Category: in the news

Worst lines

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The winners of the 2024 Bulwer-Lytton Fiction Awards have just been announced, and many of them (and the (dis)honourable mentions and runners-up) are pretty good.

Founded in 1982 at San Jose State University in California, the Bulwer-Lytton Fiction Contest challenges entrants to compose opening sentences to the worst of all possible novels. 

As someone once said: “Deliberately bad writing requires a special talent.”

It’s true. But interestingly, I have no special talent at all.
All the stuff on this blog is entirely accidental. Just variable fortune and the occasional evening filled with Castle Milk Stout with which to distractedly guide my typing fingers.

Anyway, back to the BLFA, and, as you might expect for the highest (only?) awards for this particular genre, they’re bad.

You’ll need to have your brain fired up and be in the right mood (receptive and ready to work through some mental calculations) to enjoy the lot of them before you click that link, so I recommend taking it a bit at a time.

They’re not going anywhere.

And I could list them all here, but I’m not going to. Still, here are a couple of favourites to get you in the mood.

Cthulhu awoke from loathsome dreams of gangrenous decay and the foul stench of congealing viscera, lifting his pulpy, misshapen head to find what foolish supplicant had roused him to yet another age of fear and creeping dread, but found his bloodthirst unslaked, having been brought to consciousness not by horror-filled screams of human sacrifice but by his little sister’s overly dramatic wail of “Cthulhu’s touching me!” from her side of the family station wagon’s back seat.

If broken hearts were made of simple syrup, and shattered dreams were made from white rum, and agony and despair came from ¾ ounce of lime juice, freshly squeezed, and three mint leaves respectively, then Mary Lou just served up a mojito cocktail straight from the ninth circle of hell when she told Ricky the baby wasn’t his.

And these weren’t even their best in class. So click through and enjoy.

Two videos

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Opposite ends of the planet, but both mildly relevant to me.

First off, Sheffield United boss Chris Wilder. All of United’s press conferences used to be recorded, edited and shared. But this season – for the first time ever – they’re live streamed.

See if you can notice when Wilder realises this in the video below.

Press conference errors aside though, it’s so good to see this guy smiling again after last seasons travails.

And then, this:

The weather in Cape Town continues to be pretty bloody awful, and – had it been a bit better – I was going down to the glamourous Access Park today to explore their sports shoe shops. Thankfully, because it was so nasty out, I didn’t. (But then, I suppose, if it had been a bit better, then the big thing wouldn’t have fallen down.)

As anyone familiar with this delightful place will surely attest, it’s all rather shabby. But you would have thought that they could have used some decent metalwork in the big sign at the gate, at least.

On the plus side, after this nastiness is done with (feels like -4, WTF?!?):

Check out the rest of the week:

21o isn’t going to break any records, but I’m loving those big yellow balls. (Careful now.)

And we might (for the first time in a long while) have a Spring-like Spring Day.

Who knew? (Whale spotting edition)

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Big news from EWN this week:

Yep. Same as every year:

Southern Right Whales have come to visit Cape Town shores to give birth or to find a mate – this is done every year between June and December. 

But while these are indeed magnificent creatures to see, and while they are here each and every year, some locals might not know where to look. It’s ok. EWN has got you covered, with a list of places that you can spot a whale “in Cape Town”. They’ve listed 22 different places that you can see whales.

From Doringbaai up the West Cooat (marked in red, top left) through to Nature’s Valley on the Garden Route (blue, bottom right).

Eagle-eyed readers (who will also be best at spotting whales) might notice that that’s basically the entire coastline of the Western Cape. And anyone clicking through on that link above will see that, yes, all of the 22 locations on the list are located on the coast.

So it seems to me that if you want to see whales… you probably just need to go anywhere in the Western Cape and look out to sea.

Who knew?

It’s actually rather unhelpful that they don’t also mention that you should probably do it during the day to increase your spotting success rate. Or to use binoculars to make the whales look closer.

Suddenly: Lions

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Look, we live in South Africa, and while at least some of the rest of the world [waves to the USA] think that wild animals roam the streets, it’s not quite like that. Well, not every day, at least.
Outside the cities, you certainly might come across ostriches on your drive, and if you’re near certain bodies of water at night, there’s always the chance of a notoriously unreflective hippo.

More likely is that you’ll hit one of the big buck though: and that Kudu a lot of damage to your car: a bull can weigh 300kg.

Sadly, it rarely ends well for the Kudu, either. But thankfully, these events are fairly uncommon in the greater scheme of things.

Even less common are encounters with lions.

Well, that is until recently. Because suddenly, there seems to be a lot of lion in the mainstream media.

Please note that if you’re reading this out loud for the benefit of someone else, you’ll need to clarify that I mean the big cat, not a lack of truthfulness. That wouldn’t be unusual at all.

Here are three very recent examples. Happily all up North, a long way from here.

There was a lion… ahem… lyin’… on the M18 between Pretoria and Centurion last night:

The original image was posted on X, and as the Citizen says:

A reverse image search on Google revealed similar photos of lions spotted in the Kruger National Park.

Well, yes. Similar, because that’s what lions look like, but actually not the same.
So was this claim genuine? No-one seems completely sure.
The truth is out there. And maybe there’s a lion as well.

More concrete evidence was provided by Skukuza Golf Course:

Guests at the Skukuza Golf Club, famously dubbed South Africa’s wildest golf course, recently witnessed an extraordinary scene when a group of predators converged on the final green to share an impala kill.
In a rare sighting that perfectly illustrates the untamed nature of the course, two lions, a crocodile, and a pack of hyenas took turns feasting on the kill just metres from the clubhouse.

And the video, although portrait and a bit blurry, is incredible:

The “You must have signed the indemnity form to pass this point” sign in the foreground is particularly amusing, given the range of dangerous carnivores tearing apart the unfortunate impala.

These magnificent beasts are supposedly apex predators, but they are no match for a Toyota Land Cruiser. This incident occurred in Kruger National Park, which you can drive through in your own vehicle (I recently found out that this is bewildering to foreigners). And you can get really, really close to the really wild animals. But when there is a good sighting, word spreads fast and it can get a bit busy.

Patience is key. Don’t be like this guy. Don’t get this close.

No damage done here apart from to the driver’s bank balance once the Rangers got a look at this video.

KNP spokesperson, Ike Phaahla, confirmed that the driver was fined.
“We dealt with him by tracing the number plate.”

Good plan. I would have started by looking for traces of lion fur on the front corner of every white Toyota in South Africa. But your way is probably better. I guess that’s why they pay you the big bucks.

“All we know is that he was trying to make a way at the sighting when he bumped the animal,” Phaahla explained. He added that while he was unsure of the amount the driver was fined, the maximum fine is R1,500.

A slap on the wrist for a bump up the arse.

We naturally crow about our amazing wildlife in SA, but I have no clue why there has been a sudden plethora of lion stories in the local press.
Still, it’s good that we take pride in sharing the stories about these big cats when we encounter them.

This B-girl Raygun “protest” theory is clearly nonsense.

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Earlier, someone linked to a huge – s t r e t c h – by local “expert on everything”, Graeme Codrington, in which he explains why Australian “B-girl” RayGun’s atrocious performance at the Olympics was actually just a protest about the “sport” being included in the Games. Here are some highlights (of his theory – there were no highlights in the actual performance).
Please ignore the smugness if you can.

How likely do you think it is that Australia selected a completely useless competitor for the Olympics? Not likely, right? Should this have alerted you to a bigger story, and to do a touch of research before posting? I think it should have.

A quick search will uncover that her name is Prof Rachael Gunn, and she’s a university professor, with a focus on breakdancing, gender and politics. She’s also a really well established breakdancer and has represented Australia at World championships for many years, to much acclaim. Did this give you pause for thought? It should have.

Slightly more research will uncover that she’s recently written an academic journal article entitled “The Australian Breaking scene and the Olympic Games: The possibilities and politics of sportification”. The theme of this paper is a concern that if breakdancing is institutionalised via the Olympics it is likely to lose its very essence. Her argument is that if the sport is forced to adhere to a strict code that gives points for certain elements and is centrally controlled by a body not strongly linked to the sport (like the IOC) it will stop being the sport she loves. Does that information give you pause for thought? It should.

Let’s pause for thought, as instructed. Here’s that paper, written two years ago.

And here’s how Graeme sees her performance:

The most likely story here is that her dance at the Olympics was a supreme expression of what she believes is the essence of her art form: an anti-institutional dance of rebellion and defiance. Could it have been a throw down. A challenge. The judges gave her a zero – and by doing that she was the winner of a dance that is a form of protest.

STREEEEEETCH! But then of course:

I know I am a full-time researcher so this type of info is maybe easier for me to track down, but we should all make some effort.

Eww.

Anyway, I made some effort and I found out that if this was indeed a protest, then it’s a long held gripe that she has. Indeed, RayGun seems to protest in many of her routines, given her Instagram videos.
Here she is… er… protesting in Cyprus, Sydney and the UK with form and style that seem to pretty much match exactly what she did in Paris this week.

Here she is last year, talking about how they’ve had to work hard in Oz to get athletes to the Olympics:

For many traditional Olympic sports, there is a clear pathway for athletes to qualify. For the Australian breaking community, the past three years have been a scramble to get everything in place for the road to Paris. A qualifying event in the Oceania region later this year has yet to be locked in.

“The last three years has been really fast putting all that [infrastructure] in place,” Gunn said.

“It’s been really intense, we’ve had to build a lot, and on top of training and on top of reimagining ourselves as Olympians, [it’s] been really fast-paced the last couple of years. But we are ready, we’re going to get there, and we just need the support now from the Australian public.”

Which is a bit weird, given how much Graeme says she hates the idea.

And here she is extolling the virtues of Breaking being in the Olympics, a whole three weeks ago:

Breaking provides an opportunity to explore the “faster, higher, stronger” ethos of the Olympics in new ways. It shows us that we truly don’t know every point on which the body can spin or launch its weight, the different shapes it can make, or all the ways it can move.

And finally, here’s an interview with her after her disguised protest, in which she disguises it still further…

…by not saying it was a protest at all.

After her performance, the 36-year-old Macquarie University lecturer explained she wanted to leave a creative mark.
All my moves are original. I was never going to beat these girls on what they do best, the dynamic and the power moves, so I wanted to move differently, be artistic and creative because how many chances do you get in a lifetime to do that on an international stage?

It is Genius!

Listen, I know I’m not a full-time researcher, but this type of info was very easy for me to track down, so maybe Graeme should make some effort.

Jeez. The lengths some people will go to to get some attention.

Also, please share this post. Thanks.