The last few weeks have definitely been jinxed. I'm not superstitious, cross my heart and hope to die, so I don't know how it happened. Maybe a previously disadvantaged cat crossed my path or something, but I'm obviously under the curse of the gypsy, meaning I'll probably get run over by a caravan sometime soon. Why am I being punished? I admit I haven't been suitably grateful for all the public holidays we've had recently. It's hard to wake up enthusiastic about not going to work when I'm unem-fucken-ployed again, so commemorating Workers' Day on the 1st of May was a bit dubious. I remember my old man singing his version of "The Red Flag". I'm pretty sure he didn't make it up, but he did yell it with gusto; more or less like this:
"The working claaaaass,
Can kiss my aaaaarse!
I've got the foreman's job at laaaaast!"
Never did hold much by book learning did my old pappie. He often reminded me that the pass mark at universities is 50% and we, the bewildered classes, spend fortunes every day on doctors, lawyers and accountants who have a 50/50 chance of not knowing what the hell they're talking about. Yep, he was a man of few words, except when he was speaking fluent Klipdrift.
I had wanted to enjoy Easter, but it scared the kak out of me. As the Christians ran amok, I decided they must know something I don't. It's the sort of paranoid, jealous suspicion I usually get when I'm driving down the highway and the cars going in the opposite direction are stuck in a traffic jam. Instead of rejoicing, I wonder why I'm so miserably untrendy. To figure out the mystery of Easter madness, I consulted my copy of Gideon's Bible, borrowed from the Melmoth Astoria Hotel in 1991 and an invaluable source of religious instruction and emergency Rizla paper ever since. Unfortunately, it didn't clear things up for me 'cos the gospels at this point of the book sound like an episode of Tomb Raider and they're about as credible as Lara Croft's tits. Let's face it; being an eyewitness on that first long weekend must have been somewhat confusing:
MATTHEW: "He's dead..."
MARK: "No, He's back... But Sunday's braai is still cancelled..."
LUKE: "Where the hell did he disappear to now?"
THOMAS: "Shove my finger in his where? ... Err; I think you've misunderstood. I was just being friendly!"
RINGO: "Someday John and Paul are going to get all the credit for this."
Next cab on the public holiday rank was Saddam Hussein's birthday. Okay, there wasn't an official celebration, but I'm sure the Yanks sent him a "Wish you were here" card. It's a good thing they didn't bury Christ in the museum in Baghdad or else by now he'd have disappeared for sure. Verily, he hath risen and liveth in a collection in France.
That's when every bit of technology I encountered started to go PPPHTT!. Phone batteries faded inexplicably. Faxes wandered off in search of the lost elephant graveyard. Power failed continually. Three computers crashed like they were driven by Michael Schumacher and powered by Microsoft. Apparently, this had something to do with Venus being in retrograde. According to the stars, communication was going to be a problem until after the lunar eclipse. I was a bit sceptical about the theory until I read the latest pronouncements from our health minister. She still doesn't like anti-retrovirals for treating AIDS, because they're "toxic", but she's prepared to consider spraying DDT against malaria. Luckily, no toxicity questions with trusty, old DDT. Seems I'm not the only one communicating from Venus.
So, where do you go to get away from the stars? Underground. I took time off and went down a gold mine. I discovered that the cage that takes miners down isn't lowered; that would be too slow. It's pulled down at about one and a half times the speed of gravity. If you fell down the shaft, you wouldn't be getting to work quickly enough for the boss's liking. You'd be overtaken by the cages. During a trip in one of these beauties, my sphincter threaded itself onto my spine and shot up under my solar plexus where it stayed until the trip back to the surface sent it rocketing down to make a little zero on the lift floor. Add that to the fact that we have the world's deepest gold mines (3 kilometres or 1.869456845634548756876585685 miles to those of you who prefer the old-fashioned simplicity of the Imperial measurements) and it becomes clear that when Americans go to the core of the earth to fuck around with nature, they call it a sci-fi movie. We call it "sebenza."
Anyway, observing real work restored some of my faith in human ingenuity and I realise that the whole "curse" thing was mumbo-jumbo nonsense. Hold thumbs for me that I'm right. See you in two weeks if I'm not under a caravan... on Venus... poisoned by DDT.
Al
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