Carnivorous Cow

Mr Timberland was feeling grumpy. Women were not flinging themselves at him, and no one was nursing his crushed ego. To make matters worse, he'd recently become an acolyte of Tarquin, and appeared religiously for his dose of abuse and pain in the spinning class. The Cow felt that that was overdoing things rather - anyone who voluntarily subjected themselves to a few hours of genital mutilation while straining uphill on a tortuous cycle race really did not need to underline their masochistic credentials to quite that extent. Overkill, really.

It thus came as no surprise to her to find, cowering in the dark recesses of Mr Timberland's bookshelf, titles such as "Walter's" My Secret Life, in two volumes, The 120 Days of Sodom and Other Writings and Justine, Phlosophy in the Bedroom and Other Writings by the Marquis de Sade.

The Cow raised a bovine eyebrow questioningly. Mr Timberland coughed and spluttered and attempted to pass it off as "a colleague" who had passed them on to him. Carnivorous Cow was not fooled - she often had "colleagues" try to pass things on to her - mostly problems, or work of other descriptions - and knew how quickly one built up a defensive repertoire to counter such moves. She knew they would not be on Mr Timberland's bookshelf without his assent.

Still, she wondered at the colleague discarding them - outgrown? Bored? Graduated to letters of the alphabet beyond O and Catherine M? Where did one go once pain, sufferering and humiliation failed to engage one? Did this mean... the colleague might be preparing for a career beyond UCT?

Mr Timberland, AKA Mr Sunshine and, of late, Mr Jeep, sidled into the Cow's office cautiously and closed the door. "So", he asked hesitantly, "Who's Dr Shades?"

The Cow glanced up. "I really don't think it would be wise to say," she stated firmly. This wasn't the first such enquiry she'd had. The grapevine was humming with speculation on the identity of Dr Shades - possibly even overtaking the speculation on the identity of Mr Timberland himself. The Cow felt some kind of ethical responsibility towards maintaining the anonymity of her subjects - well, probably some kind of archetypal fear of lawyers' letters. She didn't count Gwen Gill and Janie Allen as her role models.

Mr Timberland seemed motivated by more than prurience, however. When the Cow asked if he'd ever been hit on at the gym, he muttered that women didn't hit on men - an assertion so blatantly fallacious that even he couldn't pull it off with a straight face. He reluctantly admitted that he _had_ been hit on by women in his lifetime, but only when he was younger, more beautiful. He started to recount an incident, but thought better of it, and fled. Obviously worried about its blogability...

So, mused the Cow, academic maie hierarchies are not decided through rank, publication record or - for HODs - budget size, but rather through bog standard last-gasp-of-testosterone factors like the age and beauty of their girlfriends. She was quite amused, really - all these billions of years of natural selection, and we land up these relatively massive brains, the ability to wreak havoc on a global scale and possibly beyond, and what do we fall back on when it comes to hierarchy? A chemical compound that's been hanging around for millions of years! There was something reassuringly familiar about all that, despite its dressing up in layers of committees and policies and procedures.

Perhaps, she mused, it might also account for the continuing feminisation of the student body? Setting up competition for students among HODs - who were mostly male - was inevitably going to translate into seeing who could amass the biggest academic harem, wasn't it? And, after all, it was size that mattered....

"Cyclists are like lawyers!" Carnivorous Cow asserted to Gramsci. "99% of them give the others a bad name." Gramsci looked up patiently. Cyclists were a favourite target of the Cow - not yet literally, but he felt that that day might be ominously near.

"There was a letter in one of the rags that passes for a newspaper, locally," she continued, "where the writer pointed out that most cyclists were themselves motorists, and so carried in their heads with them the view From The Other Side. I think his point was to urge motorists to do the same, advising them of all the obstacles cyclists faced - flat wheels, etc, which led them to ride in the middle of the traffic lane with no due regard to motorised traffic. Personally, I think that argument is rather self-defeating - if cyclists are acting like road hogs out of consideration to hazards they face, you'd imagine that a collision with a couple of tons of hot steel and glass would rate slightly higher than a possible twig or some alluvial sand!"

"Not _all_ cyclists are completely imbecilic on the roads!" reminded Gramsci, and the Cow concurred. "Indeed," she said, "some of them do actually obey the same traffic rules as the rest of the vehicles on the roads - well, bergie trolleys excepted. But I've physically witnessed cyclists actually stopping at red robots, riding in single file and ensuring that it is safe to do so before changing lanes or crossing traffic to turn right. It's amazing - I thought their graphite steeds would implode or their fellows would drag them off and beat them to a pulp, but the Universe didn't actually end!" "Yet!" muttered Gramsci, eternally optimistic.

"But what really interested me," the Cow resumed, "was this idea of cyclists being sometime-motorists. it made perfect sense! Where do all these BeeMerc drivers go once their expensive car is parked in the triple garage? They can't spend 24hrs in the car, they must have another life too... and, it seems, this is it! Like the Masonic apron, the lycra top is a vestment of a secret brotherhood intent on world domination - oh, wait, are those the Masons or the Illuminati or the Knights Templar...?" The Cow looked non-plussed.

She'd suddenly remembered... Mr Timberland - heavily disguised these days as Mr Jeep - had recently taken to driving a Beemer. She wondered if the Brethren of the BeeMercHood had an elaborate system of secret handshakes, or if they simply relied on their esoteric discussions of Argus Seedings and Training Runs to the same ends?

Carnivorous Cow hadn't seen so much hair, or so much tie-dye, since - oh, must have been the Michael Oak fair. Spread out on the rolling lawns, and rolling on the spread out lawns, the survivors of the 60s and 70s gathered to wallow in the nostalgia of a bygone era of innocence and grooviness. As far as the eye could see, the glint of silver hair sparkled in the summer sun.

The giant Appletiser can did a slow trade - the softest beverage being consumed must have been the Cousins; for the rest, the tequila bottles joined the black sambuca and vodka bottles as ashtrays on the fringes of the lawns whither the smokers were banished.

Carnivorous Cow rolled back on the grass mat and looked up at the sky. The grey was gathering on the horizon, too. No matter - leather only shrunk once it was off the cow. She passed her plastic cup along for a refill.

Shawn Phillips tuned up his acoustic guitar and the collective heartstrings resonated. A brand new song, never before performed, from a cheat sheet. The applause was polite, appreciative, encouraging. A song which dissed George Bush got a more vocal response. He didn't need a cheat sheet for that, prompting murmurings about *which* George Bush might be the subject. When one's career spans four decades, there's no safety in assumption.

Album names forgotten - no matter; some lyrics forgotten - who cares; few of the audience could remember their names by that stage. A song for his wife - and the announcement of imminent fatherhood, at 63 - got an enthusiastic response. The greying virility felt vindicated, stood taller and prouder. The heavens opened and the wet stuff descended. A few younger people packed up their picnics and fled. The aged hippies didn't even notice - and were rewarded with the familiar strains of Casey Deiss. Gurgling through mouthfuls of sambuca and rain, the audience sang along.

Grass mats became ponchos, rugs became anoraks, and shivering couples cuddled around their bottles. Some people decided that skin was better than cotton, and stripped off wet layers. By now everyone was family, even the teenage boy who didn't want to be there, and when the audience was blessed and wished love and clarity, it somehow didn't seem out of place. The mud splatters were accidental rather than all-encompassing, and topless was as far as anyone was inclined to do for the cameras, but more than one group was mumbling nostalgically about "the spirit of Woodstock".

"Wooooooooooooooooooooooooo- man," trilled some inebriate as the crowd meandered to the parking lot, drawing giggles rather than glares, and strangers hugged goodbye on parting at the gates. The lost flower children climbed dripping into their citi golfs and mazda stings.... and slowly headed for the stressed, adrenalin-charged queue of exiting cars, their love and clarity dying in the chorus of hooters and revving engines.

The 70s was over.

Dr Shades ran into Carnivorous Cow at the gym, and they began to engage in that ritual that to the untrained eye resembles flirtation, but to the practiced ethologist more closely approximates the complex social behaviour by which animals establish dominance hierarchies, especially where these are not strictly linear - or involve more than one "line". Who intrudes into whose personal space, who yields, whose repartee is snappier, wittier, laden with more layers of ambiguity and entendre. Whose face is smilier, body language less secure, eye contact dropped?

In the midst of the dance, the Cow became aware of a Third Party. A woman. Staring with undisguised hostility at her. It was no one the Cow recognised, but since her glasses had long lain broken, this was not necessarily meaningful. The Cow paused, momentarily. Dr Shades, meanwhile, had noticed the newcomer too. He fell swiftly into displacement behaviour.

"This is the Carnivorous Cow," he explained to the newcomer. "She works with me, up on Campus. We often bump into each other at the coffee outlet, and recently we've been bumping into each other at the gym quite a bit, too." His tone became increasingly defensive as he continued. He turned to the Cow. "And this is Barbie." Just that. And then, with Barbie still glaring fiercely, Dr Shades crumpled into a subdued heap and beat a hasty retreat into the gym.

The Cow was so startled that she quite forgot about the 20 year old who tried to chat her up earlier, or the inadequacy of the air conditioning, or even the horrors of the women's changeroom. She hauled out her hellphone and started to text Gramsci about Dr Shades.

"Who was it?" enquired Gramsci. "His wife, perhaps?"

"Nope," replied the Cow, who'd met his wife. Recently enough to know that she was still his wife. Nor did anything in the longwinded introduction - of her - suggest any professional connection. Unlikely a student, either. To old for offspring, to proprietorial for an acquaintance. "His girlfriend?" ventured Gramsci.

Dr Shades has a girlfriend? the Cow wondered. Her mind wandered back to the discussion in the Sagan book about hamsters. Females preferred winners, it was clear. So why would Dr Shades - who always came off second best in the hierarchy battles with the Cow - be pulling girls?

And then she remembered her earlier conversation with Mr Timberland, about Prof Truffle who despite having the personality of hungover rhinoceros and the looks of its ugly brother, had an attractive young girlfriend. Pheromones, they'd decided - in the same way that sows go for truffles in the mistaken belief that they're sexy hot males, so Prof Truffle was emitting chemical signals that belied his true being and entranced his young girlfriend. Male sweat was, after all, the human vehicle of this same pheromone. And most male armpits were littered at women's nose height.

Perhaps Dr Shades trips to the gym were an attempt to generate a little more of the trigger pheromone, if only through the generation of copious quantities of its carrier fluid?

Carnivorous Cow had been reaading bits of Sagan's chapter on Sex and Death aloud to Gramsci, revelling in his turn of phrase, his linking of the Adam and Eve story with the "sex and death" motif, and wondering why he didn't also footnote Freud's "Eros and Thanatos" in that regard. Gramsci was rather less impressed - in his species, sex and death were very directly linked, with the female devouring the male once she had been sexually sated. He didn't need some dead American astronomer to point the link out to him.

Nonetheless, he was relieved that the condoms in the Arts Block were no longer politicised. There was no need for sex and death to be linked fatalistically on that level.

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Carnivorous Cow propped her eyelids open with matchsticks and grabbed her cup of coffee a little too eagerly. Gramsci raised an arachnoid eyebrow and looked at her interrogatively. "No, honest, I had plenty of sleep last night!" the Cow protested. She had. But the previous night, ah, that had been a different story!

Carnivorous Cow had been out. Generally, she tried to behave during the week in a manner consistent with being an employed individual who wished to remain thus. However, it was still early January, and so one's constitution still hankered after festive engagement, after all. So, "out" had quietly metamorphosed into "out late" and then "still out, early". She'd arrived home at 4am, closing her bovine eyes at 04h30. Only to be hurtled back into the world of the wakeful 90 minutes later. And, amazingly enough, she'd functioned normally all day. Well, as near as the Cow got to "normal".

But she'd made a point of an early night after that, in an uncharacteristic fit of responsibility. She was struggling to convince Gramsci, though. "Never mind what time you got home," he snorted dismissively. "What time did you get into bed?" The Cow rolled her eyes and muttered, "Oh, probably around... 11-ish" vaguely. Gramsci stalked up and down the desk, fantasising himself into Law and Order mode. "And, what did you do then?" he asked.

The Cow looked perplexed. "The Su Doku. And the crossword - but just the cryptic one. Oh, and then a chapter of the new Etienne van Heerden book, because I skipped the gym earlier, and then the chapter on Sex and Death in the Sagan book. it starts with this wonderful description of fireflies..." "Aha!" interrupted Gramsci. "So what time did you actually go to _sleep_?"

Carnivorous Cow looked up, startled. "I've no idea!" she said. "The Su Doku said it was fiendish, but it was actually quite easy, and the crossword was hardly very cryptic, and the reading..." She could feel herself on shaky ground here. It was actually more than a chapter of the Van Heerden book. And the Sagan book had the most wonderful footnotes - you could get lost in them, and she did. She loved footnotes - it was almost as good as hypertext, a blessing for non-linear readers. And, of course, his use of metaphor and the breadth of his subject matter ensured that one didn't simply _read_ the text, but mulled on it as one read, slowly savouring each morsel to extract maximum nutrition and taste. There was no saying how long she'd spent reading.

Gramsci shook his head, sadly. He wasn't sure how much sleep a fully loaded Carnivours Cow required nightly, but it was clearly more than she'd averaged the past couple of nights. "And tonight?" he asked, cautiously. The Cow shrugged. "Nothing much. An abstract that's overdue, some serious thinking about a conference in June and possibly an extended abstract for that, some scratching out of references for a reading list and a draft week-by-week course outline, and of course an overdue conversation with my old friends Justerini and Brooks."

Gramsci smiled wryly. He just hoped that the conversation led to pleasant dreams.

Carnivorous Cow recently received one of those SMSes that ask you to describe the sender in a single word, and then forward the message to 10 people to see how they describe you, in a single word. Fun, it claims to be. Profitable, the networks no doubt find it.

Perhaps predictably, most respondents were lazy, and so there were several which said "sexy". Yawn. One said "outrageous", which sent the Cow into a panic, but another said "elusive", which reassured her once more.

"Outrageous??" She asked Gramsci, horrified. It reminded her of the professor, who - while hitting on her - had called her a "non-conformist". Gramsci shrugged. What was the fuss about? The Cow was hardly a beancounter, after all, and didn't exactly aspire to fitting any particular mould. "It's the implication," she explained, exasperatedly. "That you're doing something just for effect! Rather than because it's what you want, or need, to do!" Maybe, suggested Gramsci, the person who sent the "outrageous" was implying that he felt outraged? The Cow pondered this in silence for a while. Outrage was a very healthy response to very unhealthy situations, in the main. That she couldn't dispute.

She felt a lot more comfortable with the classification of "elusive". Accessibility was not her goal in life, and she particularly did not do emotional laundry. In fact, so protective was she of her space that she was considering using the men's change room at the gym in future. "Single sex change rooms should be outlawed!" she argued vehemently. "Women just have no sense of someone else's space! Close encounters with someone else's cellulite, or an upfront display of when they last depilated, is *really* of no interest to me. At least men have this thing of keeping their eyes to themselves, just in case someone thinks they might be looking, and keeping their stuff neatly in one small space, not spread as far as possible over as much space as exists!" The woman's change room terrified the Cow. As if going to gym wasn't bad enough without that.

The visuals were, on the whole, pretty scary. She recalled a recent conversation with P, about whether men or women were worse about "letting themselves go". Of course, working - as they both did - in academic environments, many of their colleagues were in denial about having bodies. it seemed that the ultimate aspiration for many was to transcend their corporality and become pure intellect. And then, of course, there were the others. The shaven-legged metrosexual types who saw themselves as latter-day Adonis figures in body, with minds which transcended the limitations of an Einstein or a Klee and hordes of adoring glances greeting them from every mirror. It was all very sad, really.

Carnivorous Cow sat and wondered what single word she would use to describe herself, if she had to. In a rare moment of inspiration, she decided, "paradoxical".

Carnivorous Cow was recently introduced to the Random-Prove-Me-Wrong Squad. The Random-Prove-Me-Wrong-Squad are karmic debt collectors that hang out in the ether until someone utters something like, "don't worry, none of the shark attacks at this beach have ever been fatal," and then promptly employ a shark to leap out of the water and chomp someone - preferably either the person making the utterance, or the person to whom they are making it. It's all about the timing.

So, being the Cow she is, she decided to put it to the test. Locking her car one evening, she mentioned loudly that it had been some time since it had been broken into. Next morning - no sign of a break-in, but a gashed tyre greeted her. (And, but she hadn't noticed, because the gashed tyre prevented further engagement with the car that day, some further fiddling which indicated a failed attempt at hotwiring. Yep, the Random-Prove-Me-Wrong-Squad!)

Since then, of course, they've made numerous appearances. To the extent that their existence is no longer questioned - monotheistic religions have been founded on shakier evidence. Like Romans automatically poured a libation to Bacchus when supping wine, and superstitious people touch wood or finger rabbits' feet without a thought, the Cow simply accepted the Random-Prove-Me-Wrong-Squad's presence fatalistically, and thought things very quietly if at all, for fear of waking them.

Until the other day. It was a perfect day for sundowners, and Danger Beach was the perfect place. But getting home was another story. "I know," she said cheerfully, heading the wrong way down Main Road, "Boyes Drive is always far less busy, we'll go that way!" Barely had she spoken when, rounding the corner, a string of vehicles came into sight. Her companion froze, blanched, grabbed his rosary. "The Random-Prove-Me-Wrong-Squad!" he gasped.

Wrong!! As they approached, the string of vehicles manifested as parked along the roadside, obviously visiting one of the houses for a party. The road itself was clear. The trip home lasted mere minutes.

Carnivorous Cow smiled. She knew that the non-traffic had nothing to do with the non-existence of the Random-Prove-Me-Wrong-Squad. Rather, it simply reinforced their existence. Had her companion not uttered aloud the fact that the string of vehicles spied ahead was due to them - requiring that to be proven wrong - they would indeed have found themselves back up in dreadful traffic. But she was very pleased that things had worked out for the best. So, when she got home, together with her libation to Bacchus, she offered up thanks to the literal-mindedness of the Random-Prove-Me-Wrong-Squad.

Mr Timberland was Mr Sunshine no more. He looked like a rather disappointed thunderstorm, or at least a small squall. He'd lost his keys. "Academic Alzheimers!" he proclaimed, and went away to gnaw his way into his office.

Carnivorous Cow shook her head sympathetically. She kept her keys on separate bunches, so that if she lost keys it was *only* car keys, or office keys, or house keys... never _all_ at once. Unlike socks and teaspoons, though, keys did usually turn up eventually - often in the fridge, behind the filing cabinet or in the laundry basket. Mostly, once one had cut new ones, or replaced the locks.

"Do you think that's a valid construct?" enquired Gramsci the spider tentatively. The Cow looked up. "Academic Amnesia - sort of llike the 'absent-minded professor' stereotype?" he explained. "Or do you think they're just so used to having departmental slaves to look after the mundane practicalities that they're just out of practice?"

The Cow shrugged. She had her own pesonal theory, that the memory was like a filing cabinet - you could never find what you wanted in it, though you knew you *ought* to be able to, despite the stuff you used most gravitating towards the front... Interesting rather than relevant things always caught your attention when you searched for something... and ultimately, it reached saturation. You simply couldn't cram another thing in, without first taking something else out. Of course, that model wasn't supported by Real Research, but it resonated with almost everyone's experience that she'd ever spoken to. At least, those whose heads weren't entirely empty anyway.

"The trouble is," she said to Gramsci, "all these passwords we have to remember. Network passwords. SAP passwords. Cellphone passwords. ATM passwords for bank cards, credit cards, cash passports. Aleph passwords. Online banking passwords. Kalahari.net and Amazon.co.uk passwords. Hotmail, GMail, ISP and other email passwords. Bulletin board passwords. Passwords for secure access to medical aid websites, cellular network websites, ezpay websites, rewards programmes websites. And all of these have different usernames, which also have to be remembered. And don't even *think* of using a single identity or password across systems - they're all out of alignment with each other, forcing password changes and requiring unique passwords of different formats with alarming frequency so that even if it were possible at the start, things would soon be more out of synch than the robots along Main Road during rush hour." She rolled her eyes dramatically.

Which gave Gramsci an idea. "What about retinal scans, for secure logon, rather than passwords?" he suggested.

"Excellent idea!" agreed the Cow. "I'll bet even Mr Timberland wouldn't misplace his eyeballs that easily!

"I've never understood what women see in men," confided a male friend to the Cow. "Everything about men is just so inferior when compared to women."

Carnivorous Cow was a little startled. She used to have a T-Shirt which proclaimed "A Woman without a Man is like a Fish without a Bicycle". Somewhere, nestling among relics from the 80s, between "Liberation Before Education" and "Troops out of the Townships", is probably another that asks, "If they can send one man to the moon, why not all of them?".

But somehow, it was different hearing it from a man. Weren't they all on the same side of the gender fence, after all - or at least, on the same side of the sex fence, since the gender fence was probably not representable in two dimensions? Why were men, dissing men?

Gramsci mulled over that for a while. "Men get a lot of bad press. And, face it, it's often warranted. Most of the crime - nearly all of the violent crime - is commited by men. Wars are pretty much the preserve of men - Lynndie England notwithstanding. And when it comes to pollution, vandalism, reckless driving, and all sorts of other activities designed to have a negative impact on our environment and safety... yep, men take the lead there, too." he ventured. But men dissing men? he turned his attention back to the fly he was devouring and shrugged.

Maybe it was a case of, if you can't beat them, beat yourself rather?

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Carnivorous Cow was non-plussed. Which is not entirely the same as being subtracted, though she was rather distracted. She tracked Gramsci down to the dry side of the paddleski and settled down for a chat.

The thing was, new neighbours had moved in next door not long back. The Bellville plates on the car had disturbed her initially, and the fact that it was yet further evidence of the neighbourhood "whitening". Everywhere in her street, it seemed, the black neighbours were leaving, and the new paler ones straight away erected electric wires on top of their regulation picket fences, installed killer dogs and jail bars, and hid themselves from sight. She wouldn't know them if she met them across the road in Pick 'n Pay. She missed the old sense of community, of borrowed sugar and shared skinder, even the out-of-tune hymns from house church, the taxis parking the road full and the parties with distorted sound when John came back from sea.

Staggering out of the house with a new year's babelas, the Cow had decided that the hangover gods would only be propitiated through a gentle day at home, chilling in the glorious summer weather, and a chance - at last! - to get stuck into In Stede van die Liefde. Which she was just doing, when snatches of the conversation from next door clubbed her over the head.

Next door were visitors with upcountry plates. Elgin or Grabouw, clearly farmers by their conversation... but what disturbed her were the frequent crude racial terms which peppered their anecdotes. She couldn't believe that people still openly used words like houtkop and hotnot, and subscribed to the prejudices embodied within those.

She wasn't sure, at first, that she'd heard correctly. But, sadly, she had.

At first angry, she considered confronting them. But a heated argument with drunk farmers didn't seem wise in her delicate state. A complaint to the Human Rights Commission? It seemed a bit out of proportion wasting important people's time on something so trivial. Her personal dignity hadn't been compromised, merely that of the collectivity of humankind. A quiet word with the neighbours later? Hmm - it was unclear where they stood on the issue, they were out with the children when the conversation took place, so they _might_ be on the side of the angels. Equally, they might not. What if she discovered she lived next door to unreconstructed racists? She'd need a Plan B before embarking on that course of action.

Meantime, she was grateful the neighbours behind were out, and that their black houseguests were Congolese and thus unlikely to understand.

What really disturbed her, she explained to Gramsci, was the knee-jerk reaction it provoked in her. Faced with racist evidence in the behaviour of a couple of white Afrikaans speaking farmers from upcountry, her psyche shrilled at Afrikaners, and Afrikaans, and further reading of In Stede van die Liefde became difficult.

Perhaps it was the result of having a Dutch grandmother - the Dutch being big on reclaiming land and stuff, even though it was never theirs to begin with - but the Cow felt the need to reclaim Die Taal from the racists. Biting back her babelas, she cranked up the volume and sang along tunelessly to Volksbesit 2. The visitors next door shifted indoors.

Dancing around to Laat Staan Sulke Dinge, Laat Staan, the Cow felt the peace return to the neighbourhood. Picking up the neglected novel, she settled back happily in the cooling twilight. Any language that could produce lyrics as poetic as Koos Dup's (below), literature as quenching as Toorberg, or exchanges as dynamic as those overheard any day on the Parade, shouldn't be made to bear the shame generated by a small section of its native speakers.

And as for the visitors, well, sooner or later they'd be obliged to join this millennium. Or emigrate to Orania...

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