Carnivorous Cow

One is never quite sure at UCT whether fact is stranger than fantasy, given how strange some of the fact is... but rivalled by some equally interesting fantasy. Carnivorous Cow heard earlier from the exotic slip of a woman who features so highly on so many UCT men's fantasy lists, that the grapevine was ruminating - excused the mixed metaphor - on her (being Carnivorous Cow) having an affair with one of the other bloggers you know and love. Die Koei innie Kleinbooi kooi??? Well, well, well!

Carnivorous Cow couldn't wait to get back to her office to share this news with Gramsci the spider. Added to the long list of all the others she was allegedly having it off with, it was no wonder she had so little time to devote selflessly to her job, her other institutional roles, her family, her dog, her house, her car, her thesis, her friends, her life...

She sighed deeply. "If only my life was half as interesting as other people seem to think," she ventured, " I wouldn't need to be begging VSPs for Interesting Medication!" Gramsci, meanwhile, was wondering about the potential hallucinogenic effects of smoking office plants. Worth a try, he reckoned. Things could only get more interesting...

Though, Carnivorous Cow had to admit, "real life" was anything but boring. Notes were being passed in the recent Transformation Seminar between various people - some of which were assumed to be boring in nature as the distance they travelled was too far for the contents to have been too risky if intercepted; but others were definitely on the more "interesting" side of the spectrum. Carnivorous Cow is still wondering what oral sex has to do with transformation, or the alleged dethroning of white men, but then people North of Jammie Steps do think rather differently to those on the South. Perhaps they were merely drafting the next issue of _Not The Monday Paper_?

Meanwhile, on the South Side, Carnivorous Cow looked with amazement at Prof. Tom. She knew, of course, that many MAMAs held younger, blonde women to worthy of attention, but she hadn't realised that it went as far as peering through the blinds into their offices. No wonder the poor woman in question had come to avoid eye contact, shuffling nervously up and down the passages without greeting or engaging in any way. Her therapy bills were probably way beyond Discovery's league.

Perhaps, she mused, if the VSP did choose to share his Interesting Medication, she should pass it along to this poor woman instead. Perhaps then she might actually believe Prof. Tom's explanation that he was only peering in to see the time on the clock....

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TAFKAT - The Artist Formerly Known As Timberland, aka Mr Sunshine, wants to blog. In self-defence, probably, with random people questioning his existence, while other confirm it on their own terms. Mr Sunshine is worried about the longevity of his fan club under these circumstances. What, after all, is a nice MAMA SNAG to do?

There is also just a hint of that kind of testosterone-enhanced rivalry that makes women everywhere roll their eyeballs, whip a ruler out of their pockets and send the men in question down to the Men's to measure it, and sort out questions of superiority once and for all. Size clearly matters, and in the absence of this direct measure, other things serve as a proxy. The size of one's fan club, for example. The number of hits on one's blog. Perhaps, even, the number of _comments_ on one's blog.

And here, quite possibly, lies the rub. Within mere hours of erecting his Town Hall blog, Martin Hall had received a sizable number of comments. These may or may not have been the comments he sought, but, as the blog was titled something to do with getting people talking, it certainly achieved its purpose. People were talking.

In Carnivorous Cow's office, Mr Sunshine lounged back in the sunniest chair and spread the love. "I think it's great that Martin Hall has taken to blogging!" he enthused. "I hope he gets really taken with it. The more time he spends blogging, the less time will be available to him to find still other tasks to inflict on beseiged academics!"

Carnivorous Cow had her doubts. She thought that if anything had to give, it was unlikely to be his enthusiasm, and more likely to be his sleep.

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Mr Timberland bounced down the passage this morning, quoting Whitman:

He judges not as the judge judges, but as the sun falling round a helpless thing

and declaring himself to be Mr Sunshine. Mr Sunshine, he insisted, did not dwell on the gloomy, the negative, the unhappy, Mr Sunshine radiated, spreading happiness and light wherever he went.

Carnivorous Cow nearly choked on her whipless mocha. Mr Timberland didn't *look* different - attired, as always, in his Timberland outfit, in Timberland colours. He had no moles on the wrong side of his face, didn't pick up his coffee with the wrong hand or any of the giveaways that blew the cover of doppelgangers in spy novels. All that she could see that was different was, well, his mood.

Since men didn't have the excuse of hormonal fluctuations to explain away their mood shifts, Carnivorous Cow sought other answers. Had he been smoking something potent and uplifting? He denied it. Perhaps his medication had reached the desired threshhold and kicked into therapeutic territory? No medication. Perhaps something he'd eaten? Well, he admitted to artichokes, but artichokes only tweaked moods indirectly via libido stimulation which still required acting upon that to produce the endorphin hike necessary for a mood shift of this nature.

Carnivorous Cow was completely stumped. Back in her office she scratched her head and asked Gramsci the spider what he thought might be the cause. Happiness on Campus was unheard of; in fact, there was probably a policy against it listed somewhere in the back of Handbook no 3 General Rules and Policies, next to "no drugs on Campus" and "no guns on Campus". Gramsci shrugged his eigh shoulders nonchalantly, and ventured, "Perhaps it's just spring?"

Carnivorous Cow sat with her band of hard-core coffee-swiggers at the coffee outlet during their morning Pinky-and-the-Brain session. Though sometimes, it had to be admitted, it was difficult to find a brain among them, under the steady assault of virtual manilla envelopes that thudded into their email inboxes, each demand more mindless than the previous.

As they were launching into a discussion about whether Mr Timberland would have gotten away with Gross Offence such as Prof Snipe objecting to too many women and their menstrual odours in his class, Carnivorous Cow spotted An Intruder From Bremner approaching. She rapidly gave the secret signal for Take Cover, An Intruder From Bremner Is Approaching, but as no one had yet had sufficient caffeine intake, reactions were slow. Too slow. They were trapped.

The Intruder From Bremner approached, and placed her bag on the table alongside. It was a feeble attempt at disguise - conference bags usually are. Hardcore conference delegates pass their bags on to their children for gym kits or internet downloads, school being the only place where conference bags carried any attraction. But in her case, it was a dead giveaway - bulging with a 1970s model tape recorder, it provoked plastic smiles and unease among the coffee-swiggers.

Polite and charming as always, they welcomed her to their table, and proceded to grill her about her mission on Their Campus. She told them she was conducting an interview with a Real Academic, as part of uncovering Different Kinds of Scholarship. A few raised eyebrows later, she rushed off to her appointment and the real discussion resumed. Those who'd managed to escape trickled back. Conversation returned to matters of real academic import, such as whether or not it was wise for Department X to sign over a significant amount of FTEs to Department Y at the same time as taking on a costly, but flakey, appointment, or whether there were any real academics left in the Beattie Buildingsite.

Carnivorous Cow reentered her office feeling decidedly uneasy. Visits to Real Campus from intruders from Bremner were rare, and the intruders were invariably those who'd taken a wrong turn at the T-junction of their careers and decided that a move to Bremner beat another decade of marking, all told. But this was different. This was someone who hadn't previously sat around tables in coffee outlets with the coffee-swiggers as a colleague, a peer, discussing matters of real academic import and cricket scores. This intruder couldn't claim to have been driven up the hill to assuage suppressed feelings of nostalgia, or to reassure herself that she'd made the right move in buying out her conscience for a bigger office and no parking problems. She had, in fact, no reason to be there other than Coming to Find Out What it was that People on Real Campus actually did. Arcane knowledge which would be profoundly dangerous in the wrong hands.

And, Carnivorous Cow feared, those very hands were probably pressing the "play" button on that 1970s tape recorder as she was typing this blog....

"Imagine!" Carnivorous Cow exclaimed, bursting into her office. "Marion found _three used condoms_ in the women's toilet in Arts!" Gramsci the spider cowered under the keyboard, unsure what was coming next. But he suspected that the "use" was not to keep a cellphone dry in the sudden rain.

"Mention was made in the recent IF meeting by Martin Hall that they were reviewing the value of 36 000 condoms on Campus," Carnivorous Cow continued. "That works out to about one-and-a-half condoms per student. Three used condoms thus equates with the total allocation to two students. They've blown their entire supply, just like that!"

"Maybe," Gramsci suggested tentatively, "more than two students were involved. Maybe it was three, and they've still got a third of their allocation in hand, so to speak?"

This reminded Carnivorous Cow of how, when still located in the Leslie Commerce Annex (then still called Leslie Social Science) she'd encounter, without fail, every weekend, evidence in the handbasins in the women's toilets on level 5 of male sexual activity. Leaving that behind had been the good part of moving to Beattie.

"Still," she reflected, "At least they're using them. It's a start. Now they just have to be taught about safe and considerate disposal."

But Gramsci was thinking of something else. "That's quite a risk," he ventured. "Not just for the cleaners having to confront the body fluids. But also for the donor/s." Gramsci recounted recent media frenzies involving the discovery of "body fluids" at crime scenes - Willem de Klerk's on the carpet in his deceased mother's townhouse, for example - and the possible forensic implications. The donor could find himself on trial for a lot worse than lack of consideration.

"Ah yes," added Carnivorous Cow, "then there was also the recent case in Scandiwegia of the donor who found himself saddled with child support payments when the recipient couple broke up. Could be costly..."

"They'd have to identify the donor first, though..." cautioned Gramsci.

"That's easy enough!" Carnivorous Cow snorted. "Look for anyone with a relaxed smirk. An absence of either a permanently etched scowl or that blank prozac gloss. It'll be a dead giveaway!"

All the same, she thought she should perhaps avoid the toilets in Arts until the political condom supply was used up. And then some. Jealousy was not a pleasant emotion, at best.

But, for anyone reading this who might be shifting in their seat uncomfortably, the best way to dispose of a used condom, according to Carnivorous Cow:

Assuming the condom is still intact - hold it under a running tap, and fill it with a little water. About a quarter to a third of a cup is sufficient. Without trapping too much air, tie the condom closed with a simple knot. Drop into the toilet, and flush. The addition of the water should ensure suffient weight for it to flush effortlessly. Otherwise, put into a plastic bag and seal / tie with a knot, and place in a bin. Or dispose of in a special red bin specifically marked for such things (such as swabs, wound dressings, etc) where these are to be found.

Putting other people at risk as a by-product of your pleasure is not cool. It undermines the good karma you might have amassed in using a condom in the first place.

Today is National Car Free Day. Carnivorous Cow had high hopes about this. If everyone else took the train, the bus or their personal Lear Jets to work, the roads would be free for those whose alternatives to private motorised transport involved more pain and expense than made them viable.

But, of course, National Car Free Day doesn't translate into National Let's-get-public-transport-working Day. The day started out, in the Carnivorous Cow barn, with the radio news announcing rail delays on the Khayelitsha line owing to cable theft. Buses would be used to transport commuters to Mandalay, increasing road traffic rather than decreasing it.

Judging by the number of cars on Campus today, National Car Free Day hasn't been a popular concept. (Or perhaps we're just not part of the "nation"?) Carnivorous Cow found this strangely reassuring. It resonated deeply with the subtext of Our Leader's recent argument in the Senate. As much as we love Transformation, we do so hate change. And, despite the myth to the contrary, change is *not* as good as a holiday. Carnivorous Cow was adamant that she'd take the holiday, given the choice, any day.

Carnivorous Cow has a stalker! Well, he claims not to be, merely conducting research into the identity of Mr Timberland, but Carnivorous Cow has her doubts. She thinks that, being a full week away from pay day, he's just hoping to trip her up on the stairs and steal her whipless mocha.

What was *really* interesting, though, was that owing to the frequency with which Carnivorous Cow encountered The Stalker at the coffee outlet, a _real_ case of Mistaken Identity arose. One of the caffeine-charged academics that inhabit Carnivorous Cow's outbuilding asked if The Stalker was Mr Timberland!

Carnivorous Cow wasn't sure who'd be more outraged at the suggestion - Mr Timberland, that someone had usurped his identity (and with it, his fan club) or The Stalker, at the thought that out there he's mistaken for a shaven-legged metrosexual cyclist type...

Carnivorous Cow has decided that the ultimate justification for not embarking on Relationships has to be that they end. If they end quickly, good and well, but the ones that look solid and healthy and long-lived - those are the ones to watch out for. When they end, two - or more - people's worlds end with them.

And so, she noticed, it was with A&B. A&B had been together for, oh, ages. Almost two decades, which was far longer than most people's memories stretched, as long as a housing bond almost. Now *that* was real commitment...

Everyone was always remarking on what a good, strong relationship they had. They basked in the smug assurance of knowing that that was so, and smiled fondly at their little girls growing more beautiful and cleverer by the day. And then, suddenly, it wasn't like that anymore.

A had an affair. B was devastated. Within the space of microseconds they went from perfect couple to statistic. A felt trapped, watched, defensive. B felt betrayed, rejected, stupid. Years of anger and hostility and suppressed aggression came pouring out in accusations of "you always" and "you never" and the little girls looked on in confusion.

A spoke to Carnivorous Cow. "I love B, but..." began each sentence.

B spoke to Carnivorous Cow, too. Sentences began "I love A so much, but..."

Carnivorous Cow asked A and B if they told each other that they loved each other. Neither answered the question directly. Both claimed they were acting with love, but. Blame was never far from their lips. Carnivorous Cow started to wonder if blame was part of love, the shadow side. She was glad that love lived on the other side of the barbed wire fence to herself, and hoped fervently that it stayed there.

Gramsci called her a cynic, but she didn't see how a spider had any grounds for that. Spiders, after all, routinely devoured each other after their carnal bliss, which made for brief but passionate "relationships", and this struck Carnivorous Cow as ideal. Well, aside from the Doom on the windowsill...

Carnivorous Cow was approached some time back by Mr Bipolar and asked if she knew anything about the presence of a sinister grouping on Campus, akin to a cult that had had a presence some years back. She didn't, she swore afterward to Gramsci the spider, although she found the idea of mind control very attractive.

But she had of late discovered something else - a cult following! She was increasingly finding herself stopped in the passage and asked - begged - to confirm the identity of Mr Timberland... who, let the record show, has a fan club!! So far membership totals three, independently confessed and pleading for anonymity, so unaware of each other's presence.

Carnivorous Cow found all of this quite hard to understand. In the same way that the Lion Man married mere moments before being sentence to life behind bars, and convicted murderers suddenly find themselves on the receiving end of love letters from women they've never met, could this be a manifestation of fascination with, and desire for, the unattainable? Might Mr Timberland (see What Women Want) have had a point, after all?

Carnivorous Cow returned from the greener pastures on the other side of University Avenue, and reported back to Gramsci the spider. "I just bumped into Prof Ritalin on the way. He was on his way to a meeting on the scary side of Campus." Carnivorous Cow sighed and rolled her eyes dramatically. Prof Ritalin had a terrifying past, which included undergraduate studies in engineering.

Gramsci had had a troubled relationship with Prof Ritalin, and was relieved he was headed in the other direction, decreasing the likelihood of his bursting in and tossing his bag down on the chair on which Gramsci was already seated _again_. Not exactly a Buddhist, was Prof Ritalin.

The nature of Prof Ritalin's meeting, it transpired, was an attempt to salvage one of the few remaining genuinely interdisciplinary collaborations on Campus - miracle of statesmanship, as it involved collaboration not merely across departments, but across faculties. Its survival was now threatened by the intervention of hard materialism - the allocation of FTEs.

Since the rise of the beancounter had subjugated academic criteria to financial ones, and almost everything had been reduced to the crude arithmetic of FTEs and SLEs and ASMs, nice warm fuzzy notions of collegiality or academic collaboration had evaporated in political squabbles for resources. FTEs dictated your SLEs, your ASMs, your GOB and any other TLA that mattered. Old friends had been known to leave their silverware between each others shoulderblades over FTEs. Longstanding marriages had broken down, families rent asunder, world wars started, over FTEs.

And now, Prof Ritalin was about to commit career suicide by placing academic ideals above material gain by seeking a compromise which would allow his collaborators in other departments, and faculties, access to their "rightful" share of FTEs. Prof Ritalin clearly still inhabited a different era.

Carnivorous Cow wondered if she should have warned him of the snipers positioned along University Avenue ready to take him out before he reached his meeting venue, or the suicide bombers whose schedules included the meeting, or even the manhole cover that had been removed along the route. She doubted he'd believe her - he still harboured naive assumptions that his colleagues felt as he did about these matters. His colleagues, who chewed over the harsh realities of The New Dispensation with their Friday drinks-and-valium-after-work felt rather different, but knew they'd be wasting their breath to try to explain.

Carnivorous Cow looked across at Gramsci the spider and sighed. "Teenagers have really cool names these days, like Cheron and Pagan. Admittedly, Meridian's mother had no idea UCT would make liberal use of her daughter's name in the lecture timetable, and Savannah's father had no idea a drink with really corny ads would be named after his daughter."

Gramsci muttered, and mumbled something about meaning (see "more", below). Not being English First Language speaking, he argued that ambiguity in communication didn't exist for him because he uses language carefully, and always checks his understanding of what he hears or reads.

"That's all very well," Carnivorous Cow retorted, "but how can you tell if they're not having a joke at your expense?"

Gramsci pondered. "No," he said, "that would be my brother Mark. Though as Mark's brothers, we were often asked which one was Groucho..." He looked puzzled. Carnivorous Cow thought it better to let that go without comment.

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Mr Timberland dropped some passing reference to an ex-lover. Of his - the only things dropped with reference to ex-lovers of Carnivorous Cow's were usually atom bombs. Carnivorous Cow was surprised: "Do you stay friends with your ex-lovers, then?" she asked, incredulously.

Embarrassedly, Mr Timberland mumbled something about it being easier if one - or both - didn't engage in carnal relations, however... Carnivorous Cow ruminated long and hard on that.

She'd noticed of late that a number of people from her past had surfaced without warning, often in unexpected ways. A couple were now married to people she worked with. A couple of others were connected via circuitous work connections. Even one who had since died was dragged into her memory by the physical presence of one of his ex-colleagues. She'd had the uncomfortable experience of feeling herself watched in a recent seminar, only to realise afterward that the watcher had flickered onto her screen as an extra at some point.

If one's life was supposed to flash before one's eyes as one died, Carnivorous Cow wondered, what was the significance of being confronted with one's recreational history, in technicolor and sensurround? And - perhaps more frightening, as the intervening years had definitely not been kind to some of them - were they also now going to flash?

The sun hummed happily through the delicately dancing tendrils of creeper and onto the table where Carnivorous Cow sat sipping her mocha with Mr Timberland. More accurately, Mr Timberland was sipping his americano, having resisted the temptation of a mocha, and staring yearningly at the chocolate chip muffin that lay on the table between them.

Having sworn off chocolate croissants and sex in the interests of intellectual pursuits, Mr Timberland was finding the physical manifestation of a warm, oozing chocolate chip muffin a difficult temptation to rise above. ("Above which to rise", he corrected pedantically, leaving Carnivorous Cow concerned at the loudness of her thinking.)

She broke a piece off, and savoured it slowly. "Mmmm...." she lowed, "It's really good. Have some!"

Mr Timberland shook his head resolutely. The skinny body he yearned for did not yet gloat back at him, neither from his bed nor from his mirror, and so he resisted. They spoke instead of the interview he'd conducted with Prof. Habitus a quarter of a century ago, and was now finally transcribing. Carnivorous Cow broke off another piece, her face the screen upon which her enjoyment played out. It was a really tasty muffin.

Finally, he could resist no longer. Mr Timberland broke off the tiniest fragment and quickly stuffed it into his mouth. It *was* good! "Have some more!" offered Carnivorous Cow, but he leapt up as if scalded and started edging towards the door. "No, no!" he trilled, feet shuffling nervously, eyes still fixed on the remnants of the muffin.

Outside, he fixed her with his steely resolve, and declared solemnly that what women *really* want is a man who'll say no. Carnivorous Cow regarded him bemusedly. "Isn't that it?" he insisted, "the message of The Thorn Birds? Women want what they can't have - be it a priest or a pair of shoes."

Carnivorous Cow mulled over this back in her office. To be honest, she didn't quite see the analogy. Having a muffin, and offering to share, didn't quite translate in her mind into wanting what one could not have. Though, she admitted, wanting what one *should* not have was common enough - the problem usually manifesting once one had it rather than in the wanting. Psychologists, dieticians and divorce lawyers existed, as a result.

She couldn't recall if the protagonist in The Thorn Birds ever got the priest or not - it was one of those books her friends read aloud during break times at school... well, at least the juicy bits - and wasn't quite sure what "having" constituted anyway, in Mr Timberland's assertion. But something else dawned on her as she pondered - was Mr Timberland suggesting that, by refusing more of the muffin, he was increasing in desirability?

After the fallout from "Are men the new girls", Carnivorous Cow was saddened to read on News24 that the link between cycling and impotence is no longer speculative.

"That explains _a lot!!_" She muttered to Gramsci, shaking her head sadly. Though, ever cautious about ascribing causality to correlation, she wondered which was the chicken and which the egg. Was it the cycling that prompted the impotence, leading to the gender realignment... or the gender realignment that led to them taking up cycling in the first place?

“It’s not fair,” grumbled Mr Timberland. “You just use me for sport!”

Carnivorous Cow looked up from her whipless mocha in surprise. Mr Timberland had obviously been reading her blog, and had taken some of it a trifle personally. She hoped franatically that Tony-over-the-sea or one of his local colleagues would cobble together some hasty disclaimer, to keep the lawyers at bay. She didn’t want her wages to be spent on a monthly supply of Timberland shoelaces in perpetuity to appease wounded egos.

But she was particularly perplexed at the notion that a trend, such as “Men are the new girls”, could be reduced in someone’s mind to a single example. If it were only one man obsessing about weight, painting his tearoom battleship grey and calling it “cigar smoke”, and cycling, it would be sad, but not remarkable. (OK, so it is only one man painting his tearoom battleship grey, and it is rather sad, but the rest goes beyond a single tragic specimen… see "more", below)

Back in her office, she asked Gramsci the wolf spider why he thought this was so.

“Surely they’re not that self-obsessed that they think the universe begins and ends with them?” Gramsci asked bemusedly. “Which would imply that they’re not aware of the existence of like-minded people? Oh, the poor, isolated, tortured souls!”

Carnivorous Cow did not like the direction this conversation was taking. In drawing attention to a social phenomenon, was she now responsible for connecting all the isolated individuals who manifested it? The thought of facilitating a support-group for anorexic MAMAs (see "more", below) was too terrifying to contemplate. She picked up the phone nervously. “Do you have a couple of Lexotans to trade for some really high quality lucerne?”

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