As I was saying…

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The power of the ill-informed social media lynch mob wins again:

YOU, Huisgenoot and Drum announces Slide the City events will no longer take place this year in light of one of South Africa’s driest seasons in recent years.

Because people got their knickers in a knot over the fact that it was going to use water. Even though it wasn’t really going to actually use very much water at all.

Let’s listen to some experts, shall we?
Yes, I recognise that’a a bit of an unusual step in this sort of situation, because OUTRAGE! is better, but still:

A veteran environmentalist says:

“I would rather ask whether they are employing local people and contributing to the economy,” said Simon Bundy of SDP Ecological and Environmental Services, an organisation operating in the environmental sector since 1999. “The tourism industry, for example, would have benefited in the cities where Slide the City would have been hosted. The volumes of water that would have been used would be miniscule,” Bundy adds. “I don’t think it would make much of a difference if you used it for something else.”

Sod what you think, Bundy. I completely disregard your 16 years of specialist experience and I’m going to ignore everything that you have to say because I’ve got a bit of a bee in my bonnet over this and your views don’t match mine.
Because, yeah, how are the farmers going to manage without that water? How? Huh? HUH?!?

Well, let’s ask one, shall we?

Jannie de Villiers, head of Grain SA agrees. “What will happen if you give 35 000 litres of water to a farmer? It won’t make a difference. Perhaps it will for a household but it will make no difference to the agricultural sector.”

Yeah. See? Oh… wait… But anyway, what does he know? There’s more to agriculture than grain. Cows and stuff. And some of the water would have, like, evaporated or something.

Of course it would. But now, those several thousand individuals who were going to use that “miniscule” amount of water under the eagle eyes of the self-elected Water Police, will instead be cooling off at home in their pools and gardens, each wasting water left, right and centre because splashing in swimming pools and jumping through sprinklers does that, and there’s no-one there to stop them. *cough* own goal *cough*

And they won’t be helping out our tourism sector either: they won’t be buying drinks and snacks in or around the event, they won’t be parking their cars and helping the local car guards, they won’t pop into pubs and restaurants afterwards to cap off a great day in the sun. All the people who were going to be working the events across the country will now have to find alternative seasonal employment.
All of this is fine though, as our economy is absolutely booming right now. Isn’t it?

Perhaps setting up a store selling pitchforks and flaming torches might be a good business plan?
Just a thought.

But, the mob has spoken and we’re not allowed to have Slide The City, because the mob is unable or unwilling to comprehend simple facts that go against its narrative.

God help us all when they find out about the City of Cape Town’s six “Spray Parks”, which run every day throughout summer. But those will be ok, because:

Water is recirculated and treated through a process similar to that of a swimming pool filtration system. Water is a scarce resource and spray parks have been designed to minimise water usage.

Now, where have I heard that before?

Mog’s Christmas Calamity

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Just as readers in the UK (and there are several, or more) may not have been aware of Zebra & Giraffe’s new single, which I shared yesterday, so readers in SA (yes, I haz them too) might miss the Sainsbury’s Xmas ad if I don’t share it on here. So, here we go:

Aww. What a wonderful story. And what a lucky cat.

The John Lewis Man on the Moon ad which I shared last week has come in for a lot of criticism via the social media mob (see how zeitgeist I am?), namely because it set out to highlight the plight of elderly people who might be lonely at Christmas time, but it didn’t come for free. In fact, apparently allegedly, it cost £7 million to make: cue angry people telling us that the money would have been better donated to charities helping elderly people to be less lonely this Christmas. And maybe it would, but that’s not how it works. That’s not how any of this works. That money belongs to John Lewis, and – maybe you need to take a seat before I reveal this next fact, folks – they can do whatever the fuck they like with it. It’s not their responsibility to make sure that old people aren’t lonely this Christmas. It’s not specifically anyone’s responsibility, (which is basically the root of the whole problem). But people in glass houses etc: What were you doing about it before the mildly creepy Man on the Moon made you realise that some elderly people might be lonely this Christmas? What are you doing about it now?

Hmm. Exactly.

I now await, with some anticipation, those same individuals going after Sainsbury’s, whining that they could have spent their advertising budget on buying smoke alarms for apparently otherwise fairly well-off households in middle England. Or that the Ad Wizard should have saved his travel budget and not rented that casino, instead providing a Slovenian dancing girl and a bottle of budget brandy to everyone in Struisbaai, or some equally random SA village. (Obviously, while I disagree with the reasoning behind this argument, I’d actually love to see the results were it actually to be done) (as opposed to the smoke alarm thing, which would be dull.)

Whatever. I tire of this constant requirement to find fault with anything and everything.

Why can’t we just enjoy these ads for what they are: Mog’s Christmas Calamity for being a wholly implausible but eventually rather endearing story of community spirit at Christmas time, and Man on the Moon for being a rather dodgy looking, apparently undead pensioner spying on a young girl with a hugely powerful optical device?

It’s All The Same

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Except that it actually isn’t. Because this here single marks an entirely new direction for Zebra & Giraffe, and it’s actually rather nice.

The new EP Slow Motion is semi-available now.

Many familiar places in this endearing, yet ultimately rather sad, railway-based video.
And some important lessons, too. Never open the book. The book is full of bad secrets you don’t want or need to know. You will only end up disappointed. And back drinking cheap red wine in a soulless bar in Beaufort West.

We’ve all been there.
(Through the heartbreak and upset of broken promises and lost love, I mean, not Beaufort West.)

Edit: Oh, apparently it was some soulless bar in Matjiesfontein. My bad. Still: It’s All The Same.

EDIT 2: (Sept 2025) I just found this post. In the intervening period, I’ve been to the soulless bar in Matjiesfontein. It was actually rather raucous and a lot of fun. Sorry.

And Today’s Word of the Day is “Unrepentant”

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Just a quick mention for a superb column from Irish journalist Ian O’Doherty, who upset several (or more) people from Liverpool when he made the outlandish suggestion that their namesake football club should feature a permanent black armband on their kit because the club:

… goes through so many commemorations of disasters and deaths

Cue – you guessed it – outrage.

When I heard that he’d written a column for the Irish Independent on the matter, my heart sank a little. Another brave soul who stuck his head above the metaphorical parapet and was now being forced back into submission at the hands of an angry mob and a spineless editor.

None of it!

Because today’s Word of the Day is, as we mentioned in the title of this post: Unrepentant.

Ian fights back ‘gainst the naysayers, the terminally offended and what he (quite rightly, but somewhat clumsily) terms “the Outragerati”.
There are abjectly acerbic, decidedly defiant and unashamedly unapologetic soundbites galore:

What a pity we have taken perhaps the most important technological tool ever created and decided to use it to mainly share pictures of kittens and form electronic lynch mobs who dribble with righteous and incoherent fury whenever they are exposed to something they don’t like.

And:

Liverpool fans have a widely established reputation for being a humourless lot (while at the same time saying they’ve the best sense of humour of any group of fans), but this was just the latest drizzle of stupidity in what has become a downpour.

Oh, and let’s treat ourselves to just one more:

It’s no longer enough, it seems, to disagree with someone. You now have to completely shut them down. It’s a sort of intellectual blitzkrieg, which means even the most innocent remark is now seen as “hate speech” and so must be obliterated before it gets a chance to gain traction. Most western countries have a system of political checks and balances to protect people from the tyranny of the government. But what we now have is the tyranny of the people as these unelected, self-selected commissars stalk the land, deciding what everybody else can see, hear or say.

Invariably, this is done in the name of the suffocating, intolerant brand of dumb illiberalism that currently holds sway in society.

Preach, brother!

If you read one thing this week, read his column, inoffensively entitled: If I had set out to deliberately offend the Scousers, I would have gone a lot further, because it is absolutely beautiful.

Future patients of UCT medical student “totally fine” with his exam preparation techniques

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The future patients of a UCT medical student have declared that they are “totally fine” with the wacky way that he prepares – or rather doesn’t prepare – for his end of year exams.

While most students have their heads buried in textbooks in the lead up to the examination period, Thandani took to social media platform Twitter and shared the exciting news that wasn’t ready for any of the three examinations he took earlier this week. Indeed, for his final exam, he “literally didn’t touch any of the work”, instead choosing to rely on a helpful bye from a higher power, after a quiet word from his mother.

Fullscreen capture 2015-11-11 103213 AM.bmpHowever, potential future patients of Thandani who we interviewed suggested that they were “totally fine” with his apparent disregard for their health and well-being. Around half of them said that when visiting Dr Thandani in the future, they would go in hoping that GOD would perform a miracle for them, while the others merely suggested that they would check his recent timetable and avoid consulting him on any of the work his class had covered this semester, “just to be on the safe side”.

We spoke with a senior lecturer at UCT and she seemed confused by our attitude to Thandani’s apparent nonchalance:

“Well of course we tell students not to study. GOD will carry them through their exams, as long as they pray hard enough. It’s standard procedure in the department.”

When we expressed our alarm at the way medicine was being taught at UCT, she told us that we had actually ended up in the Theology Department:

“No, don’t worry. That often happens. Easy mistake to make. Medicine is just along the corridor – third door on the left. They do proper studying and stuff down there. All a bit technical for me.”

Sadly there was no-one available from the Medicine Department to speak to us as they were all at a homeopathy seminar. We are still trying to contact them, so please expect some future revision to this post.

Which is more than you’ll get from Thandani.