Thursday, February 28, 2008

Killing me softly

with his so oooong.

Ardent readers would remember how we smoked class 2 the other evening. Well Ron the guru, forgot to mention that we are now Class 1 (upgrades, baby) and actually started 5 minutes late - so we're involved in a bigger legal wrangle than Ernesto vs Larry to get it overturned.


anyway, we stick to sticking it to the rest on the water - last night was no exception. I do have to wonder what all these folk are doing round the docks? Or are they trying to picket the CTICC. Zim, Congo, Somalia? who knows - but expect some new car guards in the ensuing weeks.

Sunday, February 24, 2008

The greatest show on earth

so in the depths of a dark canadian winter, there were cheers to come from the idiot box. Now can you believ it, our two favourites are right here on YouTube!

Most Extreme Eliminations: take a ridiculous Gladiators style Jap series, and then dub the greatest ever running commentary over it. Brit viewrs would recognise it as Takahashi's Castle, but it's just so much better with the new audio. ouch!


The man show: Oprah for men. the presenters have to down their beers, and it ends with girls in dresses on trampolines. you can't improve on perfection

Wednesday, February 20, 2008

Uncle Jager hits the vlei

Oh wow, another year rolls by. I know that because kids are talking about the UCT yacht club opening cruise. They have about five of these each year, but the only one that counts is the first one. It has many highlights, I'm torn between the boat bashing and subsequent burning and the surplus semester abroad yank skanks that always get punished.

The boat burning is a goodie, as an old dog of a hull is found, decimated by bent laser sections and then lit. Invariably some idiot gets impatient and pours 5l of petrol on and then tries to impress girls by jumping over the flames. I'd like to see some jump bikes to be honest. We'll also bnever forget the time a wooden boat couldn't be found. Fibreglass makes thick, black smoke. You could call it nigerian.

Then well, where do we start with the skanks? They get enticed at O-week sign up, have a huge party. Throw name and never return. Maybe they feel a little disappointed when Snailman refers to it as a 'Lake', when the rest of us know it is a green slimy receptacle where the gangs dump their targets. Maybe they come in search of man-whore Gabriel, whose fourgasm is talk of legend.

sneak preview of the stock

Either way, they normally run out of booze, no matter how much is bought. What price that it lasts this year?
please tell me that's not Absinthe

Tuesday, February 19, 2008

MPFrees

 

So I have a fairly simple view on MP3s and the law. Music format has changed (for the better) and so should the industry. They are still stuck in circa 1970, when tapes came out. That was the end, because now you could copy any LP in your home and distribute at your own desire. Well illegal reproductions did happen, but it hardly dented the industry profits.


Then came CD's in ~1984. That was cool, because they had so many advantages over tapes. Also cool for them because they retailed for double the tape price, yet cost less to manufacturer from about day 15 (no moving parts on cd's – think about it). So they schnaaied us there with extra profit for sure. CD burners in ~1994 took mixed tapes to a new level, but they still raked in the cash. It's quite a luss do make them in any volume.


All this crap got them worried, and it was no different when MP3's kicked off about the sametime. Now I can get someone's entire music collection onto my portable harddrive/Ipod in about an hour. Take a medium sized 30Gb MP3 collection, that's about 650 full length albums. That's the most amazing way to share music, which is a good thing for sure.


The industry are too worried about their rights. Somewhere they forgot that people make music for much bigger reasons than money. Eventually they will wake up, we'll a wider range of artists and less peripheral guys making money off these artists. Demo's are getting cheaper and better as decent setups can be done in a garage. Recording companies? Well they'll change for sure. Who needs a whole promotional division when you have myspace, publicists when you have a band website? Basically the power recorded music will be more in the hands of the musicians themselves, and not the hanger's on who've been controlling it for the last 50 years (which is why they fight it). It's a better situation for sure.


I still buy albums, but mostly from local bands who deserve the cash. I'd rather copy the MP3's and just do a R100 EFT to the band account. If you somehow feel guilty about MP3's, then here's a way to get it free and legal.


loadtheshow dot coza


very clever concept, get advertising money to pay for free downloads, which then goes directly to the artists. They have a quota for the day, and anyone can plunder it until it's empty. You get told who pays for your song. Brilliant.


So that's my viewpoint, I have a rack of cd's I hardly ever use and a bunch of mostly illegal MP3's I do use often. Still think I'm a criminal, then think about this. Author writes a book that the public can buy. You buy it, read it and put it on the shelf. You're done with it really, but might lend it out to someone, who will also only read it once. That person gets the same from the book that you did, yet paid nothing. To all intents and purposes it's the same as copying a cd. So if MP3 sharing is illegal and punishable, please take book clubs ( and libraries) down at the same time.



Monday, February 18, 2008

The boys night out

So fatboy had a kak week. The foreign aid worker chick gave him the heave-ho, the b1tsh. Dangerous did the necessary, and called a boys night out. No chicks/wifes/panty potential allowed. That's a recipe for disaster, but throw in a trip to Jonny's rotis in the N1 highwayman's car and you know it's all going pear. Not sure quite why we had to have the emergency flasher beacon on the whole way, but it did seem a good idea at the time.

Being biker boys, pretty soon a track stand competition progressed to a stairwell downhill progressed to a street drag race. The ADT patrolman was roped in, but declined when he heard that the purse was a Jameson's funnel.

not a downhill course

For some reason it was decided that a spot of barbering was required, and the N1 highwayman stood up to the plate in performing the world's worst mullet. Ever. What was I thinking? Oh wait, heavy thinking had been replaced by steady drinking somewhere near main road.

The world's worst mullay, in the history of mullays

The Beams were destination A, and they stood up well. I had friends not recognising me, in my new guise as tappitparownoordboi. Pretty soon, the R8 bacardi and coke special loomed, gotta luv mercury.

Some crazy dancing ensued downstairs. What happens during 99 Red balloons in the english speaking world???yes, everyone drops their pants. Not so here, apparently. Everyone followed my lead, but then proceeded to repeat the process during random songs for the rest of the night. Looks like the system broke down somewhere. Of course we had a fine array of beauties lined up until the Parlotones rocked up and beatlemania got in the way. Damn those brazilians.

I could go on, but you had to be there. Maybe these pics of my jeans will explain the way we hit that dancefloor hard. Too hard, ouch!

die groot gat

I kneed a new pair

Friday, February 15, 2008

Wed nite mayhem

In case you hadn't noticed, summer started a long time ago. Days got hotter, windier and longer way back in mid 2007. So when the hashbrown crew assembled on Sea Minor for their first wednesday night race of the season, there was little talk of victory. Just getting round the course with all cobwebs shaken would be considered a job well done. Maybe there was no victory plans because the milnerton connection was stuck in milnerton (the suburb, not the mark).

hellooooo class 2

With roles determined and deck fluff in position the boat was fine-tuned with the time honoured TLAR* method. Skipper Price then did the usual transit and surprise surprise a bang-it-closer-than-a-ballhair-to-the-wall start was called. Position was vital, as the only watch on the boat measured in increments of minutes.

race faces

The rest of Class 2 were kakking off when they saw us power off the line at a speed of at least four knots, you could see it in their eyes. The tactical calls up the first beat were shared by all on board, and they were superb. They were so sublime, that we didn't even tack once, and even got to bear off slightly when a minute or so from the mark.

The Paardeneiland mark was duly rounded with the entire fleet in our wake. With not much else to do before the Milnerton mark, Skipper Price lashed the helm and the bar was opened. The pirates on Celine III tried covering and catching up. We just chugged our beers and smiled. They backed off once Hobb let off a snorter fart, this thing travelled UPWIND and there was no question of a water call. I think that's what happened, i was actually busy rolling off some choice MMS's to the idiots who chose to find other things to do.

life's tough

The mighty Sea Minor roared through the rest of the course, almost catching the Class 1 hackers by the line. As was earlier reported, it's been a while since we've been on the boat, so the booze stocks were looking grim. We'd already put the wench onto cane straigthfacing, and it was getting to Grappa.

posers

The line came closer, dolphins frolicked off the bow, crowds roared. We rock. It's fun to be good. A long lost bottle of champers (sparkling wine to be honest) was duly found and despatched. Zula bar still don't know what hit them.

TLAR* That looks about right

Wednesday, February 13, 2008

Dummies guide to the AC wrangles

If you (like most of us) don't know what the hell is actually going on, this article from the Telegraph should clear things up:

Salvatore sits and waits


The America's Cup has a history of making waves. Alistair Osborne reports on the spat that has left the venerable prize shipwrecked

Maybe Howard Hughes would understand. "I'm not a paranoid deranged millionaire," the late recluse once declared. "Goddamit, I'm a billionaire."



Judge Herman Cahn of the New York Supreme Court might recognise that. Any day now, he will give his verdict on a spiteful duel between two of the world's richest men that has marooned yachting's greatest prize, the America's Cup, in a legal spat of nit-picking complexity.

At the centre of the squall between these two crashing egos is a 120-year-old document, running to just two pages. It is the Deed of Gift, which governs the oldest trophy in international sport. In the hands of the two bilious billionaires, the case has become a pedant's, and lawyer's charter, degenerating into a row over what constitutes a "keel yacht" and the definition of simple words, like "weekday".

Billionaire number one is the winner of the 31st and 32nd races: Ernesto Bertarelli, whose father built the Swiss-based Serono biotech company, which was sold to pharmaceutical giant Merck in 2006 for $13.3bn (£6.8bn). Last year Forbes magazine ranked Serono-heir Bertarelli the world's 76th richest man, worth $8.8bn.

Billionaire number two is Larry Ellison, the brash software supremo still at the helm of Oracle Systems, the American IT outfit he co-founded 30 years ago. Fortune ranked him number 11, worth $21.5bn. Not that Ellison would care. "Money is just a method of keeping score now," he said recently.

Just participating in the America's Cup can cost a team between £40m and £80m. But, as a boatload of billionaires have found to their cost, it is one prize money cannot buy. Bertarelli hinted at as much after he won the last renewal: "It's been a real lesson in life; one of the hardest things I've ever done, and today, besides the birth of my kids, is probably the best day of my life."

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Perhaps that feeling explains the extraordinary goings-on since Bertarelli's Swiss Alinghi team scooped the "Auld Mug" in Valencia last summer.

The rules of the America's Cup are unlike any other sporting event. Sir Keith Mills, the Air Miles and Nectar card millionaire who led London's successful Olympic bid, knows the rulebook better than most because he is assembling a British challenge. "The America's Cup is unique in sport," he explains. "If you win it, you get to choose the challenger and where the next race is held. You also get all the sponsorship and merchandising rights."

Bertarelli wanted more, though. In a textbook example of control-freakery, he tried to tighten the defender's grip on the Cup by producing an off-the-shelf Spanish challenger - the hastily-assembled Club Náutico Español de Vela. That's not to mention some rather dubious rewriting of the rules of engagement.

This was a provocation too far for Ellison, who reached for his lawyers. The upshot was that last November Judge Cahn threw out Bertarelli's Spanish challenger and installed, in its place, Ellison's Golden Gate Yacht Club.

Says Tom Ehman, spokesman for Ellison's BMW Oracle team: "Bertarelli simply tore up the rule book and established this yacht club that didn't qualify. He also wanted to name all the officials and have the defender sail in the challengers' races, which is rather like putting the fox in the chicken coop. "

Under the rules, the official challenger races against other rivals in a series of heats until one boat emerges to go head-to-head with the defending champion.

Bertarelli naturally disagrees. One source says: "In his mind, he won the America's Cup, therefore he decides the rules. If Larry Ellison wants to set the rules, he has first got to go and win the cup on the water."

The Deed of Gift has its origins in the race round the Isle of Wight in 1851 - the 100 Guinea Cup - that established the America's Cup. Despite 17 British competitors, the sole foreign challenger - the schooner yacht America - sailed off with the trophy. In 1877, the only survivor of the victorious team, George Schuyler, donated the cup to the New York Yacht Club under a Deed of Gift. It stated that the trophy was to be "a perpetual challenge cup for friendly competition between nations". The deed requires the trophy holder to accept the challenge from any established foreign yacht club and meet on the water within 10 months for a best-of-three races, with a day's break between each.

After Judge Cahn's November ruling, Bertarelli hired new lawyers. They spotted that Ellison's challenge referred to a "keel yacht", failing to describe, they claim, the catamaran he is building. Neither did his race dates - July 4, 6 and 8 - fit the bill. The July 5 rest day fell on a Saturday, which they claimed did not count as a "weekday". So they declared his challenge invalid.

Ellison's camp suspects Bertarelli is playing for time while he designs a yacht ideally suited to the location he chooses for the next race.

Many believe Judge Cahn will force the warring billionaires to settle their differences on the water this autumn.

While he ruminates on his decision, the judge might also reflect how times have changed since British tea baron Sir Thomas Lipton sunk much of his fortune and three decades of his life into five failed challenges for the cup, spanning 1899 to 1930.

When, at the age of 80, Lipton finally gave up, New York mayor Jimmy Walker presented him with a silver cup, recognising him as "the world's best loser".

That's a status Bertarelli and Ellison would find nauseating. Happily, one of them must lose.

Tuesday, February 12, 2008

so you think your valentines is looking bleak?

spare a thought for these guys:
nice tower for a date


RIYADH (Reuters) - Saudi Arabia's religious police have banned red roses ahead of Valentine's Day, forcing couples in the conservative Muslim nation to think of new ways to show their love.

The Commission for the Promotion of Virtue and Prevention of Vice has ordered florists and gift shop owners in the capital Riyadh to remove any items colored scarlet, which is widely seen as symbolizing love, newspapers said.

"They visited us last night," the Saudi Gazette quoted an unidentified florist as saying.

It is not unusual for the Saudi vice squad to clamp down ahead of Valentine's Day, which it sees as encouraging relations between men and women outside of wedlock, the newspaper said.

Saudi Arabia imposes an austere form of Sunni Islam which prevents unrelated men and women from mixing, bans women from driving and demands that women wear a headscarf and a cloak.

Relations outside marriage are strictly banned and punishable by law.

Monday, February 11, 2008

picture story book

wow, that's a big gap between posts..of course the team has not been idly sitting twiddling thumbs. That dumb cliche about a picture and thousands of words comes to mind, digest this:


















hmm, yes well
..the keywords are phuza thursday world champs(vensters) and up the creek