Seething Revenge

The sextilogy is finally complete.

Went to see Star Wars: Episode III last night, and it was... a Star Wars movie. Which is a good thing - I happen to love Star Wars movies. But it also means that you have to accept it on its own terms. You can choose to pick at the innumerable problems - leaden dialogue, laughably appalling romantic scenes, terribly corny moments and generally poor acting levels - or you can sit back and lose yourself in the magic and fabulous world which Lucas has created for you.

You must decide for yourself whether or not you will buy into Star Wars. If you're a fan, this is a great movie - one of the finest in the series. If you're not a fan, then, for all our sakes, please don't gripe and whine about its cinematic shortcomings.

And besides: Yoda, rock, he does.

DVD evening

It started out innocently enough, watching a couple of movies while cooking up some penne with pesto for dinner. Had some light teen comedy on in the background while cooking, and then sat down to the serious business of watching "The Punisher", which I've been wanting to do ever since it first came out. It was suitably dark and very entertaining, and I enjoyed it a lot.

Then I did something really silly.

Noticing that the disc also had a few "Smallville" episodes on it from Season 4 of the show, I started one to see if I'd watched it before, and found that it was new (or at least, new to me). Then I started wondering which other episodes I had missed, and I thought, "Hey, why don't I just start with the pilot and work my way forward?"

Which was bad.

Because I was already very tired.

And I could happily watch Kristin Kruek until my eyes actually fall out of my skull.

Fortunately, after two episodes I let Bella out for a walk around the garden, and bumped into Rory L (who was just getting home). We ended up chatting for the next hour, and by the time I went back into the house I was sufficiently distracted that I was able to switch off the laptop and go to bed.

Without that interruption, I'd probably still be watching...

Salacious tomatoes

Odd weekend.

Started out well - went shopping on Friday evening and found some veggies which looked like they'd be fun in a stir-fry. Invited a few people around for dinner on Saturday, as I was house-bound that evening anyway (Matthew needed to borrow the car). Jeremy came, and Tim brought Tiffany along, which was very nice (I'd only met her for the first time a few days previously). Much red wine and excellent conversation followed, and I made a semi-Cantonese creation loosely based on chicken chow mein.

All well and good.

The next morning I popped over to Rory L's flat and chatted with him and Mandy, a friend of his who was visiting from Somerset West. Turned out she had also spent a year in Korea, so naturally we got on well. Rory made toasted cheese and tomato sandwiches for lunch.

Then disaster struck.

As I bit into the first sandwich, a bit of super-heated tomato juice squirted out and landed on my bottom lip. Searing pain. Agony. I quickly wiped it off with the back of my hand, but in the second or so that it had been on my lip, it burned me badly enough to strip off skin. And the juice was so hot that the back of my hand was also burned where I had wiped the juice off.

So, as you can imagine, I spent the next hour or so holding an ice block on the burn, trying to reverse some of the tissue damage. The skin was beyond repair, though, and there was a strip about 5 x 15mm which had been scorched off, leaving a raw and red patch.

And it was still that way this morning when I got to work.

Now, I personally wasn't too bothered, but as the day progressed and people started chatting about their weekends, I ended up describing this incident to a few different people in separate conversations. Everyone was surprised by the story, as they had all assumed that it was a mark left behind by an encounter with a particularly passionate lady.

I'm wondering if I should find that disturbing. I mean, I've worked here less than two months and people all seem to think along these lines: "Hmm, fresh injury to Michael's lip? Must surely be from the teeth of a lascivious wench!"

Is it just me, or is that a bit of a strange logical jump? What sort of unintentional signals are being given off here?

The Fat of the Land

I drove in to work today, so I got a chance to listen to the radio news. And I was so glad I did - there was a report on KFM about emergency workers who had to demolish the wall of a house in Kraaifontein yesterday in order to get to the woman trapped inside.

The reason she was stuck?

At 350kgs, she was completely unable to use the door. According to neighbours, she hadn't left the house in about 11 years.

As if that wasn't alarming enough, I heard a similar story at work today, about a case last year in which a man had to have his custom-made coffin mounted in a steel frame and lowered into the grave with a crane, as he was also about 350kgs. You can check out that story here.

It's like Galveston all over again...

Computer? OK...

Yesterday Elzane (one of the team leaders at work) walked into the IT room to gripe about one of the new employees. Apparently it took over an hour of repeated explanations before this new person understood the difference between a file and a folder.

It was four more hours before she grasped the concept of a template.

Now, I don't mean to be presumptuous, and I know that I've had more exposure to computers than most, but I'm really confused here. This person graduated last year. How do you physically manage to go through four years of 'varsity nowadays without picking up at least a basic grasp of computing concepts along the way?

When all assignments are typed as a matter of course, and virtually every white-collar job demands a familiarity with computers, how is it possible to maintain such unblemished ignorance?

Ahh, the mysteries of life...

Import/Export

Ever since my return to South Africa, one of the biggest shocks has been the price of imported goods. Things like CDs, books and sneakers had always been expensive, but they had kept par with international prices, so there was some level of justification. So when you bought a CD in 2000 and it cost R100, you knew that in the US it was costing $12, and the exchange rate was about 8:1, and it was all fine.

Now, however, the situation has gotten completely out of hand.

The prices, which increased dramatically when the Rand dropped to about 13:1 against the dollar in 2001, have stayed at the same level since then. So that a new CD still costs about R150, even though the exchange rate has been steady at about 6:1 for over a year. Sneakers average about R800.

Can you imagine paying $25 for a CD? or $135 for trainers??

A brief stroll around one of the city's more upmarket shopping malls a few weeks ago was enough to disgust me with the South African retail industry. I made a decision to do my utmost to shop only in countries where the prices are reasonable.

I realise that this will be an entirely impractical endeavour, but dammit, there's a principle involved here.

So it's finally begun. Rory is going over to the UK at the end of the month, so I've just bought a bunch of CDs from Amazon.co.uk, to be delivered to my brother in St Albans. Rory will then collect them and bring them back in his luggage.

You don't get quite the same thrill of acquisition when you buy stuff this way, but I view it as a delayed pleasure.

Movers and Shaikers...

It's good to in a land where the news is so ridiculous, it makes you cry with laughter.

So there's this corruption trial, right, into the allegedly fraudulent and illegal activities of one Schabir Shaik, close confidant and financial advisor of Deputy President Jacob Zuma. All of which becomes more media-worthy given that Zuma (despite his disasterous turn as Minister of Health a few years back) is being loudly touted as Mbeki's most likely successor as President.

Anyway, the issue of the trial is an alleged bribe of R500 000 per year for Zuma from the French arms manufacturer Thomson CSF. The govt. says that Shaik solicited the bribe in exchange for protection during investigations into the irregularities surrounding an arms deal. Shaik maintains that he only asked for a donation to Zuma's education trust fund.

Here's where it gets fun:

In case the defence of "donations for the trust fund" argument didn't have enough credibility, the defense advocate, Francois Van Zyl, gave an alternative defence. He suggested that there was "a reasonable possibility" that Shaik defrauded Thomson.

WTF??? His defence advocate gives a back-up story???

This is like OJ saying, "I didn't do it. I was at the airport. But if you don't believe that, then I'll say that I was at my mom's house."

As Van Zyl put it, "The mere fact that an accused is untruthful in his evidence, does not necessarily mean that he has committed the offence charged. There may be other reasons why he decided not to tell the truth."

It's a beautiful country...