You say amohbay, I say ameebuh

Life would be much simpler with a few small adjustments to our bodies. Who can honestly say that they haven’t, at some point, hankered after a thatch of stinging tentacles?* Instant solution to crowds and queuing.

A prehensile tail wouldn’t hurt, either. No more having to open the door while carrying keys, bags and food packages, while pushing a bicycle suspended from an umbrella. With a tail you can do all of this, while drinking an amusing beverage, or doing rude hand gestures to your neighbours (behind their backs, of course).

In fact, there are many novel body features we could do with. Ears in our knees, nostrils on the tops of our heads, nictitating membranes on our eyes, claws on our heels, and water-based propulsion systems.

Big whoop. So we get well-developed brains (in relation to our size). Lovely. So we can handle tools, construct complex languages and think up fiendish revenge plots. And overthink to the point of immobility.

Oprah’s guest speakers claim that life is all about decluttering, simplification, getting rid of complexity in the home and the workplace. Hmm. Something floaty sea creatures have been doing for ages, anyway.
I like the purple ones. Yup, purple. They are so purpley. Aaaaah. I feel simpler already.

*I always have to say the word 'tentacles' slowly, in case it comes out wrong. I thought you'd like to know that.

Invoking Gloria Gaynor

Hey! You! Yeah, YOU!
You aren’t much to look at, and probably have more complexes than parts of Tableview, but you know what? You survived. Unless of course you are the living dead, and you think you’d rather spend your damned eternity reading blogs. Could be some people’s idea of hell, I guess. I digress. MOST of you reading this are alive, and have survived until reading age. I suggest that unless you are quite a bit older than reading age, you disappear for a few years.

You may not be happy in your job, family, relationship/s, team, general environment, but you are alive. I am too. Spambots aren’t known for their rapier wit and tendency towards moroseness.

I survived: Sleeping on my tummy in my cot as a baby, sleeping on my back ditto, crawling around near exposed wires and plug outlets, eating foods containing allergens, being given toys like fireworks, penknives, tool sets, bicycles, chemistry sets and a skateboard. I survived climbing trees, travelling on planes, running while carrying glass bottles, swallowing coins and other small objects, setting my clothes on fire by accident, a few surgical procedures, lying to my parents, jumping off roofs, jumping off rocks into unknown waters, balancing on rickety things, grabbing electric fences, sticking a fork in a live toaster, small car crashes, patting sleeping dogs, being attacked by awake dogs, first break-ups, falling out with friends, realising that adults are screwed up, the ends of favourite TV series, the ends of good books, bad dreams, scary movies, real life monsters, potential kidnappers, sleazy men with pockets full of sweets, first jobs, first unemployment, failing exams, being called hurtful things, being hit by bullies, becoming a parent, and
watching all of these things start to happen all over again
to a new generation.

It’s a wonder any of us survived.
But we did.

Amplifications: The author's own.

Read this:
*“Another five would-be initiates died in the Eastern Cape on the weekend, bringing the winter circumcision death toll to 36, the provincial health department said on Monday”.
And further on in the same article:

“…one youth was admitted to Canzibe Hospital at Ngqeleni on Sunday, and as he was admitted, his gangrenous penis fell off”.
And wait! There’s more!
“…of the 36, six had suffered "spontaneous amputations" when their penises dropped off, and two lost parts of their penises.Three had been referred to Nelson Mandela Academic Hospital with grade-four gangrene and faced medical amputation”.

In one season, 36 young men are dead because of circumcision-related injuries. This is South Africa. If this had happened in some country village school in sleepy England, the entire country would have been calling for new laws, imprisonment for those doing the ‘surgery’, and the banning of all sweetened food. Ok, the last one was just a nod to the nanny state that is the UK, but you get the point.

Initiation amongst the Xhosa, for example:

*“The Initiation to Adulthood
In order to be accepted as adults by their community, young Xhosa men must go through initiation. Many aspects of Xhosa initiation are handed down and adapted following early interactions with the KhoiSan. Young boys from traditional families must go through the khwetha or circumcision school. Khwetha is regarded as an essential step into manhood. The youth's departure for the initiation lodge is a significant event and may be marked by the sacrifice of a goat. The lodge is usually located in a remote location near a stream and specially built for the purpose. Initiates are usually instructed by a 'father' and assisted by 'guardians.' There are many secret rites and ceremonies associated with initiation, and the process can last up to three months ' although in modern times, this is often shorter because many young men need to return to work. After a period of seclusion, young initiates smear their naked bodies with white clay and are covered in a single blanket or, in the old days, a sheepskin kaross. The white clay serves to conceal their identity and protect them from evil. Contact with women is forbidden, and apart from the staple foods brought to them by children, the boys fend for themselves ' usually by hunting. Before their circumcision, they must sit in the stream to cleanse themselves while confessing their misdeeds to the adults. After the ritual is completed, the new 'adults' wash the white clay from their bodies and the simple grass huts in which they lived are set alight in a ritual that symbolizes the burning of their past. In this way, they leave behind their childhood and are accepted as men. In the past, initiates were expected to wait approximately four years after their khwetha ceremonies before they were permitted to take a wife”.

I recently read of an addendum to the initiation- an initiate must not sleep with his own girlfriend afterwards, but the first time he ‘tests’ his penis, it must be with a woman in the community not held in respect (usually a prostitute). You can imagine how this exacerbates HIV in the community.
Now, I am not a Xhosa male. I am not ever going to go through that experience. I cannot comment on the cultural importance of it, but I can, and will, say that this loss of life is unacceptable. There are doctors willing to do the actual surgery, so that the circumcision taking place at the schools is largely ceremonial. There has been a massive drive to close illegal schools. In the past, young men were often forced to undergo initiation- kidnapped and taken away- this has also become less common.
Seriously, though, it makes me glad that although I hated the Western form of initiation (mocking, alcohol consumption until vomiting, towel-flicking in change-rooms, smoking behind bicycle sheds at school etc), I have never been in danger of something as physically and emotionally devastating as a ‘spontaneous amputation’.

What can be said? Well, voices of complaint issuing forth from the leafy suburbs of the cities are not going to impact society as much as the community leaders in rural areas putting an end to the life-threatening behaviour happening in these schools. Sure, cultural identity cannot be denied these young men, and, indeed, should be protected, but with the added benefit of other human rights. Access to healthcare,dignity, and the right to life.
I am not a pith-helmeted colonialist with ears closed to the wishes of the people, just a regular person who is utterly shocked at the statistics.

*The quoted parts belong to other people somewhere- follow the links...

But what's it for?

Thanks, Steers, for this. The kind of marketing any restaurant chain would envy. Some marketing director was paid huge amounts of money for this. Probably sourced from some Asian country, it's a ball, a very hard one, that tends to bounce up and hit you in the face. Hard. And it has amusing hair...

Ha. Ha. Ha.

This should be a more in-depth post about happy meal toys in general, but this one kinda sums them up:

They are all as useful as a hairy ball.

Nature Red in Tooth and Wing

My children are gentle-hearted. Apart from Jonah, who is a craven lunatic. But this isn’t about him. Well, only partially. Perhaps it is, as usual, all about him. If my memories of carrying him around the VERY BIG local zoo hadn’t been so fresh, we wouldn’t have opted for butterfly world.

Now, butterfly world is very entertaining, as long as your idea of entertainment is an enclosed area heated to tropical blasts (think: a small broken elevator in the Congo), with giant things fluttering just close enough to your peripheral vision for you to have to resist smooshing them into a rainbow-coloured smear…

I’m thinking with adult eyes (eh?) again. For children it’s quite impressive- the butterflies just flitting around like lazy social networkers, drinking at one flower, stretching their wings on the greenery. There’s an area with live spiders and snakes (in terrariums), and another with rescued parrots and lizards.

Last time we went, the large covered area with the tiny blue duiker, iguanas and marmosets was the most popular. You know marmosets, right? Tiny monkeys, little progeria-faces, Oscar night hairdos? Yeah. Those. They swing all over the ropes, and drop onto your shoulders as you walk. Being the dad, I have to take care not to let a soprano screech slip out when that happens, and I try not to think of all the bacteria and the potential for disease. You’d expect them to be as cute as their National Geographic specials spindoctors make them out to be.

Truth is, they are vicious buggers. I’ll be fair, if I were locked up in a caged area, and only allowed to drop onto the shoulders of people who have nothing better to do then muss my hair, I’d be thinking of colourful ways of revenge, too. They were trying to climb into women’s handbags-making them look like Paris Hilton with a primate fetish, and generally seemed more agitated than normal.

Perhaps it’s that time of the month. Monkeys-on-heat-time. Now James isn’t the ugliest kid in the school, and I can’t think why a sex-crazed marmoset would consider him a threat, but one minute he was holding the thing, the next it had bitten his face, and was holding his cheek in a bite-pinch. I couldn’t pull it off, for fear of tearing the skin, and I had to watch this thing then bite his hands too.

Don’t panic. He just ended up with tiny indentations and bruises. But it does rather spoil your day when you are tripping through the butterflies one minute, being savaged by a possibly rabid primate the next. Brave boy just wept a bit. I would have been heading to the emergency room, having every tropical disease test known to humankind.

All in all, a fairly typical outing. Next time we go, I’m taking a mini-can of pepper spray, or a tiny stun-gun. The fuzzy headed freak’s gonna get it.

My Life as an Emoticon

I like seeing: dogs running so fast on shiny floors that they skid into walls/the expression on a cat’s face when it realises it’s done something stupid/women who look like drunken flamingos when they wear high heels/men who make bad toupee decisions/babies tasting lemon juice for the first time/children getting distracted when they are cross and forgetting that they aren’t supposed to be smiling/cars driven by hat-wearing old people going so slowly that they are giving impatient people embolisms/rain washing the windows or the car so that I don’t have to/serving suggestions on food packaging completely unlike the product within/the ‘your message has been sent’ message after you finally send a work project off on email/pictures of our house made out of painted macaroni made by my children/and pictures they do of me looking pretty much like a twisted emoticon/a waiter heading my way before I wonder if it is impolite to snap my fingers and cry ‘garcon!’/a favourite movie for the fifth time and discovering new lines of dialogue/people taking fashion risks and not realising it/people taking fashion risks and missing the target/shiny things half-covered on the beach….

I like seeing those things. I’m thinking good thoughts, not wanting to return to this time last year when my mother almost died, and then did.

Back to my happy place…

The Loneliness of the Long Distance Couch Potato

Ball games never took off until real balls were invented. Rocks, while durable, had the annoying tendency to shatter fingers and toes, which is no joke when the nearest orthopedic surgeon is off playing golf, several centuries into the future. Rocks were also a pain to retrieve when they flew over the wall into the neighbour’s garden, especially since the neighbour was likely to be armed and not above a bit of killing for sport.

If you are a red-blooded male reading this, you’re probably rubbing your hands in expectation of a treatise on sports, and how they add value to life. Sorry. Prepare to be disappointed. In my opinion, the only things to which value is added by sports are couches. Who possesses a TV with a dedicated sports channel but doesn’t own a couch? You try sitting on a beanbag (or the floor) and watching The Game this weekend- you’ll soon find out what I’m talking about.

South Africa is sports-mad. I’m not generalizing. Sport infiltrates the psyche of the average South African to the point that they assume it has at least third place on the pyramid of Things That Are Important In Life, after eating and sleeping. I suspect that even that may be untrue for some. It’s rugby, soccer, cricket. The whole weekend, and weeknights too. Which would be great if we were all playing those sports- we’d be the fittest nation on earth- but we aren’t.

There’s a certain age when it becomes tricky to play team sports- when the team members start to have partners who don’t want them practicing and playing matches all the time, or their jobs and children absorb any extra moments they may have. Mostly sporting activities are limited to golf/cycling/running/gym.

None of those activities grab me. Nor does watching tiny people playing ball games on TV. Formula 1 is included in that.

It’s a lonely life: It makes it very hard to bond with other men around the braai/barbecue when the only thing you can add to the conversation is about an amusing herb you’ve found that does wonders to marinades.

But I don’t mind being friendless… These guys who live vicariously through team sports on TV, they don’t know the truth about me. I have the proof that I was once a gifted athlete. (See picture above). I was ten, it was 1981, and this was the inter-county Cub Scout sports day in the area of the UK where I used to live. That’s me, surging over the line. I don’t know if the photographer won a sports photography award for brilliantly capturing the tension, the exhaustion, the anticipation in my face, but he/she should have. Look how far behind me the other guy is. Looooooser!

I was active once, and young…