Carnivorous Cow

Carnivorous Cow sucked deliciously on her whipless mocha, enjoying it all the more for the angry queue of students who'd been bypassed by Winnie's special favour. She was feeling much, much better because of it - so much that she'd almost forgotten the frustration gripping Campus because of login problems, drive mapping problems, printing problems and all the other problems that greeted the first day of the new semester.

She was determined to ignore uMalume's corruption trial - after all, The Leader had said that the uMalume issue was causing division and diversion from the Real Issues, and how could the Cow possibly disagree with that? But then, she noticed an email lying in her inbox, with a cryptic note - "for your Blog!"

It wasn't something she could ignore. After all, what would life be without a little diversion?

(see More, below)

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Gramsci had been talking to his UK cousin, Bronstein, on Skype. This was particularly risky as UCT seemed to favour costly Telkom international call rates rather than free voip-type applications, which might just use some of the bandwidth someone high-up wanted for CricInfo.

It was also risky because it involved using the Cow's computer. Gramsci abandoned his Skype call hastily and took refuge under the keyboard as the Cow heaved herself into her chair.

"Skype!" she muttered as she closed the application down. Skype for Mac didn't yet support video, which she considered discrimatory and a symptom of being allied with The Evil Empire. Still, it was good for transferring files bigger than the 5MB the mail server allowed you to email. Skype had its uses.

"It's scary," began Gramsci timidly, "Bronstein was saying that law enforcement agencies in the UK are lobbying for legislation to allow the monitoring of voip calls for 'security reasons'. Can you imagine!"

The Cow was outraged. Yet another Structure trying to assert its authority on the Internet! "They just don't geddit!" she fumed. "The Internet is fundamentally anarchist, and yet states, agencies and businesses keep trying to regulate, legislate, control..." She rolled her eyes dramatically.

"Still," added Gramsci pragmatically, "I'm sure they'll abandon the idea pretty quickly. Some scary percentage of Skype calls are probably to check on Great-Aunt Emily's incontinence op, or to discuss the layout for the latest incarnation of the blogging paper, or to tell your Dearly Beloved how much you really, really, really miss them... Toss in the vagaries of bandwidth-choked transmission speeds and the amount of commitment required to monitor escalates exponentially."

The Cow agreed. It was much the same as the paranoia people initially experienced on discovering that the Postmaster had access to everyone's mailboxes on the mail server... which rapidly faded when they pictured a real person sitting wading through Gig after Gig of chainmailed petition, penis enlargement spam or missive from Bremner about the latest modification to some arcane SAP form.

Not to mention all the Chuck Norris jokes.

Which reminded Gramsci of the one he'd heard earlier from Bronstein. "Batman and Superman..." he began... before noticing the look in the Cow's eye and taking cover under the keyboard once more. A Cow's roundhouse kick is more terrifying than a Chuck Norris joke. Even.

The Cow was struggling. Cape Town was in the vice-grip of a spell colder than Ehud Olmert's heart, and she was hearing about heatwaves over on the other side of the planet. She had the distinct feeling of Wanting To Be Somewhere Else, and her criteria for where else were getting more inclusive by the day.

Campus was pretty deserted, with students squeezing in last minute hangovers and hordes of staff at the Sociology World Cup in Durbs, and the only cheering thing was that Winnie was back, and the queues were short, so coffee ascended in importance. Even Gramsci was keeping a low profile. Despite frequent refills, her hotwater bottle was simply not keeping her bovine bulk sufficiently warm. It was all pretty depressing, really.

And then Tony e/merged from his conferencing distractions and uploaded his Oslo photos to his Flickr site. Nervously the Cow took a peek, poised to brief her lawyers for a defamation suit.

But it was not her lawyers she needed to consult on viewing the photos. It was a trauma counsellor. Seeing the photos surfaced the deeply repressed memories of her swim in the fjord - the memories of a time even colder, even icier, than this, now.

It was all too much for her fragile constitution and she rushed off to the only person who could help in such a situation.

"Winnie!" she gasped as she approached. "A whipless Mocha, please!"

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And then, it finally happened! A polite note from 01302922 informed the Cow that she had now become no 01184181 to the blogosphere. It was expected, but the shock still coursed through her hide.

It reminded her of other cows who'd become numbers, grazing peacefully in grassy meadows all over the globalised beef market, and she felt a moment of universal bovine solidarity. She was glad of the teenage piercings in her ear that would allow the insertion of the plastic tag with her number to proceed relatively painlessly, and she was glad she was not a sheep needing a patch of blue or red to be spraypainted onto her fleece.

She searched in vain for Gramsci to share her misery. She worried that his absence might be due to the incorrect HR form having been completed, and his access control having evaporated, and so was very relieved to discover him later lying sleeping next to the eviscerated remains of a fly.

"Never mind," he cooed. "It's all part of a bigger picture. Think of it as enhancing your numeracy skills."

The Cow shook her head. "It's more like a bad scifi movie!" she sighed.

Gramsci chuckled. "In that case," he suggested, "take a lesson from Halle Berry. Insist on doing your own stunts, and use it as an opportunity to enhance your projectile vomiting skills!"

The Cow hoped that 01302922 was well out of range when that happened....

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"if you were to associate uMalume with medication, what would it be?" Gramsci asked the Cow as she heaved her sodden bulk into her straining office chair. Careful now, she thought, before venturing timidly, "Viagra?" She knew that was probably wrong, but garlic and african potato weren't necessary if you had a shower, and she wasn't sure what else might be relevant.

"Wrong!" cried Gramsci. "Ginkgo Biloba!"

The Cow looked up, dumbfounded. Whyever...? An elephant never forgets? She wasn't making the connection, and appealed to Gramsci to explain.

"Well, News24's headline screams 'Zuma: used for circulation'! I'm not sure if he's classified as a supplement or a scheduled substance, and so if he needs to undergo rigorous testing for registration with the Medicines Control Council, but I suppose Matthias Rath could probably advise on that."

The Cow's mind was boggled. She imagined Raynaud's Diseased individuals queuing up outside the dispensary at Grotties to be given their weekly dose of uMalume, their ashen countenances flushing as the colour returned to their cheeks and the life to their extremities.

"Mind you..." she ventured cautiously, "Ginkgo might be marketed heavily as an aid to memory these days, but if you remember back, when it first hit the shelves, one of the conditions for which it was indicated was indeed Erectile Dysfunction. It was initially touted as a kind of herbal viagra."

Gramsci clapped all his hands together, excitedly. "Exactly!" he cried. "And what a boost to flagging circulation uMalume provides! Do you think we could export him, boost the value of the Rand and stave off the need for another interest rate hike?"

"You'd best not include Russia in your itinerary!" laughed Gramsci as the Cow stumbled in, wet and grumpy. "You might just come back married!"

Bemused, the Cow looked up questioningly. Gramsci continued: "It seems that urbanisation in Siberia has become gendered, leaving the farmers spouseless." (see More, below)

The Cow blanched. Bovine spinsterhood under threat, because of gendered migration patterns? She wondered about similar gender imbalances due to female infanticide in places like China and India, and the impact on her bovine sisters there. "At least cows are sacred in India," she consoled herself. "Not scared, like in Siberia!"

Gramsci didn't think it was that big a deal. After all, Australians had pioneered Animal Husbandry long before....

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"I think this Cosmic Twins notion is stretching things a bit!" muttered Gramsci. "At best, the connection is spurious; at worst, it's yet a further manifestation of the inability of the colonial imagination to rise above itself!"

The Cow was dumbstruck. She'd thought the connections were obvious to everyone, but then again, some people did the Su Doku by a process of elimination, so not all minds worked the same.

"Well, for a start," she began patiently, "both occupy, or occupied, deputy positions to the top political position in the country, be it PM or President. Both faced accusations of sexual impropriety, linked to their relative positions of power. Both claimed these to be consensual - which has been the subject of much debate, given the resemblance of both to Jabba the Hutt.

"Both face enquiries - a trial, in one case - because of undeclared irregularities in tendering processes. Both have been savaged by the media, have fed the febrile imaginations of bloggers, have reacted in surly, defensive tones and have been selling newspapers the world over.

"Both have been dissed by feminists, used as ammunition by political opponents on their parties' right to illustrate the depths of corruption and rot inherent in their parties, and both have been relieved by their bosses of their responsibilities - though one kept his salary and perks, despite this.

"Both are valuable to their parties as reminders of their parties roots and former constituencies - the working classes, whose support they still largely retain. Both have families who are publicly supporting them, and parties who are refusing any public flogging."

The Cow paused. There were also differences, but she thought it best not to dwell on those.

Gramsci shrugged. "I'm still not entirely sure what relevance the politics of some small damp island in the North Sea holds for us," he ventured.

The Cow looked up. "There is another link," she countered. "Peter Anschutz, the American at the centre of the Millennium Dome allegations, has been getting all the bad press, but do you know who his partner in this Mega Casino plan is? None other than Sol Kerzner!"

It was all a little too much for Gramsci, and he retreated under the keyboard.

Carnivorous Cow was perplexed. Was it synchronicity, coincidence, or part of a cosmic plot, she wondered. Locally, uMalume was selling some more newspapers. Meantime, across the pond, his cosmic twin was doing the same. It was all terribly disconcerting.

Still, it was a more interesting distraction than the other news which had caught her attention. In a country with massive unemployment rates, it seemed that the way to secure a reasonable job was to commit a murder, appear on television, and catch the eye of a Minister. The Cow wasn't exactly sure how failsafe the plan was, though - what if one committed a murder and appeared on television the night no Ministers were watching? Would someone else step in to employ you, or would you be doomed to a life of media notoriety like Amanda du Toit?

Carnivorous Cow shook her head sadly. She'd really thought that, with uMalume's rape trial over, she could focus on Matters of Great Importance - like how far the Rand could freefall before the bungee cord pulled taut... or snapped. (Well, at least until his corruption trial resumed.) She'd been quite fascinated staring at a Pound coin in her hand, feeling it grow heavier, imagining a digital display of its Rand value, with the numbers spinning fast - rather like the woman watching as her bank balance disappeared before her eyes.

But the universe was having none of that. The news on the radio announced gleefully that uMalume was suing the media for defamation, for a South African record amount. And, rather like the Pound coin, the value kept changing.

Radio Highveld was to have been sued for R5Million. And then, they went and played the song again, clocking up another R2Million towards a downpayment against the Zuma National Debt.

The Cow couldn't help her bemusement. Most of the offending pieces against which action was being taken by uMalume were not pieces masquerading as fact - they were cartoons, opinion pieces, satire - yes, even the song. And the Cow couldn't understand how anyone who'd stated under oath that taking a shower protected him against HIV infection had much of a reputation to protect, anyway. Was it, she asked Gramsci, more damaging to one's reputation to state that wearing a skirt meant a woman was asking for sex - on the record in an open trial - or to have the newspapers report that one had said it?

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"It's not quite Fellowship of the Ring," Tony suggested as the Cow headed the car towards Somerset West, "but Andrew and GPS and you and I have certainly gained a better sense of shared vision and common purpose through this trip."

Meandering the car cautiously through the airport mist and her internal pharmaceutical fog, the Cow located the eNyanga turnoff and thought excitedly, a Quest! She'd always enjoyed those - at least, in their early DOS incarnations, like King's Quest and Dragon and Castle. The modern RPGs were all a bit too much like work; Su Doku was far better for generating instant Beta when you needed it.

The worst thing about RPGs though, was choosing one of the defined characters to play. The Cow always preferred to invent her own personae, changing or casting off as required, and having to put on something so closely prescribed and defined by someone else felt as restrictive as joining a political party.

Which raised the question: who was whom?

It was a little too easy to suggest Andrew as Gandalf the Grey, with his trusty Renault Shadowfax; Gandalf lacked the irony and subtlety... though there had been the prerequisite encounter with the Balrog, occasioned by Tony's delayed reappearance one day. The Cow put Andrew's character assignation on hold, and turned to the others.

Tony as Frodo? He had the big blue eyes, but somehow it was less easy to picture him in a role that was all silent emoting and hairy feet. And GPS - Legolas? Boromir? The silent, brooding Aragorn? This was far too difficult.

The Cow, of course, wanted to be Saruman the White, simply because he was the coolest character and was played in the movies by the coolest actor, but he wasn't part of the Fellowship. Of the Fellowship itself... Pippin, perhaps? He, at least, had an anarchic streak to offset all that toussled hair, and a Caledonian accent to make him a little more interesting.

And the rest of the cast - the Ents, the Uruk-hai, the Riders of Rohan... and who was Gollum???

This was all becoming a little too much for the Cow's febrile imagination. "Why don't you open it for suggestions?" offered Gramsci. "Some interesting possibilities might emerge..."

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