Res Ipsa Loquitur

African News Stories

Simon J James — Wed, 06 Jan 2010 13:05:00 +0000

The Cape Times (Cape Town)

“I have promised to keep his identity confidential,’ said Jack Maxim, a spokeswoman for the Sandton Sun Hotel, Johannesburg, “but I can confirm that he is no longer in our employment.
We asked him to clean the lifts and he spent four days on the job. When I asked him why, he replied: ‘Well, there are forty of them, two on each floor, and sometimes some of them aren’t there’. Eventually, we realised that he thought each floor had a different lift, and he’d cleaned the same two twelve times. “We had to let him go. It seemed best all round. I understand he is now working for GE Lighting.”

The Star (Johannesburg):

“The situation is absolutely under control,” Transport Minister Ephraem Magagula told the Swaziland Parliament in Mbabane. “Our nation’s merchant navy is perfectly safe. We just don’t know where it is, that’s all.”
Replying to an MP’s question, Minister Magagula admitted that the landlocked country had completely lost track of its only ship, the Swazimar: “We believe it is in a sea somewhere. At one time, we sent a team of men to look for it, but there was a problem with drink and they failed to find it, and so, technically, yes, we’ve lost it a bit. But I categorically reject all suggestions of incompetence on the part of this government. The Swazimar is a big ship painted in the sort of nice bright colours you can see at night. Mark my words, it will turn up. The right honourable gentleman opposite is a very naughty man, and he will laugh on the other side of his face when my ship comes in.”

The Standard (Kenya):

“What is all the fuss about?” Weseka Sambu asked a hastily convened news conference at Jomo Kenyatta International Airport. “A technical hitch like this could have happened anywhere in the world. You people are not patriots. You just want to cause trouble.” Sambu, a spokesman for Kenya Airways, was speaking after the cancellation of a through flight from Kisumu, via Jomo Kenyatta, to Berlin. “The forty-two passengers had boarded the plane ready for take-off, when the pilot noticed one of the tyres was flat. Kenya Airways did not possess a spare tyre, and unfortunately the airport nitrogen canister was empty. A passenger suggested taking the tyre to a petrol station for inflation, but unluckily the jack had gone missing so we couldn’t get the wheel off. Our engineers tried heroically to re-inflate the tyre with a bicycle pump, but had no luck, and the pilot even blew into the valve with his mouth, but he passed out. “When I announced that the flight had to be abandoned, one of the passengers, Mr Mutu, suddenly struck me about the face with a life-jacket whistle and said we were a national disgrace. I told him he was being ridiculous, and that there was to be another flight in a fortnight. And, in the meantime, he would be able to enjoy the scenery around Kisumu, albeit at his own expense.”

From a Zimbabwean newspaper:

While transporting mental patients from Harare to Bulawayo, the bus Driver stopped at a roadside shebeen (beerhall) for a few beers. When he got back to his vehicle, he found it empty, with the 20 patients nowhere to be seen. Realizing the trouble he was in if the truth were uncovered, he halted his bus at the next bus stop and offered lifts to those in the queue. Letting 20 people board, he then shut the doors and drove straight to the Bulawayo mental hospital, where he hastily handed over his ‘charges’, warning the nurses that they were particularly excitable. Staff removed the furious passengers; it was three days later that suspicions were roused by the consistency of stories from the 20. As for the real patients: nothing more has been heard of them and they have apparently blended comfortably back into Zimbabwean society.

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Football Club pays a lot of money to another Football Club for a Very Good Footballer

Simon J James — Tue, 05 Jan 2010 22:58:38 +0000

From the Daily Heil:

“In a move that is sure to rock the very foundations of football, a Football Club, yesterday, paid a lot of money to another Football Club for a very good footballer.

A spokesman for the selling Football Club said today, “We have been approached by another Football Club for permission to speak to a very good footballer that plays for us at the moment. They have offered us a lot of money and to be honest we fucking jumped at it, it is a LOT of money!”

“The buying Football Club, that is throwing it money about like a young chav that’s just won the lottery, is believed to be foreign, and therefore, under the rules of the FA is suffering from a lack of class and dignity and no sense of history. However, they will gladly take their money even if they did garble on in a ridiculous accent. After translation, the selling club made out that they either wanted directions to the railway station or wanted the Very Good Footballer to go and live in Foreign and play in a substandard league for an obscene, perhaps vulgar, amount of money. The Very Good Footballer was keen on the move but was unavailable for comment as, under FA regulations, he was now clearly a Godless Sodomite.”

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7 Facts To Amuse and Astound (Me)

Simon J James — Mon, 04 Jan 2010 15:38:02 +0000

I offer no explanation for these but they are all completely true.

Bagged salad is photographed 4,000 times a second.
Ken Livingstone was twice rejected for a cameo in EastEnders.
There are so few redheads in Mexico they often greet each other in the street.
North Korean dictator Kim Jong-il has a water slide in his garden.
Buddhist monks sleep upright.
Stabbing in the buttocks has its own verb in Roman dialect.
Grizzly bears hate getting their ears wet.

The tags for this post amuse me greatly.

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Resolutions

Simon J James — Sun, 03 Jan 2010 21:47:38 +0000

It’s that time of year when making resolutions is the generally accepted thing to do and talk about to strangers in the street. I made a big deal at the start of last year of publicly announcing my resolutions with great expectation, resolve and determination. I failed on every single one of them which has dented my spirits and left me in a deep funk in this traditional time of hope and expectation. Therefore I am going to significantly scale down my originally lofty 2009 resolutions:

Become a trusted advisor to Barack Obama - Fail

What more can I do? I sent my ideas and he has never even written back to engage me in political discussion or strategic implementation of my initiatives. In February of this year I sent Rahm Emmanuel a fax with a plan to send Mr Obama’s approval rating through the roof throughout America and establishing him as a unifying force. My, ‘Get Him To Wear Oldstyle Hats More’ plan fell upon deaf ears no matter how many times I faxed random numbers in America. (Seventeen times).

Find Bigfoot - Fail

Only partial fail here really as I had a really good look around Brentford and Chiswick and didn’t catch him (or her) anywhere. Although I did see a very large rat, a bigger than average pigeon and a dead fox. Also, a friend of mine has big feet.

Control the Weather with my Mind - Fail

I seem to be able to recognise weather relatively easy so I thought that preemptively establishing the conditions for a particular weather via the medium of dressing up may work, even in the opposite sense. However, I made the vital scientific connection, based on less than rigorous testing, that individual clothing choice has no bearing on the weather. Although I have not tested this outside of Middlesex.

Assert my claim and demand the throne of the United Kingdom and re-establish the Empire - Fail

I just thought the ‘House of James’ sounded good and shouted it at the Queen as she went past on The Mall. I think she heard but I’m not 100% it was the Queen. It could have been a black cab with an advert for Hairspray on it.

Invent a new new colour - PASS

Booniche. It’s the new shade that everyone’s talking about and about to take the fashion roughly by the arm and march it out of the store. It’s the colour the end of your finger goes when it’s really cold and you can’t feel it anymore. I have registered this with The Colour People at Dulux and they assure me that I am not welcome in their office anymore.

This year I have committed to breathing everyday, walking to places sometimes, watching football and very occasionally drinking too much. Only Failing on one of them so far.

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Celebrity Science Idiots

Simon J James — Sat, 02 Jan 2010 21:15:01 +0000

If you are used to having your every whim catered for and words hung upon like you’re preaching from the mount, it is inevitable that you will sometimes say very stupid things. This is why I love listening to celebrities who have heard a tiny amount of information on a subject they like the sound of spout off as if they had been researching it for 20 years.

For example, everyone’s favourite Beatle swindling hopalong, Heather Mills, said that when you eat meat it stays in your gut for 40 years, putrefies and turns into disease that kills you. She followed up that with the phrase, “That is a fact”. It’s magnificent, isn’t it? She believed that enough to actually say that to someone who was going to put it in a newspaper.

Sense about Science have been publishing rebuttals to these people for ages but I had to highlight a couple that tickled me.

Actress Suzanne Somers said that the contraceptive pill must be unsafe “because is it safe to take a chemical every day, and how would it be safe to take something that prevents ovulation?” She was unaware that natural substances such as hormones are chemicals and never thought to look it up.
Roger Moore claimed that foie gras causes Alzheimer’s disease. WHAT?
Sarah Palin dismissed evolution out of hand, with no other reason but she wanted to curry favour with Middle America. She “didn’t believe in the theory that human beings — thinking, loving beings — originated from fish that sprouted legs and crawled out of the sea” or from “monkeys who eventually swung down from the trees.” Dawkins was all over that one.
Arsenal and Netherlands footballer Robin van Persie had horse placental fluid dripped onto an ankle injury by a Serbian doctor. And then claimed it was a miracle remedy that promoted faster healing. He is still unable to play through injury.

Aren’t they great? The combination of ego, ignorance and a forum with which to spout forth leads to hilarity. It’s very much worth going to the site and downloading reading the PDF entitled ‘Celebrity and Science 2009′, it’s tremendously enlightening, funny and saddening all at the same time. It’s an essential site.

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The Things We Learned In 2009

Simon J James — Fri, 01 Jan 2010 19:56:25 +0000

Domestic pigs can quickly learn how mirrors work and use them to find food. Therefore this means that scientists have done all the east stuff and and are now putting all the hard stuff off with side projects. Next week, can an ant catch?
Babies pick up their parents’ accents from the womb, and infants are born crying in their native dialect. So it’s clear, make sure you, your partner and everyone who has close contact with you talks like Sean Connery for 9 months to have the coolest baby in the planet
The calmest place on Earth is said to be on top of an Antarctican ice plateau called Ridge A, It’s hundreds of miles away from the South Pole and is so still that stars do not twinkle in the sky because there is no turbulence in the atmosphere to distort the light. So, there you have it, THERE is your ‘calm place’. The search is now on for your ‘happy place’.
The Fonz stole all our money and gave it to a man called Mad Bernie to invest. Never trust a man that lives above a garage and only has one set of clothes.
Bagheera kiplingi is a jumping spider from Central America and is the first known vegetarian spider. It eats leaf tips rather than other animals. Wait, IT’S A SPIDER THAT JUMPS, KILL IT.
850 species of previously undiscovered insects, crustaceans, spiders, worms and other assorted bugs and creatures were found living in underground water, caves and caverns across Australia. They are now being filmed as a reality show, the winner being artificially protected from Natural Selection. The losers will be slaughtered.
Earth was bombarded in 2008 with high levels of solar energy at a time when the sun was in an unusually quiet phase and sunspots had virtually disappeared. This virtually leaves no doubt that all our latent superpowers will son be revealed to us.
Watermelon is more efficient at rehydrating us than drinking water. It contains 92 percent water and essential rehydration salts. So then, good news for cyclists on a long ride, get one of those in your back pack.
The spleen is a container for loads of immune cells called monocyte. In the event of a serious health issue, such as a heart attack, wound or infection, the spleen will disgorge them bloodstream to help defend the body. So venting yous spleen is actually very good for you.
More than 350 new animal species were discovered in the eastern Himalayas, including the world’s smallest deer and a flying frog. The flying frogs also ride the small deers.

Only one thing is a lie on this list.

Happy New Year.

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Bush: A Little Learning is a Dangerous Thing

Simon J James — Sun, 02 Aug 2009 20:37:47 +0000

Published over at Blogcritics.com.

http://blogcritics.org/politics/article/a-little-learning-is-dangerous-thing/

The original I submitted was poorly fact checked so thanks to Dave Nalle for his patience.

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Where does Inspiration come from?

Simon J James — Sun, 02 Aug 2009 11:57:46 +0000

New FWJ post here: http://freelancewritinggigs.com/goodstuff/where-does-inspiration-come-from/

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Hello there Shaun

Simon J James — Fri, 31 Jul 2009 12:32:05 +0000

Come in, have a look around.

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What Are Your Ambitions?

Simon J James — Tue, 14 Jul 2009 07:57:07 +0000

More stuff from the my other gig. An article about the origins of ambition.

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