may in fact have committed suicide by taking the wrong pills on purpose.

In Korea they've got a problem with excessive yellow snow, even without the huskies.

Has Donald Rumsfeld managed to sway public opinion of the Avian Flu issue for his own financial gain, or is this just another conspiracy theory? You decide.

COMPETITION UPDATE

I like running competitions for the readers here on my blog. So far I've run two, both of which had indefinite running times, they relied on outside circumstances to finish. The Lonely finger challenge was the last of these, and when we found out that it was actually just a lame 5fm ad (honestly it could have been so much cooler) we were deeply disappointed. We did award the prize to the most correct person, but because he was so far from correct I made it a very small prize.

Well it's time for a new competition. I've thought long an hard about what my next offering should be, but I just can't seem to come up with anything. I wanted the contest to run for a finite period and have a clear winner at the end, but I still couldn't think of anything, so I decided that the next prize will be for the person that comes up with the coolest competition!

That's right, all readers will have until the 25th of April to submit contest ideas. At the end of the period the readers, that's you, will have a week to vote on which idea they thought was best and that will become our contest for the month of April. The prize for that contest will be decided based on how cool the idea is, but the prize for this contest is a One Hundred Rand Gift Certificate to you favorite multimedia store (Look & Listen, Musica, Take2.co.za, ect). There you go, you know the prize up front, submit your ideas. I'd prefer you to send me ideas via email so that nobody influences anyone else. My address is schpat at gmail dot com, put "blog contest" in the subject line. I'm waiting for your mail!

There is a catch however, if you win this contest you will not be eligible for the one you suggest. That stops people suggesting that the contest should be for the best male netball player named sean, or something.

TOO TRUE BROTHER

A MOVIE I WATCHED RECENTLY

A few nights ago I saw Angela's Ashes. Man that was a cool movie. It was sad but funny. The characters lived in absolute poverty and some really shitty things happened to them, but they still managed to make the best of situation and have a good laugh most of the time. If you liked other period dramas about poor people who struggled a lot you'll like this one too. What makes Angela's Ashes even cooler is that it was a true story, based on the early life the author Frank McCourt. Oh yes it was a book before it was a movie and the sequel book is call "'Tis".

Schpat Out

Blue Monday

2006-03-13T18:33:00.000+02:00

It's been a very long day. I've had loads of work to do, I've barely had enough time to have lunch and make myself a cup of tea. Due to this there will be no major post today, I don't even know what's in the news myself. Tomorrow I'll be back in form again, I promise.

Until then, thanks for listening.

I'm off to buy a vending-machine toasted sandwich. What will they think of next?

schpat out

TGIF

2006-03-10T18:09:00.000+02:00

Well week one of my full blog is drawing to an end. I would have been happier if I had blogged on monday too, but you can't have everything. While I'm on the topic of improvements, I see a lot of you out there ready this here corner of the interweb and I'd really appreciate your feed back. There are a bunch of you folks up north that read and while I know a few people up there I'm not sure who is reading, so leave a comment or two. Also If you don't see your blog listed on my blogroll just let me know, I'm planning on updating the damn thing soon.

So without further ado, in this issue: news, amusement, personal comment and the three best burgers in Cape Town.

IN THE NEWS

Say it ain't so! The Hoff's been beating his wife. Man that's just not cool, Michael Knight would never have done a thing like that. But, alas, we all know that Michael Knight died the day The Hoff put on a pair of Speedo. In the bad taste department Yirmumah has a comic about celebrity wife beating featuring Ike & Tina and The Hoff.

Saturn's moon Enceladus shows signs of water. Knowing about IOL's previous treatment of scientific discovery this probably isn't even really news anymore, but I thought I'd mention it.

Women's right activists are using inflatable sex dolls in an effort to curb the objectification of women in the land of machismo.

Britons are offended by Australian Tourism's rude new catch phrase: "Where the bloody hell are you?". So much so in fact that they've banned the advert. God damn it people, they can show the ad in Salt Lake City and nobody minds much, grow a fucking sense of humor. Then again maybe all the people in Salt Lake City that would be offended have already shunned TV?

What do you think about this rather defensive statement from ex-head of Koeberg. Kinda interesting huh? The lady doth protest too much, methinks.

Austrians are special. That's my conclusion after they decided to grind up a chondite meteorite and sprinkle it on postage stamps. While this might seem like a cool idea can you guys think of any possible better way to spread an alien virus? I mean this is like a Sci-Fi that just writes itself.

In a close second to the Penis Story we have a Dildo Story. Denmark's national symbol, a statue of the little mermaid in Copenhagen, was defaced by having said sex toy attached to it. "March 8th", national women's day in Denmark, was also painted in the statue, but authorities doubt this was the work of feminists. Something's rotten in the state of Denmark.

And in a surprise return the is actually another Penis Story this week! A German burglar has managed to escape prison due to the fact that he has a permanent erection. Not even sticking needles in it helped, I'm sure a course of leeches would though.

THE PHARMACY MESS

It looks like esteemed health minister Manto Tshabalala-Msimang is trying to fuck pharmacists again. Damn pinko scum, have you ever heard of the free market? Here's an alternate solution for you, give poor people free medicine and let the rest of us decide what works best for us. I was really upset the first time this legislation was introduced because the pharmacy where I get my medicine from used to give huge discounts but were no longer allowed to under the new legislation. In an emergency if I couldn't make it out to the discount pharmacy I was more than happy to pay a premium to the local pharmacy just for convenience sake.

The health minister really doesn't have very much to worry about. Large corporation are going to put small pharmacies out of business by competing against them much quicker than she can. An example of this is the fact that Clicks plans on having a pharmacy in every store, it's not for the pharmacy cash, but rather as a means to get you into their shop and buy their items.

A free market and competition driving prices down. who would ever have thought?

AN UPDATE ON NEWS AND RANT

Well you've all watched CSI, NCIS, Crossing Jordan, Medical Detectives or some cloned variation of the aforementioned shows? Remember how those folks were able to comb a crime scene and uncover the minutest little fragment of fiber or hair that would lead to the apprehension and prosecution of evil lawbreakers? Didn't the fact that there were trained professionals working for the police help you sleep better at night? Well I don't want to shatter your illusions but these trained pro's took 27 hours to find a little girls body that was under the bed in the room that she was supposedly kidnapped from. This is because we are living in South Africa, where police rely on good luck and confessions to solve crimes, as opposed to actual investigative work.

That's right the body of the four year old granddaughter of Gauteng Judge President who was "kidnapped", was found under her bed yesterday. The picture on the right shows the number of policemen on the scene shortly afterwards who failed to discover her.

National police commissioner Jackie Selebi has gone on record as stating that he has "never experienced such levels of incompetence before". He has promised that heads will roll.

Gauteng police commissioner Perumal Naidoo stated that there was nothing wrong, the police didn't miss anything, they conducted a thorough search of the premises and found the body. He didn't think that the fact that they only search one half of the house yesterday leaving the other half for today was an issue. Stupid, fucking, arse-covering moron. He deserves to be dragged out into the street and shot. What was the emotocon for rage? >:# (I'm going with this until further notice.

BURGER HEAVEN

Ok, so now to the part where I tell you folks about the three best burgers in Cape Town, or at least the three places to go for the best burgers in Cape Town. These are not your normal Steers or Spur burgers, let alone McDonald's. These burgers are works of art that are almost too perfect to consume, but too tempting not too.

Second Runner Up: Saul's Saloon, Main Road Seapoint.

Saul's makes an excellent burger. They're big, hearty and come with a metric fuckpile of chips. They have various options on the size of the burgers and even do chicken, but unfortunately their variations on the burger theme leave a little to be desired. I love Saul's, I have fond memories of dropping my brother off at school when he missed his bus and letting him skip a few extra periods with me while we stuffed ourselves with Saul's goodness. Another major advantage is that Saul's is open 24 hours a day, but the area leaves a little to be desired.

First Runner Up: The Starlight Diner, Tygervally (in the parking lot opposite the Velodrome)

The Starlight Diner, is a magical place that reminds you of 50's american culture. It;s a proper diner complete with booths and a bar counter, the waitron uniforms are pretty authentic too. As I've mentioned there are booths, these are roomy and comfortable, with ample space to stretch out and enjoy your evening. The menu at Starlight is bliss with many, many appealing dishes, but we're here to talk about burgers. The burgers are very good, very large, and very tasty. There are a bunch of varieties with amazing toppings that are out of this world. Starlight is also open 24 hours a day. This is also the place that comes closest to offering that elusive "five dollar shake" talked about at Jack Rabbit Slim's on Pulp Fiction. At current exchange rates it's only a $3.17 shake, but that' s because of a weak rand and not the poor quality of the shake. My personal favorite is the Oreo cookie shake, or the peanut butter shake. As Vincent Vega says, "that's a damn fine shake".

And the Winner is: Royale (Long Street, Cape Town)

This place is named as another reference to Pulp fiction (Royale with cheese). I've never actually been there so I can't comment on the place, but I've had Mr Delivery from them on numerous occasions. This place is undoubtedly the best burger joint in town, undoubtedly. Variety is unmatched. The burgers are the bozmb! My favorite burger here is "The Fat Bastards", a double burger with double everything. That's some yummy shit! Sadly Royale is not open 24hrs so you can't just pop down after partying all night when you need something hot and greasy in your stomach. If you do go however make sure to try their sweet potato chips, they're brilliant with sour cream.

If you folks do go out and try these burgers please let me know and give me some feedback on what you thought.

HOT SAUCE

THE END OF THE POST AS WE KNOW IT

Well, I didn't watch any movies last night, so you're shit outa luck there. Also I'm really tired and I've got some commitments that just can't wait. I feel that this has been a good post, I even worked in two totally natural quotes from Shakespeare, from the same play even, who says this blog isn't erudite (did I spell that right?). Until next time I leave you with this thought:

"Do what you can, with what you have, where you are" ~ Theodore Roosevelt

schpat out

It's Just Too Big!

2006-03-09T16:25:00.000+02:00

Last night Elisabeth and I went to my folks place for supper. We had pasta and watched the weakest link on my mother's BIG screen TV. I capitalised BIG because this is the biggest TV I have ever seen in my life, it's like those ones they have in sports bars. A friend of hers gave it to her when they got a new one. It's about ten years old and I think that it's been bumped and the projection lenses knocked out of alignment because it's a bit fuzzy, but that shouldn't be too hard to fix. It is very cool though.

Anyway, enough being jealous at my mother's BIG TV, on with the post.

IN THE NEWS

The Pope has an IPOD, but who doesn't? Except for me of course. It was given to him by Vatican Radio and he's often spotted with the "distinctive white earphones" listening to religious and classical music. You'd have thought that Vatican Radio would have sprung for at least a 30GB IPOD Photo and not the silly little IPOD Nano.

The granddaughter of Gauteng Judge President Bernard Ngoepe has been kidnapped. The police are not linking this kidnapping to the Judge President's work, or his son's who is a magistrate, especially not the Jacob Zuma trial, but I think it's possible that a link may exist, especially when regarding the manner in which JZ's supporters have been acting.

A twelve year old child in East London has managed to get to Grade 6 without being able to read. The principal of the school says it's not their fault!

A nursery school in London has ordered that an age old nursery rhyme be changed to Baa Baa Rainbow Sheep after deciding that the word black may offend some children. Honestly I think it's got more to do with offending the children's parents, four and Five years olds rarely care about Politically Correct issues, preferring to worry about crayons and how icky girls are.

Raging feminist Germaine Greer has expressed outrage about a car advert that she says is humiliating and offensive to women. The advert apparently shows a man daydreaming about "doing daring things in a four-wheel drive" with a woman who is not his partner. Greer advocates violence against the Holden motor company as a form of protest. She further goes on to state that "I promise you, they wouldn't dare do it in Europe - they wouldn't dare." Um, lady, Europe is where they use sex and naked women to sell everything from fruit juice to newspapers. What planet are you from?

This dude in California believes that he was held-up and shot as an act of god because surgery to repair his injuries led to the discovery of a tumor in his abdomen. Wow, you really can convince yourself of anything can't you. There's also a story about a bunch of people that died in church when a wall collapsed on them, where's your god in that?

An finally another IOL penis story. British model Jodie Marsh keeps Polaroid snaps of her boyfriend's penises. She says she keeps them because it's a good way of remembering them and also to blackmail them into not selling stories about her. BTW: if you do an Google Image search for "Jodie Marsh" make sure your safe search is on or you aren't at work, porn pops up! Did you just go search for porn?

THE JZ RAPE TRIAL

This started of in the NEWS section but got so long that I've put it in another so that people who are bored can skip it. Also I haven't propagated the text with links, but a cursory search of www.iol.co.za will show you everything.

Lots of interesting revelations in the JZ rape trial. Apparently the victim has been raped multiple times before. All by members of the ANC who were living in exile and had some kind of family connection. Once while she was five and twice in her teens. One of the previous accused stated that her mother had "given her to him" by letting her wander around the house "improperly dressed". These men were tried by an ANC court and found innocent of rape, but docked six months pay for having sex with a child. This all came to light when the defense team produced a few pages of an autobiographical manuscript that the victim is busy working on, she had not provided them with this private document and was distressed by the fact that they had it. Now something bothers me here, the rapes in her teen were conducted while living in exile, but where apparently covered up by the ANC because it appears that criminal charges were never brought against these men, the matters seem to have been handled internally by the ANC. Isn't that a little odd? The ANC leadership knew of a crime but it appears that they did not report it to the relevant authorities. Sex with a minor is usually a crime, unless you are somewhere like Mexico, but you can check out the Schpat Dope for more details on that.

The other revelation is that the victim admits to never telling JZ to stop having sex with her, she also admits that she could probably have fought him off but didn't. When asked she told the court that he may have thought the act was consensual. Well JZ's entire defense rests on this. The obvious question is whether lack of complaint equates to consent. In my view it does not. According to testimony the victim had told JZ that she was asleep when he entered her room and offered her a massage (at this point she was lying with her back towards him), he continued to massage her back and she told him to stop. At this point he turned her over onto her back and she saw he was naked, he then took her hands and held them above he head as he straddled her thighs. He placed his knee between her legs to spread them and continued to have intercourse with her. The whole incident took about fifteen minutes. The victim maintains that the shock of seeing a naked man on her bed left her unable to act.

So if the accused thinks it's consensual and the accuser thinks it's rape what should the outcome of the trial be? Well it's all about the reasonable man, would the reasonable man think that the victim was consenting to sex? If the answer is yes then the verdict should be "not guilty". In my opinion no reasonable man could possibly think that being rebuked twice meant "come give it to me daddy!". I hope he doesn't get off, if you'll excuse the pun.

btw: what is the emotocon for rage?

THESE PEOPLE ARE SO RIGHT

THAT'S ALL FOLKS

This section really should be renamed, a movie I watched last night. This time it's "Shade" a movie about people who cheat at poker staring Gabriel Byrne and Sylvester Stallone. This move get a 2 out of 5. Other than showing some truly amazing shuffling and one method for dealing from the bottom of the deck it's totally boring and predictable. The movie sells itself on having great actors and being about poker. If you're interested in poker you'll laugh that the mistakes it makes and if you're not interested in poker you'll find three quarters of the film boring, especially when they make an effort to use as many obscure poker terms as possible, and then explain them to people who should already know what they mean for the audience's sake. The twist was also really predictable, it might have gotten really interesting but I'll never know. My copy of the DVD fucked up three minutes before the end and I couldn't continue watching it, really I'm not upset about it at all.

Enjoy your evening

schpat out

Could You Believe It?

2006-03-08T15:24:00.000+02:00

Issue two of proper blogging and everything seems to be going quite well. After seeing what a total letdown Lonely Finger was I need to run another competition to raise the game a bit. So if you have any ideas please let me know. Also if you have any suggestions for imporvements here I want to hear from you too.

THAT POKER HAND

Wow, I can't believe how trully fucking HAWSOME that hand was. Ok that post was sent out at 2:10 am so I didn't post any details, only that ultracool pic! Here's how it went down. I was in the BB and very short stacked when, as you can see, I was dealt AA. Under the Gun (UTG) folded and PinkyOnTour called a raise that would have taken about half my already dwindling stack. Yan1978 called and I pushed all-in. Both pinky and yan called, hands were revealed and I already knew that I had gotten all my money in while I was a substantial favourite. When the flop brought A9A I was like totally blown away. I Trippled by measely T$965 to T$2960, this kept me in the game. Pinky won the side pot with Yan, but I was the big winner here. I'm glad I was on the BB here, in another position a raise might have scared one or both of my callers off, but I pushed at the right time because if I had waited for the flop nobody would have called me. What's interesting is that Yan, even with a stack of about T$6K should never have called the reraise, and definetly not called pinky's raised on the turn, he was just too beat.

I eventually came second when I lost with AJ vs KQ heads up agains Yan, he got a K on the flop.

I promise I wont be posting boring crap about poker every day, it's just that quad A's is just so fucking cool!

Doesn't "ruin269ing" look just like FireGolem?

IN THE NEWS

Some prankster may be facing jail time after pretending to rob a bank. The fact that he did something stupid is one thing, he probably deserves some comunity service or something, but the fact that the bank employeses are pushing for jail time is just ludicrous. Get a fucking snese of humor.

This is yet another example of Crazy. some "historical researchers" are suing Dan Brown for stealing thier ideas in "The Da Vinci Code". Now I don't understand this, two "researchers", Michael Baigent and Richard Leigh, are upset because Brown used a lot of the hypothesis in there book Holy Blood and the Holy Grail" as plot points in his work of fiction. kooks like this should be so lucky that a best selling book kindles intrest in thier 21 year old "research", god forbid thier book should sell a few copies. What's more Brown actually credits the book in his text and mentions it as "an aclaimed international bestseller", just more proof that Brown was having everyone on if you ask me. What's even funnier is that one of the characters in "The Da Vinci Code" is name Leigh with a last name of Teabing (an anagrame of Baigent). I'll give you two guesses who the bad guy is, I bet that's really why they're upset. Aparently Richard Leigh even stated on tv that he never believed it to be true thier claims to be true, only a plauasable alternative.

And in Cool News(tm), students in Singapore have developed plants that glow when they need water. How cool is that!

TODAY'S PIC

I'm not all that sure that this is funny, but it is interesting. What the hell are these things? And Why?

THAT'S IT

Well I've posted enough for today. I did watch Laurel Canyon a movie set in LA staring such notables asFrances McDormand, Christian Bale, Kate Beckinsale and Natascha McElhone (the awful women from the abortion that was Solaris). Again this was a movie that made psychiatrists look bad. Coincedence? I think not!

schpat out

I Couldn't Believe it!

2006-03-08T02:10:00.000+02:00

Well Believe it, because it's true!

I ended up second in this thing!

I'm Back

2006-03-07T13:25:00.000+02:00

Well, I just haven't felt like blogging much, and it shows. Ever since November last year when I abandoned my "Large Posts In Sections" format it's just been very hard to focus and bring the very few readers anything worthwhile. Well, as of this post I'm going back to LPIS format and if you don't like it you can just skip the sections you despise, that's the beauty of the system!! I also want to get about three of these out a week. Anyway here goes.

In this issue Poker, Lonely Finger Revealed, News, Cape Town Power, Funny Picture and More....

POKER TOURNAMENT

Wow. That was my first impression when I got to the Rondebosch scout hall on saturday and saw about one hundred and fifty people milling around. There were so many people that a bunch of them had to be turned away, only a hundred and ten got to play. Then we took our seats, got a little chat from the organizers, and got underway in our games. My next reaction was a solid WOW, just at the quality of play. I was at a table of ten that seemed to have like three professional (by south african standards) poker players at it. It was really scary, everybody bullied! And bullied and bullied and bullied.

The tournament had "rebuys", this meant that if you busted out before the dinner break you could buy another set of chips and keep on playing. The rebuys made people play extremely loose, the table I was at had the most action. The organizers had expected twenty rebuys, five of them went to my table in the first hour. All the rebuys had been sold in the first hour. The "big pro" on my left rebought twice and went out very quickly, obviously the R100 entry fee meant very little to him.

I've already mentioned the bulling. I folded a lot because I had crap hands and I couldn't believe what these folks were playing on, they just had the right attitude. I had a pretty good table image, but I looked very weak, I'd seen a couple of flops and made it look as if I'd been bullied off a decent hand when in fact I had totally missed, I looked like a tight weak player and not the tight aggressive I actually am. I managed to steal a reraised pot after the flop because people thought that if I was betting I had something good, even though I totally missed. Then about ten minutes before the first break I was dealt TT in late position, I was significantly short stacked having lost about a third of my starting chips while the other 7 remaining players had shared out about seven stacks between them. I raised and it was folded to the BB who called. We saw the flop and it came out rainbow rags. That meant I had an over pair and I put the BB on a drawing hand that missed. I raised and he reraised enough to put my all in, about a third of his stack. He'd been playing very aggressively and I'd let him think that he'd scared me off a couple of hands, I knew he didn't have a made hand so I called. I showed him my TT and he showed QTd, without a diamond on the board he'd need to get a Q to beat me, on the flop I'm an 87% favorite. The turn comes out blank and my odds go up to 93%. The Q spikes on the river, what can you do. I smiled, said well done and calmly walked away. The guy who won was just not very friendly and totally acted as if he had done the right thing and had been wining the whole time. Losing the hand didn't really upset me, that shit happens, but the arrogant player who was all like "I'm so cool" was just irritating. If I had won like that I'd at least have admitted that I was lucky, and said sorry.

I survived the rebuys and was about the twentieth person knocked out. I still had fun though, and don't think I did too badly in my first real life encounter with serious poker players, I wasn't ready for this level of play and I hope to do better next time. After the main tournament I managed to get a 10 player R25 Sit 'n Go game going, we played one of those before the dinner break before people wanted the chips for a cash game. I went home and picked up my chips, and Conrad and Yanke, and headed back to play another two 10 player R25 SnG's. I came second in the last one and recovered my SnG losses. Yanke also did quite well in the last game.

I met a lot of really great guys, and a lot of real dicks. The guys who organised the event: Brendan, Simo and Pascal were just totally great. They did an excellent job, organisation was up to schpat standards.

I hear the next one of these is going to be even bigger and will be towards the end of April. Check out www.poker.org.za for more details.

IN THE NEWS

Was the Loch Ness Monster and Elephant? You decide.

You know you're white trash when you have so many family members in prison that it spawns a marketable enterprise.

It's called Tabooboo, it's pink and it dispenses sex toys in bars.

The fact that a mom learned karate to protect her son from bullies is not all that surprising, the fact that her son is twenty two years old is disturbing.

CAPE TOWN POWER

The power issue isn't even in the news anymore. Eskom does have a plan to sort the problem out before winter but the timeline is pretty tight.

Minister of Trade and Industry Alec Irwin was caught lying when he claimed that that Koeberg's problems were caused through "Sabotage". Well he was caught lying again when denying using the word sabotage. He was being recorded for TV at the time and it was simple enough to review the tapes. Do you really want somebody this stupid in charge of Trade and Industry?

Here's the quotey bit:

"I did not use the term sabotage. From every investigation we've done in Eskom and outside it is clear that the bolt was there with a very, very high probability of it being human instrumentality."

Now sabotage is apparently a "term" and not a word. Also wtf is human instrumentality? Does that mean that it would not have happened if someone had not done it? Doesn't that just mean "Human Error"?

TV footage shows Erwin saying:

"This is in fact not an accident. The investigations proceeded well and action will be taken of a legal nature and of a criminal charge nature. Any interference with any electricity installation is an exceptionally serious crime. It is sabotage."

So how do ya like them apples Alec?

The DA is calling for his resignation, I think he should seriously consider trying to influence local government election, and then denying it, a reason to resign.

LONELY FINGER REVEALED

Well it's finally been revealed and despite earlier confidence shown by Def it appears that he was wrong, sorry man I was rooting for you. It appears that the person who was "most right" was totawaste with the following.

"it's a finger-awareness program. we should all feel bad if we let our fingers feel lonely and unloved. and we should wear gloves."

Well you may have been the closest but you weren't very close at all so your prize will be commensurate with your accuracy. Also because you're in bloody Israel I'm not shipping the prize to you, you'll just have to pick up you bag of salty liquorice in person. You do like the black salty stuff right?

LIGHT MEAT?

MORE

Well I'm just signing off here but I'd like to talk about a Scientology plot that I have discovered. This weekend I watched "Garden State", a movie written, directed, and starring Zach Braff who plays JD in Scrubs. The movie was pretty cool, it had great actors (Ian Holm, Natalie Portman, Peter Sarsgaard), a very cool sound track and a decent story. So why was it a Scientologist plot? Well The movie was all about this dude who has lived his whole life heavily medicated on some form of psychiatric drugs, prescribed by his evil psychiatrist father. When he decides to stop taking these drugs many things in his life fall together, he comes to terms with his mother's death and finds love. So why bill this drama as a comedy? Well the Scientologists know that it you know that it's just Scientologic propaganda you'd never go see it. Even if it doesn't actually tout Scientology it's existence in pop culture merely works to strengthen peoples doubts and fears of medicine they don't understand. If the fact that they make many references to Zach Braff being Jewish in the film is not a smokescreen I don't know what is. The movie is also produced by Danny DeVito who, while not linked to Scientology himself, is a close personal friend of John Travolta.

Hah, told you so!

Ok this may seem like irrational conspiracy theory, and it is, but I've tried fighting these kooks with rationality, now it's time to fight crazy with crazy!

schpat out.

Counterpoint

2006-03-02T14:28:00.000+02:00

Hey Moonie,

while I totally respect your decision not to vote, as is your right, I feel that your arguments are wrong. I've never been shy about letting people know when I think they're wrong and I'm not going to start now, even really good friends are mistaken from time to time and debate is a good thing, freedom of expression and all that.

I hear you on the meritocracy! OMFG this would so rock. You're right, even retards (close minded fuckers, as oppose to people with actual mental retardation, I'm not really sure about them) get to vote, but if intelligent people don't vote because of this they merely give the 'tards a higher weighting in the polls. Just because other people are going to screw up doesn't mean people who know what they are doing shouldn't take a stand on the issues.

You argue that our country's democracy is broken because "we do not have a strong enough opposition to contest the ruling party in any meaningful way." you go on to say that "We never will have a strong enough opposition, for the same reason that the ANC can do what it likes to its voters and will not lose - because people support their party because it's their party." See this is not a valid reason not to vote. You are never going to change the number of votes the ruling party receive, but if you don't vote because they have a majority you actually strengthen that majority. Voter Turn out in yesterday's election was a little above 47%, I'll give you odds that most of the people who blindly vote for a party based solely on loyalty did actually vote. Now early reports suggest that the ruling party have received about 70% of the vote. If we estimate that approx 10% of the population feel the same way you do, what would have happened if they had voted? Well nationally 32.9% of eligible voters would still have voted for the ruling party but in this scenario 24.1% would have voted for opposition parties, this leaves the ruling party with only a 57.7% majority. If the same numbers are applied to Gauteng, where voter turn out was only 27% the results would have changed to only a 51.1% majority. That's how not voting because you think one party is too strong affects the results.

You mention splitting of the opposition and that even if the opposition were totally unified it wouldn't make a difference because the ruling party would hold such a high percentage of the vote. Currently they do have enough of a majority to simply change the constitution if they wanted to, even if the opposition was added into one party their votes still would be ineffective. Your statements are absolutely true, but isn't that an argument for voting, not against it? I mean logically it doesn't make sense to say "The opposition isn't strong enough so there's no point in my voting for them". If this isn't what you meant then what did you mean?

Floor crossing is a completely different issue. This law is broken, but it doesn't negate the importance of voting. If you don't agree with this law then vote for a party that promises to change it, just bear in mind that for that you need to wait for national elections to do that.

I mentioned major struggles that happened all over the world because people wanted the right to self determination (one struggle which I failed to mention is the Suffragist movement which fights for the rights of women to vote). I didn't mention these struggles in some kind of stupid, sentimental attempt to make you feel guilty about the people who have sacrificed so that you could vote. I pointed out that all these struggles started because people wanted the right to self determination, because they realised that it was important enough to fight for. Now that everybody in this country has the right to Self Determination you may exercise that right by not voting, this may be because you don't like the system, or even as you say "there is no candidate I feel is worth supporting", but know that by choosing not to participate you are letting someone else choose for you. By not supporting anyone you are in fact supporting the majority view. This is not altogether a bad thing, if you think the people voting are going to make good decisions, but we've already discussed how most of the people voting are morons. I mentioned an obligation to vote, well that obligation is only to yourself and the people you care about. If you feel that not voting has the same effect your lives as voting then this obligation is meaningless, but sometimes you really do have to just vote for the lesser evil.

So in conclusion you say our system is broken, I agree. However I feel that the part that is broken is that intelligent people who do know what the issues are and are bright enough to vote don't. Floor Crossing is allowed in the law, it's wrong, but not a valid reason not to vote. Corruption is rife in our country, it's wrong, but not a valid reason not to vote. There are only two ways to make a difference in these and the multitude of other issues facing our country. One is to make your voice heard and cast you vote for the party that will do things the way you want, or at least against the party that does things the way you don't want. The second is open revolution, but I've got a better idea.

Let's you and me start our own party. We can stand for the abolition of democracy and the introduction of meritocracy. We can promise that if we win a majority we will give only the deserving the right to vote, we can promise that services will be provided on a who pays for them basis and that we will immediately start research into giving you the power to explode heads (of course I'll have to pilfer funds from that one to run a side project to ensure that I have immunity to having my head exploded). I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again, the only thing wrong with totalitarianism is that I’m not in charge!

I know it's not likely that we'd win, but we'd only need about 53000 votes to get us each a seat in parliament on the gravy train. From there on out it's the cushy life for us, if we're lucky we may even be paid huge sums of money to cross the floor to a party that needs to swell its ranks.

;)

schpat

PS: To comment about Khutsong. The situation in Khutsong is exactly what I’m talking about. Here 29000 were registered to vote. How many did? 232, with 12 spoilt ballots! Who won? The Ruling Party. That means that 29000 unhappy people allowed 220 make the decision for them and put the party they were upset with into power. How exactly did boycotting help them? Well people know they are upset. So what? There aren’t going to be re-elections and the Ruling Party is still in control of the area despite 29000 people not wanting it. What should they have done? They should have voted for candidates that would have looked after them better than the last lot did. Instead the same people who abandoned them are in power again. I would really not be surprised if the whole “boycott the vote” movement was not started to ensure that people who felt strongly about the issues would not vote at all. Here is proof that people don’t care about the people that boycotted. And a follow up on the latest news about who won.

Make It Count

2006-02-28T16:54:00.000+02:00

This missive to the general readership of my blog, all 5 of you, is to remind you that local government elections are happening tomorrow. In light of this I'd like to make three points.

1. You should vote.

We were all children once, in those days we could do whatever we wished, regardless of the consequences. We played all day and didn't care about the future, in short we had no responsibilities. As we've grown older so responsibility has crept into our lives, we have jobs, bills to pay and families to support. Voting in an election is every bit as important as any of these other obligations. Self-determination is a right that people all over the world have fought and died for. It all started long ago in France, moved to America, happened in South Africa (twice) and is still going on in the Middle East. These people didn't fall out of bed one day and decide that major political upheaval would be fun, they realised the potential of controlling their own destiny. It is your responsibility to yourself, your family and your fellow citizens to vote for the party that you believe has your best interest at heart.

Many people argue that "my vote doesn't count", this is utter crapola. Have you ever been to a polling station after the votes have been counted? I have, it's amazing how narrow margins can be. Trust me, I myself narrowly escaped election to a position on the UCT SRC in an election where five votes would have made all the difference.

If you're worried about the huge margins obtained by certain heavyweights and that a single vote wouldn't count you are even more mistaken. In proportional representation type situation, like municipal elections, no votes are losers because, as the name implies, representation is proportional to votes cast, if you don't understand this then go ask The SchpatDope. In non-proportional representation type situations, like ward elections, there is only one winner, the person who gets more votes, but even losing votes count. How so you ask? Well political parties use these votes as a sort of market research to determine what their chances of winning the next election in that area are. If an area was closely contested the winning party will be more likely to make sure that they deliver on their promises, if a party lost an area by a landslide they may have to consider whether or not it is productive to stand in that area next election.

The bottom line is that apathy is not an excuse. If you vote you will be making a choice on who should be in control of making sure your interests are seen to, you may not get what you choose, but your choice will make a difference in some way. If you don't vote you will also be making a choice, a choice to let someone else decide for you. Yes apathy is cool, if you don't care, but actively participating in your future is way more important.

2. You should vote based on the Issues

I was originally going to give a long description of the major political parties, what they were offering and, more importantly, what their faults were, but I'm sure anyone reading this blog is intelligent enough to know what the issues are, and what issues are important to them. I don't care who you are voting for, just do so in an informed and intelligent way. Too many people in this country vote out of loyalty and not based on the issues. This cartoon from today’s issue of Business Day is quite cool and shows that issues are starting to take over from loyalty, however this trend is still in its infancy. I'm a bit more pessimistic about this though, I would have drawn the old guy about to trip and fall before the baton could be passed.

Issues that might be important to you are: Corruption, Welfare, Policing, Service Delivery, Women’s Rights, Economy, Health Care, and much much more. Find out what the parties stand for and choose the one that best matches your own personal ideology.

3. Game Mechanics

I believe that for any democracy to be truly successful a strong opposition is essential. This is the only political viewpoint I'll be pushing today, I don't care who wins, only that they have decent opposition. Opposition ensures that the ruling party stays on its toes. They keep them honest.

If you don't agree with the above statement you can pretty much stop reading now, all I'm going to do for the rest of this post is point out some measures that can be taken to ensure good opposition. This is not an endorsement of any specific political party, only an observation of the mechanics of the election.

A few days ago the Freedom Front Plus accused the Democratic Alliance of misleading the voting population. What had the DA done? Well they told people not to "split the opposition vote", and that by not having a clear and strong opposition the ruling party gained relative strength. The VF+ argued that due to the proportional nature of the election the DA was lying and trying to scare voters into voting for them instead of the VF+. Are the VF+ right, were the DA blackmailing voters? Well here's the truth, election of ward councillors is not proportional. The person that gets the most votes in a ward becomes the councillor, that's the long and short of it. Now in a hypothetical situation where a ruling party held 40% support in a fictitious ward and two opposition parties each held 30% of the votes the ward would be won by the ruling party even though it is clear that a majority of voters did not vote for them.

So as you can see it is possible to split the vote to the detriment of opposition party and in so doing give unintended power to the ruling party. Previously alliances between parties have been forged to ensure that wards are only contested by one of the parties in the alliance and therefore opposition votes are not split. In fact this is how the DA came into existence when the Democratic Party, the New National Party and they party run by Louis Luyt joined forces to become the Democratic Alliance. That was before The NNP decided that they didn't really want to be opposition and moved almost entirely into the ranks of the ruling party, where their leader (Martinus Van Schalkwyk) was given a cushy job as Minister of Environmental Affairs, something's rotten in the state of Denmark, but I digress.

When it comes to the proportional representation part of the election it's a bit more difficult to assess whether or not splitting the vote has a detrimental effect on the opposition. I personally think it does because if the opposition is formed of many disparate parties it is easier to divide and conquer. If all the opposition parties in South Africa decided to stop their damn bickering and joined together I think we'd find that a strong, solidified opposition could really challenge our ruling party.

Conclusion

My final appeal here is that you go out and vote tomorrow, and if you do please take the issues and the mechanics into account when making your mark. This stuff is important.

Cock punches all round

2006-02-28T12:52:00.000+02:00

Well, Well, Well. I hate being right. If I meet the people responsible for creating the "Load Shedding Schedule" I swear I will punch them in the cock! If they don't have cocks I'll force them to have gender alteration surgery so that I can PUNCH THEM IN THE FUCKING COCK!!!!

This post going to be a quick rant about how stupid the people planning for emergencies are.

I live in Pinelands, which happens to be in "Block A" of the load shedding schedule (found on the Chamber of Commerce Website). Block A is off between 06:00 - 9:30 and 14:00 - 17:30. On the face of it it seems that this is reasonable, 7 hours of power cuts is about the 30%, about what they said they need us to cut. The only problem is that the fourth block in the load shedding schedule is a union of sets A and B, this block is off from 22:00 - 06:00. That brings the total time without power to 15 hours out of every 24 for anybody in blocks A or B. If you're unlucky enough to be in block A then 11.5 of those hours are consecutive! What's more, I don't see any areas in the Northern Suburbs having their power cut, maybe they're just not on the list but reports from colleagues who live in those areas tell me that they have been unaffected by Load Shedding.

As I have stated before, this situation was totally avoidable, but now that it has happened we need to understand that there will be power cuts and bitching about them isn't going to nullify their necessity. However bitching about unfair distribution of the power that is available might have some effect. Electricity is after all a “basic service”, the provision of which is enshrined in our constitution.

To the city officials that decide on Load Shedding: Get your act together, Fucktards.

I'm sure this electricity thing is just a conspiracy to stop you all from reading the "Election Special" post that I had planned for today. Never fear, I, the great and mighty Schpat, will ensure that their evil countermeasures do not silence this lone voice of decent! That means that there will be a second post at some point today.

cheers
schpat

PS: This is my 100th post. Thanks for reading.

Eat Flaming Poo!

2006-02-23T15:49:00.000+02:00

This just in. Charles Kadali thinks that some stupid rugby game is more important than average people being able to cook food. Well, not his exact words but he has GUARANTEED that there will be power on at Newlands Rugby Stadium during the Stormers vs Brumbies match. What a fucking wanker! Hey idiot, I haven’t had electricity for three nights in a row and you are ensuring that some inbred rugby supporters have extreme amounts of electricity for flood lights! Why don’t you just reschedule the fucking game for early in the afternoon when THE GOD DAMNED SUN IS FUCKING SHINING!

You know it’s idiots like you that pre-empt shows like Star Trek and Fire Fly to play sports. You guys fucking suck.

Everybody do me a favour and phone the *UNT on 021 446 1926 and tell him how you feel!

The contents of this entry are fuelled by hate and are only the authors opinion!

FUCKTARD!

Shit Flinging For Goodness

2006-02-23T14:07:00.000+02:00

If you have any poo, fling it now! - Mason, Madagascar.

Hey there to my regular readers.

I'm really sorry about not posting for a while, it really is upsetting to me to just leave you in the lurch like this but I really haven’t felt particularly inspired to write much. But that has all changed now. I'll deal with a few things and then I'll get to my point.

First of all I promised you a biased budget review, well 'ol Trev has done a great job again. What? You thought I'd hate it? Minister Manual is the best minister in the government at the moment, and probably the best minister in the government in the last 20 years. A lot of people were really worried when this very young man was appointed as minister of finance ten years ago, and with only a Std 8 education if they were to be b3elived. Well it's true that he's not as edumacated as your average minister of finance, but he possessed wisdom (in fact his WIS modifier is at about +5). He has the wisdom to appoint very competent advisors and listen to them when necessary. Unlike some ministers we know *cough*manto*chough*tshabalala*chough*msimang*chough*. I point any naysayers to the 60% growth of the JSE over the last 12 months, and that's all I've got to say.

Also, it looks like Def may have something on the Lonely Finger Challenge, check out the previous comments). Only time will tell though. Until then Def, why don't you let us know a little about yourself so that I can tailor the prize, that you may or may not be winning, to your specific needs. Go Def!

If you don't like posts that rant, thank you for visiting but you can stop reading now.

What really has me fired up, in case you haven’t guessed it yet, is the Power Outages in the Western Cape. I find myself so upset that I am prone to uncontrollable fits of rage. I mean really uncontrollable! Here is a short list of things that upset me.

1. Lack of Foresight

Yes, all these problems could have been avoided. Don't take the crap about "unavoidable circumstances" lying down. The Powers That Be (TPTB) have known for years that demand was outstripping supply, and particularly emergency supply that would be used if power stations went off line. Last year Eskom posted profits of 5.2 Billion ZAR. About 1.6B ZAR of this was paid as a dividend to the government (more on this later). What is more Eskom's top 11 managers and directors collectively took home 70M ZAR in compensation last year. The CEO alone took home 13M ZAR, a 260% increase from the previous year. Now I have no problem paying people metricfuckpiles of cash if they deliver the equivalent value, these people clearly have not. Their bonuses would have been better spent laying another cable from Mpumalanga so that CPT could get more power if the nuclear reactors went down.

2. Deceit, Confusion & Incompetence. Danger?

So what caused the power failures? A loose bolt? Fictional Wild Fires? Pollution? Mist? Bird Shit? It'll only be out for a day, we mean two, um three ok seven. Don't call us, we'll call you! Are people who honestly believe that 'mist' is a believable excuse for a province wide power outage, or who don't really know how long it takes to restart a reactor, really the kind of people you want in charge of what basically amounts to a great big WMD? These excuses, we know they are nothing but excuses because they've been caught fibbing already (those fictional forest fires), are not only implausible but downright laughable. Did that bolt work itself loose? Are there suddenly vastly more birds than before? Is the mist in Cape Town unexpectedly acidic enough to eat through electrical insulation? The answer to these questions is, sadly, no. Far more likely (and I stress that the following is only the author's opinion) is that Proper safety checks on bolts are no longer performed, and that maintenance that stops mist and bird poo from impeding supply of electricity have been halted to cut costs and ensure profits.

3. Lack of Emergency Planning

Man, you think they’d have a contingency plan for these kinds of “unavoidable” situations. Well they do, they’ll just cut power randomly for a while, they call it Load Shedding. I realise that load shedding is probably the only way to handle a crisis like this, and once you’re in one ya gota do what ya gota do. But, if you had any sense you’d do it in a planned, organised and rational way. Supposedly they are cutting power to certain places in two hour bursts, so in theory nobody should be without power for more than two hours at a time. Well my own personal experience is that out of the last 40 hours I’ve had power for 16, and 5 of those were in the utterly useless time from 12:30 to 5:30. Here’s how it should be done:

a) Cut power for maximum of 1 hour at a time. This means that people’s lives will only have to be put on hold for a very short time. They will be able to make supper for their kids and wash clothes for work, even if they have to wait an hour to do so, also fridges and freezers won’t defrost causing waste of food.

b) Publish a schedule listing areas where power will be cut and at what times. Then stick to it!

c) Share load shedding equally between areas.

Currently power is cut for much longer than the claimed 2 hours at a time (last night I was out for 10 hours), the schedule that they have published is not being stuck to and certain areas are being affected way more than others (I was told this morning that Kennilworth has had about 2 hours out since Sunday). On the subject of a schedule, this first schedule published for suburbs within the city of Cape Town was only published this morning (four days in) and can be found here, but don’t believe a word! Also it’s really crap that I’ve had no power for so long and that according to the list there are no power outages planned in the entire northern suburbs.

4. Passing the Buck

It really pisses me off when people refuse to accept responsibility for their actions. It’s all got to do with avoidance of conflict. People will not admit to their actions, even if they are the correct ones, if they think the person they are talking to will get upset with them. I phoned the council to make them aware of the fact, and complain that Pinelands was being treated the same way as the industrial areas around it. It was tuned off at 5:00pm and only switched on again in the early hours of the morning two days in a row. I managed to get hold of Charles Kadalie, Cape Town's manager for public lighting, his phone number is 446 1926 by the way. He told me that no, Pinelands was not being treated as an industrial area and really it was out of their hands as Eskom was the one pulling the switches. I contacted my local Councillor, a really great guy, and they had told him the same thing.

Well, after further investigation I found out that it was in fact the municipality switching us off. If you’re interested the actual place where they pull the levers is in Laidlaw Road Rondebosch. Then this morning when they published the list of station to be turned off Pinelands is listed under the “Epping Main Station” along with the industrial area. Flat out lies, that’s what it was.

5. This Is Only The Beginning

Koeberg’s reactor two is almost out of fuel. This means that pretty soon they are going to have to shut that reactor down and chuck in some more uranium. This is probably going to be a 40 day process. Folks my only advice here is it to stock up on candles, batteries and gas, and don’t put anything in your freezers.

Well that’s all I really want to say on the subject for the moment. I’m really quite upset and getting more so. As an aside, Elisabeth and I narrowly escaped being stuck in an elevator for 10 hours, the power went out just as the lift we were in reached out floor last night. The doors didn’t even open properly, I had to force them after the lights had gone out. Luckily I’ve taken to carrying a torch with me wherever I go after dark. Now that’s planning for you!

Schpat Out.

Spurred into action

2006-02-15T10:24:00.000+02:00

I know I've been rather remiss in posting to this blog, but many works at place of employment has successfully stopped me. But one thing has spurred me into action, yes I just had to let all of you know about the return of the IOL penis story.

Also there's a new Schpatdope out. It's on genetic memory and worth a read. Also apparently I offend a fringe religious group, go me!

Hey it's also my birthday today. Trev is going to give a budget speech today and if it warrants comment I pledge to you my faithful readers to deliver such comment with as much bias as possible.

Damnit, while I'm here I might as well tell you a little story form the weekend. Elisabeth was in PE visiting her dad, who is sick and in hospital, the whole weekend, so I took the opportunity to play a little poker online on saturday (btw firegolem I play on Poker Stars). I played pretty much the whole day and about 12 hours into it, while on my third meal of left over roast lamb, I was getting pretty tired and told the rest of the table that I'd had a long day and would be leaving soon. One of the other players commented that it did indeed look like I'd had some rough treatment. Huh? I thought. Then remembered that my avatar was a picture of me in zombie make-up from the Land of the Dead party. Lol, yeah 'Dead Tired' I said. About fifteen minutes of puns ensued about 'Dead Man's Hands', being 'card Dead' and when I started winning again 'Digging my way up'. This little exchange really energised me and I continued to play for another three hours booking a $15 win. At the end of the day I finished only a little up and I was very happy with my performance.

Oh and I chatted to Wil Wheaton during his poker tournament on friday.

While I'm on the subject of poker: I'm running a poker tournament at UCT on saturday. It's really small stakes (R25 buy-in) but if you don't already know about it and are interested get hold of me and I'll give you some details. On Monday I got a phone call from a friend of a friend of a friend who had heard about the tournament as was interested in joining in. I was quite keen as long as they were accompanied by the original friend, but what was really interesting was that this guy had heard about a Hold Em tournament that was going to be held at UCT in march as was wondering if this was it. Obviously it wasn't but that's the second time I've heard of a 'Big Game' being held at UCT, it's definitely moved squarely into the ranks of rumour. If anybody else hears anything about this I want to know!

Ok that's enough. And I'm sure you're all bored of poker.

schpat

State of (INDIG)Nation

2006-02-06T15:37:00.000+02:00

Anyway my weekend was good, yesterday I took Elisabeth out for a long scenic drive to McGregor near Robertson. It was a lot of fun and generally relaxing and enjoyable. There were two things I saw that shocked the shit out of me, not literally. The first one was shortly after exiting the tunnel we saw a baboon crossing the road, he was just ambling at a gentle pace expecting the world to stop for him. This is not surprising because he was the size of a large shetland pony! The second thing was two farm kids travelling on the back of their dad’s Toyota hilux. These were real “Plaas Suens” you know the kind that run around barefoot in shorts playing outside with their dogs and hunting small fury creatures, what was amazing was that one of them was wearing a pink golf shirt. They should be reported to Chuck Norris!

On our way back Elisabeth and I decided to stop at Grand West for the buffet because neither of us had eaten anything much all day. It’s a great deal at R95 but we were too late and they had stopped accepting walk-ins, although now you can book. We settled on a nice Italian restaurant and the food was very good and decently priced. I had a pasta with mushrooms, bacon, cream and chillies and Elisabeth has come calamari. It was yum. Afterwards Elisabeth went to House of Coffees while I spent some time at the Roulette table. I didn’t lose a spin in the hour that I played and walked way R145 up on a R100 stake, that’s a 145% ROI. When I when tell Elisabeth I found out that she’d been sitting that the coffee shop the whole time and nobody had even served her! I blew up at the management and we left.

We went to drop the car off with my folks, marvel at their new gigantic television and eventually got to bed at about 1am. Man it was a good weekend.

Now onto the political portion of this post. If you have no interest in South African politics I hope you enjoyed the first half of the post, but feel free to skip the rest, even though you should be informed! For the rest of you, here it is.

So, I was going to do a complete review of Thabo Mbeki’s State of the Nation address but I think that the almost 3% drop in on the JSE does a far better job of describing his weak attempt at sidestepping the issues far better than I ever could. I watched the address and then read the full text to make sure I hadn’t missed anything. The text was eighteen pages long, the first ten pages were about how bad apartheid was and how brilliant it was that some women killed herself by walking into the sea. Then there was about half a page about how happy everyone in South Africa is (according to international surveys), then about seven pages of what the government promises to do for us, and a final page about how bad apartheid was and how great the people who overcame it must be.

Did anyone else notice the complete failure to talk about what has already been delivered? Why this omission you ask? Well actually it’s quite simple, the government hasn’t delivered anything. Gasp! They’re too busy lining their own pocketsses and raping aids activists to even care about the people. So, what do they do when they eventually have to report back on their progress? Muddy the waters and confuse the issue, that’s what. Actually it’s a brilliant tactic, nobody in their politically correct, right mind could bad mouth you for being against apartheid, fortunately Schpat has never been politically correct.

When will the government or, to be more to the point, the ANC stop pushing the emotional buttons of segregation and oppression and actually start delivering to the people and earning their votes? The answer is probably never, ol’ bob from the north is still doing it today, and with great effect. As long as the general population, the people, of this country continue to allow themselves to be manipulated by politicians, that are too busy building empires to care about them, this country will not improve.

Politics is just like any other game, much more effective when everyone plays fair.

Oh I forgot to mention that almost an entire page was devoted to how we are going to prepare for the 2010 soccer world cup. And now the president is taking matters into his own hands and has instructed SAFA to explain to the presidential portfolio committee why BafanaBafana did so badly in the African Cup Of Nations. I’m glad that with oilgate, travelgate, gravy plane, and the zuma rape trial they have their priorities straight!

Indignantly
Schpat Out.

Long Day

2006-02-02T15:07:00.000+02:00

I’ve been up since 5:30 and I want to go home!

Last night I discovered that my PC is well and truly fubar. I can't even get it to start looking for an OS. I've tried everything and it's just completely screwed. I think it was probably damaged by the spate of power failures that we've had. I contacted my insurance provider and hey, guess what, they'll pay for repairs, zang.

A Johannesburg based group has petitioned Trevor Manual to make the costs of private broad band internet access tax deductible. They reckon that this will stimulate growth and broad band penetration. We'll have to wait for my birthday to find out what ol' Trev has in store for us.

If you want a good laugh check out some surprisingly interesting questions about bukkake etiquette raised by Lady Poker Player (one of the blogs I read regularly). Despite being a self confessed lover of poker and porn she only discovered bukkake like two days ago, wow.

Other than that, today is role playing, our rag-tag bunch of misfits is currently negotiating the transfer of a virus like (only on a much bigger scale) weapon of mass destruction in exchange for the services of a rather large and mean lizard. The way it works is this, we relieve the lizard of the burden of guarding the weapon and so he helps us win a war, it's a win win situation. Two weapons of mass destruction for the price of one.

But before that I need to fetch my PC so zenstar and synchronos can give it a once over.

Chuck Norris does not wear pink!

2006-02-01T15:39:00.000+02:00

Wow, what is it with pink shirts? Working in a building with a good deal of "fashion" people I noticed a few of the men here wearing pink shirts as far back as six months ago, and I thought it was gay. Now, every second guy out there is wearing a damn pink shirt. It's bloody peer pressure I tell you! If you could go up to the average guy wearing a pink shirt in the street, go back in time six months and offer him a pink shirt for free, he'd probably beat the living shit out of you in homophobic rage. I've got nothing against gay men, brokeback mountain sounds kinda cool, but pink shirts are just so girlie!

Speaking of Brokeback Mountain, here's an alternate concocted by DJ Coffman of Yirmumah fame. Ladies I'm going to bet that you have no problem getting you man to tag along for: Bareback Mountain.......

Check this out, at worst it's a brilliant scam, at best it's kinda gross. These guys over at LifeGem will take the 'carbon remains' of a loved one and turn them into a diamond for you. What's more, they only need 8oz, or about a cup, of ashes to do it. Can you imagine losing a leg and having that made into your own personal gem.

And on the Living in South Africa Front

It's always good news when we find out that Capetonians may face power rationing. Yes they recon they may have to ration our power over the winter months to make sure the recent power failures are not repeated. Speaking of power failures I'd better just save this post quickly.

Also nice to see that certain factions within the ANC are opposing others that are calling for another presidential term for Thabo Mbeki. I do however suspect that they are opposing the extra term not for their love of the constitution, as they'd have us believe, but rather for their dislike of the prez. Don't you guys out there think that it's strange that the ones opposing an extra term for Thabo were JZ's biggest supporters?

Other Stupid People Around the World

A shipment of frozen beef going into Bulgaria was stopped by customs officials when they noticed that it was 22 years old. According to the health certificate it was loaded in Ireland in 1984! The dodgy paperwork wasn't what tipped them off though, it was that the meat was blue.

What would you expect to find when reading the ingredients label on a pack of sliced cooked ham? Well no matter how disgusting your answer I'm sure it's better that "Dog Shit". That's what some dude in the UK found listed when he inspected the product in a local store. The company who makes the ham denies using faecal matter in its product and claims to have fired the prankster responsible for the labelling joke, but we know the truth. Next time you think to yourself "Man, this sandwich tastes like shit!", you'll check for ham right?

Anyway, I'm reinstalling windows tonight, wish me luck.

schpat

Arrgh, I hate computers!!

2006-01-31T10:17:00.000+02:00

Well I don’t really, I just hate it when computers don’t behave properly. My PC had some kind of meltdown yesterday and now won’t start up. This was after I spent a significant part of Saturday reinstalling the OS and patching it up the wazoo. Some of the windows files are corrupted and I suppose a reinstall or s repair is in order, oh joy. But I will get it working. Oh yes, I will get it working!

I was thinking about Wayne’s World the other night. Then I started thinking about The Wonder Years, that was a rocking show. Btw, Kevin’s brother’s name was Wayne. Also Fred Savage’s brother Ben played Cory in Boy Meets World. Ben Feldman, from Living With Fran is not Corey Feldman’s brother, although Corey’s mom was a Playboy Playmate.

YOU CAN’T TAKE THE SKY FROM ME

OK here’s the point where I rally all my readers together. If you didn’t know about it, it looks like an independent production company (read as a group of dedicated fans) is trying to revive Joss Whedon’s stalled space opera “Firefly”. Apparently they are looking at buying the rights and making the show available on a subscription basis. Now those of you who have taken into my confidence will know that last year when they too Star Trek off the silver screen I suggested a very similar method of keeping it alive. Needless to say I think it’s a great idea and totally has the potential to succeed. At the moment they’re gaining market intelligence by taking a survey, they promise that you won’t get any gorram spam. If you thought that this was the best show in the whole wide ‘verse then go fill in the survey.

The difference between this plan and my Star Trek plan is that with the original I was getting in on the ground floor and making millions, whereas here I hopefully get to see a few more episodes of Firefly with little or no effort. I can’t really decide which one actually works out better for me.

Go visit their site!

My Weekend

2006-01-30T14:54:00.000+02:00

So, My ADSL is all up and working, I’m just having some teething problems with the wireless LAN getting through to my top floor. There’s about a foot of concrete separating the two levels and the signal probably has to travel through it at an angle. I thought radio waves were supposed to be reflected and refracted. I’m going to try a few things like building parabolic reflectors for the aerial or just getting a bigger, I’ll keep you updated.

I also had all I could eat sushi again on friday, pacing myself much better this time I was able to eat more than last time, by that I mean stuff that cost more. The service wasn't this great last week and I was only given three platters in the two and a half hours I was there, I could probably have eaten another two if they weren't closing. The good aspect was that because they were closing the chef practically tripled my final sashimi and nigiri allotment and I got about R200 worth right there. Rock! We also went out to a friends birthday celebration at Borusso’s, which for some reason I was sure was a steak house. Imagine my surprise when I found out it was actually a pizza place! Damn good pizza and very reasonable prices. Early evening entertainment was provided by people who were hanging around after the Met, what I initially thought was HLA actually turned out to be SDGA (Stupid Drunk Girl Action). Later it got quite boring and candle wax provided the entertainment for the rest of the evening. After that Zenstar and Moonflake joined Elisabeth and I for coffee at San Marco at the waterfront. It was cool.

In other good news the SNO now has a website up and running to give us a little information about them. Apparently consumer fixed line telephony and internet access will be available as of the last quarter of this year, that’s barely six months away. You can check out their site here.

As far as online poker goes, I was on fire last night. I played in four $3+.40 ten player SNGs and moneyed three times. Once third ($6) and twice second ($9) for a total profit of $10.40. The other game was just a semi bad decision, it was very early on, like the second hand, I was the BB and I got dealt A7d. Lots of people called the blind and I simply checked. The flop came As9d2d, I had top pair and a flush draw with about 36% chance of hitting so I made a small bet, everybody called and the SB raise slightly, I called and most others folded. The Turn came 6d, the nut flush! I bet large, not all in, but at least half my stack, I have the nuts, nothing can beat me. The SB Re raises me and of course I go all in. Cards are revealed and he had A9o, two pair! Who goes all in with two pair with a very obvious possible flush showing??!?? The next card is an A to fill his boat and my flush is swept away down the river. What a suck out. I wasn’t too disappointed I’d already won a lot for the evening so I said “wd” and went to bed thinking to myself “Just remember that there’s only an 8% chance of two pair turning into a full house on the river mate, the next nine times you’re gonna loose!”. That thought made me happy as drifted off to sleep.

Cape Town's Burning

2006-01-26T16:55:00.000+02:00

Well, the mountain is anyway. About a quarter of Table Mountain is aflame, a pall of thick brown smoke covers the Mother City. Fire fighting efforts include those of six water dropping helicopters. It's a dark day for the residents of the fairest cape, and that's just because the smoke is blocking the sun!

Speaking of dark days, Nice Guy Eddie is dead. Chris Penn was found dead in is home apparently having died two day before. Investigations into his death are pending.

Oh, and Telkom finally connected my ADSL today at about 16:30, they phoned ad everything.

Trouble with Tribbles, um Telcoms

2006-01-25T16:45:00.000+02:00

Well guess what, the Telkom guy actually arrived semi on time at 9:10 this morning, but I’m still as frustrated with Telkom as James Tiberius Kirk was with those pesky furry critters.

I had already gotten up at 6:30 (I'm excited in case you can't tell) and managed to setup the wireless network and then completely screw it up applying some measure of security. Then recover and decide that one day without security until I've got time to investigate how it's done won't be the end of the world. Speaking of security, I installed the wireless access card in my pc first and was very surprised to find no less than three unsecured wireless networks available to me. I suspect that they all stem from the Old Mutual buildings across the road. There I was questioning why I'd even bothered getting ADSL when a wireless network card would have done the trick. Unfortunately I was unable to get net access because that required a username and password, but I could freely browse the networks. I decided to avoid doing anything else illegal and told my pc to ignore these networks.

So back to the telkom guy. Well before he arrived I'd already tried syncing my modem with the DSLAM, but with no response. When he got there he pulled out his swanky HP laptop and did the same thing with his modem and again no response. Things were looking bad. He made some calls and discovered that the exchange technician had not yet connected my line to the DSLAM, arse bunglers, and places a call to set that in motion. It took him all of ten minutes to do this, it only took me two but I didn't have to unpack and pack up my laptop, which was nothing really and for that I'm going to be charges R400.

The two things that struck me as really silly were that they sent a guy out without doing the prep properly and that this guy had a 15K+ laptop to check it there was a connection, when a R1K- ADSL router would be just as good and more convenient to lug around. Hopefully the exchange dude will get his act together and make the connection today, chances?

No word from Granadilla Juice Guy today, loll.

My good friend Moonflake is running an interesting statistical study on Astrology for her blog. On the odd chance that you don't read her blog (really you should, it's much better than mine) go over there and take part in this scientamariffic study.

Do you swim on both sides of the Jacuzzi?

Because I haven’t linked in ages here are some funnies.

Zimbabwe has just released a Z$50 000 banknote. It's worth about R3.15 and with inflation expected to be between 700 and 800 percent in the next two months it'll be valued at about 50c. And that's the biggest they got.

Chinese migrant workers, who will be travelling home for Lunar New Year, are in for a 24 hour train ride that is so crowded that some of them have decided to wear adult diapers because it's impossible to get to the toilet.

While we're on the subject of crazy Asians, South Korea is going to give financial aid to rural farmers to help them pay for mail order brides. I kid you not!

Well it's 16:45 and I haven't heard a word from Telkom, who promised to contact me as soon as everything was properly connected. I'm fantasising that they're just being their usual slack selves about follow-up calls, but in reality I know that they're just being their usual slack selves about doing their damn jobs.

cheers
schpat

Bullshit Baffles Brainless

2006-01-24T14:12:00.000+02:00

Every now and then I'm truly amazed by how gullible and dumb some people can be. It makes me want to start some kind of scam where I claim that through sniffing african buffalo dung I can cure bad luck. Case in point: Yesterday I was re-entering my work building when I encountered moron of the week. Now the building in question has access control that works off a credit card sized transponder bearing the employee's name, staff number and a photo. This access card must be passed over a reader point to activate the turnstiles, I'm sure you've all seen these kind of systems before. At the time of my brush with idiocy I happened to have a bottle of granadilla juice in the same hand as my access when I swiped it at the turnstile. Lo and behold somebody who also works in the building asked me how I'd gotten in with the juice. I calmly held up the bottle, the card still in my hand and told them that it was the RFID tag on the juice that let me in. They asked what RFID was and I "explained" that a tiny transponder was "printed" onto the label that allowed stores to track their goods, I pointed at an imagined bulge in the label, again right next to my access card, and said: "can you see it there". "Oh, yeah," said the moron. I told them that it was "just a weird coincidence" that the RFID tag on the juice happened to let you into the building, "strange huh?".

Well it would be vaguely amusing had that been the end of it, but today the idiot approached me and told me that the granadilla juice trick had not worked when he tried to show it to some friends. I stifled my laughter and said, "yeah, it only works if you use the juice to exit the building first." I just can't wait for the next episode.

In other news, Telkom actually phoned me today and they want to install my ADSL tomorrow, woot. Hopefully I'm picking up the equipment today. r0><><0r

There've been quite a few entrants in the Lonely Finger Challenge. The latest challenger, def, went as far as finding out who the site was registered to and getting hold of the developers, but they wouldn't tell him anything. Spoilsports. And yes def, I am _actually_ giving away a prize, I've done it before and I'll probably do it again.

schpat

It's the weekend

2006-01-21T10:22:00.000+02:00

Well, it’s 09:300 on Saturday and I’m at work. The power outage in the city yesterday afternoon meant that some incredibly important work couldn’t be fininshed and now I’m busy bugging standby DBAs to get their act together and run some damn scripts so that I can get busy.

Other than that I decided to take Elisabeth out last night, we went to Benkei for all you can eat sushi, stuffed myself to just before vomiting, really uncomfortable. I was quite surprised that the first four items I ordered totally made up for the entire cost of the buffet, so I did that twice and then had to eat half of Elisabeth’s second portion and didn’t have enough room for my third sashimi portion, them’s the breaks.

If I ever get out of the office poker is gonna be a blast, I might not always win, but I have a great time playing. I know that some of the regular players have been reading up on tips and strategy, it might be fun to play against some better informed opponents, I just hope it doesn’t make them think too much. It’s like tekken, when you first start you take Christy and button mash your way to glory, then you think you’re great and start trying to time things and make combos, then you just start sucking. I think the best idea is to mash, and mash, and when the rare opportunity presents itself make that play that wins you a big pot. Don’t think about it too much, play from instinct and as you play more your instincts will get better.

Anyway, good luck to all ya all.

Schpat

Damn DBA just screwed up, again.

Ghosts of Christmas Past

2006-01-13T16:00:00.000+02:00

I was confronted by my second year accounts lecturer today. As I was leaving my building he spotted me from across the street and shouted out a comment. The fact that he recognised me is quite telling, it's not because I was a good student.

I would tell you what it was he shouted out to me, but in the interests of not incriminating myself I plead DA FIFF!!!!

When of when will telkom connect my ADSL? Any bets people?

I'm going to buy some more memory for my PC today. Java Bean really is the cheapest place around. Here comes 512MB for my old dinosaur.

Saw this funny pictue on a poker blog today

I got an email from Lonely Finger here it is:

Dear Lonely person,

I tried to read the mail you sent me. But I don't have another finger friend to hold down the 'alt' key to open my mailbox.
I'll just stand here alone.
Waiting.

Sadly, finger.

I went back to the site to see if any new content was added. Nothing. I browsed the site a bit more and discovered some interesting looking links, this can't be what the whole thing is about can it? Really it can't?

Don't forget the Lonely Finger challenge, check the sidebar for more details. No one has said anything yet so if one person attempts they will automatically be the closest and the funniest.

cheers
schpat

Lonely Finger Challenge

2006-01-04T15:52:00.000+02:00

Well trust mr. completely unreliable, that's you James, not to arrive for role-playing last night. But it was ok because mr. somewhat unreliable, that's me, left his character sheet at home. I tried to get a game of something going but alas it was to no avail. We had a good time anyway just talking shit, isn't it always the case. We watched The Most Amazing Show starring Corne and Twakkie last night. All I have to say is that a chakra is like a starburst of energy in your poophol! Who says SACB isn’t educational?

Another interesting thing we saw last night was an advert for a website. The ad was about a finger (complete with animated face drawn in ball point) who was so lonely he couldn’t get people to come to his party even when he offered free beer and strippers. I just had to check the website out today to see what it was all about, I left no more enlightened than when I got there. Go check out the site and if you can work out what it is let me know, otherwise post your speculations here as comments and I’ll give a prize for the person who is right, if no one is right I’ll give a prize to the most interesting idea. www.lonelyfinger.com

I can't say what it is about this week but it seems as if everybody is just going through the motions and waiting for it to end, that's what you get in four day weeks I suppose.

I'm still in the cooling off period before I go out and order ADSL but it's looking more and more attractive all the time. In case you're interested here's the financial breakdown:

ADSL 192 circuit line rental (god telscum sucks!) R270
ISP 3 Gig cap R100
Total R370

The next best connectivity option is callmore with a capped charge per call.

Callmore monthly R90
20 Dial-ups* R170
ISP R70
Total R320

That means it'll cost me only R50 extra to be permanently connected even in peak periods and never worry about internet call costs, that's R50 for piece of mind and convenience.

*I've used 20 dial-ups because on average I spend about 1.5 - 3 hrs online at a time and so 20 dial-ups is the break even point where the extra R90 for Callmore is paid off. I do realise that these figures are rough with many variables, but I think they are good enough for decision making.

Also today I realised that about 80% of my call charges are Elisabeth phoning me at work. If we can communicate via email it would save money. If we could manage only half of our communications this way it's going to save about R80, that means a saving of R30 per month, instant value!

Of course amortising the initial setup costs (R1500, ADSL wireless router with ethernet and wireless cards for my pc and Elisabeth's laptop) at R30 per month will take about four years. I could have gotten a modem for free and run cables, but ultimately R1500 is a small price to pay for not having the hassles of running wires in odd places or having them running across my lounge floor and being able to use the laptop anywhere in the flat.

Bottom line: I've been waiting and I'm still keen to do it. It's not a rash decision and I'm going to go for it.

After all that I'm going to leave you with a joke forwarded to me by the creator of Leisure Suit Larry, Al Lowe.

"Some girl on the street outside the bar just asked me if I was saved yet."
"Yeah? What did you say?"
"I told her 'I saved at the checkpoint a couple of minutes back and I can reload from there if I die.' She looked confused."

lol, geek anti evangelism humour, gotta love it!

schpat

Schpat Poker Invitational

2006-01-03T11:10:00.000+02:00

I'd like to thank everyone who came to the Schpat Poker Invitation, I had a lot of fun and it wouldn't have been possible without you. For those of you who couldn't make it here's how it went down.

Fourteen people started at about 17:00, I say fourteen, but only thirteen were actually there. Due to an unfortunate scheduling issue Garrick couldn't join us until later. Everyone put R25 into the pot and was given 1500 chips. The people who played were
Chelle, Alex, Garrick, Roo, Mike, Beth, Al, Paul, Nick, Hila, Dave, Waynne, Graham and me. Roo took a big early lead with his patented ultra aggressive style and by the time we got to the final table he needed one of the chip cases to transport his stack.

The final table was Mike, Graham, Chelle, Waynne and Roo with a rather impressive chip stack. Chelle and Graham didn't last very long after joining the final table rather short stacked. Mike went out next but managed to hold in there to witnessed Roo losing his chip lead to Waynne and Dave, he walked away with R50. The aggressive play that brought Roo to the final table with an enormous lead just couldn't carry him any further and he was taken out by Waynne and Dave, waking away with R75. Waynne and Dave played heads up for awhile trading small pots until Dave went all in on an A4o and won. Waynne earned himself R100 and Dave R125 for the evening. The tournament finished at about 01:00

After than Al, Garrick, Roo and I decided to play a little five card Draw for a R10 stake. That game went on until 07:30 the next morning going through various silly stages where I did things like playing indian poker, playing blind and playing with my draw open for everyone else to see. During these silly phases I made most of my gains. By the end of the evening the cards were so manky that they wouldn't fit back into their boxes. Thanks to these late partiers for taking the night to a whole other level and a really big thanks to them for helping me clean up.

Well I'm still tired, but looking forward to the next time we do it.

Less Stress

2005-12-22T12:10:00.000+02:00

The days are significantly more relaxed now that there is very little that can be done before Christmas. People are calmer and the roads are quieter, but thank god I'm not in the shops. I may be speaking too soon though, I've still got to pick up Elisabeth's main gift. I'm getting her a mini Hi-Fi that plays MP3 from CD and also memory cards and flash drives, from Hi-Fi Corp. While the products offered by Hi-Fi Corp are decent the quality control of their manufacturers is rather suspect and with their seven day return policy there was no way I was picking the unit up with out leaving plenty of time for a return. So yesterday I took a little trip out to the Rondebosch branch and guess what, out of stock! They have no stock of the unit anywhere in the western cape. They took my number and promised to call me back if stock came in, but they couldn't promise it would be before Christmas. So a bit of a pickle.

Elisabeth and I have been eating a lot of wraps and salad because they are quick to make and require almost no clean up. Last night I was bored of eating the same "easy" suppers over and over, so I decided to be a little creative. I've got a bunch of salmon in my freezer and I decided to do a stir fry. I picked up a Woolies ready cut stir fry pack and I was ready to go. I fried the salmon first adding a generous measure of teriyaki for flavour. Then did the stir fry in two batches because my pan is small, I really need a wok. The ginger in the veg mix really brought out the flavour of the fish and teriyaki, it was da bazomb!

After supper we watched a little TV and then I headed downstairs to clean up the kitchen and play a little Texas Hold 'em. I played two 18 p NLHE $1.50 + $0.25 Sit and Go tournaments and finished 1st and 2nd respectively. The first tournament was all about playing aggressively and winning big hands, it was what worked. It was a whole bunch of fun twice during that game I went from big stack to incredibly small stack (at one point $800 with $600 blinds) as other players got luckier than I was. Careful playing and some amazing semi bluffs saw me steeling a few pots and building my stack up again. I also had my share of luck drawing three straights on the river, all with 9. This included my last hand where I won with a straight to K against two pair KQ. Man winning was great, the $10.80 wasn't bad either.

The second game was much more reserved, it was all about winning the small pots and outlasting the other players. Early on in the game, like third hand, I raise to 500 (with a stack on 1480 on AA one other player called, that's cool it increased the pot. We were both sitting with our entire stack already in play so the hand played out: 6d Td Ac, I'd hit my flop and went all in with the rest of my stack, the other player called and because all our money was already in the pot his cards were revealed, 9Th. I still can't quite believe he went all in on a pair of T. The turn came 8s and the river Ah, Four Aces, Ka Ching! That hand set me up as chip leader for most of the tournament and let me dominate a lot of hands. But by the time it came down to the last hand I was short stacked $6k to $21k and the blinds were $2k. I was dealt Qd 6s in the hole and as BB I checked. The flop Came 3d Ac Ad and my opponent checked, that meant he didn't have an A and was probably betting on a Pair no bigger than JJ, I went all in with a bluff trying to convince him I had an A. He called, damn. The turn came 2d giving me 9 outs for the flush, the river came 9d and I thought I had it. But the villain showed Kd 2c and stole the flush with the only card that could have beaten me. I can in second and won $8.10 bringing my winnings for the evening to $18.90, sweet!

I don't think I'm going to be playing tonight, I'm on a high from winning so much that I may get careless and lose, plus I need the rest. I just got a call from Hi-Fi Corp that the unit has been delivered so I'll probably go pick that up after lunch. The project team is going to Yum for lunch, it's a bit pricy, but the menu does look great, I'll let you know.

schpat

alt.me.die.die.die

2005-12-21T10:43:00.000+02:00

I'm sorry for the really long absence here, and for disappointing all the people who read my blog often. On the up side all the hard work seemed to have paid off because I got to see a whole bunch of people over the weekend that I haven’t seen since August and that I wouldn't have seen had it not been for SchpatCON.

SCHPATCON REPORT BACK

All in all a resounding success. Many very late nights went into the con this year, but that's probably because I was so slack getting the whole affair off the ground. Friday night started with Munchkin, my brother cam through and managed to come second, Garrick won the event and prizes should be on the way. After Munchkin an impromptu game of Texas Hold 'Em sprang up. I managed to last almost the whole thing on my initial buy in, I didn't have a winning hand dealt to me the whole night, not one! Because of that the game was quite boring for me I didn't get to the showdown more than three times the entire evening. Dieter did the worst with three buy-ins and still not walking away with a cent and Roo did best winning a total of almost R100. A special mention has to go to Graham Polter (I hope that's right, it's been a bad weekend for names) who came to the table with "can you please remind me how this game works" and "I can't really shuffle, could someone do it for me" and then proceeded to sit on Big Stack for most of the night, he was the only other person to come away with anything.

Saturday morning saw me completing my module and picking up our fine sponsor Adeeb from Outer Limits. Alex was working so we had to run the Deadlands module first. It was a great running, with three tables participating. The first session ran horribly over time with one GM taking 2 hours longer than any of the others, but people were kept quiet by the readily available PS2 and the fact that they hadn't paid a cent.

The afternoon module was played by only two tables because of the late starting time, but was still enjoyed by all. Adam came round and we "jammed" a bit on our harmonicas, I'm gonna get myself a cool one sometime, mine sounds way too tinny. The game finished at about 8pm and I gave Adeeb a lift to town and then home before getting to the One Ring for the after party at about 10pm.

Because the Steve Jackson games prizes had not arrived yet the Outer Limits spon was all we had to dish out, thanks Adeeb and Grant. Best player prize went to Robyn Saul for an amazing Calamity Jane, one of the best performances I've ever seen. Mike Dewar and Brendan Quinlevin (his ears are not bleedink) came in very close joint second place, Brendan for Doc Holiday and Mike for a piratey type. The GM prize went to Garrick for his performance in "Pieces of Hate", a one point difference. He also scored best in "Hexes Wild", altogether a deserving winner.

The last R50 gift voucher was the prize for the Drunken Foosball Tournament. Now there'd been a lot of trash talking on my part but I wasn't all that confident, there were some pretty tough teams in contention. There was a round of Round Robin where Lucas and I were undefeated, at the end it was Jason & Sean vs Mike & BETH for third and fourth, and Dave & Virolin vs Lukas & me in the final. Both finals were to be monster 20 ball games, and both went into extra time. In the end I think Mike and BETH came third in a very close and exciting runners up match, and Lucas & I cleaned the board with Dave & Virolin in extra time. Go us. The tournament took about an hour to play and the guys that were at the table before us were rather gracious in letting us hog the table after I explained what it was for. They wanted to compete, but I explained that it was kinda a private thing and they totally understood. Sniggering they introduced themselves as "Japan" and "Taste" ("Taste of Japan", geddit?) they did challenge Lucas & I though, and cleaned the floor, walls and ceiling with us. I congratulated them and informed them that they had obviously had a misspent youth, I don't think they got it. Those jock types! I gave the prize to Lucas because I was just lucky, he was the real skill behind our team.

I like to take this opportunity to really thank everybody who came, and especially those who contributed. I just organise this thing for everybody to come along and have a great time, I just couldn’t have made it happen without you.

Thanks

Wow that was long!

POKERSTARS.COM

Last night I graduated myself from play money to real money. I deposited a few dollars and entered a No limit Hold 'em tournament for $1 + $0.20. That's a $1 stake and $0.20 fee to the house, then they give you $1500 in chips and you play till the last man standing, there are 45 players on 5 tables and the top seven places are paid out. I played in that for a while and eventually finished in 29th position. Then I played a 18 player 2 table $1.50 + $0.25 Turbo (15 seconds instead of 30 to make decisions) No limit Hold 'em, in that game I made it through to the final table and finished 7th. With 18 players only the top 4 are paid. I decided to go for one more game before going to bed, another 18p 2t %1.50 + $0.25 Turbo No limit Hold 'em game. I did much better this time, having sussed out a couple of the finer points of a game with severely increasing blinds. I made it through to the final table and I wasn't even the shortest stack when I got there. By the time it had gotten down to seven players I'd made a pretty severe mistake and only had about $500 in my stack (blinds were $300 at this point). Got dealt a decent pair (QQ) and played all in, people folded an I stole the blinds bringing me up to about $1.5k again. In the very next hand I was dealt AKs (the "s" means suited, "o" would be off-suit) and after the other three shortish stacks had gone all in I decided to follow, the two (substantially) larger stacks folded out. With all four players "all in" there is no more betting and no opportunity to fold, so everybody's hole cards are revealed. I was up against AQo, AJo, ATs and I had AKs . Then came the flop Q J 8, mortified I hopped for the K to come at either the Turn or the River, there was about a 12% chance of that happening, other wise was screwed. The Turn 3, shit! From all over the world (one guy in Essex, one Guy in Terahn, one guy in Erie and me in CT) we held our breath for the River: T! Everybody had hit their under-card except for me, but I still won with the straight to A. That is one hand I'm going to remember for a long time. Now I was in the top three, but I was short stack on about $6k with the other $21k split pretty evenly between the two big stacks. Blinds went to $600, then to $1.2k and soon I had been bled out of the game, but it was great. I won $5.40, yay me!

PERSONALITY-LESS ZONE

Well Moonie, I did that personality test you've been bugging me to do and, if the blog title didn't give it away, I'm Wesley Crusher. That's actually pretty cool, I've always liked Wesley. When I was watching the series I was only a few years younger than the character and I always identified with him, he might not have been the coolest character, but he was dependable and got to live on a starship! Kinda like me, except for the starship part. Plus Wil Weaton is a geek god!

SIGN OUT

I've still got some shopping to do, hopefully at lunch time. I'll try to post more regularly, thus ensuring shorter posts.

Until later

Cheers

SchpatCON: Hex Update

2005-12-13T17:54:00.000+02:00

I know, I’ve been very bad with getting the website up, but for some reason I seem to have decided that the busiest work week of the year should coincided with the busiest personal week of the year, that’s right the week before Christmas and the week before SchpatCON.

Everything is still going according to schedule, and speaking of schedules here it is.

Friday
15:00 : Munchkin, yes that wonderful card game we’ve all come to know and love.

Saturday
10:00 : All Flesh Must Be Eaten. A Zombie module with Pirates, or a Pirate Module with Zombies? You be the judge! A module by Alex Millar in a genre that he has proven to have made his own.

14:00 : GURPS: Deadlands. Gunslingers and Hucksters, Missionaries and Indians, Abominations and Terrors, these are just a few for the things you can expect. A module by schpat

Later : Prize giving probably at the One Ring.

Even Later : Drunken Foosball Tournament (remember to register on Saturday for this one.

Ok the venue is the Kramer Law Building (the same place as DragonFire and the last 2 SchpatCONs. The good news is that shirts will be ready on time (hopefully) even if the modules aren’t. Did I mention that entrance was free?

schpat

Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon

2005-12-12T00:22:00.000+02:00

Moonflake, please pass this info on to Zenstar. I should have bet!

Bela Lugosia (International House) George Burns (Radioland Murders) Christopher Loyd (One flew over the cuckoo's Nest) Danny DeVito (LA Confidential) Kevin Spacy (Outbreak) Dustin Hoffman (Sleepers) Kevin Bacon

Probably could have done it quicker, but that's not important.

Well, it's been a while again...

2005-12-09T12:15:00.000+02:00

In a nutshell here is my week: Frinight, phoned people about SchpatCon t-shirts and went out for sushi with Elisabeth. Saturday and Saturnight: attempted ObsFest, was way too busy, took Elisabeth out for supper. Sunday: House work in preperation for Elisabeth's family comming down. Monday: Hectic work, home for internet poker. Tuesday: Hectic Work, rejoice as JZ is charged with rape, Elisabeths family comes round for supper, we have home made pizza. Wednesday: Hectic work, meet Ardi for lunch, meet people to collect t-shirts, online poker from home. Thursday: Hectic Work, Elisabeth's family comes round for supper again, fetch shirts from Moonflake and Zenstar see Synk there too. Friday: Hectic work, drop shirts off at printer, going out for lunch.

That's the short version, notice that working on my schpatcon module was not mentioned, I have my weekend cut out for me. That;s if I can fit it in around moonie's birthday tonight and dinner guests on Saturnight. Sunday here I come!

It's finally over

2005-12-02T13:55:00.000+02:00

THE TABLOIDS

This morning as I drove into work I noticed two pole adverts for the local 'english' language tabloid, "The Voice": "'Jesus Killer' strikes again" and “'Satan' killer on the loose". I mean what are they doing, covering all their bases? What religious icon will be vilified next? Mohamed? Buddha? Obviously the editors are trying to get people to buy the rag, but aside from the often uninteresting page 3 girl there really is no reason, unless of course you're trying to find out about the latest porn downloads for your phone. I suppose journalism and integrity doesn't pay anymore.

ROUND 3

So I had to go back to city hall today. I arrive at 8:30 as instructed by the nice gentleman at enquiries and head on over to Court 2 to find the Clerk of the Court. On my way I see shield-mullet and wave with a huge grin, she scowls back at me, this one is in serious need of an attitude adjustment. I head past her and find Court 2, but there are a bunch of people milling around outside and none of them look like they are in charge. I ask one of the security guards where I could find the clerk and she tells me that I must go to enquiries. At enquiries I wait in a short queue only to be told that he's at the court. I get them to describe him to me and go looking for him. Eventually I find the guy, a thirty-something metro police officer who stanks of booze. He probably had a tough night so trying not to speak too loudly I explain what has happened on my last three visits. He walks into the court where a the prosecutor, a young lady, is reading something at her podium with her back towards us. Putting his arm around her shoulders and leaning in real close, this makes the attractive young prosecutor visibly uncomfortable, he whispers the story into her ear. She thanks him curtly and motions me over to her. At this point I'm worried that hung-over-letch-man has put her in a really bad mood before she hears my case.

The prosecutor then explains to me that she has the authority to drop the charges but only if sufficient evidence is provided. I "show her my evidence", she “reviews my case” and “the charges are dropped”. Well actually it happened just like that just without the quotation marks, but I was just trying to spice it up. Yay, no fine!

Final Score:
City Hall: 2
Schpat: 200

W00t!!11!!1 I win.

STUPID FUCKING DICKHEAD

This “pastor” dude from Cape Town somewhere took his kids on a shooting spree on Halloween. He drove his kids around so that they could shoot at trick or treating teenagers with paintball guns in order to teach the teens that the occult is bad. I mean WTF?? That’s not the worst of it, his son shot a very young kid in the face at point blank range before he fled the scene at high speed. This is just the kind of pro-gun activist you don’t want in your lobby, he is known for his opposition to homosexuality, pornography, communism, militant Islam, and to what he says is "humanism" in state schools. He says he did it to fight satanism, maybe he should call the tabloids.

AMUSING PICTURE

Today’s picture provided to me by Koos, and rather funny it is too. It’s entitled: “Cheated!”

WEEKEND CALLING

Well it’s been a heluva week, and it’s over now. My plans for the weekend involve taking Elisabeth out tonight, a lot of housework (family from PE is coming to visit on Monday) and going to ObsFest on Saturday and Saturnight. I’ll be there snapping a few pics, hope to see some of you guys there.

Back to The Hall

2005-12-01T13:46:00.000+02:00

THAT PLACE THAT DRIVES YOU MAD: Round 2

So I walk on over to the city hall today to check what the outcome of my appeal on the first traffic fine is. Note this is not the speeding fine I got outside George, it's the one I got in Sea Point for not having a licence. Well I go to the office were I ended up last time, where I left the fine, and sat in the queue for about 20 minutes. I get to see the mullet headed traffic lady who I gave my fine to. It appears all she does is collect the appeals and hand them over to the prosecutor who hands them back to her several days later with his decision. Effectively she is a shield that keeps the wrath of the public as far away from the prosecutor as possible. Anyway shield-mullet goes through the extremely large pile of alphabetised replied-to appeals she has received from the prosecutor and can not find my case. She checks the register (in a book not on computer!) and sees that the case has been reviewed by the prosecutor and returned to her. After 5 minutes of searching she concludes that it must have been sent to enquiries by mistake, and send me there to check. A short walk to enquiries and a 10 minute queue fails to produce anything, so back to shield-mullet. At shield-mullet's office I thank the gods of Bureaucracy that there is only one person in front of me, but when that person is done shield-mullet is off on a coffee break. Eventually she arrives back, coffee in hand, and apologises to me because the file was in fact in a different pile on her desk, the pile just returned by the prosecutor. Shield-mullet tells me that the prosecutor has queried my appeal and that I have to provide a few more details including the case number for when I reported the theft of my drivers licence. Come back when you have those details.

I go back to the office where I have the insurance details for when Elisabeth's bag was stolen, find the case number write a short letter to the prosecutor and make a copy of the licence in my ID book as proof that I have one. When I get back to City Hall I notice Shield-Mullet chatting to someone in the corridor as I go in and smile at her as I walk past on the way to her office, she smiles back. After a ten minute wait she returns to her office and tells me that she's closed for the day and that I should go to enquiries. At enquiries I explain what shield-mullet has told me, the guy behind the counter gets very pissed off and seems to take pity on me. Stamps my letter (I don't know why) and tells me to go directly to the clerk of the court tomorrow before 9am, he should be able to arrange it that I can actually see the prosecutor himself, thus totally avoiding shield-mullet.

Oh yeah, did I mention the Astrix poster outside shield-mullet's office?

City Hall: 2
Schpat: 0

SCHPATCON: HEX, AN UPDATE

Yes it's still happening on the 16th and 17th. But the t-shirt design is finished, here it is. Obviously some lettering will be added. If you want to have a t-shirt of your very own you can contact me at schpat@gmail.com. You need to get a black shirt to me before they go to print next week friday, that is get the shirt to me by thursnight. (didn't see that one coming did ya?)The printing is only going to cost about R16 and remember that entry to all events is free.

Go on you know you want one.

The website with a full time table and event summary will by up soon, I'll keep you updated.

SILLY INVENTION

Tired of wearing those damn thongs that ride up your butt? Why don't you rather check out this little garment that has no back.

AMUSING PICTURE

Well I've noticed that blogspot has had a problem with pictures, but I'm attempting to load one here for you.

OUT OF HERE

Well that's me. I'll keep you updated on both the traffic court thing and SchpatCON, until then keep on keepin' on!

Just a quick note

2005-11-29T17:02:00.000+02:00

Work has been really busy but still I strive to bring you items of interest.

Plosiguant raises an interesting question about the safety of the penis flytrap. That is one twisted mind!

ICASA has announced that the SNO should be licenced by the end of the year. This is good news for consumers, Analysts predict that they will begin operating in March 2006.

If you want a laugh check out this site. It's all about real life US patents that are really dumb. This one in particular, learn to shake damn it!

The space key on by brand new keyboard has started to squeak! This is most irritating!

What a weekend

2005-11-28T18:14:00.000+02:00

IT ALL STARTRED

It all started on Frinight (see previous blogpost for details) when yet another power failure in the western cape urged me to make plans to braai with my folks. My mom had just gotten herself two new cats, a pair of two year old gingers (brother and sister). I grew up with cats and we've always had between one and three of them at any given time, but Over a period of eighteen months all of my moms cats died of old age and she's been with out kitty companionship for about six months now. She's actually been quite depressed. The new cats are very cool and affectionate, my mom is happy. So I played with them and took some pictures before an attempt was made to overfeed me on Rump steak and various salads, my parents went totally overboard for an impromptu braai. Elisabeth and I only got to bed at 1am, we finally left when my dad was falling asleep in the middle of conversations. This made me think how, just like my mom's cats, my parents are getting old.

On saturday I ran some errands for my dad and bought a new pool cue. The salesman told me some cockamamie story about resizing the tip with sand paper that basically wasted 45 minutes of moonflake, zenstar and my lives. Saturnight (are you paying attention here?) was Dystopia's birthday thingy. We had planned to go to the One Ring and play pool and muck about, but the place was closed until about 22:30 even though there were people inside, and the bouncer apparently was being a bit of a dick. Antonio really needs to sort that shit out man. We ended up at Stones (previously the much cooler Rolling Stones) where I sucked at pool but kicked ass at Foosball. Man Dystopia and I are so gonna win us the drunken foosball tournament at SchpatCON. Phillip's band was playing at Cool Runnings, but lacking the energy and the warmth we ended up not going. By the time we left it was way later than I thought it was, I joined moonie and zen for some coffee and e-tv porn before going home to sleep.

Sunday was uneventful, I took Elisabeth out for breakfast at the Blue Route and spoke with Nick about stuff. I was really nice to see him again and I gave him this blog address so that he could link to everyone else's. Hi Nick! Leave a comment.

Sunnight (you were expecting that weren't you?) I watched Tome Raider for the first time and it was so shockingly bad. The dialog and general concept was good, at was AJ's accent, but that's where it ended. Seriously so much more could have been done, I'm not going to get into it here except to say that I wasn't expecting much and I was very disappointed. Then I couldn't sleep for like many hours and suddenly woke up tired and late. But all things considered it was a great weekend.

THE MOST EXPENSIVE PICTURE EVER

That might be an overstatement, but it certainly cost me a metric fuckpile. In case you can't really make it out that's a picture of me driving Elisabeth's car through a speed trap near George at 100kph where the speed limit is 60kph. Total cost: R800. Ouch! Now I know that there are no discernable details of the driver or passenger so I could probably argue the case, but I know I was wrong here and so I'll probably just pay the fine. Still I 60kph on a stretch of then N2 is ludicrously slow, I believe that they reduced the speed limit there precisely to trap motorists and increase revenues.

NEWS AND VIEWS

The penis flytrap has apparently been launched in SA. This is a device that is shaped like a condom and inserted like a tampon and "bites" into any offending object subsequently inserted. What has our world come to? Still it should come with a warning sign.

That raises an interesting question. It is illegal to trap your property to avoid theft, even with a warning sign, I wonder how the courts would rule on this one. Two wrongs don't make a right you know.

A thief has stolen millions of rands worth of lego in the states after swapping barcodes with less expensive items. He used to steal the expensive lego sets and sell them online for a profit. When he was caught he had 66 Lego Millennium Falcon sets, I don't blame him, that lego star wars is teh bomb. They needed a truck to confiscate all the stolen lego from his home. Lego means "play well" in Danish.

Boart has public ally announced that he stands by the Kazakh government in their decision to sue Sacha Baron Cohen. Even though I don't love Da Ali G Show I have to admit that Cohen is a comedic genius.

Mo Shaik has told media on behalf of JZ that they expect a rape charge. This after the police handed over the docket to the National Prosecuting Authority urging them to charge him. Apparently the DNA evidence collected matched Zuma, and they have a Prima Face case. While the ANCYL has renewed their support for the former deputy president the SACP and COSATU have stated that they have never backed Zuma as their preferred succession candidate. It seems that the 'Zuma for President' t-shirts are evidence to the contrary. And just in case you didn't know, the cost of JZ's ongoing VIP protection is costing the tax payers R 102 633 per month.

On a lighter note we may be looking at another cold war as the Chinese are putting more people into space while the USA space program remains grounded. China also state that they want their own space station and could make lunar landings within the next ten to fifteen years. The states plans to resume lunar missions around 2016.

SCOPING

I was typing out a spec for internal development today and I got to the part of the template that dealt with scope. I decided to have a bit of a laugh and put the following in under the "OUT OF SCOPE" heading:

Nothing is out of scope, everything is in scope, including world peace!

That'll teach them for giving me control of the scope. Ha ha ha you fools!!

AMUSEING PIC

YO LET'S GET OUTA HERE, WORD TO YOUR MOTHER

Ice Ice baby to go....

I've been listening to a bunch of what used to be regarded as "Heavy Metal" in the eighties. All I can say is that it's laughable what people get up in arms about, the lyrics of the average pop song these days are more inflammatory. My point here is relax people, these things are not as important as you think.

Well, it looks as if my home dentistry needs some attention so that's what I'm off to do now.

schpat out.

You can't fight City Hall

2005-11-25T17:52:00.000+02:00

DRAWN OUT DRAMA

Well, I went to the city hall to speak to them about a fine I got for driving without a licence. I explained that I did in fact have a licence, but it was stolen six months ago and I have applied for a new one, but it has not yet arrived. Well of course, they sent me to speak with someone else. On my way to the fourth person I had to speak to I was starting to be reminded of the Twelve Tasks of Asterix. When I got to the office there was a huge Astrix poster next to it, the Cape Town Children’s library is opposite the corridor. I can't help thinking that some petty bureaucrat is having a laugh. Well I was defeated, they took my fine forms, didn't give me a receipt, and told be to come back on Wednesday.

City Hall 1
Schpat O

ON THE WIRES

This church in Norway has had a Harry Potter themed mass to coincide with the release of the new movie there. They played the theme music and the participants were dressed in fancy dress including dark robes. Obviously some people were upset. A theologian named Hakon Stornes, who is also a priest, criticised the service:

"Harry Potter's literary universe is set in a magical adventure land, far from what children today experience as relevant for their daily lives."

My answer to that: "Yeah, and 2000 years ago the Middle East was exactly like suburban Norway!"

Scientist and the General Public both agree that Newton had more of an impact the Einstein. the survey showed that 50.1% of the public preferred Newton over Einstein (49.9%). Newton won by more of a landslide among scientists thought, 60.9% vs 39.1%.

A man in Croatia is trying to settle his debts by selling is body parts. The has offered a kidney and a cornea up for sale, even though it is illegal to do so in Croatia. He owes about R245 000.

FREEGANISIM

Well a story on IOL today brought a group calling themselves "Freegans" to my attention. If you hate the consumer world we live in and don't want to contribute to it then Freeganisim is the answer to you. A lot like the way vegans believe that by not partaking of animal products they are not contributing to the demand and therefore the industry, these people believe that if you only use stuff that was free then you are not contributing to the rising consumerism. How do you go about getting all this free stuff? Well the answer is simple: Dumpster Diving. They claim to get nearly everything for free from dumpsters, including food. For shelter they squat. If you feel an urgent need to become a freeloading hippie you can check out this site for more info. What I found quite amusing was that there was a section of the site the sold how to guides, as an example there is a 22 min how to video for sale for $20. Everything for free huh?

HUH???

SINGING OFF

Last night at role-plying I realised that our little Thursday night [why isn't that Thursnight?] group has two couples in it! I'm starting to feel out numbered, maybe HoleyCrusader and I should "hook-up" so that we don't feel left out. Other than that I'm going to my folks for supper now also I'm bummed that today isn't payday like I thought, gonna have to wait till Monday. Five week months, don't ya love 'em.

schpat

Early morning issues

2005-11-24T17:50:00.000+02:00

Physics is screwing with my sleep patterns. The sun is now rising (I realise the sun doesn't rise but that the earth rotates) really early, to top it off my new flat is higher than the last one and my bedroom has a different facing. The results of this are that full daylight happens at about 5:30. It's like living in bloody Durban! Well, when the sun comes up it's the cue to my cat that it's breakfast time, cats don't have snooze buttons!

Why don't cats have snooze buttons? If they did they'd never get fed in the morning. Their owners would just continue to hit the button until it was so late that they barely had time to shower and dress before being late for work.

CREATIONISIM

I went to that site recommended by Koos and read a few of the articles. I specifically read a few of the articles that discount evolution and I thought that some very interesting points were raised. If that's where it stopped it would be cool, unfortunately it didn't stop there, the basic arguments were:

1. Some people believe in evolution and not creation
2. We have found some holes in the theory of evolution
3. Therefore evolution is crap
4. Therefore creation is the way to go.

This is quite obviously a fallacious argument, just because two theories have been proposed and one is proved incorrect doesn't mean that the other is correct. Another article written by Richard Deem (the site creator) explains how we know that God created the universe, by misusing Occham's Razor. I'll summarise here:

1. In order for the Big Bang to have occurred "by itself" an almost infinite number of random variables would have to coincide, or an omnipotent being could simply have created it.
2. Occham's Razor states that when the answer is unknown, the simplest option should be preferred.
3. God creating the universe is simpler than a bazillion variables coming together therefore God created the universe.

The main problem with this use of Occham's Razor is that it presupposes the existence of God. It doesn't factor in the complexities of an omnipotent being who can do anything, except create a rock that he cannot lift.

I ordinarily wouldn't have gone into this, but today is the 146th anniversary of the publication of "on The Origin of Species". Look at the guy in the right here, how can you tell me he didn't descend from the apes!

FROM THE WIRES

Some Swedish girls have developed an anti rape belt. It's really simple, basically it takes two hands to unfasten and makes rape a much more complicated affair.

A club owner burnt down his establishment after trying to prove to safety inspectors that the paper hangings could not cause a major fire. The question I'd like answered: "Is it arson?"

Our friend JZ is still entitled to all his perks of being deputy president, even though he was fired! Also the police have found seaman in the pants provided by the rape accuser. If ol' JZ did rape this woman it would prove that he's even more stupid than we thought, it's commonly known that she's HIV positive. The ANC have been very quiet about the fighting within the party, but Bantu Holimisa has a thing or two to say about it. Bantu formed the UDM after being kicked out of the ANC after he accused some of it's members of corruption, seems they've always been intolerant of these kind of things.

Well the X box 360 was released, and already people are selling it on Ebay" for twice the asking price. Also there have been loads of complaints about the hardware crashing.

Can you believe that a South African started PayPal, I didn't know. Also he sold that and another web company for almost three times as much as Mark Shuttleworth did. The only difference is that he was living in the states at the time, and he's less of a hippie. Any way there's something about South African Billionaires and space, this guy didn't just go, he's turned it into his next business venture, cheaply launching satellites.

AMUSEING PICTURE

What were they thinking??? Another font please!

OUT OF HERE

Well, it's late and I have to refuel my chariot before role-playing. TallAndSkinny was very late on tuesday night and I blame that for the lack of gaming activity.

schpat

Another long, yet interesting, post

2005-11-22T13:57:00.000+02:00

I TAKE IT BACK

Well I've had to review my thinking on the police force here in South Africa, here's why. On Sunday I had to go to my local police station in order to get some documents signed. I got to chatting to the inspector (the guy what is in charge) and he filled me in on a few horrifying details.

The first thing he told me about was the disastrous staff shortages. The police station in Pinelands is manned by only three people at any one time. One of them is left at the station and the other two cruise around in their van. This isn't just for Pinelands either, they also cover Ndebeni and parts of Epping and Langa. Just three policemen! There are sometimes six of them on duty, during a shift change.

The second thing was the shocking salaries these guys are paid. The inspector I spoke with told me that he had been with the police force for sixteen year, during which time he had earned a diploma and a degree in policing through UNISA. In any corporate environment the guy in charge of a section, with vast experience and qualifications would be raking it in every month, this guy's salary: R7 500. For less experiences and more junior officers it's much less than that. That's just shocking, there is no incentive to become a police officer, and you can understand why these guys accept bribes.

Well, you say, poor pay is fine because it's really easy to become a cop, no real prior qualifications are necessary. Well that's true, in fact the third thing the inspector told me was that they had dropped a lot of the entry requirements making it even easier to become a cop. Obviously this is because the average person who used to meet the requirements could probably get a better job elsewhere. So this leads to moronic policemen.

The fourth thing the inspector told me was that the police, until very recently, used to work 12 hour shifts with four days on and four days off. During their off time they would be able to supplement their income by working for private security firms, often paying more than the police. In the four day off period it was easy to work three eight hour shifts and effectively double their income. So what does the SAPS human resource department do about this, well they stop it of course. Now policemen work eight hour shifts five days on and two days off, while this does mean more policemen it effectively prevents them from moonlighting. Also those extra policemen are all working at different times which doesn't help the staff shortage at all.

So what does all this mean to my stand point on the cops?

Well the thing is this, I sympathise with them. I mean who'd want to be over worked and under paid? We all joke about this but these guys really are. With the seriously little money these guys are paid they need to supplement their income somehow. Is it their fault that they take bribes and don't do their jobs properly because they don't earn enough? Hell yeah it is! But I still feel sorry for them. It isn't however their fault that they are under-qualified and under-experienced to do their jobs.

In short, I still don't trust the police, but I've got masses of sympathy for them.

IN THE NEWS

Well to tie into the main opinion piece on this post here is an article about how some weapons were stolen from the police station in Maitland. One Shotgun and three handguns, the perfect starter kit for armed robberies.

This guy claims he was harrased by a ghost for sex for sixteen years before an exorcism was performed. The exorcism consisted mainly of offering the ghost a groom in the form of a paper doll, to ensure that the ghost would accept the proposal a paper maid and butler were also provided to show that the groom would be able to look after his spouse. All three were sent up in smoke.

Here's one for Zen and I to be worried about. Scientists have stated that the hookah may be hazardous to your health. It may cause gum disease just like regular smoking does. Nothing fun is ever good for you is it?

Teens sells mom's home porn. Yes, that's right a teen who stole her mom's video camera and sold it to a friend didn't realise that mommy and her boyfriend had left a little bonus material on the cassette. The mother's boyfriend found out when the footage started circulating in the neighbourhood.

And to challenge your notions on prehistoric plant life scientists have discovered that dinos dined on grass! This means that dinosaurs were around at the same time as grass, which flies in the face of previously held scientific theory, the impact of this is that dinosaurs and mammals might have co-inhabited the mad ball we call Earth. Wow, if scientists are wrong about this then maybe they're wrong about that whole evolution thing too!

Some women in the Good Ol' U S of A called the 911 emergency number to complain that her onion rings were cold. The waiter had brought her food to here cold, she phoned because she wanted the police to do something about it. Well they did, they high-tailed it on over there to arrest her ass!

And finally something to give you a good scare, at least if you live in the northern areas of our country. Prez Mugabe has announced that Zimbabwe will begin to dabble in nuclear power. Yep, that's right, they've found deposits of uranium and now they want to use them to produce electricity, apparently from scratch! Hey, it's a perfect excuse for the yanks to come in a depose an undemocratic regime, a pity they don't have anything valuable like oil!

THOSE CRAZY KENYANS

I thought this follow-up story deserved its own section. Kenyan voters have declared that vitamin C is much better that potasium! or is that oranges make better juice than bananas! or is it that they are unhappy with the current president! or maybe that they didn't agree with the draft constitution that had been put before parliament, nah couldn't have been that, that's way to complicated an issue.

The democratic process was ridiculed yesterday when masses of Kenyan voters voted for fruit. I really don't understand how the complex issues that surround an new constitution can be understood by the voting public when they can't even tell the difference between "YES" and "NO". The whole thing was a sham, it ended up being a popularity contest in which supporters of various political parties (mostly organised on tribal lines) were told which fruit to draw their "X" next to. Apparently it's easier to be democratic when people do what they are told!

Actually I'm glad the vote ended up as a "NO", but it's a far cry from actual democracy.

ANOTHER AMUSING PICTURE

I'm very surprised that no one has spotted any resemblance to any one we know in the picture with the gorilla. C'mon people do I have to spell it out?

Here is an amusing notice form a newspaper, I think it's rather funny actually.

SIGNING OFF

Well not much to say in the sign off, I've said a lot already. I'm off to role-playing tonight so that should be fun, unless of course TallAndSkinny doesn't pitch, then it'll probably be majong or something.

schpat out

PS: no power failures interrupted this post!

It never rains...

2005-11-18T14:44:00.000+02:00

IT'S ONLY A GAME

Well it was an interesting game last night. We met a new character and got to totally mess with some poncy elves! Henri would probably have been friendlier if they had treated the party with a little more respect, but when you approach us with that air of superiority you just gota take what you get. Also just remember that Henri is not above shooting overly poncy, unreasonable elves in the back.

The new character seems a bit odd, but much nicer and friendlier than the one who is leaving. This is probably better for party cohesion.

GRAND THEFT AUTO

Well after everyone else had left I stood around and chatted to Zenstar at the car for a bit. Then got in my car and left down the road, that was at about 12:30am. Suddenly there are these really bright lights in my rear-view mirror and they're really close and moving quickly! I go "fuck, where did they come from?" Now at this point I think it's some dodgy drunk student and I decide ok, put some distance between us. "Warp speed Mr Sulu." (I would have said 'ramming speed' but now that we know about Sulu I didn't think that was such a good idea) Anyway, the more distance I give the fuckers, the closer they seem to get, fuck, give an inch and all that. I'm now starting to get worried, so I put peddle to metal and head round the corner into Alma Rd with a little hand brake assistance.

OMFG these guys are still behind me and closing in, I gotta get onto Liesbek so that I got more options, these back streets are really cramped! Ok avoid robots on Alma by sliding round the corner and really gunning it to the little on-ramp to Liesbek. They start flashing their head lights and I realise that they really are after me, I'm not just imagining it. I'm worried, what if they are just trying to tell me about something, but what if they want to like hijack and rob me? I decide that the best course of action is to actually stop in the on-ramp so that they can't pull up next to me. So I stop there and open the door, I step out of the car, grabbing a large bludgeoning implement on the way, only to find myself about to threaten a pair of cops, who are dumbfounded and currently reaching for their weapons.

I inform them that they scared the bajeebers out of me, and instruct them that a simple flash of those nifty blue lights would have avoided all the confusion. They understand and decide not to shoot me, a good thing all in all. Apparently they saw me getting into a car and leaving late at night and suspected me to be a car thief, they were close by with their lights off. I tell them thanks for protecting and serving, but think to myself that the average car thief doesn't exit the building with two other people, open the car, dump some stuff in it, see one of the others off in his car, chat to the other person for half an hour then leave; I didn't point this out of course. I think they felt quite sheepish about the whole not using the blue lights thing because they seemed as happy to see me leave as I was to get out of there. I still don't trust the cops though.

IN THE NEWS

These British folks are going to try fooling eight reality tv contestants that they have been sent to space. I think anyone with half a brain cell would realise if the launch was faked, but it might be good for a laugh. It does however raise ethical question about lying to people, it's the closest thing to the Truman Show I can think of, and that's kinda cool.

In another brilliant move the South African government has decided to sign a joint defence agreement with Zimbabwe. I mean WTF!??!!?! In the article the Zimbabwe's Minister for State Dydimus Mutasa is quoted as saying:

"The greatest threats to the stability of the region and Zimbabwe in particular is the threat of exogenous influences whose aim is to effect regime change especially in regards to my country"

How exactly did you guys get into power again, comrade?

In the same article Zimbabwe Defence Minister Sydney Sekeramayi said accounts of human rights abuses in Zimbabwe were merely imagined. Merely Imagined? that to the refugees.

I know this pic is actually anti-yank propaganda, but the message applies equally well here.

FOR YOUR AMUSEMENT

Does anyone in this photo look familar to you?

Here is another one that ties in with moonflake's post. While I resemble that remark I still agree with what moonflake is saying. Also I'm not at the pushing others out of their airline seats yet, the seats is snug, but I still fit. Also, like I said in my 20 random things, I realise that there is an issue and that I should do something about it.

I'm not as big as this dude am I? Someone would tell me if I was, right?

THATS IT FOR THIS WEEK

Well folks, that's all she wrote. This weekend I plan on not doing much at all, I may check out Episode II in Lego Star Wars.

cheers
schpat

Eskom hates me!

2005-11-17T11:30:00.000+02:00

Well It's been a long while since I blogged, I apologise for the delay, but work has been very hectic. We're currently planning for the festive season, our biggest time of year, and the stress is piling on. I'll do my best to at least post something small every day, but no promises!

RECENT EVENTS

One of the other reasons you haven’t had a post in so long was the huge power failure on friday. I was a long was through a long post on friday when some bright-spark computer program decided to drop the rods into the reactor core. I lost everything (oh the irony!!).

Well I had Zenstar round for supper twice over the weekend, I've been bowling (this is a lot of fun), And I performed home dentistry on myself last night (obviously that’s now the night before last). After my home (pain free) dentistry Elisabeth and I sat on our balcony enjoying the view, evening, good coffee and a nice cigar, it was very cool. I'll be doing that more often.

It's good to see that Total Waste's hot meat on Moonflake's chin is more important that the RAF, it got more comments!

SCHPATCON UPDATE

Well, they news is both good and bad. The bad news is that the date we chose (3rd December) clashes with ObsFest. Now I know we can't compete with drunken revelry so I decided to move SchpatCON out by two weeks until Saturday the 17th, this gives us yet another occasion for drunken revelry. The good news is that it means we have more time to sort out all the timing issues we've had due to hectic work pressure and unforeseen international business trips. I promise that SchpatCON will be worth the wait.

NEWS STORIES

I'm not going to bore you with too much detail here, but I've got some stuff I'd like to point out.

Doctors claim that this guy in the UK hasBeaten AIDS. Apparently his sample tested positive and then some time later another sample tested negative. They've apparently checked both samples for contamination and to verify that they are from the same source.

Some guy calculated that Flying to Hong Kong is Cheaper than Telkom ADSL. Actually it's cheaper to fly to Hong Kong and Download 100GB of data at an internet cafe than it is to Download the same amount of data over the fastest Telkom ADSL line, about R1,900 cheaper! Also it only takes like a day and a half as oppose to nine and a half days here. I haven’t checked the calcs, but its interesting.

I'm sure that you know by now that ex-dep-prez JZ has been in the news again, this time with allergations of rape. Now the ANCWL (that's woman's league) is getting in on the action demanding that the case is treated in a very serious light. This is doing nothing to fix the divide between JZ and TM, but they keep denying these tensions exist. They also vehemently deny that there has been any cover up, judge for yourselves. Now it seems as if Cosatu is rethinking it support after this newest allegation. Wow, that's a lot of links for one story. Don't you think it's strange that IOL hasn't set up a separate section for ZumaGate? (yep I've named it) At the moment they still have a section for the Shaik trial, do you think that they might be scared about drawing attention to the person who might become our next Prez?

beep ba beep ba beep beep beep

This just in: ARRGHHH!

Another power failure while typing a blog post!!!! Luckily I had saved recently. Twice now an "anomaly in the power grid" caused Koeberg computer program to drop the control rods and "cool" the reactor. Sounds like a Star Trek plot doesn't it? Just replace 'power' with 'sub-space' and 'reactor' with 'warp-core' and you'll see what I mean. Now Star Trek plots are made up to make us happy, where eskom's stories also fabricated to keep us happy? To point out one little issue with their story: They claim that yesterday's issue was caused by a fire under a transmission line about 80km from CT, but the relevant fire department denies that any fire existed! Is Green Peace right? Or is it Green Peace causing these issues? Mmm interesting!

We now return you to your scheduled programming

beep ba beep ba beep beep beep

Major retailers are planning on trading using finger prints as a method of payment instead of cash or credit cards. But even they admit:

"However, if a criminal chops of someone's finger or hand, then it could be used for a while, and thereafter would be useless. We are busy working on this and investigating different technology to detect this."

LOOTER GUY

This is the last picture of looter guy. Stay tuned, a new series starts soon.

NO ONE IS GAY FOR MOLEMAN

The Simpsons was especially funny last night, they used a “look into the future with the true science of Astrology” to see how the simpsons were fareing 8 years later. Well Bart and Lisa were teens and there were robots everywhere, even a special appearance by Futurama’s Bender. It also had a really adult theme with much more innuendo and sexuality than normal, because Bart and Lisa were teens. The heading here was really much funnier in context, a context I am not going to explain!

TRAINNG DAY

I’ve just had my Fire Marshal training and boy am I glad Denzel Washington wasn’t in charge. I now know where the radios are and what to do in case of an emergency or drill. Also I get to say “COPY”, “COME IN” and “OVER”, woot.

SIGNING OFF

Well, it's taken a long time to get this post to you, but now you have it. Also I've updated the news section of the blog and the links. If anyone out there knows a way to update this sections without updating the blogger template, please let me know.

I’m looking forward to role-playing tonight, it think there’s role-playing tonight.

cheers
schpat

AIDS-MAN!

2005-11-07T16:14:00.000+02:00

THE WEEKEND

Well I had a really cool and productive weekend. Saturday morning was a lot of sleeping and relaxing, the afternoon was a lot of general housework. The relaxing really helped getting me energised to do the work. On Sunday morning I discovered that Zenstar and Moonflake's fridge had packed up and the freezer compartment was full of food that would rot if quick action was not taken. I went round to pick the stuff up and invited Zen round for supper, because Moonie is away, he had an exam today and I wanted to make sure he had a decent meal. Actually It was really because I could! I cooked Pork Chops marinated in cider with garlic and rosemary. It was yummy. Then we sat on the balcony chatting with Elisabeth for many hours, I hope his exam went well.

IN THE NEWS

Aids man gets prison time. At first I thought that this story might be about a new super hero being unfairly punished because the public were not fully aware of the good he was doing, but I was mistaken. This is a story of a modern-day Typhoid Mary spreading one of the worst communicable diseases in history. I'm glad this guy is getting jail time, but one has to ask what kind of president is being set. Engaging in unprotected sex is risky business, his partners knew that, by not telling them that he was HIV+ was he putting them in more danger than a prudent person would expect? If you answered yes is a friend who purposely understates the statistical probability of death during sky-diving responsible when his buddy is planted? Just a slippery slope for you to think about.

Copernicus' bones found. The remains of the man currently held responsible for Heliocentric theory have apparently been discovered. They plan on doing DNA tests to see if it really is him, although getting comparative samples might be a problem. Now, if it were Galileo's bones they'd have found getting a DNA sample would have been a piece of cake, his hand was removed and stored in the Vatican after his death. They probably also know that it was his body because it would be missing a hand!

Zenstar and I both, independently, claimed to have seen shooting stars last night. Well apparently now is a good time for viewing them, check out this story. At least we weren't in the grip of some kind of mass hysteria or anything.

BODY CORPORATE

Well last week the body corporate of my block had a meeting, unfortunately not enough people arrived to achieve quorum. That sounds sordid! Anyway, the meeting has been rescheduled for today so I'll be off to that soon.

cheers
schpat

ALMOST FORGOT THE LOOTING

A Christmas Special

2005-11-03T15:08:00.000+02:00

So It's been a little while since I’ve blogged, that's because I've been doing loads of work and a little bit of research for the Schpat Dope. I've had a mostly uninteresting week, I visited Zenstar on Tuesday night and we took a little trip to the V&A where we checked out the gadget and toy shops, had Ice-cream and generally arbed for a bit.

HERE'S SOME STUFF FROM THE NEWS

More corruption in the government. I'm sure that by now this totally doesn't shock you at all, but it's always good to know when your Deputy President AND your President have both been implicated in separate corruption scandals. Seriously, undermining a UN trade embargo is a pretty stupid move. I doubt anything will actually come of this, but give it a read.

Another case of mob justice. But surprising about this was that the police were there the whole time, but claim they were powerless to stop it. Personally when people resort to being mobs and start handing out mob justice, it is completely within the bounds of the law to start shooting them, trust me this'll knock the steam right out of them. I think it's more likely a case of the cops wishing they could do what the rest of the crowd was doing, especially since he was suspected of shooting a cop the day before. To be clear here, I feel very little for the know criminal that was killed here, but I still believe that he deserved a fair and speedy trial. As a side note, count the number of time the word "alleged" is used in the article.

How to pleasure yourself and others. This is apparently what a "guide for girls" published by the Women's Institute of the central northern region of Castilla La Mancha in Spain should have been called. The publishers intended for the guide to be a guide on how to "love themselves" and how to give "give sexual expression to others". The guide, aimed at 11 to 18 year olds and distributed in schools, suggested that girls find a "confidante" to give them full body massages, it included pictures of girl on girl massage action. Sounds like a fun read, where can I get one?

I LOVE IT WHEN LOOTING COMES TOGETHER

ALL AROUND THE WORLD

Yes folks, as you've noticed I've added a little widget to the blog that shows where people are reading from. It's quite a nifty little thing that I found thanks to ChityChityBangBang!. What I've noticed is that I have a regular reader in south eastern Europe, probably Croatia or Slovakia. Whoever you are I'd really appreciate it if you give us a shout and let us know exactly where you are. If you have a blog I'd love to reciprocate and read it. I love the way the internet has shrunk the world.

I've also noticed that about an equal number of people read my blog in Jo'burg and Cape Town. If you're in Jozi and reading this drop in a comment. Hell for that matter if you're reading this and have never commented before drop me a comment so I know whom to add to my Christmas card list.

In fact, everybody who responds to this post, local or international, will get a Christmas card from me this year. All you need to do is post a comment saying what town and country you're from, and a blog address if you have one. Then mail me at schpat@gmail.com with your actual address and I'll stick something in the post forthwith.

That's it for today
schpat out