I'm sorry Your Honour, the dog ate my evidence

So Jackie Selebi was supposed to bring receipts to court today to justify how he & his wife had arrived at their expenses budget they had previously submitted to the court.
Unfortunately for Mr Selebi, his very silly wife had conveniently 'discarded the slips' the day before because she apparently found 'better evidence' to back up their budget.
Not only did she throw the slips away, she also had the foresight to tear them up into little pieces before she discarded them, just in case someone would use them for fraudulent purposes, or perhaps incriminating evidence in a trail that is now a joke.
Obviously Mr Selebi has the same opinion of prosecutor Gerrie Nel (& the residing judge), as many school children around the world have of their teachers: one that assumes the person in authority is devoid of any intelligence & stupid enough to believe the old 'the dog ate my homework' tale that's been spun a million times before.
Clearly Mr Selebi is confident that he will get off scot-free, otherwise he'd be spinning more convincing lies.

The Supervillain Guide to Super Spending: Get a job in government & then ask for ridiculous armounts of money

So according to Water Affairs Minister Buyelwa Sonjica, government need to spend R23 billion over the next 6 years to fix the country's 'network' of waste water treatment stations.
Apparently most of the plants need to be refurbished & the R23 billion is merely an estimate...
Frankly - while I don't deny that we are seriously lagging behind in terms of infrastructure in this country - I do wonder at the R23 billion figure.
Its a lot of money. A heck of a lot! Probably enough to buy out Zimbabwe & some other impoverished African country ruled by a corrupt dictator who flits over to Dubai regularly for shopping holidays.
Of course, I'm sure that the costs of redoing the country's waste recycling plants will be a huge expense, but I can't help think that there's a few fancy BMWs stashed into that budget on the contractor's side.

People Are Gullible & other such proof that Darwin's theory of evolution is true...

So according to a poll by Reuters 1 in 5 people believe aliens exist & that they live amongst us, disguised as humans.
In a survey of 23,000 adults in 22 different countries, it was found that more men believe in aliens than women (22% versus 17%), most skeptics are women & that the percentage of believers is higher in more densely-populated countries.

"more than 40 percent of people from India and China believe that aliens walk among us disguised as humans, while those least likely to believe in this are from Belgium, Sweden and the Netherlands (8 percent each)"
Wow! Clearly Sculley was of Scandinavian descent while Mulder had Chinese in him somewhere.
So it seems that if you live in a crowded country, you're more likely to be suspicious of your neighbour. This also means that the more space you have to yourself, the more likely it is that you are still in possession of your own brain & it has not been fiddled with by your lazy-ass, beer-drinking, late-night-tv-watching, bum of an alien buddy Mike (or in the case of the believers in question: Abdul).
Of course, with all that stupid around its a miracle the human race keeps on going.
Incidentally, there are numerous accounts of "alien abductions" online should you feel in need of a good laugh. Either that, or you could listen to David Hasselhoff's music for a pick-me-up.

April Fool's - how to make fake geeks panic

There's been some great April Fool's jokes over the years.
My favourite is definitely Sir Richard Branson's:
Although he was a day early - a mistake on his part due to being blown off-course (so the April Fool's joke goes both ways) Branson landed in a UFO-shaped balloon in a field outside of London in 1989 & emerged in a silver suit - freaking out the police & the crowd of onlookers who had gathered.
Brilliant & hilariously funny in the spirit of the day.
IOL's report of Somali pirates holding the internet for ransom by hijacking the Seacom cable, not as brilliant.
Of course, there are still going to be people who fall for it & panic about the end of the internet as we know it.
I'm still debating whether their report about Steve Hoffmeyer trying to play the hero by chasing 6 armed men down after a robbery, is an April Fool's joke. Unfortunately the article was published on the 31st of March...