All paid jobs absorb and degrade the mind ... Aristotle

I think it’s all about inspiration here. Those that sit at a desk or a cubicle and do vast amounts of work for others, just to make the bucks, are the one’s most at risk of turning their minds into a pile of mush. There are ways to off-set this of course. Day dreaming for one tunes you out of the work mode and feeds the mind. Find a good technique to get your mind out of the office, it really can take you anywhere. If you can’t think of anything to daydream about, looks like it could be too late for you already I am afraid.

The so called 'internet' also has huge potential to offset the degradation of the mind. If you are going to go this route you will need to have the all important screen angle sorted out. Make sure it faces just you and is not visible to curious work colleagues or mean boss’s. If your workplace has banned you from that form of stimulation, you are nothing but a modern day slave ship galley rower and need to make a change soon or risk fading away like the many millions before you.

Post script: Some jobs are so enjoyable that payment just seems like a cool perk to the vocation. I mean you can’t tell me the techi geeks who design computer games are thinking about the cash.

My good friend Seth Rotherham likes to say: “Work is a sideline, live the holiday”.

Sometimes I think the surest sign that intelligent life exists elsewhere in the universe is that none of it has tried to contact us ...Calvin & Hobbes

This has got to be the best quote I have read in a long time. The fact that it comes from a cartoon character little guy talking to his best buddy –an imaginary Tiger, made it stick in my mind.

We must be the most selfish species on this Planet. I can’t think of another one that treats their ‘home’ the way we do. We were endowed with intelligence above all other creatures. We have let that intelligence turn on us. So much so that when we are given clear indication that we are destroying our own habitat, we are trying to bargain our way out of it. Often these things have to be looked at from the simplest point of view, in other words with no other factors involved other than what ACTUALLY matters.

Children that remain untainted by there parents most effectively recognize these actuals as expressed by Calvin here.

Always forgive your enemies; nothing annoys them so much ... Oscar Wilde

I have some friends who are able to do this and they are a relaxed bunch I tell you. I however, struggle to forgive the waiter who forgets to bring a jug of water with my order, never mind the punk who stole my girlfriend. I do believe whole heartedly in this quote though. I have experimented with forgiving some frustrating acts or situations that would normally have me adding another name to the idiots of the world that I cannot tolerate list. The confusion on the side of the wrongdoer is brilliant to behold.
My recent favourite was in 'Woolworths' this week. A 40ish year old, half-women-half-piece-of -plastic, pretended to be reaching for some of those delicious chocolate shortcake treats. As she reached for them she also pushed brashly and presumably unashamedly past me in the checkout queue.
I said nothing, not even a little huff to show my irritation. Expecting a fight though, the line-jumping perpetrator turned around ready for a confrontation. I just pointed to her bag of choccies and announced out loud, so that all those behind me in the queue and importantly all the cashiers could here me:
“I am sure you are a lot hungrier than me my dear. Go ahead, I don’t mind, that super size bag of Chocolates is not going to eat itself now is it?”
The cashiers laughed out loud as the shame and guilt reigned down on the women. I did enjoy that moment I can tell you.

Post script: The plastic parts of the women were the various bits from the belly button upward that were years younger than her withering self.
I see no shame in eating a massive bag of chocolates, but I knew the rude women would.

More and more of our imports are coming from overseas --- George W. Bush

More and more of our imports are coming from overseas --- George W. Bush

I have never voted for a politician and I have no intention to. You see I don’t believe in politics. That is not quite true. I actually think that politics is possibly very suited to the very specific number of those under its’ influence that Plato stipulated when he conjured up his theory.
Outside of that microcosm I do not see the theory jelling well with these huge populations that countries now host.
One does not have to look very far to be confronted with too many glaring examples to vindicate my thoughts. Bush is just too much. Those under his spell even more to blame than him for accepting the foolishness that he keeps spewing out. Mbeki – a spineless good for nothing. Mugabe – an evil human who certainly has the brains and once looked a promising prospect, before he let politics turn him rotten.
I don’t blame politics mind you. I blame the human condition (not very healthy these days if you take a look around) that has too many faults at present to adopt a sensible approach to organizing societies like politics does.
Most will shake a finger at me and say that I am part of the problem if I don’t vote and what is my solution. I don’t propose to have one. I do beleive that if every human cared about her or himself sincerely, then by default, they would care for all those (and everything) around them and we would have little need for others to set rules and regulations for ourselves.
Of course this simple realization for some reason gets quashed every time it enters our thoughts. So it’s the clown show for the foreseeable future. Georgie Porgie the ring leader as he just churns out pearls like this one - daily.

Post script: I could not vote anyway in the 1994, first free elections in South Africa as I was locked up in campus jail. I had been ‘bust’ running through the women’s res - naked but for my rugby boots.
Plato’s Politics are actually the work of his teacher – Socrates (Not to be mistaken with Socrates the DJ from Cape Town and Caprice fame).

That's thirty minutes away. I'll be there in ten ... The Wolf - Pulp Fiction

Harvey Keitel is Winston 'Wolf Man' Wolfe in Pulp Fiction. Even amongst the evil characters of the film he stands out as terrifying. He gets the call to come and dispose off a dead body and the quote above is his reply. He says it with little emotion and dead pan. Brilliant.

This in not a phrase you will here in Cape Town however. Here time is not taken too seriously. Well by true Capetonians anyway. Now that the city has become so much more cosmopolitan, there is a conflict of attitudes. Today there are many more Joburgers living in the mother city than ever before. The levels of frustration they go through every day when making arrangements with ‘a local’ is hilarious to witness.

Typical conversation:

Joburger: “Let’s meet and discuss, what time can you make it”

Local: “Ya cool hey. Well what’s the time now?”

Joburger: “It’s eight twenty eight.”

Local: “Geeez I thought it was only about seven bru. Cool, I can probably make it at about ten. Ya let’s say I’ll meet you there between ten and eleven.”

Joburger: “?!”

Post script: A lot of the make up of the new cosmopolitan Cape Town are foreigners from Europe - model types. Those from ‘The Continent’ are generally more into African time and more welcome than those highly strung Joburgers.

If at first the idea is not absurd, then there is no hope for it ... Bert Einstein

If at first the idea is not absurd, then there is no hope for it ... Bert Einstein

If I think back to some of those ideas that were originally regarded as absurd, it gives me hope for some thoughts that I have swimming in my head. The obvious one's are things like: the guy who first said the earth was round when all the world new it was flat, or the dude who decided the sun does not revolve around the earth and was nearly executed for it.
What about the inspired individual who first decided to dip a biscuit in his tea though! Genius I say. And the first person to look at a sheep and announce he was going to stick its woolly coat in his slippers. Surely they went through vast amounts of ridicule. One wonders how they handled this pressure from the doubters all about them. I can assure you that in 1988 while watching Commando, if my buddy had mentioned Arnie Schwarzenegger would be Governor of California at any time in my existence I would have spilled my slush puppy over him in a fit of laughter.

So, tell me what you think about my swimmers. A portable toilet. Not like the cesspits the poor builders have to use. I mean something you can sling over your shoulder. Sounds bizarre, but just wait, someone will be hailed a genius over this one … I have never had a girlfriend that can hold it in. Everyone will want one. Don’t think there were pooper scooper's for dogs around in the 1700’s but those are now considered kosher right? Exactly. What about sneaky disguise like face masks? Only this one is your face, just better, and you wear it all the time. A step up from a wig say. In fact a wig-mask combo would clearly be a big hit for the ugly baldies. Eternal youth is probably the most elusive target out there. Absurd? I reckon I could be too late on this one. Jessica Simpson must wear a mask – no human face is really that perfect.

Post script: Chris Columbus was one of the first to postulate the Roundness of the earth, Nic Copernicus the geeza whose head they wanted chop off about the sun/earth issue. Not sure about the first to dunk a biscuit but I thank him for it and Woolies rusks.