Agnostic I may be, but I enjoy a good laugh...

and I can laugh at just about anything, even religion... An agnostic was taking a walk through the woods. What majestic trees! What powerful rivers! What beautiful animals!" he said to himself. As he was walking alongside the river he heard a rustling in the bushes behind him. He turned to look and saw a 7 foot grizzly charging towards him. He ran as fast as he could up the path. He looked over his shoulder and saw the bear was closing in on him. He looked over his shoulder again, and the bear was even closer. He tripped and fell on the ground. He rolled over to pick himself up but saw the bear right on top of him, reaching for him with his left paw and raising his right paw to strike him. At that instant the agnostic cried out: "Oh my God!" Time stopped. The bear froze. The forest was silent. A bright light shone upon the man, and a voice came out of the sky: "You deny my existence for all of these years, teach others I don't exist, and even credit creation to a cosmic accident. Do you expect me to help you out of this predicament? Am I to count you as a believer?" The agnostic looked directly into the light, "You're right. It would be hypocritical of me to suddenly ask you to treat me as a Christian now, but perhaps you could you make the BEAR a Christian?" "Very well," said the voice. The light went out. The sounds of the forest resumed... And then the bear dropped his right paw, brought both paws together, bowed his head and spoke: "Lord, bless this food, which I am about to receive from thy bounty through Christ our Lord Amen."

Music appears to be on the mind...

of a large number of bloggers that I read. So here goes with a list of what I've been listening to recently...my taste varies right across the spectrum from the Classics to Grunge Rock, some of those two right after each other. This list is from the collection I keep in my car. The name(s) in brackets behind each are my favourite tracks from the albums. Alter Bridge - One Day Remains (Burn it Down) Melissa Etheridge - Skin (Lover Please) KT Tunstall - Eye to the Telescope (Black Horse and the Cherry Tree) Live - The Distance to Here (Run to the Water, Sun, Voodoo Lady, Where Fishes Go) Evanescence - Fallen (Haunted) Creed - Weathered (Weathered - probably the best of the latest rock bands that doesn't exist anymore - the title track describes me to a "T") Stone Temple Pilots - Core (Creep) Creed - Human Clay (What If, Beautiful, With Arms Wide Open) Five for Fighting - America Town (Easy Tonight, Superman, Jainy) Marilyn Manson - Lest we Forget (The Beautiful People, Tainted Love, The Dope Show, The Nobodies, (S)aint) Linkin Park - Meteora (Don't Stay, Somewhere I Belong, Faint, From the Inside, Numb) Prime Circle - Hell, Crazy World (Let me Go, Hello, As Long as I am Here, My Inspiration, In my Head) Metallica - Metallica (Enter Sandman, Sad but True, The Unforgiven, Wherever I May Roam, Nothing Else Matters, Of Wolf and Man) Collective Soul - Dosage (Heavy, Slow, Run) I'll post some of the other stuff in my collection sometime...

"Not everything humankind does...

is motivated either by the spirit of competition or the will to win." One of my hobbies/passions is Fly Fishing and the above quote comes from the author of the Last Cast column in one of my favourite magazines, The Complete Fly Fisherman. The quote rings too true in my case as, not being the most experienced fly fisherman, I more than often like to get out and just survey my surroundings and the people enjoying the sunshine with me. More often than not, my version of fly casting involves beating the water to a froth, scaring more than just the fish away. But Sunday was different. Steph wanted to do a bit of studying, so I decided to get out of the house, lest I get implanted onto the couch watching the Formula 1 Grand Prix (the replay of which I ended up watching late night and getting to bed around 1am anyway). And what better way to get out of the house, without involving the lawnmower, than to go fly fishing? Over the last few years, I'd noticed a trout farm called Footloose, not too far from home yet closer than Dullstroom, the mecca of South African fly fishers, and decided to pay them a visit. There were a few cars in the car park (where they were supposed to be) and I could see a few dams through the fence. The only thing that put me off at first were the shouts and noises of children...this is supposed to be a quiet, reflective sport. "What the hell," I thought, "I'm here. Let's go and have a look." I paid my thirty Rand entrance fee, had a chat with the Indian manager at the desk (what's come out today, which dams are trout waters or not, and some general chit chat) and walked through the main gate. "Fuck me," I thought. "I've walked into a fucking children's birthday party." There were about forty or so kids running around, some fishing with floats and a pasty bait, some just running about. Instinct, and a quick survey of the five dams in front of me running parallel to the entrance, told me to head for the far righthand dam where there was no-one in the immediate vicinity. A nice quiet place to start from, to get used to the rod, the weight of the line and fly, have a few practice casts, see what happens, sit down and let the frothy water calm down again. I worked the dam for about and hour or so, remembering the text message I'd received from Steph on my way out, to "have fun and bring some nice fish for dinner" (was that a threat of "bring home some trout or don't bother coming home at all", or what??). I tried everything in my bag, floating and sinking lines, dry and wet flies of all shape, size and colour, even a different weight rod. Nothing. Damn, I was going to have to move to another dam, up to where the screaming banshees were running around also beating the water to froth. Ah, well... I decided to move to the topmost dam of the five, which gave me the perfect spot to survey the rest of the farm, as it is situated at the top of a hill. I sat down for a few minutes, had a drink of water and rested my already aching casting arm. Again, for about another hour, I used everything in my fly-casting quiver, again with the same results. I sat down again, had another drink of water and a chat with another fly fisherman who had had the same results as I had. He described the tactics he had used, and I told him mine, and we wished each other good luck. After a good rest, I remembered a piece of wisdom scribed on the back of a packet in which I had bought some new flies. In short, it said that if the water was murky to try the brightest fly in your box. I opened my black box of flies, had a quick survey and picked out what turned out to be the smallest fly in my limited collection. It is a green nymph fly, consisting of nothing more than a gold bead, some brown fluff and bright green wire tied to a number 10 hook. As you can see by the photo, it is just over 10mm long and, in all honesty, I didn't have much confidence in it. Being a wet fly, I changed back to the sinking line, shortened my leader to about 2.5m and sent the nymph swishing through the air. After a few casts, I thought some more about what I was doing and figured that, with the nymph being as small as it was, I had to slow down my retrieve and let the fly bounce along the bottom of the dam. Fuck me if that wasn't the right thing to do! Within ten casts, I landed four fish of which three were trout and one was a smallmouth carp (when I hooked this fish I thought I'd got into a monster trout, it took off like a rocket). I also lost another trout which I estimated to be around the 1kg mark, a real beauty. By this time, darkness was approaching and the fish had gone off the bite, so I decided to return home, extolling my increasing experience in this wonderful pastime, of which my father is still one of the masters. Needless to say, I had to phone my folks and let them know how I'd fared, and just to hear the slight jealousy in my father's voice. We ate two of the three trout last night, and they were delicious. Getting back to the quote at the start of this blog, "not everything humankind does is motivated either by the spirit of competition or the will to win"...but triumph does generate a different kind of enjoyment and everyone enjoys winning now and then.

This is fuckin' brilliant...

this Google Earth package is. Do yourself a favour. If you have a decent download speed, or are on broadband, download the application from Google Earth (the file is about 20MB in size). Once you've installed it, you can find everything from a full view of our blue planet, right down to a close-up of the hair on your back. Sometimes the focus on the image isn't all that great, but you can find just about any place on the planet. Just zoom in on a town or building, made easy by the controls on-screen. Here's a rough idea of what I'm talking about...this is a picture of our house in Johannesburg, South Africa. The kidney-shaped pool just up and to the left is ours, at the extreme corner of the property, while the building just below the pin is the house itself, and the building just below that is our double garage leading onto the street...

Oops, I did it again...

another Action Cricket night to remember (I think). Staggered in at 02h00, or thereabouts, after self-inflicted overindulgence at the weekly match. As I got into bed, I remember thinking to myself to remember the rib that got whacked with a ball at superfast pace, but for some strange reason or other that was the last thought in my mind as I sprang out of bed to get ready to come into the office for an all day workshop. Fuckin' hell... I can't cough, burp, laugh (not that a hangover this size is a laughing matter) or do anything that involves sudden movement on the left side of my body, as the aforementioned rib keeps saying "Oi, fucker, remember me?" It feels like I've been playing rugby, on my lonesome, against the entire All Black pack instead of a nice gentlemanly game of action cricket where no-one is supposed to get hurt, except in the name of competition drinking. I think I'm going to beg off this workshop, lest I end up hurling all over my keyboard.

Strange, the things that come to mind...

when you're standing in the shower. Now, before I start, let me expressly and sincerely state that my Steph does not in any way or form, have a big backside, but in fact, looks gorgeous in a bikini and regularly turns heads in her direction. That said, I don't know why but as I was soaping myself this morning, the old conundrum that all men face on occasion, came to mind. A woman asks her man, "Honey, do these jeans make me look fat?" And we all know how many answers there are to that one. But the one that came to my mind (and maybe it's been used before) was "No, your ass does that all by itself." As I said, strange things...

The liver can't be this evil...

for me to have done it two nights in a row? It was Steph's birthday yesterday and to celebrate I took her and five of our friends out for dinner to a dingy little restaurant in a suburb called Melville, on the arty-farty side of town. The place is called the Ant Cafe (no website and, in fact, no phone number either, so you can't make a booking unless you physically go there) and, at best, I can describe it only as being a space between two buildings (basically an alley) that some nutter has seen and said "I can use that space and turn it into a dingy eatery". And he has done just that. A glass shopfront leading from the street belies what you get inside. If the Joburg City Council had to ever walk into the place, they'd shut it down in an instant, not because it's dirty (it's actually quite clean for an alley) but because of the design and structure of the roof. The nutter has taken a hammer and chisel, knocked a few holes about a foot in diameter (at more or less the same height) down the length of the adjacent buildings and stuck some gum poles (some of which are joined in the middle by planks and nails) in the holes. To secure the poles, he's jammed firewood logs around them, making each of the holes look like there's a porcupine sticking its arse out and is joined to the porcupine on the opposite wall by the gum pole. None of the tables matches another, except to say that they are all equally rickety on their legs. What makes it a place-to-be-seen kinda place, I believe, is the little log fire in the middle of the back wall. Being winter here, logs were crackling away, and the whole place was as toasty as a pizza oven. Anyway...it was a pleasant eating experience. The food is purely Italian, pizzas, pastas and the like, all with the right amount of garlic and herbs. Today, I'm working from home. Four beers, four glasses of red wine and two double Johnny Walker (black's) don't mix well and I'm about to go looking for a couple of Anadins to silence the gumboot dancers in my head. I hope the rest of you are having a nice, quiet, day...{groan}...

If I'd known how thirsty I would be today...

I would have drunk more last night. Action Cricket is not healthy for you, particularly for your liver. Something which has always puzzled Steph is how come I always get home anything between 23h00 and 04h00, if a game starts at 17h20 and lasts only just over an hour? Quite a simple answer really. After a punishing game of running around an enclosed arena, trying to hit, bowl, catch or avoid being hit by a fast-moving ball, the only part of your body that doesn't feel any pain is the liver. And for that, it must be punished. After all, why should it be the only part of you that doesn't hurt? It is evil... So to bring it up to similar pain levels as the rest of one's body, copious amounts of alcohol, in many forms and colours, are drunk. Hence, the entire body feels sore the following morning...{groan}...and is the reason for my thirst today.

Ever had a finger in a dyke?

What a tosser I can be, especially with a drill in my hand. I am in the final stages of revamping a guest bathroom, as in having totally stripped the room, bought all the fittings, installed a new ceiling and down light, plumbed in some new pipes, laid what felt like 50,000sqm of tiles (but was only 10sqm), put in a new bog (shiny black, so as not to see the skidmarks), painted window frames and fitted a new folding door (which I cut and installed myself). I was in the process of drilling a hole for the towel rail, which fits below the new cast-aluminium basin, with all my senses telling me not to do it when, you guessed it...I put the drill through one of my newly-plumbed copper pipes. Bastard!! First instincts was to put my finger over the hole, primarily with the desire to stop myself from getting absolutely fucking soaked, but also to gather my thoughts of what to do next. Ever felt like the little Dutch boy (or was it a girl?) with his/her finger in the dyke wall? I did... (had to add in "wall" otherwise it might sound sexist) So, five seconds later, I had to sprint outside to shut off the mains, all the while water pissing over my new tiles. With the water shut off, I had to figure out what to do next, and decided I had no other option but to destroy two of my new slate wall tiles so that I could fix the hole. Imagine how pissed off I was when I found that I had just nicked the pipe and had the hole been 3mm to the left I would have missed it completely and my towel rail would now be sporting towels instead of the dent from when I threw it against a wall in utter disgust. Anyway, I had to cut and re-plumb a new pipe, cement in the hole I made to get to it, re-cut and tile the two I had taken off, grout the spaces and repaint the marks on the wall. I have since drilled the holes again and will be fitting the basin and towel rail in the next day or so. Live and learn...take the knocks...measure the gaps first next time...

Following the NASA "washing machine"...

crashing into the meteorite, did you hear? There's a Russian astrologist who is sueing NASA for 150,000 pounds, as she claims the impact changed the orbit of the meteorite, and she now has to go and change all her astrological predictions... Just confirms my suspicion, that all astrologers are "out there" (somewhere)...fuckin' looney...

Religion is a killer...

and we've all seen the evidence over hundreds of years but perhaps choose to ignore it. The Christian Bible is full of killing in the name of a God. Perhaps the Koran and Talmud are too...I don't know about them. The point of this posting is to answer all those people over the years who have asked me how I can be an agnostic, not believing in a "higher power". They give me their reasons for believing in their Gods. I give them 3,500 in the USA, and now 50+ in the UK, reasons for not...

In the aftermath...

of the London bombings I, as so many will, condemn these cowardly acts in the strongest means possible to me. It got me thinking of a conversation Cuzzin Ross and I had while he was here on holiday recently, where we were briefly debating the difference between terrorist and freedom fighter. Last night I came up with an answer...my answer... A freedom fighter believes in a cause and fights for it on his/her OWN territory (land, country, whatever). A terrorist, on the other hand, takes that same "cause" to SOMEONE ELSE'S territory, causing death and destruction in a land that does not belong to him, in which he has no rights whatsoever. Yes, there will be arguments from the fundamentalists that what the USA, UK and their allies are doing in Iraq and Afghanistan amount to terrorism but, I believe, the war against those forces should be fought in those countries. How many of their own kind have these "freedom fighters" injured or killed? Leave the innocent, peace-loving, public alone.....bastards...

Training Journal - Part 4 - Returning to Durban and the Academy,...

we spent a great deal of time sailing around Durban harbour, refining yacht-handling skills, each of us, in turn, acting as skipper and getting the rest of the crew to tack and jibe the boat in different directions depending on the wind direction and shipping in the channel. It was great fun. The crew was a great bunch, mostly youngsters ten to fifteen years younger than myself. We had varsity dropouts, a farmer, an American (specially out to do the course as the Rand/Dollar exchange rate made it cheaper to fly out here and do the course than just do the course over there), a cruise-ship dive instructor on holiday, and of course my ex- and myself...a real melting pot. But we all had something in common...a love for the ocean and the desire to increase our chances of survival on it. We spent a good few nights braai-ing (barbecue, in the rest of the world) and getting pissed. A few of us would have a joint...myself excluded from that as I never head much of a desire to try it. We learned a lot about each other and made up our minds as to who we would treat as closer friends, and those we would just remain on terms with. Generally, though, we had a great time together. At the end of the month's training, we had to sit exams, both practical and theory. The theory exams revolved around what we'd learned from the books, while the practical revolved around tieing of knots (within time limits for each) and plotting routes on charts (not maps, as some call them). There were only one or two failures in the class, from what I can remember, but the main thing was that I passed quite well. As a result of that, and my handling of situations on the yacht (perhaps my age had something to do with it as well), I was told that if I ever wanted a career in sailing, that I would be welcome to join the Academy on the staff. I would have to continue with the studies that enabled me to become an instructor, but after that, I would become one of them. The temptation was great, but at the time I had other things on my mind, including the opportunity to take a brand-new 37ft Catamaran, Ocean Trader, out on sea trials to Richards Bay with the possibility of crewing her to Zanzibar on the adventure of a lifetime. My next few entries will relate the sea-trials and the problems we encountered, and the entire journey to Zanzibar, straight from the journal that I kept on the way up, including some photos and drawings...

Thanks to Cuzzin Ross...

I've been able to determine, by reading the information on the screen properly from My Statcounter stats, where people have been checking my blog from. Some of the places and/or countries I've had hits from include: Skien Norway, London England, Edinburgh Scotland, California USA, multiple unknown places from the USA, New York USA, Virginia USA, Sheffield England, Maidstone England, Grays England, Las Vegas USA. I'm pleasantly surprised to see that there are also some repeat offenders/readers. The only thing now, is for these people to let me know (anonymously, if they prefer) who they are and/or where they're form, or if they have their own blogs that I can have a look at and to refer some of them from my own. I look forward to hearing from you all...

What would NASA do if...

the "washing machine-sized impacter" they just crashed into a comet millions of miles away from Earth, managed to change the orbit of the comet and sent it on a collision path towards us? The comet is supposed to be half the size of Manhatten Island in New York so it'll probably cause quite a bit of damage (read, total annihilation of mankind and the entire planet). Yeah, I know it's a remote chance...but what if? Would it be funny? Ironic? Moronic? You decide...

Training Journal - Part 3 - To mould us into a team...

and show us how to be co-dependant, we were sent on an overnight trip, straight up the coast, to Richards Bay. Before this trip, I was last in the town twenty years previously, for a friend's 21st birthday. We had a great time. He on the other hand, didn't see anything past 9pm. As is usual at these sort of things, we mixed him a "Mickey Finn" and everything went into it, with orange juice for a little colouring. It was amazing to see the blood drain from his face as he downed the tankard-ful and topple over, head first, into a box of presents...out cold. Alarm and panic were written all over his dad's face and he enquired what we'd out into the drink. When we told him, he ranted at us for a while for putting in "white" spirits (vodka, gin, cane, and so on) as our mate had an allergy to them, which caused him to pass out instantly. Hell, we didn't know... Half an hour later, finished spewing his guts in the garden, we put our mate to bed and partied on his behalf. Thinking about it now, that might have been the night my daughter was conceived, but I doubt it as I passed out too...guess where? Yup, on the job... Anyway, back to Richards Bay. The town has grown enormously in twenty years, from a small town dependant on the sugar and paper industries in the area, to one of the largest coal export terminals in the world. South Africa's coal is, apparently, some of the best grade to be used in the generation of power from fossil fuels. The town is now clearly established as a small city, with multiple large industries and a wonderful small craft harbour, where we moored the Chinook. (The first picture in Part 1 was taken in Richards Bay) Sailing up the coast at night is a daunting task. At times, we were no more than a couple of miles offshore and you are constantly aware that if you err in your navigation, or nod off on beat, you might just end up beaching the boat, injuring crew or worse. At times, we could even hear the pounding of the waves on the rocks, and it made us re-check our compass heading...every time. I heard about 2 years ago that one of the training yachts from the Academy, newly bought when I'd signed up, had sunk directly off Richards Bay after hitting an object, presumably a submerged container. Luckily, no-one was hurt and the entire crew was airlifted by the National Sea Rescue Institute. Dawn over the Indian Ocean is an amazing sight to see, with the sun creeping up over low-lying morning clouds, remnants of the mixing of warm day, and cool night, air masses. As we neared the harbour entrance, we furled and stowed the sails and switched to the diesel engine, also known as the "donkey". An hour after getting permission from the harbour master to enter port, we were standing in hot showers, still swaying to the motion of the sea in our unbalanced ears and after breakfast, it was time for a drink. As all the Academy boats are "dry" until they are moored, it was time to get a bit wasted even though it was only around 10am, barely opening time.

Training Journal - Part 2 - When we weren't sailing...

we were in the classroom. I didn't realise there was so much to learning how to competently sail a yacht. We were shown how to tie knots and read the different points of a compass. We learned the names of the different parts of the yacht, from the obvious to the "I wouldn't have called it that". Take a windlass for example...where do you think it goes? Actually, it's used to winch up the anchor. And speaking of anchors, how many different types are there? I'll leave it to you to go and find out...there's a few. We learned the phonetic alphabet from Alpha to Zulu, and even did a course in radio etiquette. We sailed in any conditions, relishing in the warm, sunny days, to suffering in the rainy and windy days. The training was designed to give us experience in any and all conditions. To give us the experience of long distance and night sailing, we did a couple of longer trips straight out to sea and back. This also gave us the practice we needed to read, and stick to, our compasses. No such luxury as GPS for us (though I believe the skippers had one, just in case). On a night trip, we spent our watches glaring into the dark ahead, hoping that there was nothing ahead except open water. Now and then we'd see lights of some distant ship, either longhaul fishing trawlers or merchantmen, heading toward or away from Durban. Now we knew what they were experiencing on their respective ships, though we probably had it worse due to their size and the ability of the larger ships to handle rough seas. Every swell that rolled under us made the hull pitch and roll, and in heavy seas trying to get some sleep in the forecastle was a nightmare. Each swell would cause the hull to thud into the trough, causing masses of water to swish its way down to the stern where the phosphorescence would shine like reflected stars. Seeing the glow was amazing on a calm night...but there's more of that in the Zanzibar journal coming soon.