Category: that’s a bit mad

Dollar Dollar bills, y’all

Posted on

Well, more like “Rand Rand banknoot, almal”, but still.

Inflation being what it is, and the economy being what it is, people are always on the lookout for ways to earn a bit of extra cash. Especially in South Africa.

Thankfully, I’ve seen a couple of adverts for sure-fire money-making schemes, firstly in Cape Town:

Where son of iconic British TV character, Claude Jeremiah Greengrass…

…is clearly raking it in.

And then in local economic powerhouse Johannesbeagle:

…which you can tell is the place with all the money because they apparently have R2200 bank notes up there. With a disapproving Celtic spinster from the 1910s on them.

They’re such trendsetters in Gauteng.

Having clicked through (only on the Cape Town one, obviously – I’m not about to fall for a dodgy image like the Joburg one clearly is), I can say that the initiation of the process of “earning this way” has been flawless so far.

All I’ve had to do is send off R1500 to an unknown bank account, and they’ll get back to me with all the details. Then I sit back in my car, put on about – checks image again – about 50kg (or maybe more) and grow a grey beard, and Bob is my rich uncle.

I’ll keep you informed of how things are going – probably from my yacht or something.

Fake courtesy

Posted on

No-one ever reads the bits at the beginning and end of your emails. And yet, if you don’t include them, suddenly the whole thing suddenly sounds a bit rude and impersonal. That’s because email conventions have led to us expecting to see alleged “courtesy”, even when we don’t acknowledge it because everyone is absolutely aware that it’s only ever included for etiquette purposes.

If only there were a way of saving valuable time on the completely unnecessary – and yet also absolutely necessary – fake courtesy.

Hang on a second!

Brilliant. And I really love the fact that it occasionally makes a typo as well. It makes it seem all the more human, when it patently – isn’t.

An excellent analogue for the actual line which it is typing.

And there are many more excellent things to be seen on Amadeo Capelli’s Instagram account and Youtube channel.

It’s all gone a bit Eskom

Posted on

I was trying to top up with electricity this afternoon. Most of South Africa operates on pre-paid meters, and so it’s very easy to buy units from shops, but it’s even easier to buy it online from your banking app.

Except when it’s not.

Because, shockingly (no pun intended): electricity is unavailable.

At least, it’s “currently unavailable”, lol (no pun intended).

To be fair, we haven’t had any loadshedding for a while now. It’s been over 200 days. And, while we were rightfully rather grumpy with Eskom about the whole loadshedding thing, which cost the country billions and billions of Rands and was awful, dangerous (and occasionally a bit frightening) to live through, we should tip our hats to the people in charge (no pun intended) who have done what needed to be done to fix the problems.

Now all they need to do is talk to my bank about sorting out their “Electricity – unavailable” issue.

Thank goodness the solar has been working hard all day, so we’ll be fine for the night.

Talking of which – we were even pulling in 2W from the moonlight at midnight over the weekend:

Because of course moonlight is just reflected sunlight.

Which makes you wonder how vampires wander around with impunity on cloudless nights.

Another 74 horror movies ruined, just like that.

If you never try, you’ll never know…

Posted on

Indeed:

The mantra “If you never try, you will never know” captures the spirit of exploration, growth, and fulfilment. It encourages us to “break free from the shackles of fear”, step into the unknown, and embrace the opportunities that await.

Wow. They make it sound so adventurous, don’t they?
And yes, all of what you read there is absolutely correct, of course.

But it’s also a little disingenuous, because there’s a whole other side to it that isn’t mentioned above.

Take for example my day today. I did a lot of mundane stuff which I have done many times before, and so to which the mantra in the title doesn’t apply.
I’ve already tried it – previously and often – and I am fully aware of the implications and experiences thereof.

One of my jobs was cleaning the oven (I told you it was mundane), and the issue with cleaning the oven is the lingering smell of oven cleaner. And so I left the oven door open and the fan on to air the oven out.

I’ve done that before as well.

I went walking barefoot into the kitchen maybe an hour later (still nothing new), just as a bird flew across the back windows. Probably just a Cape Turtle Dove, but in the bright sunshine outside, the sudden movement really caught my eye.
What I hadn’t previously tried was going around the right hand corner, while looking over to the left, and allowing my right lateral cuneiform bone to come into sudden and somewhat forceful contact with the glass and metal corner of the oven door – folded down handily at lateral cuneiform bone height.

Sweet baby Jesus.

It was like a scene from Tom and Jerry, but with fewer domestic mammals. There were stars and bluebirds circling around my head as my involuntary nervous system hastily adjusted blood flow and balance mechanisms to keep me from falling over.

I – probably wisely – decided to pre-empt any fainting spell as the tunnel vision closed in and, after a controlled descent – had a little sit down on the kitchen floor and tried not to vomit.

Look. This was much earlier in the afternoon. I’m ok now. I mean, my foot is pretty purple, I can’t really walk and I’m in a decent amount of pain, but it seems that I actually survived that acute phase of injury and I have high hopes that I’ll be fine in a few weeks.

But would I advise you to “break free from the shackles of fear”, and smash your right foot into an oven door?

No. No, I would not.

I have tried that so that you will never have to know.

Thank me later.

Roll

Posted on

This is equal parts dull and mesmerising. It’s a guy rolling a tyre down a hill, which is ostensibly very boring, but weirdly, you get drawn into the video and you want to travel with the tyre, down the mountain. Where will it go? Who will it meet? Will it survive?

Amazing scenery, great drone work, appropriate music, and a story that ends all too abruptly.