Carnivorous Cow

The Cow was disturbed to read that uMalume was again facing the prospect of prison. This time, it seemed, for something as prosaic as giving the tax man the finger.

The Cow has always been happy to pay her taxes, and since SARS introduced e-filing, even submitting tax returns has ceased to shake her bovine cheefulness. So she found uMalume's attitude a bit puzzling.

"It's the one State department that's actually efficient!" she sighed to Gramsci. "You'd think people would welcome the opportunity to engage with such a paradox!"

"Gmf! Only those with nothing to hide!" muttered Gramsci. He suspected that the jailing of uMalume's financial advisor may have led to some opacity in uMalume's understanding of his financial affairs.

"Still," the Cow said, "Surely it's all been aired in court, so he need only take out his paper scissors and cut out the media reports to submit those as the documentary evidence SARS wants in support of his submission?"

Gramsci chuckled at the thought of encrypted faxes and contested emails being stapled onto uMalume's IT2 in lieu of an IRP5. "He could always provide the URLs and do it by e-filing!" he suggested.

But the Cow's mind had drifted. "If he's found guilty, that constitutes a crime, right? And Willie Hofmeyr is allowed to seize assets used in the commission of a crime, not so? So... how do you rate the prospects of them auctioning off Shabir Shaik's brain on EBay to recover some of the expenses from these costly trials?"

Gramsci took refuge under the keyboard. It was a terrifying prospect. Britney's hair. Paris Hilton's miscarriage bill. Shabir's brain. And parents worried that their kids spent pocket money on drugs??

"Can you believe??" the Cow shrilled at Gramsci. "The results of a serious study propose that smelling the armpit of a colleague can help alleviate stress in the workplace!"

Gramsci scuttled for cover under the keyboard. "But I thought," he ventured timidly, "that that was one of the leading causes of office stress?"

"Exactly!" roared the Cow. "The Nipple Owner reported just such a problem in his department!"

"Ah! But armpit smelling, like nipples, is gendered, if this article is to be believed!" remarked Gramsci. "The study was on the effects of women smelling men's armpits!"

The Cow, inexplicably, did not find that reassuring. She was also rather alarmed that the article advocated getting wasted with colleagues and offloading problems onto them. Given the amount of offloading that happened among the sober, the prospect of what might happen with lowered inhibitions was truly terrifying.

But she could relate to the water cooler suggestion. Particularly if there was something worthwhile in the water... And if not, there was always the option of going back to sleep...

"Oooh! Look at this!" chuckled the Cow. "Today is Work Your Proper Hours Day in the UK! What a wonderful idea! Over here, that would count as a Work To Rule, which would be classified as Strike Action, and no doubt require a strike ballot, 48 hours due notice, and all of that performance!"

Gramsci nodded. He did think it was a little ironic that something that translated into the withdrawal, or rationing, of labour, required so much extra work. But then, labour legislation was a compromise between the demands of labour and the demands of management, and the hallmark of a good compromise was said to be that it left everyone unhappy.

"Imagine," the Cow continued, "if people actually unhanded their mice at the end of their contracted 37.5 hours each week, and left - and switched channels on the way home to something other than The Office? The System would start to feel the pain, rather than the individuals in it."

"Maybe," shrugged Gramsci. "But without the VC sending emails to inspire people to down tools, how many are likely to do that?"

The Cow sighed. Gramsci had a point. Perhaps the EDHR could write a weekly column on the benefits of offices on the mountain instead?

"Too tired!" Gramsci disagreed. "Speaking of which, the sun's already setting. What are you still doing at work?"

"What do you suppose it signifies?" asked the Cow. "I misplace an unlabelled CD on my desk, and find something entirely else while looking for it!"

"I'm sure Freud would have an answer," shrugged Gramsci, "but isn't it a bit silly? You're looking for something. In the process you'll come across a number of things that aren't it. What's so special about that?"

"Well..." the Cow shifted. "I think it might be a message."

"To tidy your office? Well, about time!" grumbled Gramsci.

"No, not that - a kind of karmic message!" persisted the Cow.

Gramsci looked up sceptically. "So what was it?" he asked patiently.

The Cow looked awkward. "Well..." she muttered, "I can't quite remember where it came from, but... the Communist Manifesto?"

The Cow was looking a little tender as she limped into her office on Monday morning. Gramsci looked up in confusion.

"What happened?" he asked

"Well," the Cow began as she slumped into her chair. "I went along to the Fokofpolisiekar concert at Kirstenbosch."

"Ah!" Gramsci chuckled. "You rocked too hard!"

The Cow shook her head sadly. "Nope. I had a migraine, so head banging wasn't quite going to feature. Mind you, the bass guitarist managed to keep it up a good while - everyone else parked off on chairs, but he strutted around with the kind of energy even Mick Jagger would envy!"

"OK..." Gramsci shrugged. "So then...?"

"Well, at one point the vocalist leapt up and did a handstand, and crashed down into the drum kit. The drummer never missed a beat, so to speak. But I think that was what caused it."

Gramsci was now truly confused. "How could that have caused your physical discomfort?" he asked.

"Ah. Yes. There were lots of school kids. They were doing school kid kind of things, like hiding their cigarettes in Appletiser cans so that they could smoke under the security guards' noses. But this one girl - eish! She was hammered! I've never seen anyone so out of it. Anyway, just walking proved too much for her, and she crashed down on me twice. And when she eventually realised that the world looked a little different because she was flat on the ground, she crashed down on other people too, until her babysitter came to fetch her. Sadly, though, she was the 'before' ad for weightwatchers, so the experience was a bit painful for those of us on the receiving end."

"You were flattened by a large, stoned schoolkid? Twice?"

"Sadly."

Gramsci thought for a while. "Perhaps that's why UCT Management gave in to the strike so quickly," he suggested. "If Cape Town really does have the fattest people, all that marching and toyi-toying can't have been good for the foundations of Bremner!"

 (More)

"Maybe," the Cow suggested to Gramsci, "I'd get better fuel consumption - and produce less CO2 emissions - if I had all the lycra scraped off my fender."

Gramsci looked perplexed. "Lycra?" he asked. "How did that get there?"

The Cow shrugged. "Argus training," she said, as if it was the most obvious thing in the world. "Some cyclists just don't appreciate that in a tangle of steel and glass vs lycra and graphite, they're bound to come off worse, and should get out of the way where they belong!"

Gramsci looked horrified. "You mean...?"

The Cow shrugged again. "Just aiding Darwin by thinning the losers out of the gene pool. But you know..." she looked confused.

Gramsci looked up.

"This notion that cyclists somehow have a smaller carbon footprint. Well, I don't think that's quite true!"

"Why?" asked Gramsci. "Bicycles don't emit much carbon dioxide?"

The Cow rolled her eyeballs. "It's not the bicycles, it's the cyclists! Factor in all the lycra they wear - made from polyurethane - not to mention the carbon life forms they ride - the graphite-frames of their bicycles. And then there's all the gas-guzzling of their SUVs as they drive to the gym to catch Tarquin's spinning classes to make sure they're in top shape..."

The Cow continued to rattle off countless further carbon-emission factors, such as trips to Cavendish for clothing, trips to the beauty salon for leg waxes, trips to up-market cycle shops for the latest gadgets and accessories - all done in the SUV. Cycling was, after all, not transport, but recreation. Getting to places to *do* stuff required an engine, preferably one that kept the middle east in business single handedly.

Gramsci flinched. "So you're suggesting that the lycra coating on your fender is karmic?" he asked in horror.

The Cow smiled. "Perhaps not as far as that," she conceded, "though it does lend an interesting twist to the term 'carbon cycle'."

"So Cape Town's not the best city in SA," remarked Gramsci, looking up from the article.

"What?!?" gasped the Cow. Such a claim, surely, defied belief!

"It says here that Bloem is best. Followed, in order, by Maritzburg, Jozi, Pretoria - and then only Cape Town!"Gramsci read.

The Cow shook her head. "No way! Jozi ahead of Cape Town? Based exactly on what - amount of barbed wire per person? Armed response personnel per square metre?" She sneered. "Or how often they flex their credit card, and the price of the cars they drive?"

"Well," Gramsci conceded, "All of that was factored in. Salary would put Jozi ahead, and so would gym membership and number of swimming pools - after all, we have the mountain and the sea as alternatives."

"What kind of survey is that?" demanded the Cow. "Ranking a city based on swimming pools and gyms! I'm surprised they didn't factor in lycra sales, or male leg waxes, too! Who conducted it, anyway?"

Gramsci chuckled. "You're closer than you think! It was Men's Health!"

"Ah well!" The Cow rolled her eyes. "I'm surprised Cape Town ranked anywhere, in that case. Unless they drew their sample down in Sea Point, finding sufficient poseurs to outrank Kimberley or Tweebuffelsmeteenskootmorsdoodgeskietfontein must have taken some doing!"

"Well," laughed Gramsci, "there was one measure on which Cape Town came tops!"

"Oh?" asked the Cow.

"Yes!" Gramsci nodded. "Cape Town has the fattest men, with 15% obese!"

"Well," the Cow muttered, "at least it's something..."

"Isn't it funny," chuckled the Cow, "English people fantasizing about Liz and Maggie!"

"Well, I can understand Liz," suggested Gramsci. "After all, they got that sexy Helen Mirren to portray her in a film. That's got to count for something!"

The Cow shook her head sadly. It was a bit like PW's finger, really. People sure were strange!

"And Maggie was sexualised in that Pink Floyd song, about the summer frock clinging to her wet body in the rain," Gramsci reminded her.

"War is sexual?" asked the Cow, gobsmacked.

"Don't you know anything?" Gramsci rolled his eyes patiently. "All those guns and tanks..."

But the Cow's mind was still stuck on Maggie and Liz. "Perhaps it's the handbags?" she ventured.

"Can you believe?" the Cow shrilled at Gramsci. "There are women out there who really prefer clothes to sex!"

Gramsci looked up calmly. "They're American," he shrugged.

The Cow paused. Accessories. Commodities. The Macdonalds lifestyle. But she suspected it was more than that. That for at least some of these women, the rush they got from squeezing into a new pair of Gap jeans was better than what their lover could deliver. Which might have had something to do with the skill of their lovers, too. This was, after all, an American sample; most of the lovers were no doubt American, too.

But still, it remained terminally depressing. "Clothes make them feel sexier than their boyfriends?"

Gramsci chuckled. "Obesity has reached epidemic proportions in America!" he reminded the Cow. "Clothes let you cover up, hide and distract. Sex, well, that typically happens in a state of at least partial undress. It's pretty - well, exposing!"

The Cow sighed. Those women hung on to their favourite clothes for twelve and a half years, on average. She wondered how much of that still fitted.

"David Beckham is going to feel so at home in LA," she sighed.

The Cow was most frustrated. Barely a week after returning from the mythical UK winter, she reads about snowstorms blanketing the foresaken island. It was all rather coincidental. Just before she'd arrived, there'd been tales of storms, too. But while she was there? Nothing, not the slightest indication of winter.

The timing was all a bit suspicious. It reminded her rather of her first trip to the damp island, where a few days earlier London was suicide-bombed. That trip had shown no evidence of heightened security; nothing, in fact - beyond news reports - to suggest that anything at all had happened. Then, no sooner had she returned to Cape Town, than further attempts were made.

It did rather strain credibility.

"It must be tough being menopausal in this weather," the Cow remarked to Gramsci. "The weather, tempers *and* hormones flaring must make quite an overwhelming combination!"

Gramsci downed the remains of his margarita and nodded sagely. There were advantages to being an arachnid in summer. Especially one domiciled in an east-facing office.

"At least the Romans built their frigidaria close to their caldaria," the Cow continued. "The Knowledge Factory hasn't been designed quite that considerately. And besides, the frigidaria are all full of freshers this time of year, being tested and taught."

Gramsci shook his head sadly. Females! One minute the Cow was grumbling about broken boilers leaving the jacuzzi tepid, and the next she was grumbling about the inadequate cooling. Though, he admitted grudgingly, there was a whole week and 6 000 miles between the two incidents.

"Perhaps they should stop pretending to fix the recurrent leaks in the Language Lab, and just let it fill up with water," he suggested. "It's well placed for a plunge-pool."

"Hmm..." the Cow mused, "I wonder if Michael Langley's budget stretches to providing laundered towels for the saunas, then? I can imagine Departmental Grants being a constraining factor - and having several colleagues sharing the same towels in their saunas could become a Health and Safety Issue."

Gramsci chuckled. "Who needs towels?" he asked. "We have all thoses unused hand-dryers in the cloakrooms..."

"Jealousy loomed large in the 1970s," remarked the Cow, "judging by the number of studies. Perhaps it was all that music advocating 'free love'?"

Gramsci shuddered. Along with its glory moments, the 1970s had also seen the likes of ABBA. Homicide, rather than lurve, was what he imagined that inspiring.

"Stereotypically," the Cow continued, "they found that women's jealousy was provoked by men's investment in other women - time, money or affection - whereas men's jealousy was provoked by women's sexual interest in other men. That does rather feed the 'men do sex, women do shopping' myth, doesn't it?"

Gramsci wasn't entirely sure this was a myth, but knew better than to argue. Instead he tried diversion.

"Interesting," he muttered. "According to Shettel-Neuber, Bryson & Young's 1978 study, when exposed to situations of sexual jealousy - say, a competitor for their mate's sexual or intimate attention appears on the scene - men's response is typically to become angry, whereas women's is typically to make themselves more attractive in an effort to retain their mate."

"Right - like Ivana Trump turning herself into Marla Maples to try to keep the Donald!" the Cow muttered. "That didn't get her very far!"

"Nor Marla Maples, for very long," chuckled Gramsci. "Mind you, I imagine it might have its uses. I imagine there are aspects of Monica Lewinsky that Bill Clinton wouldn't have minded Hillary emulating..."

The Cow imagined, somehow, that knitting wasn't one of them...

"What is it with men?!" harrumphed the Cow grumpily.

Gramsci scurried for cover. "What now?" he asked timidly.

"Well, JayPee would have us believe that men are mere victims, deprived of agency, in their relationships with women, despite all appearances to the contrary. It's almost as if he's wanting to generate some sympathy for the things!"

Gramsci could see he certainly wasn't getting any from the Cow. "But what makes you so certain he's wrong?" he ventured tentatively.

The Cow rolled her eyeballs dramatically. "Well," she said, "if that was the case, they wouldn't act like such genitalia with such impunity!"

Gramsci dared not ask. He knew he was going to hear, anyway.

"Take the man at the airport, for example. After *yet another* security gauntlet, I was sitting at Gate 27A repacking everything into my laptop bag, when this guy sits down next to me and starts chatting about nothing in particular. Separating my cables was rather more interesting, so I didn't pay terribly much attention. Then he asked me to watch his bags, and scurried off.

"A little later he returned with a woman, holding hands. After sitting down, he proceeded to ignore her, and resumed chatting to me. I resumed ignoring him. She tried to get his attention and finally succeeded, at which point he asked me where I was flying to. I told him, he burst out laughing, and told me his wife had thought they were in the wrong place, and were about to fly to Turkey by mistake.The poor woman started blushing, which gave him more reason to tease her - 'She's blushing now! See how silly she can be!'

"Fortunately boarding started soon after that, and I was among the first seats they called. Thanks to the Butler, I had a wonderful seat - acres of leg room, an aisle seat and best of all, no one next to me.Or next to that one.

"But not for long. The man decided, on seeing the seats free, that they'd rather sit there. His wife, having just settled into her seat, was clearly reluctant, and wanted to be closer to the window. He argued loudly that she'd not see anything - it was an overnight flight - and there was so much more space in the empty seats.

"Just as it looked inevitable, I was saved - some woman appeared in the aisle and asked timidly if she might sit next to me. She'd been seated next to a restless baby, and thought it best for all if she moved. I happily assented, and she sat down - just as the man finally dragged his wife out of her seat and started across.

"He was visibly unhappy to see one of the seats taken, and got really grumpy with his wife, and her eyes were still red and swollen when we got into Cape Town."

"And so on the basis of a single incident..." began Gramsci.

"Gmf!" exploded the Cow. "If JayPee was right, men as a class would be oppressed, and _no_ man would step out of line like that! The woman would have had him under her thumb, and chatting up stray women in airports would not have been on the 'permitted' list. Nor would humiliating her, or bullying her!"

Gramsci chuckled. "But don't you see? That just illustrates JayPee's point! It *looks* as though he's in control - but she got her way in the end, didn't she?"

The Cow felt her blood pressure rocket - if only she had a copy of "Men are from Mars" to thwack him with. But then, that would probably just prove his point...

"Why is it," the Cow asked Gramsci exasperatedly, "that high maintenance women still succeed in getting, or keeping, men?"

Gramsci bit what would have been his tongue, had he had a tongue to bite, had he not been a spider.

"Surely it's such a dysfunctional strategy, it would have been wiped out aeons ago by common sense?"

"Well," Gramsci muttered tentatively, "if it's survived this long, it must be effective, surely?"

The Cow rolled her eyes dramatically. "Studies indicate that people pair up with other people of roughly equivalent mateworthiness. And mateworthiness seems to differ between genders - in a woman, men favour physical attractiveness, say; whereas women reputedly favour those attributes that translate into ability to provide resources of one kind or another - so while you might get a stunning woman with a creepy-looking guy, he's probably either loaded, or loaded!"

Gramsci shrugged. Nothing new there, but he couldn't help thinking of Anna Nicole Smith.

"So then," the Cow persisted, "what's with these high maintenance women?"

Gramsci reflected. In the same way that the studies showed that women preferred older men, and men preferred younger women - but some younger men had to settle for older women because that was all they could get given their own low mateworthiness - perhaps it had something to do with what was feasible under the circumstances?

The Cow shook her head. "No, I don't buy that," she said slowly. "Then you'd get lower-end guys stuck with the high maintenance women. Mostly it's decent guys, who could be doing a lot better for themselves. Though, admittedly, sometimes their own ranking of themselves is a bit off, and they settle for less than they could get."

"Hmm," mused Gramsci. "Perhaps it's a strategy to fool men into thinking they're more mateworthy than they really are! Like playing hard to get?"

The Cow paused. There could be some sense in that. If a woman was demanding and difficult and needed a constant stream of attention, reassurance or material goods, rather than signalling that she was difficult and demanding and not worth the effort, she might in fact confuse him into believing that surely she _must_ be worth the effort, or she'd not be doing that? It made no sense, but then, little about mating games did. And hey, it seemed to work for many of those women.

"But what if he wakes up to the fact that she is just difficult and demanding and not worth the effort, after all?" she asked.

Gramsci chuckled. "We're talking men here, right? Which man is going to admit he was fooled into thinking some unmateworthy woman was more attractive because of such a strategy? He's invested in maintaining the myth!"

The Cow nodded. It explained many things. Hormones had a lot to answer for!