Lovemore Sibanda : How to send secret documents secretly.

Well, it is Xmas and all that. I doubt I will be able to post again till the New Year. I wish you all the usual.....hot weather, cold beer, tax free lottery win, shark free warm sea waves and keep dreaming. So, if you get bored over the festive period, try out this nonsense. See ya next year and thanks for checking in. More followers and comments please.

Special Agent Lovemore Sibanda, a deep undercover mole operative for the sinister head of WhackyLeaks, Darren ‘Whackhead’ Simpson, explains how he manages to send covert reports to his master without the enemy cracking the code he uses.

Here is an example of a recent report he sent -

 I am recovering from a savage beating by the Zimbabwe police because my trainers they wanted to take as a fine were made in China and had holes in them. Meanwhile that number one diamond lady, Grace, is very cross with the newspaper for saying she is stealing diamonds. She say she don’t get her nails dirty and get dirty people to do the dirty work and then she does the dirty on them.

Ps. Where is my Xmas box?

This, as can be seen, is in perfectly legible English. Now here comes the secret code.

Using Google Translate, it is changed to Albanian. It comes out so –

Unë jam Shërimi nga një rrahje të egër nga ana e policisë Zimbabve trajnerët e mi, sepse ata duan të marrin si një gjobë ishin bërë në Kinë dhe sikur vrima në to. Ndërkohë që një numër diamant grua, Grace, është shumë e kryq me gazetën për të thënë se ajo është vjedhur diamante. Ajo thonë se ajo nuk do të marrë thonjtë e saj të pista pista dhe të marrë njerëz për të bërë punë të pista dhe Pastaj Ajo e bën të pista mbi ta.

Ps. Ku është kuti Xmas e mia?

This in turn is translated into Swedish –

IUnë är återhämta sig från en vilde slog av polis Zimbabwe min tränare för att de vill ta som en fin gjordes i Kina och hade hål i dem. Medan ett antal diamant kvinna, Grace, är mycket kors med tidningen för att säga att det är stulna diamanter. Hon sa att hon inte skulle få sina naglar smutsiga smutsiga och få människor att göra det smutsiga jobbet och så gör hon det smutsiga på dem.

Ps. Var är min Xmas box?

Vietnamese officials confer with Swedes in attempt to understand the secret messages.

Then into Welsh –

IUnë yn gwella o guro milain gan yr heddlu o Zimbabwe fy hyfforddwyr am eu bod am gymryd bod un asgell ei wneud yn Tsieina ac wedi thyllau ynddynt. Er bod nifer o, gwraig diemwnt Grace, yn groes iawn gyda'r papur newydd i ddweud ei fod yn dwyn deiamwntiau. Dywedodd na fyddai'n cael eu ewinedd budr budr a chael pobl i wneud y gwaith budr ac wedyn mae hi yn y budr arnynt.

Ps. Ble mae fy Xmas bocs?

Then into Yiddish –

יונë ריקאַווערינג פון אַ ראָצכיש ביטינג דורך פּאָליצייַ פון זימבאַבווע מיין קאָוטשיז מחמת זיי וועלן צו נעמען אַז איין פליגל איז געמאכט געווארן אין טשיינאַ און האָבן האָלעס אין זיי. כאָטש פילע, פרוי דימענט חסד, קעגן די צייַטונג צו זאָגן אַז ער ברענגט דעם דיאַמאָנדס. ער האט עס וואָלט ניט זייַן אַ גראָב גראָב פינגגערניילז און באַקומען מענטשן צו טאָן די גראָב אַרבעט און דעריבער זי ס די גראָב אויף זיי.

פּס. וואו ס מיין קסמאַס קעסטל?

And, just in case, into Irish –

Meitheamh e Aisghabháil ó beating fí ag póilíní na Siombáibe Coaches Sórtáil mar ba mhaith leo a chur go bhfuil ceann sciathán déanta sa tSín agus poill a bheith iontu. Cé go bhfuil go leor cairde, Diamond bean chéile, i gcoinne an nuachtán a rá go bhfuil Tugann sé an Diamaint. Rinne sé nach mbeadh sé ina fingernails salach salach agus daoine a fháil chun an obair a dhéanamh agus ansin tá sé salach ar an salach ar iad.

Bandaleithid. I gcás ina's mo bhosca spás?

Then, just in case-case, into Vietnamese –

Tháng Sáu e Lấy từ cảnh sát đánh đập tàn độc của Zimbabwe Phân loại huấn luyện viên khi họ muốn thêm rằng một cánh được thực hiện tại Trung Quốc và có các lỗ hổng trong họ. Mặc dù nhiều bạn bè, kim cương vợ, đối với tờ báo nói rằng ông sẽ cho Diamond. Ông không làm cho nó một móng tay bẩn bẩn và có được mọi người để làm công việc và sau đó nó là bẩn bẩn trên chúng.

Băng thông. Trường hợp của hộp thư đến của tôi không gian?

Darren ‘Whackhead’ Simpson . The secret head of the notorious WhackyLeaks,  here shortly after being arrested for raping a swede and a largely endowed cabbage.

So, this is then sent via satilite to the head of WhackyLeaks, who, of course, knows in which order to untranslate in. Meanwhile, the enemy, simply translate the Vietnamese into English and it comes out like this –

June e Retrieved from vicious police beating of Zimbabwe Sort coaches when they want to add that a field is done in China and have holes in them. Although many friends, her diamonds, with newspapers saying that he will for Diamond. He does not make it a dirty fingernails and get people to do the job and then it is dirty on them.

Bandwidth. Where's my inbox space?

A photo not of Secret Agent Lovemore Sibanda, uploading to satellite his secret secrets in code.

Now, in theory, a supercomputer could then use multiple combinations of the language translaters available until it sort of hits on the original.

There is a catch, which Lovemore admits is causing a problem. Even with the correct reverse procedure, the message doesn’t come out quite like the original. In fact, I gave it a test and this is what I came up with –

Retryeved June E vicious police beating in Zimbabwe coaches blow when they want to add that the area is made in China and had holes in them. Although many friends, Diamond, with newspapers saying he diamond. It makes not one of those dirty nails and get people to do the job, and then it was dirt on them.

Bandvidth. Where is my place in the inbox?

Now, think carefully. Maybe ALL those scandalous WikiLeaks are actually done the same way! I bet the USA will sue the pants off Google. I approached an anomalous anonymous Google spokesperson calling himself Andy Amoeba, and put this proposition to him. He replied quoting Jesus - ‘It's a hassle it's an educated guess. Well, frankly I couldn't care less.’

Moan, Moan, Moan.

We all love a good moan. I tend to moan till it gets boring, even to me. The papers are full of people moaning. They are either left moaners, right moaners, or moaners who don’t know their left from their right and as such have problems finding shoes that fit.

Today’s moan is two fold. It is about my view and the fact there is a lot of white stuff that turned up over night. Take a look at this amazingly creative photo I took a month ago.

Stunning hey, and you may well ask…’How did he get the angle?’ That’s easy - because the sodding pole is on the right at that height of my view. The middle and left are destroyed by a criss-crossing of wires. It is a sea view one would expect whilst looking through a pair of stamped on spectacles. In any other civilised country this would not be allowed. As soon as I am rich, I will sue the council and have them removed underground – no matter what the cost. Erm, actually, if I was that rich I would be living somewhere sunny with cheap beer and…sigh…dreams.

These pics were taken today. I am now effectively snowed in. I know this because the postman couldn’t be arsed. Luckily, I have enough to live on for another 20 hours. After that…I will keep an eye out for frozen legs of lamb falling off the surrounding hills.

The YouTube, also taken today, shows how much fun you can have in this town.

And, the power of Google and YouTube astounds me…they actually recognised the music!

Assange and Bin Laden : Modus Operandi - Birds of a feather?

I was thinking - and this idea popped up into my head. Both these men have uncanny common threads in this present setting of planetary conflict - cyber or otherwise.

It works like this. Both –

1. are shadowy figureheads of organisations in conflict with western governments – mainly the United States of America.
2. are perceived either as brilliant fighters for freedom from infidels/suppressers/ etc etc or….are simply megalomaniacal terrorists bowed to destroy ‘our way of life’. (Answer on a postcard – see if you can quote Ian Smith on that one.)
3. should they be captured or eliminated would be the same as putting out fire with gasoline. Plenty more ‘nutters’ would sign up to the ‘causes’. The leaders both planned well for the possible inevitable, by making their loosely connected cell groups almost impossible to catch and if caught - the information ‘water-boarded’ out would generally lead to a large pond with no rivers connecting to the sea.
4. have no fixed abode.
5. are accused by perceived enemies of ‘radicalising’ their supporters.
6. at least once, peed their name in the snow. And you can do this too at www.pee-mail.com and you can send messages with this program in secret wee code. Be quick before we get bombed by drones.
7. are incredibly locked in a perpetual cycle of cause and effect.

Interesting hey! But that is where it ends.

Rwanda : Part One

In the mid ‘80s I drove through vast tracts of central Africa. One place I visited was Rwanda. I will never forget the two odd weeks I was there. Amazing place. I have in my Africa DVD collection the films Shooting Dogs and Hotel Rwanda and they are extremely haunting, even more so as I recognised many of the settings.

In a recent Open University forum for my latest modem, I literally stumbled upon another student who has also been there – in fact; it appears we were almost sitting next to each other at a recent tutorial. Anyway, she mentioned the incredible moving experience of seeing the Mountain Gorillas in the Parc des Volcans.

Here are some of the pictures along with some comments.

This is the border between Tanzania and Rwanda. It was notorious for flowing red and filled with bodies as it meanders down to Lake Victoria during the slaughter.

Crossing the bridge was weird. One minute you’re speaking English, driving on the left and the next you’re on the right, one hour behind and the official language is French. Not only that, every second day seems to be a public holiday, custom officers need a two and half hour lunch break and beer only comes in quart sized bottles. Mind you, it is excellent stuff as the Germans built them a brewery. The coffee is first class also.

The main roads are excellent, thanks again to the Germans. That’s why my Ex didn’t need a visa, but I did. Amazing what a bit of aid can do. The country is stunningly beautiful.

It was in Rwanda that our poor little Toyota Hiace packed in. It was bloody amazing it had got this far! Luckily, of all places, Rwanda was No 1 Toyota land, and they had a huge workshop in the capital. We were towed there by a strange couple we met outside the German Embassy. They later scammed us for US100. The very kind Belgium manager allowed us to camp in the huge yard overnight.

On the way to the park we nearly drove down a massive hole created by a landslide, n pitch darkness and then using the ‘detour’ through a banana plantation, got stuck in the mud. Former No1 boy scout (that’s me), was very Be Prepared. I had a bag that you fitted on to the exhaust pipe that ‘lifted’ your car out the mud. Well, that was the plan. Sadly, the exhaust had a leak. (It would get a bigger one later) Not to worry…I had a winch on the front. One problem – ever heard of a banana tree pulling an overloaded van out of quagmire so sticky you could use it to immobilise an invading German panzer brigade. (Maybe that’s why they paid for the tar roads.) And it was lashing with rain.

Still, there is always help at hand as Rwandans have this really odd habit of gathering around a white person and just well, stand there and look…for hours if need be. Whilst waiting for Toyota to open after their two hour lunch break, we pulled over and made lunch. Within minutes we were surrounded. Things got worse when a motor cyclist ploughed into the crowd!

Anyway, there in the mud, loads of locals dug the bus out whilst EX, screaming in terror, gunned its guts out and didn’t stop till she hit the ‘main’ road again. AND – to add insult to injury, our kind ‘helpers’ were now circling us like sharks closing in for the kill. I scream - ‘Give them money.’

She screams – ‘How much’. I say, ‘20 francs.’ She says, ‘The smallest note is a 100!’ I say ‘Give it to them; it is better than being eaten alive.’

She hands it over, …and…a fucking party breaks out! (Oh, it was about £100 in today’s money.)

Here are the guide lines. One says don’t look straight into the eyes of a gorilla. Especially the big one. It forgot to add that a large 500mm mirror telescopic lens might also be considered ‘aggressive’.

 

 This shot is very interesting. It is taken from the side of the rain forest. That fence is the ‘border’. Rwanda is massively cultivated, and all the mountains have just little tops of forest.

These are some of  the shots I took. I was lucky, for the group I and my fellow tourists (most well heeled and dressed in brand new ‘Wolfskin’ Safari gear, the whinging posing twats), would look for a group not that far from drop off point. If you didn’t find your group…tough titty - $300 US down the tube, hence only I went because our six month old advice sheet had been half the price. You get exactly one hour with them.

 

War of the Words : WikiLeaks finances VISA and PAYPAL and AMAZON

Satirists think faster than journalists – we are clever because we have never thought we would ever be muzzled, killed maybe, trodden underfoot, have our bitter tasting tongues ripped out and had the ‘pen and pencil’ that was given as a present for all mankind… snatched back… taken away…till now!

With amazing dexterity, the US of Arseholes has declared war yet again. This time it is against us, the people who adore the ability to post complete shite, tittle-tattle and rub bad peoples’ noses in their own muck. There will be big trouble over this – not so much the leaked documents (till now), or the ‘rape’ accusations against Julian Assange, but the Yanks war against freedom of speech, the very thing they are supposed to protect!

As you can see by the screen shots, ( Click on for enlargements.) these firms who have cut services to WikiLeaks, are actually quite happily cashing in on it all. Amazing! I struggle for a simile – It’s like the German government paying for stolen Luxembourg bank account details to catch tax dodgers – and get away with it.   

Will I close my accounts with Visa and Paypal and stop buying from Ebay and Amazon? The answer is a resounding YES - if I find some other place cheaper. Some clever bastard with too much money lying around could set up LeakyBay with payments via WikikedPal and replace Amazon’s dominance with WizzOnMon and base the lot in China.

----

WikiLeaks post list of vulnerable targets for terrorists!

Now, I am quite the expert in counter-insurgency, COIN, to coin a phrase. If I need a list of targets to terrorise, I could jot hundreds down on the back of fag packet between the logo and smoking kills, in two minutes.

My favourite has always been driving a fully loaded petrol delivery tanker into the Hofbrauhaus Tent on the opening day of the Oktoberfest. That will teach the bastards for punching me in the eye. (Long story.) Hah-hah, take that.

Still, on second thoughts, I will cancel that one. The idea was I let the tanker bleed petrol, then I jump out just as it careers down the short grassy hill (this at the BACK of the tent,where the drunks vomit and sleep it off) and it ploughs insanely driverless into the thousands of tourist binge drinkers singing along with the Bavarian folk band, ‘Hey Wiki Ooh Ahh will you be my burl’. The gushing hose would spray around like a giant cobra spitting alien acid, and then…then the highly flammable vapours would ignite instantly amongst the tobacco and pot smoking pissheads and …whoosh! Hah-hah....yeah, get that ya bastards and er...(well it's more fun than counting sheep).

But, they banned smoking this year. Oh well…back to the drawing board…any one got a spare fag packet?

England 2018 failed World Cup bid – the truth.

Well, according to the local newspapers, the England bid was stitched up from the start by the Russian mafia that according to Wikileaks run the place. Good for them I say. Compared to the UK, they know how to run a country. No one moans over there about their miserable lot. Not because they might be happy about it, but instead of benefit bailouts, the Russians simply give them something to genuinely moan about – like having their legs amputated with a chain saw and then make the grateful victim pay for the petrol.

No, the REAL reason the well organised and elegantly presented English bid was undermined and doomed to failure was due to Steven Spielberg. Yup, in another top secret Wikileak, it seems that the FIFA voting executive committee (less the English one), corrupt and rotten to the core as only dagos and foreigners are pictured daily in the Daily Mail can be, were shown extracts of Spielberg’s upcoming block buster film The Adventures of Tintin – Tintin in England

Originally, when Spielberg started work on the film, it was supposed to be Tintin in the Congo, but that was panned when it became apparent Spielberg wouldn’t ever be invited to the Whitehouse by America’s No1 butler, Uncle Barrack, because the monkeys portrayed talked more sense than the pentagon. Hence - Tintin in England.

Set in 1966, it accurately portrays how the English fans, in coordinated yob fashion, taught the opposition fans lessons in aggravated aggro and went on to beat up so many of them, that the then Prime Minister, Harold Wilson, considered to send them against Rhodesia. Traumatised members of FIFA were overheard to mutter ‘sacré bleu and vodka stroganoff’ as they left the screening. In a top secret meeting held later in the local pub in a 5 star hotel, many were obviously more than determined to vote for Russia after they were caught singing ‘Diamonds are Forever’, together on the Karaoke, and laughingly referred to the England bid as a James Bond ‘that fires only blanks’. This was obviously a reference to the pole dance put on for their benefit by Prime Minister Putin’s ‘The Spy who Loved Me’, Anna Chapman.

Spoiler Alert – We can reveal that in the film, Snowy, the faithful fox terrier, is seen humping the Queen’s corgis and is subsequently served up stuffed with Sage and Ebola, as a starter for the subsequently final losing German football team. Amazingly, when they asked what the delicacy was, they were told it was ‘English Schweinehund’. That of course is a lie, as Snowy is from Belgium.

Zimbabwe Wikileaks about president Mugabe.

The Wikileaks are making some interesting waves around the world. Most of what I have read, around 200,000 of them (I was taught speed reading in Rhodesia), remain a blur because I read them rather rapidly, but I did come across one about Zimbabwe.

It is a bit old now, 2007, but is a nice piece written by the then US Ambassador to Zimbabwe, Christopher William Dell. Some of you might remember Mugabe ranting ‘Dell can go to Hell!’. Zimbabwe opposition has jumped on this Email with glee. I am not surprised. It is a beautifully written and honest account of what was/still is going on Zimbabwe. Dell says about Mugabe –

Robert Mugabe has survived for so long because he is more 

clever and more ruthless than any other politician in 

Zimbabwe.  To give the devil his due, he is a brilliant 

tactitian and has long thrived on his ability to abruptly 

change the rules of the game, radicalize the political 

dynamic and force everyone else to react to his agenda. 

However, he is fundamentally hampered by several factors: 

his ego and belief in his own infallibility; his obsessive 

focus on the past as a justification for everything in the 

present and future; his deep ignorance on economic issues 

(coupled with the belief that his 18 doctorates give him 

the authority to suspend the laws of economics, including 

supply and demand); and his essentially short-term, 

tactical style. 

There is more, but man, has this guy done us a favour or what! I just love it. The full Email can be read here. Sadly, he balls up a bit, predicting Mugabe’s imminent demise.

Anyway, in the Times (print copy, I refuse to pay for their on-line service), which I bought for a train journey to school, it gave a Wikileak reference to another leak which I gather comes from South Africa. I can’t find it online, but it quotes Mugabe as a ‘crazy old man’. Nothing new here but interestingly, it refers to ‘president Mugabe’. With a small p. Mmm, well that could just be a typo mistake…but, have a look carefully at this picture I scanned from the print edition. 

So, is this a sort of signal that he is sort of, like president, but not really President….hah hah – brilliant!

45 Years Ago…

45 Years Ago…

Following a referendum the previous year in which voters had overwhelmingly backed independence, in late 1965, with negotiations between the United Kingdom and Rhodesia at an impasse, Smith (according to his biography Bitter Harvest) had authorized a committee under Cabinet Secretary Gerald B. Clarke to look at historical independence declarations in order to come up with a suitable version for Rhodesia in the event of a UDI having to be declared. The committee decided to use the 1776 United States Declaration of Independence as its reference. Once the text was agreed upon, the Government Printer in Salisbury created the actual document (during the first week of November).

Clarke placed the document in storage in the Rhodesian Parliament building until the morning of November 11, when Smith and his cabinet colleagues — after a last-minute appeal by the British Government failed to convince them not to follow this course of action — voted unanimously to declare their independence. Clarke was then directed by Smith to prepare the signing ceremony. The document was placed in an adjoining conference room to where the cabinet had convened to take their vote. With a photographer to record the historic moment, Smith, Deputy Prime Minister Clifford Dupont, and the other cabinet members signed the declaration. Later that day, Smith read it out on national radio, along with a speech giving justification for the action, and giving warning about probable negative reactions by the international community.

The timing of Smith's telegram to the British Prime Minister (Harold Wilson) announcing the UDI was symbolic. The message was sent at precisely 1 pm local time (11 am in London) at the exact moment that the United Kingdom started its Remembrance Day tradition (two minutes of silence to mark the end of World War I and honour its war dead). The not-so-hidden message in this timing was to recall the fact that Rhodesia had helped the UK in its time of need in both World Wars and that the British should not forget that.

Actually, I remember reading somewhere that the Rhodesians lost more servicemen as a proportion of its population than any other of the commonwealth nations. I also recall that during UK imposed sanctions the Rhodesians were banned from commemorating their fallen comrades in the UK on this day.

Whatever happened to my Fabergé Brut 33?

Dedicated to Lou-Lou on her 50^th. Love Ya Lots...

Whatever happened to my Fabergé Brut 33?

 

As a Rhodesian teen, I never really needed a deodorant. Come to think of it - I don’t really need one now. That’s because I am lucky enough not to ‘pong’ if I raise a little sweat. For example -  opening a can of beer or turning the boerwors over on a Barbie. (Er, Barbie as in Braai, as in BBQ ;  not the little plastic doll.)

But, around about the age of 16-17 year olds at Mount Pleasant High School, Salisbury, mid ‘70s , the type of deo worn became an example of class distinction among the males competing for the available sexual counterparts. All this because of Fabergé Brut 33.

As Rhodesians get old and senile, they desire some form of contact to those ‘good old days’, (the word’ good’ being rather ambiguously used). So here is a story.

___

Rhodesia had its own home-grown anti-stinky stuff. I think it was called Shield. The cheapest way was in a small bottle with a ball on top and you glued your armpit hair with it and they all turned white and stiff. Like a Mohican punk doing a hand stand. In fact, you could glue anything with the stuff. Generally, poor whites used the stuff. The alpha-males usually had Daddies with lots of readies, so the Rhodie jocks could coat themselves in Fabergé Brut 33.

The problem was that the stuff was imported and, due to sanctions, luxuries like this was like finding gold fillings in your inherited grandmother’s false teeth. When ‘posh’ Barbours (the Rhodesian equivalent of Harrods - less the Arabs), had a delivery, the word would quickly go around. Within minutes, mothers became rabid jackals, desperate to obtain the smellies; so desired by their hunky, rugby playing alpha-male off-spring. I was supposed to use my pocket money on such luxuries. My pocket money barely covered a white mouse from Leslies Pet Shop once a month (about the speed the cat found it in my bedroom clothes drawer. (Conversion rate for the time – One white mouse = five Coca-Colas (less deposit) a week.)

I remember when the gorgeous Cindi Tate, once leaned against me whilst we sat on the school desks backwards, swinging our legs so cool because Miss Simpson wasn’t there, and I filled her in on the latest gossip about her rival Gail Shaw, and touching my shoulder, ever so softly with her exquisite nose, she sniffed delicately, and said

‘Are you wearing Brut? I love Brut.’

(To imagine the passion of this statement, think - Like she sees your car key fob, and goes ‘Ooh you drive a Porsche!’  (Not quite, I don’t remember any Porsches in Rhodesia- just the usual porch, so a Datsun 120Y was good enough.)

 

I was mortified! The only thing I was wearing that she could smell was my khaki school shirt - most probably washed with Lever brothers Cold Power! (my Mum liked to save on electricity. Rich people used Surf).  The reason she smelt Brut was simply because that orange haired, six foot two, orang-u-tang, ‘OX’ Bruce Barrett, had passed us by with enough Brut back draft to open his own factory. (We zero-males, opposite to alpha-males on the Darwinian hypothesis, concluded his tag - ‘OX’  - was due to his brain capacity - rather than his physical features that averaged in body mass to two of us.)

At that point I made it my life work to have a tin of Brut. Luckily for me a sort of on/ off girl friend presented me with a tin for a birthday. I didn’t think of it as a hint, but as a sign of testosterone fuelled desire. The fact she got her mother to buy them in a six pack to distribute amongst all her beaus was unbeknown to me at the time.

I cherished that can. It was used so sparingly (only for parties) that the can would have rusted if I lived at sea level. I think I even kept the empty can on prominent display in my bedroom. Anyway, as you can imagine, as soon as I received my first pay check, I bought Brut 33.

Aah - envision it, there was me, doused with the stuff, pulling every bird in the bush, as I stumbled along on anti-terrorist patrols. I could be shot to pieces in moments, spotted by my aroma. I would have died a Rhodie macho man!

So, for a few years I wore Fabergé Brut 33. I could purchase it in Germany, but then at sometime I grew out of my teenage obsession and purchased smellies more in line with my supposed income. Fancy bottles and fashionable names cost fancy prices.

And then I was poor and old. Sob! And then you get that melancholy malingering of memories and purchase a bottle of Brut and squirt it up your nostrils in divine ecstasy, remembering how you inexplicably snogged the prettiest girl at the party and put it down to Fabergé Brut 33. If you got a feel of her breasts, you swore to buy shares in the company!

Well…I have been using Brut for a couple of years now, but as I am slow in the head, it has taken a while to realise that the Brut I was buying wasn’t the same as the Fabergé Brut 33, I remembered.

I think that when I bought a tin the other day for £1.67 -  I first got suspicious. I sort of recall that ‘back then’ a tin of Fabergé Brut 33, deo set you back a day’s pay. White man’s pay at that!

So…I had a good sniff of my armpits after a good dose of the stuff. Yup, something was wrong. Very wrong. I looked in the mirror and saw an old, grey haired man sniffing his armpits to see if he had it still to pull birds at parties using his last weapon - Fabergé Brut 33.

How sad is that? Anyway… The great smell of Brut wasn’t all there. So, I then found my spectacles, and tried to read the small print through the fogged glass. (I had just finished having a bath with the window closed.) I couldn’t read a thing about its true identity besides being most probably the best thing in the world. After I opened the door to allow much needed humidity into my Welsh water soaked apartment, I gathered that the green can I had tried to read was actually a can of Carlsberg beer. As you can see from the pictures, they are hard to differentiate under abnormal conditions! It took a few moments to correct my visibility and it is true!  Fabergé Brut 33, is now just some diluted dilution flogged as poor mans smellies. No Fabergé logo, no number…it has lost the connection with us Rhodesians.

I am bitterly disappointed, but I still use the cheap crap!

____

Interesting links –

Here is the irony because…wait for it…33 denoted the fact that it was Faberge’s el cheepo range! Yup, the 33 meant that it only had 33% of the real McCoy.

Check this out

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brut_%28cologne%29

Learning Afrikaans : Revenge of the Ninjas

Many regulars may recall the saga of me attempting to learn Afrikaans. This is pre- OU prose, but is still the most popular reading and has the most comments. To save new comers searching the archives, it can be accessed here.

 

Now, whilst I was walking on clouds of utopia today (due to just getting my results for OU Children’s Lit with a Grade 2 ( one short of a Distinction, mind you) ), I had the perpetual yowl of Radio 1 in the background.

Well, hard to believe, but some Afrikaans speaking lunatics are storming up the charts with some insane gibberish, that sounds remarkably similar to my version of Afrikaans after Mrs Smuts had beaten me semi-dead.

So…I looked to see what this is all about and…. amazing, the total end of the Boer idea of white supremacy in some alcove in South Africa is seriously put to the test. So I therefore present… er…this which with 5 million hits might be a barometer of the way South Africa is going  -are these lunatics. My personal opinion…They never met Mrs Smuts.

Lieutenant-General Peter Walls : How tall was he?

Lieutenant-General Peter Walls, who has died aged 83, was the last commander of Ian Smith's Rhodesian armed forces; his otherwise distinguished military career ended in humiliation when he became involved in the political turmoil that surrounded Robert Mugabe's accession to power in Zimbabwe in 1980.

The above headline was taken from the Telegraph. The obituary has some inaccuracies and also some interesting comments…but -

What has cropped up on numerous online forums with reference to the passing away of Lieutenant-General Peter Walls - exactly how tall was he? There seems to be discrepancies, and as a former police officer, Boy Scout and enthusiastic amateur forensic scientist, I believe I have solved the problem using a picture downloaded from the net.

Looking at a South African made standard 330ml tin of Castle Lager in Wall’s hand, it should be possible to work out his height. The can measures exactly 4 and  a half inches high. In the picture I printed out, the tin is 1 inch high. Using this scale, I measured his head. I had to guess a bit where it ended under the cap, but it is safe to say it ended just about where the badge ends.

That means his head is… I will just switch to millimetres for a bit…

Okay, tin is 25mm and head is 43mm in the picture. So if the real tin is 115mm, therefore 25mm is 22% of real tin. Erm…(I am getting a bit lost here.) So…if I divide 25mm into 43mm, I get 1.72 tins per head. Multiply that by 115mm = 198mm.

Convert back into inches (give or take a hair’s breadth), we have a tad under 8 inches, which means his head was about the size of a large turnip. Now if we look at the next picture - according to the chart, the head is 7 times the body height, thus he was 56 inches, or 4 feet 8 inches tall. Quite remarkable he was allowed to enrol in the army at all!

Obviously these observations may be not quite accurate, or for that matter, my math skills may be a bit wobbly.

UFO over Zimbabwe – Plasma Powered Helicopter?

Picture of a flaming plasma  Flying Tokoloshe over Mana Pools recently.

I awoke from my bed today after having been abducted by evil aliens employed by Ebay, when I happened to stumble across a strange little blog about UFOs over Zimbabwe.

Fascinating stuff, so I contacted my reliable sauces, Daddy Brown and Red Ketchup, to see if they could come up with anything remotely food for thought connected to egg, bacon, sausage and toast.
They managed to obtain some classified information from the Zimbabwe office of Senator Precious Littlesense, which, under Littlesense, oversees the Minister of Money Making Machines. Amazingly, it would appear the Zimbabweans have managed to build an undetectable flying machine. Okay…well you sort of see it, but when it flies it is bathed in strange lights. On the ground you see it.

Picture of a Flying Tokoloshe just before being loaded with plasma. 

In fact, it is a sort of helicopter powered by plasma! The CIA claim Zimbabwe doesn’t have the scientific know-how to manufacture plasma, but they got around that minor detail by sucking the stuff out of the confiscated televisions originally stolen by thieving white farmers. Once the machine is powered up, it goes mental, gets very hot, becomes invisible behind an aura of red hot plasma, shoots around like some drug crazed banshee, lands tits-up somewhere, usually deep in the bush - killing the pilot. 

Picture of a Flying Tokoloshe cockpit. Note condensation on the windscreen. This is due to the plasma firing up and the pilot sweating buckets.

With the semi-successful trial flights of the secret machine - code named Flying Tokoloshe Mark 5.1 and counting - the Zimbabwean government has entered into negotiations with the Taliban, who are hoping to procure several of the ZANU airworthy certificated invisible UFOs, to help them fight imperialistic invaders (whom, oddly enough, seem to be paying for them via aid money for displaced poppy growers).

A healthy bribe to an official from the afore mentioned ministry, who wishes to remain anomalous (spelt correctly), did say off-camera that -

‘Thunderbirds are go - as soon as we have more plasma TVs and pilots.’

 

Professor Daniel Chingomas - surreal entrepreneur, inventor of the Flying Tokoloshe . Seen here shortly before being last heard of by agonizingly screaming his head off - whilst enveloped in a ball of fire several hundred meters above a school in Ruwa, Zimbabwe. Several pupils were treated for trauma.