1. The Times had a real giggle of a story of this week, revealing that a top SA law firm was taken in by spoof news website Hayibo, which ran a story saying that the Somali pirates of the high seas started off recording music at home, later branching out into pirating DVDs. DM Kisch lawyer Vanessa Ferguson quoted the story as official “research” in an article that went viral on Twitter and when The Times checked in with the law firm, the chairman said:

“My response is: ‘Oops’… Looking at [the article], I’m sure she wasn’t aware [the hayibo piece was a joke]. She did it just before she went on maternity leave and may have not checked her sources properly.”

Having been there myself, one does get a bit scatterbrained in the final weeks of pregnancy as you manically race to outfit your house for the Sprog’s arrival so all is forgiven. You guys provided some much needed levity in a week filled with ANCYL hate speech and pointless posturing from many quarters on the Reitz 4.

2. On the subject of ANCYL, Freek Robinson at RSG did an fascinating radio interview with Youth League head Julius Malema (in Engels nog al) where it was quite bizarre to hear the dude wooden and falling on political platitudes. Clearly, his charisma fizzes out away from an ANC rally. You can download the interview as an MP3 in a couple of seconds from RSG here.

3. IOL had a great story on tennis star Andre Agassi’s new autobiography in which he reveals his struggle with crystal meth, an abusive father and how he hates tennis. What a cooker that book’s going to be and already Sports Illustrated and the Times of London have paid for the rights to print parts of “Open: An Autobiography.”

4. Alec Hogg of Moneyweb wrote a stunningly wonderful and moving obituary of old friend and financial journalist Flip Meyer. It’s truly one of the best pieces of writing I’ve read all year: a life summed up and what that life meant to Hogg.

5. And then The Huffington Post in the US featured a very funny website: Extreme Pumpkins as part of their Halloween fest. Just don’t show it to the little ones. They’ll never look a pumpkin in the face again.

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