The Zulu Girl

When in the sun the hot red acres smoulder,
Down where the sweating gang its labour plies,
A girl flings down her hoe, and from her shoulder
Unslings her child tormented by the flies.

She takes him to a ring of shadow pooled
By thorn-trees: purpled with the blood of ticks,
While her sharp nails, in slow caresses ruled,
Prowl through his hair with sharp electric clicks,

His sleepy mouth plugged by the heavy nipple,
Tugs like a puppy, grunting as he feeds:
Through his frail nerves her own deep languors ripple
Like a broad river sighing through its reeds.

Yet in that drowsy stream his flesh imbibes
An old unquenched unsmotherable heat-
The curbed ferocity of beaten tribes,
The sullen dignity of their defeat.

Her body looms above him like a hill
Within whose shade a village lies at rest,
Or the first cloud so terrible and still
That bears the coming harvest in its breast.

- Roy Campbell (1901 - 1957)

Gen Y

"This is the most high-maintenance workforce in the history of the world. The good news is that they're also going to be the most high performing." - Nadhira A. Hira on Generation Y in Fortune (June 4, 2007)

Self publishers of the world unite

A blog friend recently got her book, African Ways, into print by self-publishing.

It seems as simple as ABC and that 1000's are succesfully doing just this, judging by Lulu.com Top Sellers.

I think this concept is fantastic, there is something wonderful about getting the printed word onto black & white bound paper. But maybe it's just nostalgic old me.

Brewery

My friends at SA Breweries have an interesting section of their website where they try and debunk various myths and and rumours about their beer. Mainly this concerns claims that their brew is pumped full of chemicals. Sadly the attempts at debunking can be more accurately described as straight denial coupled with the usual SAB doublespeak, "We use an internationally accepted brewing process ".

And claims : "It takes over seven weeks to go from barley to Castle! "

And then here that : "The brewing process is an entirely natural process which takes between 18 and 25 days."

I know, I know. I too sometimes feel like I miss out on a few days after a good bender, but a whole month!

I still love the stuff though.

They do raise an interesting point about the much vaunted Reinheitsgebot, that: "The law said that beer should be made exclusively from malt, hops, and water. This law was introduced as a means of collecting more taxes from people - beer was being made from odd ingredients that were not as highly taxable as was malt and hops."

So the taxman not only influences how much I currently pay per pint he even influenced the ingredients generations ago.

I guess it's just best to play it by beer.

A parable

Let us begin with a parable. It is a parable developed from a tale told John Wisdom in his haunting and revolutionary article "Gods." Once upon a time two explorers came upon a clearing in the jungle. In the clearing were growing many flowers and many weeds. One explorer says, "Some gardener must tend this plot." The other disagrees, "There is no gardener." So they pitch their tents and set a watch. No gardener is ever seen. "But perhaps he is an invisible gardener." So they set up a barbed-wire fence. They electrify it. They patrol with bloodhounds. (For they remember how H. G. Well's The Invisible Man could be both smelt and touched though he could not be seen.) But no shrieks ever suggest that some intruder has received a shock. No movements of the wire ever betray an invisible climber. The bloodhounds never give cry.

Yet still the Believer is not convinced. "But there is a gardener, invisible, intangible, insensible, to electric shocks, a gardener who has no scent and makes no sound, a gardener who comes secretly to look after the garden which he loves." At last the Sceptic despairs, "But what remains of your original assertion? Just how does what you call an invisible, intangible, eternally elusive gardener differ from an imaginary gardener or even from no gardener at all?"

Antony Flew, in his book Reason and Responsibility (1968):

And to conclude, ...

"Why should you mind being wrong if someone can show you that you are?"
AJ (Freddie) Ayer

Save me from your followers

Christopher Hichens should have been at King's Park on Saturday.

Via Pierre de Vos, I travelled down the road to this great radio interview with Hichens. He pulls no punches, in defending his book, god is not Great.

It had me pondering last Saturday's rugby.
There I was, still smarting at the inanity of the Sharks throwing the game away in the dying moments and then I look up to see Jaco van der Westhuizen first cavorting like a pole-dancer on the posts and then instructing me via his TShirt slogan that the Sharks are a bunch of evil no-gooders. He prayed harder and god brought him a blind referee and Bryan Habana.

Flat Stanley Rocks

Took a quick & dirty weekend trip to Cape Town to see these guys launch their second album, "Between 2wo Worlds".

time and space collide in this moment held inside / configure and confide that you can run but cannot hide / one breath beyond compare may someday get you there / centuries gone by, generations fly / enlightened and enslaved of your ancestral alibi / but no wisdom comes at cost or have you forgottend what your father's fathers lost / if you want to come out alive / close your eyes, freedive.

Some brief clips on Zoopy will give the flavour, but take my word that these guys are amongst the best acoustic rockers this country has produced. I'm not saying that their music is groundbreaking, there is a level of it being derivative, kind of heard somewhere before, but we all absorb our influences don't we? It grows on one.

Of course, lead singer Andy Mac has a huge stage presence, literally pavarottine as well as figuratively. But he has the vocal strength and professionalism to match.

Missed out on what I gather was a monster afterparty as I had to dash soon after the gig to capitalise on an indulgent hotel room that cost about R10 a minute, but that in itself was also well worth it. Great breakfasts too.