ALL’S WELL IN LA-LA-LAND

The era of political-correctness started way back in 70s when a peanut farmer called Jimmy Carter became the first “new age” POTUS. It was the beginning of the “cause” era and soon everyone went nuts over some kind of cause or the other… save the whales, save the starving in Africa, save the planet, free Nelson Mandela.

A plethora of organisations and commemorative days sprang-up… Greenpeace, Amnesty International, POWA, Women’s Day, Earth Day, AIDS day, Gay Pride day, plus hundreds of others. Personally, the only one I have managed to muster-up any emotional stake in, so far, is National Cleavage day. There’s even a World Vasectomy Day and Day of the Imprisoned Writer, which I can relate to, considering how swiftly my articles get rejected.

In all, there are at least 298 awareness days splattered across our calendars – I’ve got some ideas for the remaining 67 days. Why is there no International Haemorrhoid Awareness day or World Gout Day? Hey, how about this – International Homeless Day? Now there’s a cause that makes sense, but apparently people don’t care much about the homeless – not even if they have haemorrhoids or gout. They are society’s discards – just people that cause the ‘cause people’ an inconvenience, whenever they have to step over them on the pavement.

Forty years on the world is more polarised than ever and poverty and starvation still ravage Africa. The La-La-Land, new world, utopic dream envisioned by Jimmy Carter has not materialised. If anything, the planet is more environmentally messed-up, socially polarised, economically enslaved and politically powerless than it was when Jimmy had his dream back in the 70s. So what went wrong?

My favourite word in the English language is entropy. I love saying it and I love seeing it unfold even more. Entropy is the universal law that dictates that everything in the natural world gradually breaks-down until it self-destructs, and the part I like about it most is that there’s nothing we can do about it.

That’s what happened to the Mayans and other great civilisations that wiped themselves out, and that’s why just the empty shells of Jimmy the peanut farmer’s utopian dream remain.

Not only is it happening to us… we are doing a fantastic job of helping it along, with our insatiable appetites for materialistic comfort, pleasure and self-indulgence. We want smarter cars, smarter phones, smarter houses, smarter gadgets, smarter games, smarter toys and smarter appliances, while Mother Nature has to lick her ever increasing wounds to meet our ever increasing wants.

Apart from not being all that smart, human beings are also greedy, vain and self-destructive – a lethal combination – but, most of all they are self-deluding. They actually believe that wearing a ribbon for a cause makes a difference… that attaching a red nose to the front of a car makes a difference… that cooking an organic vegan meal and turning your swimming pool filter off on Earth Day makes a difference. You know what colour ribbon I’d like to wear? A brown one for “I don’t give a shit”.

Don’t get me wrong, there are things I care about – like why there are no Rastafarian bank managers or airline pilots, or Eskimo financial advisors? No women garbage collectors, sewage pipe maintainers – ever wondered why they call them manhole covers? No Miss World former mineshaft workers, grave diggers or deep sea crab fishermen? Sorry, I refuse to translate that word into “fisherperson” – it took me years to get over hearing the words “chairperson” and “waitron” for the first time.

These are the troubling and vexing issues that run through my mind, while I’m not watching Baywatch with the sound turned down.

Why isn’t there an International Men’s Day? Well, some may argue that the other 364 are, but even in terms of nature, men are getting a raw deal – the facts speak for themselves.

The international gap between men and women at birth is 8.1% in favour of men, but by the age of 32, the Grim Reaper has paid an untimely visit to those extra 8.1 men, and women then become the surviving majority. The primary reason for this elevated male entropy is that men have to do far more risky and dangerous things for a living than women do. That combined with the fact that they consume more than three-times the amount of alcohol their shared birthdate female siblings do. Naturally, I don’t mind this statistic and whenever my next birthday rolls around, I always console myself with the thought that there are more 32 year-old women around, as each year passes.

So when my next birthday comes around I will have three things to cheer myself up with – more younger women, less men to compete with and another year of entropy to look forward to. That and Cher and Robert Mugabe becoming another year older.

©Mayhemfiles2018

 

 

SON-OF-A-SPEECH IT’S SONA TIME AGAIN

The annual SONA speech punctuates each passing year in this Shambala-in-reverse of a country and this year it promises to be another mother of a shambles, if the EFF get their way. This is what I call entertainment. It beats watching cricket by an innings and eleventy-seven wickets.

My SONA day is already planned. My basket of snacks and supplies for the big event is ready. The fun starts when the most grossly obese politicians in the world waddle down the red carpet in outfits you could rent out as a tent to a family Bangladesh, and the thing that makes it such a voyeuristic freak show is that they do it like movie stars rolling-up at the Oscars do, posing and pirouetting for the cameras. It’s as morbidly fascinating as watching Sumo wrestling. By the time this gargantuan extravaganza is over, I’m usually on my third whiskey and starting to get revved-up for the stand-up part of the show.

So far, without a shadow of a doubt, Jacob Zuma has been the best host of the SONA show since 1994 – I doubt that Barry Hilton presenting it could slay me more than the current POSA does.

His one-liners are epic. One that stands out in my memory was him saying that very few governments in the world could match what the ANC had delivered in 20 years. It had me rolling around on the floor. That’s why I’m rooting for him to defy calls for him to Hamba to Nkandla or waai to Dubai.

He has the tenacity of Wouter Basson when it comes to defiance, albeit in a reversal of roles and privilege – Wouter has hammered the NPA every time they have taken him to court – the NPA has hammered anyone trying to take Zuma to court. Wouter used to have the privilege of having friends in high places and he followed their orders – Zuma’s got that privilege now and has been issuing the orders until now. At the moment, it’s anyone’s guess who’s issuing them. Let’s face it, CR17, his touted successor, has been a little indecisive in 2018 so far. Not that I expected anything else – it’s been a trait of leadership in this country since P.W. Botha.

The great thing is that the hilarity doesn’t end after the speech. After that you can tune into our brilliant news channels and listen to experts saying how disappointed they were with it – it astounds me every time. I mean, this will be Zuma’s 8^th SONA and the country’s 24^th since being liberated from law, order and a regularly maintained infrastructure. What were they honestly expecting? That the government will suddenly make crime illegal? What country have you been living in for the past quarter-of-a-century?

But to be fair, a lot has changed in that quarter-of-a-century – for instance, all of our airports have been renamed and every main route in every city and town has been renamed, either Nelson Mandela Boulevard, Nelson Mandela Drive or Nelson Mandela Way – street and avenue names get allocated to lesser struggle heroes. The Springbok cricket team is now the Proteas and while the Springbok rugby team is still called the Springboks, they play with a Protea emblem over their hearts. All of these giant strides have been made since 1994.

Okay so the Japanese managed to rebuild their country in less than three years after Hiroshima, eighteen months after the 1998 earthquake and within six months after the 2011 Tsunami. To make things even worse, these over-efficient, workaholic fanatics then went on to beat the Springboks in the 2015 World Cup. Thank heavens we haven’t drawn them again in 2019.

Coincidentally, our next general election is also in 2019. The Springboks have won two of the six World Cups they have contested – the Comrades have won six out of the six elections they have contested. On that day most of the Springbok fans will be pulling for the Comrades to lose and most of the Comrades will be pulling for the Springboks to lose. Such is the nature of unity in this land, since the ‘Madiba Magic’ died. The spirit of Ubuntu has been replaced with Uluru – the reverse of Ubuntu – and the New South Africa has become a Shambala-in-reverse.

In Buddhism, Shambala means journey to peace, tranquillity and happiness. This country is on a journey to mayhem, unless someone comes along and takes over the buses wheel, takes it out of reverse and drops Zuma off at Nkandla or Oliver Tambo International.

But I still want one good last laugh before he goes. Besides, apart from the speech there could be another Sumo brawl to liven the proceedings up.

©Mayhemfiles2018