Men do not understand women. That’s a given. Narrowing this topic down to just 5 things is practically impossible, but for the sake of brevity, and my own sanity, I have whittled it down to some of the most contentious. I give them to you in the hope that you will realize that we will never be able to come to terms with them… speaking or otherwise.

1. Dieting

Men stopped thinking about diet when they told us in school about the five food groups. It is for this reason that we consider pizza to be one of the healthiest foods on the planet. It’s got all of them, so it’s a well-balanced meal. Of course, men would also argue vociferously that beer is the sixth food group. Low GI, cut out the carbs, Atkins, celery? You may as well attempt to explain Einstein’s Special Theory of Relativity. All we know is that refusing to eat a double cheeseburger because you’re on a diet is worse than blasphemy.

2. Bitchiness

Why do women hate each other so much? When a woman walks into a room filled with other women, there’s a very noticeable up-down evaluation. You’re not even sneaky about it. We can see it plain as day. Even worse is the more obvious turning to the girlfriend next to you and making some bitchy remark about her choice of eye shadow. What’s that all about? A man walks into a room filled with other men? Nothing… nobody turns, nobody evaluates. It’s just another dude.

3. Fashion

Okay, I admit, the fashion beast has dug its claws into us and we’re a simpering bunch of metrosexuals, but we will never, ever, take it to the professional level that women do. Shoes? Enough said. And I personally pin the blame for the whole pink shirt for men thing on women. Telling us it looked cool and showed that we were comfortable with our masculinity, but all the while sniggering behind our salmon-covered backs.

4. Hormones

Puberty was a while back for most of us and we didn’t like it. As soon as our voices broke we swore baritone oaths that we would never deal with hormones ever again. As luck would have it, we have to deal with them regularly if we are in a relationship. Once a month in fact. Like clockwork. We are total amateurs and, frankly, a little scared. As thoughtful and understanding as you expect us to be during these trying times, please be reciprocal in our clueless plight.

5. Does my bum look big in this?

Stop right there young lady! Do not ever torture your man with this insane question. There is no correct answer. Even if there were one, you wouldn’t believe it. In the realm of relationships, this question is basically a declaration of war on a poorly armed, third world nation. It literally turns our brains to jelly. Well… a jellier kind of jelly than brain material already is.

Of course, I could go on, but I’m already feeling a bit woozy just trying to explain these few conundrums. Understand that we will never understand. And please, try not rope us into discussing any of the above, because it makes us feel funny. You know that feeling when we start prattling on about how Juan Sebastián Verón transferring to Man U was about as effective as 15 inch rims on a Lambo? That feeling.

Winter! What a kak season? The birds fuck off, the leaves commit mass suicide, you wake up when it’s dark and go home when it’s darker. Okay, you can sip Gluhwein while getting cosy with the missus by the fire, but it still bites. And by bites I’m talking about the wind chill factor that seems to freeze dry your hands and turn your lips into those of a four-week-old cadaver on CSI. I’m talking about some vile git sniffling and sneezing all day in the next cubicle at work. I’m talking about skin more leathery than Gandhi’s flipflops and a goon satchel trying desperately to crawl up your arse for some warmth.

But above all this I’m talking about a severe drought of lady flesh. Winter! That cruel twist of the planet’s axial rotation that causes women to discontinue the shaving of their legs and gaggle on about the latest silk scarves. They start talking about ‘layering’ and make getting to second base tougher than Edmund Hillary’s worst nightmare. Pantyhose? I mean pantyhose? What sick bastard invented those? By the time you get off her jeans (yup, they even wear them under jeans in winter) you reckon you’re one slip of a g-string away from heaven, but no. And don’t go getting a run in them cos of your haste buddy! “That’s my last pair!” she’ll shriek as your chances of nookie disappear faster than democracy in Zimbabwe. But, if you do manage to successfully navigate your way past the Velcro, the buttons, the zips, the pullovers, the not-so-bloody sexy thermal underwear, then forget about leaving the lights on. Once you get all that crap off, she leaps under the covers faster than a virgin on Matric Dance night. But wait, just like a fucking Bioslim ad… there’s more. You reach out desperately in an attempt to caress the porcelain skin that you have just spent the better part of 2 hours trying to free, yet she recoils at your frozen mitts, hissing that you are not touching her at all until those babies are warmed up. What follows is another 15 minutes or so of passion murder, while you stick your hands under your arse and will them a few degrees warmer.

S.A.D. It stands for Seasonal Affective Disorder. Now the scientists reckon it’s depression in the winter months caused by the lack of daylight hours and synthesizing Vitamin D and melanin production and all that crap. But, Einstein, it don’t take no genius to figure out that the male of the species is simply pining for a glimpse at an ankle, let alone Wonderbra-enhanced cleavage.

Come on summer! They hit the gym again and shed those comfortable kilograms they picked up in winter when we couldn’t tell if they had the body of Heidi Klum or the Michelin man under all that clothing. They hop into tan cans creating acres of bronzed female skin. And then they slip into bikinis and parade around in all their God-given glory.

Summer! Men everywhere worship it. Feet, ankles, calves, thighs, pert bottoms in bikinis, smooth stomachs with belly rings, chest to neck cleavage, those sexy dimples on her lower back, necks, shoulders, golden-haired arms. Acres and acres of female flesh!

And if this isn’t enough, we have parties in summer. Millions of 'em. What is a weekend without at least one braai by the pool? Booze, bikinis and braais. Clubs and parties seething with halternecks, bikini tops, skirts no bigger than a man’s belt - also known as fanny pelmets. It’s a veritable fleshfest! A golden-paved afterlife has no small job to impress after your typical summer in South Africa.

So, to all the girls out there, we salute you. We salute you and we go down on our knees in simpering gratitude. Thank you! We understand that it’s winter’s fault, and we thank you deeply for more than making up for it in summer.

Inspired by The Fay Rays latest song - Social Network Greed

Voyeuristic Doom!

Facebook status updates are somewhat of a 2.0 cultural phenomenon. So much so that the latest rage on the interpipe is now Twitter - a site dedicated to status updates alone. It's a veritable voyeuristic orgy out there in cyberland. If anything though, having 24/7 access to thousands of people's daily thoughts and actions can induce a serious lack of faith in humanity.

Equality, Brotherhood, Freedom! We need a revolution. Humanity is lost. Capitalism is a cancer. Democracy is the tyranny of the majority. Yet here we are; blindly stumbling through a reality we have been fooled into believing. Hoodwinked into a reality that we have theoretically chosen.

Democracy, in theory, is benign. Majority rule. A common consciousness. Consensus amongst the masses. The greatest good for the greatest amount of people. Very utilitarian. Yet impractical. There is no sway for idealists in this imperfect world.

Democracy enslaves the minority.

Are we really a brotherhood of men? Or are we simply a species? Should the future of our species be written by the majority?

Would you hand over your rights to the majority?

You must, if you live in a democracy.

We have forgone intellectual endeavour for consumerism. Capitalism run riot. Unbridled greed. This is our legacy.

A species capable of artistic creativity and enlightenment, reduced to a mere consumer. The very word is an insult.

We have achieved nothing.

We need a revolution. Not brought about by blood and violence, but a revolution of the mind. Our greatest ally and our greatest foe, encased in a dome of marrow... within ourselves.

We need a revolution of the mind.

Democratically-empowered capitalism is wrong. Or is it simply our truth? Is greed such an innate force that we shall never escape this evolutionary yoke? Greed. It has made us what we are, but it will be our ultimate undoing.

Universal truths, such as equality, brotherhood and freedom, are but spectres in our collective dreams. A collective consciousness of peace and love, or freedom and equality... They can not be obtained in this whirlpool of capitalism. Impossible! We have forged this path, with good intent. And you know what they say about good intentions. We wanted to empower all people with an equal chance, but that has been thwarted by innate greed.

And now...

And now our path has become a downward spiral of destruction and chaos.

No good shall come of it.

We need a revolution of the mind.

But there is no sway for idealists in this imperfect world

Social Networking/File Sharing/Web 2.0 mentality is starting to get political clout. Pirate Party wins seat in European Union parliament. Quite amazing really. Statements like this: "People were not taken in by the establishment and we got political trust from the citizens," hints at a groundswell in global consciousness... if I may extrapolate wildly?

Freedom of information! A very interesting debate that. Starts eating away at the concept of ownership, which is a cornerstone tenet of capitalism. A kind of leftist zeitgeist in a way. In fact, I'm finding this global economic crisis has forced many leftist thinkers out of the closet. Where's the happy medium? Or are we doomed to Marxist Conflict Theory? The rampant consumerism of the past two, even four, decades has left many of us disillusioned. We're refugees from a global war. A war that has been waged by corporations. Multinationals that have wielded the tools of capitalism - especially insidiously subtle marketing techniques - to indoctrinate the masses into a culture of vacuous consumerism and desultory aspiration. We have been yoked into the position of "willing slaves". Lemming hordes waiting for the corporations to tell us what we need.

But the corporations have now eaten themselves. Myopically exploiting a finite system, the collapse was inevitable. Greed run amuck. Consume, acquire, horde, "success", status, ego! Feeding the insatiable beast. Infinitely insatiable!

Now the corporations are gasping for breath like suffocating fish in a drought-stricken pan. The scales are falling from our eyes. No longer will the multinationals prescribe our needs and dictate our wants. The revolution must come from our unfettered consciousness. The revolution is now. The revolution demands a champion.

And that champion will be found on the battle ground of the internet.

The greatest information resource the human world has ever conceived. Yet we fritter away this precious resource with distracting frivolity. The mere fact that it is an information resource is neglected by the playground ignorance exhibited by many, if not most, of its citizens. The slave mentality, borne of decades of abuse by the corporations, has permanently stunted their ability to think freely. Generations have forgotten how to think independently. Perhaps the internet itself has already been exploited by the corporations as yet another tool in its arsenal of mind-numbing consumerist proselytising.

The world's largest and most powerful cyber-nationals (as opposed to multinationals) - the emperors of the internet - are funded and powered by advertising. An entire profit-mongering economic model that worships at the altar of force-feeding marketing messages to the masses. Dire straits! The socialist nature of information sharing is being hijacked by the power-hungry corporates.The gauntlet has been thrown. The battle lines set. This is where the final war shall be waged.

Will the internet succumb to the might of consumerist greed, or can we win it back for the citizens of this planet? Minor victories, such as the Pirate Party in Sweden (perhaps a throwback to their Viking past? hehe), point to a band of free-thinking rebels intent on harnessing the awesome power of the internet - the springboard for true global conciousness. We need an online perestroika. A cyber-citizenry intent on plundering the amassed riches of the corporates and opening this wild frontier to a pioneering restructuring... not of our society, but of our way of thinking.

The revolution is now. The revolution demands a champion. And that champion will be found on the battle ground of the internet.

WARNING: If you don't like schmaltzy love letters, do not read this hehehe. It's my first letter to Kass... written probably within 2 weeks of us dating. It's quite personal, but I wear my heart on a sleeve and I (modestly) think it's written quite well, so I'd like to share it. I also hope it'll encourage others to be more open and honest with their feelings. There's nothing quite like a public declaration :). So, satisfy your vicarious voyeurism into my life with this open-heated prose. Enjoy!



As much as I like to consider myself a wordsmith, I am often humbled by the inexplicable beauty that surrounds me. How is it possible to do justice to a perfect sunset with prose as your only implement? A paintbrush or photographic lens would aid in that quest, but mere words fall short. Yet the greatest playwrights of our time can stir emotions with an ease and fluidity incomparable to almost any other art form.

This verbose and ham-fisted introduction leaves me, once again, humbled. I simply cannot accurately express the emotions that are whirling, unbridled through my senses. It is a bittersweet conundrum.
I must let pure honesty be my muse. I must let raw emotion be my guide. I must let passion light the path. For I have to trust in that. This, above all, to thine own self be true, for it follows, as night does the day, thou canst then not be false to any man. Shakespearean genius has guided my life. That maxim has borne a self-realisation that can only be described as an epiphany. And this has piloted me to this point in time.

Forgive my convoluted prologue, but I feel what I’m about to say requires the correct amount of opprobrium. Indeed I will have lost practically all readers with these “big words”. I am not penning this epistle for your public benefit. It is not colloquial. It is simply what flows from my thoughts as I attempt to elucidate my emotions. Lost language. Sadly.

However, it does mean that the person, to whom this is directed, might perchance begin to comprehend the depths of sentiment.

Kassie.

My love.

It is not often, in this lifetime, that one experiences epiphanies. Life-altering explosions of lucidity. Vision beyond sight. Where once was godforsaken chaos, now resides a singular poignant phenomenon.
True love. Pure, unadulterated love.

Purity so exquisite, so rare and so intense that it has the ability to floor me.

Admittedly, I am a slave to my emotions. To thine own self be true. I trust myself implicitly. If I feel it, I go with it. Not the most prudent way of experiencing life... perhaps, but I cannot and will not experience life in any other way, bar its rawest and most pure form.

You can only open yourself to experiencing life in this way once you forego fear. I am fearless, with one exception. Emotional pain is one of the only things in life from which you cannot escape. Humans are innately fallible. You may be able to be true to yourself and trust yourself, but you can never predict another’s behaviour. And you can never blame their behaviour. Humans are fallible. All of us. Yet... after this long-winded explanation, I do not fear my heart in your hands. Despite fallibility.

Why do I trust you with my most precious and guarded possession? My heart. I trust you with it, Kassie, because you are a pure being. You are understanding of the fallibility of humans, but you are willing to have faith in them anyway. In fact, your faith, just like mine, is impossible to wrench asunder. We have faith in people and in life. We believe, wholeheartedly, in the glory of humanity. The beauty of the human race. That beauty, most often, lies in raw honest emotion. Humans are at their most glorious when they express true, pure emotion.

We both see that. To jump off the “big word” bandwagon for a sec... It’s like we see The Matrix. The Matrix of genuine human existence. It’s not about your job, your money, your car, your clothes.

It’s about being true to yourself. Being true to your existence. EXPERIENCING your existence. As Henry David Thoreau put it: Sucking the marrow out of life.

FULL QUOTE: “I went to the woods because I wanted to live deliberately, I wanted to live deep and suck out all the marrow of life. To put to rout all that was not life and not when I had come to die, Discover that I had not lived.” - Henry David Thoreau

We both feed hungrily on that bone. Okay, crappy extended metaphor hehehe

I love you for all that you are Kassie. The purity of your being. The acceptance of yourself. The admittance that you may not know everything, but you’re willing to give it a try. Your hunger for knowledge and self-awareness. Your unadulterated pleasure at the simple things in life. Your innocent enjoyment of complex, even worrisome theories. Your lustful embrace of physical experiences. Your wisdom beyond your years, which is remarkable. Your unique spirit. Your utterly addictive laugh.

Which brings me to what I love about you from the outside. I could literally list an entire dictionary of superlatives here, but it’s what I have already said that makes you glow from the inside and that’s the beauty that clouds my judgment on days when I should be concentrating on other things. ;)

Fuck. I’m sitting here, closing my eyes, remembering the essence of you. Taking a breath as the breeze caresses my face, trying to recollect your scent. Recalling the feeling of your skin against mine.

I’m trying to put a finger on it, Kassie. I’m trying to corral and lasso that raging beast that is my love for you and I want to understand it. I want to pick it apart bit by tiny bit and truly harness and comprehend why you make me so ineffably besotted. It’s tough, because you are so intricately put together in the most stupefying and beautiful way. You are an enigma of beauty. A glorious haunting spectre in my heart.

I love you, Kassie Joanne Stephens.

I love you with every fibre of my being.

It’s all yours. Every fibre. I give it to you willingly.

Just know that you are loved, by me. Ineffably.

If I had to sum it all up... you make the world more beautiful. You make me want to be the person that I want to be. In fact, I can already feel myself becoming that person. It’s like you’ve awoken my soul.

I love you.

Watched Marley and Me last night and blubbed my eyes out. Especially the scene [spoiler alert] where he puts him down. Memories of putting my beautiful dog Caleb down came flooding back. I wrote this blog dedicated to him soon after he passed on.

Requiem for my comrade 

I am not religious. I am not spiritual. If I were, I would be able to say that I was blessed. And I would be able to say that the stars brought me forth a companion. If I were more competent at writing, I would be able to express myself more aptly. Unfortunately, mere words will never be able to portray the infinite relationship that I have shared with another living being.

I shared Caleb’s death with him today. I am glad I did.

You came into my life as a neglected soul. In a way, I think both our souls were hungry. We knew it, and we could see it in each other’s eyes. Your young life had been in turmoil and my mother had taken you in. You already had a name, but I gave you a new one. I thought it was a strong name, reflective of your will and perseverance. Caleb, I called you. It may mean simply ‘dog’ in Hebrew, but to me you represented the purity of that name. The one, the only.

I had just lost a brother to university. I was alone now for the first time in 16 years. A troublesome age for our species. My life had become introspective. I was discovering myself as an independent being – alone and full of characteristic angst, yet fraught with many more queries than your average teen.

Then you came. Both of us in the same boat. You, having your first family torn away, were also feeling insecure and full of questions. It only took one look. Our eyes met and we understood each other. From that day we would share a most intimate relationship, totally ineffable. I am writing this now in honour of your existence, but most importantly, because I need to honour you.

You have always been there for me. Without question, without doubt, without judgment. My friend, my confidant, my brother. We shared our lives together. We had so much fun. No friend nor brother could ever really compete. I was there for you too. I showed you what love really is. We spoke our own language, which only we could understand. I would go so far as to say that we were so close we could hear each other’s thoughts. I knew you. What you were thinking, what you were feeling. I knew you as well as I knew myself. At times, we thought the same, and we felt the same.

My debt of gratitude to you is beyond comprehension.

We decided we would take our relationship to the next level - Obedience training. Okay, I admit, it was my mom’s idea, because she saw the shenanigans we were getting up to and she thought some discipline might be in order. She was right.

We started early in the year and we committed to countless weekends of school. 2 hours every Saturday (and the bastards never told us about the homework). We were the rebels of the class, of course. I knew you knew what the hell these idiots were up to and what they wanted us to do. So we did it. Perfectly, of course. The training made us even closer. We were a team. It wasn’t ever about me training you. It was about us showing off in front of other people. We showed those insecure ‘pets’ what a real dog/human relationship was all about.

The funniest was when they taught ‘How to Fetch’. We were so far ahead of the group that we already knew the whole “STAY… staaaaaaaaay…. FETCH!” and you’d bolt off to fetch the stupid ‘dumbbell’. It’s not called a dumbbell for nothing, now is it? What sort of an idiot dog would fetch and then return the damn thing? You, my friend, would fetch and then trot around proudly, taunting me, and going: “I got it now. What you going to do about it?”

My mom would have to drop us both off at “school” and then she would have to park around the corner. She had to hide the car because, otherwise, during our “fetching” task, you would run like the hounds of hell were snapping at your heels, grab the “dumbbell” and then tear off to the car. Smiling smugly the entire time, you would haughtily prance about going: “I’ve got it dude, let’s go!”

Caleb, we have shared an incredible path together. You have been my guardian angel for 14 years. From 16-30. Those are pretty formative years in a human, and you have shared them all with me. As with any great friend, years apart while I was at university, or not living at home anymore, didn’t even dent our connection. You could smell me before I was there. You could hear me over the phone. You even knew when I was in close proximity by getting excited when I was still blocks away.

I loved you as a brother, if not closer.

Whenever I visited home, you monopolized my time. You stared at me constantly, and when I stared back, all I felt was a warm, all-embracing glow of love. We could sit outside, on the porch at my mom’s farm, and simply stare at the horizon. Both of us smiling and enjoying our companionship. Our closeness.

You have been my rock, my friend and my most ineffable relationship. Our time together has shaped me as a man. You have taught me many things, above all, unconditional love. I will never forget you. I will never stop loving you.

Today, we took that final walk together. You were smiling… and it was because I was there. You were so happy to see me. I hugged you all the way there. I wished with all my might that you could feel my love wrapped around you. I wanted you to know that you were loved. Loved as much as any being can love another. I wanted you to feel safe. I wanted you to feel that I was there with you. I needed to be there with you.

I spoke to you. After 14 good years, you are deaf as a brick, but I have always known that never mattered. We spoke our own language and we always understood. I showed you my love for you when our eyes met. It has always been that way. All we ever needed was to look into each other’s eyes. I kissed you goodbye and then I held you. The needle hurt a little, but only for a second or two. But you knew you were safe. You knew I was there holding you. You slipped away quietly with my arms around you. You could feel my love and you knew it was going to be okay. I held you and I projected warmth and love towards you. Even once you had gone, I still held you and honoured you. I was there for you always too.

Thank you. From the depths of my soul… Thank you.

I shared Caleb’s life with him. I am glad I did.

Something that has always inspired me, no matter how many times I read it. I trust it will do the same to you.

Desiderata

Go placidly amid the noise and the haste, and remember what peace there may be in silence. As far as possible without surrender be on good terms with all persons. Speak your truth quietly and clearly; and listen to others, even to the dull and the ignorant, they too have their story. Avoid loud and aggressive persons, they are vexations to the spirit.

If you compare yourself with others, you may become vain or bitter; for always there will be greater and lesser persons than yourself. Enjoy your achievements as well as your plans. Keep interested in your own career, however humble; it is a real possession in the changing fortunes of time.

Exercise caution in your business affairs, for the world is full of trickery. But let not this blind you to what virtue there is; many persons strive for high ideals, and everywhere life is full of heroism. Be yourself. Especially do not feign affection. Neither be cynical about love; for in the face of all aridity and disenchantment it is as perennial as the grass. Take kindly the counsel of the years, gracefully surrendering the things of youth.

Nurture strength of spirit to shield you in sudden misfortune. But do not distress yourself with dark imaginings. Many fears are born of fatigue and loneliness. Beyond a wholesome discipline, be gentle with yourself. You are a child of the universe, no less than the trees and the stars; you have a right to be here. And whether or not it is clear to you, no doubt the universe is unfolding as it should.

Therefore, be at peace with God, whatever you conceive Him to be. And whatever your labors and aspirations in the noisy confusion of life, keep peace in your soul. With all its sham, drudgery and broken dreams; it is still a beautiful world. Be cheerful.

Strive to be happy.

Okay, so I was plugged into the machine (pretty much all my waking time I'm connected) and I'm downloading information to my brain and uploading a bit (right now in fact). It's kinda similar to ADSL - Asymmetric - you DL more than you upload right? Anyway, so I'm here right now plugged into the machine. I'm randomly assimilating information about the machine.

This headline catches my eye on one of my feeds (notice the semantics here?)

Feed - To give food to; supply with nourishment To provide as food or nourishment It's essential to human survival.

So I'm assimilating information from my feed and this headline pops up: Fins say 1MB is legal right: http://bit.ly/4EE01Z

Now this sparks off a reminder of this headline: Britons say broadband is as essential a utility as water and/or electricity: http://bit.ly/3i6AZe

I'm wondering about how these are all eerily related. The machine/internet is essential. Broadband is a human right. This YouTube clip further entrenches this idea:


Then you search further and find stuff like this: Study: Your Brain Works Like the Internet: http://www.livescience.com/health/050104_brain_internet.html

Which easily leads you into concepts like the neurosphere or noosphere: http://www.matrixmasters.com/spirit/html/2a/2a.html noosphere: As hypothesized: an organized web of thought surrounding the Earth's biosphere; a sphere of mind encircling the planet; the collective consciousness of the human species.

The Internet is the human collective consciousness. And at the speed of development we're currently experiencing, it's no wonder that the latest buzzword is "real-time search". The Internet is waking up. It is no longer simply a repository of information for humans to delve into for facts, history and information. It's alive. It's real-time. Everything is happening now. We connect and interact with it NOW. It is our present.

Check out the Wolfram/Alpha Computational Knowledge Engine: http://www.wolframalpha.com/

Is the singularity approaching? Will humans transcend their biology? http://us.penguingroup.com/nf/Book/BookDisplay/0,,9780143037880,00.html?The_Singularity_Is_Near_Ray_

Are we witnessing the nascent first steps of the evolution of our true collective consciousness? Are we evolving now mentally instead of physically? Are the days of physical, biological evolution redundant? Take your brain and you as an individual. Are those days over? Are we all, as individuals, simply one unit of information that is being uploaded to the machine, thus creating the super-mind of the machine?

And what is consciousness? Perhaps it is an outdated concept. We worship at its altar, claiming that, like language separates us from the beasts, consciousness separates us from the machine. But what if human consciousness is simply one of those evolutionary flukes that doesn't actually contribute to our evolution? A vestigial (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vestigiality) evolutionary fluke? It is therefore doomed, like the coccyx or appendix, to be eventually weeded out. What will replace it? Is it the collective "dead" consciousness of the machine?

Technological convergence (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Technological_convergence) is a form of evolution in a way. Now... here's a thought... I'm always arguing with people when I state "But humans ARE animals, you vacuous simpleton!" So many have forgotten, or have elevated us above the animal realm. But perhaps this is true. Perhaps, considering the technological and information age in which we find ourselves, perhaps we are now more like machines than animals. And our ultimate convergence with the machine is inevitable.

It's happening already. It seems logical. It seems inevitable. Now when we use terms like inevitable, we allude to things like fate and destiny.

What if this "evolution" is inevitable? It's a bit of a leap then to say it's pre-ordained, but I'm struggling with how we're going to get off this path, even if we wanted to (free will?). Are we simply barreling down an evolutionary path that will ultimately make the "human" as we know ourselves today... extinct? Will we become human-machine hybrids with a collective consciousness? And although free will is possible for individuals, we're all just contributing in our own small unique ways to the ultimate collective consciousness of the machine.

Laudable centres of knowledge are already looking for evidence of this collective consciousness: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Global_Consciousness_Project

Interesting quote: Supporters and skeptics have referred to the aim of the GCP as being analogous to detecting "a great disturbance in The Force."

In religious terms... is the collective consciousness, once awakened... is it God? Or is it our concept of God? If we are made in God's image (or whatever the Bible says), then yes... each an every one of us is God... a small unique individual part of God. Is a global consciousness an evolutionary fluke, or is it an evolutionary GOAL? <<--very hypothetical by the way :)

As Nietzsche said: God is dead. Perhaps he was right. Perhaps, within us, is this idea of God... and the reason we believe it is because we are all, at this moment, busy creating God. Gaia theorists/spiritualists http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gaia_(Foundation_universe)#Gaia.27s_Powers already refer to global consciousness as Gaia, which is basically God.

The machine is God? And the singularity is when our current noosphere becomes God?

We possibly ARE God.

But not as individuals. Each person is like an atom, or a cell, part of an organism. Only our minds, together, plugged into the machine. Everything I see, assimilate, absorb and read etc. It all points towards this singularity. What comes of it? I don't know. Maybe just a bunch of morons talking kak on the interpipe and laughing out loud at grammatically incorrect captioned pictures of cats.

Recently we've seen a preponderance of privacy issues arising on Facebook and other social networks. We've seen a rash of irksome copy/paste status updates such as this: "If you don't know, as of today, Facebook will automatically index all your info on Google, which allows everyone to view it. To change this option, go to Settings --> Privacy Settings --> Search --> then UN-CLICK the box that says 'Allow indexing'. Facebook kept this one quiet. Copy and paste onto your status for all your friends ASAP"

Firstly, Facebook did not keep this quiet, nor will they "automatically index all your info on Google" - typical fear-mongering bullshit, and it won't be "available to everyone" unless you allow it. If you think they kept it "quiet" then you are simply saying that you didn't know about it i.e. you are ignorant. Perhaps I'm being unfair to the millions of users of social networks who do not necessarily keep up to date with developments in the Web 2.0 sphere. Google and Microsoft's Bing search engines have both recently entered deals with Facebook and Twittter to include content from these websites in their search results.

MORE LINKS:
http://mashable.com/2009/10/21/google-twitter-search-deal/
http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/google_social_search_facebook.php
http://gigaom.com/2009/10/21/microsoft-said-to-ink-twitter-facebook-data-mining-deal/

These deals were inked two months ago and if you've been using Google or Bing lately you may have started noticing tweets etc in your search results. Let's start off exploring why this has happened. The Twittter phenomenon has taken the Internet by storm. All the "giants" - Google, Bing, Facebook, MySpace (I include the dying MySpace only because it still has a vast membership) - didn't see it coming. Twitter basically heralded the arrival of the real-time web. Twitter is like a finger on the pulse of the zeitgeist. Whatever is happening in the world, internationally or locally, will undoubtedly break on Twitter within nanoseconds. It is real-time or live, so to speak, as opposed to most of the searchable web which is "archived" information. Why is this such a game changer? The modern world in the Information Age evolves at breakneck speed. People live their lives at an alarming pace and they demand access to information at the quickest possible speeds and convenience. Why would you want a link to a three hour old news story from a war zone, when you could be getting eye-witness accounts from people on the scene?

Real-time could be called Web 2.1. It's Web 2.0 with a nitrous injection. It's the answer to instant gratification in an information-powered world. Social networks and sites such as Twitter are where all of this real-time information is being shared, created, discussed, blogged, updated etc. It was therefore crucial for the leaders in web search, namely Google and Bing, to get a finger in that pie, or they would be left behind. Here's Google's own blog on the subject to show you how they see it.

The real-time web and you

Three years ago, TIME Magazine published their "Person of the Year" feature with a 'mirror' on the front cover. The "Person of the Year" was YOU. As stated in the article: "It's about the many wresting power from the few and helping one another for nothing and how that will not only change the world, but also change the way the world changes." This was preceded two years earlier by Merriam-Webster's #1 Word of the Year for 2004: "blog". This all referenced how Web 2.0 was coming of age. If you are online and blogging, on Facebook, tweeting on Twitter, chatting on IM, arguing in forums, posting comments on news articles, uploading videos to YouTube, archiving your family holiday snaps on Flickr, or sharing any part of your life on the Internet, then you are part of the real-time web.

The privacy threat

Once you are online, you need to realise that the Internet allows for persistence. Everything that goes online is stored on a server somewhere. Google indexes up to a trillion urls, for example. Or check out Wayback Machine to find websites from the past. Even if you didn't upload the information yourself, there will still be personal information stored on a server connected to the Internet, somewhere on the planet. Your ID number, your tax number, your car registration, your bank account number, your telephone number, your address, your credit information. It is all stored online somewhere. Even if you aren't online, your friends or colleagues will upload photos of you, chat about you, post your phone number for a friend to get hold of you. It is virtually impossible to stay “off the grid” for people who live in this digital world.

Despite security measures, if there is information online then it is hypothetically available to anyone with the knowledge to breach these security systems. NOTHING is 100% private. The most sophisticated hackers can bypass almost any security systems.

Despite this fact it is always prudent to educate yourself in maintaining the best security for your information. Install AV software and run anti-spyware software. If you really want to make sure your stuff remains private then you MUST read all the terms and conditions of every single website and program that you use. I'm sure all of us simply click the “Yes” button and surf on through without ever reading them.

On Facebook, click “Settings” then “Privacy Settings” to set up exactly which information you want available and to whom. If you have something set to “Everyone” and then under the “Search” setting you have “Allow” clicked to allow the search engines to index your information, then this information can and will probably appear in a search. As it plainly says on FB: “Public search results: This setting only allows search engines to access your publicly available information and any information you set to Everyone. This does not include anything you've shared with just your friends or friends of friends.” Pretty straight forward.

However, why do you think you are so important that your menial daily life should remain private? Or why do you think that a status update about going to KFC for lunch is so “private” that it shouldn't be seen by a stranger?

If you make everything on FB “Only Friends” then that is what will happen. It's not rocket science. This “privacy” fear-mongering panders to society's natural thirst for unsubstantiated panic. It's the same with most hoax emails you will see: Girls getting raped in mall toilets and then having their clothes stolen, the latest hijacking method, don't flash your lights at people with their car lights off because you will be killed in some gang initiation. It's all bullshit, but people feel the need to propagate this nonsense. Sidenote: Please, for fucksakes, check Snopes.com before you post anything or forward some bullshit email. You fucking moronic troglodytes! /rant

If you haven't customised your privacy settings on Facebook then that's your own stupid fault. As I have said, it isn't bloody rocket science and the onus is on you, not Facebook, to protect your own information. Your online privacy is your own prerogative. If you click on some dodgy link and soon find your Facebook account “hacked” (it isn't hacked by the way, you hacked it yourself by clicking on the link and/or application), then it is YOUR fault. These websites do their utmost to protect your from spammers and hackers, but ultimately it is you who are the weakest link and it is you who is normally to blame.

Lastly, I can't understand this obsession with privacy. My own life is an open book. I really don't give a shit if Google indexes my tweets and my updates, photos or whatever else they feel like making available. In fact, I'm more than happy to contribute. Google is the greatest information-seeking tool I have ever seen. It is amazing. I love it. If they are moving toward real-time search, then that's fantastic. It will make my life easier. It will enhance and augment my life in myriad useful ways. Why would I then want to resist it? I also can not understand why I would want to make my rather trivial existence private. The more the merrier. Web 2.0 is an interactive experience and I'm a very willing and active member of this incredible human achievement. Technophobes and the ignorant (who unfortunately make up the majority of the online – and offline – world) should stay the hell off the computer if they have a problem with this “privacy” business.

Perhaps they are paranoid because, despite ignorance being bliss, humans also fear that which they do not know. It all boils down to personal competence and knowledge. Knowledge is power. If you are sufficiently techno-literate and you educate yourself, then you really have nothing to fear.

Monday morning
08h25
William Nicol Drive
Johannesburg
South Africa

I drive along this route to work every morning, sometimes changing my route so that I don’t succumb to terminal ennui – Like a tiger pacing his small cage over and over and over, but then suddenly changing to go clockwise. I know this itinerary like the back of my TV guide on which I mull Cannabis sativa (just looking for an interesting simile Mom, if you reading this, but the botany did pay off as you can see). I often pass through this way in an ethereal stupor. Yet, I am different from the other drones.

Those automatons that succumb to the deep resignation of a life without dreams. I see them in their personal transporters. Listening to the numbing cacophony of myriad media icons. I do not have a radio in my car. I am alone with my sunroof open. A Rufous-naped Lark chirps everyday only 3 kilometres from my home in an open veld. I know the bird without ever having to see him through my car windows. How many of these clones know him?

I stop at a robot* and what a wondrous place it is. Full of sound, colour and life. The main sound, unfortunately, is the incessant hum of the media machines pumping out bass or classical from the other cars, yet all liberally peppered with commercial breaks (as they euphemistically call shameless swindling). But there, standing next to my poisonous gas-spewing vehicle, is a smiling face offering me something. I look up and smile back as the grin is infectious. I am not a smiley person in the morning as I have noted, but I can never help myself returning a smile. Force of habit I suppose, but I like that one. Nevertheless, I refuse his offer of a simple piece of paper with a direct look into his eyes, a big smile and a polite “No thanks, buddy/Mfowetu/Baba/Mate/My friend”, whichever term of respect or endearment grabs me at the time. He smiles back and often sticks his fist out for me to press mine against. Sometimes we laugh, sometimes he says thanks back. Sometimes he wishes me a good day, or great weekend, but not before I try say it first. Sometimes the piece of paper looks interesting enough to take, or sometimes I just take it to be polite. I usually just accumulate the stuff for a while before another kind soul at another intersection brings by a dustbin bag to collect all the rubbish I have amassed in my car through my own slovenly laziness. I give the man a small token of just R2 for doing me the favour of not having to walk the extremely long distance to a dustbin when I get home.

I make it a firm point of acknowledging and chatting to as many of these great people as I come across. Some of them are real clowns making me laugh out loud in the humdrum monotony of capitalist traffic. Most of them make me smile in fact. I often feel sorry for them, unable to find jobs in the formal sector and even more often simply being exploited by some other profit leering freak that pays them nothing to stand on their feet all day risking skin cancer in summer and debilitating cold in winter. But they keep smiling, not like most of the humans I see sitting in their cars worth more than these people earn in over 10 years. Even worse, these impatient and rude people treat these smiling faces with utter disdain and contentment. I would spit on their cars if I were a street vendor. I would probably hijack someone if he were continuously rude to me over the course of a few weeks. Damn well deserves it for not listening to his parents when they taught him manners.

I listened when I was taught manners and common human decency by my grandparents and parents. And so I offer this very simple statement as a big FUCK YOU to all those people who want to get rid of street vendors. Yes FUCK YOU and your self-serving ways. Your utter despicability. How dare you prance around in your awesome machine, impatient to get to the shops to buy splatter-free cooking liquid, two-ply toilet paper and bottled water. FUCK YOU on behalf of all the street vendors honestly trying to scratch a meagre breadline living to feed their kids or send them to school. FUCK YOU! And if I knew that term in any of our other ten official languages I would say that too. To those people who do smile and politely decline, no matter how many times you have to say no, who cares? Is it such a big fucking deal in your life? Smile at them. Talk to them. Buy them lunch sometime. Buy a freakin pen or calculator. Does your twenty Rand mean so much to you that you have to lose all evidence of actually belonging to the human race? Or would you rather plug it into a slot machine over a breathless minute instead of helping to support our beautiful country and its people. Nuff sed except FUCK YOU AGAIN, YOU IMBECILIC, COLD-HEARTED PROTOHUMANS. Street vendors of SA unite.

*South Africans, having been hopelessly sheltered from evil technology, decided that a pole with three flashing lights was nothing less than a miracle of science. “It must be a robot!” they cried when they saw its green, amber and red hypnotic dance. Yet around the world we are ridiculed. “That’s a bleeding traffic light mate!” the pommies chastise us. South Africa is full of such quaint anecdotes.

Remember those words? I do. I used to sing them every single day at assembly in school... and it filled me to the brim with pride. I used to look out the window as I sang those words, pledged my life to this country, and I would see the beautiful blue sky, the swaying trees, whispy clouds and a rugged mountain. Sometimes I would be moved to near tears with the emotion. I also understand that this was all part of our indoctrination into Apartheid nationalism. But it worked on me dammit. And also, although I was basically pledging my life to defend this country against "Die Rooi/Swart Gevaar" as we were then told, I still felt more than that. This was my country, my home, my land... I belonged here and I will never leave.

I am still today an utterly patriotic South African. I don't give a hoot what colour the people in power are, because my country is still here and it is still as beautiful as when I gazed out that window, tears brimming.

And nothing gets me more agitated than people who only have bad things to say about this country. It's like a personal insult. It's like insulting my mother! I hope that one day all the naysayers will have buggered off to so-called greener pastures (have you seen Natal in Spring? - nothing greener, maybe Scotland brrrr)

Pessimism is a disease that grows and spreads like cancer, consuming the human host until they are dead inside. It is a horrible affliction. Remember when your Mom used to say "If you have nothing good to say, then say nothing"? Why not spread smiles and lift people up? Change a life, make someone's day. Be positive! Just don't sit there and complain and then do bugger all about it. ESPECIALLY IF YOU WERE ONE OF THOSE TOSSERS WHO DIDN'T BOTHER TO VOTE! You have no right to say a freaking word about this country because really you are just a squatter here. A homeless vagrant. A bum. You don't belong here and you never will, so bugger off.

How can you possibly ignore all the AWESOME things about South Africa? Are you so blinded by your cancerous cynicism? Open your eyes. Look at your life goddammit. Do you own and drive a car? Do you own a home or rent a nice one? Do you have a job? Do you have the Internet for five snakes? Do you have a domestic worker? Do you ever have to get out of your car to fill your tank with state-subsidised petrol? Can you buy any international clothing label at your convenience? Can you go out and eat at Michelin-rated restaurants while drinking internationally acclaimed local wine? Can you go to a stadium and watch world champions play sport? Can you go to the beach, swim in a crystal mountain stream, trek through bushveld for the Big Five in a country leading the world in conservation? Can you meet any shade of human and laugh with them? Can you drink beer manufactured by the 2nd most successful brewery in the entire world? Can you think proudly of a self-made billionaire pushing the limits all the way to space? Can you braai outside pretty much the WHOLE year? Ah crap, I could go on forever really, but if you just don't get it, then what's the point? Please get your affairs in order and go live under gray skies with a dole-lazy bunch of low class pommies, or with a bunch of nasal-twanging crude Aussies, or wherever else you seem to think is a much better place. Please go. It means more of my beloved South Africa for us true South Africans!!!

*An earlier blog below, and in light of the recent events, I think we all need a bit of cheering up*

Rainbow Nation

I wrote the below article for a travel agent to put on pamphlets for overseas tourists (so it is a bit florid, but it's pamphlet copy remember). I think it is a pretty accurate description of this awesome country, so with all the kak going round, let's all get patriotic instead of bickering like children!!! I vote for SA, nobody else.

South Africa is the African poster child; the epitome of African culture juxtaposed with the frenetic pace of first world progress, and aptly named the Rainbow Nation due to its stark contrasts of landscape, culture, people, fauna and flora. These contrasting aspects meld and mesh into a kaleidoscope of sensory delights. Its troubled and fascinating history is enough to warrant a visit, but the wealth of its utterly mesmerizing facets will have you submerged in a place as magical and awe-inspiring as the world on which our first ancestors gazed.

The land offers up its bounty of breathtaking scenery in the form of myriad biospheres. Visitors are spoilt for choice with inviting seas and cloud breathing mountains, peaceful deserts and verdant forests, untamed savannahs and luscious wetlands. The utter diversity of life that inhabits these environments is an incomparable feast for nature lovers. South Africa is second to none in wildlife conservation and spotting the Big Five is a challenge often conquered. The Big Five originate from the hunting days when these animals were feared as the most dangerous to stalk – Leopard, Lion, Rhino, Elephant and Buffalo. Now, plucked from the jaws of extinction by intensive conservation efforts, these majestic animals roam free in massive game parks to be experienced and enjoyed by the fortunate visitor. Although the cornucopia of other fauna inhabiting this land should not be neglected as South Africa can boast a veritable Noah’s Ark of creatures, as well as a diverse range of fascinating and unique flora.

The South African people are truly blessed to live in this paradise, but it is the people of South Africa that make this country an unparalleled destination. From the dawn of civilization, South Africa can attest to being the cradle of humankind, as ancient fossils discovered here soundly place the birth of our earliest ancestors in South Africa. From that time, South Africa has endured shuddering upheavals from tribal and colonial warfare to the inexcusable suffering caused by Apartheid. However, despite these seemingly insurmountable crises the people have emerged bruised, but with an innate joie de vivre that negates these troubles. All South Africans are proud of, and fervently engage in, the nation building needed to heal this land. Visitors will be constantly struck by the genuine warmth and friendliness of all the peoples of South Africa, be they poor, rich, Black, White, Indian, Coloured or Asian. It is this melting pot of humanity that makes South Africa a truly great nation.

Visitors will often witness substantial disparities living side by side in South Africa - the ancient customs and modern ways, the concrete jungle and wild savannah, BMW’s and donkey carts, vast mansions and lean-to shacks, smog and mountain air, muddy rivers and crystal streams, elephants and poodles, cellphones and drum beats. South Africa neither makes excuses for these contradictions, nor does it boast of them. These are but the ingredients that make South Africa one of the most sought after tourist destinations in the world today.

And some cool positive links:
http://www.homecomingrevolution.co.za/
http://www.positivelysa.co.za/index03.asp
http://www.imc.org.za/goodstuff.htm
http://www.safrica.info/
http://www.positivelysa.co.za/index03.asp
http://www.imc.org.za/goodstuff.htm

I was watching this thing on TV the other night about bottoms and their ostensible rise in regard. Pretty standard stuff and quite disappointing really in terms of an in depth study into the posterior region, so I’d like to explore it a little bit further. I am a bum man after all… not in a proctological sense mind you… sickos.

The human female form is quite possibly the most achingly beautiful entity ever to have graced this star-littered universe. Especially when viewed through the extremely subjective eyes of a human male. And I happen to be one of those individuals that are undeservedly a blessed witness to this beguiling form. A form that has the unique power to turn this heathen into a rosemary-bead fidgeting monk, genuflecting in unadulterated gratitude to its supreme creator. Either that or a sunken-eyed, slavering zombie whose boundless addiction dooms him to its eternal pursuit. Hyperbole? Not on my watch. In fact, I obsequiously beseech forgiveness for my failure to capture the essence of that beauty with mere prose. Art? Perhaps. Sculpture? Perchance. Photography? Indeed. But mere lexis? I think not. As arrogantly talented as I may be as a humble scribe, words are scant praise for such a truly wondrous opus.

I could, of course, wax lyrical about this subject for decades. Until my viciously typing fingers cracked and bled with the ferocious power of a man afflicted by a siren muse. Perhaps I shall leave that ill-fated quest for another day. Today? Today I shall dedicate to the ass. Buns they call them on those late night fitness telesales ads. Buns I tell you. That just makes me hot and cross. Ass is a much better term. How that dim-witted mule managed to garner the moniker I shall never know. Perhaps due to its ample posterior. Or perhaps the other way round. No, not its baying front end. I mean perhaps its engorged buttocks became the name for all backsides. “Lookie there Padraig, that comely wench has buttocks like an ass!” Plausible.

I am proudly a bum man. Those two rounded and pert cheeks lounging comfortably like a ripe, juicy peach can reduce me to anguished tears. I have a rather simple anatomical explanation for this predilection. Simply put, a woman’s ass is like the blue print for her body. I have amateurishly noticed that a woman’s fantastic backside is like the conductor in an orchestra. It leads the entire ensemble. If she has an empire-toppling butt, the legs follow suit, the waist above that, and well if those are in proportion the rest just falls into place like a Rubik’s cube with six of the same coloured sides.

The gluteus maximus is the largest muscle in the human body. A genetic blessing thanks to the Homo sapiens’ insistence on walking upright. And if ever there were a singular human trait, a trait that immediately set us upon our modern path, walking upright would be it. No wonder the buttocks are seemingly revered. We should have monuments to ‘The Ass’. Indeed I have a whole sub-section in my porn collection that is kind of like a shrine to ‘The Ass’. Jesting aside, I can’t understand this supposed neo-ass fascination. There is no single part of a woman’s form that is a quintessential barometer of female sexuality. That’s like saying it’s the engine that makes the Ferrari. It’s the Intel chip that makes the laptop. It’s the secret herbs and spices that makes the KFC… wait, on that account we may be right. Nevertheless, the enigma of woman is the sum of all its exquisite parts. The curves that mimic ancient sand dunes. The scent that intoxicates with a mere suggestion. The dimpled lower back like uncharted exotic lands. The bow of the neck that tempts the most abstemious vampire. The hair, like diaphanous fairy silk. The belly ripe with the promise of languid sensuality. The inner thigh smoother than glistening pearl. The back that begs the soft graze of fingernails. Clavicles that rise and fall with heated passion.

Ah… sigh. Woman. The utter excruciating beauty of woman. That said I must reiterate that I am a bum man. And so to end off with the immortal words of some daft song: I see you baby… shakin’ that ass.

I was reading my local newspaper the other day. Okay, newspaper is a bit of a compliment to these things as they mainly deal with localised news, but I can't help myself really. I like to read and understand stuff that's going on in the direct vicinity of my bachelor pad.

So I'm browsing the newspaper and before I get into the actual pith of this blog I have to relate something I found therein that had the power to make me guffaw out loud, and I quote from the classified section:

2005: Do you want the advantage of a fresh start? Capitalize on new year's resolutions with the benefit of a career as a bonus. No door to doos sales.

And I stopped there LMAO

BWAAAHAHAHAHA Door to doos!!! BWAAAHAHAHAHAHAHHA And for our non-Afrikaans sprekendes a doos is a rather uncouth term for a woman's intimate plumbing so to speak.

However, this pleasant experience was marred by a letter posted by the regional manager of the Randburg SPCA. This organisation has my complete respect, but this letter damaged that respect an iota. The title of the letter is 'Take a stance against pets as prey.'

Basically the gist of the letter admonishes pet stores that sell live animals as food for other pets. Like baby mice and rats for snakes and some lizards. It even quotes the Animal Protection Act that says 'releasing any animal into a situation where it is likely to be attacked is a violation which could lead to criminal prosecution'. Frankly, I find this rather pathetic. I am an animal lover, but for jiminy's sakes the SPCA should not be meddling in areas awash with a penumbra of grey. Firstly, what the hell are these poor snakes and lizards supposed to eat? Some of them will not eat dead prey. They must eat live rats or mice or whatever. Secondly, surely a farmer selling cows to an abattoir would be committing the same offence? The McDonalds-destined bovine is being released into a situation where it is undoubtedly going to be attacked by a rather fatal bolt into its medulla oblongata. Et voila, super size me!

This stance would probably not go amiss under the Bush administration which believes in highly puritanical federal meddling. Does this act also extend to earthworms and platannas (a type of frog/toad)? I ask this because I have personally dispatched a number of these creatures into a rather volatile and precipitous situation where they are under attack by voracious piscatorial beasties. I am guilty your honour. What about arresting an impala doe for the birth of her little baby in the Kruger Park? She is undoubtedly releasing the poor ungulate into a situation where it may be attacked by any number of gnashing-mawed predators.

I am opposed to any law which seemingly disparages natural law. The food chain is cruel, but it seems to work okay.

Listen to this emotive and florid twaddle: "The complainant who reported the incident was horrified, and is unable to get the image of these helpless babies wriggling among the lizards out of her mind. This incident occurred while the callous shop owner and an assistant stood and watched the proceedings"

Freakin bunny huggers I tell ya. Has she never watched the Discovery Channel? Try watching the annual migration of the Wildebeest in Tanzania and Kenya. Huge Nile crocodiles feasting heartily on fillet de wildebeeest. Disgusting really. We must put a stop to it immediately. How could this be allowed to happen? We should be living in a telly tubby world complete with a laughing baby face sun.

These idiots have clearly removed themselves so far from reality that they see themselves as gods. The laws of nature decree that those lower down on the food chain can and will be eaten, often horrifically and while still alive, torn limb from limb, by those luckily enough to be a victim of circumstance and thus born higher up on said food chain. Humans, being omnivorous, and the apex predator in any given food chain, are welcome to chow down on whatever they see fit. Lowly snakes and lizards are therefore welcome to snack on the odd live baby cutesy widdle mousey or even bunny for that matter.

In fact, a large 4-metre constrictor python could be described as the greatest bunny hugger of all time. Give em a live bunny and they are sure to hug it to death. Which reminds me of a great joke:

Cute eight-year-old Amy, complete with pig tails, walks into her local pet store. The pet store owner, an amiable old fella, can't resist her cuteness and bends down on his knees and says:
"What are you looking for little girl?"
She responds while toying with her pig tail "I'm looking for a widdle wabby."
"Ah," he smiles, "Well we have all sorts of wabbies here. Would you like a bwown wabby like that one over there. Or would you like a widdle fluffy one like that one. Or perhaps you like that spotted black and white wabby in the corner?"

She replies with a little frown on her cute forehead: "I don't fink my pyfon weally gives a fuck!"

Written when the man who inspired me to become a writer died

Hunter S. Thompson is dead. Admittedly by his own hand, but death has no prejudice. The great leveler has no finicky qualms about how you die. Doesn’t give a rodent’s tight little ringpiece about who you are either. But some of us do live on a bit longer in the memories of the living. Some may last a generation, some even more, but only the truly great attain immortality. I believe Hunter S. Thompson was such a man. So consider this blog the doffing of my hat to one of my role models. Let’s just hope Eric Cartman doesn’t have suicidal leanings, because I only have a handful of role models left.

Some people may never have heard of Hunter S. Thompson. I shall reserve my judgment on that fact, since the man was not necessarily everyone’s cup of tea. Indeed tea lovers and teetotalers would shudder to consider Mr. Thompson anything short of an abomination. I’ll pander to ignorance and mention that Hunter S. Thompson is, or rather was, the author of the book many only consider a film starring the cheekbone-endowed Johnny Depp and the wonderfully-named Benicio Del Toro. Yes, I speak of Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas which, despite my own loathing of book-turned-movies, managed to somehow do the book a certain level of justice. Many will also not know that the story is not necessarily a work of fiction.

Hunter S. Thompson was an arch-hedonist. His love and pursuit of relentless debauchery, reckless abandon and severe anarchy can only be looked upon with awe. He consumed enough narcotics in any shape or form to drop an elephant at forty paces. He looked upon law with disdain. He single-handedly led a revolution that would change the face of journalism forever. He indulged in fervent sexual depravity that would make a two-dollar whore seem like Mother Teresa. But above all he managed to do all of this while consistently writing scathing, incisive, witty and truly gifted social commentary.

They say that there is a thin line between genius and insanity. Well no truer words can be spoken than saying that Hunter S. Thompson definitely inhaled that line and, true to form, would have complained that it was so thin. I believe this to be the reason behind the fact that his truly talented brains are now adorning the walls of his home in Aspen. Not the fact that he was a drug-addled madman who finally lost hold of his tenuous grip on reality. Genius is a difficult monster to contain within a mortal man. After 67 years of unbridled decadence, I think Thompson finally felt that he had wrestled with enough demons and fucked an equal amount of angels as he felt necessary. What more could the man do after all? He had taken life by the horns and rogered it violently up the poopchute. The only man who could justly court death simply because that was all he had left to do. Perhaps it was frustration. He had been dancing at death’s door, taunting the Reaper with middle finger raised, for decades. So perhaps he just thought, fuck it, I keep a'knockin' but nobody let’s me in, I’ll just let myself in then shall I? He had simply had his fill.

Many will say that Thompson was a drug-crazed, lawless, morality-spurning lunatic. I disagree wholeheartedly and heatedly. He was a genius. He lived a fuller life than almost any human to have walked on this planet. He experienced both pleasure and pain to the fullest extent of those emotions. Nothing can be more admirable in my eyes.

Lessons to be learned from Hunter S. Thompson? Life is for living. Boring platitude it may be, and rife with irony since he committed suicide, but I believe only a man that has truly lived can take his own life. I am not advocating suicide. All I am saying is that I still have a lot of life left to live. I want to take life and choke it until its eyes start bleeding. I want to disembowel life and let its guts spill onto the ground with a gleeful splattering. I want to rip off life’s limbs and beat it into a coma with the soggy ends. I want to cut off life’s eyelids and leave it in a desert sandstorm. Merely sucking the marrow out of life is for pussies.

“I hate to advocate drugs, alcohol, violence, or insanity to anyone, but they've always worked for me.”- Hunter

“The edge?... there is no honest way to explain it because the only people who really know where it is are the ones who have gone over.”- Hunter

Instant gratification is the mantra of modern society. We are a society of 3 year-old brats demanding constant attention to our every want, throwing temper tantrums if we don’t get it. I don’t know when it all started… maybe with instant coffee. Maybe it goes deeper than that. Maybe it is the basest of human desires – greed. No matter how many spiritual leaders attempt to beguile us with altruistic philosophy, we are inexplicably drawn to greed. Darwin describes the theory of evolution as the survival of the fittest, but it is this basic drive for survival that dictates human greed. The need to survive is greedy. There are too many organisms on this planet fighting over limited resources, and the only way to ensure survival is to succumb to greed.

This greed has created our modern society. I want it all, and I want it now. We stumble aimlessly through our days, sweating it out in the engine room of the great capitalist machine, just trying to satisfy our pitiful greed. Before we even had a chance to think about it, we had created a society that is based on instant gratification. A world where need has been replaced by want, and it is all just a mouse click away. The natural diurnal human rhythms have been surpassed by 24/7/365, and the rat race has become an eternal marathon. Skirting round the philosophical “where is it all going?”, we first need to understand what it is now.

The naked ape is the most arrogant of all creatures, blindly worshipping our so-called superiority. What we have neglected to notice is that we are subjected to the same basic natural laws that rule all organisms, including the single-celled amoeba. Stimulus and response is the overriding law that governs us all. If you place a single grain of salt in the path of an amoeba, it will immediately, upon encountering the sodium, change its course. Sodium=stimulus, relocation=response. Although this is an example of a negative stimulus incurring a response, the same goes for positive stimuli. Then we have the famous example of Pavlov’s dog. Pavlov wanted to see if he could induce a response that was unrelated to the stimulus. In this case, he attempted to induce salivation in a dog by ringing a bell. A simple enough experiment, it involved ringing a bell just before giving the dog his grub. Repeating this step enough times, Pavlov eventually removed the food from the equation. Upon ringing the bell, the dog would start to salivate - a response indirectly related to the stimulus.

Enough of the first-year sciences, how does this all relate to modern society’s desperate need for instant gratification? Philosophically it relates to hedonism. The pursuit of pleasure as the purpose of life is one that I definitely subscribe to. We are constantly chasing those stimuli that trigger the pleasure receptors in our crania (wow, two Latin plurals in one sentence – sorry). To illustrate the point of humanity’s simplicity one needs just look at the profits of Pfizer. Their little blue miracle pill, commonly known as Viagra, is a perfect example of our shallow approach to modern living. Fast erections, fast food, fast cars, fast Internet connections, fast music! Christ, we even have fast fasts, otherwise known as blitz diets.

Hurtling through time as if Armageddon was snapping at our heels, we need to slow down to a blur. We need to realise that life is more than just simple satisfaction. Believe me, I enjoy the no-holds-barred hedonism, but at the same time I am also lost and directionless. Pondering the thought of my own mortality, I feel this overwhelming need to do something important with my life. I don’t want to die a consumer. I find the term quite insulting in fact. Marketing gurus are circling like vultures over the Lemming masses, attempting to entice the last few cents out of our grubby paws. It is as if pleasure has become a commodity, owned by the multinational corporations and spewed out to the highest bidder. I don’t know where it is all going, but I do know that millions start salivating when they hear the McDonalds jingle on TV.

In the midst of all this politicking, it’s hard not to become blasé about it all. The talking heads on television seem to think they’re telling us what we want to hear, but all we are hearing is blahblahblahblahblah. Now let me draw a parallel for you. Imagine the eternal dance between male and female is a form of electioneering. Consider the fact that you are up for election, alongside every other male on the planet. Luckily this isn’t a global election. Mostly it’s municipal stuff. You compete with the males from your own area.

It’s one woman, one vote, so just pray you get an X next to your name. So let’s take this analogy even further. Imagine what your supporters are hearing from your fellow representatives. Imagine the different parties even. There’s the “Roid Party” with a manifesto that goes along the lines of “if you chicks smaak an ou wif big muscles and can like to wear sleeveless vests everyday, den vote for us, schweet hey, ja, kief.” You get the “Metrosexual” party that goes shopping for hair products along with their support base. Quite an angle I might add, but still it’s just the usual politicking crap.

Put it this way, all the ladies hear is blahblahblahblahblah. So how do you go about electioneering so that hopefully you’ll get a majority vote and be able to latch a superb specimen on your arm? The best way is to be radical. Stick out from the bloody crowd. Stop with the blahblahblahblahblah. This is where most men go wrong. They totally underestimate their voter base. They think they can make all the usual promises and that must be a sure way into her unmentionables. Bollocks dude, better have a rethink. She’s heard it all before. She may have fallen for those empty promises in the beginning, but she’s learnt the hard way. Kinda like saying “Jobs for all”, “Houses for everyone”. It’s the age old Over-promise – Under-deliver. It’s a short term tactic that may bed you some naïve school girls, but who wants to bonk someone that wouldn’t even be able to find her own clitoris? If you truly want to get elected by the elite, then you have to stick out, speak to their needs… and DELIVER.

Once you’ve been elected don’t think you can sit back for the next four years being complacent. Your elective base i.e. you girlfriend, will be very demanding. She will want delivery on all those promises you made during the lead up to the election… and even worse is that you don’t get tenure for four years. You can be deposed at any time. Keep an eye on politics and apply the practice in your relationship. Learn from the best and you’ll have a long and happy reign in the seat of power. Stuff up once and expect public apologies, trial by media and baying for blood.

In the words of Pedro from Napoleon Dynamite: “Vote for me and I’ll make all your dreams come true.” Sounds like kak, but he says it with such humility and sincerity that you actually believe the little guy. Take notes.

What the hell happened to men? When did we hand over the reins to the bitches? There I was in adolescence coming to terms with my burgeoning puberty and I was doing what came naturally. You know, trying to get my sweaty mitts on any form of porn whatsoever and jacking off with rabid regularity. Don’t be shocked ladies; the pubescent boy/man is a bundle of surging sex hormones. If the poisons don’t leave the building… well I shudder to think what would happen. So yeah, there you are a teenager and already things are complicated… because prior to this stage you only knew girls as those soft, nice smelling things you caught in kissing catches. Now you actually wanted them! This now brings complications into the man’s life as women are a tad complicated.

Men are simple. Very simple. We like it that way and we would love to keep it that way, but for that nagging urge to want to bump uglies with the complicated sex. Due to this problem, we have to endure countless challenges just for the privilege. One of these challenges is living up to their desires. Once again women complicate things even more by consistently moving the goalposts. I want, I want, I want, they get what they want, but then they don’t want that anymore, they want something else. Fucking frustrating for us simple men.

This leads us to the common definitions of what women want in a man. Once we were simply allowed to plod along happily scratching our nuts, burping, drinking beer and not shaving for days on end. Then suddenly, somehow, women got the upper hand. Their demands became unified. They defined the Renaissance Man – According to the dictionary, a man who has broad intellectual interests and is accomplished in areas of both the arts and the sciences. This type of man is referred to by other men as 'poncy git', but women like him ‘cos he fulfils some Mills & Boonish fantasy about a dude that will take them to art galleries, read them poetry and love them for their minds or some such crap. Once women bored of this new definition they wanted more. So they came up with the Sensitive New Age guy. My absolute fucking worst. Damned hippies. This freak was supposed to cry when Bambi’s mom bit the bullet, cook tofu-based gourmet meals, read their fucking palms and be an expert at tantric sex. That’s sex that takes days and they even teach you how to come without the man custard part. Where’s the fun in that? So much for the money shot!

So the hippie freak then got tossed out as they probably tired of his flatulence from all that organic food and his greasy hair from using shampoo made from Thistlewood and dried pond kelp. Then we got the Spice Girls…“I’ll tell you what I want, what I really, really want. I wanna zig-a-zig-uhhh” they chorused. Apparently in secret lady language that means metrosexual. Posh got her talons into Beckham and transformed the dude into MetroMan! The superhero of all things metrosexual.

What the fuck is that shit? Basically metrosexuality can be summed up in one word… products, especially face and hair products. This new dude is supposed to do all that girly stuff like facials, waxing, plucking, grooming and soap is banned apparently. I thought that last one was pretty cool, but they tell me it’s supposed to be replaced with cleanser, toner and moisturiser.

Does anybody else here read the above and think these flippen chicks are playing dolls with us. “Awww, let’s put some product in his hair” she coos as she strokes her Ken doll’s mop. Fucking Hallmark, Cosmo, romantic comedies, Mills & Boon! They’ve created a monster. Reality? What is that? The girls want play-play time with their dollys.

Of course, play-play time with Ken and his hair products didn’t quite work anymore. Barbie was bored. So she invented the latest one: übersexual, from the German über meaning over or above, hence superior. What is this now? The überdude is a male who is similar to a metrosexual but displays the traditional manly qualities such as confidence, strength, and class - leaving no doubt as to his sexual orientation. For fucksakes, what a load of bollocks.

My advice is to be a retrosexual. Yup another term simply meaning a dude that’s a dude... like we were before labels and products. We were just your average oke. Of course, you won’t be satisfying the female demands and therefore won’t be able to bump uglies with them, but I reckon we take back control. No matter what women want, we can be safe in the knowledge that even a metrosexual, ubersexual, or a new age dork will always live up to that one definition that women get right: All men are bastards. So all you have to do is be “nice” and they’ll love you for it.

Emotionally and intellectually disabled. Limping along the path of life like lice-ridden vagabonds. Limp, limp, limp, stumble, fall, grazed bleeding knees. Weeping and whining, arms outstretched, pleading like snotty-nosed infants. Retarded beings. Stunted wisdom. Immature souls. Searching constantly for something, anything, to fill their vacant lives. They swarm the land like seething, weeping pustules. A pathetic and rather embarrassing reflection of what it truly is to be human. Or rather, what it is to reach fulfillment as a human. Fulfillment as a human is to be at peace with being human. Greed-driven. Violent. Eternally fallible. Ugly. Vicious. Directionless. Yet filled with a colossal capacity for love and empathy. Kindness. Beauty. If you haven’t embraced what is to be human - the good and the evil – then you will need a crutch. You will need a crutch because the yukky part of being human is too much for your fragile mentality to bear. These are the retarded masses that continuously conjure up the most fantastical crutches to make this life bearable.


As Marx stated “Religion is the opium of the masses”. Perhaps more intended to reflect religion as a political tool, but still it rings true in a universal sense. Life isn’t all ha, ha, hee, hee (as the gloriously titled Bollywood program claims). It’s tough. Facing life - and death - without faith; without spirituality; without belief, takes platinum-plated balls the size of planetoids in the Kuiper Belt. Painting pretty pictures with a baby-faced sun, a golden-paved afterlife, or reincarnation as Heidi Klum’s thong, is simply pitiable. Shame. Here’s your crutch. Limp along nicely now and take care to avoid the boogeymen. BOO!


Hide behind a book. Run for cover behind sickly sweet Hallmark platitudes. Shave you head and escape reality in Goa. Batten down the hatches in some guru-worshipping cult in Texas. Join the tofu-farting, tie-dyed gimps in a sweat hut in Fordsburg. Here’s your crutch. Welcome to the paralympics of spiritualism, new-age esotericism and religion.


It’s all a crutch. Sometimes a very lucrative crutch for the people flogging books, cults, sermons, face-paint, rain-sticks, stupid cobweb dreamcatchers, crystals, CDs, DVDs, television shows, entire channels (scuse the pun). There’s a sucker born every minute. They’re easy to find. And even easier to make plunder. The decline of formal religion (in the civilized world at least) was supposed to herald the triumphant emergence of fulfilled human beings. Yet all it did was leave a sickening gap. Without the opium of religion, there are now millions of humans proudly proclaiming to be non-religious, yet achingly craving the same old bloody crutch in the form of “spirituality”. As if denouncing religion welcomes them into the realm of the intelligentsia. Bollocks. Here’s your crutch. New-age esoteric crap. In fact, I have more respect for the religious. At least they are sound in their faith. Doggedly pursuing their ancient dogma instead of blindly adopting any new-fangled craze that usually rapes and pillages from unkempt philosophies and fly-by-night stoned epiphanies. They have Red Indian dreamcatchers, aboriginal didgeridoos, Buddhist statuettes, Kabbalah bracelets, Maori tattoos and Chinese royalty past-lives. Here’s your freaking crutch.


They speak of Karma. In fact they would even spell the Kama Sutra incorrectly. They usually have zero inkling of Karma or Chakras or Buddhism or Kabbalah or any such notion. Or they will confidently proclaim their knowledge, since they recently attended this “heyshawow” weekend getaway where some idiot formerly known as Frikkie Du Plessis - but now being called Big Cock Hunting Eagle Dalai-Oogahchukka – blew cleansing lavender smoke up their anuses and ridded them of that bad past life experience.


As to past life experiences. Here’s your crutch. Being Joe Soap living in Morningside, Sandton, is just too vanilla. Lemme think... Hmmm, a ravishing, smoky-eyed concubine in the court of Sheik Mohammed Ulababakar in the 7th Century AD is much more glamorous. Ever wonder why these past-lives were never simply another Joe Soap in another time? It’s always some bloody princess this or king’s consort that.


Ever wonder why near-death experiences always involve bright-white light, flowing robes and harps a-strummin, and no one ever comes back speaking of sulphuric fumes and cloven hoof-prints in the ashen dust? I guess only the good come back then.


Is life so empty for these people? Devoid of substance? Is it their own fault? I guess you can’t blame people for being stupid. Would be great if that held in a court of law though.


Judge: Mr. Dickens, why did you not pay your TV license?
Mr. Dickens: er… Sorry, Your Worship, I was being stupid.
Judge: Oh, okay, you may go.


Jesting aside, people are empty. They keep searching for fulfillment when there is none. Fulfillment only comes from acceptance. Acceptance that this is life. This is your life. Nothing more, nothing less. It’s all you have. Now it’s up to you to make it the best life possible. Statistically speaking you could look forward to 70 odd years of good life on this planet. Don’t waste it by seeking a crutch to deal with harsh reality. Accept and be free. Be free to simply enjoy life. And then die happy.


Or carry on stumbling blindly along. Here’s your crutch.

You’re pwned and you don’t even know it guy. In true chest-beating fashion, the man will run around fluttering his tail feathers and proclaiming his total awesomeness with the ladies. “I’d hit that!” he confidently claims as a rather fit specimen sashays past him. He’ll even tune his boys how he’d take that back to his crib and bang it harder than a screen door in a hurricane. Of course, the gorgeous specimen has taken zero notice of the little twat and smiles cunningly to herself safe in the knowledge that she owns the pussy, so she makes the rules.

Women are keen deceivers. They have made it an art, whereas man’s attempts at deception seem crude and frankly primitive in comparison. We’re simpler than a two-piece puzzle and women have long ago figured this out. Long before the days of brassiere torching, women had both columns balanced. I must admit it can’t take long to figure us out. I mean, what is the earliest form of commerce know to man? The earliest commodity on this here planet is, of course, punani. They had it, they figured out we wanted it, so they decided to make us flippen pay for it. Wicked clever little angels aren’t they? We’ve been paying ever since - in one way or another - but women’s deception makes us think that we are getting it free. In fact, some of us are so arrogant that we stubbornly believe that we wield magical powers over women that “convince” them to give it up to us. AND despite glaringly obvious facts, many men still have the delusion that men rule the world, and always have. Makes me laugh actually. You’re own3d and you don’t even know it guy.

Listen to this carefully: Women only let you do what they themselves wanted to do in the first place. With the obvious discounting of violent rape or rohypnol-induced rape, women simply let us believe that we have seduced them, when in fact it is the other way round. Apparently they know within the first few minutes of meeting you if they will possibly sleep with you that night or in the future. Whereas, we sit and pray that whatever stupid lines we try on her will work somehow and we’ll get lucky. Notice that men “get lucky”. Women, on the other hand, get laid.

You’re own3d and you don’t even know it guy.

Women let us believe our self-induced delusions of grandeur. Why not? It’s too much trouble trying to explain to some gorilla that he is actually own3d. Let him think he’s winning and he’ll be putty in your hands. Confront him about his ineptitude and he will more than likely act like a gorilla.

But this is, of course, a column dedicated to man’s badass awesomeness, so I’m going to have to cheer the little guys up quickly before they realise their sad own3d existence. What does this mean to the accomplished, more evolved man? Firstly, step away from denial and embrace acceptance. Realise that it’s their turf you’re fighting on - their rules, their game, and their advantage.

To these men, I urge you to read - not Dr. Phil themed books about romantic dating and finding her g-spot (any accomplished, more evolved man should know that stuff anyway) - I urge you to read Sun Tzu’s world-famous book – The Art of War.

I’ll leave you with this:

“If you know the enemy and know yourself, you need not fear the result of a hundred battles. If you know yourself but not the enemy, for every victory gained you will also suffer a defeat. If you know neither the enemy nor yourself, you will succumb in every battle.” - Sun Tzu.

It’s tough, if not impossible, to truly know the enemy in this case. Women are more complicated than Zuma’s bank records. But, you now know the game. Don’t hate it, just play.