Further to the discussion

Wow blog discussions are fun, for full background to this post check out moonflake’s blog. Just to clarify: I’m not attacking moonflake, only her position. ;)

I don’t think I’ve got much to hide, and if that was the only factor influencing me here I’d say, sure go ahead check my ID, arrest me if there’s a warrant out for my arrest. The problem is that I don’t trust the police! Do you?

I’m not just talking about honesty here, corruption is a serious flaw in our police force but I doubt that would really affect me on a personal level. I’m also talking about the ability to make a reasonable and rational decision. Let face it, being a cop is not the best job in the country, and for that reason it doesn’t attract the best candidates. Sure the odd police man does his job because he loves keeping people safe and shit, but most of them get the job because the only entry qualification is a std 8 certificate. Honestly, considering what the job entails, who’s want to be a cop? Long hours, extreme danger, very little pay and almost no respect: sounds like a winner to me, not! It’s kinda like that book ‘catch 22′ where bombing missions were so dangerous that nobody wanted to do them, but the only way to avoid bombing missions was to be declared insane, unfortunately the only way to be declared insane was to volunteer for bombing missions!

My experiences with the police have not been altogether pleasant. Now if I was a Cape Flats drug dealer or something that would be expected but because of the fact that I’m an average law abiding citizen it has me a little worried. I’m talking about the attitude received when going in to report a robbery or car accident, or paying a friends admission of guilt fine and bailing him out of the can. In my experience cops are bullies who don’t really give a shit about you but think it’s cool that they get to carry a gun. Oh guns, that reminds me of the whole debacle around the gun amnesty and the “great” way the police handled that. Don’t even get me started on their seriously below average filing and information systems!

here are some complaints about the SAPS that kinda support my point:

I tried to report a misuse of privilege to the SAPS Crimestop line, where a car driving with blue lights and sirens nearly rammed into me on the N1. The funny thing is, I would have understood the situation if there was a crime, but then I saw the same police vehicle not 5 minutes later at McDonalds enjoying a burger. Was the officer so hungry that he needed to use his lights and sirens to buy a burger? I even have a photo taken with my cellphone (before and after) proving the allocations.

Seeing that there is no other way of reporting such misuse, I phoned the SAPS Crimestop line thinking that they would respond to my report. The person on the other end of the line simply laughed at me replying that it is the privilege of the police to use their lights and sirens whenever they choose to do so.

How would crime and corruption stop if citizens try to report such events and simply get laughed off? Disgusting service !

source

My moms 1300 slow 1992 chico was stolen and tracked down within minutes by TOP security whom she doesn’t even subscribe with. They chased the car till they met up with a metropolice car and it pursued and lost the vehicle.8 days later SAPS finds the car drives it to their car lot somewhere in Benoni and contacts my mom.When she gets there she inspects the vehicle allong with my ex cop couson only to find that SAPS has been helping themselves to several parts of the car.The evidence is clear as theyr tools that they used was still lying under the hood and all the cables/hoses that they cut off was lying next to the car.When my mom confronted the captain he said theres nothing he can do and said she could open the case against the department, another officer there commented that it could take atleast 5 years though. According to my couson, some officers of the so-called law strip cars as they see it as a police officers perc/benefits. The long arm of the law seems to be very short in this country as it helps itself, we need officers that will uphold the law and not abbuse it and when they do they should have captains that would actually give a dam and repremand them!

source

Ideally I’d like to trust in the Police force so much that if a van pulled up to me on the street and the cop inside said “get in” I’d know it was for my own good and obey him, not be worried that I was about to be an unwilling participant in a “dog training” exercise. Unfortunately the above comments only strengthen my case. Also they go to show me how police corruption could actually affect me on a personal level, not to mention being shot by an illegal gun that they sold to some criminal.

This all reminds me of another conversation moonflake and I had: There’s nothing wrong with totalitarian governments, as long as I’m in charge of them!

Responses? I said this was serious debate!

Anyway, back to the real world, the game last night was fun, I’m sorry we upset zenstar and I promise to only talk when in character or describing my characters actions next week, well as much as is humanly possible.

Looks like the blog is about to tick over to that big 1000, get yer screen capture fingers ready

schpat

Weekend Report Back and Serious Debate

This weekend was great. I got a new home entertainment system and had some friends round for supper on Saturday night. Zenstar set up the HES for me and I roasted a leg of pork. It was the best pork roast ever! Everybody thought I was totally stressed from all the work, I was actually loving it, It was really fun. Then I slept through the first half of “ladykillers” and woke up to catch the end which I hadn’t seen. Thanks to everyone involved for making it a good time.

On Sunday I tried to watch “Closer” which was utter crap!!! Ended up watching “Bad Santa” which was okay.

Yesterday my dad was on the arse end of a four car pile up on the N2 and I had to go help him out with that. That’s why there was no blog post.

And today I’m back at work.

I was going to comment on this story but Moonflake beat me to it. Good thing I don’t agree with her or I’d have nothing to talk about!

Here’s the thing, these searches are illegal. Cops should uphold the law, not break it. If people think that cops should be allowed to do these kinds of things then they should get the laws changed, speak to your local representative. Our constitution upholds the individual’s right to privacy for various reasons, not least of which is to avoid persecution and harassment. This is to say that police officials require evidence against you before they are permitted to detain or search you, this is to prevent the random abduction of people off the streets because they might be on a list of people who have committed crimes. Can you imagine a scenario where the people waiting for a bus are rounded up, taken back to the station, finger printed and detained until such time as it is certain that they did not commit any of the crimes currently listed?

It’s also to prevent the police from abusing their power, case in point: the VIP protection services detaining the scorpions special investigative unit and preventing them from investigating charges against Ex-VP Zuma, or detention of opposition party members in our “oh so democratic” neighbour Zimbabwe.

Also these methods are totally inefficient. Ostensibly what the police are doing is going: “we have a list of names of people who have committed crimes, but how can we catch them”, “let’s go and see if we can find any of them in these arbitrary restaurants!”. Surely their objectives would be more efficiently served by going directly to the homes or workplaces of the listed offenders and arresting them. This argument is supported by the fact that no one was detained for traffic offences during the Friday night raid, only five people were arrested and those on immigration and drug charges. The 550 number quoted in the paper was for people arrested at roadblocks previous roadblocks. Now if the police say they achieved their objectives on Friday night then one must question exactly what these objectives were. Were the police just fishing? How safe does that make you feel?

Anyway after that I leave you to pursue more Jenga madness.

schpat

Breaking News

Adderly Str Standard Bank was just robbed. More details later, remeber you heard it here first!

ARRGGGH Ads!

Well I logged on this morning only to find that by blog advertiser had stopped showing ads in South Africa. So as you may have noticed I’m back to good ol’ google. That was a bunch of template changes I could have done without. I screwed up and and had to reload the standard template and start at scratch.

I’m pleased to announce the completion of yet another successful SchpatDope, go give it a read. Also look out for the first question answered by Mitsy’s. She’s doing fine by the way, supported by ad clicks, yeah!

Anywho, went back to thursday night role-playing and had a blast, also played more Jenga and that was fun too. But it’s definitely better with James and Yanke to up the tense stakes.

Not much has happened to day and I don’t have any opinions to share with you so here is some funny:

When a Saw the headline: “Breast model teaching aid”
this was not what I was expecting.

These folks have formed part of a human exibit in the London zoo.

Well apparently homeopathy a croc, who woulda guessed?

Finally, Jools, Jamie Oliver’s wife, has admitted to cooking in the nude to turn her hubby on. What’s more disturbing is that she makes a special effort at Christmas, she wears nothing but a pair of jingle bells on her boobs and does a silly dance! Apparently no complaints from Jamie.

Later people.

DickHeads and Bombers

Well as usual towards the end of the week enthusiasm to blog tends to wane. I will however tell you that I’m deeply upset by the biker that tried to commit “suicide by schpat” in the traffic this morning.

Picture this: Cape Town, 2005. It’s a crowded Freeway, the trafic is bumper to bumper and schpat needs to change lanes. So he indicates, moves over to the side of his present lane and waits for a gap to open. Soon enough a gap does indeed open and schpat calmly starts moving into it. All this is happening at about 1 m/sec. At this point an idiot on a motor bike, who has been travelling between the lanes at about the speed of light, happens upon the scene. Of course he is suitably pissed of that a car driver has the audacity to actually change lanes, which makes him stop, so he protests. Now unfortunately lacking a hooter, and probably also opposable thumbs, he voices his protest the only way he can: be revving his engine to about a zillion rpm resulting in a noise of about a bijillion db. Schpat, totally not expecting this “reasonable” reaction promptly shits himself and moves, very quickly, back over into his lane. Motorcycle-riding dick-head promptly drops clutch, spins wheel, burns rubber and moves 20m to where the next car is changing lanes, stopping right in front of Schpat and leaving a 20m run-up. Schpat thinks: “ramming speed mr sulu!”, but manages to restrain self.

Jesus Christ! There are better ways to get yourself killed than relying on me to drive over you!

In the news:

Men really are more intellegent than women.

There are plans to make Cape Town “Go all night” (snigger)

I suppose this isn’t that funny if you’re one of those people who get hung up on “discrimination” but the rest of you, and even them too if they lighten the fuck up, should be amused by this. Some dude was sent a pre-approved credit card in the name of “Palastinian Bomber”. Now who wouldn’t get a kick outa having that embossed on their plastic?

Here is another flash thingy, more challenging and addictive.

The SchpatDope for tomorrow is shaping up nicely. It’s the most difficult question yet.

later
schpat

PS: Oh yea, that dog that zenstar posted about yesterday was on the late night e-tv news. Man it almost made me want to puke!

Reader Claims 1000th Prize

Last night’s game session turned into Jenga madness, zenstar has already mentioned that we played so well that we actually ended up with one game with no more possible moves. What ol’ zen forgot to mention was that I pulled hero-move-of-the-game. Right near the bottom of the stack was one block that was so firmly wedged in there that people had been trying to move it since about halfway through and given-up due to it’s difficulty. Well at one stage it was my turn and the only possible (but not bloody likely) move was the bottom-block-o-doom. Deftly I single-handedly (those are the rules, only one hand) shifted the weight of the entire stack in order to remove it, everybody was suitably amazed. Unfortunately this move made another layer available for play and Jason took the wimp move and left Alex with no possible moves. Tense moments! Jenga is teh r0>here to download it. It apparently lets users chat across all chat network standards. When I originally spotted this story this morning it was “leak tell how google may be launching IM offering”, but by this afternoon it was out. I wonder if Google was just trying to plug the leak?

All those Cosatu members out there who read my blog, thanks for talking my concerns to your leadership, but please tell them they are still idiots for pursuing the dropping of corruption charges against Zuma by the executive even after admittingthey were wrong. Tell them I don’t care about their “emotional rock” and “political hard place”. Let the justice system do its job! That’s what it’s there for, that’s what our constitution is there for. Shut the fuck up and sit down.

In a proactive move John Howard, Australian PM, has announced plans to infiltrate Mosques and Muslim schools in order to ascertain whether ort not terrorist propaganda is being propagated. Interesting huh?

Anyway, that’s about it, oh yes Zenstar claims to have won the prize, here’s his proof:

Like I said, cheating will be frowned upon >:-(
Mitsy is none too happy either!

Oh and by the way, Welcome Ork Khrist! Check out his blog, and spiffy pic, it’s linked on _my_ right.

1000th visitor wins prize!

Moonflake has inspired me. She has taken a screenshot of her blog counter when it reached a certain impressive milestone and I’d like to do the same. The only difference is that I’d like to make it an interactive thing for my readers. So here it is: If you are the lucky reader to capture the magic number (“1000″) you will receive exactly one half of my blog earnings up until that time. That’s earnings generated by clicks on ads in both this blog and the SchpatDope. Currently this number is at $11 so half is $5.50! Remember that if you actually support our sponsors while visiting to see if you are the 1000th visitor you will be increasing the prize fund!

If you don’t know how to take a screen shot here are brief instructions:

1. make sure desired window is active
2. press Alt+PrnScr to copy to clipboard
3. open MS Paint
4. press Ctrl+V to paste from clipboard
5. save file.

If you have the picture mail it to me and wait for your reward.

Anyway so that’s an interesting little thing for you to do.

Tonight is RPG and I really can’t wait.

In an interesting development a study has apparently shown that violent video games causes violence in children. Now results of the study aside (I bought a book at the book sale entitled “how to lie with statistics”) the sheer media sensationalism on this piece is amazing. They’ve even misrepresented the “Hot Coffee” patch saying that it enables content not only of a sexual nature but also explicit scenes of violence and drug use, isn’t that just the normal game? Oh they also allude to the Columbine shootings being because of violent video games, missing the entire point about the poor dudes being bullied and generally mistreated finally sending them over the edge. Next thing they’ll claim is that Pokemon and Yu Gi Oh are satanic.

In other funny, this whole village in china has changed their name. The ancestral name of the village was changed to “Gou” by some emperor after he suffered some slight, the name means “humble” but is pronounced “dog”, a huge insult in china. I guess it’s the same as being called something like Patrick Shizenkopf. The men apparently have a huge problem finding brides as no respectable women wants to be a shit head!

In not so funny here is proof that global warming exists, it’s rather alarming really.

Anyway, that’s about it for today. Remer to get that screen capture to prove you’re my 1000th visitor so that you can win your prize! Cheating will be frowned upon.

Amusing SWF inside!

Wow, I didn’t realise how much I’d had to drink on friday until I read my blog post this morning, needless to say it made perfect sense at the time. I spent the weekend replacing all the stuff that we lost when they stole Elisabeth’s bag, the insurance finally paid out. It was a weekend of great spending, we bought Elisabeth a front-loading mp3 player for her car, the faceplate of her radio was stolen, and it is very nice. As a result I spent the rest of the weekend being driven around in Elisabeth’s car so we could listen to it. I went to the folks place for dinner on Saturday and had two roasts and about 6 different kinds of veg, I think my mother was trying to out-do me, she is quite competitive. Much fun was had by all. Also I bought Jenga! Woot!

Here is that special something I promised for Moonflake. It’s from Yirmurmha.net, it’s linked on the left, go check it out.

Welcome onboard to ArchAngel, go on, check out her blog!

Ok I promised a piece about Zuma, the long and short of it is this: This guy is about as crooked as a drunk walking the white line. He has been caught in dodgy dealings and was offered the opportunity to step-down gracefully, but decline to. Our esteemed prez promptly called his bluff and fired him, he was also charged with corruption. Ever since he has been using his “support base” to place pressure on the govt to drop those charges and re-instate him. His support base includes cosatu, sasco, anc yl and apparently the SAP VIP protection Unit (one of whom seems to live in my block judging by the car parked outside). Cosatu, Sasco and the ANC YL have been calling for his re-instatement and the dropping of charges, even thought by their own admission they know that these demands are not legal or constitutional, but they’d like ol’ Thabo to make an exception, just this once I’m sure. The VIP protection unit of the SAPS actually interfered with the investigation into his crimes by preventing a court order, a search warrant, from being executed for a few hours. Here is my view, and if any of you want to forward to Jacob please feel free: Dude, get over it. Take your millions and retire, oh and advise your fellow politicians not to get caught. I don’t really care one way or another if you’re innocent or not, but a man as desperate to hold onto power as you are can only be bad news. Next you’ll be burning the Reichstad!

I’ve got nothing brilliantly funny to tell you today, but check out this flash game. It’s quite amusing. Ogle, but don’t get caught!

Anyway, cheers until later.

PS: I’ve altered the settings so that only registered users are able to post comments. There was just too much blog spam! So sorry to those folks that don’t have blogger id’s. you should sign up, you don’t have to keep a blog or anything, but you will be able to post comments.

warm and fuzxzy

wine tasting pannel good, sorry for no blog post today but too much work and then too muxh wine. lots of fun thoiugh. yesterday I was feelingf good, today im feelign really food. Still going to drive ho,e though and then take elisabeth to canal walk for shopping and supper, mmm super.

wish me luck.

and if i am really a glanse then whwere is the smegma?>???

ok bhye bye. mitsy syas hi!

schpst

Love is all around me

It’s been a rather stressful day here due to some restructuring announcements, they’ve been a long time coming, but the planners here finally found out what their new assignments are. It means the end of a lot of stress for them and, by way of repercussion, me. But that’s all over now.

I had a dream night before last and it’s taken me a while to process it. Now I don’t believe in dreams being portents of the future or anything, in fact I’m sure most dreams are nothing more than the rehashing of current events, then again some dreams are pure wish fulfilment. The dream in question was a combination of the last two categories. I won’t go into too much detail other than to say that a few issues I have have been sorted out recently and that probably spurred this dream where all the important issues in my life were resolved. One of the amusing things that happened was that I was given a box of Montecristo No. 2’s by an unspecified source, I think the idea was that it was from everybody in my life, this probably means that I think people generally like me or something, or, because cigars are phallic objects that everyone thinks I’m a dick! But I like cigars so it probably means they like me, but what does my love of cigars say about me?

That’s why we shouldn’t read too much into our dreams!

Like I said it’s taken me two days to fully process this dream, I’ve been remembering different bits and pieces randomly, and now that I’ve kinda worked it out I’m amazed at how good I feel about my life at the moment, and also how much stress I’m actually under and how good it would feel to get rid of it. Bearing that in mind, and being a proponent of the proactive approach, I took a walk over to my favourite tobacconist and bought a few stogies.

Here’s my daily comment on stuff:

No matter what you were told, or mailed pictures about, it did not snow on table mountain yesterday. Those pics are old!

Power Ranger accused of murder. Skylar Deleon has been charged with killing a Californian couple in order to steal their yacht. I’m not sure what colour ranger he was but probably the evil black one, why do newspapers never report the important facts.

In more important news MicroSoft has announced the release date, features and pricing their new Xbox 360. It’s gonna come with a pretty hefty price tag, $399, which will mean retail here in SA at about R4000 or so. The big thing is that it’s going to be out before Xmas and beat both the new Sony and Nintendo boxes. An early release is why the PS2 has been so successful, the question is: “are ordinary gamers going to wait for a superior Sony box based on the performance of the PS2, or will they cave and buy an Xbox thus ushering in a whole new era in console games?”. It’s a pretty interesting article, go give it a read.

I see Zuma’s been in the news again, maybe I’ll comment on that tomorrow or something.

I did manage to set up a SchpatDope mailing list, so sign up now and never miss an issue!

Anyway back to that dream, a big thank you to all the people who know me, you enrich my life and make me happy. I’m really glad to have you around, unless you all think I’m a dick… then you can all just piss-off!

schpat