ZANU-PF has the Twitters?

Well, probably not. 

I’ve seen quite a few people retweeting a ZANU-PF account lately, and I guess enough people have asked if it is real for there to be an article that I linked to above.

Reasons ZANU-PF would totally have a twitter account:

1: They are well known for being big fans of open communication and facilitating discussion with an active citizenry.

2: There are loads of Zimbabweans on twitter.

3: ZANU-PF has a multi-facited approach to electioneering. The police, death squads, closing down NGOs while controlling the flow of other food aid and of course, Twitter.

4. One look at their website will tell you that they are a tech savvy party of the 21st century.

By the way, if, as your website suggests, the land really is the economy and the economy the land, I’m starting to realise why your economy hasn’t been doing so well. That’s right, Imperialist sanctions. 

 

 

5. It’s an easy and fun way to talk to their friend Julius Malema through his totally real twitter account.

There are about 4 fake Malema accounts but this is the most popular (but not with the ANCYL). I’ve even seen Dept. Minister of Science and Technology/wielder of ANC discipline Derek Hannekom get into an argument with it before.

If, in the highly unlikely event the account is not real, I have another theory, a ‘Good bye, Lenin’ theory. Basically, Robert Mugabe is so far out of it that someone at the party has created this twitter account to keep him up to speed on Zimbabwe’s Great Leap Forward.

This was my tip off:

 

Now I have an image of Mugabe, BlackBerry in hand, thinking what a great job he’s done as thousands of South Africans brave the elements to make a new prosperous life for themselves in Zimbabwe. All we need is Sigmund Jähn to read them to him and we have most of the plot.

Star Wars in 3D! (kinda)

On Saturday I was last minute invited to go watch Episode I in Rosebank, and after getting miserably lost in the Mall and eventually bumping into them by chance (because I’m West Rand like that) we sat down to have dinner.

Even though a load of people were invited, the only ones who turned up were the four of us, and we are all vegans. Now that I know the cross appeal between veganism and Star Wars, I feel better equipped to do some awesome promotions.

We sat down at Pizza Vino, where they managed to fuck up four vegan pizzas beyond all measure – all measure. If you’re vegan in Joburg, don’t eat there, rather eat at any of these.

I was looking forward to watching Episode I again, because since I was a kid I really liked Star Wars. I got the trilogy on VHS for Christmas in about 1995 and then watched them immediately, albiet, not in order because Roman Numerals are hard when you’re six, and watched them over and over again until I got the remastered ones, and then I watched them over and over again.

I feel the need to qualify ‘really’. What I mean is that I enjoyed watching the movies and loved the story and the light-sabers and the explosions. However, people who ‘really’ like Star Wars know about things like the expanded universe and the books and the graphic novels and contribute to Wookieepedia and write fan fiction and sent Samuel L. Jackson death threats because he deigned to use a purple light-saber in Episode II (when we all know that light-sabers only come in green, blue and red). I don’t ‘really’ like Star Wars in that sense.

Also, in contrast to people who ‘really’ like Star Wars, I don’t think the prequels are an abomination, I think they’re good, and Episode III in particular is excellent.

I am now excited for this movie, the fact that it was R65 (a different rant for a different day), that my discount card didn’t work and that you have to stand in line and pick up your 3D glasses at the popcorn counter; these things were not bothering me.

When the movie started, I felt something was…off. Things were very dark on screen and not because they were in space and junk. The 3D glasses were so dark that the colours weren’t properly showing up, I now know what it’s like for a dog to watch a movie :/

Obi Wan thinks Block is alright.

But we plough on, because I’m a brave soldier like that. Oh yeah, Jar Jar Binks – thanks for this, Lucas. My friend suggested that the next time Lucas repackages this movie, some of the special effects budget should go towards simply placing a large black block over that character, without any explanation. Movie = greatly improved. Also, the kid playing Anakin Skywalker was a little cringy, but he was nine years old.

I have one last complaint though – Episode I is another one of those movies that doesn’t seem to have been intended to be in 3D and was made so later. This means that there isn’t a lot of actual 3D in the movie but there is a lot of making a distinction between the background and the foreground. I actually enjoyed watching the movie without my 3D glasses so I could see in bright colours from time to time but then stuff was distorted obviously.

I enjoyed the movie again, Queen Amadala, pod racing, Senate debate protocol, it had everything. I especially like the parts where they show the connections between the prequels and the trilogy and I go ‘oooohhh, so that’s why that’s like that.’. Even George Lucas’s nasty habit of ending movies with a triple layer of cheese didn’t annoy me.

the awards ceremony at the end of Episode IV is so bad that I get embarrassed watching it to the point where I occasionally go a bit red. Even 8 year old me was embarrassed to watch it in front of my grandmother.

Even with the complaining that I’ve done above, I’m definitely going to go watch Episode II when it comes out, because the movies are awesome!

P.S: If you haven’t heard about Star Wars Uncut, it’s a really cool project where the whole of Episode IV has been recreated by fans sending in 15 seconds clips in all different mediums and with their own interpretations. The finished product is on YouTube.

I read Tony Leon’s book

It took me a couple of months to read Tony Leon’s book but, in my defense, I wrote about 15 tests and read two smaller books in between (also, it got pretty boring at times).

For the alarming amount of you who don’t know who Tony Leon is, and based on my interactions with people, there are a lot of you; he was the leader of the DP/DA from 1994-2007 and is the current South African Ambassador to Argentina, Paraguay and Uruguay. It may surprise you to know that he is one of three former senior DA figures

Teeny-tiny Image via Wikipedia

who are serving as ambassadors including Douglas Gibson (Chief Whip) and Sandra Botha (who was the leader of the DA in Parliament after Helen Zille became leader). This is a very creative and by far the nicest way to deal with political opponents that I’ve ever come across. Somehow, I doubt that Helen Zille will be posted somewhere sunny though.

After reading his book you come away with several things: 1: Tony Leon is a generally good guy, if at times he lacks people skills. 2: Tony does not really give a fuck what you have to say about him. 3: Thabo Mbeki is crazy. Like for real, bananas, and the period while Tony Leon was Leader of the Opposition was probably one of the nastiest periods in politics, that showed the ANC to not handle criticism too well. 4: Tony Leon and the DP played a much more important role in our democracy than you will probably ever hear about. 5: Tony Leon has a wicked-good vocabulary.

Point 4 is actually really interesting, and one instance in particular comes to mind: During the constitutional negotiations, the NP and the ANC had reached an agreement on the appointment of Justices to the Constitutional Court.  They had agreed that Justices would be picked by Cabinet only, even though the other presiding officers of the other courts were appointed using the JSC (the mind boggles). This was obviously a pretty undesirable situation to have the most powerful court in the country effectively being neutered, and it was the intervention by the DP (rather confusingly after the deal was brought to their attention by the NP negotiator who made the deal) that we have our current situation.

So, say thank-you to the DP for that.

This book probably has some of the most difficult to understand words I’ve ever come across, and I have a pretty good grasp of English me.

I blame law degrees for this, because out of all the books  I have in my room, the ones written by lawyers (Leon, Mandela, Bizos) are on   average 2 times larger than any of the other books (to be fair though, they are autobiographies written by people who’ve lead full and very interesting lives).

This book is the first one I’ve ever read that I used a dictionary and small notebook to find out the meaning of words and write them down. Here is a selection of my favourties:

1: Inimical: Hostile

2: Filial: of, pertaining to or befitting a son/daughter.

3. Desuetude:  State of no longer being used or practiced.

4. Rapacious: Greedy (this one was worth looking up, because I think he used it 60 times).

5.  Avuncular: Pertaining to an uncle (I literally facepalmed when I worked this out, who speaks like this?)

6. Pusillanimous: Showing lack of courage and determination.

7. Desiderata:  Something wanted or needed.

8:  Contumely: Display of contempt through actions.

9: Maladroit: Unskillful or awkward (for the purposes of this book the definition should be ’75% of cabinet’).

10:  Bellicose: Inclined to or eager to fight (a.k.a Tony Leon)

These are just a handful of the ones I wrote down, which are themselves a handful of the ones that I had the energy to look up. Does he speak like this all the time, and if so, no-one has murdered him?

I did quite like this book though, it was funny and honest and best of all, Tony Leon does not seem to take himself seriously at all. If you have time for a 700 page book and own a dictionary, you should read it.

Reasons to love the Life Aquatic

I really like Wes Anderson movies and by ‘really like’ I mean that I watch the Royal Tennenbaums twice a year but still have never been bothered enough to track down and then watch ‘Bottle Rocket’ – I am okay with this (and in my defence I bought and enjoyed ‘Franny and Zooey’).

Quite a few people who also like his movies seem to not the like ‘The Life Acquatic with Steve Zisou’, even trusted source ‘Stuff White People Like‘ says it’s okay to be critical of it. This confuses me for quite a few reasons, which I will enumerate on:

Cover via Amazon

1. Billy Murray. Bill Murray is in it.

2.  A guy sings David Bowie songs with an acoustic and in French throughout the movie.

3. Jeff Goldblum. Jeff Goldblum is in it.

4. That weird kind of electro-music that is piped through the headsets – come now, you love it.

5.  The line “those amateurs. you left your dog you idiots” is the best thing that’s ever been said to pirates.

6. It’s way better than The Darjeeling Ltd.

To be fair, I though Hotel Chevalier was cool but this is probably because my appreciation of things is superficial enough to be favourably influenced by the mere presence of France or indeed French (see in this regard, point 2 supra).

7. If that scene in the mini-sub when they find the Jaguar-Shark didn’t make you tear up a bit, you’re made of fucking stone. You dick.

Imperialism

Not the ‘blood for oil’ kind, but the ‘feet and ounces’ kind.  This discussion will involve almost no talk about destroying American hegemony or kissing.

As a South African, my dealings with the imperial measurement system are limited to American and British TV for the most part, but for some reason I’ve actually had to think about more often than usual in the past few weeks. Firstly, there was a fantastic comic in the Oatmeal which summed it up very nicely (and also stated that the system could really be killed off in one generation, which I loved). Secondly, I watched Supersize Me again and at every weigh-in I had to pause it, get my phone and do math in order to gasp along with the Drs.

Many South Africans when taking a dig at the imperial system tend to enjoy lumping it in with the ‘dumb Americans’ idea (by the way, thinking everyone in a country is ignorant or dumb is pretty ignorant; hypocrisy-five!). This ‘dumb Americans’ thing is true inasmuch as they do use the system and in the fact that they would probably view any attempt to bring them in line with the vast majority of the rest of the world as some sort of communist plot (I can already see poorly spelt protest signs decrying the metric system because Nazi Germany used it). Sure they may be stubborn and a pain but at least they are consistent.

The British on the other hand seem to not know what system they use, it’s some kind of metriperial hybrid that confuses everyone. While temperature is almost always metric, things like distances are in Imperial. Depending on how left or right leaning the newspaper you read is will also determine which system it uses (The Guardian using metric and a paper like the Telegraph using imperial). The British go one further by measuring in Stone which, for reasons that I’ve never had adadquetly explained to me, is a unit of weight comprising 14 pounds, or 6.3502924kg which sounds like a useful unit indeed. The absurdity of the UK not using metric while being surrounded by the totally metric EU is brought into focus when you drive from the Republic of Ireland into Northern Ireland and large signs warn you “speed signs now in miles”…sigh.

Even though both the US and the UK have had laws on the books since the 19th century to move towards metrification, local opposition and conservative governments have been slowing the process down to the point where it’s mostly stopped in both countries now.

An aside: For a truly lovely, pathetic and very British protest group visit the website of Active Resistance to Metrification. A group that go about altering any public signs in metric to their imperial equivalent. They even vandalise signs that have both the systems on them so that only the imperial measures show, the gallery is something to behold.

The way things like this ought to work is of course format wars (like VHS vs Betamax or whatever it was called). When it became apparent about 50 years ago that the metric format had won, we should have stopped making anything in imperial units or anything that could measure imperial units. Adapt or die.  

This ruler is part of the problem...

This would be much like when we decimalized currencies in the 1970s, you learnt it and then that was that, the old system simply disappeared like all things that are replaced by things that are better at doing the thing they are supposed to do.

If you are American, angry and observant, you may have noticed that I live in one of those countries that drive on what is obviously the incorrect side of the road. I readily admit this, it’s stupid and we should be driving on the right like the rest of the damn world. I’ll make you a deal: you speak to your government about dropping the stupid system of measurement so that I can watch weight loss shows and gasp without the aid of a calculator and then I’ll speak to my government about driving on the correct side of the road so that you lot can come have a holiday without the aid of a driver, or something (there’s not a lot in this deal for you).

I also issue this challenge to the peoples of Liberia and Burma (seriously, this is the company you want to keep, America?). Ready? Go!

New Age Medicine

Since I am such a fantastic upper-middle class stereotype, aside from keeping a blog I also have an anxiety problem. Not a real-real one but more than play-play one. I was actually hospitalised in May of this year because I had chest pains and an irregular heartbeat. After much fussing and probably about R25 000 in medical expenses (role on NHI) the cardiologist decided that I was having a panic attack.

Fun facts: Did you know that symptoms of a panic attack actually rather closely mirror those of a heart attack? So imagine if you’re foolish enough to Google your symptoms (and you have a predisposition to panic) and then see signs that say you are having a heart attack? This could quite easily become a self fulfilling prophecy. My favourite symptom of a panic attack is ‘impending sense of doom’, which is just fantastic.

Anyway the nice Dr gave me some Xanax and now I take half a pill of that every day and feel lovely, I’m about 50% sure that it’s a placebo effect due to the dosage but I’m okay with that.

While my pseudo heart attacks are under control I still get quite stressed out by tons of varsity work and UJ’s inability to schedule semester tests to allow for study time (or eating or bathing for that matter) and a few SAVS duties that I let pile up. So now this leads to jaw clenching that I see a chiropractor for and about once or twice a month she gets it all re-aligned and I make no effort whatsoever to actually curb the behaviour that’s causing the problems in the first place.

This system was, once again, treating me just fine until I realised by jaw now clicks and spent about two weeks clicking it at my desk as I read notes. The idea of my jaw being a useless arthritic pile by the time I was 40 was worrying, but more worrying is that my friends at varsity began to give me funny looks and ask me why I was clicking my jaw and looking like someone with a pretty obvious OCD tic. I’m fine with people thinking I’m a bit weird, that I’m interested in odd stuff and that I talk too fast, but facial tics is clear line in the sand between ‘he’s an interesting fellow’ and ‘ooh, I think he might cut the eyes out of celebrities in magazines’.

When I wrote my second last semester test I booked with my chiropractor again and then asked what I could do about it to stop it happening. She recommended:

1.Doing the rubber band on the wrist thing in order to re-programme my brain, which is always something I’ve heard people use but have never had personal habits of mine I thought were annoying enough to correct by trying it.

2. Sucking on boiled sweets so that I don’t clench subconsciously.

Then she stuck my face full of little acupuncture needles that are supposed to stay in for a few days; I wish I had shaved this morning because now I have the whole pubey-Che Guevara look and can’t shave until they come off.

I’ve never been able to work out whether acupuncture was a real thing or silly ‘alternative’ medicine and unfortunately, all those qualified enough to answer that question I happen to meet also happen to be practitioners of it, which I think somewhat ruins their objectivity.

The elastic band seems to be working pretty well, incidentally, I’m also using it to correct other behaviour in addition to clicking my jaw so it might make me the best person to have ever lived (and have no skin on his left wrist).

The sucking sweets (my Dr prescribed me ‘Sparkles’) are also working but since 3 of their 4 main ingredients are corn syrup, sugar and food acid; I fear that whatever value my jaw may be getting from them is being taken from my teeth.

I don’t know if dentists are covered by NHI, fingers crossed.

When infomercials attack!

I used to watch infomercials when I was little and home sick from school or on school holidays; I loved them. I’m not quite sure if that was because of their time slot and my busy life as a scholar, I hardly ever saw them and were therefore a novelty or whether they were fun to watch because they are actually designed to be  entertaining.

I remember those Bauer one’s with Isabel Jones and a younger Keith and,by the way, what’s the story with Keith? Is he being held hostage here? does he have gambling debts? is he secretly blinking ‘help me’ with accompanying co-ordinates in Morse Code and we’ve never noticed? What’s the American chef doing in South Africa selling cookware etc.? I’ll find out one day.

Well anyway, poor Keith has been here so long that we’ve gone from poking fun at his pronunciation of Aloohminum (properly pronounced Al-you-minium) to sighing when him and Amore do that cringy ‘lekker fast!’ thing.

Listen, I know that it’s just a bit of nonsense and that they’re trying to sell products and it’s sort of like an arms race. I mean, if everyone else is selling their products with screaming and shouting highly cafinated blonde women, you’d look like a bit of an unenthusiastic dick if you tried to go against that convention with a calm (though compelling) presentation of the pros and cons of your product.

This had a point. In bigger shops now they have little stands with the infomercial products and then a small screen at the top that loops the infomercial. This means that you get to see the product in the flesh and you get to see a professional on the screen demonstrate that it’s the broom of your wildest dreams. This is a good idea.

However some marketing type person has tried to be clever. You know how retailers line the queues with all sorts of little things that they hope you will impulse buy (and that you almost always do) well they’ve put the infomercial stand things there too – all of them.

Now while you are waiting in the queue, you are shouted at by 4 different Keiths and a handful of other really loud people. Attention marketing people: I don’t like to queue and I don’t like being shouted at, additionally I can’t hear a fucking thing any one of the Keiths et al are saying now, it’s just a cacophony (and you said there was no use to learn this in school – ha!) of “but order now” and “but wait, there’s more!”. You know in the movie where the person is having a nervous breakdown and he puts his hands to his head and all the voices echo as the camera rapidly moves around him? – this is not a thing I want to have happen to me while I’m waiting for a cashier.

If you think I’m being dramatic – ok I’m certainly being dramatic- below is a video that I took in a queue one day which illustrates the point. You had better watch it because it took me about an hour of downloading things to change the format from BlackBerry to something even vaugely wordpress friendly before I gave up and remembered I have a YouTube channel that I’ve never used; and then I realised you can just embed things from YouTube and I had wasted a considerable amount of time.