If I were part of the ruling party in government, with a huge majority, and ever so slightly pissed with all the white people that used to be right bastards till ten years back, then I'll do exactly this. I'll start changing the names of all the white cultural beacons. Case in point: The ANC changing Potchefstroom into Tlokwe.

But then again, I'm mean like that.

But considering that Tlokwe is also the name of the carton-boxed packaged beer so popular in the townships it has to be considered that the ANC is also mean like me and ever so slightly spiteful.

This of course had the effect intended and now I can't move for petitions against the name changing being pushed at me. This odd view that a few signatures will revoke 50 years of pent up bad feeling still surprises me somewhat. I haven't signed a one. I just love sacrificing them sacred cows, and this one ranks up there.

So ten out of ten to the ANC for premeditated nastiness. Nice going, you bastards.

How to violate human rights in your spare time

This is my first current news article. Laminate it for future generations.

In the varsity newspaper today there was an article about a group of freshmen complaining that their right of religion has been violated. And what pray tell violated this most sacred-when-it-suits-us of rights? It seems that they attended a motivational speech that was NOT christian oriented. In fact it was totally devoid of all religious references and purely dealt with motivational skills out of a secular psychological perspective. THE HORROR. Totally trampling over all their god-given human rights in the process it seems. (I'll stop with the puns, just not anytime soon).

The worst thing is I'm not so sure the varsity newspaper reported this in the same spirit that I read this. As previously quickly noted I attend a very conservative university that actually up to a few years ago labelled itself as christian-oriented in its title. The constitution finally caught up to this idea and we're now just North West University (as original a place as it sounds). But it seems old habits die hard and now they are actually complaining about the absence of something that in any normal place would rather have caused the controversy.

Amazing. Sometimes I pinch myself just to make sure I haven't succumbed and ended up in christian heaven. Only the absence of incessant singing indicates that I still inhabit this vale of tears.

Jihad on blogspot ...

Which I mean in the nicest way possible, of course

Two posts back I stated that one of my short term goals on blogspot was to figure out how to get to other blogs on blogspot. This I figured out in the remarkable short time of a year. And my reward? Almost everytime I try to access a random blog I for some reason end up at this page where this kid posts cartoons about his life and times with the prophet Muhammed. Stimulating as it may have been the first time it's strange to me that this site crops up 3 out of 5 times I click on 'random next blog'.

Conspiracy? Nah, just one of those flukes that will get someone beheaded.

What one won't do for self-gratification ...

Yes, everything and up to and including THAT.

Ok, so I'm not a post-creating machine. What a surprise. The reasons I'm actually doing this at all is that I've started reading other peoples blogs. Well, first off let me say that I won't be able to and not even try match up to the quality of some of the stuff I've read out there. Well done guys for bestowing yet another inferiority complex on me, this total stranger that's never done anything to you. Well, keeping to my goal of getting someone else to actually read and in some small way be interested in something I write I'm going to keep at this and see what develops.

So the question becomes; do I have anything interesting to write about? Well, let's list a few possible topics that I actually do have some experience in and let's see what develops from there:

1.) Being a white south african twenty-something guy ...
2.) ... in an extremely conservative christian university ...
3.) ... while being an avowed atheist myself ...
4.) ... and not getting a degree any time soon due to personal laziness ...
5.) ... even though this is already my fifth year on a four year course.

Nope, nothing remotely interesting in those topics, so let's move on. Let's talk about the sugar-levels of carbonated drinks in the good ol' U S of A. This December vacation I decided to jump the pond and broaden my horizons a bit. Maybe there is intelligent life outside the north-west province of South Africa? I decided to find out...

I'm going to jump past all other types of interesting happenings while there and get straight to my point. Which is that Americans are not fat because of fast foods or inactivity or any of the main culprits, rather that they are a mullet-sprouting obese species because of the huge amounts of sugar in the sorry excuse for soft drinks they have there. This I say without any supporting evidence other than the extreme nausea I felt everytime I dared to drink anything out of a can. In my defence I was fooled by recognizable brand names which I later found out did not mean the contents of the can would not be in any way comparable to what we have here in Africa.

For some reason the post-production step where the syrupy concentrate that would normally be diluted before being sold to unsuspecting consumers was entirely skipped. You end up with a liquid (and I use this term loosely) with a higher percentage of fructose than your average sugar-cube.

Stop drinking that filth you silly Americans! Can't you see that this lies at the root of all your current troubles? With lower sugar levels you will have less ADD kids, less sugar-induced gun violence and less trigger-happy presidents. That's right, get Kubya off the pepsi and let there be world peace again!

Maybe in a future post I will tell my audience how it came about that I was nearly perforated by a genuine Iraqi war-knife by an angry neighbour (hereafter referred to as That Crazy Bitch), why you should not trust Brazilians with pink charge slips and even perhaps the best tactics when cleaning toilets in the apartment of six guys.

But then again, maybe I won't.

Mission statement (for dummies)

Since I'm going to start more time on the net in the next few weeks I could just as well keep my terribly fascinating blog up to date.I mean, I don't want to lose my audience or anything. Keep up the silent treatment guys, it's doing wonders for my self esteem!

Ok, let's face it, a successful blog won't just happen. So instead of giving it my all with a rant every trimonth or so perhaps I should just take a break from my hectic posting paste and analyze what makes a 'wow' blog just that.

First of all, a goal. Ok, my goal with my blogs from now till I accomplish it is to get at least ONE OTHER PERSON to read it. This is a nigh-on-impossible goal, so at least I won't have to lose any sleep over accomplishing it or anything.

Ok, up next then is a mission with my blogs. I abstain from this since at the moment I'm not really interested and I pretty much know myself and my ability to stick to any plan for a set time. So this blog will remain liberating missionless. If you want to read a blog with a mission go read a political or religious rant somewhere else.

Thirdly I consider it a good idea to figure out how blogspot works. As I logged on, after a merciless fight with my chronic short-term memory for a possible username I might have used, I couldn't find a link to any other blog except my own. Hell, I even struggled to just get to this screen to compose a new entry. And I'm a computer engineer, or at least a shallow facsimile of one. In my knowledge of all the doo-da's of blogspot maybe then I can find out what then is that strange beast that is a successful blog.

Fourthly I should really get my thoughts down of the world around me. My world might not be unique, or interesting, or deserving of any third-party scrutiny, but at least .... Nothing comes to mind really, I just want to write about my world, ok? Sheesh.

Ok, but off to work. Not that I'm on a deadline or anything, I'm just a lowly student vacation laborer, but the looks I'm getting makes me uncomfortable enough to start putting up the pretense of working again

Machine Windings and The People Who Care

Goeie dag!

What a beautiful day it was again in sunny North West. Or at least, that's what they told me, since I basically missed the entire thing.

Why?

Because my favourite lecturer in my favourite university module took us on a field trip. Field trips thus far was entirely the domain of school and social events, and never did I even suspect that on university level such a thing could be done to me. How tragically naive I was.

Ok, but first things first, since I'm being confusing. I am an aspiring electronical/computer engineer,and not particularly succesful in it. I enjoy and do well in the subjects I have an interest in, but am useless and completely lazy in the ones I do not. First and foremost of these is Machine Theory, a horrible excuse of a subject that is the proverbial Goliath to my nameless soldier that dies gruesomely. It deals with electrical machines, under which falls generators, motors and transformers. The stuff that makes the modern world go round, and that I couldn't give half a toss about.

Well, in exactly this subject then our lecturer (a primate that looks as if he permanently lives on invisible plakton with a set of foreteeth that wouldn't embarrass a horse) organized a day-long field trip to the quaint and homely heavy industrial area of Johanesburg. And not only that, but I also had to get up at 5 am to finish a pointless assignment that had to be handed in when getting on the bus.

And now for the scary part of the story; I actually did find the day interesting and even might have enjoyed it. This is very very scary, since this means that my core values, of which my hate for anything to do with machines is a part of, is changeable! A paradigm shift I did not expect to make on a factory floor, but there it is.

The entire process of the construction, rewinding and fitting of the machines was fascinating, and even more so the more minute supporting processes that went on all around the main event. Now I know, it all sounds boring and off-putting, but being there and seeing the monster machines being gutted and refitted and generally subjugated to the will of man was awesome.

I'm truly shook by actually enjoying this day, and I'm going to need time to get back to my pre-trip disgust of anything electrical. What a bother.