But I’m glad we’re not all blindly following Dave.
Dave has recently also been an expert on the economic effects of Brexit and the aeronautics of the Boeing 737 Max, and famously commented on the South African legal system during the Oscar Pistorius trial.
I have news. Huge, if true.
While the rest of the world was worrying about some microbiological thing or other, SA has been in the grips of a huge bout of loadshedding after jellyfish blocked an inlet pipe at our local nuclear power station.
Actually, this happens more than you might think. 1.73 million results can’t be wrong, right?
But I don’t care about Canada or Sweden or Japan. Our issue is with Koeberg, just up the road. And it seems that we’re likely to get our 980MW back into the grid by Sunday. But will that be soon enough?
Because suddenly, God’s on the job:
I wouldn’t normally believe this sort of nonsense, but this was said with authority – and not just anyone’s authority, but with authority in the might name of Jesus Amen and Amen.
I’m not sure if this is a different Jesus to the one we learned about at school. I think he was called Jesus Christ and not Jesus Amen and Amen. But that was a long time ago and I think it was all made up anyway.
Anyway, given that Mighty God and Jesus Amen and Amen are omnipresent and omnipotent, I think that questions should be asked about whether they had anything to do with the swarm of jellyfish that blocked our power station and prompted this overseas takeover of our power generation. I’m not saying that things were all rosy before, because they really weren’t, but this convenient squishy invertebrate plug being applied to the inlet pipe just up the west coast has certainly paved the way for their sponsored coup, hasn’t it?
Get what I’m saying?
Follow the money. Just saying.
I don’t think that Adele has anything to do with this. She just seems like the spokesperson for the cult on this particular issue.
I’m not big fan of the Mighty God and JAaA, but if this theist-led company sweeps in from overseas, I won’t miss the loadshedding. And if it goes well, then maybe they can make a start on sorting out this virus thing as well.
Seriously, who starts writing a blog post 12 minutes before loadshedding is about to start, taking with it computer equipment, connectivity and safety?
Hello. It’s me.
I wouldn’t want to work for Eskom’s social media department. It’s a thankless task, constantly relaying bad news to a bloodthirsty audience of rabid, baying hounds, simply waiting to pounce on your every word.
Or to the keyboard warriors of middle-class South Africa, at least.
Same same.
But you can help yourself out if you’re in that situation. Like by not linking to an article in the Randburg Sun entitled:
Tips to help prevent burglaries during load-shedding
Firstly, this makes people feel (even more) unsafe within their own homes, and secondly, given that Eskom is responsible for the loadshedding, does that not imply some sort of responsibility for the increased crime during loadshedding?
I”m no legal expert, but I think it probably does.
The prosecution rests, your honour. Whenever it gets the chance.
But did they even read the article in question? In fact, did the person who wrote the article in question even read the article in question?
I’m just asking, given that some of the tips include:
Make provision for good outside lighting but switch the lights off during the day
Good outside lighting being imperative when there’s no electricity, of course.
And:
If your house alarm goes off or you hear strange noises or your dogs bark, switch on the outside lights, but do not go outside.
Of course, there being loadshedding, those good outside lights will be of limited no use, but you can flick the switch and hear the click of nothing happening if it makes you feel any better.
Also, because we have a beagle, our dog barking is quite a strange noise, anyway.
Two birds right there.
Ah yes. The lights have just gone out and they won’t be back on for another 2½ hours. It’s the third of these blackouts today and there will be at least another three tomorrow. I’m going to have to post this via my cellphone using the tower in the adjoining neighbourhood – our local one is down, as it always during these times. So now, I need to go and stand in my front garden to get signal.
It’s looking rather dark out there. I’d better go and switch on the outside lights.
Oh.
Countries in lockdown.
The 6 Nations postponed until October.
Curfews. Quarantine.
Stadiums empty for matches.
Toilet paper panic buying.
EU Parliament closed for “an unspecified length of time”.
It wasn’t great, but it was manageable.
Awful news. Tragic.
And a real wake up call that we’re really not managing this whole pandemic thing very well at the moment.
Parliamentary suspensions, we could deal with. But no marmalade festival?
I’m done. Finished.
Last night went… “ok”.
Sure, we lost the quiz by one point, but we only had 4 players against everyone else’s 8 (thus less chance of crowdsourcing a correct answer), and we finished ahead of several (or more) other teams who clearly were nowhere near as good as us, and several of which were full of unpleasant old white people.
It was one of those evenings where the majority of our 50:50 decisions didn’t work out for us. It happens. But it was still annoying. Irritating. Infuriating. Exasperating. Infuriating. (We did well in the Thesaurus round, by the way.)
Bad luck aside, we did noticeably fall down on one tough round: 1970s music. There was a clear, gaping hole in our knowledge. Obviously, we can’t know everything, but one this particular round, we could have done much, much better.
This morning, I decided to do something to remedy the situation, so that next time we could win the quiz again – as is the tradition when we play quizzes.
I opened up a Spotify playlist full of the top hits of the 70s and set my brain to Learn Mode.
Exactly 12 minutes later, I decided that losing a quiz by 1 point (or actually, however many points) was far preferable to putting myself through listening to anything else from those ten years. I don’t like not knowing things, but in this particular case, I’m so very, very happy to make an exception. My god: I swear that I was the only good thing to come out of that decade. 3652 days of exciting musical opportunity and all we got given was Fleetwood Mac, Elton John, Neil Young and the god-awful ABBA.
It’s fine; I’ll pass, thanks.
And I’ll proudly wear my “yes, we could have done better in that round” badge when scoring 2 out of 5 on crap music next time around as well.