Forget the White Horse...

Forget the White Horse Final.  Push the Matthews Final to the shelf.  Wigan's heroics?  A notable curiosity.  This is the FA Cup Final of all FA Cup Finals.  For those of you who haven't witnessed the miracle of Istanbul, look at Steven Gerrard's eyes when Liverpool are down by two goals.



If you unconsciously rose from your seat, you weren't alone.
Cheers,
—mARKUS

Last Thoughts on the Dark Continent

Greetings, gentle readers.
It's odd that despite roaming all hither and thither across the landscape of England, echoes of South Africa keep reverberating throughout the experiences.  For one, all of the friends and associates that my father and uncle have arranged to meet have some sort of South African connection.  Paul Tagg, for example, went to secondary school with my father in East London.  My uncle Melvin's friends, Marie (pronounced MAA-ree) and Gordon have connections to branches of the family tree in South Africa that I have yet to chart.
So before I carry on with my travelling tales of mystery and imagination, I'll try and put to bed the last of the anecdotes from the southern hemisphere.

He Nodded It On!

One of the things that my cousin Sean brought to my attention is that one of my few cricketing memories from my days in Malawi continues to have relevance today.  As I related my one cricket story to him, his face suddenly flashed with recognition.  Upon further discussion, it turns out that Pommie Mbangwa, the tragic hero of my Malawian anecdote has somehow parleyed his experiences to a successful career in broadcasting.  We even watched a match from the IPL T20 Cricket season that had Pommie as a colour commentator.  Somehow, I was gratified to discover that the story I've been telling for years about the hapless bowler actually has some factual basis, and not merely some form of malaria-induced hallucinatory flashback.  I'll have to check my archives and discover if I can make a link to the story, or if I'll need to rewrite the thing again.

FAQ on the V&A

The Victoria and Albert Waterfront is one of the big tourist pulls of Cape Town, and for good reason.  There are loads of fun and educational things for the kiddiewinkies to attempt to break, there's ample shopping for those interested in quasi-authentic curios and knick-knacks, and points of scientific, geographic, and historic interest.  We didn't ride the Cape Town interpretation of the London Eye, nor did we visit Two Oceans Aquarium on this particular trip.  Despite the extended car tours of Stellenbosch and the Cape Peninsula, it seemed that these tourist activities were just beyond the pale.  I did, however, manage to pick up some books from the big book clearance shop that provided much of the physical discomfort and challenge for the weeks to come.  Couldn't just buy books, me.  Had to buy the heaviest hardcover pieces of nastiness to act as ballast in my luggage, knowing full well that I was going to hump them the length and breadth of London Town and Merseyside.
I also tried to sample some of the local tipple, a theme that was to serve me well in the latter stages of the expedition.  There are some very classy microbreweries in Cape Town that produce some tasty ales and lagers.  There is also a restaurant called Quay 10 (if memory serves) that serves a special drink known as the Robben Island Iced Tea.  This toxic conglomeration of various soft drinks, fruity bits, and a powerful array of alcoholic spirits is incarcerrific. Or convictastic.  Penalicious?  Penitentially enjoyable in any event.

Not Piers Anthony's Wretched Books

Finally, there is my little cousin Xanthe.  The daughter of my cousin Warren and  his wife Kim is a precocious and energetic wee bundle of enthusiasm who has solemnly pronounced that I must return to Cape Town this November for her sixth birthday.  I'm not sure how that might work in any sort of practical economic or logistical manner, but if she demonstrates the persistence of memory required to pester her parents, I'm sure that I'll hear about an appointment for which I may not be late.
Incidentally, the classicist in me always wants to pronounce the Greek "chi" as a "ks" sound, as in "taxi" or "nexus."  However, present day usage seems to dictate that as an incipient consonant sound, it is pronounced as a "zeta."  I blame that Warrior Princess show from the '90s.  I stand open to correction from contemporary and classical Greek pronunciation experts.
Right.  Now I should just need to summarize the England part of the trip, then summarize the developments in European football during my stay, and how they should impact club and international football in this, the even of the season preceding the next World Cup.  Those of you that hate sports may want to skip that entry.
Until then, goodnight England and the colonies.
Cheers,
—mARKUS

King of the North

Put me in Coach!

Greetings, gentle readers.

Having trudged through London under gloomy, overcast skies, and accompanied by the appallingly morose complaints of my father for the past few days, I was cast back to the carefree days of my last visit, when I only had to endure Julie and Carla’s whinging about their sore feet.  At least they didn’t incessantly complain about the nuances of hostel living (sanitation, privacy, heating, water, electricity, clean air — or the lack of all of the above), didn’t have to use the restrooms on an hourly basis, and didn’t blurt out virulently offensive things about people who are blatantly within earshot.  His rants about how much he finds London oppressively numbing and soul-crushing were entertaining for the first couple of days.  After that, every new observation that led to the conclusion that people would be better off dashing themselves into the Thames rather than suffer the purgatory of this cigarette-smoke-filled, baleful existence became just another figurative nail in the coffin in which my sense of wonder and excitement was interred.  

That being said, I have time to write now, since I`ve purchased a funky portable Wi-Fi hotspot.  At last, I am no longer dependent on little hotspots here and there.  I am a Wi-fild Party, as Kim Mitchell might have exclaimed, if he`d wanted to be beaten to death by punfriendly geeks the world over.  So, in effect, I`ve become one of those spoonheads from Doctor Who, routing mobile data signals into all sorts of sinister data centres.  Incidentally, if you ever see the Shard in London, I`m sure that you`ll agree that it would be greatly aesthetically augmented by the addition of Sauron`s lidless eye at the top.

So what we find is this:

My father and I walked through Hyde Park, past all of the monuments, halls, and museums in Kensington, past Harrod`s at Knightsbridge, past Buckingham Palace grounds, and finally past the theatres of Victoria Square to finally reach the Coach Station that would whisk us off to Merseyside.  Hours of walking.  Hours of belly-aching, moaning, and bathroom breaks. 

But at long last, we`re on a coach that had passed numerous signs covered with directions, distances, and destinations.  The one thing that they all had in common was the ominous descriptor worthy of a George R. R. Martin narrative:  ”The NORTH.”  Every other geographic feature was described in specific fashion.  That way to the Ring Road.  This way to Epping or Theydon Bois or Bumming Scroatley or whatever.  We`re going to Liverpool, and that way lies North.  Apparently.

And so I have time to write as the coach rumbles onward up the motorway and I`ve got my headphones on with Dire Straits dialled way up to drown out the obnoxious folk with overly loud mobile conversations around me.  And that means that I can do my quick film review of the brainless pap to which I subjugated myself during the 11-hour flight from Cape Town to London.  I`ll get that lot done and dusted, and then I can try and wrap up any dangling thematic strands from the South African portion of the expedition in my next epistle.

Seven Psychopaths

I imagine that if one had a small group of screenwriters embittered by the industry success of Quentin Tarantino, and they all self-abused themselves vigorously whilst watching “Barton Fink,” the puddle of cold wank left over would probably have more artistic merit than this film.  Sam Rockwell must have fun going completely over the top as a stupid and pointless character.  Oh, and Abbie Clancy gets a wet T-shirt scene, so I guess the film is rescued after all.  The next time you see photos of Peter Crouch being caught in another tawdry affair with some rancid prostitute, you can think of Abbie as his “gland slam” and despise him just a little bit more.  Oh, right.  The film.  0.5 jellybeans. 

Warm Bodies

This film was rather stupid, but thankfully, it became stupid in a profoundly less stupid way once I realized that this is not really a zombie film.  It isn`t even a bad zombie film with an abhorrently ghastly Shakespearean reference that made my oatmeal hit the wall.  It`s a clumsy plea for humanity to treat goths, fans of The Smiths, and Winona Ryder’s character in “Beetlejuice” with compassion and love.  Ultimately unconvincing, since it seems to imply that said self-ostracized groups require some form of rehabilitation, and I reckon most Morrissey fans are beyond that sort of treatment.   The soundtrack, Rob Corddry, the Canadian content, and wholly shameless plug of vinyl LP technology made the film tolerable.  Oh, and the actor who played the lad from “About a Boy.”  He does a good American accent.  Has he done any films in the intervening period between these two films, or has speech therapy conquered his adolescent years?  Two jellybeans.

Hansel and Gretel:  Witch Hunters

This is a film with a single schtick:  what if the Grimm`s Fairy Tales used 20<sup>th</sup>-century cuss words?  The humour wears off before you realize that it`s the whole point of the film.  By then, it`s too late to laugh, and you`re stuck with a pack of nonsensical  action sequences, some gratuitous violence perpetrated on Peter Stormare’s character, and a plot so ludicrously stupid that Famke Janssen can almost be heard to stifle a retch as she does the voice-over narration of the flashback explanation of the conflict in the film.  Yes, she has to explain it to you in an expository flourish of cinematic incompetence.  Will Farrell produced this, and he seems like a nice sort, so I hope he didn`t lose too much money.  Just enough to prevent him from finding funding for a sequel.  I spent most of the film staring curiously at Gemma Arterton, whose artless and bland performance was matched by her face`s unnerving lack of any character or identity.  In “The Invasion of the Body Snatchers,” if you found a pod under someone’s bed while it was in the process of duplicating a human, you would find a pale, half-formed specimen that hadn`t fully developed into a replica of its target.  Someone needs to put the being attempting to be an actress back in its pod.  Zero jellybeans.

The Look of Love

I`m generally a fan of Steve Coogan, but his choice of characters begins to smack of the sorts of decisions that Emilio Estevez makes.  All of his characters are essentially himself with a twist or two.  His characters in “24-Hour Party People”, “Tristram Shandy”, “Alan Partidge”, etc. can probably be distinguished by their taste in red wine, but precious little else.  Even “Hamlet 2” contained the same mannerisms – dithering and rambling speech dotted with oddly juxtaposed historical and literary quotations, shrouding an insecure and neurotic individual who constantly operates in a state of disconnection between himself and the world of others.   The comedic impact of this is found in the repetitive deflation of any arrogant pretences the characters try to portray.

This film is a pathetic aggregate of anecdotes, bereft of continuity and development.  Something tragic happens to character C.  Flash forward ten years to find something good happen to Character C.  Flash backward to watch him meet a person.  Flash forward five years to see that they`ve become business partners.  Flash forward again to watch their relationship disintegrate.  These little vignettes are obviously well-documented and corroborated by witnesses, but there is no narrative to tie them together.  There is no reason to like or hate any of the characters particularly, because none of them develop.  Coogan`s character is self-involved and selfish.  That’s pretty much it.  He might love his daughter.  There`s some evidence, but nothing really substantial.  And much as “Leaving Las Vegas” was flawed because it would take a suspension of reality of Mitty-esque proportions to believe that Elizabeth Shue looks so trampy and dissolute that she would get ejected from a casino, it is equally implausible to believe that a male could be emotionally motivated by anything other than some sort of existential oblivion to leave and divorce Anna Friel.  One may as well reject the virtue of incandescence.  The film is thus neither engaging, nor particularly interesting.  Cameos by Stephen Fry and Dara O’Briain are thoroughly wasted – Fry in particular is squandered in a flashback courtroom re-enactment that made “The People Vs. Larry Flynt” look like cinematic masterclass.  A single jellybean.

Right.  Enough of my bitter ranting.  I`m going to relax for the rest of this coach ride and start thinking about other purposeless, rambling diatribes that I can foist upon unsuspecting dwellers of the interwebs.

Coming soon:  the Ballad of Paul Tagg:  Roland the Headless Thompson Gunner’s Pal.

Until then, goodnight England and the colonies.

Cheers,

—mARKUS

Country Rhodes

Sundown on South Africa

Greetings, gentle readers.
So we've left the southern hemisphere and are now situated in England.  There are a few strange anecdotes yet to be related from the Cape Peninsula and surrounding areas, but, aside from the one involving an odd American woman who kept taking my photograph at the Mount Nelson Hotel in Cape Town, very few of them are likely to hold any interest at all for a neutral observer.  I've also taken some panoramic photos from the Cecil John Rhodes Monument overlooking Cape Town, but I have no idea how that format will display in this medium.  So I'll take a break from the travelogue for a bit and instead hold forth on the Liverpool game at Craven Cottage that I attended yesterday.

More like Bob Denver

Compared to the last Liverpool game that I attended at Anfield, this was an affair characterized by a much greater degree of crowd intensity and participation.  Smoke bombs, banners, flags, flares, firecracker explosions, stomping, clapping... lusty, bawdy songs... the whole shebang.  Whatever a shebang is.  If it's anything like an interrobang, it might be appropriate.

♪ Take me home / Al-Fayed
To the place / where I come from,
Craven Cottage / by the river
Take me home / Al-Fayed ♪

Well, I don't know if it's possible for the thought of "Country Roads" being used to serenade an Egyptian billionaire to cause John Denver to turn over in his grave, but he might try and cleanse the stigma by washing up on shore again.
The game started brightly.  Literally.  Pink smoke billowed from five or six canisters in the crowd and the eighteen yard-box in front of the Putney End, where Mark Schwarzer tried to tend his net despite being out-of-contract at the end of the season, and wondering how his career arc will continue.  He's 40 years old, and he's got to be considering the option of playing out the string for some semi-professional Australian Hyundai A-League side.
As the ground crew cleaned off the flares from the scorched earth of the pitch, the teams walked onto the field.  Jamie Carragher, captain on the day, waved at the away end as we all bellowed out "♪We all dream / of a team of Carraghers / A team of Carraghers / A team of Carraghers."
Somehow, the lackadaisical and languid Dimitar Berbatov, despite looking as though he couldn't be arsed to break into a canter during 99% of the game, scored for Fulham during a ghastly defensive breakdown in the first half.  That caused a hiccough in the baying Liverpool support's torrent of song, sound, and vision. But soon there was cause for jubilation once more as Daniel Sturridge equalized for the Scouse side.
Sturridge went on to complete a hat-trick, and Fulham were deservedly put to the sword.  There were a few open goals that went begging — Jonjo Shelvey particularly profligate on one occasion — and some very selfish play on the break as Liverpool looked to run up a cricket score.  The final goal was particularly interesting, as Sturridge cut in from the left and chipped Schwarzer.  The entire Putney End stand was on its collective feet as we watched the ball go up, up, up... higher than the level of the crossbar... hang there interminably as our mouths dangled agape... until finally dropping under the crossbar to an ejaculation of celebratory screams and shouts, as well as the punctuation of firecracker booms.  The captain took some lessons in goal celebrations from the hat-trick hero and the "team of Carraghers" song echoed out through the grey, chilly afternoon.
The other cute point of note (aside from my comments on twitter: https://twitter.com/JdCilantro) was the late introduction of John Arne Riise on the left side of the Fulham defence.  His first act was to lash a free-kick at Pepe Reina.  Reina saved comfortably down and to his left, but from that moment on, the travelling Liverpool support sang his song (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hY4yUhjR6pk) several times, serenading him off the pitch after the whistle.  Great to see that everyone still treats servants of the club with reverence, despite their current allegiances.  Riise waved and clapped at the away stand as he left the field following the conclusion of the match, to the delight of the red-clad mob.
I've got to run, since I'm currently in the breakfast room, and people want to eat their dry cereal near the power socket that I'm using.
Goodnight England and the colonies,
—mARKUS

Go West (where the skies are blue)

The Return of the Cape Crusader                                    

Have been in Cape Town for almost a week now, and this is what we find:

It’s been a hectic week, compounded by a group preponderance toward total paralysis when it comes to any sort of decision-making or consensus-building.  Everyone is passive-aggressive, and no-one wants to assert any sort of preference for any alternative presented.  So we end up discussing which museum is the most interesting until they’ve all shut for the night, or pull over by the side of the road to discuss which direction we should take until the sun sets.  It all seems very busy and crowded, but nothing much is ever actually accomplished.

Oh, and information control is an issue.  It’s a bit like something out of Commedia Dell’arte or “Three’s Company.”  No one really says the entire situation to anyone else, and all confusion remedies are garbled, mumbled, misunderstood, or grossly misinterpreted.  Rather than say “we’re going out for dinner, we’ll be back after eight,” people would rather say “we’re not sure what’s going on, please don’t make any arrangements.”  This dissatisifies everyone, and clarifies nothing.  All plans suddenly become tentative, and no plans ever come to fruition because there is never consensus, so the people who were trying to make contingency plans are unable to have any impact. 

So there you have it.  Clear as mud.

Megamegamcmuffin

Stopped by Cavendish Centre (big shopping mall) for breakfast.  Apparently, McDonald’s in South Africa has something that Canadians don’t enjoy – the MegaMcMuffin.  In a nation that has just been afflicted by the Double Down, someone has taken the EggMcMuffin, Sausage McMuffin, and Ham McMuffin and wrapped them all up in one big colossal and architecturally unsound tower of muffinness.   My blood’s LDL increased when I saw the picture.  I hesitate to venture what it looks like after I consumed one.

Flight of the condiments

Incidentally, the least-attractive thing about the breakfast monstrosity that attacked my circulatory system was the ghastly tomato sauce.  For some reason, South Africans don’t understand the concept of ketchup.  Or catsup.  Even at McDonald’s, where ketchup is used for transfusions for medically uninsured minimum-wage employees.

Instead of the concoction that first-worlders enjoy, with puréed onions, salt, vinegar, sugar, and a host of mysterious other ingredients, South Africans get tomato sauce that contains… tomatoes.  And precious little else, including flavour.  I’m not a big fan of ketchup, but I’m downright opposed to ketchup-esque slimy red scum that looks a bit brighter and shinier than it ought to be.

Oh, and thanks to Elizabeth Brits for the word of the week.  The word of the week is:  hectic.  I had no idea how versatile the term could be.  It can be fairly applied as an adjective to a sequestered American congress, an unreleased Disney film, a pool game between two women wearing chequered flannel shirts, or a particularly tasty spoonful of soup.

Simon Says Town

Unusually for our merry band, we actually went for a drive around the peninsula south of Cape Town.  Some lovely beaches and landscapes.  Oddly enough, the really curious incident occurred in a little place called Simon’s Town.  Simon’s Town has a pleasant naval base with training vessels and large numbers of very snappily-dressed sailors (male and female) moseying about amongst the tourists in the sunshine.

As my travelling companions milled about amicably, nibbling on foodstuffs and visiting the public toilets,  I went looking for a milkshake.  It was a hot day, I was thirsty – it seemed harmless and appropriate.  Sure enough, a rather jolly, friendly Boer fellow popped out of a restaurant called The Quarterdeck and asked me if I’d like to see a menu.  I responded that I was simply looking for a milkshake.  Within seconds, an eager black lad had teleported in front of me with a menu.

“Mint.”  I said.

“This lad,” said the Boer fellow, gesturing to the vapour trail where the black waiter has been, “makes the best milkshakes in the Western Cape!”

“Oh, I’m sure.” I replied.

“Where are you from?” asked the man, taking a step back.  I responded that I’m Canadian.

“Oh!  Oh!”  he yelped.  He turned and started to shuffle inside the restaurant, squeezing past the bar, the hallway leading to the toilets, and down a narrow corridor. “Al-something!  Al… Al… Albequerque?”

I followed him through the door, turned right, dodged a waiter coming from behind the bar in the opposite direction.  The Afrikaaner guy was standing in the corridor, hunching towards a world map tacked to the wall. 

“Alberta!”  he finally blurted, poking at the map.

“Yes,”  I said, sidling closer and pointing to Edmonton. “Right there.”

We went back outside, and he explained at length how he talks with all of the tourists, and he’s made it a hobby of trying to pick their geographic spot of origin from their dialects.  Apparently, asking a black American woman if she is from Louisiana or Alabama is an awful idea if that woman happens to be from California.  He received a torrent of abuse on that occasion.  After chatting for a couple of minutes, he asked me what I did for work.  I mumbled something about IT and Oil & Gas stuff.

“Libran,” he declared.

“I’m sorry?” I replied.

“Your astrological sign.  Libra.”

“Oh, erm… no.  I’m a Scorpio.”

A number of things flashed through my head.  If one considers that the galactic equator has shifted since the creation of the original horoscope, and that there are in fact 13 signs of the zodiac according to the International Astronomical Union, then within the definitions established by sidereal astronomy, I’m technically a Libra by date of birth.  Of course, I also have a tendency to over-analyze things, though I can never remember which zodiacal sign is associated with that characteristic.  Is that a symptom of forgetfulness or just a complete disregard for bizarre and unscientific explanations of behavioural psychological phenomena?

“… and you would need a more creative space to express yourself,” the restauranteur was finishing.  I made affirmative nods and murmurs and collected my mint milkshake from the obliging and helpful waiter.

It was an odd exchange, but there were other strange interactions to come.

But it’s lunchtime and I can always continue this later, can’t I?

Cheers everyone, and good night England and the colonies.

—mARKUS

The Import of Sport

And so, in the final hours of my time in Port Elizabeth, this is what we find.

My last visit to South Africa was thematically inseparable from the global sporting spectacle that was attracting the attention of billions of humanoids and psychic cephalopods worldwide.  This time around, there is no World Cup to dominate and occupy conversations, newspaper column-inches, online photo galleries, twitter feeds, and waking nightmares.  That being said, it find it odd how various sports seem to form a metronomic foundation of my life on the road around the southern tip of Africa.

Like Sands Through the Hourglass

While everyone else here has to work and toil and do all of those sorts of things that people do to make ends meet, I’ve been drifting through the African scenescape like some sort of diaphanous transient.  It’s very easy to lose track to the days of the week when the only real milestones are the previous and the next flights.  That’s where UEFA comes in.  I just need to think back to the last match that I watched, since all UEFA competitions are broadcast everywhere, and I can navigate my way through the murky temporal waters that way.  Only one German team has qualified for the Champions’ League Final?  It must be Wednesday.  Barcelona just been humiliated for the second time on the trot?  Thursday.  Fernando Torres scored a goal last night?  Friday.

I am Ozymandias, King of (the Sport of) Kings

Horse racing form books are filled with a nigh-hieroglyphic set of condensed information.  It took me a while to reckon up what all of the numbers, letters, and symbols represent, and what meaning they hold in relation to one another.  Eventually, these little discrete crumbs of data form elaborate mosaics of pixelated reference points, like a Magic Eye picture.  Adjusting your perspective so that those virtual pixels can be seen in the context of a larger graphic narrative gives a series of patterns and trends that can be used to predict the outcome of each race.

Twenty-to-one odds?  No big deal.

So I’ve got a working hypothesis that allowed me to pick the winners of two races from three.  I didn’t even try with one because the data set was scrawny and the field was inordinately skewed upon first inspection.  So I made a bit of money, and earned dark, vile stares from everyone in the bookie’s parlour.  There were an awful lot of aging and bitter blokes hiding behind ramparts of cigarette butts and conjuring permutations of inordinate proportions that might possibly turn six rand into ten.  I just pick the winners and take the money.

I’ll be just like Buddy Holly

I always liked cricket a bit.  The fifth Doctor wore a cricket get-up most of the time.  Of course, he also had that celery thing going, presumably so that he’d be prepared for any Bloody Marys that came his way down the pub.  That being said, I rarely had the time or the patience to watch a five-day test match in its entirety, or even keep track of the proceedings using whatever media coverage was available.  I essentially knew the rules, watched a few extended lengths of the stuff when at John’s pub in Blantyre, and could even drop the odd name, like Brian Lara or Shane Warne.

Then I discovered the wonder and the glory that is T20 cricket.  My oath.  It’s gripping stuff.  It’s like concentrated cricket highlights pumped full of electric juju and fired from an orbital ion cannon.  If anyone knows what that drug-rehab recreational activity known as baseball is, this is like telling each team that they get 120 pitches at the other team, and that one team’s batting order goes through before the other does.  No alternating innings or any of that rubbish.  Every thrown ball counts for something, and no movement is extraneous. 

Just this week, a lad named Chris Gayle shattered a cricket record that now seems likely to remain shattered for any time in the foreseeable future.  He smashed 100 runs out of 30 balls thrown at him.  The baseball equivalent would be mind-liquifying.  American stattos get all moist when they think about batters with a season average of 0.400 or over.  Well, imagine if the average wasn’t per at-bat, but per pitch, and then imagine someone that belts the ball out of the park 70% of the time, and you might start to understand.

The big T20 cricket league is (unsurprisingly) in India, and it’s a big production.  There are terribly fit cheerleaders, a stadium DJ spinning tunes, fireworks, mega-jumbotron graphic displays, internationally-renowned commentators, several different hats analogous to the Tour de France peloton, television advertising timeouts, fanatical stadium-packing crowds, and bonkers corporate sponsorships.  To my amazement, it works.  NFL games are a bunch of potty-breaks and naptimes interrupted by the odd 2-yard run play.  People at baseball games long for the seventh-inning stretch to break the monotony of watching pitchers throw to first base idly between conferences on the mound.   NBA fans have long ago forgotten what “travelling” is, and are so jaded that slam dunks receive as much attention as the colour of the popcorn vendors’ socks.

Cricket manages to incorporate the chess-like strategies and machinations of the NFL with the pop of an unexpected superstar highlight-reel bit of action, as well as some beautifully orchestrated teamwork and coordination.  It just took me a while to find a format of cricket that really brings all of those elements to the fore and distills them to their essence.

I would recommend that all sports fans check out some of the action here:  http://www.iplt20.com/

I’ve been fortunate to see matches every afternoon for the past week, and they’re always entertaining, particularly for a neutral.  If this sport ever makes it big in North America, I’ve got dibs on being the hipster who liked it before it was cool.

More news as it becomes available.

Cheers and good night England and the colonies.

—mARKUS

Last Days of PE

The Wagers of Sin

So Cousin Joey finally took us to the Boardwalk Casino, and this is what we find:

The net result of four hours of studious effort resulted in a transformation of a couple of R100 notes into a stack of R20 notes.  No big bonanzas for me, since I’m rather fiscally conservative about such things.  Since I’ve been gone, apparently the casino has built a monstrous great five-star hotel where the parking lot used to be.  The mind boggles when considering how Joni Mitchell could rewrite “Big Yellow Taxi” to accommodate such a development.  Oh, and the slot machine that brought so much joy three years ago has apparently been binned, obviously in retribution for enabling a Canadian to purchase and sneak a classified piece of technology out of the country.

The day started off far less auspiciously.   Joey had an appointment with his automotive specialists to deal with the tyres on his Mazda, so after an enormous breakfast, he dropped myself and the two elder Chans off at the nearby shopping centre, Zsa Zsa Gaborishly named Greenacres.

I found myself lending my uncle R200 to buy a pair of short pants.  Yes, you read that correctly.  Consequently, I needed to find an ATM so that I could buy some more cash for myself.  After spending some time in the food court, waiting in line behind a Gogo (elderly, matronly Xhosa) for a bit, I walked up to the machine to discover that she’d set the language to Afrikaans.  I found that odd, since there were numerous other language options available.  Quick history lesson:  whereas East London was always predominantly English-speaking during the Apartheid era, Port Elizabeth has always been a bastion of Afrikaans.  English has been gaining headway as a lingua franca, but Afrikaans is still very deeply ingrained.

As I walked away from the terminal and toward my father and uncle, I noticed that my father’s face was fixed in an unusually perplexed expression.  Turning to look behind me, I noticed that an elderly fellow, stringy grey hair and beard cascading about his head, had given up the ghost.   It may sound like an odd way to phrase it, but a human being had suddenly turned into a limp conglomeration of tissues.  Any animus had gone.  A young man was hefting the late gentleman out of his chair, while three women gathered around to give assistance.  The man’s eyes were closed, his jaw was slack and his mouth hollow and agape.  As the body was lifted from the chair, the flesh drooped and sagged from the bone.

The paramedics confirmed what was painfully obvious.  There was nothing to revive or stabilize.  They cordoned off the area with black, collapsible panels, and wrapped the body in foil before putting it on a stretcher and taking it away.

I was tempted to ask that the entire area be sealed and cordoned off, since anyone in that food court could have poisoned his eggs, and that one of the people in the room could be the killer.  But that would have been in awful taste.  Ironically, it may just have been the greasy, fast-food taste of his last meal that did the old lad in.

In any event, Cousin Joey drove up to the mall in a motorcar scene that could have been stolen from “Wind in the Willows.”  His forehead is just barely visible over the steering wheel.  Somehow, I keep getting the impression that he could whup my ass at basketball despite all intuitive knowledge about height advantage available.  He’s also a bespectacled accountant, and some of the stories from his youth paint a portrait of a typical shy nerd who has since blossomed into a life-of-the-party, how-d’ye-do man about town.  Personality goes a long way.

As we drove back to the house for lunch/second breakfast, I noticed a Hyundai Atos and wondered idly if that car had been the inspiration for the Doctor Who episodes “The Sontaran Strategem” and “The Poison Sky.”

As a quick aside, the only person in the past six months to tell me that I’ve lost weight has been my cousin Florrie.  I suspect that she’s just trying to find an excuse to feed me more of her wonderful but overwhelmingly plentiful culinary concoctions.  The practical upshot is that, when in Port Elizabeth, one eats like a hobbit in the more advanced stages of malnutrition.

Speaking of which, it’s almost time for tea.

Cheers everyone, and good night England and the colonies.

—mARKUS

Port Elizabeth, Approximately

Hunter’s Village

So it’s been three days in a happy little suburb in Port Elizabeth, and this is what we find:

I still haven’t gone down to the Boardwalk Casino with Cousin Joey.  This is not a case of extraordinary willpower or a sudden puritanical urge to avoid all sorts of diabolical temptation.  In fact, I don’t seem to recall any biblical references that prohibit gambling.  Judeo-Christian scholars amongst you may correct me, but wasn’t there a parable wherein three servants were given some talents, and the servant that saved and did not risk his wealth was slapped down very roughly?  Matthew 25…

24     Then he which had received the one talent, came and said, Lord, I knew thee that thou art an hard man, reaping where thou hast not sown, and gathering where thou hast not strawed:
25     And I was afraid, and went and hid thy talent in the earth:  lo, there thou hast that is thine.
26     His lord answered, and said unto him, Thou wicked and slothful servant, thou knewest that I reap where I sowed not, and gather where I have not strawed:
27     Thou oughtest therefore to have put my money to the exchangers, and then at my coming I should have received mine own with usury.
28     Take therefore the talent from him, and give it unto him which hath ten talents.
29     For unto every one that hath shall be given, and he shall have abundance: but from him that hath not, shall be taken away, even that which he hath.
30     And cast ye the unprofitable servant into outer darkness, there shall be weeping and gnashing of teeth.

Not that I want to start a biblical debate, but I want to play the “Young Frankenstein” slot machine again, and I reckon that a person can use the Bible to justify anything, if you find the right citation.

Economics

For those of you interested, I've tried to keep track of what things cost over here.  Although there is nothing mind-bogglingly astonishing, it gives you an idea of the commercial spending power of a travelling Canadian. Very roughly, these are the exchange rates...

1 Canadian Dollar = 8 South African Rand 

1 South African Rand (ZAR) = 11 Canadian cents

Here are some quick snapshots of prices:

• Pack of 20 cigarettes =  R30
• Lamb loin chops = R100 per kilogram
• Case of 24 bottles of lager = R140
• DVD Player = R200
• Top-loading clothes washer/dryer = R1700

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Those of you that don’t own a copy, I would suggest that you purchase a copy of the Alberta Biology 20 SNAP study guide from Castle Rock Research.  A lot of blood, sweat, tears, and toil went into the creation of that book, and I would venture to say that a lot of professional pride hinges on its contents, particularly some of Richard Yeoman’s illustrations.

One of the more interesting chapters of the book dealt with hypereutrophication and hypoxia in freshwater and estuary bodies.  The central case study was situated in Hartbeespoort, South Africa, and having been to the spot, I can say that the problem is not solved. Point of interest, the first "t" in the name is pronounced as its own syllable, so the place name sounds like "Har-te-BEES-port."

Basically, all of the fish died and the entire lake became filled with bright green scum.  Turns out that if you’ve got a bunch of agricultural land and you fertilize the snot out of it, a lot of the phosphates gather in the water table.  If you dam off a whackload of little tributaries to make a lake, you give a spot for all of these nutrients to pool.  There’s an explosion in the population of algae and cyanobacteria, and they choke the life out of anything else in the lake.  After decades of studying and attempting various types of remediation, the lake isn’t quite as nasty as it once was.  I’m still not going to go swimming in it, though.

That’s all for this morning.

Until next time, good night England and the colonies,

—mARKUS

The Eastern Cape, Part II

The Windy City

Well, Port Elizabeth is certainly more accommodating than it was in 2010.  For one, we’re not here in the dead of winter, merely autumn.  Thus it is that I can type in the A.M. without being uncontrollably wracked with shivering fits, swaddled in blankets, and crouched near a 60-watt desklamp bulb for warmth.

We’re also being housed and fed by my uncle Joey Gin, a man with either the sagacity or the foolhardiness to have married my grandmother’s niece.  We’ll soon find out how his domestic Wi-Fi works, so that my uncle Melvin can use his magic Apple iPod to initiate videoconferences with the family back in Ontario.  We all get our own bedrooms, and aunt Florrie cooks food on an industrial scale, so a greater amount of exercise is going to be necessary if we are to avoid bloating into distended caricatures of ourselves.  My weight loss program begins today… with a trip to the barber.  I reckon that I’m lugging around a bonus kilo of wiry and unruly follicular growth that would be better used with some resin to reinforce a canoe.

The big family dinner last night upon arrival at the airport involved about a dozen people that I recognizes, and a couple dozen others that I don’t.  Since no-one else seems willing or able to do it, it looks as though I’ll have to draw the diagram of the inordinately complex and convoluted family tree that interconnects these disparate individuals.  Through conversations over the past couple of weeks, I’ve discovered the sources of much tension, conflict, anguish, suffering, and angst.  One of the big ones, and perhaps the nexus of most of the genealogical madness, is my great-uncle Hugh, who died just over a year ago.  The last time I met him, he was a charming, battle-scarred, ex-swashbuckling pirate with tales of high adventure, inordinate risks, and heroic derring-do.

At some point, I’ll have to distill Hugh’s story into a country and western song, since, as Harry Chapin would have noted, there are important themes of motherhood and trucks woven through it.  First, I’ll just jot down the details as I’ve assembled them thus far, and we’ll fret about a C₇-G_min lyrical structure later.

The Ballad of Uncle Hugh

At first glance, uncle Hugh looked a mess.  A large portion of the left side of his face was missing, and the outlines were scarred and jagged.  He was missing a thumb and two fingers, shuffled about with a painful and pronounced limp, and hoarsely rasped out breath after breath.  Strangely enough, his eyes still twinkled, and his mouth continually twisted into a mischievous grin.

He had been collecting accounts from business clients back in the day.  There were several things wrong with this entire activity.  First, walking around with a brown paper bag and collecting accounts receivables in cash is just poor accounting practice.  Second, to do so on a regular basis whilst open to observation and scrutiny from all and sundry seems a bit unwise.  Finally, to wander around alone and on foot on a regular route through neighbourhoods of questionable safety and security seems downright suicidal.

And so it was.

Faced with five assailants, one armed with a shotgun, one with an AK-47, and one with a pistol, Hugh responded to demands to hand over the cash with a combination of braggadocio and machismo.  No one knows what his exact words were, but they were something to the effect of “Go fuck yourselves.”

Luckily, the brigands were a little on the incompetent side.   Not really expecting any resistance, and thrown off guard by Hugh’s cavalier sneer, the one with the shotgun swung the barrel up and let go with both barrels.  Since he wasn’t holding it properly, the gun bucked and twisted in his hands.  One barrel of shot flew harmlessly over Hugh’s left shoulder.  The other cloud of pellets struck him between that shoulder and his clavicle.

The pistol went off ineffectively and missed with the first shot.  The second shot caught Hugh in the left calf muscle.  Meanwhile, the AK-47 belched out a stream of 7.62mm bullets that blasted through Hugh’s outstretched hand (which was quite possibly flashing the middle finger at the time), and into his cranium, blowing through his left cheek, shattering bones and blinding him in one eye.  He wore his eyepatch for a reason other than pirate caché.

Hugh survived by leaping off to one side and rolling under a truck.  Somehow (and this bit I don’t get) the thieves made off with some R12,000 out of the R50,000 that Hugh was carrying before police and other authorities came swarming onto the scene.  Whether Hugh fought for each bill individually from his prone position, or the paper bag burst in some strange manner, we don’t know.  And likely never will, since Hugh’s demise.

In any event, Hugh was (according to most stories) forced into an arranged marriage in his youth with a girl named Daisy.  Hugh was never happy with the marriage and was often away from his family as a travelling salesman.  He and Daisy had a difficult and strained relationship, and yet they managed to have five children together.  Or as together as they wanted to be.  Unsubstantiated tales are told of Daisy’s possible post-partum depression, and a total deterioration of her union with Hugh.

In his travels, Hugh found companionship apart from his wife, and managed to start a second family.  The fruits of that liaison were two boys, who have apparently gone on to become successful professionals.  Meanwhile, Daisy pushed for and eventually received a divorce.  As soon as the marriage was dissolved, Daisy remarried and bore another daughter.

Meanwhile, Hugh had built a fuel supply company, based on petrol and paraffin distribution throughout South Africa.  When he brought his son Neville into the business in the 2000s, profits soared and growth was never better.  Roughly seven different factors were responsible for the downfall of this enterprise, but as always, Hugh seemed to emerge from all of the shananigans with something to show for them, even if everyone else involved was impoverished and diminished.

When Hugh died recently, his children and grandchildren gathered to pay their respects and thought long and hard about what the man had meant to them.  Then came the reading of the will, and none of the previously mentioned children or descendants were named as beneficiaries.  Of any sort.

The old pirate had found a selfish way of using his assets in such a way that he alone of his family would reap the benefits.  But that is a story for another day.

In other parts of the news…

Meanwhile, I’ve just gotten a haircut from down the street from the sleepy suburb of Port Elizabeth in which I’m staying.  And with apologies to any gay or queer readers, it really doesn’t matter how much a gay man pretties himself up, prances about, or does things with a mincing feminine affectation… as soon as he starts speaking Afrikaans, the fairy tale is over.   You just can’t have a Y chromosome and speak floral, delicate Afrikaans.  It doesn’t work.  It’s a rough, snarling, guttural language best spoken when gutting warthogs or torturing prisoners.  Thank heavens my hairstylist was multilingual, or I would have been fearful for my well-being.

I’ve got to run and do other things before Bayern München emulate their countrymen and boot another storied Spanish team from the Champions’ League, setting up an all-Deutsch final for the first time.

So until then, it’s cheers from me.

Good night England and the colonies,

—mARKUS

The Eastern Cape, Part I

Buffalo City

So after leaving Joburg behind without a whiff of regret, what we find is this.

It seems a bit odd to say that my first impression upon setting foot on the tarmac of the East London airport was that the weather finally seemed to be warming up.  It wasn’t cold up on the plateau in the north, but the warm, moist coastal air with just a hint of a sea breeze was a welcome feeling.  After leaving the terminal building, it really started to steam.  Much as it had in Toronto, London, and Joburg, our arrival had been preceded by cold, damp, and other symptoms of meteorological misery.  Each place has hitherto rebounded from such unhappiness, but none with quite as much zest as East London.  The searing sun punched through a cloudless powder sky, blasting the temperature into the +30°C range.

It was also a refreshing change to see my Uncle Reuben again.  His sense of humour is a whole different tangent apart from the rest of my father’s side of the family, and it’s nice to hear some irony, sarcasm, and litotes once in a while.  Keeps the metaphorical literary juices flowing.

Of course, this is the part of the journey where a lot of the pieces are intended to fall into place.  Thus far, there have been rumours, hints, subtexts, and clues about a series of familial condundra that underpin the actual reason for this whirlwind tour of South Africa.  There have been deaths in the family, wills, title deeds, and murmurs of dread legal battles.  Joburg only entailed meeting Uncle Sid, my grandfather’s younger brother, who through an overlap of generations common in societies where families strove for double-digits of children to have a solid household workforce, is actually younger than my uncle Melvin, despite being my great-uncle.

Sid talks like Mathazar.  It’s not really a factor until your mind makes the connection.  It’s like reading Emily Dickinson’s poetry.  Until you sing one of her poems to “The Yellow Rose of Texas,” it all sounds quite deep and meaningful.  As soon as you hear that tune and read her words, every single poem that she’s ever written becomes trivialized.  Subject to floccinaucinihilipilification, one might say.  Hey.  I finally used that word appropriately in a sentence.   I give myself bonus points.

In any event, Sid is a bit of an eccentric fellow, but given the context of my family, that’s eminently forgivable.  His driving skills are a bit terrifyingly unorthodox, and his analyses of South Africa’s socio-political landscape should probably not be mentioned in polite company.  They should certainly not be mentioned in impolite and unruly company.

Now that we’re in East London, we get to hear all of the various other sides of the stories that Sid spun over many long hours of coffee shop refills.  Joy.  This just seems like a preamble to a frenzied series of diplomatic negotiations and mediations.  Having an inordinate number of far-flung relatives that spin stories and bandy them about like some kind of transatlantic gossip telephone game just lends itself to artificially-created crises and conflicts.

In the meantime, East London meant one specifically important thing to me:  laundry.  Considering that I’ve only got my computer bag and a single carry on for luggage, the continually diminishing amount of clean socks and/or underwear acts like a countdown doomsday clock.  And we were pretty nigh close on midnight, dear readers.  Damn nigh.

But before we could reach the shelter and clothing-purifying sanctity of Villa Radloff on Browning Street, we first had to take my father and uncle on a tour of old memory lane.  Considering that my uncle Mel hasn’t set foot in South Africa since 1963, a few things may have changed from his perspective.

The first thing that I noticed is that every block had some sort of family name associated with it.  Every time the car hit an intersection, my aunt Jenny or uncle Reub would gesticulate toward some structure or other and indicate that it used to belong to, house, or was frequented by some family or other.  That family would invariably have moved away, sold the place, left it to some ungrateful children that wrecked it, or cursed the place from the afterlife after the entire family line was extinguished by a particularly virulent strain of tooth decay.

But a stranger pattern began to emerge.  These were shops.  On every corner.  Every family owned a shop.  Or two.  Or three.  It was like Napoleon’s “nation of shopkeepers” remark come to fruition.  With this sort of density, the only way that all of these shops could have been profitable would have been for a swarm of consumers desperate for tomato sauce, pilchards, and mangos to descend on these sleepy areas on a regular basis.  The only other economic model would involve some an odd ouroboros-like series of transactions in which all of the shopkeepers bought one another’s stock in turn.  Surely you can’t have a community in which everyone owns a cornershop.   Or perhaps you can.  And I’m looking at it.

In any event, it’s great to be back by the sea.  The salty hint in the air is refreshing, and the powder-silt-fine sand feels almost like a liquid between one’s toes.  There are also animals frolicking about in these environs that I don’t recall from my last visit here.  For example, there’s this little fellow that I spotted from one of the beach boardwalks:

I wondered what this sort of sand rat might be until I realized that I was taking a zoomed-in photo.  Zooming out, it is readily apparent that there is an explanation of exactly what this little duffer is, and all of its various characteristics. 

Interesting point:  phylogenetically, these little beach bunnies are closer relatives of elephants than they are of any fuzzy rodents.

Aside from driving around and looking at the shops that everyone used to own, monkeying around at the beach, and dropping into Hemingway’s to do some shopping and casino-dwelling (thanks to Platinum VIP Ted Radloff), the other port of call to note near East London is the old farm, which my great-grandfather owned, and was the seat of the family in this part of South Africa for a while.  This means that my grandfather, two of his brothers (including uncle Sid), and three of his sisters grew up there.

The place was a bit more desolate back in the 1920s, with more dirt and scrub than trees and grass, but time and care have made the place a lot more habitable since great-grandfather first started to scratch out a living on dry and poorly moisturized soil.  There is one thing that tips me off that this dirt farm undoubtedly belonged to my family or some of their friends.

Unsurprisingly, my great-grandfather built a shop on the corner.

Until next time, good night, England and the colonies.

Cheers,

—mARKUS

Where are those Meerkat Things?

Greetings, gentle readers.

After a couple of journeys into the bush, what we find is this:

Apparently, there is some sort of numerical preoccupation within African zoological circles involving the number five.  The elephant, rhino, hippo, lion, and leopard apparently make up “The Big Five.”  Apparently, some sort of Musk Ox can be substituted for the rhino in some circles, but I find myself diametrically opposed to those circles.  Leaving that tangent, there are “The Feline Five,” numbering the lion, panther, leopard, cheetah, and ocelot.  According to bush guide Lizzy, there are also “The Ugly Five.”  She didn’t list them, but she did say that the blue wildebeest was a prime example.

In keeping with that spirit, I’ll nominate my “Fascinating Five,” which would be my list of African creatures with cool back stories.  Anyone who heard me babble about this sort of thing before can attest that I dig on zebra mussels, stone martens, tarantula hawks, etc.  This lot may not be quite as super-dynamic as others, but I’ve got pictures of these ones and they’ve got charming back stories.

The European Bee-eater

Like Homer Simpson, this organism loves doughnuts.

I don’t know if this wee fella is a European bird that eats bees or an African bird that feeds exclusively on European bees.  I have the same problem with Dutch Elm disease.  Apparently, this brightly-plumed bird knows no fear of humans and eats ravenously.  This is an obnoxious and extroverted animal with a cry that resembles fingernails on the chalkboard of your soul.

The Maribou Stork

No one likes him, and he doesn't care.

Described by guide Godfrey as a species that “does some cleaning-up,” this is a good example of nature’s loathing of a vacuum.  Apparently the trees in this particular valley are too low-slung to make vultures comfortable, so some other avian needed to fill that niche.  Niches love avians.  When there is no other scavenger about to pick bones clean as they bleach in the sun, the Maribou will step up to the plate.  They also do an Easter impression every morning and evening, spreading their wings to perform some thermal solar collection.  They also find safety in branches poking out of shallow lakes.  They also don’t know that they’re Jersey-ugly and that’s the real reason no-one likes them.  Poor things.

The Baboon

Those dam-dirty apes.

The troop that I saw was composed of rather ingenious little bounders.  To protect the troop, the females, the weak, the sick, and the young spend each night on top of the concrete dam near the middle of the reserve.   The bigger males stand guard at each end of the dam, preventing any sort of threat from reaching the troop by land.  Besides that, they are apparently prime pickings for leopards, and their continued existence in the land of stealth ghost cats bespeaks enormous improvisational skills.

The Giraffe

As I alluded in a previous blog, giraffes have exactly the same number of neck vertebra as humans.  Or dogs.  Or platypi.  Or any mammal, regardless of venomousness or egg-laying predilections.  It’s another piece of that wondrous and fabulous tapestry of evolutionary biology that furnishes the exotic palace of scientific and rational endeavour.

The Hippo

OK, so the hippo is a part of the big Five, but then, two of the Big Five are also members of the Feline Five, so cross-pollination is permitted.  The most homicidally murderous creature in Africa (with the exception of insects like the mosquito, tse-tse fly, or other vectors for fatal bacteria and parasites), the hippo has been dodging attention for generations while racking up huge kill numbers of people.  Great White Sharks?  Minnows compared to these behemoths.  Snakes?  Kill a remarkably small number of people.  

Hippos trample people, smash their canoes, absent-mindedly amputate limbs, and are generally unrepentant about the whole deal.

Off to East London now.  More thoughts on things on the Eastern Cape when I land.

Good night England and the Colonies.

—mARKUS

Jet-Lag and Sleep-Dep

Greetings, gentle readers.
After a fitful night's rest at what was until recently a Holiday Inn in Johannesburg and a pursuant two and a half hour's trek northward toward desert, wilderness, and general bush territory, what we find is this:
Apparently, following up a marathon series of flights and activities across the globe with a series of early mornings and late nights is a poor idea.  When the driver arrived to convey the three of us north to Pilanesberg, I was muddled enough to think that we were going to do some kind of trendy yoga somewhere, and that the driver had introduced himself as "End-Row."  I thought it was some sort of cute sports nickname.
Well, the driver's name is actually Andrew, and the most famous yoga performed in Pilanesberg was probably some sort of breath-control and wriggling contortion exercise performed by the many miners lost in countless cave-ins in the subterranean platinum mines that dot the landscape.

The less-glamourous side of Sun City.

Pilanesberg and Rustenburg are smack in the middle of some of the richest platinum deposits on Earth.  Historically, whenever there is valuable stuff in an inherently dangerous place, a vast economic discrepancy manifests.  Poor, hungry folk end up scampering around in perilous danger, and slobberingly rich owners earn fantastic profits on their investments.
Pilanesberg is the fourth-largest national park in South Africa, and Rustenberg is the home of the only private venue of the 2010 World Cup.  It's therefore appropriate that, immediately adjacent to this conflict between ecological conservation and resource exploitation on a Norilsk-scale is Sun City, the Las Vegas of the southern hemisphere, and a poster city for decadent excess.  But I can save my rants about unionization, xenophobia, and the Royal Bafokeng for a later time.
Anyone who has worked with me at Castle Rock should recognize the name Hartbeespoort.  I wrote a series of science and biology items on hypereutrophication.  I expounded upon the causes, symptoms, and stages of eutrophication.  Now I've actually seen the bright green scum that fills the lake.  My pictures thus far don't do it justice, so I'll revisit this topic after I've got better photographic evidence.
Anyway, made it to Bakubung Bush Lodge along a number of roads that have been equipped with toll-collecting equipment that hasn't yet been activated (and won't be if people will heed the example of southern Ontario and avoid privatizing roads) and past motorists that were very courteous and communicative.
In South Africa, if you're driving a slower vehicle, or are uncomfortable travelling as quickly as the speed limit suggests, you pull to the left margin of the road and activate your hazard lights to let people behind you know that they can pass you.  Those that pass blink their four-way lights in return to thank you for your magnanimity.  And in this simple way, road rage is made a distant and alien concept.  Everyone expresses respect and acknowledges the graciousness of their fellow motorists, rather than gunning them down.
Finally, I spent the waning hours of the day in a bush vehicle, chasing the "Big 5" animals of South Africa and trying to capture them photographically.  I'll probably publish a full album of this stuff, but I'll try and hit you with a couple of tasters.

The original source of the Vuvuzela, the B-flat kudu.

If you look really closely, you can see a rising full moon.

Like all mammals, these things have seven vertebrae.  Yes, evolution is a cute thing.

Our accommodations here are spartan, but tolerable.  The weather is quite agreeable from a Canadian point of view, but chilly and inhospitable according to the native population.  As I head off to bed, daunted by the 0430h early morning alarm that is to rouse me and send me back into the bush for some more safari fun, I'll let you have a look at the meagre surroundings that cushion me to sleep.

Until next time, good night England and the colonies.
—mARKUS

Back to Africa... Again

Greetings, Gentle Readers.

What we find is this:  cruising eleven kilometres above the jungles of sub-Saharan Africa in the dead of night, our tired and weary travellers snatch fitfully at hints of sleep.  It’s been almost 48 hours of travel with only a six-hour nap in Mississauga to interrupt the cascade of customs checks and the uncomfortable cattle-car confines of coach class.

Right.  Well, apart from the fact that I was unaware of the limitations of Microsoft Office Starter, and their subsequent impact on the functionality of Microsoft Word, the trip thus far has been relatively uneventful and mercifully free of international incident.

The plane that carried us away from Edmonton on the morning of Saturday 20 April fled an oncoming snow front, and thus we surfed on the crest of a prodigious tailwind that dropped us at Lester B. Pearson International airport a full half-hour earlier than expected.  In a cascade of meteorological dominoes, our arrival had also displaced an unseasonal snowstorm from the Greater Toronto Area.  Good news all around on the weather front.

Saturday night came about rather quickly, since we’d zipped three time zones away from the setting sun.  After an odd dinner of rice and something that resembled meat from T & T Supermarket, we settled into some hard family anecdotes, rumours, gossip, and general familial catching-up.  Much to my dismay, “T & T” does not stand for “Trinidad and Tobago” in this instance.  Not sure what it stands for, but if it must have something to do with the permeating smell of slightly-gone-off-fish and the oddly gelatinous rubbery pink substance that they supplied instead of beef.

Sunday morning, I managed to finally meet up with Richard Barter after four-plus years of cyber-correspondence.  His Man City team contrived to lose to Tottenham in a cross-London derby that essentially handed the Premier League throne to Manchester United.  Not to be outdone, Liverpool then managed to draw a game in an amazing amount of injury-time whilst our star striker decided to do his best re-enactment of a Donner Party dinner service, to the dismay of hapless but tasty defender Branislav Ivanovic.  Luis Suarez is probably headed for a lengthy suspension and some bath salts rehab, both of which will significantly diminish Liverpool’s dwindling odds of qualifying for… pretty much anything.  So much for a shot at the LDV Vans Intertoto Continental Breakfast Championships.

Then there was the newest member of the fellowship.  My father and I are old veterans at dealing with the sort of neurotic paranoia that has characterized international airport security checks and customs inspections since some jackanapes stuffed some fertilizer in his sneakers in a pre-boarding lounge.  Bringing in a n00b is an awkward proposition.  Personally, I try to avoid packing anything that involves liquids, gels, pastes, colloids, solutions, precipitates, isotopes, compounds, elements, or anything with mass, momentum, density, or charge.

Quick summary:  while my father and I breeze effortlessly through every X-ray monitor, Geiger counter, metal detector, 3D MRI scan, and full-body cavity search, dear Uncle Mel got more scrutiny than a frog at a snake symposium.  My father attributes it to the fact that Mel is toting around an odd-coloured backpack, and that backpackers are routinely profiled as homicidal lunatics by the authorities.  I reckon that Mel just packed the wrong stuff – prescription medication, a nail-clipper, clothing, etc.

The answer is probably somewhere in-between.  I reckon that Mel hasn’t used his luggage in 20 years, and stored the bags in some sort of asbestos-ridden phosphate plant owned and operated by the IRA in direct contravention of the nuclear microproliferation treaty.  The team at Heathrow swabbed that backpack more than the deck of the HMS Beagle.  My father and I have learned to stand patiently after the security areas and make bland conversations that absolutely nothing whatsoever to do with Al-Qaeda.

We paid some extortionate amount for a couple of lads to hold our bags at Heathrow and ran into the City to spend some of the 11 hour layover.  As we toured around the old stomping grounds, we checked out parts of Hyde Park, Mayfair, and the Kendal part of Marble Arch W2.

Even after death, these animals march into peril.

I’m inserting photos of the latest iteration of the Duke of Kendal, as well as what my camera says is a 3D image of the Animals in War memorial,

and the gilded American Eagle of Freedom squatting obnoxiously atop the anachronistically-designed and heavily-fortified American Embassy.

The American Spread-Eagle, eager to deposit steaming piles of justice and virtue all over Grosvenor Square.

And thus our story takes us high above the dark continent at its darkest.  The 11-hour flight to Joburg has at least let me catch up on my movie-watching.  Here are my quick and dirty reviews of all of the inflight films that I’ve seen thus far.

Hotel Transylvania:  Better than expected family fare with an all-star voice cast, and just enough intelligent jokes to carry it past the usual kiddie-potty-humour (e.g., witches hoovering farts with bellows, Bigfoot clogging the toilets, etc.).  Predictable with few challenges, there are enough charming bits to make it tolerable.  2 Jellybeans.

Wreck-It Ralph:  Another family-style animation film.  Again, some extraordinary voice talents without which the film would fail entirely as an artistic endeavour.  The plot is nothing fabulous, but as an old video game aficionado, I enjoyed many of the in-jokes.  The music (based on MIDI algorithms, for the most part) is amusing, and the visuals are a fabulous span between 8-bit Nintendo and hyper-realistic “Gears of War”-esque graphics.  Check out the song "Sugar Rush" to get an idea of the retro-caché value of this film.  Found the sugary-sweet “don’t dislike people because they are different” thematic message to be particularly cliché and trite, and that’s what left the worst taste in my figurative mouth.  2.5 Jellybeans.

Django Unchained:  Obviously Quentin Tarantino is well-versed in his Douglas Sirk, since he appears hell-bent on exaggerating everything in his films beyond melodrama to thoroughly muddy the waters between intent and content.  For example, the sociopathic and linguistically talented German character (and the actor who portrays him) return from “Inglourious Basterds,” but this time, he is mercilessly hunting and executing slave-folk instead of Jews, so he’s a good guy.  Samuel L. Jackson is possibly the best bit of the film as a cross between a classic Uncle Tom and Salacious Crumb.  Silly film, but most likely adored by fans of torture porn and Blaxploitation.  2 Jellybeans.

Cloud Atlas:  Self-indulgent rubbish that exists to provide a bit of fun and variety for some jaded Hollywood falling stars.  Good thing that there was some preachy and paternalist content, or else luminaries like Susan Sarandon would never have graced the thing.  1 Jellybean.

Life of Pi:  If a film’s measure of success is how much you wish to slap the lead character, or the amount that the film can beat the audience with faux spiritualist, regurgitated Kahlil Gibran platitudes, then this effort is a home run.  My criteria are different.  I think that watching this film on a plane gives it a single Jellybean, because the strength of this film lies in the colour, imagery, and depth of the graphics, and a dinky wee 9” screen does no justice to these assets.  The “I ripped off Salman Rushdie’s Midnight’s Children” scriptwriting and wafer-thin plot do nothing to further the bland, polemic agenda of basically saying that all religions are one and that all God’s children are equally fluffy and cute.

SkyFall:  OK.  So some people wanted to go back to the purist days of 007 as written by Ian Fleming.  No underwater Lotus Esprits or laser-equipped space shuttles.  Just spy stuff.  I get it.  So does everyone else, after the film abandons any attempt to conceal its self-consciousness.  From Q’s “Were you expecting an exploding pen?  We don’t do that anymore,” to three different characters commenting on a spy’s equipment of consisting of nothing more than a gun and a radio, to the Crocodile Dundee-emulating declaration that the protagonists must go to where they are on familiar territory.  I was waiting for Ralph Fiennes to suddenly declare that the future of espionage lies in the past, and that Bond should pick up a hoe and begin subsistence farming to get into the mind of an anthrax attack from the point of view of the bacterium.  Nice action sequences and some very gruff and grumbly delivery from a bleak and unkempt Daniel Craig.  Shoehorning a new Moneypenny into the film to replace Samantha Bond was particularly unnecessary.  A very generous 3 Jellybeans.

Must run.  Have a safari in the morning.  Will try and keep people informed with all of the news as it happens, relevant or not.

Cheers and good night, England and the Colonies.

—mARKUS