What a fine mess Stanley

I am a little under the weather today, and that never happens as I am made out of liquid metal, but alas I soldier on, acting the slave for the CEO of a large company in South Africa, whom strangely enough I have not yet had the pleasure of meeting? Capitalism…never…
The following story is not about the unfortunate victims of the Air France crash recently; it’s a catastrophe far worse than that…well perhaps stupidity on a a scale the size of, well an aeroplane.

South African Airlines acting chief executive Chris Smyth admitted in Parliament on that the airline may have messed up the cancellation of 15 Airbus A320s and as a result might face a bill as high as 1.5 billion rand.
The planes were ordered in 2002, Smyth told the committee on public enterprises. "We decided we didn't need them," Smyth said. "We thought we had cancelled them, but Airbus are holding us to the original order."
He said that the airline is in negotiation to resolve the issue with the Airbus company. He suggested that it could be resolved within the next two weeks.

What? Chief exec admits in Parliament that the airline may have messed up the cancellation of 15 Airbus A320s and as a result might face a bill as high as 1.5 billion rand. How is this possible? One Airbus I could understand. “Oh I am terribly sorry for that mistake, wont happened again.”
“We thought we had cancelled them,” huh? Thought? Thought, thought he shat himself, but he didn't he just farted.
How will this beleaguered company ever look the industry in the eye again for such an idiotic blunder?

Quote of the day and its kind of translated, if you open your mind and can bend spoons: “Potential is a French word which means you haven’t done a damn thing yet,” similar to thought….
"He thought he stuck his head out of the window, so he went out to have a look".

Sticks and stones

OK this is getting ridiculous – the latest on my colleague…He trained as a fireman! And effing fireman, and he has even saved people from burning buildings…of course he did, how could we doubt him.
Judging by the size of his belly, he thankfully gave that career up long ago – he looks like a baseball hitter now - fat and sweaty.
He also knows J.K Rowling and appeared in one of her books – Head of the truth telling ministry no-doubt.

In other news:
Armed robbers attacked a South African football stadium built for the 2010 World Cup after an international rugby match with the touring British and Irish Lions.
The robbery took place on Tuesday at the sports bar of the new Nelson
Mandela Bay stadium in the coastal city Port Elizabeth after the Lions beat the Southern Kings 20-8, said police spokesman Marinda Mills.
Two men entered the bar on the stadium's fifth level and pointed a firearm at workers selling alcohol, took money and ran away, she said.
"The police were alerted. We closed the stadium and started searching for suspects. Four adult males were taken for questioning but released yesterday evening."
Mills blamed the company tasked with searching spectators.
"People were not searched properly, a firearm was brought in," she said.
The match was the first official sports event in the 48,000-capacity stadium, the first of five new World Cup stadiums to be completed.

How very bold and daring, entering such a busy place. I am going to stick my neck out and say that some of the stadiums builders could be involved…Our robbers are so bored of hitting the same spots over again that they cannot wait for somewhere new to pinch from.

OCD – Over Critical, Dummy

So there are signs that I might have OCD – obsessive-compulsive disorder. What are the signs? Well two people have told me….thanks very much. OCD is an anxiety disorder characterized by involuntary recurrent, unwanted thoughts (obsessions) and/or repetitive behaviours. That might explain the weird Dutchmen on bicycles that come into my mind ever now and then causing me to fall on my head.
Apparently OCD is the fourth most common mental disorder and is diagnosed nearly as often as the physiological ailments asthma, and diabetes. In the US one in 50 adults has OCD – wow.
I am not sure that I have started to feel embarrased just because I cant stand to see a dirty dish, or that my hands are starting to peel off the bone because of the religious washing process. Sometimes I like to count the number of steps I take to get to my car in the morning, and sometimes I like to count the cornflakes in my cereal bowl.
Wiki-innit-pedia says: Obsessions 1. Recurrent and persistent thoughts, impulses or images that are experienced as intrusive and that cause marked anxiety or distress. 2. The thoughts, impulses, or images are not simply excessive worries about real-life problems. 3. The person attempts to ignore or suppress such thoughts, impulses, or images, or to neutralize them with some other thought or action. 4. The person recognizes that the obsessional thoughts, impulses, or images are a product of his or her own mind, and are not based in reality. Compulsions 1. Repetitive behaviors or mental acts that the person feels driven to perform in response to an obsession, or according to rules that must be applied rigidly. 2. The behaviors or mental acts are aimed at preventing or reducing distress or preventing some dreaded event or situation; however, these behaviors or mental acts are not actually connected to the issue, or they are excessive.
In addition to these criteria, at some point during the course of the disorder, the individual must realize that his/her obsessions or compulsions are unreasonable or excessive. OK stop right fuggin there. So if I don’t make my bed, or anyone elses, when compelled to, or wash up after myself, or for the US army, I am normal, but if I decide to iron my bed linnen while its still on the bed, or wash my hands twice each time after touching a foreign object, I have OCD. ….OK so maybe I have OCD. Where do I go for my meds.

Sex, latex and a chicken

So the curious case of the latex filled, sado-masochist liaison between one of France's most influential bankers and his lover, who is accused of killing him, has sparked interest again in Switzerland.
Sordid details of the couple's relationship are set to unfurl during the trial, which began yesterday four years after banker Edouard Stern was found dead clad in a latex bodysuit, with two bullets in the head and two others in the body.
One thing we can deduce from the case is that latex is not bullet proof.
It follows the recent mysterious death of David Carradine, and also reminds me off the that Spanish guy they found at the bottom of a cliff face with his pants down and a dead chicken attached to his you know what.
The case centres on whether Stern drove the woman to kill him by harassing her or whether she was after his money.
“Are you after my money? Tell me damn it or I will force you to watch me parade around in this shiny little black number I found in my cupboard.”
“I will ask you again? Are you after my money?” speak now, or I will forever hold my piece in one hand and a whip in the other!”
Lawyers argue that the accused committed a ‘crime of passion’ – what exactly does that mean?
Since the discovery of Stern's body in his luxury penthouse apartment in the centre of Geneva, speculation has been rife over the hidden life of the person who was once France's 38th richest man.
A lawyer accused the lover, Brossard of "stirring up the fantasies of a 50-year-old man," who became dependant on a "sexually deviant little blonde from the suburbs."
Brossard's attorneys, on the other hand, have described the banker as an unscrupulous manipulator and sexual predator.
He said that Brossard was the toy of Stern who repeatedly humiliated and harassed her, subjecting her to "a moral degradation, to physical degradation."
According to Alec Reymond, another of her lawyers, "very seriously deviant images that Edouard Stern had downloaded on his computer" led to the conclusion that he is "not the poor victim who was manipulated by an uncontrollable sexual deviant."

What a perv…and just how many of his ilk are out there? It is uncanny that so many wealthy people are caught with their pants down in the bedroom, so to speak.
Is it a class thing? Is it a case of when someone earns X amount of money, they are entitled to come out of the closet wearing latex and rubber. $100million earned last year, splendid, lets put a gerbil up my arse and nipple clamps on. $200million, oh yes, I was really looking forward to getting tied up and hot wax poured over my penis by a dwarf and transvestites.
I blame the internet and the ANC, fuck it!

A quick update on my work colleague - He was telling us today that he could have avoided the Air France crash over the Atlantic, if he had been the pilot.

A vivid imagination

So I have a colleague at work who has lived at least seventeen lifetimes, well those that I know of.
Yup our regular Freud is a trained psychologist, a doctor, which is how he answers, the phone – yes that’s right, humble man that he is.
A doctor of what you ask? Well where do I begin, a doctor of so many things, and he is never short on providing an on the spot diagnosis, even for the lady at the other end of the office who has a tickle in her throat.
Our regular superman is a trained RAF pilot, having survived several crashes – for good measure (quick note to self, don’t catch a ride with him).
Our Schalk Burger has played provincial rugby at lock, even though he is only 5.9 inches tall – how the game must have changed.
Our Thorpedo has swum for Gauteng, and has also played countless other sports at a representative level, badminton, tennis etc etc etc!
Buck Rogers has even had aspirations of being an astronaut, but had some physical (not mental) dysfunction preventing him from being our own Neil Buzz Light-year Aldridge Armstrong.
His grandfather is a previous King of France, he knows all the politicians, former and current on a first name basis, he has worked as a journalist for all world wide media, has our own Kerry Packer, has owned this, done that and bla bla bla…get me a sick bucket I feel nauseous.
His latest story was arriving at a station while working as a journalist in London during the IRA bombing campaigns. As he got out at Paddington a bomb went off, but he was saved when regular Bobby dived on him “incredible people those Bobbies,” to quote our own Michael Collins.
He has been a singer, in a band, while also professing to play 13 different instruments, including the sitar – which comes from India you know! Aargh bloody yes, I know!
I have learnt some valuable lessons from my esteemed colleague. Actually no, I haven’t, because I learnt not to tell lies when I was five.
Ok, I will give him this, he is entertaining and does tell a good story, and oh my if it all ends up to be true, think egg on face in ostrich size proportions….nah no effing way.

Lets hope he isnt picked to play against the British and Irish Lions next Saturday.

When good sports go bad

A 19-year-old umpire was allegedly mobbed by fielders and hit with the stumps after giving a batsman not out, newspapers reported.
Matthew Lowson was allegedly attacked during a game between Sheffield
Alliance Cricket Club and Bradford Shimla in the Quaid E Azam Sunday Cricket
League in Yorkshire, northern England.
Shimla players appealed for a catch, which Lowson gave not out, sparking the controversy, newspapers said.
"Players from the opposition team had to intervene and use themselves as human shields to protect the innocent young umpire from been severely injured," the Yorkshire Post regional newspaper quoted a spectator as saying.
"I could see the players surrounding the umpire, repeatedly hitting him with fists, kicks and stumps. I couldn't believe what I was seeing. The opposition team ran towards their vehicle and fled."
HA HA run away run away, it must have been some beating they were dishing out, for that reaction from FANS, some of whom were stumped by what they saw, no doubt.

Shimla team organiser Waleed Ditta -- who said the only contact between one of his players and the umpire was an accidental collision with a bowler --claimed they had 17 decisions go against them. Accidental?
OK so this is quite a contrasting account of events, although I can almost feel the animosity from Waleed when he claimed that 17 decisions had gone against his team.

"We said to the umpire 'this is embarrassing' and he said 'I have done a course in umpiring'," he told the Sheffield Star newspaper.
"One of their batsmen was clean bowled... and the umpire said: 'I can't give that out because I didn't see it'. It was a joke. We said 'look, we have had enough, we are walking off'."
Not before taking out the stump and beating the ump to the ground, you didn’t Waleed.

Legendary umpire: Dicky Bird said: "Cricket is a civilised sport played by gentlemen. What is the game coming to?" Indeed Dicky.

I can think of a few other sports where umpires, judges, linesman etc might think twice before taking a beating with various props… Javelin throwing?
There is nothing like a discus in the face to ruin your smile. Fencing?

Tuna sandwich? Forgedabowdid

What came first the cheesy Private Investigator novel or the Private Investigator?

Why are PI’s always portrayed in black and white, with cheap suits, cheap aftershave, viewed through a thick fog of cigarette smoke, carrying a Queens/Bronx accent, with blonde broad in tow with long-fish net stocking clad legs?

Even when I read a detective novel, I picture it in black and white….strange!
And in the UK, its all elementary, and tweed suits – and don’t forget the side-kick twat-son.
Are these chaps the most stereotypical caricatures in the history of literature?

Bernard Schlink’s The Reader has recently been brought into the spotlight as a result of its adaption to film, starring Kate Winslet. The book deals with the difficulties which subsequent generations have in comprehending the Holocaust, specifically, whether a sense of its origins and magnitude can be adequately conveyed solely through written and oral media.
Those who are not to familiar with Schlink’s previous works might not know that The Reader was a break away from his usual Detective Novels, perhaps recounting his days as a court judge and some of the intriguing cases that may have been brought up before him in court. I have only read one, but that was enough for me. I have to say I am not a huge fan… Self’s Punishment.
Picture the above mentioned stereoptype, but in a Germanic kind of way…. Difficult you might think, but not really…it seems to fit in a really odd kind of way.
I haven’t read too many of these types of novels - I am more a factual novel, or the other extreme, fantasy novel kind of guy.
But getting back to my question of PI’s and stereotypes…I came across this story recently and went into black and white almost immediately, with patches of colour – polka dots actually!

Ex-New York cop has 100,000 dlr bone to pick
A former New York police officer wants 100,000 dollars compensation for trauma he claims to have suffered since biting into a tuna sandwich and encountering a bone, a report says Tuesday.
The ex member of "New York's finest," now a private investigator, has filed the lawsuit saying he choked for more than a minute on the bone and has never been the same since, the Daily News reported.
The suit says Robert McKenna, 57, suffered "permanent and emotional pain and suffering" during the incident more than two years ago and was "in imminent fear of losing his life."
"I can't even be near tuna now," he was quoted as saying.
"Like a fish fillet sandwich? Forget it."

It makes you Sclink...oh no that was terrible!

Happy Alive Day

I am at an age where birthday celebrations only have real meaning every 10 years or so. I don’t get all that excited by turning a year older.
In fact, I still get stuck on a certain milestone, which only gets updated every five or so years. So today, I am 28, and have been for at least er three years.

Enough about me though, Brit Mathew Maguire must be over the moon about having a birthday today.
A militant group in southern Nigeria said that it plans to release British hostage, Maguire who it has been holding for the past nine months.
"Today, June 1 is Mathew Maguire's birthday. He has spent close to nine months in captivity and we hope to release him today as his gift," the Movement for the Emancipation of the Niger Delta (MEND) said in an email to the media.
Maguire, an oil worker, has been held captive in the Niger Delta since September.
He was abducted along with another Briton, Robin Barry Hughes, who was released in April on health grounds.
Perhaps a note to any other hostage victims out there, if asked by your friendly militant group to fill out a form outlining your personal details, under the question birthday? Today would be a good answer.
So happy birthday old boy, and may you have many more…
Matt shares his birthday with a few other people today, including Marilyn Monroe, Alanis Morissette, Heidi Klum (with whom I would happily share my birthday), and Morgan Freeman (less so) but I think bookies have stopped taking bets on who will enjoy the day the most...