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"Clickybuttonthingymabobajig"
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12:49PM, Friday, 12 Dec, 2008
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I do some work for a motoring magazine, and this morning took possession of a brand new Mitsubishi Outlander MPV. Beautiful car, black leather seats, 4WD. Very nice. It was delivered by a friendly old chap who confessed that he didn't know how to lock it. The car comes with what a buddy of mine calls a "Clickybuttonthingymabobajig" – you know, the type that looks like the remote control for an automatic gate. Anyway, I just grin condescendingly at the old geezer and tell him to leave it to me. Press the 'clock' button. Nothing. Get in, make sure it's in 'park', pull up the handbrake. Press 'lock' - nothing. Bloody thing won't lock. So after wresting with it for 15 minutes I go upstairs and ask some of the young petrolheads at the office. They grin condescendingly at me and tell me to leave it to them. 20 minutes later they come back, defeated. They have no idea. "It's broken," they conclude, "kaput. Thing won't lock. Take it back." As a last resort I phone the Mitsubishi dealership in Paarden Eiland. Do they have any idea how to lock a brand new Outlander? "Sure," says the new car salesman, "just walk away."
It's an automatic sensor. When you approach the vehicle it automatically unlocks. Locks itself when you walk away.
Duh!
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3
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10:04AM, Friday, 12 Dec, 2008
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1. Went to go watch The Hitcher last night with YTAH at the (new, improved) Labia on Kloof. Classic 80s Rutger Hauer thriller. Hauer plays a psychotic killer stalking a young man in Texas. What I enjoyed most about is was the dark descent of the lead character from a fresh-faced young jock to a disturbed and troubled man as the movie progresses. Interestingly, [SPOILER] the movie was supposed to have ended with the young man shooting Hauer as he lies injured on the ground, but Hollywood changed it into a cliché rising-from-the-dead scene (giving the man an excuse for shooting a threat rather than just gunning a guy away while he's down) because they wanted to avoid an X-rating. I am now officially a huge Hauer fan. If you haven't seen Blade Runner and Ladyhawke, it's a good place to start. Next on my list are The Osterman Weekend and Nighthawks.
2. A word on the collapse of the US motor industry bailout collapse: good. I'm all for saving jobs and propping up the world economy but common sense tells me the American motor industry was fucked anyway. People don't drive American cars. Even Americans don't want to drive American cars. American cars suck. Therefore American cars should go the way of Japanese electronics and German televisions - they will still have their niche, but a more naturally comfortable one.
3. News poster spotted: Mboweni says don't go on binge. Well hold me back. Mate, on a R1m bond, a 0.5% rate cut is only an extra R500-odd in your pocket at the end of the month. If by 'binge' Mboweni means upgrading from No Name to Koo baked beans on your toast for dinner, he has an excellent point. Otherwise, not really.
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yoke
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11:09AM, Tuesday, 09 Dec, 2008
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Guy walks into a bar with a huge mound of dripping dog poop in his hand. He looks at the bartender and says, "Look what I almost stepped in!"
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Roundup
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9:43AM, Friday, 05 Dec, 2008
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Incredible Cape Times poster headline this morning:
"COPS TO ACCESS DNA, FINGERPRINT DATABASE"
Wow! What a breakthrough!
What were they accessing before, I wonder? The Computicket mainframe?
And then the Daily Voice tabloid says:
"PAKKIES DAD SAYS HE WOULD KILL SON"
... because he himself knows how difficult it is to be smothered with love and affection at a young age, no doubt.
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It's my office Christmas party from 11am onwards. This is the free beer that I was going to save myself for during a month of sobriety. That didn't quite work out. But I'm looking forward to it anyway.
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Hi low
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3:43PM, Tuesday, 02 Dec, 2008
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From Wikipedia:
Kleberg County is a county located in the U.S. state of Texas. In 2000, its population was 31,549... In 1997, Kleberg County Commissioners unanimously voted to adopt "heaven-o" as the official greeting of the county instead of "hello".[3] Kleberg County residents are now encouraged to use "heaven-o" to acknowledge one another. The reason cited for the change was the fact that hello contains the word hell, even though it is not etymologically related.
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Why I am a gold whore
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1:46PM, Monday, 01 Dec, 2008
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<Here starteth biobot's Bill Bonner impersonation>
This is Jim Davidson's back-of-envelope calculation of the amount of money the Fed and the US government have pledged to pour into the fiscal clusterfuck that is the US economy, as quoted in Bill Bonner's www.dailyreckoning.com:
"• $29 billion for Bear Stearns
• $143.8 billion for AIG (thus far, it keeps growing)
• $100 billion for Fannie Mae
• $100 billion for Freddie Mac
• $700 billion for Wall Street, including Bank of America (Merrill Lynch), Citigroup, JP Morgan (WaMu), Wells Fargo (Wachovia), Morgan Stanley, Goldman Sachs, and a lot more . On top of $45 billion for Citibank, comes a guarantee of $306 billion in bad loans. $800 billion to buy mortgages issued or backed by Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, Ginnie Mae and Federal Home Loan Banks.
• $200 billion for the auto industry
• $200 billion to buy securities tied to student loans, car-loans, credit card debt and smal! l business loans.
• $8 billion for IndyMac
• $700 billion to $1 trillion stimulus package (from January)
• $50 billion for money market funds
• $138 billion for Lehman Bros. (post bankruptcy) through JP Morgan
• $620 billion for general currency swaps from the Fed
Rough total: $3,651,800,000,000.00"
A shade over three and a half trillion dollars is one of the more optimistic and conservative estimates that've been bandied about. Bloomberg reckons it's more along the lines of $8.5 trillion (60% of the US 14-trillion GDP). Either way, there's only one way to describe these sorts of numbers: too much. Yes, I know they're only doing it to try and save the economy, the monetary System As We Know It, the world. I know they don't want a repeat of the Great Depression. And that's very nice of them. But while the theory that all this liquidity will restart the engines again is fine and well on paper, in reality people - investors - are a lot more sanguine about the promise of returns. When made-up money is invented, even the people who create the lies begin to believe them.
The rand has weakened. Gold is down to $800-odd. Buy gold. If you can find it.
I spoke to a Krugerrand broker on the phone today. "Everybody is buying Krugerrands," he said. "We've run out of stock. I don't know when we're getting more in. Mostly it gets cleared at our source in Jo'burg before it even reaches us. Don't call us, we'll call you."
That's not a sales pitch, folks. That's unrequited demand. And we all know what that means.
Buy gold.
</Here endeth biobot's Bill Bonner impersonation>
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-no subject-
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12:25PM, Friday, 28 Nov, 2008
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I woke up at 4am yesterday to catch a 6am flight to Jo'burg to meet
some clients. We had four meetings set up, but two were canceled. So we
found ourselves at the business lounge at OR Thambo with a 3-hour wait
before our flight back. Needless to say, wagons don't fly.
Now, being one of the very first people at the airport in the morning
has its benefits. I was given the best seats on the plane there and
back 1A and 1F (very first row, extra legroom, window seat). But on the
way there I found a kid had taken my place – 14 years old, Timbaland
shoes, expensive dreads under backwards baseball cap. I kicked him out,
and am flooded with guilt until I see that upon take off the kid holds
his head in his hands - terrified. From asshole to good Samaritan in 5
minutes.
Then boarding the flight on the way back, there's another kid in my
seat again. A girl this time. About 10 or 11 years old. "You're in my
seat," I growled. She skittles to the next seat. I settle in and
there's that guilt again. "Would you like to have the window seat?" I
ask her. She gives me a heart-melting pout and a nod. I give her the
seat, and take the crappy middle seat. Now I'm sitting next to this
absolutely gorgeous woman who has had more plastic surgery than Lionel
Ritchie. She's wearing earrings with diamonds the size of my eyeballs
in them. I am reading a MoneyWeek magazine which I'd stolen from the
lounge and when I swap it for my book, the woman asks me if she can
read the magazine. "Go ahead."
Now, I don't talk to people on flights. I always say that my life is
one long and difficult quest for a quite place to sit and read, and
airplanes are perfect for this (if I can stay awake for long enough -
something about the drone has a pathologically narcotic effect on me).
But for some reason, this woman and I start chatting. Turns out, she's
a freakin' business analyst for the major food retailers and
manufacturers. Which I find fascinating. She's so intelligent that I am
able to avoid looking at her fake breasts with uncharacteristic
success. We're chatting away, and she's telling me about her
investments, and the book she's written, and by the end of the flight
she's convinced me to buy gold (which, incidentally, I have a natural
predilection for as an investment anyway). So tomorrow my wife and I are off to Canal Walk to buy a Krugerrand.
I'd like to officially draw my wagon trek to a halt. I'm not
strictly not drinking anymore. I am, however, determined to cut down to
some vague form of tolerable teetotaling (see YTAH's comment in my
previous post). Besides, it's summertime and I'm studying next year. So
why not make hay while the sun shines?
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Dress (non)sense
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12:55PM, Wednesday, 26 Nov, 2008
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I'd just clicked 'Create post' and while the text field loaded, the following conversation occured:
IAN: Hi there. Howzit going?
ME: Okay thanks. Bloody printer's buggered again, can you believe it?
IAN: Oh? It was working fine just a minute ago.
ME: It's me. The printer hates me.
IAN: Right. Listen, I was just wondering ... where'd you get that shirt you were wearing yesterday, the Hawaiian one.
ME: Actually, it's from Florida.
IAN: Right that one. The, uh, the colourful one.
ME: Ja, I love that shirt.
IAN: So you bought it overseas?
ME: Yes. Cost me $60.
IAN: Damn. I need one of those.
ME: I know how you feel. I just had to have mine. They're totally authentic.
IAN: Really?
ME: Absolutely. I can tell you have an eye for these things. We're a dying breed, mate. Not for us, the doldrums of parrot fashion, the mainstream, the flock, the grey crowd. We are individuals. Men of unique taste and aesthetic distinction. So tell me, my friend, why do you so desperately need a shirt like mine? To celebrate the arrival of summer? A date with your wife? A gift for you father-in-law?
IAN: Er, actually, I've been invited to a fancy dress.
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Oops!
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10:51AM, Tuesday, 25 Nov, 2008
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Fell off the wagon last night. That's what happens when you have friends over for dinner spontaneously. Gosh darn it, it was fun. We called it a night at around midnight, and one of our guests was persuaded to crash on our couch. Of course, I completely forgot about that arrangement and this morning I strolled into the open-plan kitchen in my underpants and let off a wall-shaking fart. I don't think our friend will be so easily convinced to sleep over again next time round.
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Back on the wagon: Day 2
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10:10AM, Monday, 24 Nov, 2008
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Friday, 21 November
17h00 Arrive at my colleague's place in Gardens with a corked bottle of R50 Portuguese beer, a bottle of my beloved Paulaner Weissbier and an Erdinger.
18h15 Catch a Ricki's to the CCID.
19h30 "More wine please."
21h00 The 2008 Picas - shorter, leaner, meaner. A vast improvement on the Bollywood epics that were the Jo'burg versions.
22h00 Leave for the Cosmopolitan afterparty at some club in Greenpoint. Realise that I am simply too old for this shit. Quaff Peronis, stalk Kate Wilson,
03h00 Whiskies on the balcony of my colleague's flat.
Saturday, 22 November
14h30 Wake, gasping in pain. 15h00 – 18h30 Lie on couch, seething with hate for the world. 19h35 Go to my son's godfather's for a braai. Watch rugby (with a delightful Frenchman) until we fall asleep on his couch. I drink two beers and two and a half glasses of surprisingly good rosé. there is also an incredible creamy gorgonzola.
23h45 Tumble off home.
Sunday, 23 November
05h50 Get jumped on by excited two-year-old.
09h05 Arrive at Two Oceans Aquarium. Imbibe coffee repeatedly.
09h45 Rescue two year old from giant hamster cage-like junglegym.
12h30 Carry sleeping two-year old home. Collapse. 16h00 Take two year old to casting at The President hotel. 16h30 The highlight of the entire weekend. Take two year old for a swim at The President pool. He clings to my back like a monkey and squeals as I do breaststroke laps. I put him in the fountain. Wife pays R21 for an Appletiser at the bar. 22h00 Sweet sleep.
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