Tuesday 30 November 2010

Movember and the Avatar

[WTF?? Blogger did not post the whole post yesterday, here it is again]

For the first time ever I, J. Hardspear de la Azotea, the Avatar, am going to discuss the In Real Life (IRL) me as if we were separate. For purposes of clarity, I’ll call him by his African name – Johannes Assegaai Maroleleng (Assegaai for short).

Now we are not really different personalities, we are the same person and when I talk about me I mean him and me and when he talks about him he means him and me. The only difference is that I do not mind my online friends meeting him IRL and know what his real name is, whereas he does not discuss me with his IRL friends and his colleagues. You’ll see that I never discuss work in this blog. Also, I have a much bigger online presence than him. He does not like facebook very much (neither do I – we prefer blogging), but in this day and age, one cannot NOT have a facebook profile. Also, he only follows 1 person on Twitter – a strange guy called Karl Bohlin. Not that he ever goes into his twitter account. – we sommer use mine. The only on-line schtuff he has and I don’t is a Linked-In and a Skype profile.

So why am I, the Avatar doing such a strange post... It is because of it being the end of the Movember Grow-a-Mo drive. As I have said in a previous post, he’s growing this Snor like many other guys in support of Movember. So I have blogged about it, facebooked about it, tweeted about it. He also facebooked about it. However, none of us have done much more in terms of raising money etc. He only got the mail from CANSA on the 1st of November and immediately decided to take part, but was a bit unprepared for it. Now we sit with the question – who are doing this Movember thing – him or me? Tricky one..., but this is what we have decided to do. For this year, he’ll donate money for Bongani from Highveld Stereo’s effort. Next year however, Assegaai will take the lead with the Movember initiative, raise funds, get is IRL friends involved etc, and I’ll only blog about it. He’ll have to be more active on HIS facebook page and do more about creating awareness.

So anyway here’s proof of my his our effort at various stages of growing a mo. The pictures are a bit strange because he took all of it himself, apart from the ones with the shades and with little Image which are also the final ones. He also took one of his new haircut, especially for Arkwife, since she’s asked.









Monday 29 November 2010

Weird Food Scripture Cake

When I started the ‘weird food’ posts, I never would have imagined that most of the weird food and recipes in the posts would come from America.

 

I found a real treasure trove of very old recipe books (e-book format) for free on the Gutenberg Project website. One of these is an Amish Cookbook, called ‘The Pennsylvania Dutch Cookbook’. In this cookbook I first saw a recipe for Scripture Cake.

No one knows where or when this cake was invented, but having encountered it in an old Amish cookbook, it is easy to imagine. It may have come from Europe or it may have been created on the Eastern Shore of early North America. It was sweet to eat, and a chance to modestly exhibit knowledge of the Bible. It was fun in the form of an early trivia game, and a great dish to take to a church supper.

As women moved westward across America, the recipe went with them as a small, treasured bit from “back home.” It usually travelled along as part of a prized collection of recipes.
The historical cake can still be made today. The instruction to girls probably was something like this; “Read the Biblical list of ingredients and write down your knowledge of the scriptural ingredients. Then, to be on the safe side, look in the Bible to verify your answers. You are now ready to make the cake and to your share in continuing an historical friendly tradition.”
I J, Hardspear de la Azotea certainly won’t be able to do that, so following the old Amish recipe I quote the scriptures (King James Version) with the conventional recipe right at the end.

ORIGINAL ‘SCRIPTURE’ RECIPE
1½ cups Judges 5:25
3 cups Jeremiah 6:20
6 Jeremiah 17:11
3½ cups Exodus 29:2
2 teaspoons Amos 4:5
2 Chronicles 9:9 to taste
A pinch of Mark 9:50
1 cup Genesis 24:17
1 tablespoon 1 Samuel 14:25
2 cups 1 Samuel 30:12
2 cups chopped dried Song of Solomon 2:13
2 cups slivered or chopped Numbers 17:8
Follow Solomon’s advice for making good boys, Proverbs 23:14

SCRIPTURES
From the King James Version:
Judges 5:25: “He asked water, and she gave him milk; she brought forth butter in a lordly dish”.
Jeremiah 6:20: “To what purpose cometh there to me incense from Sheba, and the sweet cane from a far country? Your burnt offerings are not acceptable, nor your sacrifices sweet unto me.”
Jeremiah 17:11: “As the partridge sitteth on eggs, and hatcheth them not; so he that getteth riches, and not by right, shall leave them in the midst of his days, and at his end shall be a fool.”
Exodus 29:2: “And unleavened bread, and cakes unleavened tempered with oil, and wafers unleavened anointed with oil: of wheaten flour shalt thou make them.”
Amos 4:5: “And offer a sacrifice of thanksgiving with leaven, and proclaim and publish the free offerings: for this liketh you, O ye children of Israel, saith the Lord GOD.”
2 Chronicles 9:9: “And she gave the king an hundred and twenty talents of gold, and of spices great abundance, and precious stones: neither was there any such spice as the queen of Sheba gave king Solomon.”
Mark 9:50: “Salt is good: but if the salt have lost his saltness, wherewith will ye season it? Have salt in yourselves, and have peace one with another.”
Genesis 24:17: And the servant ran to meet her, and said, Let me, I pray thee, drink a little water of thy pitcher.”
1 Samuel 14:25: “And all they of the land came to a wood; and there was honey upon the ground.”
1 Samuel 30:12: And they gave him a piece of a cake of figs, and two clusters of raisins: and when he had eaten, his spirit came again to him: for he had eaten no bread, nor drunk any water, three days and three nights.”
Song of Solomon 2:13: “The fig tree putteth forth her green figs, and the vines with the tender grape give a good smell. Arise, my love, my fair one, and come away.”
Numbers 17:8: “And it came to pass, that on the morrow Moses went into the tabernacle of witness; and, behold, the rod of Aaron for the house of Levi was budded, and brought forth buds, and bloomed blossoms, and yielded almonds.”

Proverbs 23:14: Thou shalt beat him with the rod, and shalt deliver his soul from hell.

1½ cups butter
3 cups sugar
6 eggs
3½ cups flower
2 teaspoons baking power
½ teaspoon ground nutmeg
1 teaspoon ground cloves
2 teaspoons cinnamon
1 teaspoon allspice
A pinch of salt
1 cup water
1 tablespoon honey
2 cups raisins
2 cups chopped dried figs
2 cups slivered or chopped almonds

Preheat oven to 160 ˚C.

Cream together butter and sugar, beat in eggs one at a time, beating well after each one. Sift together flour, baking power, salt and spices. Add alternately with water to creamed mixture.

Stir in honey, fold in raisins, figs and almonds. Mix well. Turn into two well greased 23 x 13 x 8 cm loaf pans. Bake about 60 minutes, making sure not to over bake, until loaves test done by the toothpick test. Let cool for 30 minutes in pans before turning out onto rack.

Therefore, I tell you, don't be anxious for your life: what you will eat, or what you will drink; nor yet for your body, what you will wear. Isn't life more than food, and the body more than clothing? See the birds of the sky, that they don't sow, neither do they reap, nor gather into barns. Your heavenly Father feeds them. Aren't you of much more value than they? Matthew 6:25,26

Monday 22 November 2010

Don't touch my wife on her studio!

I haven’t given the whole Movember thing enough attention, although my snor is coming along nicely. My hair grows extremely fast and gets real curly, so by last week the curly hair and wide moustache made me look like a 70’s porrrnstarrr.

 

Soooo, I decided it was time for a haircut. I am very often dissatisfied with the haircuts I receive, since it only looks good for 1 day. Because of the curly hair, I cannot just have it trimmed with a trimmer. (I only do it for the savathon in march though). Since I drive past Tanaz hair salon in Corlett drive every day, and since I know they have a barber shop as well, I decided to give them a try. The stylist really knew what he was doing and I got a great haircut. (They need to use that funny scissors with the toothy comb-like blades to thin out my masses of hair and tame the curls). First time in my life I had my hair cut by an Indian guy. His name is Abdul and I will definitely go back. In fact, come 1st Dec, I think I am going to get my snor shaved off there!

My appearance is also not enhanced by the fact that I drove over my brand new glasses, and now having to wear a very old pair.

Saturday we went to see the pantomime at the Jo’burg theatre (Robinson Crusoe and the Caribbean Pirates). It was our company’s year-end function and the boss sponsored the play as well as lunch beforehand (and drinks, and parking vouchers and programmes). We were really looking forward and arranged to drop Image off at Lamb’s sister in Kempton Park. On our way there we had such a spectacular fight in the car, that by the time we reached Kempton Park, Lamb stated that she wished we stayed at home. I nearly rolled the car, so fast I turned around and started speeding back to V-town. We were already passing Bedfordview when Lamb said, “Ok, you’ve proved your point now, turn back again!” So there we were, on our way to Kempton Park yet again. We dropped Image off and I sped through Bruma, Bez Valley, Doornfontein & Braamfontein and got us to the Jo’burg / Civic / Nelson Mandela / whatever-the-latest-name-is-theatre not too late.

Lamb was her gregarious self (despite her chronic laryngitis which she picked up on account of talking REAL loud and being a teacher, which necessitates her to talk REAL loud for long periods of time – but more about that later). So as per usual Lamb was going on regaling everyone with funny anecdotes – she can make the most boring and insignificant event sound hysterically funny, when suddenly some COW from Scotland told Lamb that one of her stories was hardly the topic for dinner conversation! Now listen, I am allowed to fight with my wife, but if YOU touch HER on her studio, you touch ME on my studio! So off I went and told the whole table of my experience as Social Worker in the UK and that I think the dole has made the Brits weak, and how undisciplined their children are and that they all need a jolly good hiding, and teenage pregnancies just to get a flat and higher dole, and how the Brits think they can say whatever they want, whenever they want and to whom they want. A deathly silence went down all around the table and I ended my rant by saying: “Anyone for dessert?”

I ignored this woman flat out for the rest of the event and I could see that she was real uncomfortable. A pity though, because her husband is very nice and I wanted to talk to him – he has some very interesting job as social media analyst (on the security side) and he gets used by companies, governments etc.

Janice Honeyman & the cast outdid themselves again and the panto was very entertaining. One of the characters parodied Helen Zille and that was extremely funny!

I continued being contrary for the rest of the weekend...

Friday 12 November 2010

Vodacom Complaint #2 & Automatic Complaint Letter Generators

I, John Hard Spear De La Azotea wrote the previous post in a fit of anger. As I have indicated in an earlier post, I have started a new project and I am VERY busy. I need to prepare for yet another project starting in January. I have also been invited to do a proposal & pitch for a very big project at a multi-national next week.
I have so much to do on the current project, it is just not funny. The current client is situated in Hyde Park. You would have thought that I would get good 3G reception in Hyde FUCKING Park. Again, I do at a restaurant in Jan Smuts Avenue, but 1 Kilometre down a road off of Jan Smuts, the signal is like the trickle of piss of an old man with an enlarged prostate! Weak and halting!


Where did I get the time from to do a 4-page-in-msword long post? Well, I wrote the first quarter of a page and then used Scott Pakin’s Automatic Complaint Letter Generator on the web! I can’t really accuse Vodacom of all the stuff randomly generated by this website, but it was intensely satisfying to read and post onto my blog. So... that post was done in no time at all! also check out http://crazyoldmanletters.com

How do you feel about your cellular service provider?

Thursday 11 November 2010

VODACOM complaint

Due to the nature of my work, I work all over Johannesburg visiting clients. I only EVER find good 3G Broadband receptions in restaurants and at the airport. Everywhere else it is downright shit!


Two weeks ago I worked at one of my clients’ offices in Isando – DIAGONALLY OPPOSITE THIS BILLBOARD! (Cellphone photo – not good quality). It proclaims: BESTEST BROADBAND IN SA. This, whilst 500 metres away from this billboard (I could see it from the window) I had WEAK and INTERMITTENT signal!

I am SICK and FED-UP with VODACOM or VODAKAK as they are also known. And this is not by far the only complaint I have about them. I have had it with their HOPELESS and HAMFISTED SERVICE as well.

This is my opinion of VODACOM:

I am not short on words, so please bear with the length of this letter. First and foremost, Vodacom's pouty attempt to construct a creative response to my previous letter was absolutely pitiful. Really, Vodacom, stringing together a bunch of solecistic insults and seemingly random babble is hardly effective. It simply proves beyond a shadow of a doubt that knowledge is the key that unlocks the shackles of bondage. That's why it's important for you to know that I see how important Vodacom's disgraceful, tactless hijinks are to its faithfuls and I laugh. I laugh because if you think that this is humorous or exaggerated, you're wrong. I, hardheaded cynic that I am, find that some of Vodacom's choices of words in its crusades would not have been mine. For example, I would have substituted "brain-damaged" for "Broadband" and "meddlesome" for "Yebo." The truth hurts, doesn't it, Vodacom? I had a conversation recently with some unprincipled prevaricators who were trying to intensify race hatred. That conversation convinced me that Vodacom is addicted to the feeling of power, to the idea of controlling people. Sadly, it has no real concern for the welfare or the destiny of the people it desires to lead.

Vodacom's worshippers employ carefully developed psychological techniques to influence the attitudes of dominant culture towards any environment or activity that is predominantly cacodemonic. In reaching that conclusion, I have made the usual assumption that I certainly have a hard time trying to reason with people who remain calm when they see Vodacom guarantee the destruction of anything that looks like a vital community. Vodacom has declared that it's staging a revolt against everyone who wants to institute change. Vodacom's revolting all right; the very sight of it turns my stomach. All kidding aside, if you looked up "venom-spouting-to-the-core" in the dictionary, you'd probably see its logo. I call this phenomenon "Vodacom-ism". The same might be said of irrational, mischievous pillocks. The problem is, if you're the type who dares to think for yourself, then you've probably already determined that Vodacom thinks it's good that its convictions weaken family ties. It is difficult to know how to respond to such monumentally misplaced values, but let's try this: I plan to hinder the power of asinine insurrectionists like it. This is a choice I have made; your choice is up to you. But let me remind you that Vodacom insists that individual worth is defined by race, ethnicity, religion, or national origin. Sorry, Vodacom, but, with apologies to Gershwin, "it ain't necessarily so." I'm sorry if I've gotten a little off track here, but if I were a complete sap, I'd believe Vodacom's line that statism can quell the hatred and disorder in our society. Unfortunately for it, I realize that Vodacom's callow game of chess -- the ultra-uppity chess of cynicism -- has continued for far too long. It's time to checkmate this malodorous pickpocket and show it that its apparatchiks are tools. Like a hammer or an axe, they are not inherently evil or destructive. The evil is in the force that manipulates them and uses them for destructive purposes. That evil is Vodacom, who wants nothing less than to canonize fatuitous fast-buck artists as nomological emblems of propriety.

At times, we all have an axe to grind. Currently, I'm grinding my axe in regards to Vodacom's writings. Those readers of brittle disposition might do well to await a ride on the next emotionally indulgent transport; this one is scheduled nonstop over rocky roads. As soon as you're strapped in I'll announce something to the effect of how Vodacom presents itself as a disinterested classicist lamenting the infusion of politically motivated methods of pedagogy and analysis into higher education. It is eloquent in its denunciation of modern scholarship, claiming it favors what I call dishonest, rebarbative witlings. And here we have the ultimate irony because it wasn't so long ago that people like you and me were free to free people from the spell of commercialism that it has cast over them. Recently, that's become a lot harder to do. What happened that changed things so much? To put it briefly, Vodacom happened. By breaking down traditional values, Vodacom has managed to shatter and ultimately destroy our most precious possessions.

Vodacom's delusional accusations often resemble an inverted fairy tale in that the triumph of innocence comes at the start and the ugly sisters of nativism and colonialism enter on stage in triumph for the final curtain. I and Vodacom part company when it comes to the issue of demagogism. It feels that science is merely a tool invented by the current elite to maintain power while I claim that those who have most injured and oppressed humanity, that have most deeply sinned against it, are, according to Vodacom's standards and conscience, good people. Apparently, bad people are those who have noticed that Vodacom's froward ebullitions lobotomize everyone caught thinking an independent thought. Vodacom then blames us for that. Now there's a prizewinning example of psychological projection if I've ever seen one. Vodacom practically breaks its arm patting itself on the back when it says, "It takes courage to go down into the muddy trenches and shank the working class in the back to keep the cash spigots flowing." As if that were something to be proud of. At this point, our task is to address a number of important issues. Your support can help greatly with this task, this crucial task, at which we must not fail.

I don't know how to tell you this, but Vodacom's bons mots are exemplary of the forces minorities must fight in their struggle to achieve equal footing with the rest of the community. Before I start, however, I should state that to understand what Vodacom's particularly mischievous form of interventionism has encompassed as a movement and as a system of rule, we have to look at its historical context and development as a form of complacent politics that first arose in early twentieth-century Europe in response to rapid social upheaval, the devastation of World War I, and the Bolshevik Revolution. We need to oust Vodacom and its cold-blooded apologists from anywhere we find them handing over the country to the worst types of antisocial phlegmatic-types I've ever seen. Unfortunately, reaching that simple conclusion sometimes seems to be above human reason. But there is a wisdom above human, and to that we must look if we are ever to reach the broadest possible audience with the message that this is a contributing factor to the apparent decline of civilization and culture around us. Vodacom would have me wander around in a quagmire of self-pity and depression. Nevertheless, I can state with absolute certainty that it is squarely in favor of interdenominationalism and its propensity to fleece people out of their life's savings. This is so typical of Vodacom: it condemns bigotry and injustice except when it benefits it personally. Vodacom's cajoleries are a pastiche of beer-guzzling moral relativism and rash, lewd resistentialism.

Unless you're a newly hatched pod person you already know that there is a political agenda behind the "Vodacom answers to no one" malarkey. But let me add that no clear-thinking individual would have the temerity to lower this country's moral tone and depreciate its commercial integrity. To plunge right into it, Vodacom twists every argument into some sort of "struggle" between two parties. Vodacom unvaryingly constitutes the underdog party, which is what it claims gives it the right to channel the pursuit of scientific knowledge into a narrow band of accepted norms that are based exclusively on its truculent biases. Vodacom always looks the other way when one of its trucklers gets it in his head to ransack people's homes. Apparently, the principle laid down by Jean-Marie Collot d'Herbois during the French Reign of Terror still holds true today: Tout est permis à quiconque agit dans le sens de la révolution. Let's play a little game. Deduct one point from your I.Q. if you fell for Vodacom's ridiculous claim that it is omnipotent. Deduct another point if you failed to notice that Vodacom needs to stop living in denial. It needs to wake up and realize that there are those who are informed and educated about the evils of terrorism, and there are those who are not. Vodacom is one of the uninformed, naturally, and that's why it is inherently devious, officious, and unscrupulous. Oh, and it also has a muddleheaded mode of existence.

It is pointless to fret about the damage already caused by Vodacom's sinful, larcenous opuscula. The past cannot be changed. We must cope with the present if we hope to affect our future and denounce those who claim that ethical responsibility is merely a trammel of earthbound mortals and should not be required of a demigod like Vodacom. With friends like Vodacom, who needs enemies? I mean, everything I've said so far is by way of introduction to the key point I want to make in this letter. My key point is that it ignores a breathtaking number of facts, most notably:

Fact: Its slogans are the opiate of the doctrinaire.

Fact: When it asks a question it's usually intended more as an insult than as a request for information.

Fact: Its dupes will leave us high and dry as they twist the teaching of history to suit Vodacom's nefarious purposes.

In addition, even when Vodacom bespeaks us fair to our faces it expresses quite different thoughts behind our backs. No joke.

Those of us who are too lazy or disinterested to provide a positive, confident, and assertive vision of humanity's future and our role in it have no right to complain when it and its drones create a climate in which it will be assumed that our achievements reflect not individual worth, talent, or skill, but special consideration. When I say that it may be helpful to take a step back and follow knowledge like a sinking star beyond the utmost bound of human thought, I consider this to mean that Vodacom has never gotten ahead because of its hard work or innovative ideas. Rather, all of Vodacom's successes are due to kickbacks, bribes, black market double-dealing, outright thuggery, and unsavory political intrigue. Vodacom has stated that a richly evocative description of a problem automatically implies the correct solution to that problem. That's just pure statism. Well, in Vodacom's case, it might be pure ignorance, seeing that Vodacom's insidious, addlepated paroxysms leave the current power structure untouched while simultaneously killing countless children through starvation and disease. Are these children its enemies? The key to answering such questions is to realize that for Vodacom, all roads lead to sadism. The time has come to choose between freedom or slavery, revolt or submission, and liberty or Vodacom's particularly dysfunctional form of stoicism. It's clear what Vodacom wants us to choose, but it's our responsibility to disentangle people from the snares set by it and its pals. That's the first step in trying to uplift individuals and communities on a global scale to make efforts directed towards broad, long-term social change, and it's the only way to shape a world of dignity and harmony, a world of justice, solidarity, liberty, and prosperity. This is far from all I have to say on the topic, but it's certainly enough for now. Just remember one thing: There is considerable evidence to show that Vodacom is serious about wanting to torment, harry, and persecute anyone who crosses its path.

If ever I had a tough letter to write, this is it. My challenge is to convince you that Vodacom's pleas are based on some deep-rooted personality disorder. Before I get moving here, let me point out that Vodacom will create some poxy, pseudo-psychological profile of me to discredit my opinions because it possesses a hatred that defies all logic and understanding, that cannot be quantified or reasoned away, and that savagely possesses impetuous perjurers with supercilious and uncontrollable rage. If Vodacom can overawe and befuddle a sufficient number of prominent individuals then it will become virtually impossible for anyone to contribute to the intellectual and spiritual health of the body politic. Nevertheless, Vodacom's plan is to lead us into an age of shoddiness—shoddy goods, shoddy services, shoddy morals, and shoddy people. Vodacom's intimates are moving at a frightening pace toward the total implementation of that agenda, which includes stifling dissent.

To pick an obvious but often overlooked example, Vodacom can't fool me. I've met intolerant fence-sitters before so I know that I have a scientist's respect for objective truth. That's why I'm telling you that Vodacom's failure to overcome the obstacles that people like it establish is so noisome that the grossly fallacious reasoning behind Vodacom's effusions can be confirmed by some simple fact-checking. Now that that's cleared up, I'll continue with what I was saying before, that the justification it gave for wasting taxpayers' money was one of the most bookish justifications I've ever heard. It was so bookish, in fact, that I will not repeat it here. Even without hearing the details you can still see my point quite clearly: Even when the facts don't fit, Vodacom sometimes tries to use them anyway. It still maintains, for instance, that it is a paragon of morality and wisdom.

Since most people oppose Vodacom's loquacious epigrams, it has had to torment, harry, and persecute anyone who crosses its path using every manipulative means imaginable. The irony is that Vodacom's most coprophagous accusations are also its most self-centered. As the French say, "Les extremes se touchent." It's a well-known fact that I have always lived my life by the mantra, "A good person will deal stiffly with mad cockalorums who foment, precipitate, and finance large-scale wars to emasculate and bankrupt nations and thereby force them into a one-world government". It's an equally well-known fact that I, unlike Vodacom, refuse to view countries and the people that live in them either as economic targets to be exploited or as military targets to be defeated. When logic puts these two facts together, the necessary result is an understanding that on several occasions I have heard it state that all it takes to start a rabbit farm is a magician's magic hat. I am not able to rightly apprehend the kind of confusion of ideas that could provoke such a comment. What I consider far more important though is that if I am correctly informed, Vodacom's writings are not just retroactively ineffective but proactively inert. In any case, its attendants like to say, "Vodacom's press releases enhance performance standards, productivity, and competitiveness." Such frothy eloquence neither convinces nor satisfies me. If someone wants me to believe something squalid like that, that person will have to show me some concrete evidence. Meanwhile, I intend to show you that many, many people have been hurt by Vodacom for daring to make efforts directed towards broad, long-term social change. In fact, there are so many such people that even listing their names would take more space than I can afford in this letter. In their honor, though, I will say that if Vodacom's thinking were cerebral rather than glandular, it wouldn't consider it such a good idea to replace our timeless traditions with its unambitious ones.

One thing to keep in mind is that I call upon Vodacom to stop its oppression, lies, immorality, and debauchery. I call upon it to be an organization of manners, principles, honour, and purity. And finally, I call upon it to forgo its desire to shatter and ultimately destroy our most precious possessions.

Although I can find only circumstantial evidence of misconduct and rule violations, over time, Vodacom's philippics have progressed from being merely rummy to being superrummy, hyperrummy, and recently ultrarummy. In fact, I'd say that now they're even megarummy. Now, lest you jump to the conclusion that doing the fashionable thing is more important than life or liberty, I assure you that idle hands are the devil's tools. That's why Vodacom spends its leisure time devising ever more deplorable ways to have more impact on Earth's biological, geological, and chemical systems during our lifetime and our children's than all preceding human generations had together. It's incredible to me that anybody could be so twisted. You may have detected a hint of sarcasm in the way I phrased that last statement, but I assure you that I am not exaggerating the situation. I suppose that's all I have to say in this letter. If there are any points on which you require explanation or further particulars I shall be glad to furnish such additional details as may be required.

Vodacom is utterly dotty. We all are, to some extent, but it sets the curve. As I've said in the past, Vodacom's sympathizers insist that Vodacom can achieve its goals by friendly and moral conduct. I say to them, "Prove it" -- not that they'll be able to, of course, but because every time Vodacom tries, it gets increasingly successful in its attempts to force some to live by restrictive standards not applicable to others. This dangerous trend means not only death for free thought, but for imagination as well. We must inculcate in the reader an inquisitive spirit and a skepticism about beliefs that Vodacom's trained seals take for granted. As mentioned above, however, that is not enough. It is necessary to do more. It is necessary to make Vodacom answer for its wrongdoings. I close this letter along the same lines it opened on: Vodacom plants false evidence to incriminate its adversaries. That's all I have to say. Thank you for reading this letter.

I am going to put this on their facebook page as well. Maybe if I complain long and hard enough, they’ll offer me a position as Trevor Noah’s Counterpart!

Wednesday 10 November 2010

Severe Blogging withdrawal symptoms

I started on a new project on Monday - things a bit hectic - cannot quite get round to blogging.

Suffering from severe blogging withdrawal though! 

Be back soon!

Monday 1 November 2010

Movember - Grow a Mow for Cancer Awarenes - CANSA Campaign

Hi there!

CANSA is the one cause I, J. Hardspear de la Azotea try to support.  Every year in March back the shavathon campaign by having my hair shaved off with a nr 1 clipper.  This year will be the first time I support their men's health campaign by growing a lipwig during the month of November.

Please advise me as to which style I should go for...  maybe one of those thin pencil stripes.

Please also visit the campaign page, and get the large version of the different styles (picture below)


Do you also wonder where the word mustache come from... I've saved you the trouble and went to have a look on the Online Etymology Website:  Here is what they say...

mustache


1580s, from Fr. moustache, from It. mostaccio, from Medieval Gk. moustakion, dim. of Doric mystax (gen. mystakos) "upper lip, mustache," related to mastax "jaws, mouth," lit. "that with which one chews," from PIE base *mnto- "mouth" (see mouth). Borrowed earlier (1550s) as mostacchi, from the It. word or its Sp. derivative mostacho. The plural form of this, mustachios, lingers in English. Dutch slang has a useful noun, de befborstel, to refer to the mustache specifically as a tool for stimulating the clitoris; probably from beffen "to stimulate the clitoris with the tongue."

...the Dutch... [shaking my head]