Pandora's Aquarium

Groot Trek

2007-10-24T09:12:00.000+02:00

This website is working again, how amusing.

But I have moved on...

STPC Press Release

2007-10-24T08:59:00.000+02:00

It’s that time of year again... time for The Silvery Tay Poetry Competition, which celebrates deplorable verse and is dedicated to the Affectionate Remembrance of William McGonagall, Poet Laureate of the Silvery Tay, also known as Sir William Topaz McGonagall, Knight of the White Elephant of Burma.

Hopefully, Mr James Clarke of the Stoep Talk Organisation (which owns The Star newspaper) will be our celebrity judge again this year. Not only is Mr Clarke an expert of Pomes, he is also venerably fit for duty, being the heroic L*E*A*D*E*R of the Tour De Farce. He looks lovely in Lycra, too, and if you run out and buy a copy of his book Blazing Saddles, you can photostat all the pics and prestik them up on your walls, as I have done.

Click, friend, and enter! (but don’t click today. This link is not working yet. Technicians are attending to a technical thingy and will have it technified before the 1st of November, latest, if they value their lives)

test

2007-09-19T09:51:00.000+02:00

test

Putting legs on snakes

2007-08-31T11:37:00.000+02:00

There’s engineered cats for allergic pet owners, there’s growing human organs in pigs, for transplants. New cows bred to produce skim milk for making skinny lattes to be sipped by golems draped over chic chairs in Coffee Shops. It’s Oryx and Crake*, for real. Chimerae - released from the realm of myth, now available in a lab near you – initially part goat, part sheep but now part rat or rabbit, part human. Ethical dilemmas (how outmoded, surely. Why don’t they just save some time and have done with the lip service?) notwithstanding, they say Important Medical Breakthroughs are being made with the help of these creatures. I say, screw your important medical and probably largely cosmetic breakthroughs. If you can make coherent communities and social consciences and decent homes and literacy and renewable power and jobs and effective governments and a rethink about the holiness of unlimited human fecundity in your stinking labs, then I’ll be impressed.

We are so enraptured by our fantastical ideals of ‘freedom’ that we kick and scream at the idea that the way forward from here involves a vigorous pruning of many so-called freedoms. We have invented ludicrous rights for ourselves, our civilisation as it is right now is an adolescent, who is sure that it knows everything and has nothing more to learn, will not suffer anyone telling it what to do and is motivated entirely by urges which override even its innate survival mechanisms.

Malcolm Gladwell, commenting on Jared Diamond’s book Collapse, said, “…societies, as often as not, aren’t murdered. They commit suicide: they slit their wrists and then, in the course of many decades, stand by passively and watch themselves bleed to death…”

That’s what we’re doing, only we’re not just an isolated society on Easter Island. We are the whole world and this is the only island we have. Nobody needs to tell us this - we actually know it and we carry on regardless.

*Novel by Margaret Atwood, about what happens when science takes over from where religion left off. Sort of.

Emission omission

2007-08-31T11:01:00.001+02:00

Africa Geographic magazine made a valiant attempt at putting all the official climate change info (the basics of it anyway) into one accessible place, being their August 2007 edition.

Then, extraordinarily, they all but cancelled the effort out with advertising. I understand that advertising in magazines is a necessary evil but this is incredibly frustrating – “Flight Centre goes Green”? Please. But the biggest liberty was taken by a double page advertorial about how marvelous and environmentally responsible Sasol is.

We all know about fossil fuels and their dastardliness. There’s a hierarchy of demons here just like anywhere else, and oil only comes third. Second comes coal, and in first place is coal-to-liquids, which is Sasol. In a magazine dedicated entirely to this issue of anthropogenic climate change, I can’t understand why there is not even one little panel of text which zeroes in on coal-to-liquids. I lie. I can understand perfectly.

Know the enemy

2007-08-30T00:55:00.000+02:00

Some people have said that we can save the world without economic sacrifice. You have to be either naïve or calculating to be able to make that claim with a straight face. Others, like Planktos Inc., go further by saying that we can actually get rich saving the world, and they want to show us how. The Planktos investor schpiel goes: “You should own global-warming stocks... At worst, you'll make a profit. At best, you'll make a profit and help save the world. That sound OK to you?” and “Go Green. Get Rich”, and so on. They are carbon sharks, and their game is indulgences.

Planktos is the company that recently set out on a geoengineering expedition to sprinkle iron hematite dust onto the open ocean not far from the Galapagos, in hopes of causing an algae bloom that will mop up lots of CO2, while also helping to feed the starving plankton which in turn feed the starving fishies. They will spin the escapade like this: We have mopped up lots of CO2, see? We’ll carry on doing it so that you can pay us money and take that flight/buy that SUV with a clear conscience. You emit, we remit.

Schemes like this are what all globally committed commercial greeners are wearing this season. Planktos has a PR blog, where you can read about all sorts of green sexiness, like the wonders of biodiesel and how the Holy See is now carbon neutral thanks to them.

Entities like Planktos have cut straight into a rich seam of pale green mainstream and the public is lapping it up, but it doesn’t help in any real way. It only helps to confuse people and encourage extra consumption. On the oxymoronic subject of ‘eco-consumerism’, from an article by George Monbiot:
“There is an inherent conflict between the aspirational lifestyle journalism which makes readers feel better about themselves and sells country kitchens and the central demand of environmentalism: that we should consume less.”

Other suggestions for geoengineering include artificially dimming the atmosphere by creating particulate (or mechanical) shields, to mimic the effects of things like volcanic eruptions which temporarily prevent some solar energy from reaching earth’s surface and cause cooling. Even if these hypothetical fixes were in fact more than just the scientific equivalent of throwing custard pies at the sky and yelling, “Ha! Take THAT, atmosphere!”, the thing is that unless emissions are drastically cut anyway then the more emissions build up the more “shields” we will have to create…

There can be no business as usual without serious consequences for life as we know it. That’s not the so-called good life as we privileged few know it, that’s the actual livingness of life for thousands of species including us (also including Bigosaurus full-tilt-growth-is-god-almighty Moneyrex, as immune as it thinks it is). Unless we do some joined up thinking immediately and get ready to take the economic sacrifices on the chin, then decades from now hindsight will miserably tell us that the only way we could have mitigated the effects of our greenhouse emissions would have been to have drastically cut the emissions themselves at whatever material costs, while we still had time to do so. Pity we can’t just catch a wake up right now, today, this minute. One very far off future day, of course, when we’re a puzzling layer in some future civilisation’s fossil record, it won’t matter at all.

Gavin Schmidt has a good analogy for all this:

“Think of the climate as a small boat on a rather choppy ocean. Under normal circumstances the boat will rock to and fro, and there is a finite risk that the boat could be overturned by a rogue wave. But now one of the passengers has decided to stand up and is deliberately rocking the boat ever more violently. Someone suggests that this is likely to increase the chances of the boat capsizing. Another passenger then proposes that with his knowledge of chaotic dynamics he can counterbalance the first passenger and indeed, counter the natural rocking caused by the waves. But to do so he needs a huge array of sensors and enormous computational resources to be ready to react efficiently but still wouldn't be able to guarantee absolute stability, and indeed, since the system is untested it might make things worse.

So is the answer to a known and increasing human influence on climate an ever more elaborate system to control the climate? Or should the person rocking the boat just sit down?”

George Monbiot on Eco Junk: http://www.monbiot.com/archives/2007/07/24/eco-junk/

Gavin Schmidt bio http://www.giss.nasa.gov/~gavin/
Planktos Inc http://planktos.com/
Planktos Blog http://www.planktos.blogspot.com/

The original Fe experiment: http://www.rsnz.org/education/alpha/alpha106/alpha-106.htm
(Well, does it work or doesn’t it? Help or harm? No-one seems to have an answer. I have looked and looked, and there are as many fors as there are againsts)

Don't tell him (edited)

2007-08-21T03:43:00.000+02:00

I’m a bit brain dead at the moment. I feel as though someone has injected formaldehyde into my head. Maybe the posting of those Black Eyed Peas lyrics a couple of posts ago has started to kick in. As someone said (Nietzsche? And if, as I found out the other day, you pronounce ‘segues’ as ‘seg-ways’, then how on earth do you properly pronounce ‘Nietzsche’? Have I even spelled it right? And is it ‘spelt’ or is it ‘spelled’?), “He who fights with monsters should look to it that he himself does not become a monster. When you gaze long enough into the abyss, the abyss also gazes into you.”
If it’s temporary, then I don’t know how long it will last but I have to post something in the meantime because I owe it to my six readers. That’s you guys. If it’s permanent, well then, hello wondrous oblivion, where have you been all this time?

So, what to post? People often post pictures of their pets, or of their new cellphone, or of their car. Hmm. I’ve already posted pics of my pets. I know - I’ll post Ray Hartley’s cat pet pic(http://blogs.thetimes.co.za/hartley/). The caption is, “Someone should tell him”:

But I don't think they should, because he looks very contented.

I don’t have a new cellphone, sorry. Here are two pics of my car though, one with the paint (http://paquarium.blogspot.com/2007/06/dear-diary.html ) and one with the snow. For such a young and innocent little car, it’s seen some life eh?

Lark and Stardust

2007-08-14T03:34:00.000+02:00

If a meteorite had landed on that pub, at the gig I was at somewhere in Pretoria a couple of months ago, I would not have cared or even noticed. For two whole hours and a bit I didn’t have a single thought about carbon sharks, nuclear waste, marketing or any other type of rape, pillage and plunder. Lark, live, did it. They’re great on CD too, but this band is at its best live. Having somehow survived Oppikoppi, they’ll be back in GP at Carfax on the 24th of this month. My elder daughter is their Number One Fan, so luckily I’ll be able to take her with me as a buffer, or a Buffy, ‘cos Carfax isn’t exactly home away from home for me. I get psychedelic when I can’t quite identify the species around the watering hole, so psychedelic that I start identifying with unidentifiables and then all hell breaks loose because I get sudden urges to do things like start wearing black lipstick or death-metal hoodies, or pierce my eyebrow, or say “dude”. It’s alarming and just won’t do anymore. I’ll be forty in less than half a year and I really don’t want to do any more metamorphasising. I know this is heresy but I think comfort zones are a good thing and I want to be a proper old lady like my gran one day, with sensible shoes, silver hair in a bun and a mauve twinset.
The Radium’s got Soaks and Estate Agents and Okes and things, no alarms and no surprises you know? Nothing to aspire to. Very comfy. The worst that can happen at the Radium is that I’ll sing. But Carfax? Elder daughter’s a drummer, see, so if anything sidles up persuasively in a death-metal hoody (or whatever they wear there) and says, “Dude…”, then she can fend it off. She’s taller than me, which helps, and her drumsticks can double as stakes. Ha ha.
Lark is demanding and very loud and schitzophrenic, and brilliant. Lark is not warm and fuzzy (although a quarter of it is actually Fuzzy, on bass, sometimes double bass nogal), not comfortable, and doesn’t invite you to put your feet up and have coffee. It might be a portal of some sort, it sounds like a hall of mirror doors, and the diva from The 5th Element lives behind one of them.

Stardust the movie is coming soon to a theatre near you, but read the book first if you can. The blurb says something about it being a fairytale for grownups, and I suppose maybe it is but I resent that description although my brain’s too tired at the moment to explain why. Some of the main bookshops have it in stock, and all of the comic shops do, so it’s pretty easy to get hold of. There are Big Names in the movie, does that mean it’ll be a good movie though? It’s bound to piss a few rabid fans off as these things do, but on the whole I’m almost prepared to bet the farm that it’ll be a great escape.

Read it and weep

2007-07-20T04:08:00.000+02:00

Having failed so miserably at getting down to the Cape Town Book Fair in order to flock about the shins of the most important literary figure to emerge from Kenilworth or the world in the last four hundred years or ever, I feel as though I may not have tried hard enough. My little stack of dogeared copies of The De Villiers Code and Texas glowers at me from the bookshelf, unautographed and reproachful. Indelibly marked by this account of abuse at the distracted hands of Spud’s minions, my mind is all but gone with grief. Read it, and weep with me. The light shineth in the darkness, brothers and sisters, and the darkness comprehendeth it not. Must Mr Eaton cut off his ear, I ask you? What will it take???

http://www.mg.co.za/articlePage.aspx?articleid=312087&area=/columnist__tom_eaton/

The Loony Bin

2007-07-20T00:17:00.000+02:00

US Patent 5827173 is a “Prenatal audio communication device”. The mind boggles, and one fears for any prenate unfortunate enough to be enwombed by a woman who would even consider using such a thing:

“A prenatal audio communication device has a receiving chamber which accepts sound waves for transmission through a flexible tube to a megaphone secured against the abdomen of a pregnant woman so as to transfer sound waves from an external source with which the chamber is juxtaposed to a position proximate the ears of the baby in the womb. Means is connected to the megaphone for encircling the pregnant woman and securing the megaphone outlet port against her abdomen. Preferably, the inlet port has a perimeter contoured to be snugly juxtaposed about the mouth of a typical adult. A curved lip extends along the inlet port perimeter to form a continuous seal between the chamber and the face of the user, to increase the comfort level of the user when the chamber is pressed against the face and to make a single chamber more universally usable with a variety of sound wave source shapes and sizes. Preferably, the securing means is an at least partially elastically stretchable strap which connects to D-ring type members disposed on opposite sides of the megaphone.”

Second RSS Awards

2007-07-20T00:09:00.000+02:00

And the Platinum Pustule for Really Stupid Song goes to The Black Eyed Peas.

Reputed to be “one of the most popular hit singles in history”, the song is called My Humps. It’s also probably one of the most complained-about songs in history so unfortunately we’re not breaking any new ground here. Most recently parodied by Alanis Morrissette as an April fool joke, you can find her version plus the original on any one of a dozen video hosting sites, if you feel like clubbing some brain cells to death.

I can barely bring myself to put these lyrics in here, partly because they make my mind so numb I can hardly remember how to copypaste, and partly because they might act like google fly paper and then, well, there goes the neighbourhood. A sample, nevertheless:

My hump, my hump, my hump, my hump,
My hump, my hump, my hump, my hump, my hump, my hump.
My lovely lady lumps (lumps)
My lovely lady lumps (lumps)
My lovely lady lumps (lumps)
my lovin' got you
She's got me spendin'.
(Oh) Spendin' all your money on me and spending time on me.
She's got me spendin'.
(Oh) Spendin' all your money on me, up on me, on me.

…and so on.

I wish they’d invent a pill for radio intolerance, because it puts a person at a terrible disadvantage. I think if I could hum along to songs about girls who feel wretched about cheatin’ on their guy and feel they may as well be puttin’ a gun to his head but they really just can’t help it, I could quite enjoy life. That’s Rihanna, and she takes runner up for her song “Unfaithful”.

LyricBlokka TM, get it now at these fine stores. I’d be in there like a shot.

Nominations for the next Awards welcome. To qualify, songs must have actual lyrics but needn’t be current hits.

SNAFU

2007-07-10T03:52:00.000+02:00

Our Christian churches, perhaps in some sort of partnership with our media, are having a bumper year, with key questions flitting clunkily about like flower fairies with little lead boots on. There was the tricky: “Does Satan really exist?” and there were also some questions which had wafty answers like, and I quote but I can’t remember who: “Well, you know, the bible doesn’t prohibit actual gayness, rather just the practice of it.”
Then of course, there were the reams of questions surrounding Our Lady of the Blinding Ray in Benoni.

But our rainbow of Christianity isn’t yet as plump with permitted political colourants, flavourants and emulsifiers as it is in other places - Utah for instance - so by contrast our theological angst is quite quaint. Here’s an example of what they’ve had on their minds over there:

“Utah County Republicans ended their convention on Saturday by debating Satan's influence on illegal immigrants…

Don Larsen, chairman of legislative District 65 for the Utah County Republican Party, had submitted a resolution warning that Satan's minions want to eliminate national borders and do away with sovereignty.

In a speech at the convention, Larsen told those gathered that illegal immigrants "hate American people …are determined to destroy Christian America, and there is nothing they won't do." He also said that illegal aliens were in control of the media, and working with Democrats. At the end of his speech, Larsen began to cry, saying illegal immigrants were trying to bring about the destruction of the U.S. "by self invasion."

http://www.heraldextra.com/content/view/220065/4/

Quinquereme of Rubber Duck

2007-07-10T03:45:00.000+02:00

A few years ago, a ship accidentally tipped into the ocean its cargo of little rubber ducks and frogs, originally destined for bathtubs across America. It was reported in newspapers that flotillas of the toys had been seen cheerfully navigating the high seas and making the most of their serendipitous liberation, some putting to shore along the way and others pressing on. I think about them often, and wonder: are some of them still out there, startling brawny oil rig men or being spat out by disgusted whales? What would a sunbleached, travel-weary but still valiantly bobbing rubber bath toy have to say, if it were interviewed?

Renovating

2007-07-09T05:55:00.000+02:00

Mundus vult decipi (?)

2007-06-07T03:41:00.000+02:00

The terribly wicked and utterly delightful Mr. Eaton points his singular sword at the “mawble-and-porms-brigade”:

“If only they knew how they looked, how the fantasy is exploded every time the true, representative driver of the SUV goes out on her errands: the tiny Stepford wife, ring-encrusted fingers spread desperately around the gigantic tiller, stringy tanning-bed-purple arms fighting the power-steering, her dulled eyes half-closed in that permanent expression of moronic disdain the rich reserve for when they are forced to mingle with the less rich.”

You strike an SUV, you strike a rock

im in ur internetz stealin ur time

2007-06-05T00:56:00.000+02:00

The internet (ahem, beg pardon, the internets), as we know, is/are (a) very strange place/s. There’s google of course, which is strange. I was at a thing once, around ‘99, where there was a man we’ll call Andrew who hunkered about in a chalky circle, throwing plastic replica bones, while talking about the way forward and paradigms and core relationships and innovation. Occasionally he’d mention the word "Google". Milling about in the shadows (actually, it was a flouro-lit conference room so there were no shadows but you know what I mean), the casually dressed suits on this fun team-building exercise chewed on the ends of their cellular network branded goodie bag pens.
“What’s a google?” they worried amongst themselves. A man with a smear of sticky purple ink bleeding down into his branded golf shirt collar tried to leave the room traditionally, but the door had been bolted from the outside so he threw himself out of a window.

“So basically,” said Andrew, after he’d given everyone a go with the bones, and got them to sing shosholoza while standing on their heads and juggling raisins with their eyebrows, “At the end of the day what we’re saying here is that a paradigm shift in leveraging relationships within core markets focuses on innovation and strategic removal of impediments to the implementation of the blah rhubarb. And remember, Google. Thank you.”

Apart from one lady who ended up with a raisin lodged in her sinuses, it was the Google bit that stuck most firmly. Google is like that glue they use to stick promo CDs onto magazines, which sticks to everything else too and your skin in particular. You sit there at the coffee shop with the magazine wrapper and a little sugar packet siliconed to your fingertips, fluttering away like a crazy person. Even if you manage to lose the paper bits, you’ll retain the glue and it looks like snot. You flap at it feebly, you try rubbing it off onto the underneath of the table, it ends up on your chin. The people sitting at the next table will ask to be moved.

You can hardly do anything online without Google. It’s the people’s gateway to the universe. You can feel at home and put your feet up on it, whether you’re into Scrapbooking or S&M. And it can sell more stuff than any other entity in history. Andrew, if you’re still out there, if no-one’s slipped nightshade in your Red Bull or defenestrated you yet then of course you know this: You were right and I wish I’d bought shares.

Anyhow, heaven help us, now there’s Lolcode. I don’t know what it does but I think this is what it is: a programming language based on IRC-speak, engrish game-speak, texting-speak, snowclones (‘catch-structures’ like, “To X, or not to X”) and lolcats. Lolcats are those cutesy photos of cats with pidgin captions, e.g., “o hai. i make u cookie but i eated it,” which go round and round and round in places like myspace (and your inbox if you’re careless enough to have given your email address to a nitwit).

I’ve posted before about Making Light, how entertaining it can be. In a recent open thread, they did some literature in sort of lolcode. The ritual deployment of This Is Just To Say is in there, naturally. There’s some Chaucer and Shakespeare, there’s all three parts of The Lord Of The Rings, how could there not be, and lots more. I once promised to keep this blog silly, so this makes up for any lapses in silly that might have occurred - Here’s Pride and Prejudice:

Rich man can has girl.

Bngli: i can has dance?
J4N3: k
l12: i can has dance too?
DarC: no u ugly go way
l12: LOLz
Bngli: BRB

MrC0lnz: l12 i can has heart?
l12: no gway
Chrltt: u can has me
MrC0lnz: K BRB

Wikm: IM IN UR TOWN SEDUCIN UR DAUTERS
lyd14: o hai

DarC: i can has heart?
l12: no gway u rude

l12: IM IN UR PEMBERLEY ADMIRIN UR STUFF
DarC: hai
l12: OMG thought u were AFK!!1!

J4N3: OMG lyd14 & Wikm BFF
l12: WTF?
lyd14: i can has wikm, k?
Wikm: i can has $$$? LOL
DarC: k

Bngli: hai, back. i can has heart?
J4N3: k lol
DarC: back
l12: thx 4 ur help
DarC: i can has heart?
l12: k lol

If you are far enough gone to have liked that, that is if you are ROTFLYAO, then here's a whole anthology, to distract you from your work for the next two days at least. Scroll down to comments #119, 120 and 130 for LOR. “Is one ringtone enough to rule them all?”

All your silly are belong to us.

:-) kthxbye

Dear Diary

2007-06-01T09:54:00.000+02:00

They were repainting the roof of my local Spar yesterday. A freshly opened 20L tin of terracotta paint fell from the roof and bounced off my tiny shiny pretty pearly silver two-week-old Yaris as I pulled into the parking bay, about three seconds after I had mused on how lucky I had been to get one right by the entrance. Damn you Asphaltia, daughter of Satan, Succubus, Whore of Babylon.

Various men with glinting murderous eyes gathered round the startlingly novel cowhide-jackrussel paint job, and hungrily offered to pummel the young roof painter, as though I looked incapable of it. I declined and laughed and took the hand of poor Jaques, the painter, who had come down from the roof and was crying real tears and shaking from top to bottom, because in that moment I could see clearly, in slow motion even, and I was just so happy for him that I’m not a murderous man. If you’re going to spill roof paint all over a brand new car, and you have a choice as to which car, pick mine ok? I tried to explain to Jaques how he should see this like winning the lotto - that what happened was quite literally once in a lifetime ‘cos it’s my first brand new car and I won’t ever have another. He must have misunderstood because he went even paler, sobbed even louder, edged towards the group of murderous men and tried to take cover in their midst.

The dent in the roof from the tin is like an exclamation mark. Serves me right I suppose, for getting all inexplicably fond of and vain about a stupid car. I don’t even like cars. Let this be a lesson to me.

Mr Ludwig the Flower Man

2007-05-17T01:21:00.000+02:00

Checking in at the Silvery Tay Poetry Competition site today, to see whether there’s any housekeeping needed before I go and do a foolish 3am caution-to-the-wind type of thing like mention it in David Bullard’s comment threads, I found that I must either have forgotten to post the “Short Exceptance Speech” that Melodi Bloggs emailed to Mr Clarke and me; or I did put it in but it got eaten by a passing flock of jubjub birds, which are known to be attracted by bright multicoloured party lights like Melodi. If I forgot, I’m sorry, and if it was eaten, I hope they enjoyed it as much as I did. Well I’ve put it up there now so that’s all right then.

It went like this:

Short Exceptance Speech

Dear Ms Pandora and Mr James Small
It is with great humbility that I accept this onerous award.
I’ve never won anything like this before and I hope it won’t go to my head.
In honour of the honour I will be decorating my second bathroom in the same classical tones as my Pandora’s Poet Laureate certificate of 2007. After which I will be approaching Mr Ludwig (the flower man, not the composter) about having a rose named after myself.
And in the words of the intrepid Jesus, “I’ll be back”.

Yours poetically
Melodi Bloggs

Pandora’s Poet Laureate 2007

Re the housekeeping, I’m relieved to report that none was needed. This is because as yet I have not mentioned the STPC on David Bullard’s blog, of course. I have been sending emails to myself and sticking post-its all over my desk, loo door and kettle, with lists of reasons to remind me why I should not do it. I hope it keeps working.

David Bullard’s Eternal September

2007-05-14T04:08:00.000+02:00

I was both amused and alarmed by David Bullard’s column about blogs and bloggers in last week’s Sunday Times. It was all absolutely true, every word, so knowing what lay in store for him I sent some little psychic sachets of sterkte winging through the ethers, for him to keep in his pocket. I hope they’re coming in handy. But why would he want to engage with a not very subtle cabal of nitwits whose collective online oeuvre is concrete proof that some people should not have been allowed to learn reading and writing in the first place? Now he’s gone and nailed his foot to the funnyfarm floor by acquiring a blog of his own. Why would he do that? Like he said this week, “I should have kept my mouth shut.”

It’s not too late, Mr Bullard! Bail out immediately before they eat your brains. No-one is immune, not even you. Don’t feed the baboons for goodness sake. Get some calamine for that nasty rash and take comfort from the fact that they get bored really quickly and will move along any minute now.

But if you must pursue this folly against all advice, may I offer my services as Disemvoweller? You will need one for sure. The beauty of disemvowelling is that it’s not the same as censorship. It’s better. I’ve been dying to try it but have never had the opportunity here, all four of my readers being very well behaved indeed. I will charge you 1 cent per word or part thereof, the reason I have to charge is not because I’m after the money (although I’m anticipating it getting to a point where you offer me a rand a vowel just to keep me on) but because I’m after the job description. I’d quite like to be able to say, “I’m a Professional Disemvoweller” when people ask.

Shibboleths

2007-05-04T11:30:00.000+02:00

1.
Doug Shaw Prime did a test to find out what kind of American accent he has. I thought I ought to do it too, so I did, and it said: “New York City. You are most definitely from New York City. Not New Jersey, not Connecticut. If you are from Jersey then you can probably get into New York City in 10 minutes or less.” I found that very interesting.

2.
The Extensis blog had a haiku competition to celebrate the premiere of a hardcore designgeek film called “Helvetica”. While I absolutely do not in any way whatsoever miss my late career*, I did like these haikus. First prize was a limited edition Helvetica fine art poster, which in those circles can be compared to a staunch Catholic winning one of baby Jesus’ milk teeth. My favourite was Christina’s, which won second place:

wedding invite came
they chose brush script mt bold
i give it six months

*only tiny insignificant bits of it, and even then only sometimes.

Girl Stuff

2007-04-16T01:35:00.000+02:00

Melodi Bloggs, as you ought to know, was the winner of the Silvery Tay Poetry Competition 2007. She is a beloved friend of mine and I have begun compiling an anthology of her bons mots, gathered from emails and conversations around the edges of board games. Here is a sample:

Melodi Bloggs on ‘Fruition’: “By fruition, do you mean headgear a la Carmen Miranda? I don’t mind going this route, but it’s not strictly Geisha, and I always end up losing my bananas.”

Melodi Bloggs on dating: “My innards are those of a fifteen year old. My outers, sadly not.”

There's a lady, Ellie, who has an eponymous knitting shop in Edenvale. I can remember going there with my Ma when I was a kid. So I coveted my sister's scarf last winter, and not being able to find a similar one anywhere, went to Ellie's in hopes of finding a way to make one for myself - how difficult can it be to make a long thin woolly thing with wispy pompoms on? I found Ellie unchanged, she’s like an ancient china shepherdess. She showed me how to cast on and how to do a lovely lacy dropped-stitch thing, and I asked, "So, do you have a book with, like, stitches and patterns and stuff?" The other customers, most of them magnificent old ladies, each with a life's worth of unpicked things, started laughing and I had an epiphany: This woman IS the book. Well it’s now next winter and I still don’t have my scarf - I never got past knit-two-rows-unpick-three. I miss my granny.

For a Barbarian woman to offer help in a Greek Cypriot woman’s kitchen on Greek Easter (or any other time in fact) is foolish. Maria and Stalla and Thea Eleni will go pale for a moment, exchange panicked glances and then chorus something to the effect that everything’s almost done, ok can you take this spanakopita out to the men? Don’t drop eh?
Yes, I am Barbarian, my compound crime not only to do with not being Greek but also to do with having mostly Viking ancestors (you cannot hide that sort of thing from a Greek), which is as bahrrr-bahrr-ee-yun as it ever gets, with as much emphasis as you can muster on that second syllable. After years of wondering why they still invite you to these gatherings at all, you learn to just be very grateful that they do, and you sit quietly and eat, and eat, and eat, and you don’t argue anymore with Stellios about that dessert with the rose-cordial actually being Turkish. He’s getting on now anyway and doesn’t need the stress. When they send you off at the end of it all with a stack of tinfoiled leftovers enough to last two weeks, you don’t joke, “Do you think I can’t feed my own family or something?” You just say “Thank you,” with relish, and look forward to next year.

An A-C of Things that Might Help

2007-04-08T04:18:00.000+02:00

A is for Asphaltia

There is a goddess of parking spaces, apparently. She is called Asphaltia and her invocation goes, “Lady Asphaltia, full of grace, find for me a parking space.” I like it a lot and look forward to more successful parking in future.

B is for Butter-side-up

Caro Jazoni sent me a Vimrod cartoon that said, “If you are worried about having a bad week then post yourself some toast on Monday. Then Tuesday and Wednesday can be spent looking forward to what might come in the post, and then on Thursday the toast will come which will be a treat, and then on Friday it’s the end of the week.”

C is for Cat

Death, and What Comes Next.
English
Afrikaans
Many other useful translations, including Catalonian, here.

All you ever needed to know about Zombies

2007-04-02T02:52:00.000+02:00

Over at Making Light, they’re good at grabbing a thing and running with it. They can take a piece of spam and turn it into a couple of days worth of entertaiment. I wonder where they get the time - maybe they actually live inside the internet and their comment threads are like other people’s walking the dog or dusting behind the bookcase.

This particular subthread, which kicks off at comment #53, begins with: “A spammer writes: ‘We will appreciate if you will use the following information to link us back from your web site’. I hope no-one on ML minds, but I’ve been running a Zombies simulation on a 2 Mqbit SQUID using the comment threads here as modelling data. This is not a Vingefied AI system with trapped, sentient copies of the contributors here: the agents modelled are guaranteed soulless empty software shells…”

While I suspect that the stuff re 2 Mqbit SQUID and vingeified AI systems etc was aimed squarely at gaming geeks (because that is the type of alarming language that I’ve come to associate with people of that ilk) and other ML insiders, and therefore not at me, I nevertheless had a lot of fun reading what followed.

They also have what they call a “Ritual deployment of This is Just to Say”, which is always cute. Here’s the Zombie deployment:

This is Just to Say

I have eaten
the brains
that were in
your cranium

and which
you were probably
saving
for grad school

Forgive me
they were delicious
so gray
and so warm

The Sheep Albedo Hypothesis

2007-04-02T01:44:00.000+02:00

“Not everybody agrees with the Sheep Albedo Hypothesis. Leading the flock of skeptics is the New Zealand Sheep Farmers Guild. Their spokesman, Steve Ramsturf (no relation) was quoted as saying "Baaah, Humbug. No matter what goes wrong with the world, they're always trying to blame the poor New Zealand Sheep Farmer. First it was the methane belch tax. Now this Albedo thing.”

If you have time to read only one scientifical article today, let it be this one.

Get well Sophie

2007-03-27T09:01:00.000+02:00

Sophie the Dachshund slipped a disc. A human slipped disc is dire, but a dachshund slipped disc is hell on earth. Anyone who has ever been in service to one of these impossibly charming dogs will know that the space they take up in one’s life is inversely proportional to their actual size, and when the dachshund is poorly there’s far too much empty space on the couch for her humans to be comfortable rattling around in. So these photos are to help with the cheering up of Sophie’s family and the full recovery of Sophie herself.

1. Angel and Ollie
2. Chloe
3. Rosie

Half of Tom Eaton is Missing!

2007-03-19T01:11:00.000+02:00

I speak in my capacity as Tom Eaton’s Number One Fan, and on behalf of all lesser fans, when I say that the Mail & Guardian is a heartless creature. It gave us last Friday’s edition without Viva Gazania and didn’t warn us first. No sky-writing bi-plane, no complimentary gold Lindt bunny by way of apology, no little sample packet of valium stapled on, just a very missing column. Does it have any idea what this does to people? It’s like when you’ve ordered a pizza and they’ve left out the base and the tomato and the capers, and all you get is a mozzarella pancake stuck to the bottom of the box. Or when you’ve gone to get Master and Commander on DVD and get home to find disc 3 of Lost 2 in there instead. Well not exactly like that, because there’s still his cricket column, which is vitally important, but we really need to be forewarned if we’re only getting half of our weekly Tom Eaton.

To cheer myself up a bit I thought I’d transcribe the previous week’s Viva Gazania in here, and was three-quarters of the way through doing that when I discovered that I could just link to it instead, like in the old days. How odd. I remember moaning about it being unfair that one had to subscribe to the M&G in order to access it online. Well, it turns out that I was either hallucinating or being incredibly thick, because it isn’t true now. I don’t know if it ever was. Maybe they’re just messing with my head. Whatever the case, this is a good time to point out that you should not believe everything you read, especially if I wrote it.

- Here it is: “Boetie Gaan Boardmans Toe”, about Ragnarök; and cucumber slices at the Heilbron Spa. http://www.mg.co.za/articlePage.aspx?articleid=301453&area=/columnist__tom_eaton/

Until recently I had neighbours who are actually living this legend, fervently. They’re gone now, to an encampment somewhere, to sit out their uhuru, time is short they say, and I can’t say I’ll miss them at all because they were… challenging, in many ways. It’s difficult to believe that these people are for real, but I can say from personal experience that they absolutely are. They are as real as the Heilbron Spar, which is deeply depressing. I was googling for news of David Bullard after I heard on the radio that he’d been shot, and among the first of the online ‘articles’ to appear was one from a blog called “Why South Africa Sucks”. It’s manned by someone who calls himself the Uhuru Guru. I’m not sure that Mr Bullard would appreciate being a poster boy for this cause, so I hope he hasn’t noticed.

The Carbon Circus

2007-03-13T01:50:00.000+02:00

This is a photograph of Atomic Kitten planting a tree to offset emissions from a concert of theirs. It shows their fans that they are responsible girls who care about nature and stuff. Two companies who currently sell this concept are the Carbon Neutral Company and Climate Care. There are many others besides.

Alex, Christian and Beth have set up a nifty website called cheatneutral to illustrate why the offsets business is an acid trip. They did it so well that I don’t have to say another word. See http://www.cheatneutral.com/

Chips it’s the Russians again

2007-03-05T09:05:00.000+02:00

There are many fine things about the Russian nuclear industry. For example, it has plenty of radiant women in it, which is why they have the Miss Atom Beauty Competition, open to any woman aged 18-34 who works in the nuclear sector in Russia or other ex-Soviet states, or is studying nuclear science at university. The most glowing among them wins a mink coat, second prize is diamond jewellery and third, a Swiss watch. You can go along and vote at http://miss2007.nuclear.ru/eng/

Another thing is that the Russian nuclear industry has a waste disposal program, which is commendable. It involves such things as burial of solidified radioactive wastes in concrete burial units or trenches, and injection of untreated low-level liquid wastes into deep underground porous rocks surrounded by layers of clay, etc.
Which is pretty much best practice around the world. According to Anthony F. Earley Jr, “The U.S. is producing 2,000 metric tons of spent fuel each year, with 50,000 metric tons held on site at existing nuclear facilities. While that approach may be inefficient, it is perfectly safe. For example, at our Fermi 2 nuclear plant, used fuel has accumulated in our fuel pool which will reach capacity in 2010. We will build a dry cask storage facility similar to the two other facilities already in place at other Michigan nuclear plants. These facilities can safely store waste for decades.”

Russian investigations of potential geologic repository sites are ongoing.

Back here in SA, our former health minister (and there we were back then, thinking Manto would be a new broom) and current minister of foreign affairs, Nkosazana Dlamini-Zuma, has assured us that Russia will be doing all it can to assist us in our quest for more nuclear energy than we could have conjured up in our most febrile dreams. Wonder if we’ll get to host some of their waste in return for the assistance?

7 out of 10 Americans now believe nuclear energy to be safe, affordable, reliable and clean. The world currently has about 442 nuclear power stations. America needs 50 new ones, China’s adding 63, India’s building 7, Russia has plans for another 42, etc etc...

If it sounds like earth’s about to become one giant nuclear landfill, that’s because it is. But let’s not have any furrowed brows and backward thinking here, because it’s perfectly safe, as Mr Early Jr has said. Be positive. We’re all in this together and for the sake of morale we should not go off and google negative words like “Dounreay” anymore ok? Everyone knows that the Scots are either mad or retarded in any case, and those things won’t happen anywhere else.

Everything’s going to be just fine.

South African Ballet Theatre needs YOU

2007-03-02T11:03:00.000+02:00

Koos Kombuis wouldn’t mind if the State Theatre got bulldozed. He said:

“Dis nie asof die Staatsteater my koud laat nie. Ek het sterk gevoelens oor hierdie saak, en dit ontstel my, want ek weet my opinie is onlogies, onfatsoenlik en hoogs aanvegbaar.
Om heeltemal eerlik te wees: ek haat die fokken Staatsteater… om die eenvoudige rede dat dit ’n verskriklike lelike gebou is.”

I could not agree more. The sheer ugliness of the State Theatre is only one of many reasons why, if you’re in Gauteng and plan on going to the ballet this March, but you can only afford one ballet not two, you should choose SABT’s Romeo and Juliet at the Civic Theatre instead of St Petersburg’s Swan Lake at the State Theatre. This is not an advertisement, it’s my duty. The SABT is a hard working company with a big heart and a whole lot of soul, and they need us more than the Russians do. Ballet is not soccer or rugby after all, toemaar, dis orraait, we all have our little things and in any case we don’t mind at all if soccer fans don’t feel like going to the ballet. Or rugby ones even. It’s not that we have anything against rugby fans you know, some of our best friends are… where was I going with this? Oh yes –

So St Petersburg are back for a rerun of their blockbuster swanlake and the tragedy is that the Gauteng leg runs alongside the SABT’s season of Romeo and Juliet. Shame, I don’t think they spitefully planned it like that on purpose. But it will puncture the SABT’s ticket sales because people see the words “Russian” and “Ballet” together on the same page and then it must be holy or something so that’s what they’ll rush off to see.

Well the SABT needs us more. Where the Russian ballet companies are their country’s darlings and want for nothing, we have to set up cake tables to raise funds so our own companies can have refurbished sets. And if someone bequeaths a much needed studio piano, we have to have another cake sale for the moving and tuning of that piano. Not that we mind doing it at all, we do it for love. That our dancers themselves couldn’t afford to shop at these cake sales even if they wanted to, is only a blessing if you look at it wrong way up.

Go see Romeo and Juliet. Come on, Swan Lake? A wedding story, with lots of technical showing-off, a gullible prince, a villain who looks like a mosquito who thinks he’s Batman, a wildly eccentric plot (I’m going to be in trouble for this blasphemy) and so many quivering feathers that you can’t see the trees for the tutus? Or Romeo and Juliet. A love story, with swashbuckling swordfighting (ok, foppish fencing then, I can’t tell a lie) and a dependably tragic and satisfying ending. Go for it.

If you happen to hate ballet and would rather stick pins in your eyeballs then sorry for putting you through this.

Celebrity Malfunction Resolved

2007-03-02T10:57:00.000+02:00

James Clarke agreed to judge the Silvery Tay Poetry Competition!

He has been hailed as a National Treasure and duly showered with thanks, rose petals, and blessings for his fields. You can find out who won here: http://ppomes.blogspot.com/

We expect great things for next year's competition.

Bliksem!

2007-03-02T10:25:00.000+02:00

Neil said recently: “Blogger is being grumpy.”
And even more recently he said: “Blogger's just giving me error messages.”

So it’s not just me then. And Neil’s own son works for the great google.

I rest my case, see previous post, and I have hurled some terrible and resounding expletives at them.

One should never swear unless it’s absolutely necessary because the point of swearing is being able to shock people out of their boots when you need to. If you do it all the time there’s no effect at all. I hope blogger is really, really shocked now.

The unbearable coolness of cooler

2007-03-01T03:42:00.000+02:00

Nothing’s allowed to be simple.

Blogger has new frilly things, and we must use them whether we like it or not because google’s not letting anyone in anymore unless they’ve converted. We must have the new Cooler Stuff and we must be grateful to the genius boys and girls who spend all their waking hours making blogger a better place, a funner place, a cooler place, a place that rocks harder than myspace, dammit. I wonder if there’s a cool ceiling? What happens if all the cool gets used up? Beyond cool there is cooler, but can there be cool beyond coolest? How would we survive in a world without cool? There was nothing wrong with blogger, it worked fine and it was simple and that is a fact. But it wasn’t cool enough.

I often wonder what would happen if these geniuses turned their supercharged boff-ness to the solving of some of the real problems we face in this century. Anyhow I had a bunch of things to say but I have to take a crash test tour of idiotic Cool Stuff instead and I might use expletives so let me just keep quiet for now.

If I find a nice new colour scheme I might get cheered up though.

Patricia?

2007-02-26T02:43:00.000+02:00

Long ago, James Clarke cemented himself properly into the mosaic of my soul’s fountain when he advised (in his Stoep Talk column) on how to deal with telemarketers.

It goes like this: you gather up your best honeyed tones and say something along the lines of, Yes, how wonderful! Could you hold on just a moment while I let the dog in/close the door/turn the radio off? You leave the phone off the hook and go finish your supper. They will hold the line for absolutely ages, I’ve even tested it by going back after 5 minutes and saying, so sorry, don’t go away, be with you in a moment. They’re patient and determined. They will hold. These are genuine people just doing their job of course, at least (surely?) for the most part not the vivisectionists or kitten-drowners we suppose them to be. On a good day one could even imagine that they busy themselves on the other end with embroidery, or sudoku, or emery boards. Fzzzht fzzzht, yes I’m still here yes I’ll hold. It’s nice to be on the power end of that please-hold thing for once, you know? I have whiled away many a pleasant hour like this. If there’s no one else around then I draw the curtains and treat myself to a sort of tiptoe toyi-toyi crossed with an air guitar solo, complete with theatrical soundless guffawing and gesturing with fingers at the receiver, and that’s also quite nice although it isn’t ladylike.

Since I haven’t been able to get hold of Ms Lewis, and since today is supposed to be the day that we find out who the winner of the Silvery Tay Poetry Competition is, I must assume that for some terrible reason she might not be available after all. So if we don't have a winner by midnight tonight I’m going to to ask Mr Clarke to stand in for her, because 1. I don’t think anyone’s ever given him the chance to wear tumbling blonde tresses and nine inch nails before and that’s kind of unfair, 2. He needs to practice the Wearing of the Lycra for the upcoming Tour De Farce in Spain, 3. He knows Pomes and, 4. At worst he could only say no but if he did he’d do it very kindly because he knows who my dad is.

Wish me luck!

P.S. This will of course mean that we might have to wait a couple more days to find out who the winner is.

The Absolute Absurdity of Carbon Dioxide Shortages in SA’s Beverage Industry

2007-01-10T00:22:00.000+02:00

Item 1. God Bles Ms Lewis

Oh, frabjous day! The Lovely Ms Lewis is to be the first ever Judge of The Silvery Tay Poetry Competition! Here’s what she said:

“Dear Sivlery Tay
I heard about this on www.blondextenshuns.co.fu, and am delighted to inform you that I would LUV to be the judge on your poem competition. No one's ever asked me me this before and I was beginning to wonder why. In, fact, I'm prepared to put the winning poem to music for my next konsert - A Tribute to Bles - to be held at the Krugersdorp jukskei stadium in March.
Stay in touch.
Lovies
Patricia”

Isn’t that wonderful? I just knew this year was going to be all filled with pink and purple and stars and puppies!

Item 2. Oh, Woe

A pernicious condition of the universe has made it impossible for me and a keyboard, never mind internet access, to be in the same place at the same time for long enough to hit send or publish, for some time now. But I did it I did it, although now I’m off again and it’ll be a good three more weeks ‘till I get my planets back in a row. Then I’ll give a super-sizzling Account of it all. I think.

The Sea, The Sea

2006-12-06T20:34:00.000+02:00

I must away, like all good Gautengers must, at times like these. We get empty street syndrome in December, you know. Oh, the horror. Linksfield to Linbro Park in under 45 minutes at rush hour is just not a challenge. So, we go south where the traffic goes. If the headache is not intense enough, we have been known to drink seawater in great gulps, while fighting off undertows as the cunning rocks exfoliate our sunburn, for an extra bit of frisson. What’s a sandwich without the sand, for heaven’s sake? Just a wich, and badly spelled too.

Speaking of sand, Pastor Ray McCauley obviously didn’t pay enough attention at Sunday school. If he had, he’d have known that a wise man builds his house upon the rock, and he wouldn’t be having this trouble that he’s having with his beach house in St Francis, which is falling into the sea.

But St Francis Bay these days is creepy anyhow. At first you obligingly murmur, “How sweet. A thatched, white cottage.” After the hundredth thatched white cottage, you begin to think it might not end, and it doesn’t. After the three hundredth you’re well on the way to despair.
Out of season it looks like one of those abandoned compounds on a planet in a fascinatingly bad scifi movie. Peace and quiet is one thing, but those endless thatched white cottages clawing at each other across the canals with their spindly jetty-fingers, the rubble, the cranes creaking, not a soul in sight apart from the occasional shadowy darting of a Grand Cherokee with tinted windows and who’s to say there’s a human inside? Maybe the inhabitants got hunted by the Seventy-two-tentacled Lagoon Creature, and she’s snacking on some of them while keeping the rest in gooey stasis in underground chambers, to feed to her hungry children when they return from working holidays abroad.

Maybe I’m crazy, and possibly damned, but St Francis is at least as creepy as Pastor Ray himself.

Oops, almost forgot - The Silvery Tay Poetry competition is coming along nicely. We have about ten viable entries so far. By January I expect we might have a good fifteen bad poems for our celebrity judge to ponder over. No-one has volunteered yet. You’d think Patricia Lewis would jump at an opportunity like this, but she hasn’t.

I’m very glad I’ve decided not to have any more birthdays. The more birthdays I don’t have, the more chance I have of continuing to be able to forget which year I was born in, and in time I could even forget that I was born in the same year as both Vanilla Ice and Celine Dion. Obviously an iffy year, that.

Quick, for ten points: Who was Robert Van Winkle?

So long, farewell, aufwiederzein (Dio? Help? Spelling?) adieu…
I’m going to stick my neck out here and wish everyone a Merry Christmas, for old time’s sake. See you in the New Year.

The Lone Deranger

2006-12-05T08:10:00.000+02:00

Shoppers at Johannesburg bookstores are being menaced by a woman claiming to be Tom Eaton’s Number One Fan. Her identity is unknown as yet but one victim said, “I think it’s Lin Sampson, because of the shocking lack of fashion sense and the potted fern trailing out of her bag.” According to the victim, “…[It] was traumatic. I had fought several people for the last copy of ‘Cook With Jamie’, and the shop was littered with bodies, but when I got to the counter I found myself paying for ‘Texas’ instead. What can I say? This woman is very persuasive and I think she knows where I live.”

Well, let them think it’s Lin Sampson if they want, I say. We know better don’t we?

The Raven Loonies

2006-11-30T06:11:00.000+02:00

At the Radium last night, Isadora, Gina, Bella and I decided to stop talking about our Band, and start practicing instead. Our name was going to be The Red Hot Flushes but Isadora says it sounds a bit desperate, and she’s the leader so we’re going to be The Raven Loonies instead. Like those Robert Palmer shoowop girls with the red lipstick, but a bit more modest and animated. Not nun-modest, mind, because it’s a sin to let genuine god-given cleavage go to waist, and not Red Hot Chilli Peppers-animated because that’s just not dignified for ladies of our quality.

We spent most of the evening practicing in the cage-like entrance (because, suddenly, there’s no smoking at the Radium. Incredible but true. This is just a fad I’m sure) watching cop-cars scream past, fending off glue sniffers and encouraging besotted fans who wanted our autographs but were too shy to ask. There was even an estate agent among them. I honestly did not know that estate agents listened to Blues but there he was, pinned happily to the bars. “All I want is a room somewhere,” we sang, “Far away from the cold night air…” and he listened, captive, wide-eyed.

Jacky Bond and Wayne Coughlan didn’t mind too much although Jacky said if we were going to be a band we’d need to look up harmony in the dictionary. We think he might just be feeling a little threatened, though, and we won’t hold it against him. He’s also a bit peeved that we know all the words to Summertime and have to write them down for him on serviettes when someone requests it. He’ll come round. He has to, because we’re going to recruit them on a temporary basis for the instrument stuff, which we don’t do yet.

One charitable aim (there are others) of The Raven Loonies is to visit old age homes and bring succour to the frail and the forgotten. Rock Chik Rox says anybody wanting to do away with a cantankerous and incontinent elder will be glad to hear it. We don’t much like her tone, and she’s sixteen so how can she even know what incontinent means?

Anyhow, next time you see a crowd outside the Radium, it won’t be because The Raven Loonies are playing there, it’ll be because there’s still no smoking allowed inside the Radium. But if you see a crowd outside the Rus ‘n Bietjie Sentrum Vir Bejaardes or any similar establishment, you’ll know it’s The Raven Loonies. Come in, give generously, and get autographs ok?

No Poem Here

2006-11-30T01:39:00.000+02:00

Something funny happened on the way to the antiURL

What do you do
when you see this:

No Ad Here
This Ad
Intentionally Left
Blank
No URL here

nestled in a google ads column
with the other ads, looking
for all the world like a little lost piece
of no-ads-land in ad-central?

Do you feel sorry for it?
Do you feel like giving it your loose change?
Do you want to take it home
and give it a cup of tea and a bath?

Do you click on it?

Be honest.

Flotsam

2006-11-27T07:36:00.000+02:00

There once was an extraordinary man (who’s probably still around if his liver hasn’t exploded yet) called Walter, who could turn a list of silk screening paraphernalia into a sonnet, and often did. He said, “You have to leap into a rose bush with your ‘art”. Deep down I knew he was right, but when it came to choosing between art and commerce, I did not do the right thing.

I once sold my soul to a cellular network provider for a couple of rands and lunch at the Michaelangelo. For two endless years, it went like this: “But can’t you put the logo inside the xmas bauble? Can we make the logo bigger? No, you know we can’t have the logo pink with stars. Yes, we remember the brief for our employee of the month cartoon of Thembi from Merchandising contained the words ‘young, fun and tropical’ but we didn’t mean it literally. Please take the lei, the cocktail and the sarong out, and put her in a suit and don’t forget the logo, and make it bigger.”

People who want to be artists but also need to eat often turn to the Dark Side like this. Their families even encourage it. They shouldn’t, because the artist might never find his way back. Breadcrumbs don’t work, for well-documented reasons. I suggest a stint as an intersection window-washer if you need a couple of bucks, rather. You’ll get less abuse.

Back in the primordial soup of 1998, Walter taught a bunch of sceptical students how to make a pinhole camera. I found mine yesterday, I’d forgotten all about it. It’s a completely magical thing, and it was the most fun I’ve ever had with cardboard and tinfoil. There was philosophy involved, and faith, there were rose bushes everywhere, there were definite rules that had to be followed but only upside down and inside out, and so what you had to do in order to make a picture was sneak round the back and catch it by surprise, before the rules noticed.

What else got lost between then and now? Plenty. I’m going through impenetrable cupboards, drawers, teetering stacks of books and papers and boxes and stuff, trying to throw out junk so I can find important misplaced things like birth certificates/little Buzz Lightyear figurines, etc, and so I can try to think straight, but the more stuff I find the less I throw out and thinking straight seems to be completely out of the question at this point. I’m hoping it’ll all just catch fire so I can be done with it, but I’m also terrified that it might. So I’m taking a little chisel, some fine brushes and a virtual mini-obscura to the chalky cliffs on an Archaeoillogical Preservation Expedition, just in case it does all catch fire. Please excuse the dust, but this is an alleyway after all, remember, not a reception desk. Makes a nice habitat for small fauna and flora, anyway. Like a shipwreck.

Oh, look – Fossil 1: here’s Great Gran’s rabbit-fur coat, f’rinstance. Great Granddad made it for her himself out of some of the bunnies (I can see it clearly, “Och, puir wee bunny! Hahahahaha BANG”) who were having regular tea parties in the veggie patch. The thing is revolting, is a luxury hotel for small fauna and sheds more hairs than twenty mad English dogs in the Karoo midsummer noonday sun, but I. Just. Can’t. Throw. It. Out.

*sigh*

Fossil 2, mothers

Mothers don't know shit.
They ought to know that
if they say "Don’t," you will
and if they say "Do," you won't
but they say "Don’t," so you do
and now that you have a daughter or two
you want to say "Do,"
so that they won't
but you're scared because maybe
just maybe times have changed
and daughters might listen.
Mothers don't know shit.

Fossil 3, lintscapes

Perhaps there was a funfair here,
there, see, with lights strung along the pier.
The deck would have been scrubbed nightly
of ice-cream archipelagos.

Little girls would have chimed
the morning in with coins for the lacquered
pastel ponies on a carousel, pretty breezes
playing among the pigtails

Fossil 4, french musicians

Suleiman Bin Daoud
Had a harem of quarrelling queens
To amuse himself with, in idle moments
Trinkets, baubles, playthings

He'd enchant them all in turn,
fill their seven-veiled nights with
honey’d almonds, sweet ambrosia -
Make them believe they were Balkis.

(Note: these are not poems and they’re not trying to be. They are a special sort of self indulgent post-its, as used by archaeoillogigists and other invented people.)

And so on. Come back in about a year if you can’t stomach it, it should all be over by then, fire willing. I’ll understand.

Sit Vis Vobiscum

2006-11-21T15:58:00.000+02:00

(May the force be with you)

You know when someone says to you, “Illiud Latin dici non potest!” (“You can’t say that in Latin!”) and your usual response goes something like, “Huh?” (“Huh?”)
Ja, me too. Well, not anymore, thanks to Chris Kawalek at http://www.rktekt.com/ck/LatSayings.php

For example:

Quid Fit?
(Wazzup?)

Vidistine nuper imagines moventes bonas?
(seen any good movies lately?)

Quantum materiae materietur marmota monax si marmota monax materiam possit materiari?
(How much wood would a woodchuck chuck if a woodchuck could chuck wood?)

Quomodo cogis comas tuas sic videri?
(How do you get your hair to do that?)

Nihil est--in vita priore ego imperator Romanus fui.
(That's nothing--in a previous life I was a Roman Emperor.)

Tum podem extulit horridulum.
(you are talking kak)

In dentibus acticis frustrum magnum spinaciae habes.
(You have a big piece of spinach in your teeth.)

Credo nos in fluctu eodem esse.
(I think we're on the same wavelength.)

Antiquis temporibus, nati tibi similes in rupibus ventosissimis exponebantur ad necem.
(In the good old days, children like you were left to perish on windswept crags.)

Feles mala! Cur cista non uteris? Stramentum novum in ea posui.
(Bad kitty! Why don't you use the cat box? I put new litter in it.)

Gustatus similis pullus.
(Tastes like chicken)

Canis meus id comedit.
(my dog ate it)

Veni, vivid, volo in domum redire.
(I came, I saw, I want to go home)

Te audire non possum. Musa sapientum fixa est in aure.
(I can’t hear you. I have a banana in my ear)

Sentio aliquos togatos contra me conspirare.
(I think some people in togas are plotting against me)

Vah! Denuone Latine loquebar? Me ineptum. Interdum modo elabitur.
(Oh! Was I speaking Latin again? Silly me. Sometimes it just sort of slips out.)

:-)

Lucky Packet

2006-11-20T10:53:00.000+02:00

Intergalactic Tabloid Headlines, 2065: “Humans Fail! Parktown Prawns Rise to Claim Earth!”

I missed a great many things last week, partly on account of being busy helping an old lady to cross the road (no, really. She was moving house and had been standing in the queue at the municipality being ignored by the cashiers for a fortnight. Whether that’s just the MO of municipality cashiers, or whether it’s because she’s really short and can’t see over the counter, I don’t know) but mostly on account of suffering from Chronic Futility Syndrome (see Intergalactic Tabloid headlines). This always makes me retreat into Terry Pratchett. So I spent most of my time hanging out with Johnny in Only You Can Save Mankind, and also with Tiffany Aching and the Nac Mac Feegles, and I had a lot of fun. Fiddling, while Borneo burns, but anyway.

Most sorely missed-out on, though, was Mr Eaton’s column in the M&G, which was a Poem about sheep and toy poms and crocodiles, and other animals, and would have gone down a treat in these parts. Unfortunately I can’t link to it because the M&G has gone and pulled a “Subscribe to view” trick on us. This is fair enough but also unfair to those of us who buy our papers the retro way while also relishing the copy paste option, for the simple reason that a stapled sixty page document of favourite columns is easier to read in the bath than is its equivalent in newspaper clippings. Bah.

This week, Mr Eaton has gotten hold of Mbeki’s Secret Travel Diary. I don’t know how he does it. A snippet: “…it was discovered by our interpreters that [our Chinese hosts] are referring to us by our exports rather than our names: apparently Nigeria’s Obasanjo is “Honourable Diamonds and Shit Movies”, while I am known as “Honourable Gold and Afrikaans Engineers”. Mugabe is known simply as “Mr Refugees”.”

Have I ever mentioned the fact that I am his Number One Fan?

And, speaking about Spud (no, I know we weren’t, but Mbeki was, in his Secret Diary), I wonder how Dan Brown feels about being so solidly overthrown by John Van De Ruit on the Sunday Times top 10 fiction booklist. And how John feels about being single-handedly responsible for the ten-year waiting lists at SA boarding schools. Who knew that so many teens were actually reading, in any case? John, please can your next novel be about how cool it is to tidy up your room?

The Afghans scrub carpets with stones, to make them look older. I bet it makes the carpets look older, too.

Lemon Syllabub

2006-11-16T08:33:00.000+02:00

Ugh. Weekus Horribilis. Instead of an account, I think a Syllabub might be more helpful. Do try this at home:

1 cup cream, chilled
1/2 cup white sugar
1/4 cup white wine
1/8 cup fresh lemon juice
1 teaspoon grated lemon zest
A pinch of nutmeg
fresh mint

Whip the cream and sugar in a chilled bowl, until the cream begins to thicken. Gradually whip in the white wine, lemon juice, and lemon zest. Continue to whip until light and fluffy, but not grainy. Cover and chill. Serve in chilled parfait glasses, garnished with a dash of nutmeg, a sprig of mint, and a slice of lemon.

Chilled, ek se.

Send Pomes Now

2006-11-09T01:15:00.000+02:00

We’ve been working round the click widdershins, and are pleased to announce that The Silvery Tay Poetry Competition is now open.

Here you go: http://ppomes.blogspot.com/

---<-@

Make a wish

2006-11-07T23:01:00.000+02:00

I wish that as many people as have read The Da Vinci Code would read George Monbiot’s book ‘Heat’.

(You can find George, and his stuff, here: http://www.monbiot.com/
and here: http://www.turnuptheheat.org/)

Flipside # 1

2006-11-07T10:52:00.000+02:00

There’s a downside to having teen kids in the house. No, let me rephrase that: there are downsides to having teen kids in the house. But some of the downsides have flipsides that are actually upsides.

Like, music. Thanks to them, I have been exposed to a lot of music that I wouldn’t have heard had they not been living in my house. Much of this exposure has been traumatic, but some of it has been numinous. They call it “Mom’s musical education”, as though I have none, but I am glad of it when it brings me things like Lark, and Regina Spektor.

Music lives, despite what my grandfather predicted. Even though he would not agree.

Great Scot

2006-11-02T00:17:00.000+02:00

Now look here. They dedicate entire months to that Burns fellow, but not even a single hour to William McGonagall, Poet Laureate of the Silvery Tay. I find this shocking.

It is said that William Topaz McGonagall was "so giftedly bad he backed unwittingly into genius". He was a legend in his own lifetime, fearlessly reciting anti-alcohol poems in Dundee drinkeries and elsewhere across the world. Despite peltings of rotten eggs and vegetables, he pursued his vocation with vigour and commitment until the day he died.

So, here at Pandora’s, I decree that the 12th of January will not be my birthday anymore. I am giving it to William McGonagall, and it will be known henceforth as Silvery Tay Day. I’ll accept no more diamonds, no more pearls, as gifts. No more fine French perfume, if you please. I’ll take only bad poems, and very bad ones indeed, on the 12th day of any given January from now until my end. There will be a Competition, we’ll have a guest judge and it will be… I haven’t decided yet, and the worst poem will win a Floating Title, and that title will be called… I haven’t decided yet.

All interested parties had better get started. Forty lines or thereabouts, there’s not a purple moment to lose here. As an example of what you’re up against, I give you: The Railway Bridge Of The Silvery Tay, a Poem by William McGonagall:

The Railway Bridge of the Silvery Tay

BEAUTIFUL Railway Bridge of the Silvery Tay !
With your numerous arches and pillars in so grand array
And your central girders, which seem to the eye
To be almost towering to the sky.
The greatest wonder of the day,
And a great beautification to the River Tay,
Most beautiful to be seen,
Near by Dundee and the Magdalen Green.

Beautiful Railway Bridge of the Silvery Tay !
That has caused the Emperor of Brazil to leave
His home far away, incognito in his dress,
And view thee ere he passed along en route to Inverness.

Beautiful Railway Bridge of the Silvery Tay !
The longest of the present day
That has ever crossed o'er a tidal river stream,
Most gigantic to be seen,
Near by Dundee and the Magdalen Green.

Beautiful Railway Bridge of the Silvery Tay !
Which will cause great rejoicing on the opening day
And hundreds of people will come from far away,
Also the Queen, most gorgeous to be seen,
Near by Dundee and the Magdalen Green.

Beautiful Railway Bridge of the Silvery Tay !
And prosperity to Provost Cox, who has given
Thirty thousand pounds and upwards away
In helping to erect the Bridge of the Tay,
Most handsome to be seen,
Near by Dundee and the Magdalen Green.

Beautiful Railway Bridge of the Silvery Tay !
I hope that God will protect all passengers
By night and by day,
And that no accident will befall them while crossing
The Bridge of the Silvery Tay,
For that would be most awful to be seen
Near by Dundee and the Magdalen Green.

Beautiful Railway Bridge of the Silvery Tay !
And prosperity to Messrs Bouche and Grothe,
The famous engineers of the present day,
Who have succeeded in erecting the Railway
Bridge of the Silvery Tay,
Which stands unequalled to be seen
Near by Dundee and the Magdalen Green.

- William McGonagall

But that’s not all. There is a sequel, because, alas, the Tay Bridge collapsed a year later, in 1879. I’ll post it tomorrow.

P.S. Does anyone know if there’s a video shop in Jozi that has a DVD of ‘The Great McGonagall’, with Spike Milligan and Peter Sellers?

Pop Quiz

2006-10-24T08:19:00.000+02:00

Who said: “Do not debase yourself for worms. Of all sinners, the merchants of deception are the most vile. Their fate is sealed.”

Was it:
a)William Shakespeare
b)Robert Mugabe
c)Tom Eaton
d) Pope Benedict XVI

ANSWER: c) These are the words of a trigger-happy angel, referring to advertising execs, in Mr Eaton’s new novel ‘Texas’.

(Apologies to Hogarth)

Italian Bath Song

2006-10-03T10:10:00.000+02:00

In Mike Ford’s honour, I was going to write an epic poem, but I’ve written an Italian bath song instead. It goes like this:

1
Zuppo pomodore
Napolitana arrabiata Verdi
Brodo con fungi brodo vegetale
Tiramisu piano canoli maria

Chorus -

Osso bucco Agnolotti agnolotti
Mmmhmmm hmmm
agnolotti

2
lentiche spaghetti
cacciatore frangelico zuchero
succo Panzerotti porcini
da consumarsi entro il

Chorus

Repeat 1

Chorus, however many times you want.

The tune’s along the lines of a cross between the Macarena and Schubert’s Der Lindenbaum. Try it tonight, it’s easy. He’d like it, I think.

John M Ford (Mike) is Dead

2006-10-03T10:02:00.000+02:00

I never managed to actually get my hands on any of his official writings, but got to know him through his posts and comments at Making Light, the sum of which could fill quite a few very funny, very serious books. As Neil Gaiman has said, “…all of [his] great bon mots really did just come tumbling straight out -- they were always replies to something, with never a hint of ‘here's one I prepared earlier’ about them…”

Here are three of my favourites, from the particular body of work that Neil’s talking about:

“Scotty! I need a sonnet in three minutes or we’re all dead!”
“Och, Cap’n, ye canna force the muse. Have ye got a rhyme for ‘silvery Tay’ somewhere on the bridge?”

- John M Ford

Against Entropy

The worm drives helically through the wood
And does not know the dust left in the bore
Once made the table integral and good;
And suddenly the crystal hits the floor.
Electrons find their paths in subtle ways,
A massless eddy in a trail of smoke;
The names of lovers, light of other days --
Perhaps you will not miss them. That's the joke.
The universe winds down. That's how it's made.
But memory is everything to lose;
Although some of the colors have to fade,
Do not believe you'll get the chance to choose.
Regret, by definition, comes too late;
Say what you mean. Bear witness. Iterate.

- John M Ford

NASA ANNOUNCES PLANS TO EXPLORE LANGDON SPACE
For Immediate Release As Soon As We Find Some Money

As part of its “Mission Earth” program to do things that might, you know, be comprehensible to the average American (see “Manned Mars Program to Incorporate ‘Survivor’ Elements” above), the agency today announced its “Mission to Langdon Space,” in which teams of EVA-suited scientists would be “inserted” into multiply-connected Occupational Use Terrains (MachOUT universes) with the intention of discovering who is, in physical-science terms, getting any, with whom, and in what combinations.

The first question that came to reporter’s minds should be obvious. The second question was, “What if everybody just, like, fibs?” Mission Specialist Victor von Kinsey (winner of this year’s Nash Trophy for Interesting Paramathematical Behavior) replied, “We naturally expect respondents to fall back on constructions such as ‘It depends on what you mean by “whoopee” and ‘Nudge nudge say no more.’ The purpose of this project is to collect interesting data from which results suitable for premium-cable distribution can be redacted. Everything else is error bars.”

Asked what the practical application of this effort might be, Dr. Kinsey said, “Global warming,” and ran off singing “Du, du, bist eine kleine Teekanne.”

- John M Ford

(These I took from Making Light, without asking - apologies: http://nielsenhayden.com/makinglight/ )

RIP dear man, although I think you’ll be too busy entertaining the astrals for any resting. We have lots of your words to keep us company, and we’ll treasure them.

Science Idols

2006-09-15T19:16:00.000+02:00

Ahem. This just in. The American Association of Petroleum Geologists recently awarded Michael Crichton a journalism award. For his novel State Of Fear.

I… I’m… zzt...

Speechless.

The Union of Concerned Scientists is running its Science Idols cartoon contest. I was vacillating between numbers 3 and 7 but now I’m sommer going to vote for number 10, dammit.

http://ucsaction.org/campaign/vote_now_for_science_idol/?qp_source=wacucs%5fhomearspotlig

So Not Cool

2006-09-14T08:24:00.000+02:00

There is a certain elitist discriminatory practice whose purpose it is to put an extra razor-wire frill above the electric fence on top of the eight-metre-high two-metre-thick concrete-encased lead wall that separates the have-maths from the have-not-maths.

“Oh, don’t be silly, it’s not that difficult,” the number-abled will simper, “Look, I’ll show you…”
And it always ends in tears, for the differently-abled one. The genius will be smirking and puffed up and superior. But again, as I’ve said before, somebody has to make the sandwiches. I really think people ought to be nicer to the ones who make the sandwiches.

Read more about this scourge in an article by Tom Eaton, here: http://www.mg.co.za/articlePage.aspx?articleid=279760&area=/insight/insight__columnists

I am, as you know, his Number One Fan.

Pale Green Mainstream

2006-09-14T08:21:00.000+02:00

I was wondering about civilization, and about climate change, and thinking as always about how interesting the next century’s going to be. I looked up ‘Civilisation’ in the dictionary, just to be sure that I knew what it meant, and came across ‘Poop’ (it happens all the time. Dictionary-induced ADD).

So I asked some adolescents what ‘Poop’ meant. They were enthusiastic about it, in the way that only adolescents and Leon Schuster can be about all things fecal. If you want to talk to adolescents about the back bit of a ship and you want them to pay attention and concentrate, then don’t call it a Poop.

Same with climate change. Don’t call it global warming in public unless you want some armchair expert pounding out letters to the editor about how much snow there’s been in Antarctica lately and that last time he checked that didn’t mean warm.

There’s glitch in the ECM (effective communication matrix) with regard to the telling of the climate and emissions story. It does need to be told like a story, and with pictures too, because that’s what ordinary people all over the world respond to. They don’t relate and certainly can’t respond constructively to papers by A. Climatologist et al. Actually, there are some marginally more-informed people who don’t respond terribly constructively to them either, as a quick look around the comments section of climate-related articles in MIT’s Technology Review will tell you.

For a good few decades now, climate scientists have been trying to say what they need to say but can’t say in words that most citizens (even ones who read Popular Mechanics rather than People) can relate to. The beleaguered scientists wave graphs around and talk about ‘albedo’ and ‘hockey sticks" and ‘ITCZ’ and people either pity them, or think they’re crazy and should get out more, or that it must be a conspiracy by eco-terrorists against Our Way of Life. The Greens, you know. I pay my taxes, I don’t hurt anyone, I put a Ronnie Bag on my pavement at least once a year, leave me alone.
There are poets and artists and other assorted activists who do understand the scientists to some degree but they almost always end up dementedly joining Greenpeace and are thus further lost to the world of reason, which does not help the cause. (By the way, Germaine, your comment in public about the crocodile guy getting his just desserts definitely doesn’t help the cause, even if it is true)

It’s Joe Soap who could, if he chose to, contribute to a huge whack of mitigation. Instead of to a huge whack of catastrophe. He won’t choose to, though. He has to be made to, and bullying isn’t allowed so manipulation is necessary.

Someone has cottoned onto this and is looking at how best to deploy the manipulation. It’s the British Institute for Public Policy Research (described by RealClimate.org as “a UK based left-leaning think tank”), and they’re using a company called Linguistic Landscapes, which has some nice window dressing but who are basically about PR and marketing. While there’s something about this affair between Marketing and Climate that makes me want to scream, it might be fairly good work. Depending whose side you’re on. Pale Green might become mainstream because you can depend on marketing to sell stuff or die trying, and that’s what they’ll be selling with this. They’re using language like “…we need to work in a shrewd and contemporary way, using subtle techniques of engagement… treat climate change communications in the same way as brand communications… Approach positive climate behaviors in the same way as marketers approach buying and consuming”. I’m biting my tongue.

The astonishing ongoing success of the Eden Project in Cornwall had mostly to do with horticultural determination in the beginning, but I bet marketing helped with getting the vital millions of visitors in. All those visitors leave with a smile that didn’t necessarily come from consuming stuff, and that’s cool. They also leave knowing what "waste neutral" means, and that’s very valuable in ways that money can’t buy.

I have this fantasy in which the mega consumers of Bedfordview get sentenced to a month’s tourism in Cornwall instead of Dubai and come back to happily convert their previously pastoral but now hideous suburb into an undulating valley of bubble domes and vegetable gardens, with little padstals along Kloof road. It’s nice, that dream. Sunbeds swopped for gaily fluttering umbrellas, gyms turned into concert venues, peace love and flowers man. Can you dig it?

A belated account, in three parts, for Dio.

2006-09-14T08:14:00.000+02:00

Part I

In which an expedition is undertaken...

During my July expedition to Hermanus, I pondered over how few whales were frolicking in that comely bay. I began discreet enquiries as to the whereabouts of the great beasts. A local fisherman suggested that perhaps it might be a little early in the season and that I ought to consider myself lucky to have seen any at all. However, his toothless smile, twinkly eyes and candid manner did not fool me! My sharp instincts in these matters led me to consider the possibility of a scandalous conspiracy. Just then, my good father received a telephonic communication from my godfather in Amanzimtoti. With keen interest I learned from my father that my godfather and his wife were sitting on their lawn watching whales. In Amanzimtoti. We have always suspected my godfather and his wife of nefarious activities, and now here was proof.

“By gum, Daddy!” I exclaimed excitedly, “They have whales in Amanzimtoti and we don’t have any here in Hermanus!”

“Indeed, indeed,” mused my good father bemusedly, “Most curious indeed. Daughter, we must exert ourselves tirelessly in pursuit of a solution to this perplexing puzzle! We have always suspected your godfather and his wife of nefarious activities, and now here is proof!”

“Yes!!!” I enthused with enthusiasm.

Part II

In which the intrepid sleuths tirelessly pursue their instincts...

And so it was that we spent the week relentlessly wandering the charming cliff-paths and the beaches and the rockpools, with great courage fighting off bloodthirsty Tourists, Sabre-Toothed Dassies and deranged Whale Criers, stopping only too briefly for replenishment at various pubs, restaurants and coffee shops, and it was most exertional. We found no further clues. We even made two sub-expeditions to Kalk Bay, hoping to glean information from intellectuals with old grey-muzzled dogs in antique bookshoppes or arty types in quaint alleys, or indeed from the waiter at the Brass Bell, but alas.

News of our mission had spread, and those in the know had detected our stealthy footsteps on patina’d pavements, and had obviously gone to sit in their wretched little hillside houses to peer out from behind their genuine sash windows, smugly. I also tried, in vain, to obtain the autographs of Ann Donald and Finnuala Dowling, neither of whom was anywhere to be seen. I suspected that this was because they were in on the conspiracy. I noted their reticence, and marked them down on my trusty Suspicious Persons list.

In due course I returned home to Johannesburg, no closer to solving the mysterious mystery of the whales that we did not see in Hermanus but that my godfather and his wife did see in Amanzimtoti. Just then, I received a missive from Secret Agent S. It treated on a conference by SAUFOR (South Africa's Unidentified Flying Objects Resource) on the shameful covering-up of extraterrestrial technologies by Authorities and suchlike. Also mentioned was the Relatively Very Recent Incident in Port Shepstone, in which a spaceship was observed crashing into the sea by a great many eye witlesses. Authorities have to date found no trace of that spaceship and have expressed doubt as to its status as a spaceship at all, preferring instead to placate citizens with fairytales about weather phenomena etc, etc. But as we know, Authorities are always lying.

So I joined the dots, crossed my eyes, and came to a startling conclusion that I will now reveal to you!

Part III

In which a conclusion is reached, a revelation made, and a follow up expedition is followed up...

I will now reveal that:

My godfather and his wife were working for the aliens, in cahoots with Authorities, and had arranged for most of the whales to be in the Durban area whilst everybody who usually knows where to look for whales was looking for them in the Hermanus area, so that the heinous aliens might thus abduct our whales, undetected, from those Natalian waters! HA! We had always suspected my godfather and his wife of nefarious activities!

“Oh, Daddy!” I emoted, emotionally, “We cannot let the aliens escape with our whales, no, never! They can take our lives but they’ll never take our whales!”

“I concur most vigorously, Daughter!” My good father concurred, vigorously. “I will at once invite the traitorous pair to HQ here in Hermanus under a pretext, and lock them in my shed until your Mother returns from Cornwall!”
With this, he invited the traitorous pair to his house for the weekend under a pretext, where, as promised, he lured them into his garden shed, and where they presently remain.

I am happy to report that during my most recent expedition, from which I am now returned as you might surmise, we had some evidence that our brave plan has indeed foiled the terrible plot to abduct our Whales! Yes! There are more whales in that good bay right now than there are geeks at a gaming convention!

:-)

Hermanus

2006-08-19T00:25:00.000+02:00

These three pics were taken in Hermanus. The last one is at Hemel En Aarde dam, the middle one at Kwaaiwater, and the top one taken from the cliffs just west of there – the dark blob in the water is a Southern Right Whale, just the top ten percent of him, about forty (maybe less) metres away. I get so beside myself with this that I can’t take proper pictures, and so I missed the rest of him. Nearby was a mother and her calf, they were just moseying around contentedly. Further out in the bay about a dozen others were leaping clear out of the water, and slapping their tails, and generally showing off as though they knew we were watching. Which, of course, they did. How do you know that a whale knows you’re there? If you’re standing on a cliff with a whale in the sea below you, and he rolls so that one great eye looks directly at you, you know that he knows. It’s nothing short of awesome, and it makes this silly world we live in seem irrelevant.
Apart from the whales, the sheer beauty of everything within a three hundred kilometer radius lets you know you’re somewhere special. There’s a valley here, called Hemel En Aarde (Heaven And Earth), and that’s exactly what you get. Who could ask for more?

I am completely in love with Hermanus. I will live there, soon. I’m doing everything in my power to make this happen. I’ve decided this, and once I decide something it’s practically carved in stone. I don’t decide things very often, something has to be monumental before I decide on it so hear ye, hear ye: I will live in Hermanus. I will grow old there, happily. Mark me.

Whinge

2006-08-18T21:24:00.000+02:00

I am a very bad blogger. Sometimes, I even forget I have a blog. Today, I remembered, and shuffled over to see if it was still there. It was. Is. Bugger. Did I write all this? How is it that I have time to write this much waffle? And it’s not like I didn’t ask myself, at the beginning, when a blog seemed like an exciting sort of thing to do, how is it that people have so much time to write such waffle? So I knew what I was in for.
But really, what’s this all about? It isn’t real writing or anything and I don’t think anyone thinks it is. At the top end I suppose it’s all about traffic, and the point of it is probably equally divided between peppy popularity and product placement. But down here at the pond-scum end, it’s just us little amoebas whiffling away about whatnot. And haven’t we figured it out by now: the internet is not real life and 99% of the people who live there are not real people? Yes, of course we have. We watch the next generation blissing out on some myspace hallucination, and we know they’ll grow out of it. Or will they? It’s different now. Mind you, all old people say that, when they don’t feel like getting their heads around whatever new thing.

Doug Shaw Update

2006-08-18T09:31:00.000+02:00

Doug Shaw loves me. He said so. And not just any old Doug Shaw either, but Doug Shaw Prime. THE Doug Shaw! Not just Doug Shaw the arch villain, or Doug Shaw the mad professor, or Doug Shaw the trapeze artist; but Doug Shaw Himself. Doug Shaw loves me because I mentioned his name so many times, a couple of posts back. So this is how it works, eh? Mention someone’s name enough times and they find your blog, just like that. And then they either love you or they hate you. Doug Shaw loves me, Mandy De Waal hates me: 50/50 odds, not bad… Neil Gaiman, Tori Amos, Neil Gaiman, Tori Amos, Neil Gaiman. Tori Amos, Neil Gaiman, Tori Amos, Neil Gaiman...Tori Amos…

So, Doug Shaw Prime, thank you for solving the Doug Shaw mystery. I’d leave a grateful comment on your blog but I can’t, it won’t let me. I’m not going to push it by hacking either , not because I can’t (he-he), it’s just that I’m dead scared of that half-a-cow corpse you have in your freezer…
Dear readers (all three of you :-) ): you can see the corpse for yourselves by going to http://revdj.livejournal.com/ and scrolling down a bit.
But, seriously: are people googling themselves or something? ‘Cos, how does this work? What are the chances of you stumbling across your name mentioned on one of a zillion piddly blogs, just by accident? If I google myself I don’t get anything at all. I am unfamous. Infamous would be more interesting and probably quite lucrative. But I’m not going to go there because I still have living relatives and there’d be hell to pay.

The Borg, The Devil and the Coffee Shop

2006-06-15T04:09:00.000+02:00

There’s a difference between a coffee shop and a Coffee Shop. In a Coffee Shop, you’ll get high-concept, applied to a hundred franchised outlets nationwide (or thousands, worldwide). The overwrought menu will feature high-octane shooters with porno names, novelty ‘coffees’ and power smoothies, frou-frou fusion folly on twenty different types of stale bread slapped together according to the formula by underpaid high-turnaround staff. There is no owner, there’s a holding company. The manager will not be able to change the CD because there isn’t one, there’s a permanent shuffle of twenty prescribed popular trax. The rows of jars on the counter are décor, filled with coordinated coloured water. If you ask for Marmite toast they won’t have it. The patrons will be posers. They’ll click their fingers at the waitress impatiently. They’ll be networking, networking, networking. Many of them will have sunglasses on top of their heads. They’ll be loudly animated and will check to make sure everyone else has noticed how happening they are. You will not be allowed to ignore them.

By contrast, a coffee shop will serve real coffee, and you can ask the owner to change the CD if Eros Ramazotti’s annoying you. A coffee shop is where you can spend the space between the time and, unless a large table of lost Coffee Shop creatures has wandered in, which seldom happens, you can even spend it in peace. The décor is as invisible as good typography. If there’s a row of jars on the counter, they’re full of macaroni, or pickles, or tips for the kitchen staff. You’re assured of human kindness in a coffee shop, and of a menu which might be full of typos and amusing spelling but offers things that nourish, and that you can recognize. You’ll get honest sandwiches at a coffee shop and you can always get Marmite toast. If they’ve run out of Marmite they’ll trot down to the Spar and get some. Your fellow patrons will be people. They’ll greet the waitress warmly. They’ll be reading tabloids/Tolstoy/Time, or writing lists/letters-to-the-editor/literature, or chatting face to face. Or they’ll be playing backgammon, or agonizing over the lotto numbers. By and large, they’ll keep their business to themselves. You can eavesdrop if you want to.

So the coffee shop which used to be my home away from home is gone. One day it was there, and the next it was covered in paper which said, exciting new Coffee Shop opening soon. Sure enough, some weeks later, there was a Coffee Shop, where my coffee shop used to be.

This coffee shop thing is a symptom of a world gone Meta.

So is Wikipedia. I’ve been troubled by Wikipedia for a good long while now. I tell kids to stay away from it. But why? They ask. I stop just short of answering: because it’s the devil*, and say instead: because it’s often not accurate.

But it’s worse than that. Wikipedia is The Borg. And more direly even, it’s the Borg without a Queen.
Don’t get me wrong. In some ways I admire the The Borg (and I love dinner-time conversations that become incendiary when someone suggests that the solution to humankind’s angst could be to just go Borg), but everyone knows that there must be a Queen. Without one, the hive-mind disintegrates into useless units of hapless confusion. There are people who have found Wikipedia entries about themselves that range from wishful thinking to downright false, and after they’ve gone in and corrected the entry, they return to find that some kind soul has incorrected it back again. That’s the thing about popular opinion and the way it becomes canon, despite reality. The aggregate wins.

It also seems lately that Wikipedia and Google have some sort of galactic domination arrangement. I used to get a good variety of results on a Google search, from academe to news to popular opinion and all sorts of psychedelic stuff in-between, and I could more or less make my own mind up as to whose information I would get the most benefit from. These days, I have to sort through the first three pages of search results with a fine-toothed comb to get something that’s not Wiki. There’s a lot to be said for keeping information in context, and for keeping sources intact. When everything’s flattened out by aggregate, you get muddy puddles in isolation, with no paths leading to and from. When it comes to plain old information anyhow, I want a meritocracy. With Wikipedia, how do I know if the person telling me a thing is qualified to tell it?** And if all information is to become cast in this type of format in the future, as some people think it will be, what will there be to compare it against? There are whispers in certain circles, predictions of the imminent birth of artificial intelligence from deep within the womb of Google itself… who’d have thought? We thought it would be humanoid at least, didn’t we? Nuts and bolts, with an operator’s manual and an Off Button maybe – but humanoid. Or caninoid, or whatever. Reassuringly recognizable anyhow.
Wikipedia as AI’s 2-IC… I don’t even want to think about it. Not today. I’ll think about it tomorrow. Rhett, oh Rhett.

*What is the devil? Fundamentally, it’s things that scare us. It’s also things we don’t understand, and things that threaten to displace us, and things we can’t be bothered to investigate further. It’s the tokoloshe under your bed, it’s over here, it’s out there. It’s different things to different people and usually boils down to fear. So Wikipedia is not the devil, then. But maybe Google is.

**With apologies to The Cosmic Cabman, who does actually write good stuff for Wikipedia. If you wrote it, Dio, I’ll ratify it without question. This is flagrant cronyism of course, which excludes me from ever being considered by a lucid panel of experts for the post of Wiki Queen. Actually, Afrikaans Wikipedia is at this point probably a really reliable source of info, if only because the online community is small and cozy enough (by web standards anyhow) that everyone knows someone so credentials can be cross-checked… and anyone writing an inferior article risks have his biltong confiscated…

Praise Tom Eaton!

2006-06-05T10:35:00.000+02:00

I’ve become Tom Eaton’s Number One fan, I hope he feels honoured.

Regarding his book, The De Villiers Code, some silly interviewer asked him: “As a South African writer / storyteller did you set out to write a story South Africans will recognise as their own?”
My Tom answered: “No. I set out to write a story that South Africans would recognise as Dan Brown's. Stephen Fry described The Da Vinci Code as ‘complete loose-stool-water’ and ‘arse-gravy of the very worst kind’, and while I think he may have been a little charitable, he was going in the right direction. It's not the gullibility of people that offends me. I'm also not a religious person, so I don't get worked up over the arrogance of assuming that 600 pages of drivel by a write-by-numbers typist can reveal what 2 000 years of scholarship couldn't. What I really mind, though, is that his excremental writing goes unchallenged. You wouldn't let a stranger stand in your living room for hours on end, shovelling faeces down your shirt while he screamed, ‘You're a moron!’ So why would you let Dan Brown do it?”

(The whole interview’s at http://www.litnet.co.za/ricochet/homebru_tom_eaton.asp )

The De Villiers Code is one of the most wickedly funny things I have read in a long time, but there’s a catch: you have to read The Da Vinci Code first. You’ll need one of those protective pointy silver foil hats that they wear in the movie Signs; it might help to stop your brains from leaking out your ears, but it must be done. I did it, and look, I’m still fine aren’t I?

Would the real Doug Shaw please sit down

2006-05-31T11:32:00.000+02:00

At a Star Trek thing I was at last year there was an individual going by the name of Doug Shaw. He said that he was a writer of books on economics, and was busily speed reading (both of which habits I associate with psychopathic conditions) through a huge book (the kind you could use as a weapon) on the History of Western Philosophy. He had a tense, unhinged charisma and a scar on his cheek and struck me as being someone on whom I could loosely base one of the villains in a story that I'm working on. So who was this person? I embarked on an epic google, but it turned out that trying to find a specific doug shaw is tricky. There are hundreds of them. They even have a collective website, dougshaw.com. But then, if I were a real villain, I might also purposefully choose a name that allowed me to get lost in the crowd.
I finally found one with genuine villain potential. A MENSA member with a scheme for every occasion; a rampant capitalist whispering into the ear of politicians, offering the planet up for sale in so many ways; the host of strange pay-at-the-door parties and then: the piece de resistance – some sort of rabid underground religious evangelist. ACME Evil Genius! Absolutely perfect! I don’t even care if he’s not the right doug shaw! So, Doug Shaw, if you’re reading this (no, the other doug shaw. No, not that one, the other one… ) I hope you don’t mind too much. It’s a compliment.

Verily, my friends (and VERILY, my enemies!!!), I have risen up in the world. I have been quoted and also shamelessly flattered in a real article by a real editor lady: http://www.women24.com/Women24/Columnists/Article/0,7173,12-147_9791,00.html
The article is all about silliness, and how it’s okay to be silly, and about how silliness can actually save the world. I am vindicated, and newly galvanised to the promotion of the Great Way of Silly. From now on, this blog will be nothing but silly, silly, silly!

Lost Property

2006-05-31T11:29:00.000+02:00

A friend recently failed the Scientologist's personality test. This is unfortunate, as I was hoping for a contact on the inside. I don't know any practicing Scientologists but I know people who claim to have escaped Scientology, and they're reluctant to discuss it - they seem a bit embarrassed and a bit broke, and one gets the feeling they'd rather just forget about it altogether. I'd very much like to know more about the interesting Scientology story regarding the alien ruler Xenu who fixed the overpopulation problem on his 76 planets by bringing millions of people in for a tax inspection, then drugging them and shipping them off to earth (presumably unpopulated at the time), where he had them stacked around volcanos before nuking the volcanos. The way I understand it is that most personality problems experienced by people today can be attributed to the fact that the lost souls of those unfortunate nuked aliens attach themselves to humans, clinging desparately to some vestige of existence and causing all kinds of schitzophrenic glitches in the average human's matrix.

Of course, this might just be a story made up by anti-Scientologists to discredit the religion itself. I don't know. One of the most interesting things about this church is the vehemence of its opposition. Something which is so hated by outsiders must surely be hiding great truths. Or not.
I wonder, if my friend made a substantial enough donation to the church, maybe they'd ignore the failed personality test and let him in. He can infiltrate, and we'll be able to see if all these stories are true. I mean, if I could prove that I had thousands of anguished alien souls hanging onto my aura, it would explain a LOT.

Girl put your records on...

2006-05-04T09:35:00.000+02:00

...tell me your favourite song, you go ahead let your hair down...

This blog began as a medium through which I could stay in touch with friends and family all over the globe and in particular, with my sister B who was living with us at the time. That’s funny, hold on, let me check that… Yes it’s true: so I could stay in touch with B although we lived on the same property, in the same house in fact. It didn’t work quite the way I’d planned – I thought I’d make chatty, newsy day-in-the-life type entries. Looking back at the blog I’m laughing at all the concrete evidence of best laid plans coming to ruin…

But I don’t think I could stay in touch with my own pinky finger, quite frankly, because I have too many Fishies. Fishies are those bubbles that some people have in their heads. They go, “plook, plook” in the silvery depths and mostly it’s like Chinese torture, although sometimes, on really lucky days, it’s like an epiphany, or Christmas-tree lights. Some people have Nebulas, which are pretty much the same thing, just more sophisticated. I always felt odd because of them, and never fitted very well anywhere, least of all in my own real life, until I discovered Neil Gaiman’s “Sandman” some years ago. The character Delirium, who often trails a flock of bobbing rainbow-fish balloon-things and seldom makes sense in the traditional meaning of the word, was a revelation to me because I already knew her so well. I felt a bit better about my own fishies after I met Delirium because although she’s odd she’s basically a good person. When I discovered much later that Neil and Tori Amos were friends, and that Del was partly based on Tori, the world began to make a whole lot more sense to me, non-traditionally of course but nevertheless.

Anyhow, this is to say, I’m sorry about all the Fishies. There are a handful of people in this world who I love too, too much for words, among them: Ray; my Terrifical Teenage Daughters; Mom and Dad; B; Weez; Mom Joss; Nu; Dio; Migi; Choz; Alli Cat… if you’re reading this, guys – thanks for putting up with me.

The end of days is nigh, as usual

2006-05-02T12:57:00.000+02:00

A while ago, after reading up about carbon trading, I wrote something about our planet being able to withstand the ravages of human nature, that for all our delusions of grandeur we could never actually destroy it as such. Destroy environments conducive to the wellbeing of our species and others, sure, but not destroy the actual planet. Well, I was wrong. It IS possible. See http://qntm.org/destroy

Well, Really!

2006-05-02T12:51:00.000+02:00

! A request has been made to this blog. It comes from none other than a Compliance Officer (Resistance is futile). So: One of Two, also known as Nu, having been mightily impressed by our (patent pending) mouse-over-and-waft Sniff-n-Sneeze© plugin, asked that we develop a mouse-over-and-spell-check gizmo for the comment box. It seems she’s been unable to access the Natural Comment nano-betaframe thingy itself because of blogger-VS-word cut/paste (ERROR!!!DINGDING!!!FATAL:ERROR!!!! put your hands on your head and drop your cookie settings now:ERROR!!!) non-compliancy Issue no: 73.9. You know the one. Ok, fine, we’ll see what we can do but personally I think that this is just a terrible excuse - we geeks (hehe) know the error’s actually to do with her Sink Notification Socket. Thingy. And the way she always forgets to charge her Svchost Antimatter Modulator – I mean really, it’s no wonder.

Captain-Postman Pete said he’d tried to look at this blog but suddenly everything went all funny on his keyboard. So he tried to blame me for dropping some or other virus on him. Oh puh-leeez, come on. Pff. Like, I don’t have better things to do than script viruses all day long and fling them at non-geek friends and family. People like us (us geeks, you know) must just take a deep breath and count to ten, I suppose. So in the interests of the sanity of geeks (like me) everywhere, I have added to the FAQ. Sigh.

FAQ continued:

7. Why does my computer wig out when I look at/try to post comments to your blog?

Either a.) You're technologically challenged and should not be allowed within a 10 Km radius of any computer or b.) You have some heavy internet karma.

I can't help if the answer's a, but if it's b I can't help.

So try this: Go into the garden and find a portable-sized rock. Talk to the rock, let it absorb your frustrations. Feel the power of the rock. Respectfully pick the rock up and carry it to where your computer is. Place the rock gently on the desk near the computer. Now, while wearing a red knitted hat with a bobble on top (like the ones they wear in the movie "The Life Aquatic") inside which you have hidden a moth's wing, a blue marble and a flat penlight battery, sit down in front of your computer and switch it on. When the desktop appears (or, when it doesn’t – like if after waiting for over an hour all you get is a black screen with an ominous dos prompt instead of a desktop, for instance), put your right hand upon the rock while addressing the machine thus: "you bloody bastard computer, don't mess with me or I'll hit you with this rock." Then, phone a geek and request an emergency consultation. While waiting for him, keep your hand on the rock and your eyes on the monitor, scowling dangerously. When the geek arrives, have him look at the computer, but all the while, do not let go of the rock. The geek should have the problem sorted in no time, because in my experience too-big-for-their-boots computers always respond very well to geeks when there is a primed rock handy. This is a seriously dark and deep binary magick, you understand, so while you are performing this entire ritual it might also be an idea to have a shaman (or other intermediary) available, to intercept any demons which might want to take advantage of a rip in the fabric of spacetime.

If this fails (because nothing is perfect), then try seeing the loss of all your stuff (treasured letters form far-flung friends and family, for example; or your entire portfolio) as being a wonderful opportunity to start afresh. No, really. For heaven’s sake, stop crying. And next time, back up.

Poetry is dead, long live Poetry

2006-04-26T04:05:00.000+02:00

I often carry on about my computer getting dragged into black holes but this time it really did. Apart from trees falling down on phone lines and stuff… long story but the short of it is that I now have a new phone line and a new computer too. Not sure if I’m glad because I must admit that not having a computer or a phone line did free me up for other pursuits, like painting with real paint; reading real books; writing with real pens etc - not that I pursued any of them besides the reading but I did have good intentions. Anyhow, alas/alack, now I’m binary bound and shackled once more.

This laptop takes a little getting used to. It doesn’t have the patina that my old monster had. Doesn’t make the same comfortably familiar Cranking Victorian Machinery noises, like an old and rusty (but faithful) robot-dog called up out of its basket for a spot of reluctant cat-chasing. But it’s okay. It will do.

I was amazed to find that famous people have been leaving entertaining comments on this blog in my absence – ok, one semi-famous person anyhow. See “Poet as Hired Gun”. I had thought that this blog was fairly innocuous and a bit boring, with at most about five occasional readers, but it just goes to show. This month it was Mandy De Waal, she-poet who runs with wild horses (?) in the Magaliesberg, and still manages to hold up a well paid day-job too. Mandy doesn’t do garrets, and is ‘empowering’ other ‘poets’ to follow suit. There is a lot of Added Value in it.

Here is a comment posted by Gwen Watkins to Mandy’s original article about poetry and business, which can be found at http://www.biz-community.com/Article.aspx?c=18&l=196&ai=9575

“The concept of using poets to pursue a political agenda is hardly new, nor the idea of persuading workers that "imaginative" ideas will in any way set them free.

Many poets were used by the state or tacitly wrote to please. For as many freedom poets as you can find, I can find those that glorified the state. Even Shakespeare was not above twisting the truth so as not to annoy Queen Elizabeth I – the play Richard III is not in the least accurate but the truth did not set you free in those ‘enlightened’ times – it put you in the Tower of London.

Poetry is about the flight of imagination – it springs from deep and true emotions. It’s something I have done for forty years but never on command. Shaped poetry to achieve an end is no longer poetry and as for praise singing – its very name tells you exactly what its purpose is – propaganda set to rhythm.”

Which was very well said, I thought.

PAX

2006-04-01T00:20:00.000+02:00

I've decided to put all my grudges aside and be more mature. So, forthwith, I will no longer be mean to Marketing People. I won't make sarcastic blog entries about Marketing People. I won't post any more irritating comments to Bizcommunity. I will live in peace, and let Marketing People live in peace too.

This I swear, so help me gods.

Just Brand Me

2006-03-30T09:06:00.000+02:00

A triptych:

1
Kieron Dwyer is in big trouble. He subverted Starbucks. After he’s been sued to smithereens, no doubt he’s going straight to hell. Not many can parody a mindset so eloquently, and this thing is a work of art, so damn and sue me - I’m posting it. (For the full story go to http://www.cbldf.org/pr/001130-starbucks.shtml)

2
The people in charge of protecting the interests of the brand integrity of the film Attack Of The Killer Tomatoes™ sent Neil a letter threatening to sue if he does not remove a link to AOTKT’s official website. Not that Neil did ever actually link to that, um, illustrious entity in the first place. Initially, he was amused, thinking it might be some kind of prank by Dadaist Lawyers, but was disappointed to find that it was not. Anyhow, if you have nothing better to do (e.g., if you like watching lawyers make asses of themselves on behalf of people who think too much of themselves; and especially if you hate vegetables), you might want to scuttle off to these urls and be mildly entertained:
http://www.neilgaiman.com/journal/2006/03/mystery-dada-tomato-threats.html
http://www.tomatoesareevil.com/ (links page, although the Link That Caused All The Trouble doesn’t exist. Anymore.)

3
Authors and other artists often use cultural markers to help describe the particular ‘flavour’ of a scene. Some brands get so interwoven with a culture that they become like unto salt for the table. But a couple of the big guys are unhappy about the use of their marks in fiction; worried that overexposure will result in “trademark dilution”. If they get their way, you won’t be able to say the word “Harley” in a story about a biker anymore. And don’t use Nike’s name in vain ok? Or Else. No more free advertising, guys. If you want to advertise McDonalds in your story you’ll have to pay them for the honour.
So instead of writing something like, “In a fit of depressed defiance she ate an entire box of Quality Street,” you’ll have to write, “…she ate an entire box of those assorted toffees and chocolates in various brightly coloured foil and cellophane wrappers; you know - the kind often given by pupils to teachers at the end of a school year.”

Poet as Hired Gun

2006-03-29T07:23:00.000+02:00

“Poets will no longer live outside the fringes of business, but will become increasingly commonplace within the heart of the corporation as cultural decoders, praise singers, mediators between management and labour and as a facilitator for forging a new paradigm for leadership.” - Mandy de Waal

She says this with a straight face. She believes it too, deliriously caught up as she is in the evangelism of Marketing. Mandy has in her trinity: the market as father, brand management as son and ‘poetry’ as holy ghost. One gets the feeling that her holy ghost is her wild card - ‘Poetry’ is just so hot right now.
Thankfully, we can trust genuine poets to evade this new career that Mandy is so excitedly marking out for them, because one of poetry’s many functions is to expose precisely the kind of speech she sells for what it has always been – rhetorical verbiage. Spin and praise-singing by their nature can never claim the edge of poetry’s diamond blade. No deal, Mandy. Whatever you put out in the name of Marketing Almighty won’t really be poetry, and those who devise it won’t be real poets. Deep down, you know this, Mandy.

(Besides, what corporation in its right mind would invite poverty and chaos by admitting a poet to the inner sanctum? And in any case, the vital elixir of attic dust wouldn’t settle well in gleaming boardrooms. You’d have allergic reactions all over the place)

I agree with the Eskom Man

2006-03-26T17:43:00.000+02:00

As everyone living and travelling in SA knows, we are having some trouble with our power supply. We’ve grown so fast that the grid cannot cope, no-one seems to have predicted it, and then there’s the trouble with that bolt (?) at Koeberg. We are helpless as babies, of course, plugged into and completely dependent on the matrix, and people sit around gnashing teeth and rending garments waiting for the power to come back on. The boss of Eskom got really upset in a boardroom recently, where there were wraparound windows with all the crisp Cape Town daylight anybody could possibly need for a meeting pouring in, and where every electric light in the room blazed nonetheless. “Turn them OFF!” he raged. He mentioned that we’re greedy and excessive and we’re part of the problem, and I completely agreed with him. Many didn’t, including David Bullard, who went on to pen a sarcastic and indignant paragraph berating the man for urging us all to be less wasteful. The gist of his angst is that THEY (meaning whoever is in charge of anything at any given time. My kids say that Chuck Norris is THEY) are incompetent gits and THEY’RE making excuses and THEY have a duty and THEY’RE failing us.
But I still agree with the Eskom Man. We DO have to learn how to use less. If only we had a global Mao-type entity to initiate a re-education programme of some sort to this effect, with really steep penalties like execution or something for failure to comply. We won’t do it ourselves, by choice, so someone’s going to have to dictate it.

I got Tagged. Huh? I’m usually about three light years behind any given current development but it made me feel kind of important, in a sad little way. Tagged? By Toutatis, What does this mean?!? It must be a Marketing Ploy! But no, it’s one of those circulatory pass it on things. This one doesn’t seem to come with dire warnings about what will happen to you if you don’t pass it on, so there isn’t any fun in not-passing-it-along-on-purpose-just-to-see-if-the-terrible-things-happen. May as well pass it on then… Thank you, David.

Four jobs I've had:

Window Dresser
Waitress
Illustrator
Starship Navigator (at school they called it “tends to daydream”)

Four movies I can watch over and over:

Pi
Life Aquatic
Finding Nemo
Galaxy Quest

Four places I've lived:

Blantyre, Malawi
Chirimba, Malawi
Johannesburg, S.A.
Cape Town, S.A.

Four TV shows I love:

Star Trek
Voorblad
Going Nowhere Slowly
Fawlty Towers

Four highly regarded and recommended TV shows I haven't seen:

Highly regarded and recommended by the general TV-addicted public? I don’t even want to know.

Four of my favourite dishes:

Noodle soup
Toast with peanut butter
Macaroni cheese
Bread & butter pudding

Four sites I visit daily:

- not online daily, but most frequently I visit:
neilgaiman.com
hereinmyhead.com
a couple of blogs: do they count as sites?
bizcommunity.com (out of a sado-masochistic compulsion to observe Marketing People in their natural habitat, and also to amuse myself by irritating them as much as possible with pernickety comments. They are very easily irritated and sometimes I have nothing better to do when my brain gets empty. Which is sad, sad, sad I know but we all have our vices)

Four places I've been on holiday:

Zimbabwe
Mozambique
Botswana
England

Four albums I can't live without:

Tori Amos, Scarlett’s Walk
Loreena McKennit, The Mask and Mirror
Zakir Hussain, Making Music
Eva Cassidy, Live at Blues Alley

Four places I'd rather be right now:

Navigating a Starship
Sitting on the shady bench overlooking Diana’s Eco Shrine in Hogsback
Reading a book on the stoep of one of the beachfront cottages in Keurboomstrand
Having an ice-cold whatever’s-going at midday in the dark, cool Waenhuis in Nieu Bethesda after walking the dust roads on a particularly dry, hot and windy day.

Four other people I’m tagging:

Dio
Owen
Neil :-)
Desmond Tutu

Emission Control, We Have a Problem

2006-03-17T18:03:00.000+02:00

This is a Very Long lecture-thingy, anyone who doesn’t like it can go and google “britney and kevin” or something.

A good while ago I asked, what is Carbon Trading? After a month of looking at it from as many angles as I could, I really wish I’d never asked, because it turns out that Carbon Trading is like piling all the deck chairs onto the up end of a sinking ship and sipping cocktails while pretending it’s not sinking. It is a great delusion, and probably the most ambitious business scam in history.

It works like this:

We on planet earth have something called the greenhouse effect, a natural heating system that is necessary for life on earth as we know it, but which in excess is harmful to life as we know it. Certain human activities have pushed the limits in this regard, by releasing far larger amounts of the relevant gases than would naturally have been released. This isn’t a good idea right now – as yet, we have nowhere else to live. A bunch of countries got together in the early nineties to see what could be done to mitigate snowballing of the greenhouse effect. Some stuff was decided. All participating countries had legally binding Reduced Emissions Targets to meet. The targets were inadequate, but it was a start.
Also, a plan was devised which, among other things, allows CO2 and other greenhouse gases to be traded. The idea was that the more you intended to emit, the more expensive it would be for you, in theory penalising the worst offenders where it hurts them most – in the pocket. (In practise, of course, the more the big money spends itself the bigger it gets)

Very simplistically: say you normally use 150 emission units, that is; you emit x amount of greenhouse gas. It’s been decided that this is too much and you are given an amount of 100 units that you may not exceed. Your neighbour is in credit, though: he uses only 50 units because he has far less industry than you do, but is also allowed to use 100. You yourself can’t actually get by with only 100 and still live the way you’re used to living, but if you want to you can buy 50 of your neighbour’s unused units (with money or trees or good deeds, it’s quite flexible) and use them for him on your own behalf. He’s happy, you’re happy, everyone’s saving the world and making money into the bargain. What is being traded here is, literally, hot air: and look - you are still making exactly the same amount of emissions as you were before. So is your neighbour. And mostly, the Kyoto Protocol becomes a farce.

Carbon Trading, AKA the Emissions Market, is a forked-tongue arrangement for ‘offsetting’ greenhouse gas emissions. It will allow poor and underdeveloped nations to remain poor and underdeveloped while under licence to rich overdeveloped nations who will continue as before, in real terms not reducing emissions at all, just spreading them around a bit.

Carbon Trading has many rabbits in its hat, but has trees as its star crowd-pleaser. The theory goes like this: trees remove CO2 (one of the greenhouse gases) from the atmosphere, and store the carbon molecules. Therefore, if we plant new forests* in poverty stricken countries, they will function as global CO2-sponges and carbon-containment-fields (officially known as carbon sinks). The development of genetically modified super-trees is also proposed, which may soak up even more CO2 and store even more carbon. An amazing offshoot of this is that the poor get to benefit from it, through infrastructure investment and through the trees themselves, which can eventually be harvested and used in wondrous ways.

It sounds okay if you’re too busy with the daily grind of life to be paying proper attention, which is mostly the case. A closer look suggests that this kind of mopping up and storing is temporary. The theory is, at best, wishful thinking and at worst, outright deception.
The loco logic of Emissions Markets (google it – the money-numbers are staggeringly huge) says that it’s okay - we can keep releasing carbon that took millions of years to lock down in fossil deposits, if we just plant trees which will mop it all back up again. Instantly. Well it’s not that simple. The way they put it, we’ll have a planet full of people thinking that Carbon is the devil and only trees can save us, halleluiah. Carbon and Carbon Dioxide are not the same thing. Carbon itself isn’t a “greenhouse gas”. Carbon’s not the problem – it’s the conversion of it into extra CO2 by releasing too much of it into the air that’s the problem. Fossil deposits like oil, coal, peat and chalk are the most efficient carbon sinks of all - they can store carbon for eons while trees cannot. Stripping fossil deposits and replacing them with trees is like smashing a ruby and replacing it with a red glass bead – only much, much worse.
The Carbon Trade marketing pitch uses the sentiments of reasonably educated people to dishonestly plug for the “welfare” of the less fortunate. “It will help all the poor people so much,” the schpiel goes. “It’s win-win! We will plant trees that the poor will benefit from and the poor in turn will benefit the whole earth by allowing us to do so! Why, you too can offset your own greenhouse footprint, Joe Public - just plant a tree for every X amount of air-miles that you do. We have seen the light, and it’s trees.”

Get totally serious about spending serious money on searching for alternative, clean, sane, renewable energy? Stop over-consuming insane, dirty energy in the meantime? By the Gods, why bother? Let the leftover mutants huddled around the North Pole as the century ends worry about that stuff. Let them trade bread if they want to. If they can find any. OK let them trade nuts and berries then. If they can find any. For now we’ll just trade carbon credits because it’s so lucrative. Live in the moment. No worries, eh?

Genuine ethics would probably not smile upon carbon trading with its potential for abuse and corruption, and its ability to deflect attention and money away from a committed search for alternative energy sources. (It’s not just energy either – we do so many things in excess that are harmful, for example, we mine peat on a large scale so that we can use it as a medium to grow table-mushrooms in. We want millions of mushrooms on our plate right through the year and so this is how we do it)
The Emperor always needs a new suit and the tailors will always have a job. And, since the world-pool of generally acceptable things is increasing exponentially (in the interests of runaway-train-freedom-of-speech and freedom-of-whatever-whenever, all that), we might soon get some new Reality TV: once a week, all the little kids who tug at mummy’s skirt and say “But the Emperor has no clothes on!” will be lined up against the wall and shot. Pour encourager les autres, as Lynne Truss would say.

Maybe the planet has a plan of its own and maybe we’re part of it. Maybe it consciously wants us to keep turning up the heat and become extinct so that it can have a new era, experiment with some novel and interesting life forms. The runaway greenhouse effect is not necessarily bad for the actual planet (which seems to relish changing its look and feel from time to time); it’s only bad for humans and quite a few other species. But I believe** that the Earth itself will survive us. As important and powerful as we think we are, I don’t think we actually have the ability to vapourise the planet, even if we childishly nuked it one day just to see what would happen.

* Not actually forests. More accurately, they plan large scale monoculture tree plantations. There are big differences, for example: An established forest has a generational spread of young, mature, old and dying plants, as well as a variety of species both fauna and flora. All the species support different cycles within the whole while interacting, the system is robust because natural disease etc has less chance of bringing down the entire system when there’s a variety of species with different immune responses. Detritus is quickly broken down by myriad organisms and becomes compacted as humus on the forest floor – sealing it layer by layer and, if undisturbed, trapping carbon molecules in the medium to long term. A natural mature forest is one of nature’s own carbon sinks… etc… etc. Whereas a plantation consists of a single species and generation, vulnerable to various scourges, humus is not effectively formed, carbon molecules only trapped in actual trees for as long as they stand – short term… etc…etc.

**Belief: You can only believe something you do not know to be true. Whatever cannot be verified or proven in the present must simply be believed, or not believed. You don’t have to believe in tax, for instance, because it exists and can be proven. But you have to believe in fairies, god, human kindness, etc because no proof exists.
Some believe in Virgin Birth, even against proven biological facts to do with humans and their ridiculous inability to wind-pollinate. But then, we know very little verifiable stuff about Angels at this point. Perhaps in the future it might be proved that they can in fact do it without doing it, and sceptics will have to apologise. Maybe cloning is not so much a new technology as a forgotten art, and back in 0000 they were using it all the time. Could artificial insemination qualify as immaculate conception? In the hands of the right Marketing People, yes absolutely.
Belief is a wonderful tool. You can believe, or not believe, in absolutely anything you want to. There are no limits and no boundaries with belief. It’s very much like Marketing, actually.

RSS Awards

2006-02-17T04:40:00.000+02:00

Welcome to the first monthly Really Stupid Song Awards.

Runner-up: Shakira. She sings, “Lucky that my breasts are small and humble so you don’t confuse them with the mountains.” This song narrowly missed the top spot because something might have gotten lost in the translation, as so often happens. The song was probably even stupider in Spanish, but this is an English award.
And the winner is: Barbra Streisand and Barry Gibb for Stranger in a Strange Land, the ultimate soundtrack to a delusion. Barbra sings, “I write a letter every single day to a stranger in a strange land far away.” Barry sings, “Da-dada-da dadada-da-dada”… They’re so… happy! Starry-voiced and wrapped in warm, fudgy vanilla emotion. Little flocks of bluebirds dart through the song, you can see the rainbows stretched across sparkling waterfalls. A pink butterfly flutters coyly on each phrase. Lambs and lions lie down in dewy pastures, and in the hazy distance you can see a little nuclear family skipping along, waving goodbye to “somebody’s son” who’s going off to fight “somebody else’s war” with a flask of hot chocolate tucked into his rucksack.

Congrats Barbra and Barry! You win a fools-gold-plated copy of Springbok Hits Country Style (the one with Barbara’s Daughter and Snakes Crawl at Night, around summer ’81 – “I am Barbara’s daughter, I am Barbara’s child”; “Oh the snakes crawl at night, that’s what they sa-ay, when the sun goes down, then the snakes do pla-ay”), and a big box of Quality Street.

Nominations for next month’s award can be posted to Comments. To qualify, songs must have actual lyrics, but needn’t be current hits.

Being James

2006-02-13T11:52:00.000+02:00

Stephen King tells a marvellous story about James Joyce:

“According to the story, a friend came to visit him one day and found the great man sprawled across his writing desk in a posture of utter despair.
‘James, what’s wrong?’ the friend asked. ‘Is it the work?’
Joyce indicated assent without even raising his head to look at the friend. Of course it was the work; isn’t it always?
‘How many words did you get today?’ the friend pursued.
Joyce, still in despair, still sprawled face down on his desk, said, ‘Seven.’
‘Seven? But James, that’s good, at least for you!’
‘Yes,’ Joyce said, finally looking up. ‘I suppose it is… but I don’t know what order they go in.’”

- From “On Writing” by SK

Yuri’s Night

2006-02-10T18:17:00.000+02:00

Yuri’s Night

Whose night???? Yuri’s. I just learned that April the 12th is the anniversary of Mankind’s first ever space-flight, by cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin in 1961, and also the launch of the first space shuttle exactly 20 years later. Many, many people will be throwing wild parties on Yuri’s Night, the kinds of parties where toasts are made to The Final Frontier… parties where people have Sudoku-type tournaments and where if you don’t wear spectacles you’ll feel a bit out. THAT kind of party. The coolest kind by far. Ok so I’m no good at Sudoku but SOMEONE has to make the sandwiches and pour the drinks, don’t they? To infinity and beyond!

I have nothing at all to say about the cartoon blasphemy brouhaha. But I do have a sort of parable:

In Terry Pratchett’s alternate universe there is a collective of omnipotent being-things called the Auditors. They hate life, because it’s messy. They can’t interfere with it, though, because that’s against the fundamental unwritten Rules. They would cancel life in an instant if it weren’t for those rules. What they can do, is play little tricks on it.
Thus: “The ascent of mankind must have been a boon to [the Auditors]. At last there was a species which could be persuaded to shoot itself in the foot.”

(From Thief of Time by TP)

That’s all.

Save Our SALT

2006-02-09T23:52:00.000+02:00

I have to post this long lecture-thing here. Have to, because I haven’t heard anything more about this issue lately and I fear somebody may be Sweeping It Under The Carpet. Maybe not enough people know about it, and so it’s probably my duty to post it up. Even if only 2 more people in the world hear about it. If Phil Plait gets to hear about it, then I’ll count him as a hundred people because he’s the only real Astronomer I know (and I don’t even know him and he doesn’t know me either), and maybe he can talk to Other Astronomers and maybe they can, I don’t know, do a petition or something. Something. Anything.

Sutherland, Karoo, South Africa. Desolate, and in the middle of nowhere, but famous in certain circles, because of SALT. The Southern African Large Telescope was built in Sutherland for specific reasons: no light pollution, minimal radio pollution. Crisp, clean air and all the stars you could ever hope to see in a southern night sky. It has a very important job, and it should be one of our most treasured possessions, but most (80%?) South Africans don’t even know it exists and if they did, they wouldn’t care much, or realise how important it is. (“Oh, look, it’s a telescope, that’s nice. Where’s the mall?”)

So “they” are now looking to do a golf course development in Sutherland. The reasons for "them" actually even thinking about wanting to do this in the first place are unfathomable to me... someone must have been pissed or stoned after work one evening and said, "hey bru let’s do a golf dev at Sutherland it’ll be fun." And so, a Proposed Golf Estate Development, a blazing thing sprawled out for kilometres, with state of the art irrigation plumbed straight into the water table and a dedicated power-plant (how else would they DO this? Call in David Copperfield? Factoid: Golf courses can use around two million litres of water a day. The Karoo is desert, and water-challenged as it is) festooning the night with bright garlands of light. Dubai-innie-Karoo, with all that goes together with that. No doubt they will go on about “upliftment of the community”, “job-creation”, etc etc but those are such empty, easy words to pull out of a hat when the schpiel comes to town. Please. This is all about Gary Player’s god-complex and the money to be made around it.

Observatory is a Johannesburg suburb, so called because that’s where the observatory was, way back when. Technically, the observatory is still there, although there isn’t any telescope anymore. How can there be? On an average night in Jo’burg you’re hard pressed to find the moon behind the light and smog, nevermind attempt a glimpse of the cosmos beyond. Now it’s a dome-shaped party venue. EXACTLY! That’s the point! It’s in Jo’burg. But we’re talking about Sutherland here, and we're talking about SALT, and the mere fact that the proposal is even under consideration by council is very, very scary. (Maybe they don't understand - maybe they think astronomers are the people who write the daily horoscopes in the paper and maybe they quite rightly suppose that you don't need a telescope to do that.)

Am I just being miserable here? Killjoy? Is SALT that important? Should we lay down in front of the bulldozers? Is that over-reacting? Should we hire an assassin? Would that be more effective?

There's hardly any noise being made about this. Two articles in the Cape Times and that's that. The astronomers at SALT didn't even KNOW about it. I think they weren't supposed to - "Project scientist at Salt, David Buckley... spotted the golf course proposal almost by accident on the Platinum Planet website..."
I don’t think this should just be allowed to go by without some sort of uproar.

Phil?

For the fearless

2006-02-09T22:08:00.000+02:00

http://www.anzwers.org/free/universe/index.html

I’m not sure that this website hasn’t been planted by HQ for some nefarious purpose of the Intelligent Design (ID) fraternity, but it’s quite, quite awesome. Funny, I always automatically mistrust things with the words “anzwers” and “free” in the same line. Kind of a knee-jerk reaction. Still, even if it has been planted, I’m not sure it could really be that Dangerous. Unless the ID people are actually in cahoots with Marketing, in which case DO NOT CLICK ON THE ABOVE URL* unless you really want somebody mercilessly, stealthily and subliminally selling you a DVD of “What the Bleep Do We Know” (one free poseable Einstein figurine with every 100 units shipped). Actually, hmmm. ID and Marketing. A marriage made in Heaven? This is quite an interesting idea and I’ve just stumbled on it. Eina.

*It’s too early to tell, of course, so go on, just be brave. Really, it’s amazing. The visible universe…

Neil said...

2006-02-09T10:08:00.000+02:00

“All my life, I've felt that I was getting away with something because I was just making things up and writing them down, and that one day there would be a knock, and a man with a clipboard would be standing there and say, ‘It says here you've just been making things up all these years. Now it's time to go off and work in a bank.’”

–Neil Gaiman

Experiment

2006-02-09T09:39:00.000+02:00

I quite like this new green-apple-look template, which is oddly called “Rounders” by the Template People. Rounders I remember playing as a kid, it was something like but not quite cricket, mixed with baseball. This is apple-y though. I wonder: is there an html version of scratch-and-sniff ? A mouse-over-and-waft thingy, or something? It would be lovely to be able to have the scent of apples drift by as the page loads. I’ll have my… ahem… Eye Tea department look into that. (Dio – look into that would you? Eau de Summer Apple ok?)

If I made my own template, it’d look like this:

Many innocent people?

2006-02-08T10:53:00.000+02:00

There was a full page story in The Star last week about a South African man who got conned by a young, pretty Russian girl over the internet. He parted with a good deal of cash and only realised his mistake when, after having sent her money for a ticket to SA (with two nights stopover in Paris as a special extra) she failed to emerge from the plane at Durban airport. She seemed so sincere, he said. He professes to regret his broken heart more than he regrets the lost cash. He said he was well aware that such scams exist; but that she did not grab any bait that he dangled (?), and was sweet enough (?) to have him “supersede my own set of rules and boundaries.”
Unbelievably, this credulous man is a 60-something attorney from Durban (ie, not a kindly old cabbage farmer driving a donkey cart in a remote village on the Isle of mists in the Land that time forgot... although… Durban… never mind) who had been “playing around on the internet” and visiting dating sites for some time, and who has “other internet girlfriends” too. He says, “I firmly believe that this is hurting many innocent people…” and wants the government to investigate and prosecute such scammers.
Come now, Sir. I might be hard and cruel for saying this, but you can’t have my sympathy.

Two Questions:
- Does anyone know what happened to Rolbos?
- Can anyone explain Carbon Trading to me in words I can understand?

Must be literate

2006-01-17T11:58:00.000+02:00

Do your thing A.R.

Sit down to catch it
flex fingers, light cigarette,
open document
Phone rings

No, thank you
I do not want your steam
cleaning or gym
membership

Paragraph waits, cursor
blinks. Page thinks
get some coffee
phone rings.

Hello caller yes
I know. I’ll see what I
can do of course.
Yes, OK.

Hatchling paragraph flails,
threatens suicide, last chance
catch me now
or else

Gate commotion
arrivals, departures, small
talk, strange weather
we’re having

Phone rings, sorry
she’s not in or wrong number
all day this way.
Sluice paragraph

People are just
doing their thing I’m sure
but because of it,
I can’t

Stephen King says that unless you’re brave enough to shut the door, you won’t. Along with a shut (and bolted, and lead-lined, and bulletproof, and sealed, and bricked up) door, I’m thinking that it might be an idea to build an underground bunker in the middle of a haunted forest. The kind with booby-traps and stuff, and a string sort of thing attached to a catty for pelting hollow-point haycorns at that deranged, lost, unwitting type of intruder who manages to make it through the asp moat by sheer luck. But then, you might spend so much time on defence and paranoia that you wouldn’t get any writing done anyway.

Mr King also said that being married is part of what helps him be so prolific. Yes, I can see how that might work for him. A wife is a useful thing. A good one will feed you, proofread, rescue manuscripts from the bin/laundry/dog, bring tea, keep the children quiet and away from that closed door, screen phone calls (“Dear, this is one you’ll want to take. It’s the publisher, he wants to know how you’d prefer your million buck advance – cheque or cash?”) and generally facilitate your entire career.

ADVERTISEMENT
Aspiring writer seeks good stay at home wife. Must be literate. Must be strict with children and dogs. Contact Audrey ASAP

In recovery... all apologies

2006-01-12T01:41:00.000+02:00

I have survived another festive season and lived to tell the tale. Was mightily amused by so many people's shock-horror response to the fact that instead of Merry Christmas all over the place we now have Happy Holidays and Festive Greetings. They are feeling marginalised and unholy. They should be glad, instead, that the Silent Night version of Christmas is thus unhooked from commerce's global Santa Baby version.

Made New Year resolutions: Stop smoking, drink only 1 glass of wine per day, stop complaining. Stupid to make those kinds of resolutions anyhow. Scratch resolutions.
Revised resolution: listen to classical music properly. With headphones on. Stop insulting genius by turning it into background music. Buy proper CDs, and not compilations. Get to properly know at least three composers deeply this year. As opposed to sticking the compilation CD in the tray and thinking, well this is so nice, but never knowing what it is. I got a Grieg CD, and was amazed to find that I know all this music, I just didn't know it was him. That is terrible. Soundproof room if necessary, to block out ever-pervasive Greenday/nirvana/system-of-a-down/etc which is downside of having fifteen and seventeen-year-old kids and all their strange friends in house. Is this music good for them? I know, I know, if it's too loud you're too old but it's the content that bothers me more. Oh really? So Nine Inch Nails and White Zombie et al was all peace love and flowers back then or what? Resolution addendum: remember that you also listened to stuff that freaked people out and had them convinced you were turning into a sociopath. Resolution addendum addendum: Stop worrying about kids so much, they will be fine. Just hide the NIN and WZ where kids can't find them so can't copy them secretly. Mental Note: Secretly borrow Nirvana etc when kids are out, and copy.

I found this on my fridge:

I
wish
I
could
fly
with
a
little
music
and
go
mad

The magnetic poetry has been there since I can’t remember when – I don’t know how all those small blue words survived, with moving so many times; and small nephews; puppies; careless mops and such. It’s become part of the kitchen scenery, odd little conglomerations of words, which fall off and get slapped back on again to read things like, “friend by dream give dance summer”.
So when I read, “I wish I could fly with a little music and go mad” while getting the milk, I had a little leap of faith because someone has been consciously making poems on the fridge while getting the milk. This makes me happy. Besides, it’s a lovely poem. I get that poem, I really get it. In fact, that’s what led to my revised New Year’s resolution.

A happy belated new year to everyone, let’s see what comes.
Welcome Beeb (sis, is that you?) :-)

A really good movie...

2005-12-19T10:25:00.000+02:00

...is one of the highest forms of art, for me.

The Sea Inside – just saw this on DVD. Awesome movie. I cried, and I don’t usually.

Beowulf - I read something about “The new Angelina Jolie movie” yesterday. As though a movie is nothing but a celebrity limo. The fact that Neil Gaiman has been working on this project for ages now is not newsworthy enough I guess. Anyhow, the “new Angelina Jolie movie” is actually a long standing project called Beowulf, and is based on the Anglo Saxon epic poem of the same name. Hero Beowulf fights evil Grendel “descendant of Cain”, and Grendel’s mother, and dragons and things: “...Thus these warriors lived in joy, blessed, until one began to do evil deeds, a hellish enemy. The grim spirit was called Grendel, known as a rover of the borders, one who held the moors, fen and fastness...” It should be a dark and thunderous adventure and I’m looking forward to it.
They are also going to do a movie of Neil’s astonishing novel, Stardust. You should rush out now and get a copy of this book, it’s not like anything you’ve read before and yet you will recognise it all. He is doing the screenplay himself, so it will translate into celluloid beautifully I think.

Rant…

The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe -

Don’t read this rant if you don’t know the books and you want to go see the movie and enjoy it for what it’s worth.

I was afraid to go and see this movie. I lived in these stories as a kid, wore them like coats, and tried often to go through my own wardrobe. They were my best friends and gave me courage.
Maybe it had something to do with the 20 minutes worth of ads I had to watch beforehand (Hey! I am paying for this ticket and this stale popcorn and this flat cola and these buzzing speakers! You should be paying ME to watch these ads!), but I was right to be afraid. While the movie looks nice enough on the surface, some of the CG animals, like the fox and the wolves, (and yes, even the lion that they’ve been bragging about so much) fall seriously short. You just can’t really believe in them. And surely there’s a better way to make animals talk? Like maybe let them think aloud or something? Busting guts and harddrive space to make them photo-real and then giving them human mouth movements and facial expressions is just silly. It’s not bending the truth, it’s breaking it clean in two. The faun/satyr/phoenix/mermaid thing works well with CG because you’re not trying to fool yourself about them being real to start with.
With Jadis, I got the feeling that they were onto something, but then they got lazy. She’s cruel and cold and selfish, sure, but not enough. The mere sight of her should stab your heart with a steely icicle, you should tremble at the very thought of her. This does not happen in the movie and her sleigh makes far too much noise. She should be snake-like. She isn’t.
Peter is smarmy. Susan is an afterthought. Aslan… what can I say. You don’t actually end up understanding what all the fuss is about, they don’t explain: What’s so special about this Narnia place anyway? Why is this lion so beloved? Why are they all so keen on fighting this battle? So what if he dies? At one point, he’s supposed to be about to roar a roar that will shake the foundations of Narnia and fundamentally alter all who hear it, it must put courage in some hearts and fear in others. Cover your ears, he says. He roars. Rrooaarr. So?
And then, they’ve censored it silly. Come now. Not one drop of blood. I had to censor it myself when I read it to my kids when they were very small, and they went on to read it for themselves a little later, in full. But telling it this sweetly to a generation of wiseass kids who are playing Doom and Quake and even Vice City (yes, they are. 10 year old kids are playing this. If you’re a parent and you don’t know this then you need to catch a wake up), and who have unrestricted access to adult material of all kinds via their cellphones… that’s just stupid. Does Disney think it’s going to undo decades of gratuity now, by telling only half of a really good story? Now that Disney owns Narnia… oh god. I have a headache.

Well anyway. Lucy and Mr Tumnus are great in the movie. But then, they are not complex characters. So this ends up being just another kids holiday movie, unexceptional. Which is nothing short of a travesty. I wonder how it will go with the rest of the Narnia stories, should they decide to go on with it? There is enough material for another ten years worth of spin-off figurines.

You guys ROCK!

2005-12-16T13:23:00.000+02:00

Ek voel so lekker warm and fuzzy. Ek het ‘n unexpected opportunity (half an hour of actual TIME. Can this be true?) gekry om ‘n bietjie te surf. By way of Susynoid, first star on the right and straight on ‘till dawn, het ek ‘n happie van Dignet gelees, en ook Eben se Oord, en ek weet hoe absurd is dit, dat ‘n engelse meisie in Afrikaans probeer skryf, maar julle woorde klink so nice (soos die krikkel van die vuur, na die braai – when it’s just right for marshmallows and ghost stories, or bananas in tinfoil with chocolate and cape velvet), hier binne die koue sieellose internet. Langsaan julle, voel ek so bietjie one-dimensional. Ek het nie een slukkie kultuur om my eie te noem nie. Net English, and we all know how patchwork that is. Toe maar, dis orraait. As ek nie in die band kan speel nie, sal ek sommer net ‘n groupie moet wees.

:-)

xox

2005-12-14T20:18:00.000+02:00

Thank you Dio! I have links, because I can cut and paste and I can sort of follow instructions. You have no idea what this means to me. Today, html, sort of. Tomorrow, the cosmos? Somebody stop me!

An it harm none, do as ye will

2005-12-14T07:40:00.000+02:00

I had wanted to be cheerful and blithe, but I’m not a good actress so I’ll just be morose, and retain some integrity. Marketers gleefully quoted Charles Bradlaugh today:

"Without free speech no search for truth is possible... no discovery of truth is useful... Better a thousandfold abuse of free speech than denial of free speech. The abuse dies in a day, but the denial slays the life of the people, and entombs the hope of the race."

In true marketing style, the quote is out of context. Bradlaugh lived in different times and was not talking about sales. He was campaigning for Irish Home Rule, the redistribution of land, birth control, and atheists being allowed into the House of Commons, among other things. These creatures are campaigning for the sale of everything, from our children to the planet; together with many other things we had imagined were not for sale. As with so many freedoms, the ‘right’ to do such-and-such becomes nothing more than an excuse for doing it, in this insane Ripley’s version of a world. The ‘truth’ as applied to contemporary life is a dire culture of entitlement; with gratification as its sole aim, and its war cry has nothing to do with any kind of real freedom or real truth. I can think of many current instances in which the abuse of certain ‘freedoms’ has not died in a day, and is of itself busily entombing the hope of the species. If everyone lived in a little bubble of their own, and their words and actions could not affect the whole, then wholesale freedom of speech would be a fine thing. And although most of us think that we do in fact live in such a bubble, in reality not one of us can or does. We’re either oversensitive or desensitised, and both positions play straight into marketing’s hand.

In my ideal world, no one gets absolute freedom of anything until we have learned - and can apply - compassion, respect and tolerance. Impossible things to measure and truly difficult to practise, but by the time we’re eighty, maybe freedom can be ours in some small way. In the meantime, of course we should feel free to speak – if we think first. Marketing people better batten down the hatches and lay in some supplies, because if they’re to evolve from seething pond scum to thinking person with earned rights, at least three million years must pass.

Nice Dream.

Long live Bradlaugh, and a pox on those who take his name in vain.

In the spirit of the season, here’s something by Ogden Nash:

A Carol for Children (Abridged)

God rest you, merry innocents,
Let nothing you dismay,
Let nothing wound an eager heart
Upon this Christmas day.

Yours be the genial holly wreaths,
The stockings and the tree;
An aged world to you bequeaths
Its own forgotten glee.

Soon, soon enough come crueller gifts,
The anger and the tears;
Between you now there sparsely drifts
A handful yet of years.

Oh dimly, dimly glows the star
Through the electric throng;
The bidding in temple and bazaar
Drowns out the silver song.

Two ultimate laws alone we know,
The ledger and the sword –
So far away, so long ago,
We lost the infant lord.

God rest you, merry innocents,
While innocence endures.
A sweeter Christmas than we to ours
May you bequeath to yours.

Please, thank you, so sorry.

2005-12-05T12:36:00.000+02:00

Lynne Truss (Eats, Shoots & Leaves) has a new book out called Talk To The Hand, which is all about people having no manners anymore.

When I was a kid you had to be polite to everyone older than you, and nice to everyone younger than you, or else. You even had to be polite to really horrible older people, because the grownups were so busy climbing social ladders that they didn’t know who the really horrible ones were. But we kids knew. And we still had to be polite to them.

Maybe manners do maketh the man, but I’m confused. I just had my pin number filched by a very polite and neatly dressed criminal at the ATM. This is ridiculous, because I’ve been around long enough to know about these things. The thing is, while I was acutely aware somewhere in my consciousness that this impeccably mannered person was hoodwinking me, I was too busy being polite to assert myself by kicking him in the nuts. Years of conditioning has overridden my base instincts and rendered me incapable of self-defence? This is not good.
The lady at the bank rudely rolled her eyeballs at me as if to say, “You idiot,” when I told her my story and begged her to change my pin. I was polite and apologised for inconveniencing her, of course.

I would so like to have tea with Lynne Truss. We could duel politely with our little silver filigreed cake forks, and argue good-naturedly about whether to keep or lose the apostrophe forever.

And I could ask her (politely) why she keeps writing all the books I was going to write.

ROTFLMAO

2005-11-30T14:45:00.000+02:00

That was interesting...

:-))))))))))))

I have no idea what I just did.

htmWHAT?!

2005-11-30T14:36:00.000+02:00

Having been all inspired by an ancient guru :-) and dear old friend of mine, the intrepid Cosmic Cabman, who also just got a blog, I thought I might try a brave thing like, say, a simple link or two. So I enlisted the Help button and it said:

“…

Google News

Billboards and Blogging: Nothing’s for Free

2005-11-30T09:27:00.000+02:00

I’ve been wondering about free online-journal/blog services being so FREE, especially to us Joe Soaps. Here is my conspiracy theory:

There is a branch of organised crime called ‘Marketing’

Marketing would like us to believe that a giant photograph of a luxury all-terrain vehicle is better than the view of natural wonders which it is obscuring, and will go to great lengths, including chainsaws, dynamite and bribery of officials, to ensure that the view of the giant photograph itself is not obscured by any natural wonders, such as an annoying old tree, or a pesky rocky outcrop.

These are the people whose evangelistic mission is to get Stuff sold. They are fundamentalists, and their mantra goes, “Stuff is god, Stuff is happiness. Stuff is the measure of your success. In order to access god and happiness, and therefore to succeed, you must get more Stuff. Consumption is the key to your potential, which is as limitless as the happiness you will have access to, if you only consume.”

Now it’s all gone to seed…

‘Seeding’ is the big new thing in marketing circles. A Seed is nothing more and nothing less than a very carefully selected (and paid) peer. Someone who meets all the right criteria is inserted into a group, at school or in the workplace or anywhere else where peer acceptance might register on a success gauge. The Seed will do two things:
1) Hang out and become part of the group, then collect very subtle information from within, the type of information usually unavailable to those not in the group. He learns the group’s ‘code’, if you will, and brings it back to HQ (marketing company). HQ then uses this information to sort of re-encode the schpiel in order to sell Stuff to the group in ways it can positively identify with. The product now speaks the group’s language.
2) Bring ‘buzz’ back from HQ. This is word of mouth, viral chit-chat of the “look at this” or “have you tasted” kind, and if the Seed is worth his salt, ie cool enough in the group to be emulated, the product he’s buzzing about will show rocketing sales figures. Not very nice, but quite clever. Good old-fashioned espionage and propaganda. Yes, they are doing this to our kids and it isn’t illegal. And there we were, thinking the child actually needed this garment/beverage/gadget for some weird teenage reason.

It was only a matter of time before HQ found out about Blogs. What is a blogosphere if not a properly hierarchical peer group?

In 2000 there was an article that said something along the lines of “as Weblogging becomes more widespread among corporations, there's likely to be some resentment from the pioneers who see it as an anti-corporate concept.” Well I’m not exactly a pioneer but I can imagine...

So now there’s this explosion. Anyone can do it, you no longer have to know a hundred programming languages and be a member of Mensa. You don’t have to be the type of person who’d rather spend her spare cash on extra RAM than on that cute new pair of shoes anymore. Joe Soap can do this thing and what’s more, he can do it for FREE. Keep in touch with family and friends, have your say. And that’s not all! Engage with the global community, make new friends and influence people… All for free.

Well I’m not buying it. Which isn’t to say I’m not buying into it because, clearly, here I am. But when I put two and two together, based on my experience with marketing and on my observation of the metamorphosis - of the great worldwide web of shared information into Consumer Central - I get a definite four. Nothing’s for free.

I propose that there is a frenzy of excited marketing dogs sniffing around personal blogs at any given moment, pissing on tyres, picking up on hints people didn’t even know they’d dropped, all the better to target you with, my dear. Monsanto itself couldn’t make a herbicide apocalyptic enough to kill these weed Seeds before they sprout. You can be sure that those who offer free online journal type services (such as this one which is ‘ours’ to exploit) are not only in on this, but cashing in on it too. Mystery solved? Or conspiracy theory? You decide.

The only way to beat these Stuffing lunatics is to renounce life as we know it and find a cave somewhere. One without a billboard within a 50 kilometre radius, that is. If such a one still exists.

Meanwhile…

It turns out that this blog was hidden only to me. Thank you David, for the magic shift button! We all have one I’m sure, but I didn’t know that you could also use it to refresh stubborn webpages… of course, you have to hold it down for quite a while, which took me the best part of the past week to discover. It’s my new toy. I remind me of Eeyore, getting his Birthday Present from Pooh and Piglet, which amounts to a deflated balloon and an empty Hunny jar. Pooh and Piglet are concerned that something might have Gone Wrong with it all, but Eeyore just happily (as happily as Eeyore can at any rate) sits there putting the balloon in the jar and taking it out again.

:-)

Still Testing

2005-11-25T09:16:00.000+02:00

Well at least I now have access. Even though the posts are hidden somewhere in "search this blog". This is all terribly amusing.

let it go - the
smashed word broken
open vow or
the oath cracked length
wise - let it go it
was sworn to
go

let them go - the
truthful liars and
the fair false friends
and the boths and
neithers - you must let them go they
were born
to go

let all go - the
big small middling
tall really
the biggest and all
things - let all go
dear

so comes love.

e.e. cummings

Favourite Movie Moments:

1. Daniel Day Lewis leaps through the thundering waterfall with the words, “I WILL find you!”
- Last of the Mohicans

2. Scarlett tears down Tara's magnificent hunter-green velvet drapes with the golden tassels, for a dress to make Rhett weep, and Mammy's eyes go just about as popped-out as any eyes before or after.
- Gone With The Wind

3. Dory speaks Whale.
- Finding Nemo

4. Angelica Huston sashays through her house saying, “This is my research assistant, Xavier…”
- Life Aquatic

I'm sure that one day, when I have this blog beaten into submission, I will begin to say coherent things in it. Well, I'm not SURE sure, but I hope I will. En Garde, Blogger! Under the old oak at dawn! Victory will be mine!

Enlightenment Lite

2005-11-23T08:52:00.000+02:00

Finally, the self-help DVD we’ve all been waiting for. Have your cake and eat it too. You, also, can become god. Forget your troubles, c’mon get happy. See the movie “What the Bleep Do We Know” now, or cook it up in your kitchen.

Here’s the recipe*:

Layer the following in a large plastic bowl -

Metaphysical mixed berries (skinned and seedless)
A handful of new seasonal fruits (NLP etc)
Pasteurised Quantum Theory custard (fat free, sugar free)
Fingers of assimilated but unrealised eastern mystic sponge cake (both Fabulous GuruTM and The Monk Without The Monastery!TM are good brands for this dessert)
Interconnectedness (Patronising consumer version) jelly
A tot of God liqueur

Serve chilled with a sprig of fresh Political Correctness.

*A helping of this should cause no discomfort other than a very temporary high. However, should you eat the whole bowlful, you’ll need gastric lavage and a good slap, and two years community service mopping floors at a government hospital of your choice, during which you will receive a compulsory weekly debriefing with, alternately, Desmond Tutu and Lin Sampson. You might emerge with your feet firmly back on the ground and able to once again tread the little footpaths of your own earthly human existence, the coming-to-terms-with of which is what your life is actually for. But we can’t promise this.

Here, by Popular Demand, is the FAQ…

1. What is Pandora’s Aquarium?

1.1 It’s a song by Tori Amos -
I am not asking you to believe in me. Boy I think you’re confused I’m not Persephone.

1.2 It’s a version of Walter Battiss’ Fook Island, but less messy and without the code-speak, and you don’t need to be Fooked to visit, you just need to be able to survive the End Of Days. And, it has recipes plus incredibly subjective, sometimes emotional, and even occasionally incendiary, book and movie reviews. It’s a sort of attic soup kitchen, the main stage for a largely unwritten-as-yet but partly illustrated comic, which is a version of Sandman but with less Sax & Violins and more mermaids. When only a single comic series of this ilk exists, one has no choice but to copy it. Neil Gaiman set the bar so high that I will probably be dead before I am finished. Thanks so much Neil.

2. Why are you doing this blogging thing?

I’m not sure.

I need a soapbox? No that’s not it. Because I have too much time on my hands? Possibly. I did the blogger code questionnaire and I have double minus scores for most questions so it isn’t because I’m a geek who lives the internet high-life either. In fact, I’m a Luddite. Go on, laugh. Hack me, it’s so easy. We’ll see who wins one day when the lights go out, and they will. I will have vegetables in my garden and you technological geniuses will have to eat your motherboards.

3. Are you some kind of religious nut?

No.

4. So why do you sometimes use religious language?

Because it’s melodramatic.

5. What do you do for a living?

Absolutely nothing official at the moment. I used to be a designer but now I wouldn’t even design you so much as one corporate nametag even if you paid me a million bucks. Ok, for a million bucks I would but I want the money up front.

6. Can you really cook?

Yes.

Jangle Balls

2005-11-17T08:10:00.000+02:00

For these few days, the hills are bright with cherry blossom. Longer, and we should not prize them so.

- Yamabe no Akahito

Which is why Xmas just isn't Christmas anymore. From October, jangle bells and Xmas ditties, three whole months of special specials, sweaty plastic-suited santas...