Carnivorous Cow

"Can you believe it!" snorted the Cow. "Another one! That's the second, in as many days!"

"What?" enquired Gramsci timidly.

"These letters from the Library, advising me that books have been recalled, and I must please return them by their due date."

"Well..." Gramsci offered, nervously, "there might be someone else waiting...?"

"Gmf!" fumed the Cow. "That's not the issue! It's by when they want the books!" She pointed at her screen. "Look! December 2006 was nine months ago! how on earth am I supposed to return a book on a date nine months  in the past? If it was that simple to turn back the clock nine months...." she rolled her eyeballs.

Gramsci could picture it. Maternity hospitals would all shut down overnight, if it was that easy.  

"Perhaps they've got a time machine?" he suggested.

"Well, I hope it's better than the Wayback Machine!" the Cow muttered. "It seems the copy I have of one of my papers is not the final version. Google Scholar can find a copy, but that web link points somewhere entirely else now, and even the Wayback machine gets confused!"

"Perhaps it was all those diagrams in that paper?" mused Gramsci. "I also found it a little confusing, with all those arrows..."

"A time machine would be useful, though" the Cow speculated. "There are many people here wanting to turn the clock back."

"Whyever?" asked Gramsci. "They merely have to stroll down to Bremner. I don't think the 70s ever left, there..." 

"This looks like a brothel!" the emissary from Bremner announced.

The Cow looked across at the spluttering Head of Department, the dumbstruck Deputy Dean, and wondered, which were the sex worker/s? Which the punter/s?

She puzzled over it on returning to her office, too, and enquired of Gramsci what he thought.  

"Hmm..." mused Gramsci.  "Interesting. Did he mention which brothel?  Perhaps he had a particular one in mind, and it might be easier to allcoate roles with that information?"

The Cow paused. She had once been called "Madam", but somehow Heidi Fleiss  was not her first choice of shadow. Michelle Pfeiffer in her catwoman latex outfits, though - that she could perhaps consider...

Her train of thought was abruptly derailed by Gramsci's interjection. "I don't suppose," he asked quietly, "that anyone asked the emissary from Bremner quite how he came to be so familiar with the appearances of brothels?" 

"Well," she muttered, "the protests of denial from the HoD might also be up for scrutiny, then.." 

The Cow was really struggling. it had been a long week, but it was just too many things, one on top of another. She sighed protractedly, disturbing Gramsci from his siesta under the keyboard.

"Wazzup?" he muttered crossly.

"Well..." the Cow began slowly. "First off, the mayor announces that her being arrested in Mitchell se Complain the other night was 'worse than apartheid'. And while I don't doubt that for her, personally, it probably was, it must have come as an awful slap in the face for all those other Capetonians for whom arrest during apartheid didn't simply mean being taken politely into a police station and booked. 'Attending an illegal gathering' back then meant anything from sustained interrogation to beating, torture or disappearment." The Cow paused. 

"And then," she continued, "the Prez has to go and make a comment to the effect that everyone born in Africa is an African. On the one hand that's so obvious it doesn't bear repeating, but can you imagine the implications? All those EE reports that are going to need to be changed, all those personnel records recoded, all those challenges in court to EE policy implementation strategies and appointments..." She rolled her eyes. "If everyone local is now an African, how on earth are selection committees going to apply the policies?"

Gramsci shuddered. Simple enough if one changed the wording of the policy, he supposed, but how many years would it take to walk that through all of the relevant committees to get that in place? And what happened in the meantime?

"Plus," continued the Cow, "Mr Timberland has decided to reinvent himself as Mr Rogue! A pink-paper reading metrosexual, trying to butch it out with macho shoes! Who does he think he's fooling?"

"What colour were his socks?" asked Gramsci nervously. The Cow ignored him.

"Even here!" she roared. "The new look blogspot!"

"What's wrong with that?" asked Gramsci. "The links field might be broken, but there are some cool new features...?"

"Not that!" the Cow spluttered impatiently. "The design of the summary page! The colours! Haven't you noticed? Oranje blanje blou! We're back to the apartheid flag here! We just need a Union Jack and a Vierkleur tucked away somewhere!"

Gramsci looked - and had to admit it was true. "Perhaps we should offer blog space to former staff, then, too?" he suggested. "Perhaps the colour scheme might be comforting to the mayor?" 

"Guess what?" the Cow chuckled as she tottered into her office, clutching keys and coffee and cards in a decidedly unbalanced fashion.

Gramsci looked up from his afternoon snack as the Cow handed him a postcard. He'd seen that picture before, in the Library, only more of it and in colour, so he wasn't quite sure what the point was.

"The other side!" The Cow rolled her eyes impatiently. Gramsci dutifully looked.

"Might be an interesting exhibition," he admitted, "But why are they wanting to find UCT? Did someone misplace it?"

"Look closely!" the Cow insisted. Gramsci looked, bemusement etched deep into his chitinous exoskeleton. Finally he admitted defeat. "What?" he asked, perplexed.

"The email address! What do you notice about it?"

Light broke out in Gramsci's multiple eyes. "It's a GMail address!" he shreiked. "I don't believe it! The Department of the wife of the DVC with the IT portfolio... using a GMail address for Official Purposes! I guess that's a vote of confidence in the UCT Email system alright!"

"Well," the Cow confided, "I hear that within the passages of ICTS they no longer refer to it as GroupWise, but as GroupSex."

"Why would that be?" Gramsci asked, puzzled. One of those sounded a lot more fun than the other.

The Cow shrugged. "Because," she sighed, "they reckon we're all screwed..."