Sunday, April 19, 2009
The computer.
The computer is without doubt the most amazing of mans inventions, but its long term influence on society has yet to be understood. In South Africa alone we are expected to have over 4 million users online by the year 2012. Just why has the computer experienced such phenomenal growth?
The reasons are quite easy to understand. The computer offers us a world in which we can control our own needs. An environment of instant gratification in which we get answers to all out questions without fear of looking stupid. A platform to communicate via text or speech without ever having to come face to face with the people involved. We can produce business documents, and graphics. Watch or produce DVD films and create or listen to music. Play games. Do our banking, and pay the bills. And then there is the most popular web search of all…Pornography. What more can I add to convince you that Cyberspace is the place to be. Or is it?
I agree that on the surface it sounds like paradise, but let’s take a closer look at what’s happening in reality. Let’s start by analyzing why anybody would host a website in the commercial world we live in today, unless it was for commercial reasons. So I assume it’s safe to say that the majority of sites are there to sell you something, and that the information you are getting is mostly biased towards persuading the reader into buying something. So in actual fact the Internet is nothing more than an advanced ‘Yellow Pages’ designed to convert your interest into hard earned cash. This has now been refined into the most advanced marketing tool called Google Adword and the Google page ranking system. Let me try and explain in layman terms how it all works. There are for instance 240,000,000 odd web pages with some relevance to art on the internet, so what Google have done is attach a cost per click to each word combination used to search this quagmire of information. If you want a good page ranking for your Google Adword campaign for say the words ’Contemporary art.’ you would land up paying R34.00 every time someone clicked on your ad. What it boils down to is this…Only your large companies with high profit margins can afford the visibility necessary to promote themselves online. The more clicks they get the higher their page ranking. The higher their page ranking the easier they are to find on the search engine. Nobody offering solid helpful information for nothing stands the slightest chance of ever being discovered. It is in fact exactly the same as magazine and newspaper advertising. My big gripe is that the internet was meant to be for the people by the people, but it has been hijacked by Google and all the other search engine pirates. The question here is whether we want our new cyber world controlled by the greed of commercialism or as a pure platform for the exchange of information and ideas.
Now let’s move on to the various communication formats available. The big problem with these possibilities is that firstly they are not face to face, which will ultimately lead to a lack of ability in reading peoples facial expressions during conversation. Research has been done on this aspect, which clearly shows that face to face intercourse clearly shows that facial expressions can communicate forgiveness and empathy that would not necessarily be conveyed by the written word.
The reliance on text only could also result in the lose of ‘long hand’ writing skills, which would spell the end of the personal touch of ‘thank you’ letters.
A sad world indeed.
And if we take a look at the effects the computer has had on business and industry, we can only come to the conclusion that it is singularly responsible for the lose of millions and millions of jobs. A similar scenario is busy happening in the fields of film making, music, writing and art, as internet piracy continues to steal the meager profits necessary to promote the up and coming artists of the future.
Game playing is probably the second most popular online activity, and in my opinion has done nothing but promote violence and stop children from inter reacting during healthy outdoor activities like sport. If things continue in this way I can see the Olympic Games having to introduce events like ‘The fastest finger.’ ‘The computatholon.’ and that popular crowd pleaser ‘The hackers 100.’ Nothing to laugh at when one reads that three out of every five American children have been diagnosed as obese.
Internet banking is another rather dubious online activity. What with the amount of scam artists developing ever more sophisticated methods of scanning your hard drive for banking details I would be very wary of transferring my children’s pocket money. And if you have ever read the small print on those online banking agreements you would see that you are personally liable for protecting your pin number, but what chance have you got against a Trojan horse or some worm or other?
And then finally we come to the most popular online activity called Pornography. Just how low will they go to get our attention? I don’t believe there is a single human being male female straight or gay that can resist the wide variety on offer. That’s why they call us Homes Erectus. But be that as it may there are two ways of looking at this activity. Firstly as a driving force that makes you take yourself in hand, or secondly as a mild stimulus provoking nothing more than wishful thinking.
Which leads me to believe that it is better to be a wishful thinker, than allowing the computer to make a total wanker out of you?
To summarize let me sketch a picture of what the world might look like in twenty years time if we make cyber space our new domain…
A rather podgy fat fingered pale faced man sits mesmerized in front of his SyncMaster 750 computer screen. He has all the time in the world, because it has been years since he was last employed. He remembers the days when he was married, but unfortunately his wife did not appreciate the amount of time he spent on the computer. She called it an addiction, but what else was there to do with your time. Fortunately his children still contacted him via ‘Face book’, which was at least better than not seeing them at all. There was no longer any sport to play, because everybody now played their own games online, where they could become their own hero’s, which was a lot more self fulfilling. What more could he ask for in life? Okay his migraines had increased in frequency and intensity, but he was getting free treatment online. That was the great thing about living online…you could read up on all possible diseases, and then decide whether you had any of the symptoms or not. He never missed the physical contact of being married either, because today you could just log in to ‘Lovers online’ connect to the ‘full contact’ mode, attach the ‘orgasmotron add on’s’ Adjust your preferred ‘real time monitor’,and…shazam! You’d reached the capacity of your stiffy drive. You just can’t compare cyber sex with the real thing. Or can you?
The choice is still yours.
The reasons are quite easy to understand. The computer offers us a world in which we can control our own needs. An environment of instant gratification in which we get answers to all out questions without fear of looking stupid. A platform to communicate via text or speech without ever having to come face to face with the people involved. We can produce business documents, and graphics. Watch or produce DVD films and create or listen to music. Play games. Do our banking, and pay the bills. And then there is the most popular web search of all…Pornography. What more can I add to convince you that Cyberspace is the place to be. Or is it?
I agree that on the surface it sounds like paradise, but let’s take a closer look at what’s happening in reality. Let’s start by analyzing why anybody would host a website in the commercial world we live in today, unless it was for commercial reasons. So I assume it’s safe to say that the majority of sites are there to sell you something, and that the information you are getting is mostly biased towards persuading the reader into buying something. So in actual fact the Internet is nothing more than an advanced ‘Yellow Pages’ designed to convert your interest into hard earned cash. This has now been refined into the most advanced marketing tool called Google Adword and the Google page ranking system. Let me try and explain in layman terms how it all works. There are for instance 240,000,000 odd web pages with some relevance to art on the internet, so what Google have done is attach a cost per click to each word combination used to search this quagmire of information. If you want a good page ranking for your Google Adword campaign for say the words ’Contemporary art.’ you would land up paying R34.00 every time someone clicked on your ad. What it boils down to is this…Only your large companies with high profit margins can afford the visibility necessary to promote themselves online. The more clicks they get the higher their page ranking. The higher their page ranking the easier they are to find on the search engine. Nobody offering solid helpful information for nothing stands the slightest chance of ever being discovered. It is in fact exactly the same as magazine and newspaper advertising. My big gripe is that the internet was meant to be for the people by the people, but it has been hijacked by Google and all the other search engine pirates. The question here is whether we want our new cyber world controlled by the greed of commercialism or as a pure platform for the exchange of information and ideas.
Now let’s move on to the various communication formats available. The big problem with these possibilities is that firstly they are not face to face, which will ultimately lead to a lack of ability in reading peoples facial expressions during conversation. Research has been done on this aspect, which clearly shows that face to face intercourse clearly shows that facial expressions can communicate forgiveness and empathy that would not necessarily be conveyed by the written word.
The reliance on text only could also result in the lose of ‘long hand’ writing skills, which would spell the end of the personal touch of ‘thank you’ letters.
A sad world indeed.
And if we take a look at the effects the computer has had on business and industry, we can only come to the conclusion that it is singularly responsible for the lose of millions and millions of jobs. A similar scenario is busy happening in the fields of film making, music, writing and art, as internet piracy continues to steal the meager profits necessary to promote the up and coming artists of the future.
Game playing is probably the second most popular online activity, and in my opinion has done nothing but promote violence and stop children from inter reacting during healthy outdoor activities like sport. If things continue in this way I can see the Olympic Games having to introduce events like ‘The fastest finger.’ ‘The computatholon.’ and that popular crowd pleaser ‘The hackers 100.’ Nothing to laugh at when one reads that three out of every five American children have been diagnosed as obese.
Internet banking is another rather dubious online activity. What with the amount of scam artists developing ever more sophisticated methods of scanning your hard drive for banking details I would be very wary of transferring my children’s pocket money. And if you have ever read the small print on those online banking agreements you would see that you are personally liable for protecting your pin number, but what chance have you got against a Trojan horse or some worm or other?
And then finally we come to the most popular online activity called Pornography. Just how low will they go to get our attention? I don’t believe there is a single human being male female straight or gay that can resist the wide variety on offer. That’s why they call us Homes Erectus. But be that as it may there are two ways of looking at this activity. Firstly as a driving force that makes you take yourself in hand, or secondly as a mild stimulus provoking nothing more than wishful thinking.
Which leads me to believe that it is better to be a wishful thinker, than allowing the computer to make a total wanker out of you?
To summarize let me sketch a picture of what the world might look like in twenty years time if we make cyber space our new domain…
A rather podgy fat fingered pale faced man sits mesmerized in front of his SyncMaster 750 computer screen. He has all the time in the world, because it has been years since he was last employed. He remembers the days when he was married, but unfortunately his wife did not appreciate the amount of time he spent on the computer. She called it an addiction, but what else was there to do with your time. Fortunately his children still contacted him via ‘Face book’, which was at least better than not seeing them at all. There was no longer any sport to play, because everybody now played their own games online, where they could become their own hero’s, which was a lot more self fulfilling. What more could he ask for in life? Okay his migraines had increased in frequency and intensity, but he was getting free treatment online. That was the great thing about living online…you could read up on all possible diseases, and then decide whether you had any of the symptoms or not. He never missed the physical contact of being married either, because today you could just log in to ‘Lovers online’ connect to the ‘full contact’ mode, attach the ‘orgasmotron add on’s’ Adjust your preferred ‘real time monitor’,and…shazam! You’d reached the capacity of your stiffy drive. You just can’t compare cyber sex with the real thing. Or can you?
The choice is still yours.
Sunday, April 12, 2009
What can we do about the filthy stinking rich?
What can we do about the filthy stinking rich?
It’s really scary to think that 90% of the world’s wealth is in the hands of something like 8% of the population. If ever there was a recipe for revolution this is it. Just look at the turnout of protesters at the latest G20 summit in London carrying banners saying ‘Bankers rhyme with #ankers’ and ‘Stop the greed.’
The fact is that nobody likes the rich. And it’s their own fault. They drive around in cars worth more than most people’s houses. They have holiday homes on exotic islands worth more than most people’s life earnings, and sail yachts that cost more than the GDP of some small countries. And how about that Russian billionaire who has spent over 56 million dollars on two trips to the moon? And talking about the moon, do you know that they trained a scientist, at the cost of millions of dollars, to go to the moon in a space ship that cost billions of dollars, so that he could test the absorbency of baby’s nappies in outer space? What a load of waste!
And so we can blatantly expose the rich for what they are: a bunch of selfish greedy bastards who spend their time trampling all over the poor in their extra large carbon-soled jackboots.
What can we do about them? Well, I have a suggestion that might level the playing field. Something I call RATS, which stands for ‘Rich Asset Time Share’. It’s really quite simple. All assets, monetary or materialistic, must be shared with the poor. So if your bank manager buys a new Jaguar, the six people with the lowest bank balance at his branch get to use the car for one day a week, leaving the bank manager the use of the car on Sundays to go to church where he can confirm that ‘he should neither a lender nor borrower be’.
And if any institution should practice what they preach, it’s religion. The Vatican is one of the richest states in the world and yet the Pope on his latest visit to Africa donated no money to help alleviate the poverty, and instead chose to discourage the use of condoms, which in turn will result in the very cause of poverty in the first place.
So come to think of it: a simpler way would be to tax the living hell out of the rich, and ban all tax havens. To achieve this we would have to get rid of cash in all its forms so that drug dealing, money-laundering and any sort of robberies involving money would become pointless, leading to the ultimate cashless society. That would be the answer. And don’t tell me that it would take away the rich person’s motivation, because greed is not that easily blunted.
So there you have it. Problem solved. A libertine society in which ‘Liberty, Equality and Fraternity’ could be practiced instead of ‘Jealousy, Envy, and Greed.’ The French philosopher Rousseau first said this before the French Revolution. And we all know what happened then.
Let’s hope that RATS is instigated as soon as possible, so that our ruling rich learn to lose their money before their heads.
It’s really scary to think that 90% of the world’s wealth is in the hands of something like 8% of the population. If ever there was a recipe for revolution this is it. Just look at the turnout of protesters at the latest G20 summit in London carrying banners saying ‘Bankers rhyme with #ankers’ and ‘Stop the greed.’
The fact is that nobody likes the rich. And it’s their own fault. They drive around in cars worth more than most people’s houses. They have holiday homes on exotic islands worth more than most people’s life earnings, and sail yachts that cost more than the GDP of some small countries. And how about that Russian billionaire who has spent over 56 million dollars on two trips to the moon? And talking about the moon, do you know that they trained a scientist, at the cost of millions of dollars, to go to the moon in a space ship that cost billions of dollars, so that he could test the absorbency of baby’s nappies in outer space? What a load of waste!
And so we can blatantly expose the rich for what they are: a bunch of selfish greedy bastards who spend their time trampling all over the poor in their extra large carbon-soled jackboots.
What can we do about them? Well, I have a suggestion that might level the playing field. Something I call RATS, which stands for ‘Rich Asset Time Share’. It’s really quite simple. All assets, monetary or materialistic, must be shared with the poor. So if your bank manager buys a new Jaguar, the six people with the lowest bank balance at his branch get to use the car for one day a week, leaving the bank manager the use of the car on Sundays to go to church where he can confirm that ‘he should neither a lender nor borrower be’.
And if any institution should practice what they preach, it’s religion. The Vatican is one of the richest states in the world and yet the Pope on his latest visit to Africa donated no money to help alleviate the poverty, and instead chose to discourage the use of condoms, which in turn will result in the very cause of poverty in the first place.
So come to think of it: a simpler way would be to tax the living hell out of the rich, and ban all tax havens. To achieve this we would have to get rid of cash in all its forms so that drug dealing, money-laundering and any sort of robberies involving money would become pointless, leading to the ultimate cashless society. That would be the answer. And don’t tell me that it would take away the rich person’s motivation, because greed is not that easily blunted.
So there you have it. Problem solved. A libertine society in which ‘Liberty, Equality and Fraternity’ could be practiced instead of ‘Jealousy, Envy, and Greed.’ The French philosopher Rousseau first said this before the French Revolution. And we all know what happened then.
Let’s hope that RATS is instigated as soon as possible, so that our ruling rich learn to lose their money before their heads.
Political speak.
Political Speak.
If there is one thing that gives me the pip it’s political posturing. We are having our national elections here in South Africa at the moment so a lot of the more radical politicians are up on their soapboxes washing their mouths in political rhetoric, with statements such as:
“Comrades! We will not be told what to do by some colonial expansionists who don’t recognize our sovereignty. Who are these people who want to bully us? Just a lot of imperialist pigs who want us to call them ‘Boss’! They are the snakes that have come to spread their venom amongst our people! They must all die and go back to where they came from! We do not want these types of people in South Africa! We are not your slaves! We are not here to do your beck and call! We will not listen to anyone who does not think the same as the ANC, because we are proud of our democracy! Amandla!”
Who are these people they talk of? What is a democracy without dissention? And please explain to me when last any one served an emperor unless of course he was talking about Africa’s late Emperor Haile Selassie? What a load of protagonistic hogwash.
Funny how we always need an enemy before we can rally the troops. These references are obviously aimed at the 10% white minority in our country who have about as much power as a dead battery.
Another favorite style our politicians like to adopt is one of talking above the heads of the gathered masses. It would sound something like this:
“Brothers and sisters…the mess a potage of circumstances we find ourselves in is a direct consequence of our own volition. Our inability to comprehend the validation of our own actions. A truly diabolical fruition of magnanimous proportions. Believe me when I say the flagrant contradiction of our democracy can only be verified by the inculcation of our constitutional rights. Viva Africa! Viva!”
This unfortunately only makes sense if you have a Bachelors degree in Bullshit. Who do they think they are addressing? The league of Morons?
The art of politicking is sadly lacking in this country as not even the meaning of democracy has been agreed upon. We must be the only democracy that controls national television, vilifies the freedom of the press, ignores public opinion, is perceived to directly influence the Judiciary, has instigated a black empowerment program, and swears to kill anybody who does not agree with the ruling party. Nice.
And it’s not only the male politicians who suffer from the malaise of ‘Struggle politics’ – the women seem to have an even more developed overbite in their political speeches. Here follows my made-up example:
“Fellow Comrades. Nobody is going to push us around. You strike a woman…you strike a rock. Amandla! The ‘West’ are always telling us what to do. Well, let me tell them something: Hamba soeka wena! We don’t need to listen to you! They say Aids comes from sleeping around. Well, my husband does not need to sleep around. He has many wives. They say women must be thin and wear a bra, but that is only because they want to hide their small breasts. Shame! What can they tell us, when we were the first women to go topless. What can they say, when we are the only women who do not need a perm. What can they teach us, when we do not have anything to learn?”
Well, that about says it all. So I’ll just leave you with this final thought: listening only happens when you stop talking.
If there is one thing that gives me the pip it’s political posturing. We are having our national elections here in South Africa at the moment so a lot of the more radical politicians are up on their soapboxes washing their mouths in political rhetoric, with statements such as:
“Comrades! We will not be told what to do by some colonial expansionists who don’t recognize our sovereignty. Who are these people who want to bully us? Just a lot of imperialist pigs who want us to call them ‘Boss’! They are the snakes that have come to spread their venom amongst our people! They must all die and go back to where they came from! We do not want these types of people in South Africa! We are not your slaves! We are not here to do your beck and call! We will not listen to anyone who does not think the same as the ANC, because we are proud of our democracy! Amandla!”
Who are these people they talk of? What is a democracy without dissention? And please explain to me when last any one served an emperor unless of course he was talking about Africa’s late Emperor Haile Selassie? What a load of protagonistic hogwash.
Funny how we always need an enemy before we can rally the troops. These references are obviously aimed at the 10% white minority in our country who have about as much power as a dead battery.
Another favorite style our politicians like to adopt is one of talking above the heads of the gathered masses. It would sound something like this:
“Brothers and sisters…the mess a potage of circumstances we find ourselves in is a direct consequence of our own volition. Our inability to comprehend the validation of our own actions. A truly diabolical fruition of magnanimous proportions. Believe me when I say the flagrant contradiction of our democracy can only be verified by the inculcation of our constitutional rights. Viva Africa! Viva!”
This unfortunately only makes sense if you have a Bachelors degree in Bullshit. Who do they think they are addressing? The league of Morons?
The art of politicking is sadly lacking in this country as not even the meaning of democracy has been agreed upon. We must be the only democracy that controls national television, vilifies the freedom of the press, ignores public opinion, is perceived to directly influence the Judiciary, has instigated a black empowerment program, and swears to kill anybody who does not agree with the ruling party. Nice.
And it’s not only the male politicians who suffer from the malaise of ‘Struggle politics’ – the women seem to have an even more developed overbite in their political speeches. Here follows my made-up example:
“Fellow Comrades. Nobody is going to push us around. You strike a woman…you strike a rock. Amandla! The ‘West’ are always telling us what to do. Well, let me tell them something: Hamba soeka wena! We don’t need to listen to you! They say Aids comes from sleeping around. Well, my husband does not need to sleep around. He has many wives. They say women must be thin and wear a bra, but that is only because they want to hide their small breasts. Shame! What can they tell us, when we were the first women to go topless. What can they say, when we are the only women who do not need a perm. What can they teach us, when we do not have anything to learn?”
Well, that about says it all. So I’ll just leave you with this final thought: listening only happens when you stop talking.
Love thy neighbour.
Love thy neighbour.
Moving house is fraught with all kinds of stressful stages. First there is the neighbourhood, then the location within the neighbourhood, and then finally the house within the neighbourhood, but the one thing we never consider is the actual neighbours themselves. And herein lies the story.
We recently moved into a rather posh yet congested area located on the slopes of Table Mountain overlooking the city of Cape Town. The perfect location with a spectacular view, but that’s where it ends. The house on our left is a rental which was initially occupied by a rather severe looking spinster who from day one would write us little notes which were left in our letter box…
Dear Sir,
Kindly do not leave your trash bin out over night as it attracts vagrants.
Dear Sir,
Would you please not open and close your garage door late at night as the sound scares my dog.
Dear Sir,
I would appreciate it if you did not fertilize your lawn, as the smell is totally unacceptable.
Dear Sir,
I don’t know if you are aware of this, but when I stand at my garage window I can see your laundry line. Kindly have a wall built or move it to the other side of your house.
Signed…..Your Neighbour,
Miss J. Wallace.
And all of this within the first week of us moving in. Well I’d hardly had time to compose my reply, when the very next Monday morning I noticed the removal company arrive and that was the last we ever heard from her.
Luck was on our side, or so I thought, because two days later a small pick-up truck, laden to the skies, heralded the arrival of our new neighbours, who proudly introduced themselves as Margie and Leon and their rather demented-looking son called Melvin plus…. the three scruffy-looking bull mastiffs named Spanner, Spider and Satan. And yes…all hell was about to descend on us.
These spoilt mongrels had obviously grown up on some farm and were used to wide open spaces and barking at anything that moved within a 10km radius, which meant that every time I watered the garden or so much as walked anywhere near the fence they would go absolutely ballistic. Not just barking but snarling and snorting as if someone had just kicked them in the balls. And worse still were the sounds they made when their loving owners came home from work – a sort of muted hysteria that would have frightened a pack of hyenas off their kill. It took months of numerous phone calls and finally a petition signed by all the neighbours to force these dog-lovers to lock their over-protective hounds from hell indoors whenever they were not home.
Peace at last I thought, but no ways…the demented son Melvin then took it upon himself to extract revenge. To this end I would spot him creeping around the garden in the dead of night dressed in a black ninja costume clutching a splat ball gun with which he would shoot multi-coloured paint balls at all the neighbours’ walls. How I would love to splat his balls.
And so having exorcised those demons I can now move on to the neighbours in front of us who once we had moved in decided to build a swimming pool and sauna right up against the boundary wall dividing our properties, complete with pool-heating system and pump that together set up such a din that I thought I was suffering from a severe case of tinnitus. Having my music recording studio no more than five meters from the source resulted in all my recordings sounding as if they had been recorded in a bee hive. Add to this the sound of people diving into the pool and generally enjoying themselves, and my songs sounded like the Beach Boys humming in B flat.
Now you don’t think a sauna could spell much trouble until you imagine the sounds people make when jumping back into the pool after ten minutes in the hot house. Fortunately it took only one polite phone call to remedy this complaint as the eldest son, also a musician, immediately identified with my concerns. They subsequently put a silencer and housing on their pool equipment, and today we are only left with the eyesore of naked bums running to and from the sauna, although I must admit some of them are no eyesore at all.
And then we had the German brain surgeon on our right. The one who wanted to take us to court for having a skylight, which if we stood on a ladder, would allow us to see him skinny-dipping in his pool, and when I pointed out to him that he had a normal window overlooking his neighbour’s pool he told me that I should mind my own business, and asked me to leave.
The funny thing was that he already had the house up for sale, and within a month we had new neighbours. Good riddance to him or so I thought, because when the new neighbours moved in they realized my greatest nightmare: a young, enthusiastic, outdoorsy couple with two young daughters and two Labrador puppies. Why me Lord?
The animated dad started by building the girls a tree house that looked straight into our bathroom. Then a trampoline followed, right under our bedroom window. Next, the dog kennels straight below our guest bedroom. And don’t forget the swimming pool, and the level of noise emanating from young children, notorious for screaming at the tops of their voices whenever they come into contact with water.
Now since both parents work away from home all day, the mother has alleviated her guilt by inviting every other child at the kids’ school to come and swim at any time they like. Well, this invitation has certainly been taken up, as not a day goes by in the summer without children being dropped off by busy moms, at all hours of the day, to make use of this public swimming pool and crèche. And not only kids are dropped off, but their dogs as well. The sound is deafening – screaming children, barking dogs, and a fair amount of crying. God, please bring on winter.
So, let this be a fair warning to all of you who are about to move house. Don’t worry about location, location, location. Worry about neighbours, neighbours, neighbours.
Moving house is fraught with all kinds of stressful stages. First there is the neighbourhood, then the location within the neighbourhood, and then finally the house within the neighbourhood, but the one thing we never consider is the actual neighbours themselves. And herein lies the story.
We recently moved into a rather posh yet congested area located on the slopes of Table Mountain overlooking the city of Cape Town. The perfect location with a spectacular view, but that’s where it ends. The house on our left is a rental which was initially occupied by a rather severe looking spinster who from day one would write us little notes which were left in our letter box…
Dear Sir,
Kindly do not leave your trash bin out over night as it attracts vagrants.
Dear Sir,
Would you please not open and close your garage door late at night as the sound scares my dog.
Dear Sir,
I would appreciate it if you did not fertilize your lawn, as the smell is totally unacceptable.
Dear Sir,
I don’t know if you are aware of this, but when I stand at my garage window I can see your laundry line. Kindly have a wall built or move it to the other side of your house.
Signed…..Your Neighbour,
Miss J. Wallace.
And all of this within the first week of us moving in. Well I’d hardly had time to compose my reply, when the very next Monday morning I noticed the removal company arrive and that was the last we ever heard from her.
Luck was on our side, or so I thought, because two days later a small pick-up truck, laden to the skies, heralded the arrival of our new neighbours, who proudly introduced themselves as Margie and Leon and their rather demented-looking son called Melvin plus…. the three scruffy-looking bull mastiffs named Spanner, Spider and Satan. And yes…all hell was about to descend on us.
These spoilt mongrels had obviously grown up on some farm and were used to wide open spaces and barking at anything that moved within a 10km radius, which meant that every time I watered the garden or so much as walked anywhere near the fence they would go absolutely ballistic. Not just barking but snarling and snorting as if someone had just kicked them in the balls. And worse still were the sounds they made when their loving owners came home from work – a sort of muted hysteria that would have frightened a pack of hyenas off their kill. It took months of numerous phone calls and finally a petition signed by all the neighbours to force these dog-lovers to lock their over-protective hounds from hell indoors whenever they were not home.
Peace at last I thought, but no ways…the demented son Melvin then took it upon himself to extract revenge. To this end I would spot him creeping around the garden in the dead of night dressed in a black ninja costume clutching a splat ball gun with which he would shoot multi-coloured paint balls at all the neighbours’ walls. How I would love to splat his balls.
And so having exorcised those demons I can now move on to the neighbours in front of us who once we had moved in decided to build a swimming pool and sauna right up against the boundary wall dividing our properties, complete with pool-heating system and pump that together set up such a din that I thought I was suffering from a severe case of tinnitus. Having my music recording studio no more than five meters from the source resulted in all my recordings sounding as if they had been recorded in a bee hive. Add to this the sound of people diving into the pool and generally enjoying themselves, and my songs sounded like the Beach Boys humming in B flat.
Now you don’t think a sauna could spell much trouble until you imagine the sounds people make when jumping back into the pool after ten minutes in the hot house. Fortunately it took only one polite phone call to remedy this complaint as the eldest son, also a musician, immediately identified with my concerns. They subsequently put a silencer and housing on their pool equipment, and today we are only left with the eyesore of naked bums running to and from the sauna, although I must admit some of them are no eyesore at all.
And then we had the German brain surgeon on our right. The one who wanted to take us to court for having a skylight, which if we stood on a ladder, would allow us to see him skinny-dipping in his pool, and when I pointed out to him that he had a normal window overlooking his neighbour’s pool he told me that I should mind my own business, and asked me to leave.
The funny thing was that he already had the house up for sale, and within a month we had new neighbours. Good riddance to him or so I thought, because when the new neighbours moved in they realized my greatest nightmare: a young, enthusiastic, outdoorsy couple with two young daughters and two Labrador puppies. Why me Lord?
The animated dad started by building the girls a tree house that looked straight into our bathroom. Then a trampoline followed, right under our bedroom window. Next, the dog kennels straight below our guest bedroom. And don’t forget the swimming pool, and the level of noise emanating from young children, notorious for screaming at the tops of their voices whenever they come into contact with water.
Now since both parents work away from home all day, the mother has alleviated her guilt by inviting every other child at the kids’ school to come and swim at any time they like. Well, this invitation has certainly been taken up, as not a day goes by in the summer without children being dropped off by busy moms, at all hours of the day, to make use of this public swimming pool and crèche. And not only kids are dropped off, but their dogs as well. The sound is deafening – screaming children, barking dogs, and a fair amount of crying. God, please bring on winter.
So, let this be a fair warning to all of you who are about to move house. Don’t worry about location, location, location. Worry about neighbours, neighbours, neighbours.
Do you believe in Miracles?
Do you believe in Miracles?
Wow…I just can’t believe how lucky I’ve been this month. I mean it’s not my birthday or anything like that, but I have won over R56, 000,000-00 in lotteries on the internet. What a load of tempting twaddle. And you know what? I couldn’t resist the one from Microsoft Lotteries where they informed me that I had won the second prize worth 500,000.00 pounds British Sterling, so I
completed the application form with my name, occupation and address, and waited impatiently for my cheque to arrive. And sure enough an email arrived within minutes advising me to contact Scarlet Couriers who would deliver my cheque to the front door once I’d paid a small clearance fee.
“Ah ha,” I said to myself out loud. “You spam-scamming bastards. You’re not going to catch me…that is for sure.” And with that said I deleted all correspondence from Jeffrey James: head of the Microsoft lottery board. And that would be that.
Or so I thought, because the next day I got a phone call from London and sure enough it was Jeffrey asking to speak to Guy Preston. Well I know my name is not Guy so I politely corrected him.
“Oh yes of course…Grant. How silly of me. Just phoning to ask why you have not collected your winnings?
Well, what could I say? That I didn’t need the money at the moment… or maybe that I needed time to consider what charity I was going to give it to. I was absolutely lost for words.
“It is my job to ensure that this money doesn’t fall into the wrong hands,” he continued. “And I don’t want you being scammed out of your legitimate winnings. This is after all a lot of money.”
“Yes.” I agreed. “An absolute fortune.”
“So can I presume you will be contacting the courier straight away to have your money delivered?”
“Yes. Of course,” I mumbled, “I will do it straight away.”
“Good…then from all of us here at Microsoft we would like to congratulate you on your winnings, and wish you all the best in the future.”
“Goodbye, and thank you very much,” I answered.
“Goodbye,” he replied.
Nobody would go to these lengths just to scam someone, I thought to myself. What if this is for real? What if God was not asleep, and had heard my prayers asking for a small fortune if he had anything to spare.
My conscience, in the form of my ‘better half’ then entered the room, and asked me why I was smiling so much.
“You haven’t been surfing the porn sites again have you?” she asked.
“No ways,” I was too quick to reply. “I think I’ve just won the Microsoft Lottery worth 500,000 British pounds sterling. That’s about R2, 000,000.00 I think.”
“At 13.9065 that would give you a total of R6, 953,000.26, and I don’t think anybody is going to give away that amount of money without you even entering a competition.”
My bubble went pop. She was right. What was I thinking?
“Just type ‘Microsoft lottery’ into your Google search and let’s see what we get?”
And sure enough…a little common sense goes a long long way… Microsoft Lottery Scam. Microsoft Lottery a Hoax. And so it went on and on.
At least I knew I wasn’t the only one who believed in miracles.
Wow…I just can’t believe how lucky I’ve been this month. I mean it’s not my birthday or anything like that, but I have won over R56, 000,000-00 in lotteries on the internet. What a load of tempting twaddle. And you know what? I couldn’t resist the one from Microsoft Lotteries where they informed me that I had won the second prize worth 500,000.00 pounds British Sterling, so I
completed the application form with my name, occupation and address, and waited impatiently for my cheque to arrive. And sure enough an email arrived within minutes advising me to contact Scarlet Couriers who would deliver my cheque to the front door once I’d paid a small clearance fee.
“Ah ha,” I said to myself out loud. “You spam-scamming bastards. You’re not going to catch me…that is for sure.” And with that said I deleted all correspondence from Jeffrey James: head of the Microsoft lottery board. And that would be that.
Or so I thought, because the next day I got a phone call from London and sure enough it was Jeffrey asking to speak to Guy Preston. Well I know my name is not Guy so I politely corrected him.
“Oh yes of course…Grant. How silly of me. Just phoning to ask why you have not collected your winnings?
Well, what could I say? That I didn’t need the money at the moment… or maybe that I needed time to consider what charity I was going to give it to. I was absolutely lost for words.
“It is my job to ensure that this money doesn’t fall into the wrong hands,” he continued. “And I don’t want you being scammed out of your legitimate winnings. This is after all a lot of money.”
“Yes.” I agreed. “An absolute fortune.”
“So can I presume you will be contacting the courier straight away to have your money delivered?”
“Yes. Of course,” I mumbled, “I will do it straight away.”
“Good…then from all of us here at Microsoft we would like to congratulate you on your winnings, and wish you all the best in the future.”
“Goodbye, and thank you very much,” I answered.
“Goodbye,” he replied.
Nobody would go to these lengths just to scam someone, I thought to myself. What if this is for real? What if God was not asleep, and had heard my prayers asking for a small fortune if he had anything to spare.
My conscience, in the form of my ‘better half’ then entered the room, and asked me why I was smiling so much.
“You haven’t been surfing the porn sites again have you?” she asked.
“No ways,” I was too quick to reply. “I think I’ve just won the Microsoft Lottery worth 500,000 British pounds sterling. That’s about R2, 000,000.00 I think.”
“At 13.9065 that would give you a total of R6, 953,000.26, and I don’t think anybody is going to give away that amount of money without you even entering a competition.”
My bubble went pop. She was right. What was I thinking?
“Just type ‘Microsoft lottery’ into your Google search and let’s see what we get?”
And sure enough…a little common sense goes a long long way… Microsoft Lottery Scam. Microsoft Lottery a Hoax. And so it went on and on.
At least I knew I wasn’t the only one who believed in miracles.
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