the corner office

SABC2 is airing old Pieter-Dirk Uys satires on Thursday nights. Tonight was Beyond The Rubicon. Some of this stuff is incredibly cheesy 18 years later, but some of his lines and impersonations are still rapid-fire brilliant. I remember some of the punch lines from the first time I saw them.

Looking back, I'm taken by how many of those old politicians are so removed from our mindshare, that in good time we'll laugh at the impersonations but have no memory of the originals to put them in context. When last did anyone see Piet Koornhof and his wingnut ears on telly? PW Botha and the wagging finger? Even FW De Klerk seemingly got his first TV outing in ages, to offer a sound bite about yesterday's elections. I think Pieter-Dirk would do well to include old news footage of the main protagonists, to keep these people in context.

Perhaps you just had to be there :-)

More to the point though, when will local artists start releasing their stuff on DVD instead of boring old VHS? I'd love to get some of these classics but I don't even own a VCR anymore.

It's done. I feel all democratic and stuff. Ronwen & I were planning to pop into Northcliff Primary School to vote at 9, but that turned into 11 (it is a public holiday, after all ;-). Thankfully the queues weren't too bad and once again, as we were leaving, the queues were starting to lengthen, so our timing was impeccable.

Not without a hitch though. When we registered in November, a barcoded confirmation sticker with our ID numbers was stuck into our ID books. Let me restate that: a computer-generated, ID-number-aware bar-coded sticker, to confirm that we had registered at the Northcliff voting station. Were Ronwen & I on the voter's roll today? Noooo. We (along with a good few others) had to re-register, but at least we got to vote. One of the voting officials sheepishly said "hmm, I guess they didn't capture your details". If that were a paperised process I could understand, but in this case the system was at least partly computerised, dammit. Did someone accidentally sit on the floppy disk afterwards?

Anyway. Concerned onlookers will be pleased to know that we won't be havin' no Supreme-Court-electing-the-president fiascos here. We make our mark literally, with a big bloody cross, which while primitive, is so far removed from the world of dangling chad confusion that you have to wonder whether progress really is worth it. An interesting point about our ballots, is that each party is represented in 3 ways: the name of the party, the party logo, and a thumbnail photo of the party's leader. Why? This has been a tradition since the 1994 elections, and as I understand, the faces are included because so many South Africans are still illiterate, and faces and logos are the only way they can identify their party.

Something which has changed since '94 is how you're marked to say you've voted. Back in '94 you got your fingers swabbed with an invisible UV ink to make sure that you didn't try to vote twice. Nowadays they have special ink pens (are they, or are they just white-labelled Koki pens? ;-) and the election officials make a dot across your left thumbnail, cuticle and skin. I presume this is cheaper than the UV ink and equipment and there's less hassle than with UV lights, batteries, power outlet problems in rural areas, yadda yadda.

I suppose the other upside is that having done your bit for your country, you can at least wear your little ink dot with pride :-)

Just finished reading Hard Drive - Bill Gates and the Making of the Microsoft Empire. Good book about the man whose "personal wealth is estimated at $6.5 billion."

Yep, a 1993 Microsoft biography. I picked it up last weekend at a second-hand bookstore. At first I put it back on the shelf, thinking 'nah, too old'. But I figured that 450 pages dealing with the first 20 years of Microsoft's history is bound to more interesting than 450 pages dealing with 30 years of Microsoft's history, especially when I know about the last 10 years having lived through them :-). A really good read. No punches are held when it comes to describing Gates and his less-than-charming personal hygeine habits, etc, and a fairly balanced but unforgiving look at the allegations of the dodgy dealings and mindset that got MS where it was.

The one thing that really stands out, as one reads of how MS focused on hiring "the best of the best" and Bill Gates and his lieutenants being hyper-intelligent people, is how they just kept churning out such crap software. They devoted millions and millions of dollars, and had the country's best programmers working absolutely ridiculous hours for months and years on end on various projects, and never quite seemed to come up with the really magical stuff that other software companies came up with. Food for thought.

I dropped Ronwen at the airport this afternoon - she's in Durbs for the weekend to spend some quality time with the nephew. This leaves me free for another wild and whacky weekend of work and studies (and perhaps a bit of house-cleaning).

Kinda lonely at home. The usual crap programs are on TV, and as I'm sitting here working with locally produced shite like The Res in the background, I'm still letting loose my usual stream of OTT ad lib comments, but there's noone to tell me to stop it. Where's the fun in that?

*sigh*

Just me, my new Black Sabbath CD, and the long, lonely drive to Linden to drop off my assignment. Well, it would've been lonely but for the stupid auntie who shot a red robot along Pendoring and almost took me out. And Ronwen wonders why I always slow down for green lights. I've lived in Joburg for too long, that's why.

Autumn is upon us. Windy as can be, blowing dry leaves and litter up and down the roads. Right now, I'm craving a cigarette or chocolate. I could do with both, dammit. Instead, I shall settle for tea & email, before trying to squeeze in a decent night's sleep. For a change.

Grot.ty is how I feel this morning. A head cold/flu thing took up residence last night, and I'm not enjoying it one bit. Least of all 'cause I'm trying to forcefeed matrix algebra and trigonometry that I haven't looked at in 3 years, into my brain for a graphics assignment that's due today. Oh, and I need to hurry it all up and get back to work to meet a deadline or two that are looming later this week.

Regular cheerful programming will commence sometime soon.

After my post from last week, the issue of who's a terrorist and who's not is a sensitive issue in ZA this week:

Amnesty panel chairperson Judge Ronnie Pillay intervened, saying not everyone in South Africa agreed on the definition of "terrorist".

"It is a sensitive aspect," he told Nieuwoudt. "Perhaps we can use another word to describe the person that you describe as a terrorist."

Semantics in the hot seat in Motherwell case .

One day I'll learn not to make impulse purchases at CD shops, and research things a bit first.

There's a version of The Lansdowne Tapes, released in 1993, a copy of which I now proudly own.

In 2002, a 2-CD remastered version was released. A copy of which I'd far prefer to be owning.

Hmph.

We popped into Cresta today and I came home with a heap of CDs. My plan was just to pick up a copy of 'Original 20', which is a 2000-copy limited edition New Model Army compilation released only in ZA to commemorate their tour. I'm now proud owner of #1395.

Back in '99 I had almost everything of theirs I could get my paws on, up to their "Strange Brotherhood" album. I didn't really enjoy Strange Brotherhood and over the past couple of years I've played their old stuff to death but not paid attention to their new releases. Needless to say, last week's concert prodded me into taking a renewed interest, and by the time I left Look & Listen today, I'd also added studio album "Eight", live album "...& Nobody Else" and rarities and B-sides compilation "Lost Songs" to my collection. Wicked.

I also picked up Queens of the Stone Age "Songs for the Deaf" (QOTS are great, although I still prefer Kyuss), Black Sabbath "Black Sabbath", and obscurest of all: Uriah Heep's "The Lansdowne Tapes". This is a collection of songs from their pre-UH days as Spice, and a chunk of unreleased and alternate versions of early UH tracks. Brilliant stuff.

What's a real mindbender, is just how incestuous the British music scene must've been in the late 60s. The Lansdowne Tapes has rather an extensive bio of the members and group up to and during their first few albums, and the list of groups and artists related to UH one way or the other is ridiculous. The list of bands with members who've played in Uriah Heep or with Uriah Heep members in other bands, includes The Nice, Steeleye Span, John Mayall, the Rolling Stones (yeah, Mick Taylor), Greg Lake - King Crimson and ELP, Jethro Tull, Elton John's band and Supertramp. Have you ever!

We were out for dinner last night. Not content with allowing us to go out and have a nice time and come home and blissfully pass out, the universe conspired to Complicate Things. We got home and noticed that the neighbour's cat was kipping under Ronwen's Golf. "Hope it's not dead" jokes Ronwen. "Ha ha, I'll check", laughs I. I hop out planning to pet & play with the cute blighter while Ronwen heads off to park the Volvo. By the time she gets back, it has become quite apparent to me that this cat is, unfortunately, an ex-cat. We decided that it would be best dealt with in the morning, secretly hoping that it would miraculously cash in one of its Nine Life Coupons, wake up and prove us wrong.

No such luck. Neighbours are a bit cut up about it this morning when Ronwen told 'em, by which time rigor mortis had set in and it was looking a lot less peaceful than it had last night. Aaaanyway...