Get well Sophie

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!

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

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

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

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

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!

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

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?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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.