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

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.

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.