FACEBOOK VACATION....

It's time to take a break from Facebook for a little while and get some real work done...
It's unlikely I'll see what people are up to this week and I feel strangely liberated.
Later, folks....

On Joan Rivers and female comedy

Well, whoever said that women aren't funny isn't sharing my reality although, as with anything in this society, men contrive to control everything through illusory assertions which, in the stratagem of forced repetition, most of us seem to accept as the stereotypical reality.
It's not - it's just product.
I made a statement on Facebook about Joan Rivers representing America metaphorically - plastic on the outside and cynical within which was a joke, of course, although I do harbour a very jaded opinion of America which is founded unfairly on what its so-called leaders do and say rather than the kaleidoscopic ethos of its colourful citizens who retain that magnificent quality of self deprecation and a vision that looks behind the bullshit.
And it's through the agency of comedy, particularly, nationally introspective parody that so many of us can laugh at ourselves although that process is so often laced with pathos at what we've collectively come to represent that the laughter might just be tinged with a touch of shame and inevitably, catharsis.
And sure there may indeed be far too many male comedians comparative to the female counterpoint so in that sense, Joan Rivers is iconic in that she is harsh, shameless and takes no prisoners just as Bill Maher, George Carlin et-al have always done - comedy has become socio-political commentary and has forged the essence of many a nation's conscience.
And as in days of yore, men have always known (at some level) the innate inner power of the feminine principle, the goddess energy - that which not only creates but enshrines the desire to nurture life and this has been perceived as a threat to that physical, bombastic, pervasive and illusory might that men have, for millennia, fought to maintain.
As life and our world continue to unfold and evolve, I think we all know (whether we care to admit it or not) that this feminine principle is the positive force that glues it all together despite the legacy of male destructiveness which has brought us to the brink of cataclysm and would have us continually poised there in a state of fear as a means of maintaining that male dominated "control".
I think "authentic" people help smash that illusion and perpetuate the freedom that cannot be compromised - that of our spirit where our strength and humour lie.
Joan may appear in a package of colourful nipped, tucked, superficiality but what lies beneath and what issues forth from those botoxed lips is the truth and there's the rub. The paradox of the parody.
Men currently and fragiley perpetuate a world of unsustainability which inevitably will be saved by the feminine principle and that, I do believe, is the real joke as the last laugh will be on men.
And the funniest woman on the planet is actually my wife. She makes me laugh in ways that every person should laugh - from the belly. And in laughter there should always be love.

FEELGOOD FUCKWITS

And so, as George Carlin might have once said: Here's another bunch of people who should be beaten to a pulp with mining equipment and left to bleed in a twitching heap - the feelgood fuckwits.

These are the people who always purport to take the higher moral ground usually because they've never struggled a day in their old-school-tie, daddy-paid-for-varsity-and-my-car-and-my-bail lives!

These are the ones who post a really tear-jerkingly, tragic then uplifting story on Facebook that has you snotty then ultimately all warm and fuzzy until they cap off their repost with:

"Like and repost if you care. Ignore means you don't care..."

GAK!

What the fuck! Who suddenly made you the guilt police, douchebag?







If the story is good enough to repost, I'll fucking repost it - not because you have elected to give me a little nudge in the direction of moral rectitude. And just for that presumption - you can go fuck yourself, you sanctimonious, self-righteous, preachy little twat!
And the story can go fuck itself too just because of you!

And if that doesn't seem right and you're thinking - ag shame - two wrongs don't make a right - you can go fuck yourself as well - with the same rusty cheesegrater that Preachy Douchebag number one just used.

Let the story speak for itself, for fuck's sake. There are enough politically-correct, anal-retentive, OCD, control-freaky, authoritarian, nosy, holier-than-thou arseholes in the world as it is - we don't need to have our decision-making on Facebook and other social media networks policed as well - Zuckerberg and a few select US government agencies are already doing that on your behalf.

You wanna do something really morally upstanding and worthwhile? Go volunteer at a soup kitchen for the homeless, you supercilious knobhead - oh and remember to insist that the scabby, smelly poor bastards only consume wheat-free, ozone-friendly, free-range, animal-free, nutrition without any unnatural additives, preservatives, chemicals or synthetic substances...because it's all been donated by you, of course!

Holier-than-thou vomit only

And when you're done with that - help undress the hapless gits, pare their corns, wash their feet and scrape the fungus off their asses before tucking them up in bed to an educational story with a suitably subtle and apposite socio-political moral to try get them on the same straight and oh-so narrow road that you believe yourself to be on...

Get that right and I'll repost anything you fucking wish anytime you wish it.

Pricks!

SWINGING, GETTING MARRIED AGAIN AND OTHER THINGS I SERIOUSLY NEED TO DO

Interesting that when we surf the Internet and use web applications like Facebook and suchlike, the boys at Google, Big Brother, the NSA, CIA, FBI et-al are all having a good old peek at what we're up to and where we are doing it from.
Yep, they are.  Maybe not like in a surveillance-centre situation like Pine Gap in Australia, an official government-funded eavesdropping site in collaboration with the US DOD (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pine_Gap) - and there are a few more besides, dotted all over the world - but there are programmed algorithms that screen for subversive phrases, websites, surfing content etc.
Trust me, this is how it works.
And the porn industry have got their SEO story in order (I am told by a good, filthy friend of mine...who would prefer to remain anonymous but hey - credit where it's due - Norman, you old dog!)
So no surprise when you just happen to inadvertently stumble across a porn site by mistake - probably some URL left in the browser history by a previous user - your wife or kids for example and voila - there you are at hornycoedswithvegetables.com or something equally tasteful...and these little regionally-apposite ads appear dotted around the page while you might be viewing Co-ed Candy preparing a butternut for tonight's stew...
Yeah, there are those ads for singles and easygoing MILF's (whatever those may be Mature Intellectual Lady Friends or something) and lo-and behold all in the very region from where you are accidentally viewing this website. And no questions asked by all accounts.
The wonders of modern technology and cyber communication eh?
As an aside - if there is a person on the planet who has access to the Internet and cannot get laid then I'm afraid it's suicide for you, my friend - and I'm sure there are websites for that as well....
But what I'm failing to understand is the ads that pop up during my Facebook sojourns as illustrated in the picture accompanying this post.
First off, they're telling me I'm a fat bastard and that I should be dieting using their chosen methodology. Now, it may be true to say that the midriff has thickened with the onset of fit-and-fifty-syndrome but as a vegetarian and an exerciser, non-drinker, non-smoker etc., I am still comfortably slipping (euphemism for wriggling) into my 34-36" (86-90cm) waisted trousers and have only gone up 1 size in about 30 years so they can take their fucking diet regimen and have it for dinner themselves, preferably via enema - the cheeky bastards!
Moving down the list, apparently they have been tracking my recent posts about the now-defunct iPod Touch and my whinge at Apple per-se. And thus appears the knight-in-shining-armour mobile device in the guise of Samsung. It could, of course, simply be that they've really, really perused my profile and are aware of my allegiance to the Blues of Chelsea Football Club, themselves sponsored by Samsung. Either way - they KNOW!
And fuck me if they haven't been reading the posts about potentially impending transportation of our piggies via trailer - there's an ad for one of those very machines right there. Spooky huh?
But, as they say in all the very best TV ads, wait - there's more!
Sliding further down the column (if you'll pardon the expression) I am invited to link up with one, Joanna Krupa, Polish super-model and all round babe it would appear. And this is where it begins to get a tad confusing...
Below that is the second partnering invitation - this time for Oriental love - is this at the bottom of the ad column because they are renowned for providing a happy-ending?
I am at a loss.
It has to be said that out of idle curiosity I clicked on those particular links - just to see what it was all about, you understand, in the interest of fair and accurate blogging....
And there - you see - perfectly harmless. On the Joanna Krupa link (now a US citizen by all accounts) right there crammed in with the ads for Ukrainian and Polish singles is the ad for Project Management courses (something I clearly need) as well as a download to speed up the Mac I'm using - the sneaky little so-and-so's...
But there is something seriously amiss with the "Secret Of Asian Women" link.
There I find that hot Asian women are looking for a normal guy like me.... and just by answering 3 easy questions, I will be doing it sideways in the Oriental way in a matter or moments, never to cast my eyes in the direction of another occidental woman again...
And that could be true - all of it but me, a normal guy? - that is just too far fetched to even think about.
I have no idea where they get this idea that I have this Oriental fetish though.
Ah, must dash, Karen is calling me back to our kinbaku session.

さようなら

Sayōnara

UNBELIEVABLE HOLLYWOOD ASSES

I don't think it's just me is it? But there has been a more frank and unashamed approach to sex on film these days and I'm not talking your regular porn flick deep pink fare - no, I'm talking about the offerings being produced by Hollywood on TV and in film now being served up with increasing frequency.

It must be stated here and now, however, these are merely observations and certainly not complaints. Not yet, anyhow.

More tits, ass and full frontal exposures (even penile appendages, much to my good lady's amusement as she sees this as leveling the field somewhat after decades of womanly nudity with no male counterpoint) have become manifest with the advent of.... what? A more mature, discerning audience? Hmmmmm - perhaps not methinks.

I think it's simply a case of the global population having become gradually inured to the unspeakable "horror" of naked flesh on their screens - this, obviously, until now more horrifying than gratuitous violence with which the media networks see fit to inundate us on an hourly basis as Global Super Powers sabre-rattle or progress(?) to actually bombing the shit of people in the troubled Middle Earth region of our beleaguered planet. Therein lies true, unspeakable horror of a more naked type than the beauty of the human form, warts and all.

The war paradigm  is a sad reality which I try hard to see beyond but the ongoing motion picture of Earth's staged anthropogenic conflicts, while devastating in a shameful, pernicious way, lack in their entirety, the majesty and magnificence of Gaia's own rumblings and bellicose rants - for me, terrestrial traits that have been cyclical and ongoing for millennia and not sudden, catastrophic changes imposed upon the planet by humankind's unsavoury activities as much as that would appease my own cynical sensibilities.

Point is - I simply don't believe it. The science (when scrutinised objectively and removed from the politicisation of this topic) simply doesn't hold up. The whole thing is bogus.

Returning, however, to the topic of sex on film, mainstream film: what for me is even more difficult to swallow (pardon the expression) is the manner in which this is presented. That is unbelievable. Not in the contemporary sense of - WOW - fucking unbelievable! In the sense that it lacks credulity on any level.

These Hollywood personages may indeed have the capacity and opportunity to bump, grind and shag like rabid rabbits in all manner of acrobatic, contortional  positions which would make the authors of the Karma Sutra blush and with an appetite and stamina to repeat the process within minutes of the previous session (or so the continuity staff would have us believe). I can swallow all that (oops - again).

But what strains the very bounds of plausible reason, believability and the condition of the human beast as I have come to know it over decades of studying it in its natural (and oftentimes unnatural) habitat - is the postulation that everyone who ever gets naked on screen regardless of age condition or social circumstances and who resorts to a bout of the horizontal bop for the sake of our entertainment and (perchance) plotline - has a perfectly smooth, unblemished arse. 

Fuck right off, folks - it is just not plausible. I'm not buying that shit at all.

Shape-shifting lizards ruling the roost in Buckingham Palace are a more plausible idea at this point.

Pimple-free arses for as far as Hollywood can ever hope to see - never!  

There's always one. 

And that's the bare-arsed truth! 

 

AUSTRALIANS - STOP MOANING

Rudd

Gillard

Abbott

We're a long way from being Aussies yet but here's how I understand this:

º  In 2007 Australians voted in the Labor Party (ALP) into government in an ALP led coalition 

   

º  Kevin Rudd led the country as Prime Minister until 2010 at which time his popularity with Australians and within the ALP had waned considerably

º  Julia Gillard challenged Rudd for the party leadership in 2010 which she won unopposed and duly became Australia's first female Prime Minister

º  Gillard announced a date for the next general election which happened just months after her appointment. The vote resulted in a hung parliament and Gillard was ultimately supported by 4 of the 6 crossbench MP's maintaining Labor in power in a minority government

º  Gillard's popularity waned within the country and Rudd saw fit to challenge for party leadership in 2012 which he lost 71 - 31 votes, thus Gillard remained PM

º  In March 2013 another ALP leadership spill was announced with Rudd nominated to oppose Gillard. At the last minute, Rudd withdrew and Gillard maintained the leadership

º  Uncertainty remained within the ALP and in June 2013 Rudd challenged Gillard again and retook the leadership role becoming PM once again

º  A general (federal) election was held yesterday (7th September 2013) with the Liberal Party led national coalition headed by Tony Abbott defeating Rudd and Labor by 89 - 57 seats with Abbott set to be the new PM

º  Aussies are already moaning like hell about Abbott....

What the fuck do you actually want, Australia? Do you know?

At least you seem to have the power to change things whereas here in South Africa we don't.

STOP FUCKING WHINGEING! 

THANKS

Even though I have to confess to having been more the victim of a brain-fart (leaving my travel bag on the plane on Wednesday) than a victim of some nefarious conspiracy, I have to be grateful to the universe (and the good folk at Mango Air - with the exception perhaps of the cleaners who may have been the culprits who stole my Garmin and iPod) as the important stuff all came back to me unscathed.

I shall never be critical of a woman's handbag ever again having given my own little baggie a spring clean - is it possible to get so much into such a small space?

Black holes do exist.

Excelsior 

IN FLIGHT ENTERTAINMENT

In-flight entertainment.

It is usual for one to seek some form of amusement once you've been deprived of the use of your array of "electronic devices" as you yawn through the safety announcements beaming at you via the bulkhead console over your head.

And it is rare for any real stimulation to be found between the pages of the well-thumbed in-flight magazine. Isn't it? 

However, I was resoundingly and most emphatically wrong on that count as it turns out.

Mango Airlines inflight rag, "Juice" (yeah, I know)  just up and smacked me in the face with a full page Monsanto ad pronouncing the joys, benefits and empathetic approach this conglomerate adopts toward the planet and its impending cataclysmic annihilation if we don't genetically modify everything immediately. 

Nature and/or god and/or the human species have no chance of survival, they claim, without Monsanto sweeping to the rescue on their white charger, sowing the seeds of (what?) redemption - or something.

The image of Monsanto on a horse or perhaps more than one horse just conjured up even more images of the 4 riders of the apocalypse - well at least three of them - pestilence, famine and death. All they really needed was to go into weapons production (and it can be argued that they already have) for War to mount that last spectral horse and they would have the proverbial full-house.

I took some "before" pictures of the ad with my iPod as a cunning plan (to paraphrase one Edmund Blackadder) took shape within that twisted cranium of mine.

Ten minutes later I had overwritten the entire ad with captions and responses for the benefit of the next occupier of seat 4C - just to offer a balanced perspective, you understand and then I moved through the magazine in my usual flip and skip style.

That is - until I saw the best article - maybe ever in the whole history of journalism.

I shit you not, fair folk - would I ever shit you? I mean, come on...

It was ostensibly about champagne, local production thereof and the difference between sparking wine and champagne. Which is all quite passé really - I mean, we've all been down that road before, yawn.

But there were illustrations of the various bottle capacities in the champagne industry - from the half bottle (which is cryptically called - well - a half bottle) all the way through the range, viz: Bottle (wow, that's adventurous too), the Magnum (two bottle capacity), the Jeroboam (4 bottles in one), the Rehoboam (6 bottles), the Methuselah (yep, 8 bottles),  the Salmanazar (12 bottles) and finally, the Nebuchadnezzar containing a whopping 20 bottles worth of bubbly. 

Why, you may ask, does a tee-totalling vegetarian have anything but a passing interest in effervescent alcoholic beverages?

Why indeed?

Well, that wasn't the pièce-de-résistance at all folks - no - it gets better.

The prospect of sitting in a local restaurant, my lovely and I and ordering a cheeky little Nebuchadnezzar of champers is almost too tempting to ignore, not that we would ever get such a thing right, of course.

But it would be worth chancing inebriation just for the thrill of cracking a 15 litre bottle of champagne, sampling it only to tell them that it wasn't to your taste and could they bring you another?

All that aside, what really riveted me in the article was the small segment on "the art of sabrage".

And what, pray tell, might that be? One would be inclined to ask. I did.

It is quite simple: it is the art of opening a champagne bottle using a sabre. And I don't mean lopping off the cork, no. This involves a manoeuvre whereby the sabre-wielder holds the bottle at a particular angle, having already dispensed with the foil and the wire basket.

And then he slides the blade of the sabre deftly up the neck of the bottle along one of the seams until it connects with the annulus (that would be the ridge at the neck where it flares to accommodate the cork).

And bugger me if the whole thing (neck and cork) doesn't just neatly cleave at that point separating bottle from top amid, I would imagine, a spurt or two of foaming wine.

I mean - isn't that just fucking brilliant!

Back to the local pizzeria for me and the wife with a hearty summons of the maître-d and the procurement of yet another cheeky little Nebuchadnezzar of his finest if you please.

This in and of itself would initiate a curdling within his bowels for starters.

"....wait just one moment, my good man," I will intone with a suitably haughty expression on my face, lips pursed in faux indignation as the designated waiter (or perchance the maître-d himself) commences work with the foil and basket atop the megalithic receptacle. 

"Sabrage, please," I would command, arresting his hands from the easing of that cork from its tight little green tunnel.

"I'm sorry, sir?" he will no doubt splutter.

"Sabrage," I shall repeat. "Sabrage, my lad."

I fear at this stage, he shall gape at me open-mouthed, bereft of verbiage.

I know I would were the situation reversed and I was in ignorance of this antiquated practice.

And I shall leap to his rescue.

"I would like the bottle to be opened traditionally..."I would venture. Just enough to confuse him further.

"Sir?" he might rejoinder.

"Sabre, my lad. Get a sword and slice the top off the bottle. Sabrage, don't you know..." and I might just add a "what" for maximum pomposity as the situation would, you must agree, warrant.

"A sword?" he is likely to splutter. "Slice off the top with a sword?"

"Yeeeeeaaas" I will drawl like Jim Carrey at his final Pet Detective audition.

"Oh for heaven's sake!" I will explete. "What kind of establishment is this? No sooner have I got you stocking Magnums, Jeroboams and Nebuchadnezzars  and  you mean to now tell me that you don't have the means to expedite a traditional opening! Good lord!"

And then, as if by magic, I shall reach below the table and extract a handy sabre, procured that very morn at some emporium of suitable purveyance (on the never-never as it were).

"Allow me," I shall say, straddling the mighty bottle as a child might mount a hobby horse.

"Have at thee," I would yell and promptly decapitate the Nebuchadnezzar in one swift stroke, erupting a foamy spurt all over the hapless maître-d's best penguin suit.

And that would almost be that except for the fact that I would have him trickle some of the foaming liquid into a flute whereupon I would stare aghast into the glass and proclaim in a horrified tone: "We cannot drink this, man - there's a splinter of glass in it.... please bring us another bottle..."

At which point I may have to defend myself with aforementioned sabre ensuring that the maître-d doesn't get hold of it first and try his hand at decapitation for himself.

Ah - perchance to dream.

And that, my friends is what in-flight entertainment is all about.

Kudos to Mango for supplying it.

And now, it is almost time to drift off to the dulcet tones of Stephen Fry reciting some of Paperweight Volume 2 and then to Cape Town.

Excelsior.

SPRING HAS NOT YET SPRUNG

Just in case South Africans think it's Spring today - it isn't. 

That's still 20 odd days away and if you haven't noticed - it's fucking freezing outside. Don't take those frost covers off the plants just yet. 

But if the ladies want to get into lightweight flowery frocks and prance about the streets - that's okay with me.

AUSSIES RECKON TONY ABBOTT IS NOT DESIRABLE BUT HE'S ACCEPTABLE

Just love the Aussies - Tony Abbot is not desirable but is acceptable...
That is just hilarious.

Tony Abbott - Mad Monk

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.

(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..."

ON THE MAYAN CALENDAR AND THE "END OF DAYS" written June 2012

The Great Mayan Calendar Conundrum

"XULTUNT, Guatemala — According to the Mayan calendar, December 21, 2012, is the date for a major world cataclysm, perhaps, even the end of the world. But a newly reported discovery may soon eclipse that dire prediction."

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...

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.