Category: annoying people

Cyclists: why are they hiding?

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Autumn has well and truly set in to Cape Town now. Leaves everywhere, that chilly breeze around every corner and sunset before 6pm each evening (5:56pm today, and it’ll only ever get as early as 5:44pm).

So why, oh why, oh why are the local cyclists doing their level best to blend into the roads and surrounds? Seriously, what has to be going through your mind to pop out for a ride along Rhodes Drive – the notoriously narrow and twisty road up the side of the mountain – wearing dark green and black lycra?

Yeah, I do understand that black is supposed to be slimming, but there’s only so much that it can do in the face of those 6 Castle Lites you down each evening. A bridge too far for Monsieur DuPont, I’m afraid.

Rhodes Drive is a very popular cycle route. And with good reason: it’s a good test for the legs, it’s recently resurfaced, and it’s just up the road from the posher suburbs of the city. The only thing it’s missing is any traffic lights to ignore, but otherwise, as far as cyclists go, it’s got the lot. But it also runs along the eastern side of the mountain, and so it loses the sun even earlier, and much of it is tree-lined, so it loses even more light, more quickly. And yet you MAMILs think it’s a good idea to try and camouflage yourself and see how many motorists you can pick off on a culpable homicide charge.

Is there maybe a thing on Strava for that?

Note that I am in no way suggesting that cyclists should be knocked off their bikes: of course not. But there has to be some sort of natural selection in this world, and you, puffing and sweating your way up towards Constantia Nek after sunset, in your freebie, khaki Nedbank Private Wealth cycling top you got from that golf day, is pretty much lining you up for – at the very least – a glancing blow.

Being a cyclist is unfairly dangerous enough without you trying to make it worse for yourselves. It’s not like there aren’t things like bright, reflective attire and – and please hear me out here – “lights” [crowd gasps] that you could adorn yourself and your two-wheeled machine with, in order to make yourselves a little more visible. And it’s not like the money isn’t there. You forked out (no pun intended) close on six figures for your bike, but you can’t afford a set of lights to stop you being killed while you’re using it?

Priorities? Skewed, mate.

Lights and shiny clothes would be a good thing at any time and in any place. But when heading out onto an twisting unlit, tree-lined road at dusk, they would almost seem completely sensible.

But, no. None of them choose to do it. Which says a lot about cyclists, I suppose.

So yes, while I absolutely recognise that all road users must share the road, it looks like us drivers will have to continue to share it with idiots. And pretty much invisible ones at that.

Flagpole

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I’m still not completely convinced that this isn’t a late April Fools joke.

Because while in a country with no money, massive social and economic issues, no electricity, widespread poverty and rampant unemployment, it doesn’t seem like making a joke about the government spending R22,000,000 on a big flag would be particularly amusing, it’s also exactly the sort of thing that the government would actually do.

And that wouldn’t be funny either.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. I see all the arguments they’ve made:

The flag, as the brand image of the country, needs to be highly recognised by the citizens.
This has the potential to unite people as it becomes a symbol of unity and common identity.
The project is envisaged to contribute towards nation-building and social cohesion. 

But I would say that about 100% of the citizens already recognise the flag. And I’d also say that our shared experiences of things like loadshedding and unchecked government corruption are more likely to unite us and be a symbol of our common identity than this project. And that being the case, I’m sure that the spending of this R22 million will absolutely encourage nation-building and social cohesion, as the citizenry come together as one to ask the burning question:

What the actual fuck are you doing spending R22 million on a flag?
Just. Stop.

So is this whole story just a joke? I don’t get it. At all.

Next week, South Africa spends R49million on a giant hamster.
(I just made that up, so it’s probably not going to happen.) (Probably.)

An easy opportunity to use a gif that was already in my media library

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Yesterday (well, just before midnight on the day before yesterday, if we’re being precise), the government issued an extension of sorts to the temporary amendment that it had previously made last month regarding the wearing of masks in public places.

This made a lot of those people very annoyed, but it was actually a good diversion for them to avoid talking about the USA exceeding 1,000,000 (one million) Covid deaths. And even that is a wild underestimation, according to many sources. Just like the flu, they said. But it’s really not.

Anyway, aside from the sleight of hand, the only other bit of good news for those people was that the press release about the extension seemed to suggest that students would no longer have to wear masks in schools. This didn’t make any sense – especially along the other guidelines that were in the same gazette – but since when has this (or any) government ever made any sense?

Anyway, that was the situation until the early afternoon, when someone at the Department of Health finally woke up and realised that there had been an error, and told the country that actually, students would have to wear masks in their classrooms after all.

Wow. The metaphorical cat was placed right among the allegorical pigeons with that announcement.

And lo, there was much wailing and gnashing of teeth. But it was this hysterical tweet that stood out for me:

Because obviously, I immediately thought of this gif:

And though I have no idea what about the appearance of the individual who came out with those question above, my mind will now always associate them with Helen Lovejoy.

Look, the fact is that anyone can go to their local police station and lay a charge against the Department of Health if they wish. So why leave it for someone else, since you clearly feel so upset? Why wouldn’t you go and do it yourself if you think a crime has been committed? For that to go much further though, that Department needs to have broken some sort of law, which in this case would be… would be… er… “being a bit vague in a late night press release”?

Oh my. Proper Death Row, Throw Away The Key Stuff there.

In the meantime, masks remain for indoor spaces, schools or otherwise, and the numbers – probably affected by two public holidays and a long weekend and Covid fatigue, as mentioned here:

– continue to rise:

Ventilate, vaccinate, mask up, stay safe. And won’t somebody please think of the children?

Thanks.

School run little Hitlers

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I had to do some stuff in Claremont this lunchtime. (It’s a Friday, in case you are reading this far into the future, or if you are reading today, but have no understanding of basic time stuff.) I didn’t have much choice in doing this thing at this time, but it was a bad time to be doing it, because it was school kicking out time, and there are a number of schools in that vicinity which were, as was their wont, kicking out.

The school run each day makes up nearly all of the traffic in our area. There are many, many schools and therefore many, many students and most of them get driven to school. It can be chaos. I get it. I see it twice every day.

The upshot of this is that parents make their own rules to deal with the traffic a bit more easily. And yes, this works, but there are some drawbacks. For example, Kenmar Road, adjacent to a very prim and proper posh Girls’ school, becomes one way for the duration of the school runs. But… not officially. The Yummy Mummies in their big Chelsea Tractors and Phat White Porsches only go in at the bottom and out at the top. And while this undoubtedly makes the traffic in that area flow a bit more easily at these times, if you don’t know that it’s temporarily and unofficially one way (because there are no signs and your Girl is not at that posh Girls’ school) you can cause utter chaos by simply (and legally) going the “wrong way”.

This is both frustrating and a whole lot of fun. But you’d likely only do it once.

I have done it once (by accident), and I was sworn at, hooted at, and had several mummies roll their eyes back so far they could see their overpriced haircuts from the inside.

But how was I to know? And why should I abide by their self-imposed “rules”, anyway?

Today, I didn’t drive the “wrong way” down Kenmar Road. But, I did have the audacity to [gasp] pull over and [second gasp] park(!) on a road nearby. Oops.

For the record, your Honour, I had no choice in where I parked, because it was where I needed to load a lot of heavy and messy stuff into my car.

But it made one posh Girls’ school mum in a John Cooper Works Mini (nice) so incandescent with rage that she wound her window down to fling her hand out in a “what are you doing?!?” kind of way, before screaming away up the road, knocking a squirrel over (and yes, killing it – unfair contest) as she raced off to collect Persephone and Jocasta from the posh Girls’ school.

I’m a bit sad about the squirrel. Well, I was sad briefly. If the nasty lady had been paying a bit more attention instead of frothing at the mouth, she might have avoided it, but on the other hand, the squirrel was on the road and they are annoying little invasive bastards, so one fewer of them is not bad thing.

But what if it had been a children?

Long story short (really? – Ed.), I’m tired of having to fit in with these little Hitlers and their selfish made-up rules to make their lives easier at the expense of everyone else around them. They come over into our middle-class suburbs in their larney cars for a few minutes each day before heading back to the salubrious safety of Silverhurst and Bishopscourt, but they still feel the need to be in charge of us peasants while they’re here.

Well, sod ’em. I don’t go into their posh-end estates and try to tell them where they can drive and park, do I?

No. Not often, anyway.

So, I’ll – legally – drive where I want and park where I want, when I want, thank you very much. Just cos you have a nice car and a posh Girl, it doesn’t make you the boss of me, lady.

Ha! And I told my wife I’d get right through this post without actually mentioning Herschel by name.
Mission accomplish-oh.

It’s too early for this kind of stupid

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I’ve heard the argument that before social media came along, the nutters were always out there: it’s just that we never got to hear from them.

Like Zuma’s daughter:

And this weird right wing Christian (of course):

66% of the world’s population vaccinated.
100% of the world’s population still alive.
Worst “weapon of mass murder” ever. I could do more damage with an unripe banana.

I think I preferred those days.