Then we came to a place we had known
And knew it not.
We could see signs we had always seen
And could no longer read them-
The road to our destination we were told
Began right where we stood
So let this then be a marker.
From:
The Buffalo Hunters by NiK-[publ:1996]
When I wrote the Buffalo Hunters-a violent crime fiction novel, ten years ago as a form of exorcism for a shooting incident in which I'd been involved, it started with the above words. The book itself uses no place names that could be changed in the future. The absence of identifying place names was regarded then, as a weakness by some reviewers: today the presence of now redundant place names would have made my work obsolete.
In the spirit of the times my latest novel, a faction piece released this month does not carry the name that I was born with. I decided that for my sixtieth year I would change my name and publish my work anonymously-like the web page bloggist that I am. I can see that a name is irrelevant and I wouldn't have used an author's name at all except that my publishing assistant pointed out that libraries and bookstores needed to put books on shelves alphabetically by author's name, so I made up a name that didn't sound like anything you could associate with anything at al and stuck it on the book.
What's in a name: Jo-burg, Jozi, or Johannesburg, which do you use: which do you prefer-which of these rolls off the tongue, rolls off the ear, with comfort and ease -which one do you choose.
Now try Oliver Tambo International; O.R.Tambo International, O'Taambo International-which of these rolls off the tongue, rolls off the ear, with comfort and ease-which one would you choose to use?
Often the people who propose name changes are visually oriented-concerned with how a name looks. They go to great trouble ascertaining that the name looks right without giving serious consideration to how the name will sound from the point of view of the user.
Los Angeles International is universally known as eL- Ay-X, but Heathrow is rarely called H-R simply because the name is more difficult to say in its abbreviation. So it is certain that O.R Tambo will instantly be shortened to O'Tambo-for the mind works by ear, as Al Ries and Jack Trout pointed out in their 1981 Marketing classic: 'Positioning' the battle for your mind.
What those people who propose the name change, to honour someone they regard as important, must ask themselves is would they be happy at their hero being reduced to O'-Tam-bo Int'-? Personally I think it sounds cool and exotic and certainly it gives us an ethnic afro feel that simply doesn't wash with Jo-burg.-except that I don't know where it is so I have to spend more money now telling the customer where my product is instead of letting the brand name do the job where appropriate and it is appropriate for an airport to be associated with a place since it defines a destination. It isn't essential though or the world would be full of people going to the wrong destinations and it isn't. And anyway we could solve the problem by changing Jo-burg to O'Taambo as well.
The easiest thing for that random parasite called 'politician' to do, is to change the name of a place to suit a specific agenda. The name may be changed because the association of the current name is inconvenient, inadequate or inappropriate, even outdated.
Sometime names change back to earlier names presumably because the new name became in its turn inappropriate. So for instance the recent, so-called G8, conference was held in a place called St Petersburg, which turns out to be a city with a long history that has been restored and the name by which it lived for the past three generations, Leningrad, has now been consigned to the garbage dump along with the ideology that created it.
In effect the old name simply refused to die out no matter that the citizens were subject to one of the most brutal campaigns of re-education ever imposed on any society in the story of the human race.
The sorry tale of Leningrad's rise and fall is a salutary reminder that all too often the disconnection that accompanies the change of name is ultimately the root of decline and fall, sometimes of the place itself and often of the entire region. It is expedient and relatively easy for a controlling power to change a name. It is another matter altogether to retake ownership of that part of the collective consciousness that associates names with places.
So Congo became Zaire which having been discredited returns to Congo, now conveniently shortened to DRC to avoid confusing it with another better known Congo. The disconnection is complete and the place is permanently in the process of becoming. There are some indications that the name New Orleans is now so inextricably associated with the disaster Katrina that it may never be repopulated by those who left when it was destroyed last year.
The politician obsessed with name change intends to negate the undesirable associations of the past in order to establish a renewed sense of future. The very act that is intended to sever ties to the past obliterates whatever glories the past held [along with its more forgettable ignominies] and the loss of memory cannot be selective. So currently two places locally called Potchefstroom and Lydenburg are to be renamed to kill bad past associations and since neither place was formerly particularly memorable to any who did not live there or have to go there for some urgent purpose, it is likely that no one will particularly care that these references disappear and are replaced by names that are equally non-memorable identifications of dusty shanty towns in the middle of nowhere. They will simply disappear and hearing the new names on the weather bulletin there will be no sense of okay that's bad weather coming from the east or the south west or whatever.
Ordinarily for the past millennia the problems compounded by persistent name changes was not an acute one. We lived then in an under-communicated world. After all it is well known that it took a thousand years for bronze making knowledge to percolate from China to Egypt back in former times. Even as recently as 1920 A.D. the name Leningrad could be adopted with a reasonable presumption that within a few years all people everywhere would know where it was. When in 1990 something it was changed back to St Petersburg the effort to inform a planet obsessed with the day to day minutiae of living has been arduous and drawn out and for the ordinary productive citizen of the planet probably meaningless-This is one reason why the G8 conference was held there -to popularise the new name [and probably because too, the newly emerging autocratic Russian State would not tolerate the levels of protest that have accompanied all previous G8 conferences during this decade.] It is significant that after all the brutality of the past, the Soviet Union morphed so easily back to its historical 'Russia'-which apart from everything else is easier to say.
In our own part of the world we changed the name of our currency close to forty years ago and yet an old slang name for the dead currency lingers on in memory amongst the poor and dispossessed in the most curious of manners. Someone wanting to purchase a single cigarette could buy something called a 'loose' from a streetside vendor. 'How much for a loose?' Fifteen 'bob' will be the answer. What is a 'bob'? Who knows? -The answer; the ancient currency involved something referred to in the slang of the time as a 'Bob'. This is translated into today's currency; and to keep up with cigarette tax inflation the price has moved over the decades from 'two bob' to its current twelve, fifteen or twenty or even twenty five 'bob'. 'Bob' has morphed into a convenient multiple of ten.
The negation of memory is, in this case, as with St Petersburg, an incomplete process.
All to often the intention to obliterate memory is political and is deliberately intended to exclude the class of citizen formerly associated with the place to be renamed. Where the change is accompanied with dynamic growth and development and a complementary battery of applied effort, the transition to the new name is often successful. Where it isn't then the outcome is less certain.
So a quarter century ago the rebel State of Rhodesia was overthrown and replaced with the shiny new State of Zimbabwe. Steps were actively taken to drive out the people who had an emotional attachment to the former name but it seems that the Applied Effort category of actions to be associated with the change were misdirected: and over time the new name has become synonymous with failure, as the citizens who replaced the former overlords failed to live up to the promise implicit in the name change. Today the country's new name is synonymous with oppression, corruption and the taint of failure, like that of the re-named Myanmar. What the failed State of Zimbabwe demonstrates is that in a communication crowded planet a bad reputation is easier to popularise than a good one, as we all know, say, regarding the lapsed schoolgirl from our old high school gossip days.
Which brings us to the core issue relevant to name changing. The decision to change the name of a place is invariably driven by political expediencies. It is relatively easy to have a re-naming ceremony at which all those who will be the emotional beneficiaries of the change can slap each other on the back. Later however comes the difficulty re-establishing the new name in the consciousness of the wider populace. Of re-taking ownership of that space in our consciousness that associates a place with a name.
In the days of Leningrad there was no problem since the wider populace was actively discouraged from travelling to the place. In 2006 however the most crucial requirement for almost every place on earth is to generate tourism revenue to deal with the problem of unemployed surplus and inherently unwanted humanity. Thus there may well be pitfalls inherent in what marketers call 'branding'.
For instance if one lived in the place formerly called 'Warmbaths', a place well known for its health giving waters, then changing the name to 'Bela Bela' creates two difficulties for prospective tourists. Where is the place and why is it a useful place to visit? [ Perhaps Bela Bela means beneficial waters in some other language-how does one communicate that idea to a prospective customer with more simplicity than was done with the old name-or is it the intention of the name changers to restrict advertising to only encompass and target those who understand the meaning of the new name-?]
The usual approach is to advertise the place as Bela Bela [formerly Warmbaths] adding to the cost of marketing and creating communication difficulties for the marketers. When the name is even more well known-like say Pretoria: a place celebrated amongst others things in globally famous drinking songs like 'We are marching to Pretoria', a song known all over the planet and the place disappears-morphed into the new name Tshwane, the confusion is immense as anyone attempting to give tourist information to bewildered foreign travellers will testify. T-Shwaa-nee is technically easier to say than the more cumbersome Pre-taw-ria-Shwayne is more probable to a foreigner who associates 'ane' with pane, lane or sane-shwayne has also got fewer syllables than shwaa-nee so shwayne is the more probable choice over time-.people will soon be saying that they going to Shwayne, no matter how many disapproving mutters come from those who have an emotional attachment to the new name.
Then of course one gets the multiple name change like when a place at which the traveller may choose to disembark changes its name from that of a once renowned albeit generally discredited politician to a geographic location and then to a less well known politician not only does the cost of re-establishing that the new name is associated with the old location, but in the case in question -renaming an international airport from Jan Smuts [never incidently shortened to Jay- Ess-] to Johannesburg International [a sensible change, some would say, and shortened instantly to Jo-burg Int] to the relatively obscure [from an International perspective] O.R. Tambo International is guaranteed to cause hassles and inconvenience to marketers. This is both because the location of the airport now has to be explained and clarified and because the initial letters in the honoured politicians name are associated with ambiguity in the world's dominant travel language.
In the final analysis the change of name is not the issue, it is the task of replacing the old established name with a new name in the minds of a world in a state of perpetual motion that is the issue. In an over communicated world finding a place in the mind of the customer is expensive, brutal and probably short. To give one instance of the difficulties lying ahead of this particular change, how would the new name be listed in the telephone directory when it becomes universally referred to as O'Taam-bo-thereby sounding quite different to how it is spelled.
One has only to contrast the different responses of the world at large to three disasters over the past few years to truly appreciate the difficulty inherent in re-branding a product. When South East Asia suffered the Tsunami disaster two years ago the event occurred at the one time of the year guaranteed to get everyone's attention-The annual Christmas/New Year shut down - the result was an instantaneous outpouring of charity unprecedented in the history of disaster relief. On the other hand last year's earthquake disaster in Pakistan administered Kashmir, and the more recent tsunami disaster in Java took place during prime business time and were barely noticed. In fact the most recent disaster in Java coincided with the current Israeli incursion into Lebanon and it is doubtful that it received even one percent of the attention generated by the first disaster with naturally a minimal amount of relief in a relief crowded agenda. The Palesinian/Israeli conflict is incidentally almost entirely rooted in the repercussions following forcible name changes.
The recent change of street name in my neighbourhood of Harrow road to Joe Slovo Drive is a prime example too of the unintended outcome associated with a change that can backfire to the ridicule of the person to be honoured-the road is so frequently blocked with traffic at crucial times that the word 'drive' is inoperative and the roadway it is now informally known as 'Slow Jovo'.
At least the city has managed to replace most of the relevant signposting. Since it is not a particularly widespread name change. Changing names is expensive and it is again fashionable for those who propose to change the name using taxpayer's money to make emotion drenched claims that no expense should be spared to facilitate the change and of course when that the time comes to spare no expense there just happens to be no budget, or the starving and the indigent part of the budget is cannibalised to make the payments to well-positioned cronies. There are unlimited opportunities to change names in a revolutionary outcome there are however seldom sufficient funds to do even the urgent things like maintaining hospitals and roads and police services, so the result is that I may be heading for Ch-wayne-but all the signposts still point to Pretoria and strangers to whom both names are new get lost and stand a good chance of becoming someone's lunch.
All too often too the new name is also associated with declining performance. For instance a group of towns to the east of 'Jozi' were transformed some years ago into the impenetrably named 'Ekuruleni' [ Now shortened to Eek or Ee-Kay]. Anyone travelling to the more outlying parts of the new 'metro' as its fashionably called, will notice that the parks and pavements haven't been mowed for a season of two, streetlamps work desultorily, street signage and manhole covers have gone of for recycling and the gutters overflow with effluent.
Suddenly few of the formerly independent towns now grouped under the single heading, 'Eek', are able to manage the most simple of services that ratepayers used to take for granted and vast numbers of people simply evade paying their rates and service levies because they can-the newly empowered authority is apparently unable to cope with the logistics of controlling all that falls under the new name. Perhaps this is because presumably so many people had to be laid off to accommodate the inflated salaries of the new metro managers and the needs of 'downsizing' and rationalisation of services to extract so-called economies of scale. -Perhaps that was the intention all along, change provides wonderful profiteering opportunities for otherwise unnecessary humans.
So what's in a name? Perhaps nothing it seems.
Cheers.
Friday, July 28, 2006
Sunday, July 16, 2006
Anyone for Pale Riders? Chaps.
Weblog 15 July 2006 Jozi:
Now that we are in a gap between the World Cup, Wimbledon and the Tri Nations it's time for a quick burst of warfare in some well known volatile place and its back to the game again. Reality can only be invariably allowed to disrupt the main agenda-which is the The game of diversion Nero once played. Perhaps we could be going into a penalty shoot out -oh dear: a sporting metaphor to lighten the horror that must be Gaza today.
Prediction: Within months someone takes the Iranian nuclear plant out of the International equation. Syria degenerates towards a fundamentalist regime and the army takes over. Lebanon returns to civil war and the State of Israel is engaged in all- out war backed by a revitalised Uncle Dubya. But this conflict into which Israel is stumbling is no 6 Day wonder with all the pulverised people retreating to the sidelines: this is Iraq on steroids.
Would that the rampaging universe ignores these words and sends us a rugby victory instead-
Where to next?
Is the train leaving the station?
Are the passengers on board?
And will the journey take us into unknown territory?
Fool. Every journey takes us into unknown territory.
Have we reached the climax towards which we have hurtled for two thousand years
The moment adored by those who profess
This
Or
That creed?
Or is this simply an evasive tactic to distract us from the non-goings on at the G8+4
In the resurgent and increasingly authoritarian Russia.
Are we being distracted from
Or led towards
The global rise and rise of authoritarianism:
Aristocrats and anally rich wannabee main persons are gathering in
Comfortable places and deciding on the doling of the world. Or are they simply practicing smugness.
Either way it seems to be that we are reaching a climax of sorts.
Israel reacts with full apparent awareness of the need to act instantly. Planned reaction.
The first real 'people's government' in Israel has taken what many see as a step too far. Invading bombing and generally throwing a mass of toys out of the cot.
Is that is what our ancestors meant
When they said that
When good people stand by evil triumphs.
And when the good stand by out of despair the outcome is the same.
Perhaps there are no good people.
All reason appears to have been thrown from the window
By the Israelis
Mr Putin the new rising Csar of the lesser Russias calls it a 'disproportionate' response to the alleged abduction of a gawky young
Corporal and subsequently two other unidentified soldiers.
He is right. We all know he is right.
So why does the leader of a people who have given the world so much over so long decided to embark on what is virtually a tit for tat suicide mission.
Some years ago just prior to Bush's invasion of Iraq I blogged about how we were in an era between the generally conciliatory based philosophy of so-called Liberalism and the retributive philosophy of what is now termed Neo-conservatism.
My sense is that retribution is slowly coming to the boil. Our liberal spring is over and 'the winter of our discontent' looms large on our globalising horizons.
The forces of so-called Irrationalism driven by dysfunctional humans with deluded alternate visions for our intrinsic bubble reality have pushed us to the edge of catastrophe. Have possibly pushed us to abandon the Liberal ethic and turn to our dark sides.
Our entire system and its hope for humanity is under threat from forces that believe there can be an alternative way to run our planet than this free [ish] market that will give us all a better life. If our human story were a scientific experiment then we have long since proven that human development is best nurtured under conditions of democratic meritocracy and that the only things that grows from the fanatics visions are the painful shriekings of broken lives.
At the very worst humans do not need vast amounts of freedom to flourish. Without freedom though societies wither and it is frequently argued by the retributionists [aka neo-cons] that an excess of freedom generates a state of anarchy.
Now a state of anarchy also occurs when two people who live next door refuse to acknowledge the rights that either have or simply deny the right of each other to exist.
When a conditional right exists on one party [in this case Israel] and no right exists from the other party [in this case Hamas and its backers -the absentees in Syria, Lebanon and Iran and perhaps elsewhere]then the result is absolute.
Someone always loses.
We forget because we have all lived in this era of human rights for so long that the so-called Liberal philosophy with its founding ethic of social responsibility, rule of law, and self-reliance balanced to the Aristotelian mean, is wafer thin.
We are a species that has bestrode this planet for at least 180 millenia and to the best of our knowledge this wafer thin philosophy has held sway for perhaps 1 of them. We should beware that we are not reverting to the ideals that held us at bay from our destiny for the other 170.
There are many who see the 'war on terror' as a set up: a conspiracy of neo-cons, and who knows maybe it is. I put it on the same level of probability or conjecture as I place the even more unprovable existence of god.
No. I believe the truth to be more prosaic. The concept of Chaos theory pretty well sums it up. People do what they do. Because people's behaviour is relatively predictable on a mass scale there are all sort of people with their own agendas to affect mass behaviour and profit in some way from the table droppings. Sometimes these agendas clash on a scale that forces an eviscerating response. Such a concatenation of events occurred in 1914, largely due to the holidays and the limitations of communications in that era.
The Israelis have no-where to. We have seen what ordinary humans who have chosen to arms themselves as human explosives and destroy their enemies can do. Every day somewhere on the planet someone blows up ten people and themselves [or so it seems].
What will it mean to us when an entire nation realises that it is facing a foe so implacable that nothing short of the destruction of the entire State will do. What will it mean for us when the day comes when that nation decides to act: 'To do or die.' And what if this is what we are witnessing here.
Mao taught us that in the war of the flea the flea wins. He never heard of dog dip.
We have forgotten the lessons Genghis Khan taught us. The Jews haven't. They know that there are implacable enemies who would exterminate them as Genghis Khan did the late empire of the Kwarazm-shah [circa 1220] the now forgotten place today known as Iran and obliterated all memory of those people from our race. The Nazis were neither the first nor the last to practice genocide. The Israelis know that if they fail to act decisively now that they may never again have the opportunity.
Sensible Israelis have undoubtedly read the message of the fate of the schmuck so-called 'white farmers' of the Zimbabwe soon-to-be-failed-State; arbitrarily relieved of their property decades after they negotiated a settlement that most obviously had a hidden agenda. That a similar agenda is in play in South Africa is rapidly dawning on the former Afrikaner rulers of the racist Apartheid State and there is nothing they can do to alter their destiny. The Jews are amongst the few 'comeback-kids' in history.
They took the path less travelled [eventually] and face what Yeats called 'quiet desperation' as their people are murdered daily, their icons demolished, and their place in society usurped. This can be said of the Welsh, the Afrikaner, tribes that have no names fighting for their destiny in the Niger delta against the forces of corrupt oil power or the latter day Jews.
History shows us nothing but ignominy there and they will either fight or gradually disperse to the four winds and reconstitute themselves in a new image and like the luckless Afrikaner those who remain will slowly vanish over the next two centuries notwithstanding Karen Zoid and the post Apartheid flowering of Afrikaner culture.
Over the past 180 millennia entire cultures have arisen existed been eradicated and vanished. But the Jews have fought against assimilation and now they face the truth. Perhaps this is the moment history has prepared us for two thousand years, that great moment in our common story represented by the 'Pale riders'-fuck-I hope not, there is nothing more despairing than living under conditions of perpetual conflict.
Can you imagine anything more destructive than an all out war escalating out of control because the Israeli's have encountered a people who are equally determined not to be eradicated and who intend to have back the territory that from their perspective was stolen from them. Take a person's soul and dignity and they were barter for a new soul and new dignity. Take away the land and you have an enemy for all of time. We know this here: two implacable foes, one piece of land.
Of course the newly democratically elected regime [if one may use that word] in Israel can choose to negotiate and swap prisoners for prisoners. There isn't really any alternative that the earnest democrat can accept. Unless the democrat is actually only faking it-and as the former G7 cosy up to a rising autocrat in Russia right now as you read this the democratic credentials of the former so-called 'free world' are beginning to look dodgy.
Should such a 'democrat' as Elmut Olmert [sic] perceive that the enemy is not just Israel's enemy but an enemy of all allegedly free people, then there is ultimately-when all else appears to have failed-.the mailed fist. Then the child must know that the parent was right and must go to wherever the enemy hides, even if this means that the parent must go to the places of those 'good' people amongst whom the enemy of the children swim. Then the failure of those good people to act when they could means the probability of their own destruction-there are no innocents in a State run by terror, and for those living in the shadow of Israel this is an avenging State deluxe.
Nonetheless this is the human condition and much of the next thousand years will be geared to constrain this but right now the cycle has been retarded: Violence flows. This cycle cannot be broken it can only be retarded and constrained and this may well need what Napoleon called: 'a whiff of grapeshot.'
Sensible people would recommend to their friends that they release the three hostages unharmed so there is no longer an excuse for this violence, unless of course they can't release the hostages or intend to execute them on Internet television. OF course it could be that no excuse was really needed: this is high noon and it's Show Time.
Cheers
NiK
Now that we are in a gap between the World Cup, Wimbledon and the Tri Nations it's time for a quick burst of warfare in some well known volatile place and its back to the game again. Reality can only be invariably allowed to disrupt the main agenda-which is the The game of diversion Nero once played. Perhaps we could be going into a penalty shoot out -oh dear: a sporting metaphor to lighten the horror that must be Gaza today.
Prediction: Within months someone takes the Iranian nuclear plant out of the International equation. Syria degenerates towards a fundamentalist regime and the army takes over. Lebanon returns to civil war and the State of Israel is engaged in all- out war backed by a revitalised Uncle Dubya. But this conflict into which Israel is stumbling is no 6 Day wonder with all the pulverised people retreating to the sidelines: this is Iraq on steroids.
Would that the rampaging universe ignores these words and sends us a rugby victory instead-
Where to next?
Is the train leaving the station?
Are the passengers on board?
And will the journey take us into unknown territory?
Fool. Every journey takes us into unknown territory.
Have we reached the climax towards which we have hurtled for two thousand years
The moment adored by those who profess
This
Or
That creed?
Or is this simply an evasive tactic to distract us from the non-goings on at the G8+4
In the resurgent and increasingly authoritarian Russia.
Are we being distracted from
Or led towards
The global rise and rise of authoritarianism:
Aristocrats and anally rich wannabee main persons are gathering in
Comfortable places and deciding on the doling of the world. Or are they simply practicing smugness.
Either way it seems to be that we are reaching a climax of sorts.
Israel reacts with full apparent awareness of the need to act instantly. Planned reaction.
The first real 'people's government' in Israel has taken what many see as a step too far. Invading bombing and generally throwing a mass of toys out of the cot.
Is that is what our ancestors meant
When they said that
When good people stand by evil triumphs.
And when the good stand by out of despair the outcome is the same.
Perhaps there are no good people.
All reason appears to have been thrown from the window
By the Israelis
Mr Putin the new rising Csar of the lesser Russias calls it a 'disproportionate' response to the alleged abduction of a gawky young
Corporal and subsequently two other unidentified soldiers.
He is right. We all know he is right.
So why does the leader of a people who have given the world so much over so long decided to embark on what is virtually a tit for tat suicide mission.
Some years ago just prior to Bush's invasion of Iraq I blogged about how we were in an era between the generally conciliatory based philosophy of so-called Liberalism and the retributive philosophy of what is now termed Neo-conservatism.
My sense is that retribution is slowly coming to the boil. Our liberal spring is over and 'the winter of our discontent' looms large on our globalising horizons.
The forces of so-called Irrationalism driven by dysfunctional humans with deluded alternate visions for our intrinsic bubble reality have pushed us to the edge of catastrophe. Have possibly pushed us to abandon the Liberal ethic and turn to our dark sides.
Our entire system and its hope for humanity is under threat from forces that believe there can be an alternative way to run our planet than this free [ish] market that will give us all a better life. If our human story were a scientific experiment then we have long since proven that human development is best nurtured under conditions of democratic meritocracy and that the only things that grows from the fanatics visions are the painful shriekings of broken lives.
At the very worst humans do not need vast amounts of freedom to flourish. Without freedom though societies wither and it is frequently argued by the retributionists [aka neo-cons] that an excess of freedom generates a state of anarchy.
Now a state of anarchy also occurs when two people who live next door refuse to acknowledge the rights that either have or simply deny the right of each other to exist.
When a conditional right exists on one party [in this case Israel] and no right exists from the other party [in this case Hamas and its backers -the absentees in Syria, Lebanon and Iran and perhaps elsewhere]then the result is absolute.
Someone always loses.
We forget because we have all lived in this era of human rights for so long that the so-called Liberal philosophy with its founding ethic of social responsibility, rule of law, and self-reliance balanced to the Aristotelian mean, is wafer thin.
We are a species that has bestrode this planet for at least 180 millenia and to the best of our knowledge this wafer thin philosophy has held sway for perhaps 1 of them. We should beware that we are not reverting to the ideals that held us at bay from our destiny for the other 170.
There are many who see the 'war on terror' as a set up: a conspiracy of neo-cons, and who knows maybe it is. I put it on the same level of probability or conjecture as I place the even more unprovable existence of god.
No. I believe the truth to be more prosaic. The concept of Chaos theory pretty well sums it up. People do what they do. Because people's behaviour is relatively predictable on a mass scale there are all sort of people with their own agendas to affect mass behaviour and profit in some way from the table droppings. Sometimes these agendas clash on a scale that forces an eviscerating response. Such a concatenation of events occurred in 1914, largely due to the holidays and the limitations of communications in that era.
The Israelis have no-where to. We have seen what ordinary humans who have chosen to arms themselves as human explosives and destroy their enemies can do. Every day somewhere on the planet someone blows up ten people and themselves [or so it seems].
What will it mean to us when an entire nation realises that it is facing a foe so implacable that nothing short of the destruction of the entire State will do. What will it mean for us when the day comes when that nation decides to act: 'To do or die.' And what if this is what we are witnessing here.
Mao taught us that in the war of the flea the flea wins. He never heard of dog dip.
We have forgotten the lessons Genghis Khan taught us. The Jews haven't. They know that there are implacable enemies who would exterminate them as Genghis Khan did the late empire of the Kwarazm-shah [circa 1220] the now forgotten place today known as Iran and obliterated all memory of those people from our race. The Nazis were neither the first nor the last to practice genocide. The Israelis know that if they fail to act decisively now that they may never again have the opportunity.
Sensible Israelis have undoubtedly read the message of the fate of the schmuck so-called 'white farmers' of the Zimbabwe soon-to-be-failed-State; arbitrarily relieved of their property decades after they negotiated a settlement that most obviously had a hidden agenda. That a similar agenda is in play in South Africa is rapidly dawning on the former Afrikaner rulers of the racist Apartheid State and there is nothing they can do to alter their destiny. The Jews are amongst the few 'comeback-kids' in history.
They took the path less travelled [eventually] and face what Yeats called 'quiet desperation' as their people are murdered daily, their icons demolished, and their place in society usurped. This can be said of the Welsh, the Afrikaner, tribes that have no names fighting for their destiny in the Niger delta against the forces of corrupt oil power or the latter day Jews.
History shows us nothing but ignominy there and they will either fight or gradually disperse to the four winds and reconstitute themselves in a new image and like the luckless Afrikaner those who remain will slowly vanish over the next two centuries notwithstanding Karen Zoid and the post Apartheid flowering of Afrikaner culture.
Over the past 180 millennia entire cultures have arisen existed been eradicated and vanished. But the Jews have fought against assimilation and now they face the truth. Perhaps this is the moment history has prepared us for two thousand years, that great moment in our common story represented by the 'Pale riders'-fuck-I hope not, there is nothing more despairing than living under conditions of perpetual conflict.
Can you imagine anything more destructive than an all out war escalating out of control because the Israeli's have encountered a people who are equally determined not to be eradicated and who intend to have back the territory that from their perspective was stolen from them. Take a person's soul and dignity and they were barter for a new soul and new dignity. Take away the land and you have an enemy for all of time. We know this here: two implacable foes, one piece of land.
Of course the newly democratically elected regime [if one may use that word] in Israel can choose to negotiate and swap prisoners for prisoners. There isn't really any alternative that the earnest democrat can accept. Unless the democrat is actually only faking it-and as the former G7 cosy up to a rising autocrat in Russia right now as you read this the democratic credentials of the former so-called 'free world' are beginning to look dodgy.
Should such a 'democrat' as Elmut Olmert [sic] perceive that the enemy is not just Israel's enemy but an enemy of all allegedly free people, then there is ultimately-when all else appears to have failed-.the mailed fist. Then the child must know that the parent was right and must go to wherever the enemy hides, even if this means that the parent must go to the places of those 'good' people amongst whom the enemy of the children swim. Then the failure of those good people to act when they could means the probability of their own destruction-there are no innocents in a State run by terror, and for those living in the shadow of Israel this is an avenging State deluxe.
Nonetheless this is the human condition and much of the next thousand years will be geared to constrain this but right now the cycle has been retarded: Violence flows. This cycle cannot be broken it can only be retarded and constrained and this may well need what Napoleon called: 'a whiff of grapeshot.'
Sensible people would recommend to their friends that they release the three hostages unharmed so there is no longer an excuse for this violence, unless of course they can't release the hostages or intend to execute them on Internet television. OF course it could be that no excuse was really needed: this is high noon and it's Show Time.
Cheers
NiK
Sunday, July 9, 2006
London calling...again
London Calling
I'm watching a replay of the London bombings one year on.
The grinding details regarding the pain
Felt
By
Those
Who remain behind
Brought out for a re-union with we
Who are numbed by earthquakes and bombs
And tsunami's and bombs
And Aids and bombs and big bright Mercedes motor cars
And the forgettery that wipes everything clean as soon as we know it wasn't us that
Got bombed.
Alt control delete
Alt control delete
Alt
Control delete
Altdelete control delete alt.
Delete delete.
Getting our attention is more and more difficult and calls
For ever more
Intrusive
Modes of intrusion.
Take notice of me. Now.
Last night 'they'-the Beeb played scenes from a tape
Released by who knows who
And
Allegedly featuring one
Of the
Suicide liberation fundamentalist
Irrationalist perp's in the whole bombing
Bit
And for a moment I thought of V
And who's playing
Whom
In this asymmetrical game we are having with
Ourselves.
.NiK[06]
Nik
I'm watching a replay of the London bombings one year on.
The grinding details regarding the pain
Felt
By
Those
Who remain behind
Brought out for a re-union with we
Who are numbed by earthquakes and bombs
And tsunami's and bombs
And Aids and bombs and big bright Mercedes motor cars
And the forgettery that wipes everything clean as soon as we know it wasn't us that
Got bombed.
Alt control delete
Alt control delete
Alt
Control delete
Altdelete control delete alt.
Delete delete.
Getting our attention is more and more difficult and calls
For ever more
Intrusive
Modes of intrusion.
Take notice of me. Now.
Last night 'they'-the Beeb played scenes from a tape
Released by who knows who
And
Allegedly featuring one
Of the
Suicide liberation fundamentalist
Irrationalist perp's in the whole bombing
Bit
And for a moment I thought of V
And who's playing
Whom
In this asymmetrical game we are having with
Ourselves.
.NiK[06]
Nik
The stuttering game
July 8, '07
The stuttering game.
One of those intimate peculiarities that reveal one's proclivities most enthusiastically
Is the contrived stutter.
We've all heard them on the radio
On television
'Our guys' the endless stream of
'in' people who proliferate in our media and talk -You know: the so-called,
Chattering class'. Those who are consulted and asked to state the obvious done
With style and authoritative panache.
I say Scroon these interest rates- What do say hey do you think we're at the end of it
Oh gosh no- at least another 200 basis points lie ahead. This due to the impact of the screed upon the exchange scrabbler
The tosspot deficit
And the ballooning cost of scromps
Yes dammed peculiar stuff these scromps.
In amongst these is the regular one who uses the stutter as a strategy to control the debate/discussion/interview/interaction. They all have similar names and
As Pete put it- 'They all sound just the same.'
The contrived stutter is a strategy
It is used to draw on a presumed
Latent implicit sympathy/guilt at no sympathy
Feelings in a listener, which makes them fearful to
Interrupt -you know how fragile people are in the company of the damaged,
And simultaneously helps to keep the airwaves full thereby preventing others, perhaps
Less sensitive, from jumping into the silence
That would ordinarily be represented by the length of time the 'stutterer' would have Stuttered-and
Stealing the moment..
One would imagine that in the combative turf represented by political interactivity Keeping the floor is as essential to Party
Political success as keeping the ball is to a sports team's success. If you are unwilling For whatever reason to practice thinking
Faster than a cutthroat razor can slice the wind
Then better a strategy that maintains a slow pace
Controlled
To mask the synergies of both
simultaneously
My favourite this year was the trades union chappie who claimed
His members didn't care for the ten commandments
Of the Christian bible because
His members weren't
Christians.
He encountered some flak if you remember
And appeared on the worthy Mr Perlman's programme
And was interviewed and under attack he dominated the airwaves
with his gloriously structured and wonderfully prepared stut, stut, stutter.
It was magnificent -the man went da da da da da da da teraraera d through question after question obfuscating
His responses
With elaborate Party stammer-laced construction
That stood in stark contrast to the glorious
Fiery outpouring of rhetoric we all heard from him earlier in the broadcast and the previous day when he'd first been reported.
Then there was no tongue tied twisting around through a curiously convoluting range of
his meanings and his feelings and his intentions.
Complete clarity. Absolute certainty. Then-
Perhaps the He who spoke to Perlman was not the same He
Recorded at the meeting?
I think that people who genuinely stutter and for whom
Stuttering is a terrible affliction
Must feel immensely abused by this widespread
opportunistic yet now most fashionable
Misuse of a
Developed physical handicap to lure their listeners and
Numb them with a stream of stuttering seal talk. The ultimate
Effect is one of
Disconnected information or in
Politically incorrect layman's language -frequently-
Bullshit.
The Party stutter was the one thing missing from the performance of the supporting hero in 16 Blocks- the movie; featuring a booze laced, dronk verdriet, slouch about bum played by the inimitable Bruce 'love s ya baby' Willis.
The subject of the movie, which involves the removal of the
Supporting hero: a vital witness in a corruption enquiry, to a courthouse somewhere Downtown
by a certain time, is a tedious fellow: after-a-while-you-wanna-slash-his-chords
And-render-him-permanently-paraphasic.
In short a yabbling
Kid with a need
To become a modest baker of
Birthday cakes and
In amongst a completely incoherent adenoidal stream of vacuous babble
He manages to present a completely
Convinced
Belief that people can change -and that you can
Take control of your life and
Turn it to where you want it to be. The one thing he never
Does
In his satiric mind numbing stream of babble is stutter.
But then perhaps the stutter would have been
Counter
To the theme of the movie, which was,
Intrinsically,
About honesty.
.NiK[o6]
The stuttering game.
One of those intimate peculiarities that reveal one's proclivities most enthusiastically
Is the contrived stutter.
We've all heard them on the radio
On television
'Our guys' the endless stream of
'in' people who proliferate in our media and talk -You know: the so-called,
Chattering class'. Those who are consulted and asked to state the obvious done
With style and authoritative panache.
I say Scroon these interest rates- What do say hey do you think we're at the end of it
Oh gosh no- at least another 200 basis points lie ahead. This due to the impact of the screed upon the exchange scrabbler
The tosspot deficit
And the ballooning cost of scromps
Yes dammed peculiar stuff these scromps.
In amongst these is the regular one who uses the stutter as a strategy to control the debate/discussion/interview/interaction. They all have similar names and
As Pete put it- 'They all sound just the same.'
The contrived stutter is a strategy
It is used to draw on a presumed
Latent implicit sympathy/guilt at no sympathy
Feelings in a listener, which makes them fearful to
Interrupt -you know how fragile people are in the company of the damaged,
And simultaneously helps to keep the airwaves full thereby preventing others, perhaps
Less sensitive, from jumping into the silence
That would ordinarily be represented by the length of time the 'stutterer' would have Stuttered-and
Stealing the moment..
One would imagine that in the combative turf represented by political interactivity Keeping the floor is as essential to Party
Political success as keeping the ball is to a sports team's success. If you are unwilling For whatever reason to practice thinking
Faster than a cutthroat razor can slice the wind
Then better a strategy that maintains a slow pace
Controlled
To mask the synergies of both
simultaneously
My favourite this year was the trades union chappie who claimed
His members didn't care for the ten commandments
Of the Christian bible because
His members weren't
Christians.
He encountered some flak if you remember
And appeared on the worthy Mr Perlman's programme
And was interviewed and under attack he dominated the airwaves
with his gloriously structured and wonderfully prepared stut, stut, stutter.
It was magnificent -the man went da da da da da da da teraraera d through question after question obfuscating
His responses
With elaborate Party stammer-laced construction
That stood in stark contrast to the glorious
Fiery outpouring of rhetoric we all heard from him earlier in the broadcast and the previous day when he'd first been reported.
Then there was no tongue tied twisting around through a curiously convoluting range of
his meanings and his feelings and his intentions.
Complete clarity. Absolute certainty. Then-
Perhaps the He who spoke to Perlman was not the same He
Recorded at the meeting?
I think that people who genuinely stutter and for whom
Stuttering is a terrible affliction
Must feel immensely abused by this widespread
opportunistic yet now most fashionable
Misuse of a
Developed physical handicap to lure their listeners and
Numb them with a stream of stuttering seal talk. The ultimate
Effect is one of
Disconnected information or in
Politically incorrect layman's language -frequently-
Bullshit.
The Party stutter was the one thing missing from the performance of the supporting hero in 16 Blocks- the movie; featuring a booze laced, dronk verdriet, slouch about bum played by the inimitable Bruce 'love s ya baby' Willis.
The subject of the movie, which involves the removal of the
Supporting hero: a vital witness in a corruption enquiry, to a courthouse somewhere Downtown
by a certain time, is a tedious fellow: after-a-while-you-wanna-slash-his-chords
And-render-him-permanently-paraphasic.
In short a yabbling
Kid with a need
To become a modest baker of
Birthday cakes and
In amongst a completely incoherent adenoidal stream of vacuous babble
He manages to present a completely
Convinced
Belief that people can change -and that you can
Take control of your life and
Turn it to where you want it to be. The one thing he never
Does
In his satiric mind numbing stream of babble is stutter.
But then perhaps the stutter would have been
Counter
To the theme of the movie, which was,
Intrinsically,
About honesty.
.NiK[o6]
Killing kows in suburbia
Amongst the many things that had to be done this week one gratuitous moment came on Friday morning when I snatched and caught chunks on the move of what seemed to be one of Perlman's more bizarre after eight debate topics.[SAFM Fri 7.7.06]
Apparently there are citizens who have been moving into the old genteel suburbs and are offending the established inmates through a particular customary habit which seems to involve beating a kow to death in some way [that was never clarified] and then doing who knows what [again unclarified] with the blood n guts and the skin n things and then presumably eating the carcass in some way, [also not clarified].
In fact all we know after an hour of debate is that kows are being moved into the suburbs somehow and then slaughtered in pursuit of some vigorously defended but inherently unexplained 'cultural purpose' whatever this bizarrely defined ritual signified somehow got lost, well certainly on me.
We know from various callers that the process of slaughter results in the kow making a fearful noise; filled with terror and scaring children and causing dogs to bark. From my days as a hunter in my youth one can assume that the process of post mortem gutting would be generally stenching up the neighbourhood with instantly rotting intestinal parts, which in turn rapidly all bring masses of flies and maggots n things into the environment. This state of affairs would be presumably regarded by most people without medical aid facilities as a potential health hazard to be avoided, and apparently it's here: going on next door as soon as 'they' move in.
Yes you're right it was one of the incessant "us" n "them"...issues again.
Ignoring for a moment the thought that this may actually be quite an isolated phenomenon, notwithstanding that this debate has apparently occurred previously on other stations over the past couple of years: this is at least the third such debate on radio that I have picked up on recently, I would like again to stress that on each occasion this issue of why kows need to be butcheredat presumably huge expense seems unclarified. One presumes that status is somehow involved.
We don't know how the kows are killed, who does the killing or what happens to the bits n pieces. Is the late kow consumed by the guests? Is it eaten raw [i presumen not]or cooked, is it buried in the ground for a period of time in pursuit of some arcane plea or perhaps just given to the dogs. What in other words, happens to the contents of the kow once the kow is noisily despatched.
The rage on the part of some frustrated pro-kow killing citizens was that [those?] 'people' objected to this practice. [ as usual these debates are loaded with 'they'ing' and 'them'ing']. The phone-ins were pretty adamant. A considerable body of callers regarded the practice with general distaste. And conversely there was the almost reflexive flood of calls denouncing all those who saw the practice as reprehensible, for whatever reasons, as mean minded exclusionists. But then it wouldn't be a debate without a whole lot of inter-tribal slanging and random rage loaded stereotyping going on would it?.
There was some outnumbered fellow who took an animal rightist position. That being horrible to animals in fulfilment of one's cultural wank was uncool. His point was ignored. Perlman stuck to his point-he wasn't digressing from his prize into some never never land -he wanted blood. We did establish though that the caller wasn't circumcised [!] and felt it had not impacted on his life[don't ask!]. Perlman gave up and we went back to Kows
Interestingly no one phoned in to suggest that the entire issue represents a great business opportunity. And so in the interests of pouring oil on troubled bloodstains, I shall rectify this in what follows.
First off: I think this whole issue of kultural rights is something that needs to be assessed in terms of where we believe that we're going and if we are going to keep up with this particular practice [ie ritual suburban kow killing] or move on into the 21st century.
Secondly: We also have to remember that in a world overwhelmingly loaded with inherently superfluous humanity that anything that can turn a buck must be promoted as a means of solving the desperate problem of work opportunity shortage that afflicts us nationally.
In other words while we recognise that cultural variances can retard progressive trends we are dependent on these variances to generate tourism revenue simply because it provides employment. The question not mentioned in the debate is 'do we move on' or do we make this 'cultural practice' work for us, assuming we can resolve the animal rightist issues inherent in moving on.
By way of example of moving on, for instance, it was a common customary practice amongst my ancestors to pop over to the local 'loony bin' [sic] [known today by the more politically correct term Psychiatric treatment centre]
on a Sunday after mandatory church attendance,
and poke sticks at the 'loons' and
generally have a bit of fun at their expense and feed them pea-nuts [get it] and such like infantile stuff. This was considered so 'normal' that we still have the word 'bedlam'
in our language.
Bedlam represented one of the more famous places where my ancestors practiced this outlandish cultural belief.
Others of my ancestor's favourite cultural practices were bear baiting, dog fighting and dame ducking [no not with an F]. This latter you may know involved tying some offending female onto a stool on the end of a see saw and tipping her into a pond when they became a tad uppity. If they survived it must have been because they practiced witchcraft, which we had been culturally wired to believe was bad. Therefore we would kill those who survived.
We don't do this anymore. [Some would suggest we do, only with more subtlety and a large dose of bulimia.]
I for one regret, with some nostalgia, that we no longer have public hangings
and that we no longer take women [and men for that matter] convicted of infanticide
and while still living, sew them into cloth bags
and toss them overboard into Table Bay. It was also customary amongst certain local indigenous
cultural groups to garrotte rapists while they were immersed in water and some excellent lithographs on this topic have come down to us via the inestimable Thomas
Baines. I note without judgement that we don't seem to keen on reintroducing this cultural practice into the suburbs.
Collectively all this punishment seemed so wonderfully gratifying.
Nonetheless I also accept that part of the price one pays
to progress into this wonderfully secular consumerist world illusion
that we have created out of nothing
but expectations and shaped belief
is that one sets aside these more bizarre rituals in the
'interests of progress' [such a gloriously empty phrase isn't it?] and
'getting along with each other'.
However what I think and what the market does
are invariably unrelated to each other I see that this particular kow killing
'cultural practice' rooted as it is in the general fantasy's with which
we people our mundane existence has immense
potential as a business idea .
It is perhaps symptomatic of how we allow emotion to inter-
fere with judgement that no entrepreneurial types have seen the opportunity
presented
by this unleashed national outpouring of desire to ritually 'murder' animals
in suburbia.
There are two [perhaps not] obvious avenues of approach here:
· the 'home ritualisers' who were the subject of the debate.
· And 'World Cup Ox Slag Braais' with a difference. [for offshore readers O.R. Slag = butcher = braais = barbeque aka 'barbies' to antipodeans ]
· Combine two cultural habits and create a dramatic and omnipotent backdrop to those staggeringly prosaic football games upon the screen-Combine Paglia's Chthonian, Dionysian night with the shallow Apollonian fantasy of football. [And by the way the new logo is totally 'there'-I love the covert, ironic symbolism of the black figure being the only one holding the ball while the four semi-finalists this year were all European. According to our beloved el Presidente we {Africa} are going to win the next one. He stated this with such Smutsean purpose that I for one believed him-why not.]
But to the first: Since there is obviously a demand for 'cow slaughtering services' I envisage an enterprising fellow-well versed in the various practices popular in the cow slaughtering devotee market who would for a market related fee set up a razz ma tazz ritual slaughter with a full surround sound production system with moaning ancestors sounds and suitably devout music and bone rattling SFX and all accommodated in a small stadium in a slaughter approved warehouse.
All the guests would arrive and sit/stand/whatever in the appropriate recognised ritual format You know the sort of thing: important people at the front with, shortguns, machetes, daggers, or depending on how far back the ritual goes, maybe rock clubs or maybe even just the rocks.
They would be supplied with ritual gowns and gloves and, watched by lesser guests would consummate the ceremony [if I may use such a delicate phrase to gloss over the unclarified murdering process].
The whole business could take place in a sanctified
soundproof environment
after which all the parts needed for the balance of the event could be separated from the parts not needed, like
say
for instance the hooves [this is an assumption-maybe the hooves are part of the ritual-so little was clarified-so much left to the muse], and they could all be removed to the celebrants homestead where a roasting arrangement had been prepared, in the same way that people go from the wedding to the reception..
I am of course assuming [again] here [perhaps incorrectly] that the subsequently
dead kow is cooked: the debate was unclear on this point and given how long it usually takes to cook a kow from raw I couldn't rule out the idea that for those guests who were really important and had to go to lots of meetings even on Sundays that they would most probably eat the meat raw as a sign of their superior social standing and then leave immediately after eating.]. Of course in culturally diverse homes the meat could be zoomed inside and nuked with the microwaves for the important guests: as long as nobody finds out.
But it is in number two option here where I really see a wonderful opportunity: the world cup festivities.
Here the opportunity exists to create that truly continental vibe that has been the subject of so much yearning over this practice we're having for the big event. You know what I mean- people are constantly phoning in to a range of radio stations to air their aspiration to see that this world cup truly symbolises what is different about our continent. They'll love this.
Killing Kows for the Kup.
Those who've followed recent [Cup] events will know that most people in Germany never got any closer to the stadiums where the action was than those of us who stayed at home and watched it on the telly. Instead these vast hordes were gloriously entertained in huge squares not unlike say Hatfield Square in the curiously named Tshwane where big screens showed the game and those who found the action boring could drink, shag, and generally have fun while all the time being available to cheer joyfully when something cool did occasionally happen. I thought it was a delightful Germanic contribution to the notion of multitasking.
Imagine a pre-qualifier or semi-final preceded by the 'public slaughter of kows' in these public places [under special licence of course]. Designated Muti men would hold 'divination sessions' to pick the likely winners and the different supporter groups could vie and bid for the biggest kow for 'their' team. Then all those bloodthirsty supporters who travel in packs with their teams could participate in the general 'killing of the kow' [according to best ritual practice of course]. And those with the biggest meanest collection of gate guarding ancestors would have to win against the pure and the virtuous.
[Note for language purists: the Kow would have been deconstructed to an abstraction through calling it Kow instead of Cow and as a result the thirsting tourist hordes would perceive only an abstract solution to their joy, in the classic self-indulgent passion of pursuing ones cultural extremities, like crossing the planet to watch people kick a ball. They would no longer see Kow as a live creature that feels pain, fear and anxiety.]
For an additional fee people could practice their ancient beliefs through swinging the machete/club/boulder whatever and get a certificate confirming that they have attended a ritual World Cup 2010-Kow Killing- and done whatever it is that is done.
I think this would be a hit and would certainly contribute to what we all hope will be called 'The memorable Cup'.
Of course I understand that there will be the usual outcry from the 'huggers' over moral issues and how this business of publically slaughtering kows in the suburban square in front of the ritual Plasma screen may contribute to foreigners learning to associate our continent with overt animal slaughter, but that is what people coming to the mother continent should anticipate with joy-They will get to experience reality in place of the sanitised homogenised off-stage animal slaughter practiced in their homelands where most human carnivores have leaned to disassociate the meat they buy in butcheries with the fact of a once living entity sacrificed deliciously to our craving for their flesh.
Cheers
Apparently there are citizens who have been moving into the old genteel suburbs and are offending the established inmates through a particular customary habit which seems to involve beating a kow to death in some way [that was never clarified] and then doing who knows what [again unclarified] with the blood n guts and the skin n things and then presumably eating the carcass in some way, [also not clarified].
In fact all we know after an hour of debate is that kows are being moved into the suburbs somehow and then slaughtered in pursuit of some vigorously defended but inherently unexplained 'cultural purpose' whatever this bizarrely defined ritual signified somehow got lost, well certainly on me.
We know from various callers that the process of slaughter results in the kow making a fearful noise; filled with terror and scaring children and causing dogs to bark. From my days as a hunter in my youth one can assume that the process of post mortem gutting would be generally stenching up the neighbourhood with instantly rotting intestinal parts, which in turn rapidly all bring masses of flies and maggots n things into the environment. This state of affairs would be presumably regarded by most people without medical aid facilities as a potential health hazard to be avoided, and apparently it's here: going on next door as soon as 'they' move in.
Yes you're right it was one of the incessant "us" n "them"...issues again.
Ignoring for a moment the thought that this may actually be quite an isolated phenomenon, notwithstanding that this debate has apparently occurred previously on other stations over the past couple of years: this is at least the third such debate on radio that I have picked up on recently, I would like again to stress that on each occasion this issue of why kows need to be butcheredat presumably huge expense seems unclarified. One presumes that status is somehow involved.
We don't know how the kows are killed, who does the killing or what happens to the bits n pieces. Is the late kow consumed by the guests? Is it eaten raw [i presumen not]or cooked, is it buried in the ground for a period of time in pursuit of some arcane plea or perhaps just given to the dogs. What in other words, happens to the contents of the kow once the kow is noisily despatched.
The rage on the part of some frustrated pro-kow killing citizens was that [those?] 'people' objected to this practice. [ as usual these debates are loaded with 'they'ing' and 'them'ing']. The phone-ins were pretty adamant. A considerable body of callers regarded the practice with general distaste. And conversely there was the almost reflexive flood of calls denouncing all those who saw the practice as reprehensible, for whatever reasons, as mean minded exclusionists. But then it wouldn't be a debate without a whole lot of inter-tribal slanging and random rage loaded stereotyping going on would it?.
There was some outnumbered fellow who took an animal rightist position. That being horrible to animals in fulfilment of one's cultural wank was uncool. His point was ignored. Perlman stuck to his point-he wasn't digressing from his prize into some never never land -he wanted blood. We did establish though that the caller wasn't circumcised [!] and felt it had not impacted on his life[don't ask!]. Perlman gave up and we went back to Kows
Interestingly no one phoned in to suggest that the entire issue represents a great business opportunity. And so in the interests of pouring oil on troubled bloodstains, I shall rectify this in what follows.
First off: I think this whole issue of kultural rights is something that needs to be assessed in terms of where we believe that we're going and if we are going to keep up with this particular practice [ie ritual suburban kow killing] or move on into the 21st century.
Secondly: We also have to remember that in a world overwhelmingly loaded with inherently superfluous humanity that anything that can turn a buck must be promoted as a means of solving the desperate problem of work opportunity shortage that afflicts us nationally.
In other words while we recognise that cultural variances can retard progressive trends we are dependent on these variances to generate tourism revenue simply because it provides employment. The question not mentioned in the debate is 'do we move on' or do we make this 'cultural practice' work for us, assuming we can resolve the animal rightist issues inherent in moving on.
By way of example of moving on, for instance, it was a common customary practice amongst my ancestors to pop over to the local 'loony bin' [sic] [known today by the more politically correct term Psychiatric treatment centre]
on a Sunday after mandatory church attendance,
and poke sticks at the 'loons' and
generally have a bit of fun at their expense and feed them pea-nuts [get it] and such like infantile stuff. This was considered so 'normal' that we still have the word 'bedlam'
in our language.
Bedlam represented one of the more famous places where my ancestors practiced this outlandish cultural belief.
Others of my ancestor's favourite cultural practices were bear baiting, dog fighting and dame ducking [no not with an F]. This latter you may know involved tying some offending female onto a stool on the end of a see saw and tipping her into a pond when they became a tad uppity. If they survived it must have been because they practiced witchcraft, which we had been culturally wired to believe was bad. Therefore we would kill those who survived.
We don't do this anymore. [Some would suggest we do, only with more subtlety and a large dose of bulimia.]
I for one regret, with some nostalgia, that we no longer have public hangings
and that we no longer take women [and men for that matter] convicted of infanticide
and while still living, sew them into cloth bags
and toss them overboard into Table Bay. It was also customary amongst certain local indigenous
cultural groups to garrotte rapists while they were immersed in water and some excellent lithographs on this topic have come down to us via the inestimable Thomas
Baines. I note without judgement that we don't seem to keen on reintroducing this cultural practice into the suburbs.
Collectively all this punishment seemed so wonderfully gratifying.
Nonetheless I also accept that part of the price one pays
to progress into this wonderfully secular consumerist world illusion
that we have created out of nothing
but expectations and shaped belief
is that one sets aside these more bizarre rituals in the
'interests of progress' [such a gloriously empty phrase isn't it?] and
'getting along with each other'.
However what I think and what the market does
are invariably unrelated to each other I see that this particular kow killing
'cultural practice' rooted as it is in the general fantasy's with which
we people our mundane existence has immense
potential as a business idea .
It is perhaps symptomatic of how we allow emotion to inter-
fere with judgement that no entrepreneurial types have seen the opportunity
presented
by this unleashed national outpouring of desire to ritually 'murder' animals
in suburbia.
There are two [perhaps not] obvious avenues of approach here:
· the 'home ritualisers' who were the subject of the debate.
· And 'World Cup Ox Slag Braais' with a difference. [for offshore readers O.R. Slag = butcher = braais = barbeque aka 'barbies' to antipodeans ]
· Combine two cultural habits and create a dramatic and omnipotent backdrop to those staggeringly prosaic football games upon the screen-Combine Paglia's Chthonian, Dionysian night with the shallow Apollonian fantasy of football. [And by the way the new logo is totally 'there'-I love the covert, ironic symbolism of the black figure being the only one holding the ball while the four semi-finalists this year were all European. According to our beloved el Presidente we {Africa} are going to win the next one. He stated this with such Smutsean purpose that I for one believed him-why not.]
But to the first: Since there is obviously a demand for 'cow slaughtering services' I envisage an enterprising fellow-well versed in the various practices popular in the cow slaughtering devotee market who would for a market related fee set up a razz ma tazz ritual slaughter with a full surround sound production system with moaning ancestors sounds and suitably devout music and bone rattling SFX and all accommodated in a small stadium in a slaughter approved warehouse.
All the guests would arrive and sit/stand/whatever in the appropriate recognised ritual format You know the sort of thing: important people at the front with, shortguns, machetes, daggers, or depending on how far back the ritual goes, maybe rock clubs or maybe even just the rocks.
They would be supplied with ritual gowns and gloves and, watched by lesser guests would consummate the ceremony [if I may use such a delicate phrase to gloss over the unclarified murdering process].
The whole business could take place in a sanctified
soundproof environment
after which all the parts needed for the balance of the event could be separated from the parts not needed, like
say
for instance the hooves [this is an assumption-maybe the hooves are part of the ritual-so little was clarified-so much left to the muse], and they could all be removed to the celebrants homestead where a roasting arrangement had been prepared, in the same way that people go from the wedding to the reception..
I am of course assuming [again] here [perhaps incorrectly] that the subsequently
dead kow is cooked: the debate was unclear on this point and given how long it usually takes to cook a kow from raw I couldn't rule out the idea that for those guests who were really important and had to go to lots of meetings even on Sundays that they would most probably eat the meat raw as a sign of their superior social standing and then leave immediately after eating.]. Of course in culturally diverse homes the meat could be zoomed inside and nuked with the microwaves for the important guests: as long as nobody finds out.
But it is in number two option here where I really see a wonderful opportunity: the world cup festivities.
Here the opportunity exists to create that truly continental vibe that has been the subject of so much yearning over this practice we're having for the big event. You know what I mean- people are constantly phoning in to a range of radio stations to air their aspiration to see that this world cup truly symbolises what is different about our continent. They'll love this.
Killing Kows for the Kup.
Those who've followed recent [Cup] events will know that most people in Germany never got any closer to the stadiums where the action was than those of us who stayed at home and watched it on the telly. Instead these vast hordes were gloriously entertained in huge squares not unlike say Hatfield Square in the curiously named Tshwane where big screens showed the game and those who found the action boring could drink, shag, and generally have fun while all the time being available to cheer joyfully when something cool did occasionally happen. I thought it was a delightful Germanic contribution to the notion of multitasking.
Imagine a pre-qualifier or semi-final preceded by the 'public slaughter of kows' in these public places [under special licence of course]. Designated Muti men would hold 'divination sessions' to pick the likely winners and the different supporter groups could vie and bid for the biggest kow for 'their' team. Then all those bloodthirsty supporters who travel in packs with their teams could participate in the general 'killing of the kow' [according to best ritual practice of course]. And those with the biggest meanest collection of gate guarding ancestors would have to win against the pure and the virtuous.
[Note for language purists: the Kow would have been deconstructed to an abstraction through calling it Kow instead of Cow and as a result the thirsting tourist hordes would perceive only an abstract solution to their joy, in the classic self-indulgent passion of pursuing ones cultural extremities, like crossing the planet to watch people kick a ball. They would no longer see Kow as a live creature that feels pain, fear and anxiety.]
For an additional fee people could practice their ancient beliefs through swinging the machete/club/boulder whatever and get a certificate confirming that they have attended a ritual World Cup 2010-Kow Killing- and done whatever it is that is done.
I think this would be a hit and would certainly contribute to what we all hope will be called 'The memorable Cup'.
Of course I understand that there will be the usual outcry from the 'huggers' over moral issues and how this business of publically slaughtering kows in the suburban square in front of the ritual Plasma screen may contribute to foreigners learning to associate our continent with overt animal slaughter, but that is what people coming to the mother continent should anticipate with joy-They will get to experience reality in place of the sanitised homogenised off-stage animal slaughter practiced in their homelands where most human carnivores have leaned to disassociate the meat they buy in butcheries with the fact of a once living entity sacrificed deliciously to our craving for their flesh.
Cheers
Tuesday, July 4, 2006
Watching paint dry: so much for the world cup
It's like watching paint dry to a cacophonous soundtrack. Intermittently there is an instant of absurdity in the struggle. Some massively well paid fellow gets the ball at last after an agonising inch by quarter inch struggle down and up and down and up and down and up and -you get the picture.
I've decided that the reason why soccer [known elsewhere in the world as football] is all-powerful is that it so perfectly mirrors the human condition, where so often life's struggle is unfair and the victory so frequently doesn't go to the best team or player.
The big name hero who's name is electrifyingly shrieked by the omnipresent tv announcer appears like a flash in a melee and balloons the ball into the air in a deadly blow struck for the old fashioned amateur in us all-reminiscent each time of something I myself may have once attempted thinking that the ball was for rugby. Never did so many teams suffer from strike failure as have collapsed this year into formlessness-perhaps the ball was strange to them then.
Yes it's struggle, struggle, struggle, struggle- with an occasional chance- usually failed. Teams leave the game never having been beaten-so close to impossible has it been to score goals. I am sure that there have been fewer goals scored than twice the number of teams originally taking part-and that makes watching paint dry a little less dramatic but certainly more rewarding.
Next week the spotlight turns though and the world is going to place us under an 'inscrutable scroot' [as Bloodknock would have put it].
It is time for our 2010 preparations to become 200 % more transparent than they have been-We need a corporate sponsor to erect a huge billboard somewhere with a timeline CPA [critical path analysis] ticking off the projects as they unroll.
We have some issues-Undoubtedly when we sold the FIFA on this venue-us the hosts- there were things that it was understood needed to be done to be ready. Aside from such obvious trivia as Stadia and ticketing booths, we needed a safe environment for a million drunks to puke about in, for instance. We needed a goodly supply of clean and wholesome young women to take the edge of the stress of following some inept collection of players from venue to venue. We also needed to show that we can move people around with comfort and ease-and it is our declared intention to do all of these things. What is that old saw about the road to hell and good intentions?
So far we [the public] have been subjected to a great deal of evasive bullshitting by many people and whether they like it or not the next few months are going to be 'Kak of Betaal' time [for offshore readers O.R.: 'shit or get off the pot']
A publicly visible timeline showing for instance the alleged fifteen or so stadia that are alleged to be in progress need to be revealed from completion date, which I understand to be at least 2009 [about the time of the next election]
or maybe earlier, showing the steps to be covered between then and now. We need to know what still has to be done- Enough of this fluffy 'alles sal regkom' [It will all be alright on the night.] This German thing is a tough act to follow-and this follows the Asian version, which was already an awesome piece of organisation.
Ditto for other things-and what are we going to do about the whoring bit?
The Germans had fuckbooths arranged, for those lusty visitors whose general robustness had not been impacted by gallons of beer. As seen on TV they were like drive-in cabins which discreetly screen the participating parties and which come equipped with alarm bells for the receiving party [the fuckee]. Should such party feel aggrieved or threatened a quick ring of the alarm bell will apparently bring a horde of defenders to rips the nuts off the offenders.
Like Sydney a few years back and Athens too, huge numbers of able and hopefully willing fuckees [or penetratees if you prefer] were needed to service the aroused passions of a million or so horny visitors: who being mostly male and at leisure seek nothing less than that glorious release provided by a pair of clenched thighs. It is certainly a more engaging act than watching paint dry on a well-trodden field.
Are we going to embark on a campaign to deal with the HIV status of the thirty thousand or so 'relational needs suppliers' who will be called upon to perform lustily for the host country? And shouldn't that also go onto the scoreboard.
I am not even going to discuss the crime thing. One presumes that the deal was sold on the back of declining crime figures. 'We'll be down to zero crime by 2010 Louis'. We don't really know what has been happening with crime trends due to the ban on the release of crime statistics by the SAPS. We have tended to accept the police version that the trend was down and we were happy that we had survived the worst.
So the recent upsurge in what may be called 'terroristic crime' does seem to be a counter trend, guaranteed to give us bad headlines. It would be easy to fall into the old conspiracy trap-ie the random spate of murders both high and low profile has no apparent motive and seems random and awful-A film director shot dead while walking his dog-no arrests. One of my students randomly shot dead some weeks ago walking down a suburban street [no arrests]-A pair of young men abducted with their car and executed in Cape Town-[some arrests] a woman journalist randomly shot dead after stopping at the wrong place on the highway-[no arrests]-and -and -and-the litany proceedeth-People who mention the murder rate at a lower than before 48 or so per day are seen as unpatriotic-but presumably the courts of more advanced country's would not flinch at hearing class action suits from young men maimed for life or even sentenced to death as a result of our unclarified social difficulties. Perhaps FIFA would sensibly issue tickets with an indemnity written in -attend at your own risk-not responsible for off the field mishaps. It would be a sensible move.
Are our criminals so obviously in such savage competition with their fellows that they must suck the marrow dry before the bone cracks. It is as I have observed before that our malicious crime rate is the one true example of free enterprise left in our oligopoly stricken land.
[Of course there is the increasingly obvious news that the crime wave with its excess of brutality could well be part of a military campaign being waged by enemies of democracy living next door to us as our neighbour proves to be our worst nightmare.] Whatever its source we are going to have to do something radical-as if we never knew that-and the something radical could well mean a further inroad on our hard won freedom.
The problem with chickens is their regular need to roost and ignoring that doesn't negate reality. As they say in the movie business-'hurry up and wait.'
So much to do so few sponsors.
I've decided that the reason why soccer [known elsewhere in the world as football] is all-powerful is that it so perfectly mirrors the human condition, where so often life's struggle is unfair and the victory so frequently doesn't go to the best team or player.
The big name hero who's name is electrifyingly shrieked by the omnipresent tv announcer appears like a flash in a melee and balloons the ball into the air in a deadly blow struck for the old fashioned amateur in us all-reminiscent each time of something I myself may have once attempted thinking that the ball was for rugby. Never did so many teams suffer from strike failure as have collapsed this year into formlessness-perhaps the ball was strange to them then.
Yes it's struggle, struggle, struggle, struggle- with an occasional chance- usually failed. Teams leave the game never having been beaten-so close to impossible has it been to score goals. I am sure that there have been fewer goals scored than twice the number of teams originally taking part-and that makes watching paint dry a little less dramatic but certainly more rewarding.
Next week the spotlight turns though and the world is going to place us under an 'inscrutable scroot' [as Bloodknock would have put it].
It is time for our 2010 preparations to become 200 % more transparent than they have been-We need a corporate sponsor to erect a huge billboard somewhere with a timeline CPA [critical path analysis] ticking off the projects as they unroll.
We have some issues-Undoubtedly when we sold the FIFA on this venue-us the hosts- there were things that it was understood needed to be done to be ready. Aside from such obvious trivia as Stadia and ticketing booths, we needed a safe environment for a million drunks to puke about in, for instance. We needed a goodly supply of clean and wholesome young women to take the edge of the stress of following some inept collection of players from venue to venue. We also needed to show that we can move people around with comfort and ease-and it is our declared intention to do all of these things. What is that old saw about the road to hell and good intentions?
So far we [the public] have been subjected to a great deal of evasive bullshitting by many people and whether they like it or not the next few months are going to be 'Kak of Betaal' time [for offshore readers O.R.: 'shit or get off the pot']
A publicly visible timeline showing for instance the alleged fifteen or so stadia that are alleged to be in progress need to be revealed from completion date, which I understand to be at least 2009 [about the time of the next election]
or maybe earlier, showing the steps to be covered between then and now. We need to know what still has to be done- Enough of this fluffy 'alles sal regkom' [It will all be alright on the night.] This German thing is a tough act to follow-and this follows the Asian version, which was already an awesome piece of organisation.
Ditto for other things-and what are we going to do about the whoring bit?
The Germans had fuckbooths arranged, for those lusty visitors whose general robustness had not been impacted by gallons of beer. As seen on TV they were like drive-in cabins which discreetly screen the participating parties and which come equipped with alarm bells for the receiving party [the fuckee]. Should such party feel aggrieved or threatened a quick ring of the alarm bell will apparently bring a horde of defenders to rips the nuts off the offenders.
Like Sydney a few years back and Athens too, huge numbers of able and hopefully willing fuckees [or penetratees if you prefer] were needed to service the aroused passions of a million or so horny visitors: who being mostly male and at leisure seek nothing less than that glorious release provided by a pair of clenched thighs. It is certainly a more engaging act than watching paint dry on a well-trodden field.
Are we going to embark on a campaign to deal with the HIV status of the thirty thousand or so 'relational needs suppliers' who will be called upon to perform lustily for the host country? And shouldn't that also go onto the scoreboard.
I am not even going to discuss the crime thing. One presumes that the deal was sold on the back of declining crime figures. 'We'll be down to zero crime by 2010 Louis'. We don't really know what has been happening with crime trends due to the ban on the release of crime statistics by the SAPS. We have tended to accept the police version that the trend was down and we were happy that we had survived the worst.
So the recent upsurge in what may be called 'terroristic crime' does seem to be a counter trend, guaranteed to give us bad headlines. It would be easy to fall into the old conspiracy trap-ie the random spate of murders both high and low profile has no apparent motive and seems random and awful-A film director shot dead while walking his dog-no arrests. One of my students randomly shot dead some weeks ago walking down a suburban street [no arrests]-A pair of young men abducted with their car and executed in Cape Town-[some arrests] a woman journalist randomly shot dead after stopping at the wrong place on the highway-[no arrests]-and -and -and-the litany proceedeth-People who mention the murder rate at a lower than before 48 or so per day are seen as unpatriotic-but presumably the courts of more advanced country's would not flinch at hearing class action suits from young men maimed for life or even sentenced to death as a result of our unclarified social difficulties. Perhaps FIFA would sensibly issue tickets with an indemnity written in -attend at your own risk-not responsible for off the field mishaps. It would be a sensible move.
Are our criminals so obviously in such savage competition with their fellows that they must suck the marrow dry before the bone cracks. It is as I have observed before that our malicious crime rate is the one true example of free enterprise left in our oligopoly stricken land.
[Of course there is the increasingly obvious news that the crime wave with its excess of brutality could well be part of a military campaign being waged by enemies of democracy living next door to us as our neighbour proves to be our worst nightmare.] Whatever its source we are going to have to do something radical-as if we never knew that-and the something radical could well mean a further inroad on our hard won freedom.
The problem with chickens is their regular need to roost and ignoring that doesn't negate reality. As they say in the movie business-'hurry up and wait.'
So much to do so few sponsors.
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