Scary Halloween Stories

Since it’s Halloween I thought I might share three frightening stories of a different kind, two from South Africa where I live, and one which is as international as it gets.

I’ll get the international one out the way first.

Apple CEO Tim Cook has announced publicly that he’s gay. And no, that’s not the scary bit. Why anyone would be required to announce their sexual orientation is beyond me, because that’s nobody’s business but their own. Again, that’s not the scary bit either. The thing that frightens me is that a homophobic idiot in Russia by the name of Vitaly Milonov wants Cook to be prohibited from entering Russia because he believes “… It’s obvious he has the intention of imposing his ideas about families, not just of introducing new gadgets.”

Milonov, a politician, was apparently also instrumental in getting anti-gay laws promulgated in Russia last year. He also commented that “This is a political act aimed at popularising homosexuality.” Bullshit! As if that’s not bad enough, who knows what evil plans the more militant homophobes are hatching to harm such a high-profile personality?

Locally, two stories today that send shivers down my spine involve the ANC and Jacob Zuma, the President.

It has been reported that the ANC is broke, and cannot pay staff and outstanding debts. They have denied it off course, but the ANC leadership are glorious denial kings. While it has long been thought that the ANC is itself a broken organization, this additional setback, just adds fuel to the speculation fire. What are they going to do to right their financial woes? Considering their infamous track record involving corruption on a multitude of occasions, most notably the Arms Deal Scandal, I am pretty terrified right now, over how I and the beleaguered taxpayers of this country are going to foot the bill for the ANC’s financial woes.

Finally, the ad-hoc committee that was set up by the ANC-led Parliament to decide whether President Jacob Zuma should be held liable to pay for the costs of the upgrade to Nkandla his personal residence, to the tune of a quarter of a million Rands, has not surprisingly decided that he is off the hook. This committee comprised a majority of ANC members of Parliament with a smattering of opposition party members who walked out at the onset after disagreeing on the terms of reference among other issues, leaving the investigation and deliberations to only ANC members.

The whole thing was a farce meant to stymie further probing into the massive fraud that was perpetrated on the country, and the resultant whitewash was hardly unexpected. It was analagous to a murder suspect demanding and being allowed to pick a jury of his own friends and family.

If the ANC can do this and get away with (as seems likely), then it has really scary repercussions for the future of democracy in this country, and indeed, the future of the country itself.

iDon’tGeddit

Big news this week is the release of yet another iteration of the iPhone. It’s the iPhone half-a-dozen and it’s much bigger; and probably sports some new-fangled tech-shit that will amuse a lot of people no end.

But am I the only person who doesn’t understand this fascination obsession with new cellular phones? Sorry “smart” phones.

And I’m not just picking on Apple. They’re the solo-evil-genius of the smart phone world, but the Android operating system has multiple evil manufacturers. If I remember correctly, Samsung released a new Galaxy version only just recently, also with a few more bells and whistles that maybe ten people will actually use.

Off course the one thing that keeps improving, is the camera on these phones. But I still don’t understand why. There must be like ten people in the whole world who have somehow managed to capture a really good photo with a smart phone. Everything else is just shite. Why wouldn’t it be? Who can hold a smart phone steady enough to take a really good photo. All it’s good for is selfies. And there you have the irony with smartphones. They’re made for not very smart people.

I got my first smart phone a little over a year ago. I chose a Blackberry because I didn’t want to be called an Apple or Android or Thor forbid, a Windows fanboy. I also only wanted a phone to make and receive calls and send and receive the odd text message. And Blackberry used to be the most stable and reliable cellphone out there. Then it all went south.

The nightmare started after the first software upgrade. The phone became practically unusable. So Blackberry eventually sorted out the mess after a few months, but the company was going down the tubes pretty fast. The next software version fixed the bugs of the version that was supposed to make Blackberry the greatest thing since… Blackberry. I think they’ve recovered somewhat in recent times.

But then came the next software upgrade a few weeks ago. And guess what? Yep, my phone is almost unusable again.Sigh!

So I’m now waiting for the software upgrade to fix the software upgrade…