Carnivorous Cow

The Cow was horrified! Having a spiritual moment in front of the chocolate machine earlier, she'd been tempted by a colourful pack of bright treats with a cute cow on the pack. Manhattan milk bottles they were, and the cow was labeled Nandi cow.

On post-consumption inspection, she discovered that the ingredients included Gelatin (Bovine). Bovine gelatine!!

Not only was she a Carnivorous Cow, she'd just been rendered a cannibalistic cow! She was traumatised!

Just as baby food seldom contains the smiling baby on the jar, and dog food no longer contains - by law - the bounding wagger on the package, the Cow had expected the cow on the pack to be the consumer, not the contents.

Nowhere did the pack announce WARNING - UNSUITABLE FOR VEGETARIANS! OFFENSIVE TO HINDUS! CONTAINS COW TOES! The name, and shape - milk bottles - suggests innocence and goodness, amplified by the pastel shades of the sweets themselves.

The Cow wondered how many small children knew what they were eating.

She wondered why there wasn't a big notice on the chocolate machine - it wasn't as if a discerning customer could read the ingredients on the pack before purchase.

The Cow felt angry. Violated. Nauseous.

She sighed. Already her life-long Nestle boycott severely limited her choice at the chocolate machine. If she added Manhattan / Kraft products, what would remain?

Chips! Aha! She never did like Mr Potatohead very much, anyway....

The Cow found Gramsci rolling around on the keyboard laughing. "It's not only in the States where stupidity is rewarded by the courts!" he whooped.

The Cow lifted a bemused eyebrow. Gramsci pointed at the monitor, where an IOL article reported on a Munich court's ruling against a "love witch" who had to refund - with costs - a dissatisfied client.

"The court ruled that the service could not be rendered, so the costs were therefore not justified! Imagine - that really deserves a Stella award!"

The Cow shook her head sadly. If exploiting people's credulity was criminal, several industries (management consultancies, second hand car sales, insurance, weightloss... the media?) would fold, and unemployment would rocket. And given that begging would be likewise impacted, what would happen to all these hustlers? Would they turn to <ulp!> Real Crime?

More scary, though, was a world where stupidity had no negative consequences. Would wrong answers qualify for the same marks as correct answers? It seemed like Postmodernism's final revenge! The Cow felt ill.

"Still," chuckled Gramsci, "at least there was some justice!"

The Cow looked puzzled.

"Her lover - that she was trying to bewitch, to return to her," reminded Gramsci. "Evidence suggests that he stayed gone! Sensible guy, that!"

The Cow laughed. "Well, I suppose if he did return, the magick would have worked, and she'd have had to return the award, with costs..."

The Cow was disturbed this morning by a discussion on the radio concerning maternity leave for pregnant schoolgirls. As she ought. It was her alarm clock, after all, and she'd have overslept had it not disturbed her.

As her intravenous caffeine feed had run out during the night, she was not awake enough to process all the information, but it seemed that someone was mooting four months' maternity leave for pregnant schoolgirls in an endeavour to prevent them dropping out of school. The Chair of SADTU in KZN seemed to be arguing against this, on the grounds that four months absence from school would encourage them to drop out.

It seemed that everyone agreed that schoolgirls dropping out of school was a bad thing. No one seemed to have much of an opinion on whether schoolgirls having babies was a good or bad thing - or perhaps that bit had happened before the Cow's consciousness was penetrated by the debate - and the Cow couldn't help wondering whether this was a sign of progress or not.

"Ah yes," Gramsci sighed later when the Cow mentioned the discussion. "It's because of the social grants. Children under 14 bring in income, so they're a desirable commodity. And, as we've seen with Madonna, a cool accessory, too."

It puzzled the Cow no end. Children generally cost more than the State grant paid. And continued costing beyond the 14 subsidised years. The balance sheet didn't seem to balance.

"But when they're 14," reminded Gramsci, "they're old enough to produce their own offspring, and bring in their own money."

A pretty instrumental view of children, thought the Cow. But then, weren't all of them - other motivations frequently cited the need to "complete a family", "cement a marriage", or - for some women - to self-actualise. All of which had everything to do with the parent/s, and nothing to do with the child.

"Of course!" snorted Gramsci. "The child doesn't exist yet! Only once it's physically there can its interests be considered!" Which, of course, raised the spectre of that Other Debate, just lost in Nicaragua, about When Does A Child Exist.

"But given that HIV incidence is so high in KZN - particularly among young women - what happens to all these grant-assets when the mothers become too ill?" mused the Cow. "Even celebrities will soon turn their gaze elsewhere for accessories..."

But Gramsci's attention was elsewhere. "If they're speaking of maternity leave," he muttered, "pension schemes, housing subsidies and thirteenth cheques can't be far behind."

The Cow shook her head slowly. Things certainly had changed since she was a calf.

Ever since the demise of the metrosexual, the Cow had found herself dragged into innumerable discussions about what, exactly, constituted masculinity. The possession of a Y chromosome? That made about as much sense as defining Natalie du Toit as an amputee.

So she was very intrigued to learn from Gramsci that Askmen.com had recently posted a survey to come up with the Top 49 Men - the best representatives of the gender. In the process, they hoped, criteria would emerge which would somehow be defining.

What emerged, instead, was a list. Most of the people on it were men the Cow had never heard of - obscure sports players or singers or even <gasp!> cooks and clothesmakers, but scattered amongst these were people who might even be recognised outside of Minnesota or Iowa.

The order was a little perplexing though. Justin Timberlake rated above Steve Jobs? David Beckham above Bill Cinton?? And who was this George Clooney that got the top spot?

It seemed rather like the Senate discussion on The Next VC. It seemed that what was wanted there was Stephen Hawking in Brad Pitt's body, though - given the expressed preference for an internal candidate - the Cow feared the selection committee would land up with the empty set, as she'd yet to encounter such a specimen on Campus.

But it did raise methodological questions about popular definitions. The AskMen.com list left her no closer to understanding masculinity. She suspected that some people simply had bigger PR establishments to click mouse buttons in their favour.

Though perhaps when discussing masculinity, didn't it all come down to size in the end?

Carnivorous Cow was a little perturbed that the Pope had served eviction notices on the occupants of Limbo. Particularly as it seemed a little unclear whether or not they where they were to be rehoused.

As the department in whose tea room the Cow was sitting was not Religious Studies, they could be forgiven for muddling the various locations of the Afterlife, and confusing Limbo with Purgatory. Heaven and Hell were a little more difficult to confuse, although Prof Castle declared that Heaven sounded awful and he'd far rather end up in Hell. "Wearing those same smelly white robes every day," he muttered in disgust, "and having those silly, heavy wings! Not to mention all that choral singing! Sounds like Hell to me!"

Which raised the issue of where in Hell one would be sent if one committed different sins which were differently punished. "Perhaps," suggested Dr Green, "one spends some time in each, in turn?"

"But who would administer that process?" demanded the Cow. "That would require quite a substantial bureaucracy to manage!"

"Bremner!" declared Dr Stirrer. "They could have a career path - starting off managing Hell, and getting promoted until they manage Heaven!"

The discussion unravelled rapidly from there, until everyone was rolling around on the floor laughing hysterically. The Cow was relieved no one from Bremner was in the vicinity - bad enough that laughter was heard in an academic building, but to find the staff of a department gathered together, actually talking to each other was outrageous! The tea room would almost certainly be repossessed and turned into more offices for Economics.

Which again raised the issue of what was to happen to the evicted babies from Limbo. "Perhaps," suggested Dr Stirrer, "Madonna could adopt them?"

"'Gay marriage', like 'military intelligence', is a contradiction in terms!" declared Gramsci emphatically. "It's a logical impossibility, so why the Constitutional Court has to get involved, is beyond me!"

The Cow wasn't sure she agreed with the last bit. If gay people wanted their Constitutional Right to legislated misery enshrined, then surely they had as much right as anyone else.

"Not so," argued Gramsci. "'Gay' means 'Full of or disposed to joy and mirth; manifesting or characterized by joyous mirth; light-hearted, exuberantly cheerful, sportive, merry', according to the Oxford English Dictionary. How can a marriage be described as 'characterised by joyous mirth', in all honesty? Gay marriage just doesn't work as a concept!"

The Cow pondered awhile. "But surely," she ventured timidly, "the same can then be argued about the alternative, 'civil union'?"

"Exactly!" roared Gramsci. "What union is ever civil?"

"But still," the Cow protested, "doesn't the Constitution promise equality?"

"Gmf!" spluttered Gramsci. "Sometimes the State has to act for the greater good, to protect people from themselves. Imagine, for example, they had a referendum tomorrow on reinstating the Death Penalty. We'd be back in the Dark Ages like a shot!"

The Cow had to concede that that was a point. Besides, she felt a whispering reminder of those badges from the 70s that claimed that "women who want to be equal to men have no ambition".

Meanwhile, somewhere, she was sure, some lawyers were already sharpening their pencils for the first gay divorce...

"Can you blog about sex?" he asked, nervously.

Well, clearly one can, and people do. Confessional sex blogs are A Big Thing in the prurient North. Stephanie Klein's Greek Tragedy, Zoe Margolis's Girl with a One-Track Mind, Jessica Cutler's Washingtonienne, and of course Belle de Jour, are all blogs about sex. But the Cow suspected that that wasn't the real question. She suspected that the real question was, "Can you blog about sex on the UCT Blogspot?"

Which was altogether more difficult to answer.

On the one hand, there were policies... and, beyond that, a legal framework... but unless one had planned to be gratuitously graphic or outrageously offensive or provocatively perverse, one wasn't technically defying a policy. (The trouble with that, Gramsci remarked, was that what was tame vanilla to one person was indeed provocatively perverse to another. "Who are these people?" demanded the Cow, curiously.)

Then again, as a University blogspot, there were issues of Bringing The University Into Disrepute. But whether sex would enhance or damage the University's reputation was, of course, a debate that would need to take place.

More to the point, the Cow felt, was the issue - again - of intention. If one blogged about AIDS, for example, sex was always there as a subtext. And there was altogether too much silence around AIDS anyway. So used condoms in the Arts toilet wastebins, horrific as it was for the cleaners, was probably defensible. Whereas the argument in favour of a confessional sex blog listing all the sexual exploits of a UCT staff member within the ivied walls of their office... would probably be harder to make.

"Harder to fake, more like it!" sniggered Gramsci. "That wouldn't be a confessional sex blog. That would be fantasy!"

The Cow looked out of the window at some passing colleagues. "Or horror..." she muttered quietly to herself.

What can, and can't, one blog about? pondered the Cow ponderously. Her last couple of posts seemed to have provoked shock, horror, outrage. Partly for prodding holey cows, and partly for - well, she wasn't entirely sure.

"Can you blog about contraception," asked one email. "I mean, doesn't contraception imply, like, sex? Are people still allowed to have sex?" (Well, the wastebin in the Arts block toilets clearly shows that they do, allowed or not. And responsibly, given the number of used condoms in amongst the Coke cans and sweet wrappers.)

Others found other aspects questionable. "You shouldn't hope to visit the US soon," cautioned the Nipple Owner. "You won't be allowed in." This after mentioning at the start of a post the desire, bred out of a frustration with modern capitalism, to bomb the US embassy.

The Nipple Owner went on to list topics he self-censored. Including an incident some decades ago where a party had gotten out of hand, featuring a (now) respectable academic. This, of course, got the Cow's mind working. She recalled many such parties - vaguely, and through a rather inebriated haze, it's true - from the days in which Cape Town still had an Intellectual Left.

She sighed heavily. Gramsci looked up questioningly. She shook her head, nostalgically. "I sometimes wish Cape Town still had an Intellectual Left!" she sighed.

"What about..." began Gramsci, hopefully. He paused, confused. Were there any intellectuals left? There were some clever people, sure. But were there any he'd classify as Intellectuals? He panicked. It reminded him of the discussion he'd overheard between the Cow and Mr Timberland, about clever people of a certain ethnic group. Now that, he felt, was definitely something not to blog about! Quickly, he turned to the Cow.

"So what did you think about the storms this past weekend?" he asked, nervously.

The Cow was feeling distinctly grumpy. "I think I'll go and bomb the US embassy!" she scowled as Mr Timberland timidly stuck his head around the door.

"Why?" he squeeked as he backed off hurriedly.

"You wouldn't understand!" she grumbled. "You're male. You can just walk away from these things!"

"What things?" He really knew this was silly, he should flee quickly while he could still, but his innate masochism drove him to persist. "What wouldn't I understand?"

The Cow looked up, witheringly. "Contraception. There isn't any that's safe, effective, acceptible, affordable... There just isn't. Everything has side effects and the side effects are all calculated to ensure women's bodies are imprisoned and their libidos quashed!"

Mr Timberland opened his mouth, but knew better than to let any sound emerge.

"And then," the Cow continued, "when you finally find something that might just, perhaps, be slightly more tolerable, slightly less toxic, slightly less invasive, than other means - you can't get it locally! Not," she thumped her desk dramatically, "because of some health issue. Oh no! Because of..." her voice rose to a crescendo, "trade regulations!"

Mr Timberland looked startled. "What...?" he gasped.

"Yes!" growled the Cow. "We're talking over-the-counter stuff here! No MCC approval, no randomised drug trials. This is stuff you can buy at a drugstore - like drugstore.com. Or Amazon.com. Only... they're not *allowed* to export this to South Africa! Oh no, this ban isn't about health, it's about commerce!"

A thin line of foam was appearing at the corners of her mouth. Mr Timberland backed off a little, and then ventured, timidly, "Surely it's not about health? That's pleasure, surely, rather than health?"

He ducked just in time as a heavy object came flying over his head and crashed into the wall behind him, knocking several bricks out. He fled. Panting up the stairs, he realised that perhaps it was a health issue after all - though perhaps of the psychological kind.

Gramsci shreiked excitedly as the Cow shuffled into her office. "Look!" he squeeked, thrusting the newest glossy product of the University's spin department under her nose.

"Hmmm..." she muttered, shaking her head sadly, "they spelled 'ageing' wrong."

"No, not that!" spluttered Gramsci in frustration. "Look here!"

Indeed, there, at the top of the page... and there, on the letterhead... New. In three official languages. The Cow shook her head again. "My Xhosa's too rusty," she muttered, "so I can't speak for its accuracy, but the Afrikaans translation..." Her voice died away quietly. Somewhere along the line Universiteit Kaapstad had morphed into Universiteit van Kaapstad. "You'd never believe half of the Department of Spin were Afrikaans First Language speakers..."

Gramsci chuckled. "That's probably the point," he said wryly. "No political brownie points to be bludgeoned by speaking Algemeen-Beskaafde Afrikaans these days!"

The Cow sighed sadly. Languages, generally, had fallen on hard times. The number of students in the language departments were not what they had once been, and schools seemed to be offering fewer language options, too. Even Latin, for all its usefulness and beauty, was disappearing from schools. "Tragicus!" she shuddered.

She couldn't imagine a world where lovers no longer SMSed each other "amo te" or "ich liebe dich", or where cheesy chat-up lines no longer included "voulez vous couchez avec moi?" or "masihambe ekhaya yakho" among first languages speakers of what commonly passed for English.

Gramsci agreed. "It's not only the language of lurve that will suffer, though," he suggested. "It seems that bilingualism is being touted as vital for research, too!"

The Cow pricked up her ears, excitedly. Maybe if she could smuggle herself into the new Arabic classes, some of the half-written papers on her flashdisk might miraculously finish themselves.

"Frigidus!" she smiled, optimistically.

Carnivorous Cow was most intrigued to hear about the Canadian professor whose on-Campus dope smoking was accommodated through the provision of his own private, ventilated, smoking room. Here in Africa, he'd be expected to boost the GDP of the Eastern Cape out in the rain, like the tobacco slaves and the barefoot bidi bums. Plus, she suspected, the application would draw the attention of someone down at Bremner to the presence of a professor in Philosophy.

"What?" she could picture them saying, "Philosophy still have a professor? A full one? How did that slip through the net? We'll have to sort that out, quickly!" And before you could say dog's breakfast, Philosophy's FTEs and SLEs and ASMs and RFJs would be spewing out of computers all over Bremner. It wasn't a pretty picture.

Still, she could understand the logic in a University wanting to keep its Professorate stoned. The Polish cow recently in the news merely underscored what local sugar farmers have known for decades - that while alcohol can provoke aggression in workers, the herb keeps them placid and docile.

"Just imagine," chortled Gramsci, "how different Faculty Boreds would be if they served green tea, or space cookies? No vehement discussions about timetables or admission requirements. Just spreading the lurve..."

The Cow tried. Honest, she did. But somehow she just couldn't see it. She shook her head. "I think the only drugs they're interested in are beta blockers and anti-depressants," she sighed. "I think the 70s are finally over..."