Carnivorous Cow

"Can you be fired for credulousness?" asked the Cow. "Some stories leave you unsure of whether to laugh or cry. Take this one: some woman watches a DVD spelling doom & gloom for the whiteys when Madiba dies, and then along comes the SMS to say he's in a coma, and she packs them all off in a tent to Heilbron!

"After two days they realise not much has changed, so they go home, and she finds she's lost her job." The Cow shook her head sadly.

"Completely whack," agreed Gramsci. "She was probably one of those who stockpiled candles and baked beans just before the 1994 elections, too!"

The Cow smiled. She knew people who were still tripping over cans in their garage - the candles long used up thanks to Eskom; but this woman was 49, not 79. Surely she ought to have learned?

"To make it worse," the Cow continued, "she attributed their credulity to the credibility of the Suidlanders DVD! If someone told me to gather at the Heilbron Spar, I'd be a little wary. I've never been to Heilbron, but the queues at the local Spar are bad enough normally. And that's not even on Lotto nights!"

"Still," added Gramsci, "it was an awful waste of an opportunity. A whole bunch of stupid people - the kind who believe right wing scare stories - all gathered in an exposed place, together... Why couldn't some enterprising group have done the gene pool a favour and earned them a Darwin Award?"

The Cow shuddered. "That's it! I'm never shopping at a Spar again!" She rolled her eyes dramatically. "If they're dumb enough to believe that, they're dumb enough to pitch up at the wrong branch." She sighed. "Online shopping just got a whole lot more attractive..."

The Cow was astounded to read of a kindred spirit in India. That sweet little bovine, it appeared, had taken to hoovering up his housemates after lights-out - behaviour with which the Cow could completely sympathise, given that they were a bunch of chattering chickens.

"He was probably just trying to get some sleep," she explained to Gramsci, "and a midnight snack on the side."

Gramsci shuddered. He thought fondly of The Cow and the Chicken, where the two protagonists shared a bedroom happily. He couldn't imagine that Cow tucking into that Chicken - after all, they both preferred pork.

But the Indian cow was rumoured to have been a tiger in a previous life. A bad tiger, it must be assumed, to have descended to life as a cow, and perhaps the next incarnation was now doomed to be a chicken.

But the Cow was still reeling under the shock. "Might there be more of us, out there?" she wondered aloud. "After all, if it can happen spontaneously..."

Gramsci chuckled. "Oh, I don't think the universe need worry too much about that!" he laughed. "After all, the report did state that it was possible only in exceptional cases!"

Exceptional? Ah, smiled the Cow. She could live with being exceptional...

The Cow was feeling very grumpy. Grumpier than usual, even for a Monday. She had a backlog of online banking to do - bills to pay, plastic to unmelt and airtime to buy - and Telkom had prevented her from doing so all weekend.

"You'd swear," she fumed to Gramsci, "that they didn't want to get paid. The line was so flakey it dropped every few minutes, and when you redialed, the connection speed was about 60% of what you'd last gotten. In the end, I was probably connecting at half a bit per second, with the wind behind me, and substantially less when it changed."

Gramsci sympathised. Everytime it rained, his connection with reality was impaired, too. Mainly because of all the hallucinogenic insects he ate to stay warm and bright in amongst the grey.

"And now..." muttered the Cow, "the pain refuses to recede. After getting bounced repeatedly because my login details are incorrect, I reset my password, and *still* can't get in. Phoning the bank's helpline is a nightmare - how many hours of distorted George Michael can you sit through before you want to commit mass homicide? And then..." the Cow spluttered enraged, "you go to their feedback form, on the web - once you find it, well-hidden as it is - to tell them that every conceivable aspect of their service sucks... and find that that doesn't work, either! Text won't enter, menus won't drop down, buttons press in vain.."

Gramsci shook his head in sympathy. Mondays weren't kind.

The Cow shifted awkwardly. "Then it occured to me," she muttered, "that Firefox might be updating again for a reason. Two updates in two days generally means something. So I tried Safari instead, and that worked."

"So you managed to pay your bills then?" asked Gramsci.

"Gmf!" snorted the Cow. "Those can wait! I just transferred some money to a card whose code I remember so I can draw money for a caffeine shot!"

"Perhaps," ventured Gramsci, "life would be simpler if they cut out the middleman? Dispensed with banks, and paid the money directly to Amazon, or some such, and you could just order the goods direct from there?"

The Cow blanched. The thought of having to pay excise duty on every cup of coffee was horrifying. She wondered if coffee beans would grown in a pot in her office?

The Cow was intrigued to read about a study which found a correlation between teenage sexual precocity and delinquency. "Proof," she declared to Gramsci, "of the anarchic nature of hormones!"

But sadly the findings didn't really support that assertion very strongly. Partly because the study's definition of "delinquency" seemed so bizarre. "I'm surprised they found any teenagers that were not delinquent, with such a definition!"Gramsci agreed. "It seems more like a definition of Teenagerdom than Delinquency!"

The Cow nodded sadly. But then, the study was American. In America, having the wrong political opinion, or observing the wrong religion, would be deemed "delinquent", if not constitute outright misdemeanours.

"Calling it 'nonconventional' behaviour also signals how unfamiliar the researchers were with real teenagers," she commented. "After all, how many teenagers do you know who've never engaged in 'minor crimes'? Especially," her voice rose slightly, "when they include things like damage to property, trying out drugs or -" she paused in shock "graffiti!"

Gramsci looked up, surprised. Graffiti was a crime? He'd always considered it a form of cultural expression, like wearing All Star Hi-Tops or skateboarding.

"Gmf!" The Cow snorted. "Tagging, maybe. Proper graffiti is an art form! Visually, conceptually - good graffiti artists rank up there with Joseph Beuys or Rene Magritte!"

Gramsci puzzled a little longer. "Perhaps that's exactly it!" he mused. "Magritte's pipe!"

The Cow looked up, perplexed.

Gramsci continued. "Never mind Foucault! Think Zapiro! uMalume's drooping, dripping shower head. Mbeki's perky pipe. Sexual incontinence vs 'normal' sexual potency!"

The Cow shook her head. She thought that was stretching it a little. And besides, she really didn't want another brush with uMalume's lawyers!