Category: this is south africa

A picture of a VW gear lever

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Remember this extraordinary outburst?

you say you weren’t used to the car?LIAR,LIAR,LIAR… As EVERYBODY knows,in a VW,1st and reverse gear are TOTALLY on the opposite side to each other.

*pauses for dramatic echo effect*

Well, helpful reader @pimrie has helpfully taken a photograph of his VW gear lever, and he’s kindly allowed me to share it with you.
Please excuse the fact that his car could probably do with a bit of a clean. That’s not what this is about.

vwrev

No, what this is about is the fact that in this particular VW, 1st and reverse gear are… er… not “TOTALLY on the opposite side to each other”.
Maybe there’s more than one sort of VW gearbox. And evidently, internet commenter and legal threat donor Paul Murray was thinking of the other sort of VW gearbox. Which makes it all the more confusing, because when you’re panicking because several tonnes of angry, infected pachyderm is bearing down on you, you might well forget which sort of VW you’re in and, with that vital information, the layout of the gearbox.

Rule one of posting outraged allegations on the internet, Paul: make sure that you’re actually correct in your outraged allegations.

What’s The Problem With That?

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From the Guardian, this:

tgrI don’t think that this is breaking news to anyone, really. But while the Guardian uses the word “admits”, as if it’s some sort of dirty secret, executive producer Andy Wilman is refreshingly open about the whole thing:

He said the show offers “an hour a week where absolutely nothing is achieved, but the path to nine-year-old escapism is briefly lit up”. He added: “Most TV shows that have been going for as long as ours refresh themselves by forcibly injecting new elements into the format, but on Top Gear we keep ourselves young by ageing. You’re watching an organic journey of those three going through their motoring lives.

No-one actually watches Top Gear for reviews of the vehicles on there, do they? Sure – back in the late 70s and 80s, that’s what it was about, but since Clarkson and Hammond took over in 2002 (and were joined by May after the first season of the relaunch), it’s pure entertainment, tenuously linked to cars.

Willman vowed that upcoming shows won’t tamper with the childish formula, offering a rally in supermarket aisles, a tank smashing through a building and a drive round a nuclear site.

See?

I wouldn’t really class myself as “middle-aged”, nor as having “a mental age of nine” (others may disagree on both these points), but I’ll certainly be tuning in when Season 21 begins next month in SA.

Two sides…

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Remember the Kruger Park elephant attack video that went viral a couple of weeks ago? Here it is:

 The elephant was subsequently shot, making it very dead, and prompting comments like:

so they kill a poor elephant because he was horny as nature intended?? wouldnt common sense tell someone who’s DRIVING to keep..oh i dont know…..DRIVING ON?? was her car stalled?? no. she just sat her dumb ass there and got away with a few scrapes. what a dumb bitch.

and:

They KILLED the ELEPHANT for being an animal, and what happened to the DUMBASS DRIVER? Then, you cry you want to protect a tree, a dog, an eagle, an elephant because of extinction? IMBECILS.

and the occasionally controversial viewpoint of the “Biological Entities Should Be Ranked In Importance To The Global Community Based Solely On Their Average Mass” Brigade:

They killed the elephant for this? I hate humanity, if fair was fair, you’d shoot the tourists too for being stupid and driving TOWARDS AN OBVIOUSLY DISTRESSED ELEPHANT! I love how the life of a 90kg human is worth so much more than a 5000kg elephant. How retarded is this world?!?!?!? I hate people.

All fair enough, right? Ha. Sure.

Except, now that she’s out of her critical condition in hospital, having been gored by the 6ft long tusk of the elephant which went through the side of the car she was in, and then waited for 25 minutes before anyone drove along the road they’d been attacked on, the couple involved can have their say.

It’s riveting stuff as teacher Sarah Brooks describes how she repeated thought she was going to die as the elephant charged repeatedly at the vehicle. This after she couldn’t find reverse in the rental car as she panicked – which in turn prompted this astounding comment:

you say you weren’t used to the car?LIAR,LIAR,LIAR… As EVERYBODY knows,in a VW,1st and reverse gear are TOTALLY on the opposite side to each other.

UPDATE: Actually, Paul is incorrect in this allegation.

Of course EVERYBODY knows that, Paul Murray. Of course.
But Pop Quiz, Hotshot – where are they on a Hyundai?

Nah. Just kidding, it’s just the transmission systems of Volkswagen vehicles that the entire world has intimate knowledge of, isn’t it? And, obviously, being a teacher, Ms Brooks should have been fully aware of that, because using the VW Polo gearbox, while 5 tonnes of angry elephant bears down on you is something that she deals with in the classroom on a daily basis. If I was her teacher, I’d probably put something like “Could Do Better” or “More Effort Required”, because this whole gearbox faux pas has really not ended well, now has it?

That said, Paul Murray, your presumably rhetorical “What were you doing so close to the Elephant in the first place?” question doesn’t exactly tally with what the Park Rangers have said:

“We were 30 metres away from the elephant before it turned on us,” says Sarah, and shows me the video they were taking at the time to verify this. “A park ranger came to see us the day after it happened. He said: ‘I’ve seen the video. You were unlucky. You didn’t do anything wrong.’ The elephant had a maggot-infested abscess and had wounds all over his chest from being in a fight with a bull earlier on in the day. He was a very angry elephant. We were just in the wrong place at the wrong time.

But what does that park ranger know, hey Paul Murray? He’s probably another gearbox ignoramus or just a LIAR,LIAR,LIAR.

Now, I do want to continue with my views on this whole incident, but I feel that I must share some more of Paul Murray’s comment, because… well… just read and enjoy:

Give the World and the Elephant ‘some’ credit of not being as Ignorant as you are.You want to come into a place where at least lots of somethings die and get killed by something bigger,stronger and smarter than you?

Paul Murray is right though: Kruger Park is “a place where at least lots of somethings die”, but having read the piece he commented on, I’m pretty much of the opinion that Ms Brooks didn’t want to get killed by something bigger,stronger and smarter than her. Or for that matter something smaller, weaker and dumber than her. I just think she got caught in a difficult position, panicked and couldn’t find reverse.

Paul Murray continues:

Know your place in the food chain,stay in your Country and leave us South Africans and our animals alone,you ignorant twat.

Which is a bit awkward, when, as a human, Ms Brooks occupies pretty much top spot in the food chain and the passenger in the car was her… er… South African boyfriend who is currently living in the UK.

But wait, there’s more!

At least you may suffer a rabid fox attack as a prize for you costing us such a magnificent animal.And remember,STUPIDITY is NOT AN EXCUSE.

It’s all gone a bit Monty Python now, hasn’t it? At least a rabid fox attack? What sort of a threat is that? Seriously, why would that happen to her? Because she inadvertently got too close to a rabid fox, panicked and couldn’t find reverse in a VW. Yes? THEN SHE FULLY DESERVES THAT VULPINE ASSAULT!!!!!1!

Pfft. It seems with internet commenting, STUPIDITY is AN EXCUSE.
On with the rest of the post. And back to Ms Brooks’ story.

The people that shot the video. Where were they?

We thought the car that was behind us would still be there, but it was gone… That’s the thing that’s upset me more than anything. They said they thought we were dead, and told us later they didn’t have any space in the car.

Two of them visited Sarah in hospital. She pleaded with them not to publish the video. As it was, they did. The heavily-edited version, which made them look at best daft, and at worst deliberately foolhardy, went viral within hours.

Nice. Stay classy.

Look, it may seem that I’m just taking Sarah Brooks’ side in all of this, but I’m really not. In fact, I really don’t care. I’m glad that the couple survived and I’m sorry and a little sad that because of her injuries, she will never be able to bear children naturally. It irritates me that suddenly, everyone is an expert at everything and had made their minds up before knowing both sides of the story, though.
Bandwagon-jumping, kneejerk, herd-like behaviour. On the internet.
Who knew?

There are a lot of things to learn from this incident, though: that elephants can be dangerous, that some people have very little conscience or compassion when posting video footage on the web, that internet commenters don’t read (or maybe do read but just ignore?) the pieces that they comment on, that occasional CAPITAL LETTERS are a sure sign of outrage, but most of all, that in a VW, 1st and reverse gear are TOTALLY on the opposite side to each other.

Totally.

Dizzy new heights

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There was altogether too much undissipated energy coursing through the veins of the younger members of the 6000 family this morning, and so a dissipation intervention was required.

City Rock was it. Indoor rock climbing with literally thousands of those weird plastic artificial hand and foot holds plastered across overhanging plywood walls and fibreglass cliff faces.

At R125 per child, it’s not cheap, and even then you’re limited as to what they are able to do. There are four automatic belay lines which they can use and then there are a few walls where they can free climb. But if you want to use the rest of the facilities, you need to hire an instructor to help you along, and that’s an additional R150 per hour.

For two kids for an hour, that’s R400 (about €0.57 at today’s exchange rate *weeps*). Plenty wonga, especially as Scoop wouldn’t climb higher than about 3 metres even when attached to several tonnes of warehouse.
So we didn’t do that today.

That said, the kids did enjoy themselves a lot. Alex especially wanted to climb all of the things, and ended up frustrated by the roof, so maybe we’ll look to share an instructor one day in the future.
In the meantime, plenty of excess energy was dissipated and the rest of the afternoon and evening passed off without any problems.

Intervention successful.

Weren’t we lucky in 2010?

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Can you remember all that time ago, back to those Halcyon days of Portugal v North Korea, France v Paraguay and no load-shedding? June 11th to July 11th 2010 was one of the finest months South Africa has ever had. No crime, seamless organisation and an amazing advert for the country in front of a worldwide audience.

It could all have been so different. Imagine, if you dare, that final at Soccer City. Howard Webb with his whistle, Nigel de Jong with his studs up and Andreas Iniesta going on another mazy dribble to absolutely nowhere, before falling over theatrically. The eyes of the world watching, enthralled…

And then the power goes out.

It’s a disaster. The country is a laughing stock and… and… well, look, it’s just a disaster, isn’t it?

But it didn’t happen. Despite the fact that we’ve long had power woes – 2008 in particular stands out as being load-shedtastic – we made it through that month with not even a flickering hint of a blackout. How?

Well, the answer comes – some 3½ years later – from a one Nelson Thabo Modupe, of Lichtenburg, who now tells us that:

he prevented power cuts during the 2010 Soccer World Cup through his prayers

You almost want his third name to be Jacob, don’t you? Just as long as his fourth one isn’t Julius.
Anyway, I digress. Often.

The fact is that Nelson saved the country from ridicule and deserves some sort of reward. He’s attempting to claim that now in the shape of a R250,000,000 (that’s about $6.09 at current exchange rates) payout from Eskom:

because he saved the power utility the burden and humiliation of load shedding

And, given the global audience and the hugely damaging effects of a power outage in any of the 64 World Cup games would have had, I think he probably deserves it. Cough up out of your phat R12.24 billion profit for the six months to September 2013, please Eskom. Give the man his money.

But before Nelson disappears off back to the North West province to buy heaps of precious metals with his newly-gained moola, just let’s hold on a bit.

Because with great power (and let’s face it, getting God to help Eskom out of tight spot is great power), comes great responsibility. And that’s where I think Nelson has let us all down.

How could we forget the infamous fake sign language interpreter at the Nelson Mandela Memorial service held at…wow… Soccer City, just last month? Yes, with (potentially even more of the) world’s eyes on us again, on the big stage – the biggest stage – we were internationally embarrassed. What an absolute shambles it was, start to finish. There were pieces in Time magazine, Sky News, the BBC and, Oh Sweet Jesus, even the Daily Mail – LIKE THEY NEED ANY MORE AMMUNITION?!?!?!?!???1!!

Nelson. Oh, Nelson (no, not that one, this one)… You could have prayed and you could have prevented this burden and humiliation of the fake sign language interpreter. You had the power to do this, Nelson, and yet you chose not to? Why would you expose us all to this ridicule, Nelson?

You have let the country down, and we deserve and demand compensation. Perhaps unsurprisingly for the purposes of this blog post, I feel that about R250,000,000 should see us suitably placated.

And now we know what you are capable of – and we freely admit that the whole Eskom thing was a truly remarkable effort, Nelson – I’ll give you until the end of February to have a word upstairs and get rid of that terrible Zuma bloke. Otherwise, I expect to see your cheque book out again.

I hope we’re clear on things now, Nelson.