DON'S BLOG SPOT

It has finally occurred to me what is actually wrong with The Human Animal. We are all stricken with a virus that we picked up many thousands of years ago. It's an insidious, indestructible virus, and its effects are long-term and profound. This virus doesn't make us feel sick per se, but it makes us behave in a way that is so contrary to Nature, our most vital life-force, that over many centuries it has been slowly making us extinct anyway. The interesting thing is that we are blissfully unaware that it is even a virus. We call it..... INTELLIGENCE.

It may or may not not have occurred to you that most township dogs and urban strays in Africa survive by scavenging alone. You can be certain that very few of them get a silver bowl of Pedigree with gravy every day just before they jump on the owners beds for a good kip. I have wept many times when travelling through townships and homelands in this country. The sight of skeletal, mangy, miserable looking creatures sniffing in the dirt is just too much for my old heart.

I have just read that there have been 99000 unwanted teenage pregnancies in South Africa this year alone. This got me thinking. Of course.

Let's face it, alcohol puts up a wall between one lousy day and the next. Or one good day and the next. Whatever. But it always amazes me how much confusion there is around the simple act of having a dop!

Whenever I’m feeling particularly overwrought some deep instinct tells me I need a good cry. And sooner or later it happens. Understand that I’m not one of those guys who pretend not to cry. In fact I love it. It’s such a wonderful emotional release.

In 1991 I travelled to New York with my band ADULT ART to record an album with an American producer. In those days South Africa was still very much persona non grata on the international stage because of Apartheid, so it was an arduous 36 hour journey just to get there! But that's another story.

Let me ask you something. If you were told that you could only own one motorcar for the rest of your life, would you choose it based entirely on how it looks, without ever touching, examining or driving it?

I have been inspired to write this piece by the scintillating wisdom of the UCT student who said; and I quote: "science as a whole is a product of 'Western Modernity', and the whole thing should be scratched off!" Now this is a very brave statement, so I will address this to her, my latest, bestest hero, directly.

Question: What has 22 heads, 44 legs, a low threshold of pain, shuffles around a lot but goes nowhere, whines and moans and is terribly boring to watch? Answer: A soccer match.

I sometimes think I'm living in a circus. No...I sometimes think I'm living in a circus on another planet!