Instant Diesel - What a Gas!

I first came across this story a few months ago but put it down to being too silly to take seriously. It has now appeared in the international press after more details were reported in the Zimbabwean Financial Gazette.

Basically, its about a ‘Spirit Medium’ who persuaded the government that she could produce refined diesel out of a solid rock by chanting and striking it with her staff. Sounds a touch biblical! For this miracle, the woman was given £1.5 million! Plus a farm (ex-White farmer’s of course), and a few other benefits.

The whole sorry tale has now unfolded, and it is a must read.

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/africa/article2748936.ece

You should go on to read the comments from others. If anything, it proves the wanton greed and utter stupidity of the people who are supposed to be governing Zimbabwe.

Congratulations to South Africa, Finland, Russia and China.

All the build-up, all the hype, all to no avail. I am gutted. I think I will give up following any sport. It makes me ill and people threaten me and call me bad names if I support the wrong side.

And that was exactly the problem last week.

First the Russians booted England pretty well into touch as far as qualifying for the European championship. Who is to blame? The referee of course. That should never have been a penalty. I mean, like, Roony only grabbed the other bloke OUTSIDE the penalty area. What is the sport coming too, when dirty illegal tactics are so poorly judged? Where is the justice? I think the ref was Irish, which explains it all – racist bastard! Still, the manager is USELESS! England should never have an English manager, because they just take the piss because they earn so much less than the players. Get that Portuguese bloke, who never has a decent shave, to do the job. He has the right attitude. Forget tactics and all that bollocks. He just tells the players,

‘Get out there and earn your keep, ya lazy bastards, or your all fired and wont see a farthing, never mind any shilling.’

Second disaster to hit me was the rugby. It wasn’t a very exciting game. The Boks just hung around drinking Castles and waited for England to trip over each other so they could get a few penalty kicks. Then of course there was the controversial try that was disallowed. That was the refs fault and I believe he was Irish – the racist bastard!

So still struggling to cope with that disaster, I pinned my hopes on Lewis Hamilton to claim the F1 World Championship in Brazil. What happens? Some bloke from Finland in a red car wins! Our man is left floundering about with an engine that cut out because some Irish mechanic deliberately left a spark plug out of the gearbox (that’s what a man in a pub told me), the racist bastard!

To wrap up the week on Sunday evening, there I was, weeping bitter tears of defeat, and decided to watch the final of a world ranking snooker tournament being beamed live from London. A Chinaman was playing the great Ronnie O’Sullivan (who I believe is Irish). As soon as I tuned in, that racist bastard must have known, and just too really put the boot in, deliberately threw the match to let the Chinaman win!

So now feeling extremely depressed, I called the Samaritans Lifeline. Because there must have been a huge amount of people also suffering like me, I landed up being put through to a 'call centre' in Pakistan.
I explained the situation that I was feeling suicidal because of all what has happened.
They were very excited at this news and wanted to know if I could drive a truck or fly an aeroplane...

(P.S. Just in case there are any more misunderstandings, I have nothing against the Irish and this is just a piece of satirical piss-take. I say this because some Afrikaners, who I also have no problems with (except Mrs Smuts), didn’t quite realise that with my last posting!)

"England expects that every man will do his duty."

As posted today on the web site South Africa Sucks by Dark Raven.

10 reasons it's better being a Bok fan than a Pom fan:

1. Bok fans aren't surprised and grateful when their team wins matches, they're surprised when their team loses.

2. Green and gold jerseys look cool on all kinds of South Africans, but white jerseys make England supporters look like the love children of unhealthy Zombies and dead fish.

3. We actually have 15 players in our team, rather than just Jonny Wilkinson and 14 old guys.

4. The South African sports media might be a self-serving, sycophantic bunch of freeloaders, but at least they aren't staked out outside the team hotel hoping to get a picture of Monty's wife tanning topless.

5. Our coach has got a chin (okay, more than one when he speaks Afrikaans).

6. The Boks' traditional rivals actually come from different countries like New Zealand and Australia, as opposed to being English provinces, like Ireland, Wales and Scotland.

7. Fans of other teams hate the Boks because they're hard bastards - they hate the English because they're hypocrites who won't admit they're hard bastards.

8. Instead of wanky names like Jason, Jonny, Martin and Phil, our players have cool names like Os, Bakkies, Wikus, Akona, and, uh, Percy. (Dammit, trust Percy to ruin everything again).

9. Bok fans don't mind being hated, because of all the practice we had during the apartheid years. English fans, on the other hand, can't seem to understand why the rest of the world loathes them.

10. Win or lose on Saturday, Bok fans are flying back to a summer of hot babes and beaches. English fans are doomed to a winter of sleet and clogged M1.

11. (Everyone knows South Africans can't count) Schalk Burger pushes the earth down when he does press ups. Martin Corry sticks his bum in the air.

Excuse grammar and spelling- just my quick response…

10 Reasons Why I support England.

1. The South Africans stabbed us Rhodies in the back.
2. When England win they will get titles like ‘Sir’, the South Africans, might they be lucky not to be murdered and get to live a few more years, will receive the title ‘Oom’.
3. The English are natural born losers but they still managed to have the largest empire in history.
4. The English have a flair for drama. When blood flows over white shirts, it arouses visions of the crusaders. When it pours down a green and gold, it reminds people of a drunken Afrikaner falling over an ox drawn plough.
5. When Mbeki and the boys turn the Boks black, the English will give the white ones a job.
6. The English have names that remind people of gentlemen, the Bokkies have names that remind you of drunken Afrikaners falling over ox drawn ploughs.
7. The English understand the rules better because it happens that they are written in their language.
8. The English don’t need a Visa to go too France.
9. The English invented the sport. Typical Africans, the Boks stole it!
10. The English run around happily playing in the rain. The Boks run around preying for the stuff.
11. And finally, the English can count to ten, Dark Raven can’t!

My Thanks For The Week.

Thanks to Zimbabwe for finally breaking the Z1 million dollar threshold for US 1 dollar. That is a truly an amazing feat. How did you do it? Let me guess, it was the naughty colonial White racist farmers again. No wonder you dragged ten of them into court this week for having the audacity to actually grow food! I mean, how a government is supposed to beg when idiots actually want to feed people by working on a farm!

Farms are for other things. Like, chop down all the trees for firewood to cook the emergency relief, etc.

Thanks to the Chinese restaurants in Zimbabwe, who generously agreed to roast peoples’ pets (who can no longer feed them and the SPCA don’t have any drugs to put them down), and sold them as Rover Hot-Dogs to the starving populace. Are you shocked…nah, no chance. Just the other day they stopped a group of peasants about to slaughter a giraffe that had somehow got lost and wandered into the suburbs of Harare.

Thanks to the English rugby team who beat France, because I had a £2 bet on them and picked up a cool Z$36 million (at today’s exchange rate).

Thanks to all those corrupt African leaders whose thieving now exceeds all foreign aid per year, being, give or take a few paltry million pounds, equals the GDP of the United Kingdom. Please keep the begging bowls out, we have loads more to hand over. I just can’t wait for Bob Geldorf’s next concert. After all, didn’t Shakespeare say something like - ‘If music be the food of tyrants, play on!’

Thanks to the British tabloids for doing an amazing good job of reporting on that poor child who was kidnapped in Dafur and held to ransom for a loaf of bread. It made a change from reading about the multi-million pound extravaganza tabloid feeding frenzy surrounding the missing Maddie McCann. (Google that name and it comes up with 1.36 million hits.)

Thanks to the South African Springbok Rugby team who will loose tomorrow because I have £4 on England. I will be eating boerwors rolls during the match. I hope I won’t choke on one.

Thanks to Lewis Hamilton who will be F1 world champion and hopefully finish off that scheming little cocky Spaniard in Brazil on Sunday.

And, last but not least. Thanks to the English football squad who have finally proved once and for all, they are completely SHITE!

Coffee break and I forgot to get some milk!

One of my spies, buried deep in the hierarchy of Robert Mugabe’s ZANU(PF), has managed to photograph the new Zimbabwe dollar note – here it is

Next…

How stupid can I be? There I was thinking that when it comes to marketing, I am a natural born seller. One idea is to use YouTube. So using an MP3 someone sent, I added a few pictures from my archive and put it up. A short time later I realised I had forgot to advertise my Blog on it. Attempts to edit it failed, but I thought ‘aach man, the thing is already been put up there by someone else, so no big deal.’

Yeah, very clever. When I looked at my YouTube account last night, I nearly vomited. The damn thing has hit 32 thousand in three weeks! Aaaaaahhhhh! (It is the one about the Zimbabwean border-fence jumper.)

Next…

I am bored.
I hate the reediting part of writing. Why can’t the words just sort themselves out on their own? It’s supposed to be funny the stuff I write, but after I have gone over it more times than Take That have sung ‘Have a Little Patience’, I think passing a kidney stone would be more pleasurable. At least I would have an excellent new topic to write about. Till it came to the time to edit that too!

Freewrite! That is the magic word, but has anybody sold a book made up entirely of freewrites? Do you put on the cover – Not much of this makes any sense, the punctuation and grandma r atrocious along with the spilling – BUT, you will get the gist of it. Special offer £15.

OR – we can hope, like some of the other lazy writers, who instead of concentrating on EDITING ad nauseum, fart around on their Blogs hoping that a talent scout from a writer’s version of the X-factor will come along and say –

‘Yes, you’re the man/woman/transvestite I am looking for. I have a machine that will be pushed up your arse, suck all the shit out, and spray it onto the blank pages of a best selling book.’

I suppose not. Still, I can sneak off and do a little nonsense writing on the side every now and then, just to keep my wit alive.

I was musing over turning all 100,000 odd words I have, for the time I was in the police, and redoing the lot in the 3^rd person with Sixpence (me) wandering around causing chaos and havoc. Here is a little test run –

1977 - Sixpence joins PATU

Sixpence has joined PATU. He didn’t have any choice, but if he wanted to be a policeman in Rhodesia it was standard procedure that he would be trained to be a deterrent to terrorism. Unfortunately, the terrorists hadn’t been informed that Sixpence was to become a member of the world renowned cannon fodder Police Anti Terrorist Unit (known in the local ‘freedom fighter’ lingo as ‘those who have no brains to shoot out’), otherwise they would have all died laughing and the war would have ended there and then.

Sixpence joined the other fresh inmates at training camp, dressed in his best ‘look like a tree.’ clothes. Rhodesian camouflage was rated one of the best in the world – proven by the fact that within an hour of putting them on, Sixpence had been pissed on by four dogs, a cat had crawled its way up his back (leaving him scarred for life), and now had two bats suspended from his earlobes like some freak earrings from a Dracula film.

On the parade ground, Sixpence stood to attention and listened very carefully to the instructions being shouted at him and the others by Section Officer (SO) Billy ‘The Fucking Insane’ Kidd Ya Knot, who was responsible in getting Sixpence in top-fit order, so as to chase nasty killers and kill them (but Sixpence would have preferred to be in the pub drinking, because he didn’t like this idea of people he didn’t even know wanting to kill him, and then he must kill them back!).

‘Raise your left leg.’ Screamed Kidd Ya Knot.

All complied, even Sixpence, because he remembered that the left leg was the one with his brand new digital watch strapped onto that ankle.

‘Now raise the other one,’ instructed the instructor issuing instructions.

Sixpence shot up his right arm, exactly 10 degrees higher than the standard NAZI salute, just like they had taught him at school when he needed to do a wee-wee.

‘Not your arm, you idiot!’ roared The Fucking Insane.

‘But Sah!’ screamed Sixpence, in fear of his life as Kidd Ya Knot cocked his pistol and aimed it at his head,

‘If I raise my right leg as well, I will fall down!’

‘Congratulations Sixpence,’ SO Kidd Ya Knot replied, as he systematically executed the rest of the squad who had stood there on their right legs, making them all left-overs. Placing the smoking barrel in his mouth, he grunted out one more sentence before the last bullet in the chamber sent him to his Irish maker –

‘You are promoted to my position – God help Rhodesia!’

Sixpence was well pleased. Joining PATU wasn’t as hard as he had feared. He couldn’t wait to get back to his police station and tell his Baas how clever he had been, and whistling his number one favourite pop song ‘Hello Hello, It’s Good To Be Back’ by Gary Gicker, Sixpence went off into the sunset to become the famed Gokwe Kid - Dick of The Bushveld.

Well, that’s enough dreaming and messing about. Back too editing, till next time, stay cool and keep laughing.

A New Deal For La-La-Land.

I have fallen behind on my daily ritual of reading www.zimbabwesituation.com

I tend to speed scroll, looking for some plums, which is rather difficult, as very little is grown there anymore, but who cares, as long as ‘Get Whitey off our land’, is sold successfully to the Western world.

One plum I did spot –

A new currency is coming out soon. This is because the present lot, even after knocking three zeros off, has now reached the magic mark on the black-market of Z$1 million to £1. The Governor of the Reserve Bank, Dr. Gideon Gormless, said in a recent speech to the disillusioned,

‘To battle inflation, we have to fool it. Firstly, we take away all the unnecessary zeros and put the word ‘New’ in front of Zimbabwe Dollar. Then, as we print more of the stuff, to buy as much foreign currency as possible from the illegal money changers, we start to add more words in front of NEW. So, in two months time we have, Newer New Z$. Then we have, Newest Newer New, followed by New-New Newest Newer New etc. BUT that way, it will always stay stable!’

This concept was met with rapturous applause, but one heckler shouted out,

‘You idiot, there wont be space for all the words after eight months.’

However, the father of modern Zimbabwean economics had already planned a solution.

‘It will be printed on loin cloths imported from China.’

Not convinced, the heckler, before being beaten to death by members of the ‘Green Bobs’ Bombers’ pointed out that only the poor could afford to wear such primitive attire.

‘But of course,’ Gormless replied. ‘The political elite won’t be using the new notes. What do you think we do with all the foreign currency we buy? Spend it on peasants!’

Finally, to end the meeting, the man that single handily, against all the odds, made all people called ‘Sixpence’ and ‘Tickey’ now worthless, quoted another liberator of Colonial repressive capitalism –

"When all the trees have been cut down, When all the animals have been hunted, When all the air is unsafe to breathe, Only then will you discover that you cannot eat money"

Thanks for almost crippling me – A True Story

As a writer, you are trained to look for inspiration from all walks of life. One place I have recently been looking at is gumtree.com

The best bits are the confessions and thanks section. There are some really weird people out there! Inspired by some of the more bizarre postings, I took a true story and wrote it in a very similar way to some of the crazy shit people put up there. It was quite well received, so I decided to turn it into a YouTube video. So for your pleasure, here I am, starring in my first movie.