In case you’ve never encountered this.
I’m told by a friend-of-a-friend on FB that: “Apparently a member of a-ha went there (cant remember why) and took a CD. Within three days the group came up with this arrangement. They had no sheet music or anything other than the CD to work off.”

Obviously, I haven’t encountered this. If I had encountered this, it would have been all over the blog the day that I encountered  it. Just like it is today, which is the first day I have encountered it.

Brilliant. It’s on accordions, it’s in North Korea, there’s an austere painting and some fake sunflowers behind them and the guy on the right (as we’re looking) can’t stop swaying. And then it ends, abruptly. And there’s no applause.

In my mind, there can be no better example of an 1980′s hit played by a quintet on instruments of the bellows-driven, free-reed aerophone family in a politically-closed Asian country. And I’ve seen a few: who could forget that cover of Club Tropicana, played on pitch pipes by that 5-piece from Myanmar, for example?

What I can’t understand is why it only has 5,000 views in the three days that it has been on YouTube. This has every single element of  the perfect viral video: we’re obviously just in the incubation phase right now. All of us now have the duty to spread the disease as widely as possible. Admit it, another piece of your life’s jigsaw clicked into place the moment you watched this – what gives you the right to deny others that experience? Who made you god?

Go – click the share button. Spread the wealth.

Thanks Jacques

UPDATE: (via @ColinMac7 on twitter) 

alas, not every Norwegian is a member of AHA, and there has been more than a million YT hits tinyurl.com/73yfjuh

So it’s a Morten Traavik (and not Morten Harket) that took the CD to North Korea. And there’s the full story (and an epic photo of him) on the BBC page via that link.

As you might expect, many Mail Online readers didn’t take kindly to a report that strived to paint them as simplistic, terrified dimwits. Many leapt from the tyres they were swinging in to furrow their brows and howl in anger. Others, tragically, began tapping rudimentary responses into the comments box. Which is where the tragi-fun really began.

I’m not going to reproduce the whole column here – that’s what that first link is there for – but suffice to say that while it’s funny, it stops disappointingly short of where it could have gone. There’s so much fodder there for your perusal and enjoyment. Please feel free to share your favourite moments from the comments section there in… er… the comments section here.

For the record, we have no evidence that the results of this “controversial” Canadian study are correct.
Well, apart from this, obviously.

And so it was I moved to SA and struggled to settle, despite the best laid plans of Mrs 6k, her friends and family and the dear, dear Department of Home Affairs who made it abundantly clear that they would love me to hang around as long as I kept filling in forms and handing over money.
One of the things that made life a whole lot easier was joining up with The Firm. Now, this isn’t some scary Tom Cruise film whereby your company takes over your life, this is a football team. Because there’s nothing better than social football to get you meeting nice people, getting some exercise, drinking some beers and kicking seven bells of crap out of the oppostion on a Tuesday evening.

The Firm is often labelled as The Best Idea Larry Ever Had™, Larry being the guy in charge who had the idea of converting a group of Fantasy Footballists into a crack squad of 7-a-side footballers. The mix is just right: a hint of youth, a tablespoon of experience and a dash of competitiveness, all topped off with a dreamy helping of enjoyment.
We play every week; most we win, some we lose – occasionally we’ll bring home a trophy for our troubles. It’s perfection.

But then, if The Firm was The Best Idea Larry Ever Had™, the idea that Larry had on Sunday was probably The Worst Idea Larry Ever Had™. The plan, as usual, was to have a bit of a run out on a Sunday morning down at the Greek club. And hour of 5 on 5, whites vs coloureds (Shirts, people. Shirts) ahead of spending the rest of the day with family, on the beach or flopped on the couch in front of some Premier League action. But there was no slot free at the Greek club that morning until 11. And it was when Larry was told this that Larry had The Worst Idea Larry Ever Had™.

Cool. We’ll take it!

Holy crap. What a mistake.

Pulling into the car park at ten to, I noted that it was 36°C on my car’s thermometer. In the shade.
As I stepped out of my airconditioned comfort out into the Green Point sunshine, I was met by a wall of thick, still, hot air.
Some sort of sense of self-preservation should probably have kicked in here. But it didn’t. And so, armed only with several litres of cold water and a willingness to kick some balls, we headed out into the heat of the almost midday full sun.

It was horrible. One of the worst footballing experiences of my life. Within 2 minutes of running around, I was gasping, drenched through with sweat and feeling dizzy and nauseous. These, even by Cape Town standards, were extreme conditions. The ball wasn’t even flying through the air properly. I felt truly awful.
Some sort of sense of self-preservation should probably have kicked in here. But it didn’t. And so, with a couple of breaks, we continued to toil for an hour. What utter, utter idiots.

It killed us. I have heard no positive comment come out of the camp since the game finished. In fact, as one of the other protagonists pointed out last night – I’ve heard very little from anyone. He and I may indeed be the only survivors.
It literally took me two hours to cool down when I got home. Yesterday afternoon, I vomited twice, drank a case full of energy drinks and took a whole packet of Imodium and I’m still completely broken. I’m left frantically looking for some sort of Reset button for my body. Does anyone have the instruction manual, please?

Thing is, I’ve learned nothing from this experience. When the shout comes for next Sunday’s game, I won’t consider the weather forecast. I’ll be there and I’ll probably almost kill myself again.

So there you have it. If you’re looking to try and settle down in a foreign country, join a social football team and see if you can completely destroy your body on a hot Sunday lunchtime.

You’re welcome.

Just for the record, I have never asked either of my kids this. The answer would probably be too depressing or would put me (and them) in a very dangerous situation at home.

Safety first…

But I struggled to get my head around this particular bunch of facts about Neutron Stars, which I happened across.
As you do.

A neutron star is so dense that one teaspoon (5 millilitres) of its material would have a mass over 5.5×10¹² kg, (5 500 000 000 000 kg) about 900 times the mass of the Great Pyramid of Giza.
The resulting force of gravity is so strong that if an object were to fall from a height of one meter it would only take one microsecond (0.00001 s) to hit the surface of the neutron star, and would do so at around 2000 kilometers per second, or 7.2 million kilometers per hour (7 200 000 kph).

Always handy to have masses measured in Great Pyramids of Giza, I find.

“Hey – I have’t seen you in weeks! Wow – have you lost weight?”
“Why yes. I’ve exercising more and eating less and I’ve lost about 0.000000001636 Great Pyramids of Giza. I feel great.”

Anyway, to put that into perspective, here on earth 5 ml of water weighs 0.005 kg and an object falling from 1m would take about 0.1 sec to hit the floor and would do so at 35kph. Which you really should survive, depending on your landing position.
Personally, I’d feel less confident about coming out of a collision with the floor at 7.2 million kph unscathed.

Consider yourselves educated.

It’s a pleasure.

“This decision will make so many people happy,” stated event director Tyrone Perfect. “Horses are such sweaty, smelly animals and don’t fit well with our vision for the Met of the future. Last year, there was almost an incident when the bold colours and abstract shapes of a rather avant garde – but totally fabulous outfit – scared one of the animals in the parade ring. I mean, thank heavens that no-one was injured, but we felt that it was a sign that haute couture and horses simply don’t mix. One of them simply had to go, and there’s simply no way that we could lose the fabulous fashion, darling. Simply no way.”

Indeed, when we surveyed prospective guests, the decision seemed to be popular. “It’s a good idea. No-one watches the racing. And it’ll mean more time and space for getting drunk and leering at drunk girls in short dresses,” said failed student Aaron Castlelite, while Met veteran Edith Cougar agreed: “Back when I first went to the Met in the 50s, we used to marvel the power and the muscle of those magnificent beasts, but since they let the native men in, there’s so much more to enjoy than the horses.”

Betting manager Roy Cash had only been made aware of the decision earlier in the day and was yet to hear of exactly it would affect his staff. “Obviously, I want to protect the livelihood of my business and the jobs of my workers and although I’ve seen nothing on paper yet,  Tyrone has told me that instead of betting at the Met, once the horses have gone, the plan is to just get the punters to give us a few hundred Rand each – cut out the middle man, as it were. That way, we can guarantee our profits and remove the ongoing problem of smug bastards who get lucky and then claim that they actually knew what they were doing.”

Perfect was anxious to promote the advantages of the proposed changes: “The Met is all simply about breaking down barriers and that’s literally what we’ll be doing in 2014 – taking down those ugly white railings for good. We’ll have more space for more people and more marquees with arrogant bar staff serving overpriced cocktails and we can also expand on our competitions like Best Dressed Man, Best Dressed Woman, Best Dressed Couple, Best Dressed Group and Best Dressed Event Director. Hello!
Oh and also, we’re going to pilot a project this year where we try and find someone who actually paid for a Met entry ticket and then we’re going to put them on stage and openly ridicule them. Believe me, it will be simply fabulous.”

The 2012 J&B Met is on at Kenilworth Racecourse this Saturday 28th January.

Just occasionally, I check to see what serach terms have been used to find 6000 miles… over the last few weeks. They’re usually pretty obvious – this time there was a lot of stuff about load-shedding, that concert “next year”, the inevitable weeing on your bougainvillea and, as ever, some queries on who will be playing at Kirstenbosch this Sunday (it’s Zahara (TBC) with Claire Phillips, by the way).

And then, amongst all the one and two-word search terms, this:

lovely idea, to get out of this stupid, fairtrade, brown-stained, mandelson-skewed, equal-opportunities, multicultural, carbon-neutral, trendily left, regionally assembled, big-government, trilingual, mosque-drenched, all-the-pigs-are-equal, property-is-theft hellhole and set up shop somewhere

It sounds like some sort of Jeremy Clarkson diatribe that he’ll get into trouble for.

And then I remembered, that’s because it is and he did.

Let’s allow Jacques Rousseau at Synapses.co.za to explain for those who have a mental age below 5, shall we?

It simply highlights the fact that some people would look twice at an inter-racial couple, and reminds viewers of the poster that in the ideal DASO future, this wouldn’t happen.

While it has certainly got (some of) South Africa talking, as I said, the chatter is all rather depressing and I really don’t feel like joining in.
Fortunately, an amusing internet meme (which I am happy to propagate) appears to have risen from this general nonsense and added some amusement to the otherwise miserable proceedings:

Click images to upsize your viewing experience.

UPDATE: Oh – and Jacques sums it up just perfectly here:

What this sort of thing goes to show is that if you want to find a problem, you’ll do so – regardless of the intellectual contortions necessary.

Yep.

UPDATE 2: A point proven by this from the CDP’s Theunis Botha:

In a country with high levels of Aids and an overdose of crime, especially the high incidence of farm murders this year, this poster sends the opposite message to the country than needed.

Yes, when a white man hugs a black woman, farm murders happen. And God kills a kitten.

]]> http://6000.co.za/not-looking-twice/feed/ 2 http://6000.co.za/poor-choice/ http://6000.co.za/poor-choice/#comments Tue, 17 Jan 2012 18:45:44 +0000 6000 http://6000.co.za/?p=7742 Back in December when we arranged the repairs to the pool and the pool area, the weather was pretty rubbish in Cape Town.
But we couldn’t have foreseen that we’d choose to have it done during the hottest week in living memory.

It’s a job that has to be done during the summer months, because the lower water table in the drier seasons lessens the risk of your pool literally popping out of the ground. (On first hearing about this possible phenomenon, I was desperate to see it happen – then I saw how much it was going to cost me if it did.)
But the summer months have weeks that are in the mid-20s, which would have been fine. Right now, in an effort to get any sort of comfort, I’m writing this from next door’s pond.

While there’s plenty of evidence out there suggesting that James may be a fraud when it comes to his claims of canine control, I fail to see how following his recipe for a Raw Fennel & Almond Salad could possibly harm you (as long as you thoroughly wash all the ingredients first). I’d therefore like to suggest to James that he gives up on the dog stuff and instead concentrates on delivering us instructions for making tasty meat-free dishes. That way, no-one gets hurt.
Least of all a two year old girl playing on what should have been a dog free beach.

James Lech has been fined R1,500 for taking his dogs onto the beach that day, and a charge has been laid against him by the parents of the little girl involved. But James was still out and about on Saturday on that “Pack Walk” we mentioned in that last post. Let’s just be thankful that apparently this time there were no toddlers around to “witness the POWER of the PACK”.

James has promised us a public statement about the Clifton incident:

A public statement and interviews shall be available regarding the facts and comments concerning the incident. Currently documentation is being compiled with our advisors and should be ready within the week.

Hmm. How many lawyers does it take to spell “I’m sorry”?

We’ll share James’ public statement “and interviews” (?!?) when it’s released. And I can’t wait to hear his version of “the facts” on this attack. After all – the last time one of his dogs attacked a young girl, it seemed that his version of “the facts” didn’t quite match the CCTV version of “the facts”.

I saw the child running, coming around the right of my table, jumping over the dog while he was lying down and resting and accidentally stepping on it at the same time.

When told that the video footage showed otherwise, Lech responded:

I saw it with periphery vision because my head is tilted, correct.

This strange periphery vision may also account for James missing the “No Dogs” sign on Clifton Beach and also his not putting a disclaimer on his site stating that he is NOT endorsed by the “World’s Number One Dog Whisperer”, Cesar Millan, despite clearly being instructed to do so.

The good news is that fennel is reputed by many (including Chief Prawn Lance Armstrong) to contain many nutrients that may promote healthy eyes and good vision.

So like I suggested above, James: Less dogs, more salads.
Please. For the safety of all our children.