It’s the most wonderful time of the year

Hello again.

I really wasn’t even going to mention this, but it seems that I am duty bound to by the many (two) regular readers who have registered this blog into the 2012 SA Blog Awards.

What I am not going to do is beg for votes as some classless individuals have already been doing on twitter. Do you really think Gareth Cliff gives a flying flip about your blog? He certainly doesn’t give a toss about mine, although 5fm management did memorably have a few words to say back in February.

SA Blog Awards Badge

Click the badge above (or click here) and follow the instructions if you want to vote for 6000 miles... in the 2012 SA Blog Awards. Voting is open from the 19th until (2359 on) the 28th of December 2012.

Arrivals

Much to the kids’ excitement – and after several months of near breathless anticipation – Grandma & Granddad have arrived in Cape Town. They brought Pot Noodles and mushy peas with them, which is always a bonus.

The neighbours are also delighted to welcome my folks to the Mother City: they’re celebrating their arrival by repeatedly blasting out the theme to The Full Monty – a film set, as many of you will recall, in Sheffield. I’m not actually sure if it’s a party going on or just a drunk woman sitting alone dreaming about stripping steelworkers.

Either way, the 26 hour journey door-to-door has hopefully tired my parents out sufficiently to sleep through the continuing insistence that Errol Brown believes in miracles.

Where you from, you sexy thing?

Zeitgeist

Well done, South Africa.
The Google Zeitgeist results have been released, detailing exactly what the world was looking for in the 1.2 trillion searches done throughout 2012 and the good news is that you can narrow it down and see exactly what those people who walk amongst us were looking up this year.

You can see the full results for South Africa here, but have a few highlights courtesy of me:

The most searched image was “Lady Gaga”.
The most searched TV programme was “American Idol”.
The most searched person was “Whitney Houston”.
The most searched “How to” term, was “How to kiss”.

Can you say “Shallow”? (Although I have to say that it’s not really much better globally speaking).
And then, just in case you were wondering if things could get any worse, the most searched term overall was “OLX”.

OLX.co.za is a local online classifieds site. And that doesn’t seem so bad as your top searched term until you actually look at what it is you are searching for: “OLX”.

Why on earth would you need to search for “OLX”?

Were you perhaps struggling over the spelling of the company name? Because that spelling would be “O-L-X”, pretty much exactly what you just typed into Google.
Google is hugely useful to find shortcuts and information on a huge range of subjects. However, searching for “OLX” on Google actually just adds an extra and wholly unnecessary step to your web experience. For me, it’s just another sad reminder that people have actually stopped thinking altogether and will just autonomously Google anything rather than actually working it out for themselves.

Oh dear.

Well done, South Africa. Well done.

It’s the end of the world as we know it

And I feel fine.

Robert Sefatsa of Soweto feels rather differently though:

T he Constitutional Court has received an “extremely urgent court application” for the appointment of an “investigative task team” to prepare for the end of the world on December 21, according to a report on Wednesday.

Robert Sefatsa, 38, a Soweto resident, also stated in papers handed in at court that the government needed to form a new department to prepare for judgement day next Friday, Beeld reported.

He suggested that the new state department should be called the “department of paranormal and esoteric sciences”.

Sebatsa pointed out that according to the Mayan calendar, judgement day would be on December 21, and it was therefore a matter of extreme urgency that South Africa and other countries make their preparations for the apocalypse.

A commission of inquiry should include geologists, statisticians, astronomists, economists and extra-terrestrial technologists, and should be competent to cope with evacuation procedures, sea and air logistics, and resettlement, he said.

Seriously, Robert? What’s the point of all this expense if the world is going to end next Friday. Then again, I suppose there’s no point in saving any money if the world is going to end next Friday. And if the world is really going to end next Friday, where exactly are you planning to evacuate to and resettle in?

In other news, the rest of the world has known about this whole Mayan Calendar nonsense for years and years now. Has news of our impending doom really only just reached Soweto? Perhaps the most laughable thing about this application is that he expects the Government to actually do something inside a nine day timeframe.

Of course, Mr Sebatsa, as a South African citizen and taxpayer, is completely within his rights to make this court application. Just as the Constitutional Court is completely within their rights to throw it out and then pop down to the Mystic Boer to laugh it off over a few brandies.

However, this is South Africa, and thus I fully expect to be blogging tomorrow about the new DPES which is hastily being set up in Pretoria.

Classy Lancastrian After Dinner Party Treat

This was just emailed to me. I’m not sure if it was off some Lancastrian pinterest board or other, but it’s proof that there’s nothing that you can do to properly domesticate people from that side of the Pennines.

Frankly, I’m amazed that a Lancastrian even knows what a “dinner party” is. But I’m guessing that Gemma is just using a posh term for some people eating tripe together.

To be honest, if I felt that I was so broke that I had to resort to frozen Aquafresh as an alternative to after dinner mints, I’d probably just not invite anyone around. Jesus, can you even imagine how bad the rest of the meal must have been?

“Yes love, we went to Gemma’s ‘ovel. We ‘ad some twigs for starters, tripe fer main course, some lovely muddy water fer afters and then she topped t’evening off with some wonderful frozen toothpaste.”

 However if, for some utterly bizarre reason, you think that this is a good idea:

a) Stop reading this blog and get away from me. And everyone else. And,
b) Please remember the dangers of fluoride toxicity and don’t eat too many of these “cool” “tasty treats”.