Literally used to mean: this is not a metaphor.  Now, literally means: I am really serious about this metaphor and I really want you to listen.

talking about this quote on Obama.

Sadly, he’s right.
But that doesn’t mean that I won’t continue to ridicule people for using the new definition.

That particular attack came while research into False Bay’s shark population was underway and, of course, there were immediate and vociferous allegations that the two were linked, although this was later rubbished by independent experts. However, the surfing community is still generally unhappy about humans dumping blood into the sea because that attracts sharks which then allegedly eat the surfers. You can see this unhappiness here, with quotes such as:

I don’t like the idea of chumming. 20 years ago, we never saw a shark at Muizenberg. Now we see them regularly.

and:

…anything that brings sharks closer to humans isn’t good.

It seems that surfers are obviously concerned about the danger of shark attacks. Who knew?

All of which brings me back to that Cape Times article today. Aside from a few stats on the shark-spotter programme, it also mentioned some natural chumming:

An injured pygmy sperm whale beached itself at Surfers Corner in Muizenberg on Saturday and the red warning flag was kept up to caution the public that its blood could attract the presence of sharks.
The red flag indicates a recent sighting and a high shark alert.

And how did the surfers react?

hundreds of surfers remained in the water to take advantage of good waves.

So really, how bothered are surfers about chumming? Not much, it seems, when a DYING WHALE FULL OF SHARK ATTRACTANT is spewing its load into False Bay right next to their Mecca, they just carry on surfing.
Why on earth would they do that? Let’s ask an expert, surfer Gary Kleynhans, who was there on Saturday:

The surf is cooking! I understand the shark spotter programme is a safety measure and I appreciate that. But if surfers want to go surfing, they will.

I’ve been doing some rudimentary calculations and it seems to me that when a bloke chucks a bucket full of blood into the sea, that will attract great whites, but if a whale beaches and releases a whaleful of blood into the sea, that won’t.

Especially if the surf is “cooking”.

Am I alone is seeing a slight dichotomy here?

Nope. Vladimir is all tucked in there. And thank goodness, if the rumours of his immense statue are to be believed. Apparently, “Once you go Red, you never go back.” Or maybe it was all propaganda.

I’m not publishing the JZ picture on here, not because I disagree with it being painted, drawn, whatever, but because I really have no compulsion to have a stylised image of Mr Zuma’s parts on my blog. If you want to see “it”, then pop over to this M&G story on the subject.

But come now, it’s just another big fuss over nothing. In protesting, the ANC have now ensured that the Streisand Effect is in full force and the 99.99% of the nation that was wholly unaware that a picture of the President with his fly down even existed are now marvelling at… at… Murray’s work.
It’s fantastic publicity for Murray and for the Goodman Gallery for what, to me, resembles a GCSE art project (but with a willy). If the artist is trying to portray a message with his work – and apparently he is – it’s been thoroughly lost in the rumpus around JZ’s bits being on display. If you want to send a message through art, maybe go back to throwing loo rolls into trees.

Meanwhile, the “freedom of speech” brigade are out in force again, citing Constitutional rights as they always do when this sort of thing happens. And, of course, they are right: Murray is well within his rights to illustrate the genitals of anyone he wants.
But I would love it if despite the fact that Brett Murray had the right to paint JZ’s genitals, he chose not to. Just because you’re allowed to do it, just because it’s your right, it doesn’t mean that you have to. And yes, the ANC has its knickers (not depicted) in a knot over this and it’s all awfully silly, but there really was no need to have done it in the first place. Except to earn the fat fee that some stupid overseas buyer has paid for it, I suppose.
Meh. Brett should head off and find something else to do that actually benefits the country.

As for Jacob – if he didn’t want the picture painted, he should never have agreed to pose for it.

Unless you’re a Dad, or a grammar Nazi.

South Africans are LAWLESS. Every day my jaw drops at, in particular, our driving. No indicating, hogging the fast lane, parking anywhere, no servicing and billowing smoke out the back etc etc.
I often wonder what goes on (or doesn’t) in these people’s minds. Is it deliberate, or pure ignorance, or a heady mix?

And I wrote this some time ago:

the laws are there, but the fact that they’re just not enforced means that the driving public feel that they don’t have to obey them.

These facts have been proven further to me on the roads over the last few days.

Firstly, an unsecured toddler on the back seat of a Mazda 323. No, this isn’t a good thing, but sadly it’s something we’re well used to here in SA. So picture my delight when a traffic police car pulls out behind said Mazda. And then picture my disgust when said traffic police officer interacted with the Mazda, not by stopping it and fining the driver to high heaven, but by waving to the child through the back windscreen.

And then today, after a massive road smash on the M5 this evening – one car on its roof on the central reservation – tow trucks, fire engines, ambulances everywhere – and the traffic police, standing by, but not actually doing anything because right then, it was all about the other emergency services doing their thing. Fair enough.

All of which meant that the traffic police officer had plenty of time to chat the incident with the cyclist who had pulled over. I hope it all worked out ok. And it was kind of weird to see a traffic officer and a cyclist discussing… hey… hang on a second. Cyclists aren’t allowed to cycle on the M5 – where were the traffic officers while this conversation was going… hey… hang on a second – they were talking with him.

I don’t think that I need to add much of a conclusion here. Even the more intellectually-challenged of my readers can see where I’m going with this. When even the police don’t give a damn, we have a problem.

Frankly, I’m rather depressed by the whole thing.

UPDATE: Meanwhile, in France…

First off, 1. FC Köln v Bayern München. Bayern aren’t the team you want to face in your final league game of the season, especially when you’re struggling to avoid relegation. And when the visitors led 4-1 with seconds to play, the Köln fans showed thei disapproval thus:

(Another pic here). Obviously, the ref had no option but to take the players off, the game was (technically) abandoned and the result stood, much like the lines of riot police and stewards across the centre of the pitch for almost an hour afterwards.

But of course, it’s England that has the hooligan problem.

Meanwhile in Spain, Real Madrid were coming from behind to condemn home side Granada to a nervy last match next week. The result of this was an ugly brawl between Granada players and the match officials at the end of the game, including a bottle being thrown at the referee by one of the players. Can’t blame the fans for that one, although the referee had to leave the pitch under the protection of three riot shields. In all my years of watching footy in England, I’ve never ever seen that either. Although it seems fairly common in Spain – who could forget the UEFA Champions League encounter between Real Madrid and Barcelona last year, when exactly the same thing happened.

But of course, it’s England that has the hooligan problem.

And the beautiful game, as played in South America, is actually far less beautiful when you look more closely.

I’ve seen players injured on the field of play before, but rarely does the trainer have to come on and treat the player while riot police protect them from objects thrown from the crowd. And by “rarely”, I actually mean “never”.
Police in England don’t use rifles and rubber bullets to disperse angry fans, like they do in Brazil (World Cup 2014, anyone?).

Yes, England has certainly had it’s fair share of problems with hooliganism in the past. But that reputation should be left right there, in the past. While there are problems occurring regularly in other leagues around the world, English football has been free of any major trouble for many years now.
Maybe it’s time that FIFA sorted out some of the other “big” names in world football before accusing English fans of being troublemakers.

Stupid girl. All you had, you wasted.

Afrikaans rapper Jack Parow says he is “cool” about being led off the stage midway through a concert in Newcastle when his lyrics upset some in the audience, and that he had a “rad time” regardless.

Parow, whose real name is Zander Tyler, was taken off the stage at the Vodacom Winter Festival on Friday night when a group, upset by his lyrics – which included profanities – physically threatened him.

One man nearly jumped on stage, but was pulled back by police called in to help festival organisers with the group.

A war of words erupted on the Newcastle Newspaper’s Facebook page, with people calling Parow a “satan slang (devil snake)” and a “disgrace to the Afrikaans language”.

Now, I can take OR leave Mnr Parow and I can HAPPILY manage without swearing in my music, but seriously now, what were the audience expecting? It’s like turning UP to a Metallica gig and “hoping they don’t play anything too loud”.
I have kids and I try to shelter them from swearing (amongst other things) as much as possible. That MEANS not taking them along to Jack Parow gigs (amongst other things). No matter HOW backward Newcastle is, the allegation that this performance was instrumental in corrupting their youth is a bit OTT.

Parow, unsurprisingly, was unabashed:

Parow said he was singing his song Dans Dans Dans when the microphone was taken from him by an organiser and he was led off stage. He then noticed police trying to calm a few men beside the stage.

“Some people don’t like the swearing. I was singing ‘Dans, dans f***en dans’. This one guy was shouting at me and said: ‘Why are you f***ing swearing?’, but that was funny because he was swearing at me.”

As you will have noted above, all of this has (typically) reared its head on Facebook, WHERE a couple of comments by Anthon von Lisenborgh have captured the imagination of some individuals and INTRODUCED random CAPITALISATION to popular culture:

The biggest IRONY for me is that Jack Parow’s shortened act followed that of Afrikaner Steve Hofmeyr (and whom Anthon comprehensively fails to accuse of being an “Artist of Satan”), a man perhaps BEST known for his racist rants, being divorced by his wife after having “numerous affairs”, assaulting the female editor of a popular gossip magazine and being described by the Deputy CEO of the South African Institute of Race Relations as being a disgrace to South Africa and of using his “not insignificant following to sow anger and hate among young white people”.

When it comes to role models, it would seem that the Afrikaans culture is struggling somewhat, but while Jack Parow CONTINUES to use the F-word (and he will continue to use the F-word) Anthon seems conveniently blinkered to Mr Hofmeyr’s shortcomings.

UPDATE: A bit more on Anthon – he’s written a book: Apocrypha 999 – The Mystery of Solomon and Queen Bilqis of Sheba - and in his author bio (filled with MORE random capitalisation), he includes THE line:

…do with it as you feel fit or do nothing if you want, it is up to you to decide and not me.

Obviously, the same doesn’t apply to concerts in North West Kwa-Zulu Natal.

I’m not getting drawn into this one. Evans was found guilty and, while I understand that he is appealing the verdict, there is no excuse for what he has done and no excuse for anyone to defend his actions or to question the judgement.

However, Ian does make some valid points with reference to the the way that the inexcusable behaviour of a few idiots has been taken to be representative of the whole club.

This case isn’t anything to do with Sheffield United. It is nothing to do with football. It is about a sexual assault.

Those in charge at Sheffield United FC have dealt with the matter very well. At the minute you cannot say this reflects badly on the club, but now we have the danger of a negative media frenzy thanks to the actions of a vocal minority.

The Sky cameras will be focused even more firmly on United and the supporters on Saturday. A spotlight intensified by the ferocity of comments from some of our support alongside the reported tweets of current and former players. Please don’t let yourselves down. Please don’t let the club down.

And he’s absolutely right. But I feel that his appeal will fall on deaf ears. The vocal minority will continue to be vocal and the media will jump all over it.

Thanks Paul

What’s also tragic is the sudden outpouring of pseudo-expert opinions, many blaming the Ocearch shark project which was taking place in False Bay at the time, for the attack. Of course, understandably, emotions were running high due to the incident yesterday and the controversial, if often over-exaggerated, reports of Ocearch “chumming” the water to attract sharks to tag offered a convenient scapegoat. These accusations were further supported by the director of Biodiversity and Coastal Research, Alan Boyd immediately cancelling Ocearch’s research permit when he heard about the attack.

Now, 24 hours on from the attack, the City of Cape Town has released a report and review of the events yesterday. It’s calm, detailed, factual and rational. Everyone should read it. Especially this bit:

The following critical point needs to be stated. During the attack the sharks dorsal fin broke the surface (as reported by the eye witness Mr Marais). If this shark had been one of the tagged sharks, the satellite transmitter would have given off a signal that would have been recorded on the system and located the shark at Kogel Bay. On assessing the data, no satellite records exist for that area. Two of the sharks tagged in False Bay have given off signals and were located in the Macassar/Strandfontein area shortly before the attack. The lack of satellite signal is clear information that the shark involved in the attack is not one of the sharks tagged by the Ocearch Research Programme.

Further, with regard to public speculation of the role of chum, the following should be noted. White sharks occur in False Bay in healthy numbers throughout the year. The small and limited chumming by Ocearch would not have attracted additional sharks to False Bay as the amount of chum used is insignificant in comparison to natural chum sources in the bay including the natural chum slick emanating from Seal Island, fishing activities in False Bay, by-products from Kalk Bay harbour as well as the small and immaterial chumming by permitted cage divers. Furthermore, the Ocearch Programme operated in False Bay at Seal Island on Sunday and Monday. The wind direction has been strong south east throughout the week. Any residual chum from their activities would have dissipated within hours and, due to the wind direction, moved from the island in an opposite direction to that of Kogel Bay.

As a result, there is no evidence or reason to suggest that the tagging of four White Sharks over a period of 24 hours from Sunday 15 April to Monday 16 April, in False Bay, by the Ocearch Programme had any role to play in the tragic events that occurred at Caves.

Although the City has, and continues to have, no role in the Ocearch Programme, as well as not feeling that it is appropriate, or required, to defend or support the programme, it holds the view that it is essential that the correct and factual information be provided to the public. Public and media speculation linking the two unrelated activities is uninformed and misleading. 

Highlighting is mine.

There’s more detail in the report as to why the City has (independently)  reached this conclusion, but I applaud them for actually taking the time and effort to put that last paragraph in.

The report also answers several of the questions asked by ZigZag’s Anton Louw in an obviously personal column “Ocearch and the Kogel Baai attack – Searching for answers, finding few” published overnight. There are a few questions still outstanding though, including this one (on the practice of chumming):

Why are almost all the scientists and researchers lined up on the one side of the fence, and the laymen on the other?

When tragic events like this occur, people look for any reason that can explain things. In this case, Chris Fischer’s methods and Alan Boyd’s go-ahead had already raised the ire of the layperson community well before yesterday’s incident. But that ire was based upon misinformation and exaggerated facts (see also: fracking). Do these people really think that the director of Biodiversity and Coastal Research just signed off that research request without some degree of forethought?
Sadly, his kneejerk reaction yesterday in cancelling, instead of simply postponing, Fischer’s permit will lead many to think he did.
And ironically, because of his actions, we will now know less about the behaviour of great white sharks in False Bay; information that could potentially assist in preventing further attacks of this nature.

All in all, it’s another lesson that sometimes bad things happen for no reason. And also that looking at factual information – especially independently reviewed factual information – is infinitely more sensible that leaping to emotional and incorrect conclusions.