Four

For a change, something cool I found while reading Jeremy Zawdony's blog a while back.

Basically you give four answers to things which'll (maybe?) provide people with some insight into how you work/think/relax.

Four jobs I've had in my life:
Newspaper sub/layout/designer
Journ dept lackey
Event management
Barman

Four movies I can watch over and over:
Finding Forrester
Training Day
Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas
Ronin

Four TV shows I love to watch:
Prison Break
Six Feet Under
The OC
One Tree Hill

Four of my favourite songs at the moment:
Move along – All American Rejects
Pharell Williams ft Gwen Stefani – Can I have it like that
Jamie Foxx ft Kanye West – Extravaganza
T-Pain – In love with a stripper

Four places I've been on vacation:
South Coast
Jeffrey’s Bay
Sun City
Cape Town

Four of my favorite dishes:
Pizza
Lasagne
Steak and chips
Macaroni cheese

Four websites I visit daily:
John Battelle’s weblog
The Huffington Post
Paid Content
Moneyweb.co.za (I work there, c’mon!)

Four places I would rather be right now:
Mexico
At home watching TV
The Netherlands
UK (I wanna see what all the fuss is about)

On a totally unrelated tangent, I’ve been meaning to blog about 'Syriana' since LAST Monday. And that damn public holiday just messed up most of my plans for this week. Should finish a post later tonight about that movie and 'V for Vendetta' which I saw on Saturday. Hold thumbs...

There are no words...

It was about more than just a win...
I searched Technorati last night for "South Africa Australia cricket" and there were already quite a few blog posts up about how we gave the Aussies stick.
The thing though was that, over and above beating our arch nemisis, these kind of victories give our whole country a boost.
One of the Sabc commentators said that the atmosphere at the Bullring was like a 'World Cup final'. Yesterday we spoke in the office about this being like the 1995 Rugby World Cup. A very unexpected thing happened after the game. Cars and taxis were hooting like crazy and at the intersection outside our building, cars stopped at the robot, people jumped out running and waving flags. There were taxis full of people cheering, complete strangers were high-fiving each other. 1995, indeed.
Looking at the crowd at the match during the part that I got to see and on the highlights last night, I couldn't help getting that clichéd warm and fuzzy feeling. There was an entire nation (a representative nation) watching that match, cheering us on.
And we needed this. We've got a power 'crisis' in the Cape. Jacob Zuma and his army of blind followers have been causing chaos in the centre of Joburg. Today marks the start of a huge Transnet strike which is going to dent our economy. Three of our five teams in the Super 14 are playing like kak.
But, for one day, just for one day we got to forget about all of that. We got to forget about the potholes in the roads. We got to forget about the fact that Cape Town still doesn't have a mayor. And that the ANC still hasn't told us who most of the country's mayors are going to be.

There is statisical evidence that our success on the sports field affects the confindence in our country, and consequently our economy. Witness 1995. Witness when we won the 2010 World Cup bid. I really hope this lasts...

As an aside, its been ages since we've seen SA not choke at the death - in fact, the last time was probably back in Hansie and Kepler's days. And Boucher proved yesterday that we don't have to mess up under pressure. And how cool was it to see my man Roger playing like a champ again?

Chuck's back... not that he ever went away

You know its a slow news day when the Washington Post writes a story about Chuck Norris facts...

At the moment, the 65-year-old martial-arts master is the object of a kind of sardonic cult veneration. Conan O'Brien, on his late-night show, has been airing vintage "Walker" clips for months. CollegeHumor, a Web site popular among the dorm set, regularly links to all things Norris on the Internet (recent entry: a rare photo of Norris sans beard). Norris popped up in a cameo in "Dodgeball" two summers ago, and in a two-hour "Walker" movie in October, which drew respectable ratings. Most intriguing, and certainly most amusing, has been the grass-fire spread of Chuck Norris "facts," a series of Paul Bunyanesque exaggerations riffing on (and amplifying) the Legend of Chuck.

This is some awesome shit...

Why can't The Star write about stuff like this? Oh yeah... wait cause its a kak newspaper

Tough Love: Norris Fans Board the Chuck Wagon (WPost)

A question or thirteen

Why is Backstage still on tv?
Why is 5fm planning to ruin my morning with Gareth Cliff on breakfast?
Why do I see at least one accident on the way to work every day?
Why didn’t we get DStv sooner?
Why has SL Magazine gone to shit?
Why is Rhodes launching an alumni magazine?
Why are 99% of radio shows formulaic and boring?
Why didn’t I discover Ricky Gervais sooner?
Why do people drive four blocks from their offices to the mall at lunch?
Why are they cleaning our building’s windows for the second time in a month when they hadn’t cleaned them for four months prior to that?
Why have all Isidingo’s writers seemingly started taking crack?
Why can’t someone in SA launch a decent legal online music service (Musica downloads suck!)?

Why don’t I blog more often?

A quick list

Thank you e.tv for having enough sense to buy Six Feet Under and also for having the conviction to continue serving it up for us, even if ratings (most probably) aren't that high. It really is gratifying to watch something once a week that actually really really makes you think, unlike some of the reality tv crap that's managed to find its way on to our tvs (think Strictly come dancing).
Thank you HBO for making a series so unconventional, yet so utterly brilliant. So much so that I think I need to start amassing the dvd box sets.
Thank you Ricky Gervais for making me laugh as much as you did when i listened to your final guardian podcast last night. Still not sure whether i'm going to dole out R50 four every four episodes of season two... mmmm....
Thank you to whoever started that silly 75 questions ms word email forward thing. Been very interesting to see the responses.
Thank you Fresh, Thato and Mpho for playing awesome music and for making me laugh in the mornings... even if it is only for 26 more days :(
Thank you FNB for my credit card. Makes life sooooo much easier.
Thank you Amazon UK for sending me Freakonomics when I asked for it. One hundred bloody rand cheaper than Exclusive Books.
Thank you Opera for designing Opera Mini so that I can browse the net and check mail on my phone... very cool. Screw you Motorola-piece-of-kak-proprietary-broswer!
Thank you salami from killarney, whoever the hell you are - splattermail cracks me up.
Thank you to The Killers for making the most amazingly awesome album ever.

Just some random thoughts that came to me while I was eating lunch... pretty tempted to do a sarcastic one now... just a thought. may use it. may not.

What made my day today: Windscreen-washer man Godfrey at the Glenhove offramp. No matter how crap I'm feeling (not that I was felling kak today), he manages to make me smile.

Now listening to: A colleague talking to someone on the phone about something or other...