Category: annoying people

Day 709 – I had a yacht

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Last night’s dreams were interesting. I had a yacht. “Had”, not just because the dream was last night, but also because it was one of those super yachts and it had just been confiscated or impounded in the swanky harbour in which I had recently moored it.

Am I now worse off? I didn’t have a yacht when I went to bed, and ostensibly, I don’t have one now that I have woken up. In fact, I may never had had one: I don’t remember actually ever being on the yacht at all, only being told that it had been seized.

Will I be allowed to get my belongings off it? I mean just some clothes and stuff, not the helicopter and the jetskis.

Although, if you’re offering…

There’s a lot of fuss online about yachts being seized and the more hysterical anti-vaxxers (who are now all pro-Putins) are warning us all that if “The State” can suddenly impound the super yachts of a Russian oligarch, then it easily could impound something of ours too.

To me, this seems unlikely for a number of reasons. Firstly, presumably, these powers aren’t new, and – even though I’ve had things for years and years – no-one has impounded anything of mine yet.
Well, apart from last night, of course, but that wasn’t real.

Secondly – and this is very much along the lines of the long-forgotten “they’re going to track us through the Covid app” nonsense – I really don’t have anything that they care about, just like your sad little life really isn’t interesting enough for them to want to track you.

And thirdly (obviously, I have double-checked this one, just to make sure) I’m not providing financial and political assistance to a despotic regime that is currently bombing innocent civilians. Arguably, this is probably the biggest reason, given that there are plenty of people out there who have super yachts and interesting lives, but who haven’t been funding and supporting the bombing of residential neighbourhoods in Kyiv, and are still free to hold disco parties on their stern deck and sail in and out of ports as they wish.

So god only knows what Dream Me must have been up to before I was informed that they were taking my boat last night. Thankfully, whatever it was didn’t actually happen, because it was just a dream.

Day 704 – Local propaganda

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Here are a couple of articles that appeared on local news site IOL (Independent (ha!) OnLine) today. While the rest of the world shuns Russia and their dodgy “news” sources, we are seemingly welcoming them with open arms. Sputnik (not this one) is now banned from spilling their propaganda vomit across the EU, but here’s their uninvited and surely unbiased take on China’s reaction to sanctions against Russia, in the local rag:

IOL is part owned by Chinese State Television, by the way. Which at least goes some way to explaining their strange fascination with telling bemused and uninterested South Africans about… well… all (wonderful) things Chinese State Television:

And as if that content wasn’t bad enough, here’s a wonderful puff piece about Russia’s 30 year love affair with South Africa, penned from the wholly impartial

Embassy of the Russian Federation in the Republic of South Africa

And shared today, which is conveniently the 30th anniversary of the resumption of diplomatic relations between the countries (the National Party weren’t big fans, see?).

It chats about how great Russia has been to SA in all those years, and goes on in some detail to remind us all of the support it offered to the ANC and other anti-apartheid organisations during the pre-1994 years. However, if they are wanting to use this as some sort of emotional leverage (what? no. surely not!), then we’d all do well to remember that during those years, Russia was part of the USSR in very much the same way the Ukraine was. And so I’m not sure why we should now choose to be celebrating and supporting one, while it invades and bombs the other.

SA’s response to the invasion of Ukraine was initially rather wishy-washy, as mentioned here, but then suddenly DIRCO kicked in and had a bit of a pop at Vlad’s actions:

Cyril (and presumably Vladimir) was reportedly somewhat unhappy with that though, and so then there was this:

The trouble (or rather the t-Ruble – see what I did there?) is, being such good mates with Russia, we do seem to have an awful lot of money tied up with them in one way or another, which makes it politically awkward for us to try to admonish them. But we don’t want to end up being one of those countries that tacitly supports their actions, like Nicaragua, Venezuela or – God help us – Belarus. Because that would be a very unpleasant situation to be in.

SA has been excommunicated by the rest of the world before – with good reason.
Let’s not experience it again for a bad one.

Day 697 – Basic cartography

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I’ve spent the morning as a Cartographer’s Assistant. It was interesting and rewarding stuff, although it doesn’t pay well (actually, it doesn’t pay at all), you can get a bit sunburnt, and – where possible – you should choose not to assist a cartographer in a dog shit filled park.

Unpleasant.

The cartographer in question was my son, using basic triangulation to plot the whereabouts of some bridges, some benches, a lamppost and at least one bin. This was for a Scout badge, and – to me, at least – it looked like all the requirements had been fulfilled. The DSF park in question was Keurboom Park in Claremont, which has likely been mapped already [checks]… yes:

…but this was still great practice for him, should he need to map anywhere that hasn’t been mapped yet.
Especially if there are lampposts and bins and bridges there. People need to know whereabouts those sort of things are.

Thankfully, now that Keurboom Park has been thoroughly mapped (at least twice), I won’t have to go back there. What a disgusting toilet of a place it is. We were there for about three hours, and we probably saw (no exaggeration) about 150 dogs. At a rough guess, I’d say that 50% of the owners cleaned up after their pets. And if you’re looking at [kwik maffs] about 50 dogs per hour, that’s 25 new “hazards” each 60 minutes, or 1 every 2½ minutes throughout the day – just in that bit of the park.

It’s everywhere. Utterly repulsive.

Of course, it could all be so much better if the owners did something about it. The park even provides free bags and there are plenty of (mapped) bins. But the middle-class white people of Lynfrae and surrounds (or at least 50% of them) clearly feel that they are above cleaning up after their dogs.

Probably a good idea not to bother getting a dog then, you wankers. Just a thought.

Day 691 – 13 seconds gone

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Another run, another 13 seconds (per km) shaved off my time. It was a hot one this morning, and I wasn’t helped by last night’s yellowtail ceviche, pork loin and chocolate brownie (and the accompanying rather decent chenin blanc). That yellowtail ceviche, pork loin and chocolate brownie (and the accompanying rather decent chenin blanc) did make up another incredible meal out at the amazing Black Sheep in town, though.

Valentine’s dinner done right.

Less good for Valentine’s Day (or any other day) was the fact that I ended up going down a bit of a flat earther rabbit hole yesterday. The alien, anti-vax, crypto, Trump stuff was all there as well – the full oddball bingo card – so this was the real deal. A lot of it had me rolling my eyes and sighing, but there were some absolute gems. Like this:

Let’s get things absolutely clear from the get go here.

Bees. Fly.

Like planes, birds, wasps and… well… flies. They fly.

Where the hell does this absolute horse shit “levitation” story come from? Who comes up with it? Who believes it? And who shares it? These aren’t the actions of normal, sane people. And yet each of the arseholes at each of those stages, making those decisions have the same voting rights as you or I.
Is it any wonder we’re neck deep in the dwang and sinking fast?

Maybe we need to “build up energy inside a hollow cavity near our larynx”, and levitate out of here.

Or maybe that’s complete BS. I asked a friend who’s a bit of an entomologist, and he said it’s absolute BS. I didn’t really need to ask him. I knew. Because any sane person who reads that knows that it’s crap.

Like this:

I asked a friend who’s a bit of a paleontologist and he said he couldn’t tell me anything because he wasn’t government appointed. He didn’t really. Perhaps unsurprisingly, he said this was absolute BS.

Because it is. But this is the harmless end of the spectrum. Then – very quickly – they slip easily into the much more serious, but equally stupid “lizard people” and “murderous satanists” (we call them medical practitioners) “killing patients in hospital”, and the whole, very prevalent, anti-Semitism thing. And while no-one is going to act on levitating bees or fake dinosaurs (and who would even care if they did?), there are real world, real serious implications of spreading this sort of crap around.

Leave the bees and the dinosaurs. Report the real world stuff.

Day 688 – The consequences of war

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As the threat of World War III moves ever closer – despite Putin’s assurances that he has no plans to invade Ukraine – there are other connected issues which need to be addressed up front.

Location map of Crimea. | Download Scientific Diagram

Anyone – and I mean anyone – attempting to dismiss or make light of criticism towards any hostile advance into Ukrainian sovereign territory using the phase (or any derivation thereof):

Crimea river

will immediately lose all respect from me. That’s if they ever had it in the first place.

I hope you take this warning seriously. I have no time for tired, old puns on this blog. So if you were planning on using it, I hope that you’re now Russian around looking for an alternative.