News Flash!

I enjoy staying up to date on current affairs. That usually includes perusing our local news sites for the latest updates. Every now and then though, a local politician decides to hold a press conference about a pressing issue, and makes a complete fool of him/herself.

 

A short while ago our Minister for Water and Sanitation announced that the reason our water levels remain critically low is because people are stealing our water from the dams. They haven't managed to catch these people because they probably do it at night when no-one's looking. Anyone who has information on these criminals are urged to come forward.

Then, in another cringe-worthy press conference, our Minister for Health said that the major cause of cancer and stroke in South Africa is the doggy style position. He said that after three years of arduous research it was found that the high pumping of blood during sex, when one is kneeling or standing, overloads the veins in the legs which ultimately causes stroke.

The latest article that caught my attention was a press conference held by Zimbabwean first lady Grace Mugabe in which she stated that girls have a much higher chance of getting pregnant than their male counterparts, and thus should take extra precautions during sex. “Girls have a higher chance of falling pregnant than boys. If you look at the statistics, girls have nearly 100% chance of getting pregnant, while boys have nearly zero chances of falling pregnant. This means girls have to be extra extra vigilant”, she said.

Why do we even bother having comedians in Southern and Central Africa? Clearly they are outclassed by our political figures! No wonder the world thinks we are a joke....

Instant Millionaire!

So this morning when I checked my mail, I noticed a mail from a Nigerian princess offering to do business with me. Her family is extremely wealthy and she would like to share their wealth with me, should I choose to assist them. All they would require in return was my banking details so that they could deposit the funds. That is all! The easiest money I would ever make! Unfortunately for Princess Virginia Khampala I saw right through her scheme.

I still struggle to understand how people fall for these schemes. In fact, it has puzzled me so that I wrote a previous post about it, that can be found here. In that post I mentioned James Veitch, a man who decided to take on these scammers by spamming them right back. And recently he released another video about his quest to spam the spammers. I hope you enjoy it as much as I did!

Heartbreak

So a little over a week ago I was sitting at my desk, minding my own business, when my body decided it was bored and tried to liven things up a bit. I developed chest pains and had trouble breathing. And I did what any self-respecting person would do and just ignored it. The pain eventually subsided but the tight feeling in my chest didn't. After a few days of this I decided to seek the opinion of a medical professional and went to a clinic for a checkup. They did an ECG and immediately declared that I had to go to hospital. Seeing as I was upright and breathing I considered this overkill, but they were adamant.

On arrival at the hospital I spent 45 minutes checking in. This was mostly due to the reception desk being unable to reach my medical aid. While I was sitting in reception waiting for someone at my medical aid to notice the ringing phone, I wondered what they would have done had it been an actual emergency. Would they have tried to keep me alive while still waiting for someone to answer? After quite some time I was told that my medical aid had finally realized that the ringing sound wasn't in their ears and answered the phone. I was told to report to the cardiology ICU ward. There the nurses tried to figure out why I was there, as I was younger than all the other patients in the ward by at least 40 years. Eventually they told me to strip down and handed me one of those hospital gowns where your butt is on display for everyone to see and stuck me in a hospital bed.

A myriad of ECG, blood pressure tests and blood tests followed. They were drawing so much blood that I was wondering if I would have any left. When my test results finally came back I was told that everything looked okay but I was being held overnight for monitoring. I spent the night hooked up to a blood pressure machine, an oxygen monitoring system and a drip. They had to spend 5 minutes disconnecting me every time I went to the bathroom. I really started feeling like someone in a white coat with wild hair was going to try and conduct electricity into me while yelling "It's alive! IT'S ALIVE!" Thankfully I was discharged on the condition that I be back a few days later for an angiogram.

For those who don't know, an angiogram is where they make an incision in your groin, right next to your old chap, and then thread a piece of wire up a major artery and into your heart. I suspect the surgeon just secretly likes to see you with your pants down. The angiogram itself was quite painful. It felt like they were trying to shove a firehose into my body. Thankfully it didn't last very long but then I was told not to move for 4 hours lest I rupture my tortured artery and bleed to death. Very comforting thought!

The end result of this whole thing is that I am actually fine. They've done every blood test they could think of, and a few that I am pretty sure they made up on the spot, and they have declared me healthy. The problem turned out to be the way that my heart conducts electricity. If I knew that beforehand I might have just saved myself a lot of trouble and hired an electrician!

Restart Required

This morning I had to install a content management system for the company I work at. And the installation, though lengthy, went well. Upon attempting to launch the application I was informed that I needed to restart my computer. Alright, annoying but I suppose necessary. So I restarted my computer. Then, after the restart, I try and launch the application only for it to inform me that it can't connect to its database. Nowhere during the installation did it tell me that it had a burning desire to connect to a database, so one was not installed. After a bit of grumbling I installed database software, only for my PC to once again inform me that a restart was required in order for certain files to become available. I was quite annoyed at this point but gave a deep sigh and once again restarted my computer. After the restart the database application still failed to install, and after some creative Googling I found the issue. After fixing the issue and attempting to install the database application, it again wanted a restart.

My question is this, why does Microsoft even want us to use computers if all they do is constantly restart your computer?! You install updates, you have to restart. You install an application, you have to restart. Your PC is misbehaving, you have to restart. North Korea tests a nuclear weapon, you have to restart. It is enough to drive one absolutely crazy! But that got me wondering, couldn't we apply Microsoft's problem solving solution to every day things? For example, your Government is corrupt, reset the Government. Makes sense to me! Maybe IT guys should be making decisions, we would get a lot more done!

Bathroom Break

So I was having lunch with my dad, his fiance, my uncle and his girlfriend on Sunday and a good time was had by all. At some point I decided to answer nature's call. Upon finishing my ablutions and trying to exit the bathroom, I realised that the key had broken in the lock and the door would not open. Being a man I tried all sorts of ways to get the door open before finally realising that I will need to call in reinforcements. Imagine my dad's surprise when he received a phone call from me from within the bathroom. When I explained my situation it was met with much hilarity and the entire family congregated outside the bathroom door to offer comment or reassurance.

The first step was to see if there was a spare key, but alas, no such luck. So a wide variety of tools was handed to me through the bathroom window. The plan was to remove the door itself. So I valiantly set to work trying to get the pins out of the hinges. Unfortunately the first pin was quite comfortable where it was and resisted my efforts at removal. But, with great determination, effort and a desire to not remain in the bathroom for the rest of the day, I managed to finally convince the offending pin to relocate. It should be said that, at this point, my family members were all congregated outside the bathroom window, providing commentary and advice. I secretly wondered what the neighbours would think were they to peek over the wall.

After the removal of the first pin the second one gave up without a fight, probably not wishing to endure the same treatment that I had given the first one. Unfortunately the door remained resolutely in place, even after some well-placed kicks from the other side. I decided to wash the dust and grime off of my hands and had just turned to the sink when the bathroom door suddenly landed right on top of me. It turns out that my dad's fiance, in her best Hollywood cop persona, had taken a run-up and flung her full weight against the door. Like any criminal faced with Hollywood justice, the door gave up immediately.

After crawling out from under the door I removed the lock and we put the door back on its hinges. After testing to see that the door could open and close (this time from outside of the bathroom) we could once again settle down for some coffee and biscuits. This was definitely not the quiet Sunday that I had imagined I would have! In future, when nature calls, I think I will just quietly slip into the garden and go seek a tree......

We are the Bored

During the festive season my neighbours went somewhere with lots of sun, sand and waves. That left their Jack Russel to sit around all day being extremely bored. While the entertainment of a dog does not rank high on many people's lists, it became a priority of mine when said dog decided to yap for absolutely no reason in an effort to a) entertain itself, b) drive me completely insane, c) all of the above. I eventually resorted to buying the bored canine dog toys and chewy treats just to shut it up. Alas, I did not succeed. But that got me thinking, what other ways do people have to beat the boredom? I found a list of ways in which people entertain themselves while bored at the office and thought I would share it with you. Who knows, it just might inspire you!

1. "When I am bored at work I make lightsaber noises with my pen. Today I got caught."

2. "Sometimes when I am bored at work I will speak to people in a really high voice while maintaining a straight face, just to amuse myself."

3. "Whenever I am bored at work I think of ways to break into the office if I ever get locked out."

4. "When I am really bored at work I start narrating everything I am doing in a game show announcer voice in my head."

5. "When I am really bored at work I like to write 'I'm watching you' on the toilet paper a few squares in just to mess with people."

6. "Sometimes when I am bored at work I sit and cut my split ends one hair at a time."

7. "I practice my signature for hours on end when I get bored at work."

8. "Sometimes when I am bored at work I will just sit and stare at myself in the mirror."

9. "When I am bored at work I will try and see how much water I can fit in my mouth from the water cooler."

10. "Sometimes at work when I get bored, I will use the office supplies for arts and crafts."

11. "Sometimes when I get really bored at work I will change my desktop theme to places around the world and flip through the pictures and pretend I am traveling the world."

12. "When I am bored at work I write resignation letters because even though I can't afford to quit, it makes me feel better to pretend that I can."

13. "I'm the guy at work that bends up all the paper clips when I get bored. My coworkers are starting a witch hunt to find the person who is wasting office supplies."

14. "I'm not normally one to take selfies, but when I am alone and bored at work I suddenly become a supermodel."

15. "I engage my boss in idle chit-chat when I get bored at work because I know he will just keep going on for at least an hour if I let him."

16. "When I get bored at work I move stuff around to confuse people."

17. "When I am bored at work I dial random extensions and if they answer I yell 'Get off the phone! Get back to work!"

18. "Sometimes when I am bored at work I read smutty fan fiction in my cubicle."

That Time of the Year

As the year draws to a close, something strange happens. Your workload seems to suddenly grow to Everest-size proportions, no-one is available for meetings although everyone wants meetings and people run around frantically buying Christmas pressies. Unfortunately this accounts for my silence in the past few weeks as well, just minus the Christmas shopping. Even so, when I came across this gem, I just had to take the time to share it:

An unidentified mom was pretty concerned about some unusual symptoms that her teenage daughter had been displaying, so she brought her on down to the doctor for a checkup. As Boredom Therapy shares, both mother and daughter weren’t too pleased with his diagnosis, but the doctor was able to quickly put them both in check.

After the initial pleasantries, the mother explains what’s been going on with her daughter.

“She keeps getting these cravings, she’s putting on weight and is sick most mornings,” the mom says.

The doctor has a look, and he reaches a conclusion that the girl is about four months pregnant. Flabbergasted, the mother simply can’t wrap her head around what the doctor has told her.

“Pregnant?! She can’t be, she has never ever been left alone with a man!” mom says.

The daughter concurs and assures her mother that she’s never even kissed a man, so the doctor heads on over to look out the window. After a few awkward moments pass, the mom asks the doctor if there’s something wrong.

“No, not really, it’s just that the last time anything like this happened, a star appeared in the east and three wise men came over the hill. I’ll be darned if I’m going to miss it this time!” he said.