Wild Pheasant in red wine

Cooked by a specialist connoisseur there is no meal to beat it.

Rip is one of those rare people to do it.  It must be slowly cooked in a black cast iron pot on the open fire just with onion, small chunks of potatoes and a small rosemary branch.  Small quantities of about half of the wine goes into the pot now and then while you savor a similar amount on the tongue.

Oh yeah, it has to be a Shiraz; if you can find one from the Allesverlooren Cellars so much better.

Last night was wonderful; next Tuesday it will be guinea fowl for my birthday.

Eat your hearts out, Folks.

2 Help Brendano

A change in the weather brought us back from the hills this afternoon; ole Rip is with me and is attending to the preparation of two pheasants for the pot on Wednesday while I assist Brendano.

Brendan, I can see your point about the guy you refer to in your Post on Trolls in your Site but the entire occurrence with your MyT Profile deletion has The Club written all over on it.  Do remember that I spent almost three months there last year, to my eternal shame but in defense of which I do want to place it on record that I offered to go on my own volition when I discovered what they do behind the closed doors of that vile place.

Their sole purpose is the deletion of “Blogs” and they had a method.  One guy, usually Mister Jackal and Doctor Hideous will go in to annoy the victim to react; when he does the cohorts flood the moderators with complaints that the victim was stalking and/or trolling someone.  They used to boast that the moderators would act on three complaints to delete a profile.  They had Bravo, Alanh, Larry, Bubbles and Old Rosie; if you look at any deletion you will find them there.

You, Levent and Metin Yilmaz have long been their prime targets; prior to that the list included Jack Wolfe and Duckham, amongst others.

You may ask why Levent?  Well it is enough for them that Levent is from Turkish descent [and therefore, got to be a Muslim] but that he also resides in one of the places they abhor most namely Ireland.

Don’t ignore Bravo; or do so at your peril.  The guy is a bag of deceit [good grief, in a few months from the head of a large American International Tobacco Company in Moscow, to having his own Team on a Security Contract when the bomb went off and “his contract” ended, a promise of a new contract in Bucharest but now sitting at the pool in Cyprus where his whole extended family of dozens and dozens of cousins have suddenly been domiciled for generations and taking care of his new found library]; he runs The Club; the others are just his minions.

It may be convenient for him to let you think that it is the other guy because he is struggling in his battle to take the Chariot when Boadicea goes.  People have latched onto the real guy; he now gets three to five comments per Post at the Chariot and not a single one in his personal WordPress Site.

That is why he has moved back into MyT, to rebuild his reputation and because he is a useless Blogger on open forums.

Let them have him at MyT.  Write it off.  Build your own Site.  WordPress doesn’t tolerate “trolls and drolle.”  I had one stalking me; when he became a nuisance I trashed a Post by renaming it exactly that “Trashing a Post” and deleted the previous contents in place of which I published his given IP address and one of his messages.  He had previously managed to evade my spam box but he was gone completely two days after I ran the revised Post.

I did the same to Bravo and the Club and ran two Posts on them; Ole Bearsy fumed in his beard while he and Bravo called me names but they skulked away into the sewers.

I decided to Post this in order not to embarrass you in your Site and now leave it up to you to decide.  They have a whole new crowd at MyT; the latter will survive because the problem was never one of their making.  The only problem is that English Bloggers are not capable of handling a “Free Speech” Site and never will be.  Get out of there.

Into the Hills

I don’t know how I missed it because the signs have been there but in the end it was Ole Rip that done it.

He came down from the hills early yesterday morning; our days are warming up a little suddenly though the nights are freezing still.  He trampled around while I showed him what I have been doing on the Net lately before he exploded.

“Do you honestly want to tell me that you are wasting the most beautiful time of the year on crap like that,” was what he said before he went on, “with the stupid English race and all their petty squabbles?”

I pointed out that I am also doing some good work in America and you should have heard him then.

“Aakie,” he said [it’s the affectionate Dutch by the older and wiser person for Ike, kind of means young little Ike], “they know as little as the English.  Some of them have a little more common sense, but most, … take that idiot Gore.  Gahawd Ike, all he needs to know is look at the snowfall the last six to ten years on those eastern mountains to know that this “global warming” is a lot of crap.  Lordy, Lordy man, a short walk up this hill right in front of your eyes you can see the Koue Bokkeveld Range covered in ten foot of snow less than forty miles from here; the darn Globe is freezing up, I am telling you. If anything it is darn well freezing up,” he repeated himself.

He ranted on about useless modern science, flawed education, the much preferable instructions in the noble lessons of nature, politicians and the mess in the world in general while he grabbed a loose bag and started throwing some of my warm clothes in there.

“Come into the hills with me,” he said, “to get some sense into your head.”

I only managed to stop him by agreeing that I will join him tomorrow.

Well, that was yesterday as I said, and yesterday’s tomorrow is now on my doorstep.  Ole Rip is snoring soundly in the “out-room” while I am at the keyboard at 4:26 AM but he will be up soon and we will leave just after sunrise around eight.

I am taking a break from the trolls and all “die drolle” in the English Blogging Community.  There are but a few good guys; the majority of them are compulsive liars, cheats and petty egos; if their Bloggers set the standard England is a lost race.  Please don’t expect much from me in the next few weeks.  There is no better cure for “cobwebs in the brain” than a few weeks in the hills with Rip van Winkel and I am off.

I shall see you when I do.

Why She’s for Real

The future White House Residents

Is this really from the Time Rag?  Is it for real?  Yes it is!  Have a look and see for yourself.

Sarah Palin in ’12? Why She’s for Real

By Mark Halperin Thursday, Jul. 15, 2010

http://www.time.com/time/politics/article/0,8599,2003944,00.html

 I never in my wildest dreams thought that I would see a positive Post on Miss Sarah in these lofty pages.

 They must be really scared that she will run in 2012.  Yes, there can be no more doubt; scared out of their cotton-picking little minds they must be.

Soccer World Cup 2010 and emails from the poor who will have to pay for it

Crowds at the World Soccer events often numbered sixty or seventy thousand people and the Whole Wide World saw the jubilation and smiling faces.  Prostitution was legalized for the duration of the event and one can assume that prostitutes and customers smiled for that too.  All leave for police and security staff was withdrawn, special courts were set up and manned [all leave in the Justice Department were canceled too].

 All went well and after years of regular electricity failures even that did not occur during the entire event, not one single time in fact.  Full Government owned and managed Electricity Supply Commission [Eskom] the country’s only supplier of electricity had made arrangements for additional supplies to be on hand from friendly neighboring countries.  Even that worked well.

 But the first emails started doing the rounds two weeks from the end.  The ninety percent of the population numbering about 45 million out of 50 souls and ordinary citizens who did not, in fact could not, attend the extravaganza because they simply could not afford the tickets; neither did they have money for transport to get to events and no special arrangements were made for them; as far as their daily lives were concerned it might as well have happened in Timbuktu.

 With the emails came the messages that the Country would soon be back to reality, this time even more real than before because somebody will have to pay for the extravagance of the roughly one hundred thousand inhabitants who were having the time of their lives, and as if it was a portent of things to come when reality returns the Country experienced a widespread electric power failure at 06:00 on a bitterly cold winter day the morning after the final whistle.  Power returned after an hour only to go off again two hours later.  Life in South Africa has gone “back to normal.”

 What is “normal” in this tortured land?

 Some emails tell you.

 “In 1994 a small number of taxpayers enjoyed the luxury of super tax status, meaning they were earning more than the magical sum of 250 thousand smackers per annum,” one read.  The most recent count in 1994 gave the total as 72 or 78 [I can’t remember which one it was but it doesn’t matter].

 In 2000 the magical income figure was substantially increased to 500 thousand and the most recent count then said there were then 1900 recipients of this largesse.

 In the meantime social and old age pensions had advanced from about eight hundred rand per month in 1994 to nine hundred in 2000.

 In 2009 some Media Sources started rumors that the super tax bracket had jumped to over one million and that there were now over 5000 lucky ones.  Social pensions have gone up another one hundred to approximately nine hundred a month.

 When the Eskom debacle hit the headlines in 2009 by which time the entire country was suffering under daily power cuts Government stepped in to place a ban on discussions in the Media.

Eskom had requested their shareholders, the Government, to increase electricity rates by 45% in 2009.  It was granted and the Government gave the Eskom CEO a 12 million  Salary package for that.

In 2010 just before the Soccer Event Eskom was granted 35% increases per annum for 2010 and each of the next two years.  When the news therefore, broke that 50 senior managers [50 is what they say but we don’t know whether there will be another 50 in each of the next three years too] had joined the select group of people now drawing salaries of 12 million please per annum.

“The next News that broke was a Government ideal of 32 Billion smackers with the International Monetary Community to fund the increased Eskom Salary bill.  The International deal was given to some highly qualified Financial Advisory Company of which the ANC Government is the Principle Shareholder and a total “News Blackout” on the deal followed in a day.”

But some socially minded people in the Media decided that it was too much and when the public supported them they published the snippets.

“It is true they said that high salary recipients will from now on be almost the only taxpayers in the country, hence they deserve the higher salaries.  It is also true they said that social pension’s and the 75% of the people who earn the same sort of income as social and old age pensioners are thus exempt from income tax.  They Government, they said, fully support the principle.  This soon appeared in email form and circulated the entire country two weeks ago.”

Soon after that another email published this:

“When the old age and social pensioners receive monthly stipends of 800 bucks in 1994 the average municipal bill for Electricity, water, refuge removal and land tax [that being property tax on the 500 square meters that is where you have your little four roomed house but excluding the tax on the latter] was approximately 250 bucks a month, leaving the recipient with 550 to eat and dress.  Naturally he never owned a vehicle and thus did not have to buy gasoline but needed bus and train fares only to get to work and the grandchildren to school.

After the next two electricity increases that have already been approved the corresponding bill in 2012 will be approximately 1000 per month but it is hoped that his monthly pension will by then have increased to 1200 per month for food and transport.  With the anticipated and indeed inevitable increases in food prices that will follow on the increased electricity costs for industry and manufacturing by 2013 forty million people [roughly eighty percent of the population will not have to worry about income tax forms, transport or school fees because they will cease to exist when they stop eating, as the Government fervently hope will be the case.”

Another email said:

“At that time the top one percent super earners will be justified in their assertion that they deserve their higher incomes because they are after all is said and done the only people that are still paying income tax.”

On the Soccer matter the following two emails are relevant.  The first one circulated about two weeks ago in the middle of the extravaganza and the second one late Sunday night just after the final whistle and shortly before the first electricity cut in more than a month on Monday morning.

“Thanks France, England and those other countries that left early when you lost and could not go any further here.  It reduced the noise and traffic congestion for forty million of us that saw no soccer but had to suffer the noise.”

The last one simply said, at the end of some bitter words:

“When tomorrow dawns, in the name of God go, just go and leave us to find out how we are going to pay the price of Soccer World Cup 2010 but please, do us a great favor for the eighty percent of our people who will have to foot the bill, please don’t come back for the Olympic Games that some are now demanding.  Just stay away and enjoy your legalized prostitution elsewhere.”

In case my readers are skeptical I challenge you to verify the numbers and facts in this Post before you criticize.