Applications and payments for the ISBN codes now complete.
Publication via Kobo imminent.
Watch this space...
Very excited...
Friday 30 August 2013
Thursday 29 August 2013
The First Book of PRANA - coming soon...
The First Book Of PRANA will be available in ebook format very soon.
Watch this space and the Kobo e-shelves...
This chronicle of darkness, light; hard rock and blues may be destined to become your bedside companion forever. As I've said before - Lucifer has been my co-pilot for years - isn't it your turn?
And you won't know what that means until you download Volume 1 and explore my deep-seated psychosis first hand...
Miss it at your peril.
PRANA – SYNOPSIS
PRANA is partially semi-autobiographical except for some (but certainly not all) of the darker bits...
In essence it is a story about personal despair – being trapped with no foreseeable way out.
But there's always a way out – it's just that we may not particularly like the consequences of what's being offered especially when that solution involves Lucifer and your soul.
PRANA isn't your usual Faustian tale of horror but it does involve demons, angels, contracts, alchemy, conspiracy and as much shapeshifting as can reasonably be managed. With a cameo appearance by Nelson Mandela!
It is both sacred and profane and runs haphazardly to the music of Blue Öyster Cult, The Police and Pink Floyd with an unfortunate yet unavoidable performance by The Pet Shop Boys.
It is indeed a book for all tastes...as long as those tastes run to the macabre and a deep concern for the consciousness of the human race.
Image courtesy: Shutterstock
Wednesday 28 August 2013
THE TAO OF SPILL CHAI LATTE
Spill Chai Latté is no Eastern savant shrouded in the arcane miasma of I-Ching philosophical mysticism but he might well have been, such was the impact of his influence upon my mortal being this very morn. And me all altruistic and giving - the benevolent archetype in every sense of the word.
Y'see - we (my lovely and I) have this thing where, during the week, first thing in the morning, we drink the magical elixir of honey, lemon and cinnamon (all infused with boiling water, you understand) which, although invigorating and refreshing and may reach the parts that count, is not by any stretch of the (most feverish) imagination, coffee.
But on this day it felt like a deviation from the norm was the natural order of things and it took little persuasion, none at all actually, to convince my lady that she might consider coffee in favour of the usual toddy.
And so with the the still winter twilight suffusing the sky, having wrested myself from that realm somewhere between Morpheus and the posh British narrator of Jeffery Archer's latest audible offering, Best Kept Secret where the narration convolutes in concert with my mind state gravitating between REM and the actual plot line, I tumble out of bed still wired to the iPod courtesy of my silicone cabled Sennheiser ear-set and stumble toward the kitchen avoiding the usual posse of (apparently ravenous) cats.
After completing the ancient masculine ritual of testes VULNUS urinae, commonly known as scratching your nuts while pissing, I fed the cats (read: topped up the partially depleted bowls which they refuse to consider once the inner section diminishes although 50% of the pellets nestle quite undisturbed around the perimeter of the bowls, consciously rejected until desperation drives the cats to grudgingly nibble in these regions in that everlasting psychological struggle between human and feline). The cats almost always win.
While I am heating milk in the microwave and shovelling powdered chai latté into my knee-high tubular mug, I ponder the question of adding sugar (or in our case xylitol) to the mix. Karen likes her coffee latté'd as well. I usually just have rooibos tea - black and unsweetened and yes, I like it like that. But today I am going to splash out with a super-sized measure of viscous, creamy, sugary refreshment.
However, somewhere in a shackled box in the basement storeroom of my mind lies a small, gnarled, paranoiac gremlin who insists on shouting through the cobwebby gloom all the things that I shouldn't be doing to the body that maintains his vitality. Why, I'm not exactly sure as one would've thought that given the nature of an existence in perpetual bondage he'd be keen to be free of that particular state of being which might be induced through the ingestion of sugars, preservatives and all manner of poison masquerading as contemporary food and beverages.
But no, he squeals and complains like a regular Radio 702 listener after a South African general election or Pravin Gordhan's annual budget announcement.
I ignore the little bastard (although I can still hear him) and add another heaped spoon of the composite of lactose, sugar, whey powder, skimmed milk powder, unhydrogenated coconut oil, flavouring, black tea extract, salt and sodium phosphate cunningly packaged as "sweetened instant chai latté" into my mug before bombing it with nuked low fat milk and boiling water in equal measure.
It smells tip-top and Karen's coffee also tastes pretty darn good.
I wander (lonely as a cloud or something) back widdershins toward the bedroom, deposit the mugs of steaming beverage onto the bedside tables and tumble back into bed between cats now engaged in duvet surfing (with much clinging thrown in) as my legs create perfect undulating waves for this very purpose.
And to the iPad for the early morning surfing of an altogether more ethereal nature than that of the cats, their disgruntlement at being tossed about now quelled as they nestle ever closer to the heater in the corner of the room.
I am distracted. What can I say?
I reach out, I grasp the iPad, I swing it in my general direction but hell and fiery damnation if the charging cord doesn't develop a mind of its own and sweep my steaming brew onto the bed and against my buttocks, the one of the left persuasion, eliciting from me all manner of shrieks, profanity and gymnastics which had Karen hopeful momentarily until she realised that this was not antiquated Pictish foreplay but rather an expression of extreme unhappiness as my glowing arse cheek deftly moved out of the path of the frothing cream tsunami rapidly flowing along the mattress.
It's hot, it's sticky and it's fucking messy - no not carnal interaction of the biblical kind - the poxy chai latté shite that has now migrated through the sheets and into the mattress, down the bedside table, under the glass of the bedside table, onto the floor, under the rug and, if it had its way, would be trickling toward the Amazon River such was its desire to be an uninhibitedly free-flowing waterway.
There was a mere mouthful left which I quaffed in a single swig. Man, it was sweet.
I thought I heard an echo in my head saying: I fucking told you so!
But I'm sure I must have been mistaken.
Karen is customarily quiet at these times until the ranting or gesticulating has abated and she offers no platitudes or judgements of the events she has just witnessed, exhibiting mercurial restraint, knowing that the bed linen was changed just two days ago.
While I wipe with a towel, curse with a passion and stride with a purpose back to the kitchen, I can hear the gremlin laughing throatily in that echoey prison of his.
It merely remains for me to ponder the Tao of Spill Chai Latté and whether this was invoked by the universe (initiated by me) at some profound and unknowable level that has disavowed the ingestion of enlightening-inhibiting synthetics - which does seem eminently more agreeable than admitting that I am just a clumsy fucking dickwad who should pay more attention to what I'm doing.
But I relent. I make a plain cup of rooibos tea, no milk no sugar and head back to the bedroom to commence this missive. I can still discern the aftertaste of the chai latté on my palate but remarkably, the laughing and the shrieking from elsewhere within my head has mercifully ceased.
Tuesday 27 August 2013
ILLEGAL HOMELESSNESS
So you're not allowed to be homeless! What the fuck will they legislate next - that culpable homelessness is punishable by death?
Or when the shelter "solution" doesn't work maybe they will simply round them all up and humanely dispose of them and make food out of them for the rest of society.
We could, of course, short circuit the process and just get together on a Friday night and barbecue a few vagrants with a nice bottle of chianti... in the interests of law and order you understand...and cleaning up the streets for the rest of us...
Aseholes!
It's quite obvious that the bulk of Earth's populace are conditioned to be well-behaved, conformist consumers and slot into the system that serves their masters rather than themselves. Disempowerment through this conditioning and forced repetition that has become the belief of contemporary man has created the societal structure to which most of us adhere. This would be why the good old US is outlawing the harvesting of rainwater, and in some cases, planting of sustenance foods and suchlike - wishing to change the gun laws, then we have the Patriot Act, Homeland Security and on and on - all geared to hand over self-empowerment to the "authorities". If they could tax our intake of air they would - maybe that is yet to come...
And I have to disagree with the claim that the Maya failed or fell flat in any respect. If we are talking about the so-called doomsday/end of the world interpretations of their long count calendar - these are modern interpretations of a device which made no such claims nor, in fact, did the Mayans themselves. There are other Mayan artefacts which speak of a time beyond the end of that specific cycle as with the Hopi who spoke of humankind emerging into the 5th world (if I'm not mistaken) at around about the same time (2012). There was a galactic centering that took place at this time and that was indeed predicted as a potential energetic and consciousness shift affecting those who had the means to sense the effect. For most of us - we bought into the hype and expected (like Y2K), the sky to fall on our heads as with Asterix the Gaul and his clan mates. Didn't happen but who's to say something else just a tad more subtle didn't take place?
But there was no prediction of a biblical type apocalyptic armageddon as far as I am aware.
As for the obvious subjectivity and interpretive nature of the Christian bible in its many forms, translations, revisions and guises, the baseline of the references in the early books to "gods" rather than a supreme deity God, certainly, in my view, gives more credence to Sitchin's interpretation of these texts aligned with the Sumerian creation "mythology" and would certainly explain why so-called gods sought power and dominion over their creations... An omnipotent creator would have to have some serious psychoses to require a kick out of smiting His/Her/Its creations just for the hell of it (pardon the pun) or because they didn't please Him/Her/It.
Bottom line, though, however much we think we may have evolved (which isn't necessarily always an advancement or a positive change), our societies are geared less and less to manage our population and the unfortunates who find themselves on the streets for many reasons.
By beginning to implement legislation as has been proposed and lauded in South Carolina, is, for me, a diluted form of passive eugenics where the elite (whatever the fuck that means) get to choose who gets to do what and why - and if we extrapolate that to the fucktards in charge (making us even more dimwitted fucktards for putting them there unwittingly and believing the bullshit they spout - so maybe we do deserve all the shit we get then...) - they would happily eliminate those seen to be genetically inferior to them to promote their own genetic lines. Hitler, Kissinger, Bill Gates and many prominent "good" guys were/are all for this ethnic cleansing and have said as much. So their godlike pronouncements are in line with those of the wrathful gods of the Old Testament only now with iPods and bio weapons at their disposal rather than the old heaven-sent chariots of fire, plagues of locusts and suchlike...
Problem with the principle of advancing the chosen, however, is that they would be perpetuating bloodlines of fucktards like the GW Bushes of this world which isn't necessarily promoting the finest of the fine and the best of the best when we talk genetics - just the privileged few who deem themselves to be superior to the great unwashed masses who have as much right to be here as anyone else.
Wayne's World personified: We're not worthy....
It's quite obvious that the bulk of Earth's populace are conditioned to be well-behaved, conformist consumers and slot into the system that serves their masters rather than themselves. Disempowerment through this conditioning and forced repetition that has become the belief of contemporary man has created the societal structure to which most of us adhere. This would be why the good old US is outlawing the harvesting of rainwater, and in some cases, planting of sustenance foods and suchlike - wishing to change the gun laws, then we have the Patriot Act, Homeland Security and on and on - all geared to hand over self-empowerment to the "authorities". If they could tax our intake of air they would - maybe that is yet to come...
And I have to disagree with the claim that the Maya failed or fell flat in any respect. If we are talking about the so-called doomsday/end of the world interpretations of their long count calendar - these are modern interpretations of a device which made no such claims nor, in fact, did the Mayans themselves. There are other Mayan artefacts which speak of a time beyond the end of that specific cycle as with the Hopi who spoke of humankind emerging into the 5th world (if I'm not mistaken) at around about the same time (2012). There was a galactic centering that took place at this time and that was indeed predicted as a potential energetic and consciousness shift affecting those who had the means to sense the effect. For most of us - we bought into the hype and expected (like Y2K), the sky to fall on our heads as with Asterix the Gaul and his clan mates. Didn't happen but who's to say something else just a tad more subtle didn't take place?
But there was no prediction of a biblical type apocalyptic armageddon as far as I am aware.
As for the obvious subjectivity and interpretive nature of the Christian bible in its many forms, translations, revisions and guises, the baseline of the references in the early books to "gods" rather than a supreme deity God, certainly, in my view, gives more credence to Sitchin's interpretation of these texts aligned with the Sumerian creation "mythology" and would certainly explain why so-called gods sought power and dominion over their creations... An omnipotent creator would have to have some serious psychoses to require a kick out of smiting His/Her/Its creations just for the hell of it (pardon the pun) or because they didn't please Him/Her/It.
Bottom line, though, however much we think we may have evolved (which isn't necessarily always an advancement or a positive change), our societies are geared less and less to manage our population and the unfortunates who find themselves on the streets for many reasons.
By beginning to implement legislation as has been proposed and lauded in South Carolina, is, for me, a diluted form of passive eugenics where the elite (whatever the fuck that means) get to choose who gets to do what and why - and if we extrapolate that to the fucktards in charge (making us even more dimwitted fucktards for putting them there unwittingly and believing the bullshit they spout - so maybe we do deserve all the shit we get then...) - they would happily eliminate those seen to be genetically inferior to them to promote their own genetic lines. Hitler, Kissinger, Bill Gates and many prominent "good" guys were/are all for this ethnic cleansing and have said as much. So their godlike pronouncements are in line with those of the wrathful gods of the Old Testament only now with iPods and bio weapons at their disposal rather than the old heaven-sent chariots of fire, plagues of locusts and suchlike...
Problem with the principle of advancing the chosen, however, is that they would be perpetuating bloodlines of fucktards like the GW Bushes of this world which isn't necessarily promoting the finest of the fine and the best of the best when we talk genetics - just the privileged few who deem themselves to be superior to the great unwashed masses who have as much right to be here as anyone else.
Wayne's World personified: We're not worthy....
Monday 26 August 2013
(BBS) BENJAMIN BUTTON SYNDROME
So there I am sitting in a funky trendy Cape Town bistro off a cultural square near "the mountain" bru... Fact is - it's hard not to see the mountain from the City Bowl - probably impossible actually.
The Capetonian tardy timekeeping bug has already established the day's ethos with a lacklustre attitude by a local car rental concern making me run late for my first meeting. Well, they didn't actually make me late but that's not the point. It was compulsory to bitch: I have Joburg fever and that calls for Teutonic precision - Swiss clock timekeeping. For a while at least. After rooibos tea, a scout of the project site and a rude video clip, played on the state of the art audio visual equipment, to kick off the site meeting, I am all out of Jozi paranoia. We'll survive the day despite a fifteen minute delay and just maybe we'll have time to go to lunch. Wow, lunch - away from your desk?
And the only female meeting attendee was politely asked to leave the room for the screening of the quirky, strip show with a twist: this self same female now confessing a love of porn and exhibitionism coupled with an all-consuming desire to experiment sexually in any way possible with her man, a partner who clearly doesn't rise to this challenge as much as she would like.
Why is it that when men are young, spotty, stupefyingly single, raging with testosterone and available, they are numbingly oblivious to sexual signals from the opposite camp like nasally challenged moths tumbling through a pheromone storm? Dumb assholes who don't deserve a functional todger and the inevitable post-pubescent long-playing diamond-hard erections!
Yet when you mature (or in the man's case - have flashes of seriousness in between your usual puerility) and are committed to a monogamous relationship, the pheromone receptors are flipped on as if by some cosmic switch - it must be linked to a milestone in the standard male life project plan - Task 187 "Monogamy Attained" this a predecessor for Task 69 in the new micro project plan you hadn't even opened until then - "Ability to receive all and any sexual signals from opposite sex".
And by some twisted divine retribution, convincing me consumately of God's femininity, you field the signs and innuendos, the coy glances and fluttering lashes, the lingering hand on a shoulder, the unnecessary exposure of high class augmented cleavage at a business lunch and you cannot respond as you were prepared to do in scenario 1 when you were all ribs and dick with no brains or morals.
In fact, some virile adolescents are so tight skinned when they achieve a hard-on that their ribs open and close like a venetian blind as they press up and down on their manhood! Or blinking may cause their foreskins to move back and forth. Caught in a sandstorm they might wank themselves to death...
It's truly bizarre and altogether the wrong way round. And, no ladies, we don't all think with our dicks when the signals or offers are thrown our way, although some women would like to categorise all men in this manner. Some of us just sigh and say to the little crickets on our shoulders: "Typical - some asshole who has it all and doesn't know it..."
Wednesday 21 August 2013
CONSPIRACY THEORY
What's theoretical about a handful of corporations which have fingers in all the pies that effectively run the planet? Media, the food industry,the medical industry (not health), arms, oil and technology.
What's theoretical about the governments in all so-called democracies passing more and more laws under the radar that purport to enshrine public interest but in reality undermine personal liberty?
What's theoretical about global surveillance and public eavesdropping? This is legislated in every democracy of which I'm aware.
We don't need to talk about dictatorships - they may be what lies at the heart of all governments but at least dictatorships don't pretend to be democratic.
The only thing that remains theoretical is the reason that the corporations who own these governments actually do these things.
If you believe it is in the interest of public safety and that old chestnut, national security, then I posit that you are a theoretical idiot.
RUPERT SHELDRAKE ON BEING BANNED FROM TED TALKS...
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kAuxXvNVhgA
Interview with Dr. Rupert Sheldrake about the censorship of his TEDx talk 'The Science Delusion' on the Skeptiko podcast with Alex Tsakiris.
Skeptiko podcast is a leading source for intelligent, hard-nosed skeptic vs. believer debate on science and spirituality. Each episode features lively discussion with leading researchers, thinkers, and their critics.
http://www.skeptiko.com/
http://www.sheldrake.org
http://www.ted.com/
Skeptiko podcast is a leading source for intelligent, hard-nosed skeptic vs. believer debate on science and spirituality. Each episode features lively discussion with leading researchers, thinkers, and their critics.
http://www.skeptiko.com/
http://www.sheldrake.org
http://www.ted.com/
Michael Crichton on Global Warming (Part 2 of 3)
Tuesday 20 August 2013
SHOULD CHILDREN BE ALLOWED TO CHOOSE DEATH IF THEY'RE SICK? Belgium and The Netherlands think they should
A friend urged me to look at this in a broader context and the "motivation" behind the proposed legislation and, believe me, I have looked at the reasons why through several articles on this topic and it still horrifies me. (below is a link to just one of them)
The legislation is to come about as a result of the sheer numbers of children who might face a life of a compromised quality through all manner of serious afflictions.
Now, if you ask me, this is a classic case of addressing the symptoms of a problem rather than the causation. It may just be that given the global increase in population, we see a preponderance of afflictions affecting our children or it might be that we have found a way to conveniently eradicate the "problem" by handing it over to the kids themselves.
Is it a case of (in the words of Frank Zappa), advocating decapitation as a cure for dandruff?
I do not downplay the seriousness of what may be afflicting kids at all but surely we, as a society, should be addressing the reasons why we are producing a seeming plethora of sick kids while adopting a paucity of assistance? Is there a form of genetic aberration that is sweeping Belgium and The Netherlands? Are people there genetically inadequate? That in and of itself seems questionable wouldn't you think? Are there other factors in play?
What are these factors? We should be examining that a hell of a lot more vigorously to find out why so many sick kids are being born?
And if our laws do not find it appropriate for minors to be adequately mature to drink alcohol, drive cars, get married and vote, how does the responsibility of deciding their own life or death fate suddenly become less onerous? The ultimate decision that one faces now suddenly handed over to minors when society through all of its other mores, laws and dictates deems those same people unfit to make such a decision.
It smacks of moral and ethical abdication of our assumed responsibility as caregivers and/or parents to me.
Yes, in certain opinions, there may seem to be too many people on Earth but if we, as the self-proclaimed custodians of the planet, managed our resources and economics correctly there is no shortage of space or essential commodities. Instead, we mismanage the systems that are designed to make the planet work and billions go to bed hungry every night while more face chronic poverty and disease - all unnecessary in a world where our abundance was equitably managed. But it isn't. And we should not forget that it was generally so-called adult decisions which created the present number of people in the first place and now we elect, when certain of these offspring become problematic for us and perhaps themselves, to go the way of the wild animal and allow the runts of the litter to simply perish because genetically they aren't quite up to scratch. This is base eugenics at every level.
And while I am the strongest possible advocate that animals are sentient and that we can learn much from them, I believe that our innate humanity trumps our base instinctual nature and isn't it that which should be governing us in our approach to such challenges?
Is it more humane for afflicted people to simply die? Perhaps it is - that in itself is an unwinnable debate given the impossibility of extracting emotion from the engagement. But should such a decision be given to the afflicted child when we, as the people responsible for bringing that child into existence and where our collective behaviour has arguably manifested these "problems" in the first place, simply absolve ourselves of the responsibility or the wellbeing or fate of that child?
Deciding to impose death as a solution (smacks of the policies of one Adolf Hitler) whether self imposed or by decree of others should be the most difficult decision any society should face and here we are making it as easy as possible.
It's not that death should necessarily be feared but should it be the simple, mechanical process that is being advocated here and given over to people not yet old enough to vote?
I'm not that sure that it should.
http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/timstanley/100222557/belgium-and-the-netherlands-consider-permitting-euthanasia-for-children-including-to-relieve-suffering-for-the-parents/h
Monday 19 August 2013
DUMB ANIMALS
That would be us, right?
I mean, we're the species that seems to be astonished every time an animal does something mildly intelligent, which they do all the time.
Why are we surprised that animals are intelligent? Just spend some time with them and you'll soon discover just how intelligent they actually are.
Good grief, next I'll be telling you they are sentient or have souls!
We create our own reality from our belief systems and this explains everything on this topic.
Those who feel the need to consume meat often help justify this by telling themselves that the creatures they're eating are just dumb animals and are bred for this sole purpose anyhow.
So if you are what you eat and you're eating some dumb creature then....
ON THE MAYAN CALENDAR AND THE "END OF DAYS" written June 2012
So said Mel Borup Chandler, ksl.com Contributor on 29th May 2012.
He does go on to say, however, that the most recent discovery shows a calendar of Mayan origin that continues on for 4,000 years beyond that fateful date which so many have come to regard with awe and perhaps many more with disdain.
But it has to be said that nowhere in the Mayan calendrical cosmology do they ever assert a cataclysmic end to the world on the now famously portentous date. They merely state that a great cosmological alignment will occur at this time which has the potential to initiate significant shift in humankind's consciousness.....or not....
But as my oh so worldly wise wife pointed out to me in bed this morning: Just because the Maya decided to carve out calendars with such precision doesn't necessarily mean they were fabricating each one to indicate the end of time and the world as we know it.
(The above discovery would seem to bear out that assertion)
And let's be honest, she went on to say, who determined when they stopped carving a calendar in the first place or even determined an end date for it? The poor bastards assigned to such a task must've needed a beer break now and again surely.
And what about working hours? Did they have The CCU (The Calendar Carvers' Union) back then or might the prediction for the end of the world have been subject to the vagaries of industrial action or a slack shift supervisor? Such factors might have moved the now fateful date to August 23rd 2014 - who can say?
The logic being applied by many to the famous Mayan calendar would necessitate us to then assume that because your current diary or wall calendar shows the upcoming year but not necessarily the one following it that the world will end at that time. I mean it has to - the calendar ends on that date, ergo so must the world...
Or may it perhaps mean that the manufacturer of said almanac hasn't contained all that future data in the current document so that he can sell you a new one next year or the one after that as is commercially expedient for his business? Repeat business is, after all, the best kind innit?
Or perhaps they simply don't include the calendrical information to the end of time as there wouldn't be enough trees on the planet to make the paper to record such a timescale. Or better yet they have come to the conclusion that the whole thing is a circular formula based on the premise that as they fell the trees to make the end-of-days almanac and actually begin to manufacture it, the mere fact that they are felling these trees at the rate required to do so will accelerate and alter the originally predicted end-of-days final date as we will deplete the planet of oxygen to such a degree that it will no longer sustain any form of human existence at a certain date. And to peg that zero date is an impossibility. So why bother making the thing in the first place?
It is my recommendation that in order to make this a self-fulfilling prophecy that we all (that is, the entire global population) at midnight precisely (Guatemalan time) on 21st December, leap into the air simultaneously and come crashing down, again simultaneously. This is very likely to shift the planet off its usual orbit and axis and push it inexorably into the path of (what should have been) a passing solar flare thereby conflagrating the planet and destroying all life thereupon. (except, of course, cockroaches - so it follows that politicians will be the gene pool that rekindles human existence in the new world and who would want to live in a world like that anyhoo?)
Or perhaps we can all stay home with a nice cup of Horlicks and watch TV until we pass out from boredom.
The choice is yours...
ON MALEMA (from 2012)
Please explain to me the definition of "suspension from the ANC".
How can active participation in rallies and speaking engagements festooned with ANC paraphernalia and surrounded by ANC bunting and flags possibly be construed as a "suspension"?
A suspension in my book is when one is banned from active participation in the organisation from which you have been suspended. Yet Malema oozes forth unrestrained in all but a cosmetic sense.
When are we going to wake up to the fact that there is no democracy at play here and that pronouncements by the ANC, official or otherwise, are about as ingenuous as Selebi's sudden health crisis?
As the days grind on and our consolidation fragments as quickly as our infrastructure, I find it very hard to keep the faith.
The only savoury facet of this ANC remains Madiba himself who perhaps wields some subliminal Damoclean sword of conscience over the squabbling miscreants calling themelves politicians and leaders.
When he is gone, God alone knows what rudder will remain to steer these buffoons in any manner of integrity or higher conscience...
Sunday 18 August 2013
ON ZUMA AND THE LOGIC PROBLEM
Pop quiz, children, for those who like logic problems:
If Jacob Zuma is traveling in a blue-light convoy from Pretoria to Johannesburg, a distance of 65km, at 175kph and is hitting a head wind of 45kph and he is exactly centre of the convoy (unless he bends forward to get another absinthe and coke which alters the centre point by 300mm) which is precisely 26.3m in length, and the Gautrain is traveling in the opposite direction between the same cities but over a distance of 60km (railway is more direct) and the convoy left at 14h00 CAT whilst the train left at 14h15 CAT and is filled with 24 promiscuous single Zulu ANC card carrying maidens at an average weight of 85kg each holding a Checkers bag filled with Tastic rice, Impala mielie meal and Nik Naks, and 3 of the maidens are 2 months pregnant, 5 are infertile and the rest are menstruating in synch: at the point that the convoy and the train pass one another and the centre point of the train and the shower rosette on Zuma's head are in exact latitudinal alignment, will he still be such a nepotistic, scum sucking, lying, cheating, raping, immoral, fat, ugly, horrible sack of shit?
TOFFEE
This was some months back.
So I have this craving for toffee earlier this afternoon with nary a lump of the stuff for kilometres. You know how it is...
So, toffee is easy to make, says I to myself. It's just sugar and butter and well.....oh....um. And then Mr Google was summoned and a few recipes perused. As one does.
I can do this, says I.
"Karen?" I holler, "Do we have this, do we have that, do we have the other?"
"Indeed," says she, puzzled. "What are you up to?"
"Toffee," I reply, "a craving..."
A sardonic smile from Mrs M and I'm alone in the kitchen.
I have the thick bottomed, deep pan. I have the dish lined with waxed paper, I have the deep fry thermometer. How organised, thinks I to myself.
And then it bubbles and then it froths and then it turns a little darker but the temperature is not what it should be but I press on. And I use a bigger gas ring and we get to the desired temperature. Then there is the stirring and the pouring and the cry for help to assist in the scraping of the dregs into the wax-paper lined dish and the squealing in pain as the good Mrs M scrapes scalding hot liquid onto my fingers. Oh how I cursed. How my fingers did blister.
And I turns out that wax paper is only waxed on one side so we have some very sweet paper backed sweet glassy stuff that is way too hard to be the toffee that I wanted but after rinsing off a segment or two and scraping off the paper and yielding up some really sticky substance, I decided that my toffee craving had been sated.
Stick to omelettes, says I as I sit down to a beer and the TV. That cold glass surface is heaven to those blistered digits.
Drive to the shop next time is the chorus that is ringing in my head.
Wilson's have been making the fucking stuff for decades.
DECOREX JOHANNESBURG 2013
And so: Decorex 2013 where a funky necklace resembling cubes of nougat were my good lady's sum purchase. I can certainly live with that.
And, as ever, as much as innovative lifestyle accoutrements serve to enrapture Karen, simple anthropological phenomena conspire to keep me engaged - human behaviour just endlessly fascinating to behold.
This began with the queue into the car park. Why is there always some douchebag trying to busk his way past the parking authorities in an effort to save the R15 parking fee? That's Au $1.60 or £1.00 - hardly a king's ransom is it. After using some emphatic body language which unequivocally conveyed our disgruntlement to the would-be Scrooge, he coughed up and we all moved on.
It would make more sense to be negotiating at the exhibition entrance if you wanted to save money - that fee being R85 a head (Au $9.40 or £5.50) but this activity too was cause for amusement.
The event organizers have spent squillions on marketing, posters, advertising and printed bumf yet there are no signs over the entrance doors identifying why a queue has formed at one door and not the other adjacent empty inviting one.
I am understandably perplexed by this although no one else seems noticeably perturbed as if they already possess an arcane inner knowledge of the riddle of the ingress...
I casually ask the couple in front of me: Why is no-one using that door?
They shrug. No idea.
"Shall I go ask that security officer?" I venture, wondering why no one else has considered this. The roped queue control chutes beyond the glass doors seemed reasonably clear on that side. A quick confab with the burly security wallah revealed that the vacant door was for holders of Web Tickets only.
"Ah," says I, "might have been more helpful if someone had put a sign over the door stating that less than obvious fact..."
My witty sarcasm was lost on this recently erectile bipedal lifeform so I moved back to my place in the queue. "Web ticket holders," I said which precipitated a conversation about how inadequately things were organised in South Africa and how this would lead to its eventual and inevitable annihilation through crumbling infrastructure and abject apathy. Bit of a stretch really but people just love to moan don't they.
My lovely wife then joined me in the queue having been subjected to a similar frustration at the ATM just outside Entrance 5.
"Why the fuck," she says to me sotto-voce, "does it take people so long to draw cash at an ATM? I mean, what's involved? You arrive, put your card in the machine, make a selection, collect the money and leave. That should take about three minutes tops. But there are people who take forever. What the fuck is that all about?"
These questions, I knew, were rhetorical but it did seem as if we were being exposed to the negative forces of the evil gremlins of the biomorphic field of queues. Or something.
Once inside it was all laughter and giggles as they deftly relieved us of R170. Just goes to show that sometimes money does seem to buy happiness even if, albeit a somewhat short-lived fulfillment. I guess the lustre fades once the wads of cash that you have dedicatedly lifted from the thousands of decor drones are handed over to the so-called authorities never to pass through your grimy mitts again.
Three and a half hours, two halls, a passable lunch to saxophone accompaniment by the adult personification of Lisa Simpson later and we were back in the car wondering why we had bothered to do this in the first place.
Must've been about a nougat necklace, I surmised. It must hold mystical magic as yet to be realised.
Onward and upward, good people of Middle Earth - the adventure has yet to begin.
RAPE IN SOUTH AFRICA
Rape in SA 
We live in a subversively misogynistic society here in South Africa where women are reduced to objectification to greater and lesser degrees by our varied cultures. The extreme manifestation of this (and I believe it to be a perverse misinterpretation of ancient cultural traditions), is in the (erroneous) belief that females are there for the taking with or without their consent.
If you cast your mind back to the rape trial of our highest official in this country, our deranged president, who leads by example - he stated in his defence that when the "victim" showed signs of coming on to him, he was obliged as a man to follow through on the sex act in the spirit of his cultural traditions otherwise he would have lost face in her eyes for not being a real man. Or words to that effect. Her version of this was simply that she said no, he forced himself on her and she was powerless to resist.
And guess what? Zuma was found to be the victim here and the woman the instigator who, like everyone else that has dared challenge the highest male authority in the land, became the guilty party. Which pretty much hands down the ethos from our "justice" system to the populace that "women are actually asking for it..."
This has been brought into stark reality in our neighbouring Swaziland where they have brought (or are busy bringing) legislation into being whereby women will be banned from wearing mini-skirts and other "provocative" clothing!!!!!
All this speaks to the fact that it is the male psyche in this country that is seriously flawed and very, very fucked up.
Not a case of: Men, keep your dicks in your pants and your power lust under control. We have a case of: Women, you are the devil sluts who are begging for us to do it and it would be wrong if we didn't.
It's a factor that sickens me to the core about this country and just one of the many examples that have caused my wife and me to seek a life on another continent. Sad but true. We've just had enough of this and other bullshit, not least of which - the attritional mode of "governance" in this beautiful country.
And it's right to say that the re-education of men begins at home with mothers, wives, sisters and girlfriends - letting them know that it is not cool to belittle women or downplay abuse, rape or any other form of victimisation even using the baseless cultural tradition as an argument for this inexcusable behaviour.
But in my view, this subject should be taught in SA schools where it is aimed at males from the earliest of ages. Maybe then, we will start turning this perversity around. But while the message being sent from the highest office in the land remains what it is, we have a very, very long hill to climb....
I have said it many times before - this situation makes me deeply ashamed to be associated with these arseholes claiming to be men.
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