There will be no blog post here today.
Normal service will be resumed tomorrow.
Tickled
I get sent a lot of jokes via email.
Generally, they’re not very good, but this one tickled me, so I’m going to share it.
A Tall Klipdrift Fishing Tale
I went bass fishing this morning at Groendal Dam, but after a while I ran out of bait. Then I saw a puff adder with a dead lizard in its mouth. Lizards are good bait for bass.
Knowing the snake couldn’t bite me with the lizard in its mouth, I grabbed it behind the head, took the lizard, and put it in my bait bucket.
Now the dilemma was how to release the snake without getting bitten. So, I grabbed my bottle of Klipdrift and poured a little brandy into its mouth. His eyes rolled back, and he went limp. I then released him without incident and carried on fishing, using the lizard as bait.
A little while later, I felt a nudge against my foot. I looked down and there was that same snake with two more lizards in its mouth.
Life is good in Africa.
Numerous disclaimers here: I’m not sure that lizards are good bait for bass (or anything else), I’m not sure that a puff adder is unable to bite you if it already has something in its mouth, and I’m not sure how a puff adder (or the SPCA) will react to Klippies being poured down its throat.
Maybe it’s the fact that it involves brandy. But I think it’s more likely that I just liked the idea of a snake more obedient than our beagle. I’m actually making a list of things that are more obedient than our beagle, and so far it turns out that everything is more obedient than our beagle.
There’s a lesson here…
I’ve enthused about Getwine on the blog before, most notably here and here.
For those of you who missed those posts or have simply forgotten what I wrote about, here’s what Getwine says Getwine is:
GETWINE is a South African Wine Portal which allows you to easily buy superb South African wine online and have it delivered to your door.
What they don’t say in that tagline is that those wines are often heavily (or more) discounted. This puts really good wine into the occasionally desperate clutches of us normal people.
But not just us normal people. Abnormal people as well:
Yes, that’s a Getwine delivery going to a motor yacht on the Waterfront. The motor yacht in question is the Vava II. I’m not saying that it’s fancy or anything, but it’s owned by Swiss-Italian biotech entrepreneur Ernesto Bertarelli and cost £100,000,000. OK, it is fancy. There, I said it.
I’m no expert, but I’d wager that Ernesto wouldn’t exactly struggle to buy basically any South African wine (or vineyard) he wanted. He could even check the grapes out in person by using the helicopter that sits atop his big boat.
But no, Ernesto (or his people) chose to buy discounted wine from Getwine.
Firstly, let’s not for a moment suggest that this isn’t a big vote of confidence in Getwine’s offerings and service. And big congratulations to them. Local boyz dun good.
I’m guessing that Ernesto picked up some hints and tips from a local blog and simply went from there.
But secondly, is this an example of how people with lots of money (and Ernesto does have an awful lot of money), get and keep lots of money? By not splurging on the simple things in life, when there’s an equally good – and more reasonably priced – alternative. (Obviously, I don’t count his 97 metre long yacht in this “no splurge” category.)
Is there a lesson for us financially mere mortals here? I think that there probably is.
And will we listen? No. Of course not.
Allegedly, Vava II is on her way to somewhere that’s not Cape Town at some point today. You can live the Playboy lifestyle vicariously through Ernesto via Marinetraffic by following Vava II’s progress here.
UPDATE: See the comment below by Getwine with all the details.
WOW
Simultaneously spotted on twitter (via @ivovegter) and Stumbleupon (via someone else), this Marble Music Machine is simply incredible:
I wanted to share this asap, but there’s evidently a massive backstory which you can view here.
And there’s previous as well, with this punched card, hand cranked music box offering from over 3 years ago.
Wow.
ex-Industrial Wales looks ok, actually
Here’s a wonderful photograph of Dinorwic Quarry in North Wales, where they used to quarry slate, and which is now home to the Welsh National Slate Museum (no, I had no idea either).
There’s much to see here. We’ve got slate (unsurprisingly), we’ve got water, a valley, shafts of sunshine on steep green hills with snow-capped peaks in the clouds in the background. That’s an awful lot of boxes to tick in one single image, but despite that, it’s not contrived in any way. It looks almost magical. And that’s not bad for an ex-industrial site in North Wales.
It’s even better bigger and on black.
Photo Credit: Pentland Pirate on Flickr