Whiplash - The Blog

Category : Dalai Lama God politics Jacob Zuma Bishop Desmond Tutu
To paraphrase Ogden Nash :

Little Gods have Lesser Gods
On their backs to smite them,
And Lesser Gods have Lesser Gods
So on ad Infinitum.

Archbishop Emeritus, Desmond Tutu, finally spoke up and voiced his displeasure and moral outrage at the actions of the ANC regarding the Dalai Lama debacle but went on to voice his opinion regarding the ANC and our thug to be president, Jacob Zuma.

He said nothing that many people have not already said,  or voiced any opinion that is unique.  He just has the ear of the world and his pained message of outrage and disgust whirled around media circles in seconds. His comment that the ANC, and by inference Jacob Zuma was not  God seem to have struck a nerve.

When the ANC's rebuttal accuses him of blasphemy , even Zuma's most ardent supporters surely have to stop and either be amused or afraid.  I think fear is a pretty smart choice.

When politicians liken themselves to omnipotent gods, we can only imagine where this will lead.  Already some people have been sacrificed (followed by a ritual cleansing but he was acquitted for that one), along with common sense and reason.  Even human blood is being shed in offering to "The Party" as election campaigning takes on a very physical nature.  Soon opponents will be tossed into the fires to appease the Gods, and when they run out, the priests will start picking out suitable offerings from their followers.  Once a God gets a taste for blood, the thirst only increases, and it's only the Gods and their priests who reap the benefits.

A word of warning to those who would criticise Gods: - historically, it never turns out well for them;  and for those who would be modern Gods on earth ... remember the last guy who tried that...

Posted by Torch At 4:22 PM Location Johannesburg - South Africa | Permalink | Comments (1) |      

Category : Dalai Lama Soccer World Cup Politics China
It looks like our esteemed leaders have finally lost it.  

The South African Governments remarkable decision to deny His Holiness the Dalai Lama a visa for a peace conference, because it "..is not in the best interests of the country" flys in the face of everything I believe in, and I'm not alone.  The international response was predictable outrage, and the five Nobel peace Laureates including our own Bishop Tutu, Messrs Mandela and De Klerk immediately withdrew along with other leaders.  

Now I understand that here in South Africa everything has a price. If you have the cash you can buy just about anything from votes to a get out of jail free card, even a lucrative arms deal. But one would expect more from our elected officials instead of their self serving, money grubbing corruption, especially when it comes to human rights.  The Chinese waved their checkbooks and the deal was done, a case of  "Screw morality, show me the money."

These days it's accepted that home office officials to policemen, members of Parliament and their friends have morals that are bought and sold like commodities.  Every week brings a new scandal which ultimately costs us, the voting taxpayer, and we manage to shrug our shoulders and let it go.

But this is going too far.  You can lie, cheat and steal from me, but I object to having my morals sold on my behalf, without my knowledge or agreement.  The people in power, are supposed to represent you and me, the people.  We put them in power and they have sold our morality to the highest bidder.  We can do something about it.  It's an election year, we have to use our votes to elect people worthy of us.

I urge you all to support a call for the potential supporters, the participating teams and the organisers to look for an alternate venue, and for a complete and total boycott of the entire event here, until we get a government worthy of it's people.

Posted by Torch At 5:16 PM Location Johannesburg - South Africa | Permalink | Comments (1) |      

Category : Animal rights Death St Partick's Day
St Patrick's day came and went. St. Who?  

How does one celebrate St Patrick's day?  Americans go overboard, they hold parades, dye things green and get drunk.  Michelle Obama, American first lady, well the wife of the American president, to show her Irish roots and her closeness to Ireland and all that is Irish, went so far as to dye the fountain of the White House green... now all she has to do is drink it.

Celebrations of this holy day, follow the standard formula; beer, all things green, more beer, boiled food, more beer, don't forget potatoes, and more beer.  Sometimes, they save time and trouble, dye everything green including the beer, mix it all up and leave it deposited, recycled, in gutters.  

I come from pretty well documented Irish roots.   The founder of the line arrived with the 1820 settlers, from Wicklow, Ireland, where he is recorded as sneaking off with the keg of communal brandy, and we have been breeding, cross breeding and inbreeding ever since.  Needless to say, like many South Africans, St Patrick's day passed without event.  But the powers that be had other plans...

I might have mentioned somewhere, that I live in the worlds smallest cottage, a shed with aspirations and no architecture.  I share this tiny space with three large dogs.  Three very large dogs; a Great Dane, "Ella", and two boerbuls, "Decca" and "Tiny".  Combined it's over 200 kilos (what's that .. about 480 pounds?) of canine poop machine. They lie on the floor at my feet, dreaming their doggy dreams, whining, barking and twitching as they romp through their doggy dreams.  They also fart.  A lot.

So it's not unusual to have to hurtle outside at all hours, if only to survive the output of the internal combustion pooch.  Last night however, things got a little rougher than usual.  No matter how long the door and windows were opened, the strange odour lingered.  I put the dogs outside, sprayed air freshener, and all that achieved was to make the place smell like something died in a camellia shrub.  It was becoming intolerable.

After 20 minutes searching, I found a small unrecognisable item stuck down the side of the fridge.  It was squishy, furry and very green.  I sat there looking at it before it dawned on me.  It must be a little St Patrick's Day gift from the leprechauns, a reminder of my ignominious ancestry.  I turfed it out and after an hour or two the air inside become breathable again.
   
This morning I found the swimming pool is showing definite Irish sympathies.  

I think I need a beer, I'll even dye it green if it put's an end to this mischief.

Posted by Torch At 7:06 PM Location Johannesburg - South Africa | Permalink | Comments (0) |      

Category : Death God Satan Society TV Guns Children
I am often accused of being a cynical bastard and most of the time it's true.  I am.  As much as I would like to believe that people are inherently good, humanity en mass goes out of it's way to prove me wrong.

Take, as a perfect example, the latest round of gun toting adolescents who armed themselves to the teeth end vented their angst and frustrations on their fellow man.

To the families of the victims, there is nothing one can say or do that will possibly make a bit of difference.  Their lives have been changed forever, their loss is beyond our understanding or comprehension.  

As for the perpetrators well, they too have to get a certain amount of sympathy.  While I readily admit there are some good old fashioned psychopaths out there who are beyond sympathy or redemption, it must still take a fair amount of pressure to get to the point where the only solution to one's problems is to take a few people out and then kill one's self.  But, and this is where my cynicism is justified, people have to have something to blame.  

The anti gun lobbyists are all shouting .."It's having too many guns around .. they're Eeevil... The government should do something about it."  The gun lobbyists will drag up the old chestnut that guns don't kill people, people kill people and they might have a point.  Take away the guns and the little bastards would probably find a way to take each other out with dictionaries and pencil cases.  Children can be very imaginative and remarkably inventive.  

With the poor German lad - they found porn on his computer.  "It was porn... It's Eeeevil " goes out the cry, "The government should do something about it."

Failing that, he listened to 'heavy metal rock music.'  "It's the music... It's Eeeevil"  goes out another cry, "The government should do something about it."  

Then of course, he watched violent TV shows.. "It's the television.. It's Eeeevil goes out the cry, "The government should do something about it."

He played violent computer games... "It's the games ... they're Eeevil goes out the cry, "The government should do something about it."

What about... "he was bullied and picked on in school... "  like this makes it alright?  Ok if he just took out the bullies perhaps it might have a slightly positive effect on potential bullies in the future, but even so.

What a crock of shit.  The porn just shows the boy was a horny adolescent, the heavy metal rock - that he had really poor taste in music. TV and  PC games ... if they were so harmful and such a poor influence what's taking Armageddon so long to arrive.  Schools worldwide should be awash in blood and knee deep in shell casings by now.

Why is everyone too scared to take a good look at the parents?  They bred the little sod, and raised him for 19 years, yet we are now asked to ignore the influence they had, or may not have had?  

If all things like TV, video games and bad music are so inherently dangerous why are parents not held responsible for raising their child with less than acceptable values? Who pays for the music, the TV and the games?  Are we really suggesting that raising children is a government responsibility?  If this is the case, I want potential parents tested and licences issued well before people are allowed to recklessly breed.  

With the German kid, like so many similar cases, he swiped his lethal little arsenal from daddy's gun collection.  18 guns in a household where the kid has access and daddy is not even a factor?  Oh please!

What makes all this taboo?  Why is it the government's problem? I think it's because every parent is terrified and that deep down they know they are failing their children, and that somehow their children might have been responsible for pushing the kid over the edge.  Or, more terrifying, that the next post pubescent little gunslinger could be their child.  If they cast stones now and it all goes pear shaped... well they would be condemning themselves.

What's the answer?  Well you could always play it safe, and abrogate all responsibility completely.  You can always blame Satan.  "It was the devil... It's eeeevil..... and there's bugger all anyone, even the government can do about it."

Just remember .. it could be your child next... and then what?

Posted by Torch At 10:38 PM Location Johannesburg - South Africa | Permalink | Comments (2) |      

Category : Colonists society politics TV
I was watching yet another endless (and pointless) political debate on the television the other night when one of the participants started rambling on about how everything wrong with South African society was somehow a result of either colonialism or the evil apartheid regime when it suddenly struck me just how true this might be.

The gentleman in question was slouching there, earnestly waffling on, as ambitious politicians everywhere do, in his Saville row suit, expensive silk tie and shiny handmade shoes when I pictured him in more appropriate (colonist free) attire: - barefoot and wearing a few badly cured animal hides; - but there again, there would be no television for any sort of half baked propaganda either so we would not be able see them anyway.

There are so many things that the evil western colonists have brought and inflicted upon the unwilling masses, designer labels, credit cards, luxury German automobiles (every dictator has at least one German luxury car somewhere), five course meals, concrete, high rise buildings, posh suburbs, overseas travel, Swiss bank accounts, democracy and lets not forget the AK-47, land mines and birth control.

In the good old days, those rosy times before these western curses befell the unwilling, life was so much simpler.  You wanted a new house.. you cut some reeds or dug up a bit of mud and built one.  No mortgages, zoning laws, planning permission, legal wrangling, or pushy estate agents.  You just took a chunk of land and built a simple structure on it and called it home.  If you were hungry.. you went out killed something and ate it... there were no supermarkets, strip malls, no Woolies or Hypermarkets.   When you needed clothes .. you peeled a gazelle and viola! - designer threads fit for a king and it comes with a free meal thrown in for good measure.

Now I'm not saying that these things would not have been invented because the indigenous people are stupid or backwards.  After all they had already invented flint cutting tools, managed to forge iron weapons and were practising warfare, fratricide, patricide, nepotism, bribery and corruption long before the white man arrived.   Had the wicked westerners not brought these other evils with them, they would have spontaneously appeared at opportune moments, just as they did for the Australian aborigines and the many lost tribes in the south american rain forests.  I'm sure that if we search the amazon basin long enough we will still find a tribe of head hunters, armed with blow pipes and poisoned darts, dressed in a few skins and feathers sitting down to watch satellite television, which they invented without the help of evil racist colonists.

OK so Africa, especially Southern Africa, is now believed to be the cradle of mankind, it's where it all began. It's a tad disconcerting that once humans could stand upright and run, they did, to anywhere but here. But the thing that really worries me about this whole idea is that in some remote village, cut off from all civilisation, some lost and forgotten tribe has discovered cold fusion energy and nobody knows about it, or perhaps they found a cure for half witted politicians...

Posted by Torch At 11:17 AM Location Johannesburg - South Africa | Permalink | Comments (0) |      

Category : Valentines Day Romance Kiddy porn
Well that was Valentines day.  The smell of love is already being replaced by that of gently decomposing roses, chocolates have been guzzled, and the hearts of spurned lovers are well on their way to healing.  For all this, I love this garish Hallmark festival with all the twisted cynicism it encourages and we all rush to embrace to our heaving bosoms.

Let's start with St. Valentine.  The records here are vague to say the least, the most likely story being that there were several Valentines and somehow the stories were merged over time.  The legend, and that's as definitive as one can get, is that one Valentine was martyred by the Romans for performing Christian marriages.  In hindsight, the Romans may have been on to something there, as many a divorcee might agree.

A rudimentary knowledge of history shows a very unbalanced relationship between Romans, early Christians, and large carnivorous felines.  Further reading reveals that the Romans had even more  imaginative and iffy ways to deal with Christians, including impalement, flaying, roasting, burning and the ever popular (in it's day) crucifixion.   The upshot is we get to joyously celebrate the rather ugly death of a possibly misguided man.  

Moving on to the wonderfully romantic images associated with this day...  Ok. images of stylised hearts, I can understand. Sending a picture of a real heart might be misconstrued and put a damper on one's libidinous aspirations.  Instead we further our romantic aims by sticking pictures of naked, pudgy, prepubescent boys on a piece of card, call him Cupid, send it to our beloved(s).  Thus in a bizarre turn, we get to celebrate legalised paedophilia too.

There is another tiny detail to consider.  What does one do with a prepubescent boy, with a messianic complex, who has issues with affairs of the heart?  ( You just have to read up on mythology to see that this was a very troubled boy, his relationship with Psyche would keep an analyst busy for years...)  Only the God's could come up with such an original answer: That was to give him arms!  

An thus he is usually depicted with a bow and a quiver full of arrows.  had all this taken place in todays world, daddy's handgun is weapon of choice as witness by the Columbine Massacre and such like...

Maybe Al Capone had the right idea after all,  with his notorious if forgotten Valentines Day Massacre, but I suppose it really depends on what you consider romantic.  

Posted by Torch At 3:54 AM Location Johannesburg - South Africa | Permalink | Comments (0) |      

Category : Humour Israeli
An  Israeli arrives at London's Heathrow airport.
As he fills out the entry form, the immigration officer asks him: "Occupation?"
The Israeli promptly replies: "No, no, just visiting!" 

Posted by Torch At 6:19 AM Location Johannesburg - South Africa | Permalink | Comments (0) |      

Category :
Of all the Ballets, the most famous, if not the most popular, has to be Swan Lake.  As the Grande Dame of all arse numbing full length ballets, it also manages to be the prettiest if not gayest.  Not totally unexpected when you consider the composer was a very depressed, closeted homosexual.  The man clearly had issues...

The plot, such as it is, centres around a camp Prince Sigfried, (Lillian to his really close friends) who lives with his (stereotypically domineering) mother who in turn is trying to get him over his "phase" and married, and some bird he has a thing for.

Act One opens in a castle garden.  The opening of any ballet is usually big, and everyone in the company gets a go on stage.  Swan Lake is no exception.  The local villagers, courtiers and a few of Ziggy's friends do a lot of leaping around.  Mama enters and using large theatrical gestures she indicates the him a) her disapproval of his partying;  b) that he has to pick a bride out of a handful of princesses she has organised for him.  We only know this from the programme notes.  Trying to mime all of this would leave the most accomplished mime screaming in frustration and even a semaphore operator would have some difficulty.  Some swans fly by and Ziggy either does a "straight acting" number or stirred up by all the leaping around in tights, he and his mates rush off to kill them.  Tres Butch.

Act two takes us to the meat of the production. Set in a gloomy forest glade, we get to meet the swans.  Now I happen to like swans, but even I will admit they are big, fierce and very bad tempered birds, unpleasant at the best of times.  Quite capable of breaking a man's arm with a blow from a wing, they hiss, kick and peck at anything that moves, and where swans are, most things are moving.  Usually in the opposite direction.  

The swans here however are all short, painfully anorexic, young-ish (it never pays to look too closely), girls dressed in white.  They are however, reputed to exhibit very swan-like behaviour in their dressing rooms.  They trundle across the "Lake" on tippy toes for most of the act, their block shoes hammering out a delicate thunder much to the annoyance of those in the front three rows.   Odette, our tragic heroine, does all of this while balancing an itty bitty crown on her head.  

After a fair bit of swanning around we have to refer to the programme notes to decipher the mime wherin, a lot of arm waving and chest clutching translates to her begging Ziggy to cease and desist.  Apparently  she and the other swans live under the spell of the Evil Sorcerer Rothbart (Tres Eeevil!) and are only allowed to regain what passes for human form between midnight and dawn.  At this stage I must point out that this transformation is subtle and hard to notice.  Only a vow of eternal love expressed by one who would die for her can break the spell.  Like I said, it's a lot of arm waving and chest clutching.  

Ziggy is supposed to be enraptured by Odette's beauty, declares his love (more chest clutching) and begs her to attend the Ball the next night.   The mime here is restrained and the invitation to the ball never approaches the obvious gesture.

She does a little bit fancy footwork to explain that she can only attend after midnight and the arch villain makes his entrance.  The Evil Sorcerer Rothbart appears disguised as an Owl or maybe it's a wet hen, which is to say he wears a tatty brownish outfit that requires a lot of arm flapping.  Unlike the previous arm flapping this conveys no decipherable message, but he doesn't give a hoot anyway.

Ziggy then acts more like a perch for shaky balancing than a butch prince, but after more leaping, lifting and stretching of tights the dawn breaks and the girls turn back to swans and they all head off to roost.

At this stage of the proceedings there is usually a much needed interval of sorts to relieve bladders and consume as much alcohol as possible in as short a time as possible.  The audience do the same.

Act three opens on the ballroom scene.  More group leaping and a smidge of heavy lifting follows and we are introduced to the six princesses, but predictably Ziggy is not interested in any on them. (Hah!)  The Evil (Eeeevil!) Sorcerer Rothbart enters in yet another disguise.  Fortunately, not an Owl this time.  He is accompanied by his Daughter Odile, Odette's evil (Eeevil!) double. the two roles are usually danced by the same girl, a detail identified by the little crown they / she wears which remains balanced through the entire performance.   Some bits of national dancing take place and Ziggy, the callow youth he is, forgets about Odette and claims Odile as his bride to be.  The Evil Rothbart demands Ziggy swear eternal fidelity to his daughter, which he does.  Like that's ever going to happen.

In a moment of dramatic pique and bad navigation Odette, comes flying through a window, quite literally, (breaking the glass in some adaptations). Truimphantly, (more bloody arm waving and leaping) The Evil Sorcerer Rothbart reveals his daughter's true identity and they vanish.  Exit Ziggy to search for Odette...

Act four, and the last act, returns us to the lake. The swans are moping around on tippy toes and flap their arms in a slow manner to indicate sadness but more than likely just to stop themselves toppling over.  The distraught Odette enters, sweaty yet seeming unscathed by the interlude with the window.  As Ziggy approaches, the Evil Sorcerer Rothbart conjures up a storm.  Ziggy begs for forgiveness but the slighted Odette tells him that they will never meet again.  In a snit, Ziggy snatches her crown and tosses it into the lake.  She then spends a goodly five minutes dying, in what has become the now infamous  "dying swan."  The storm subsides, and a flock of swans is seen on the lake...

The curtain descends and the restaurants are filled with patrons who heartily tuck into toasted chicken mayonnaise sandwiches and consume quantities of alcohol silently praying that sensation returns to their buttocks before the journey home.

Posted by Torch At 12:29 AM Location Johannesburg - South Africa | Permalink | Comments (2) |      

Category : Finance Altruism Open Source
As the world's economies collapse and slide into recession, markets are crashing and even blue chip companies are falling like houses of cards, the future is becoming more uncertain for everyone.   And this might not be a bad thing.  Perhaps this is the time to stop and reflect on the possibility that the way we have been doing business is flawed.  

For those souls who are rabid "Anti-globalisationists" I think that boat sailed some time ago. Modern communications and movement of people and goods took care of the globalisation some time ago.   For extreme Socialists and Capitalists... well to quote Dr Phil, "How's that workin' for ya?"  Let's face it, the great Socialist exercise died with the USSR, and Capitalism is choking to death on it's own excesses right now.

I'm not averse to anyone making an honest buck, nor am I against paying a fair rate for fair work.  Like most of you, I'm really in favour of being paid a fair rate for what I create / write / do and have been ripped off often.   I get outraged when a company goes into liquidation leaving hundreds unemployed when the directors and managers are paying themselves millions in salaries and performance bonuses.  

So where to from here? I'm no economist, my grasp of finance high or low, is tenuous at best but I have a few models that seem to defy accepted practises and are successful.  

An ex-lover of mine retired at 35.  Is he a financial genius?  He does not think so, and attributes his success to a simple philosophy.  "Things only work if everybody wins."  His business dealings are absolutely fair, he believes in paying and being paid for work done, and nobody benefits at someone else's expense.  And this philosophy extends through everything he does.  He pays the licences for software on his PC, he does not download pirate music off the web but buys the CD's and DVD's.  When he gets too much change in a store, or the bank makes an error in his favour, he returns the money.  He also has another less well known quality.  He helps people.   When a friend of a friend was released from prison, he helped get him back on his feet. When an underprivileged kid got a partial bursary to a university, he paid for all his books and clothes for two years.  His birthdays are big loud affairs, but gifts are restricted to items for donation to a hospice or orphanage of his choice.  

Another friend is a world renowned, well published psychologist who could be making a fortune in the private sector but devotes huge amounts of time helping NGO's deal with torture and trauma victims for a fraction of the income.  His philosophy too is a simple one, he just makes a difference. He does actually make the word a better place even though there are times when he really struggles to see it.  His work might not make him as rich as he could be but it gives him peace and he's comfortable.

I play with computers, it can't be called work, I have way to much fun doing it, but it does produce a small income occasionally.  I use Open Source Software;  Applications and Operating Systems that are worked on by hundreds of developers and programmers and are free to the world.  That's right, there is no fee, no license to pay. It can't be owned and it can't be sold.  And there's tons of it out there, and the list of applications is growing daily.  

What about the latest trend for fair trade whereby people who produce raw materials are paid a fair amount for their goods, and profits are not retained right at the top of the process chain but distributed equitably through the entire chain.  

These are but four simple and very personal examples of business models where greed and self interest are not the prime motivators. Am i being totally naive in thinking that perhaps, just perhaps, there is something of value here?

Posted by Torch At 12:34 AM Location Johannesburg - South Africa | Permalink | Comments (0) |      

Category : Bulemia Anorexia Obesity
When I wrote about the obese (I called them fat, so politically incorrect) in an earlier posting, I was inundated with hate mail.  And for some reason, almost every response had three things in common; nobody took me to task publicly on the blog but sent private emails; it was always someone else fault and; I was cursed for discriminating against fat people.  Several people went so far as to call me a "Body Nazi" and said that it was because of people like me that society now had a problem with Bulemia, Anorexia and other eating disorders.  Oh, and all the heavies were happy with their weight and the way they looked, just not happy enough to say so in public.

So I'm somehow responsible for people being fat and thin... go figure.  Having mulled it over for a while I am obliged to respond.  

The term that grated me the most was "Body Nazi".  The only eating disorders victims of the holocaust had was generally lack of anything to eat, and bringing them in to defend a point about a lack of impulse control in the fat is beneath contempt.  

Do I discriminate against fat people?  You bet your lardy ass I do BUT I do have one caveat.  It's not so much the excessive weight that I find objectionable but it's the overt display of greed and decadence that I find disgusting, wearing ones wealth as excess poundage on ones hips is just tacky when there are people starving to death around the world.  

And they are starving.  Hunger is not limited to third world countries, it is everywhere, in your country, in your city and even in your community.  And it carries a shame unlike any other.  At the risk of making this all sound like an angry and bitter diatribe of envy,  but not that long ago I was amongst those.  I was absolutely broke, and meals became irregular.  The longest I went without food was for ten days, and I could not tell anyone or ask for help.  It was not the first time, nor will it be the last.

Which of course means that Anorexics and Bulemics earn a special mention.  Illness or not, to gorge yourself and then force yourself to puke it up "to stay thin", to deliberately eat as little as possible, are just obscene.  With a growing trend for women, and now men, sticking a finger in their throats to dispose of a meal, it's no wonder there is a huge market for toilet cleaners, that get rid of stains, odours and germs.  If you are going to be that intimate with a toilet bowl, and stick your head in it, who wouldn't want it all clean and sparkling.  

But TV adverts for toilet cleaners are possibly too subtle.  A special bad taste award has to be given to the marketers of Heartburn and Indigestion remedies, ENO's and Gaviscon.  In both ads Joe average (usually thin) is seen in a crowd / party gorging and guzzling food and drink.  Suddenly the excess catches up, his face a picture of agony as he clutches his abdomen.  Is he full?  Has he had enough?  Is it time to back off and maybe have a glass of water? Not on your nelly... a quick swig of the "miracle cure"  and his face lights up, and he's back to shoving food in his face and swilling wine.  

This is conspicuous consumption at it's worst, made more so by big business not only making it all perfectly acceptable but cashing in on it.

Posted by Torch At 10:46 PM Location Johannesburg - South Africa | Permalink | Comments (0) |