Rhino Reality

What has the plight of the rhinoceros got to do with Jean Baudrillard? You may well ask. The famous French philosopher, who died in 2007, is possibly best known for coming up with an idea so bizarre, it makes you wonder what he was smoking besides Gauloises. He called this concept the simulacrum, and it’s so weird, there aren’t many people who can get their heads around it. Let me try and simplify the thing and put it in a nutshell.

The simulacrum is not just an imitation of reality, it becomes reality itself, and the original reality dwindles into the background and becomes meaningless, and people then relate to the simulacrum and not to reality. See what I mean?

Now, just the other morning, me and my buddies were playing pool over at the Sea View. We were discussing the price of rhino horn.

“If you had a pet rhino,” I said, “would you cut its horn off and sell it?”

“For sure,” said Cupcake, straightening up after having sunk his white. “You know what a kilogram of rhino horn fetches nowadays?”

“Same price as cocaine,” said the other guy.

“Which is?” I asked, not knowing the price of cocaine.

“Around $50 000 a kilo.”

“Holy rhino shit!” I said. “That’s like R350 000! Bring me the chain saw.”

“Except you don’t own a chain saw,” said Cupcake.

“And where’s your pet rhino?” asked the other guy, squinting down his cue and dreaming of a 3-in-one ricochet.

“I suppose it’s all about supply and demand,” I said. “All those Orientals wanting a scarce commodity.  The fewer the rhino, the more they’ll pay for the horns.”

“Basic economics,” said Cupcake.

The other guy struck his white one helluva shot, which resulted in just about every other ball on the table being displaced but not one of them ended up in a pocket.

“Basic stupidity,” I said. “These Orientals are paying 350 grand for a kilo of powdered keratin – the same stuff as your fingernails are made of.”

“So? It’s not the intrinsic value that counts. It’s the perceived value, my mate.”

“Just another fucking simulacrum,” said the other guy.

“Yeah, like that stupid watch of yours,” said Cupcake, pointing to the other guy’s imitation gold Rolex. “Does that piece of shit even work?”

“Of course it works. But it loses like two days in four hours. Doesn’t worry me, though. I don’t wear a watch to tell the time. Who needs a watch when you got a cell phone? Everybody’s got a cell phone.”

“So why wear the fucking thing?”

“Image, man, image,” said the other guy. “It throws people into a state of mental confusion. They can’t work out if it’s genuine or not; there’s so much fake shit about, you never can be sure of anything.”

“It’s not a watch you’re wearing,” I said. “It’s a signifier of something else. Some kind of hyper reality.”

“Yah, that’s how it works for me. People think it’s probably a fake, but maybe it’s not. Maybe  I stole it, and that makes me kind of dangerous. Or maybe this Rolex is the genuine 50 thousand buck thing, and I’ve got millions in the bank, even though I look like a loser, And that makes me super cool, jy weet? Anyway, this watch, which I bought for a hundred buckaroos at a flea market, makes people treat me with more respect than if I wore some nondescript watch, or no watch at all.”

 “Yes,” said Cupcake. “But this hyper reality bullshit, this simulacrum, is no good for our rhino population.”

“That’s for sure,” I said. “As long as the Chinese believe in the efficacy of the simulacrum, the demand will far outweigh the supply. We can say goodbye to the rhino.”

“Not so fast,” said the other guy. “We must turn the simulacrum to our advantage, the way I’ve made this stupid watch replace the reality of a genuine Rolex with something that is not an imitation of a Rolex watch, but an imitation of the Rolex brand. The watch itself is no longer of any consequence. We can do the same thing with the rhino – and make some money at the same time.”

“Is this your crazy thought for the day?” I said.

“What we do is this,” said the other guy. “We make ourselves a rhino horn mould. Then we get a whole lot of ground up cattle horn from the abattoir, and a good modern binding agent that sets really hard, and then we go into production churning out hundreds of imitation rhino horns.”

“Aha!” said Cupcake. “I think I know where you’re going with this little brainwave of yours. We make a quick fortune without having to work too hard, and then we flood the market with our imitation horns.”

“That’s it,” said the other guy. “You got the picture just like that.” And he snapped his fingers in the air. “At a critical point the market will collapse and rhino horn, genuine or fake, will acquire junk status.”

“Brilliant!” I said. “Not only will we have made a pile of lovely boodle and saved the rhino from extinction, but we’ll have exploded the simulacrum. “Those idiots in Viet Nam and China will have to find some other worthless commodity to which they can attach the pseudo magical properties they now attribute to rhino horn.”

“It seems,” said Cupcake, “that the human brain is becoming less and less capable of dealing with reality in its raw condition. But hey, we’re supposed to be playing pool! Whose turn is it?”

To view my longer work as an author, you can find me on Smashwords here.

Stock Cars in Bredasdorp

A lot of men in Gansbaai spent their spare time on the couch watching sport and downloaded series. Others passed their spare time in the pubs, watching sport and talking mindless shit to while away the empty hours. Then there were those who were forever going off in all weather hoping to catch one of the last few fish left in the ocean. Derek did a bit of all of this, but his main obsession was driving his stock car.

“Have you ever been to stock cars, Sedrick?”

“I once went to stock cars at Tygerberg Raceway when I was a kid. It was a bit like going to watch wrestling, and I remember laughing a lot. It must be fun crashing into other cars and forcing them off the track.”

“There’s more to it than that, you know. You will need to come and check it out if you guys are going to help me.”

“I’ve been to Bredasdorp a good few times,” said Sedrick “but I never saw any sign of a race track. Where is it?”

“You know where the grain silos are? It’s behind them, near the lime factory. Actually, it’s built in an old lime quarry, and the surface of the track is lime. I joined the Bredasdorp Motor Club six years ago, and I race every season. But in six years I have never won a single race. Not one. Even the fucking woman drivers beat me!”

Sedrick took note of the emotional distress that was causing the man’s face to twitch, his lips to tremble, his eyes to become moist, and his voice to quiver and falter. This guy was on the point of emitting an almighty sob. Sedrick’s professional empathy did not extend to mopping up snot en trane. It was time for some tough love.

“Listen here, Derek: pull yourself towards yourself and stop being a self-pitying wanker, pulling yourself in the wrong direction, if you know what I mean. For Christ’s sake, there’s always a solution if you are prepared to use your grey matter, and not to try to get your rectum to do the work of your cerebral cortex. Monty and I have been giving some serious thought to your predicament, and we are in the process of devising a strategy that will enable you to win the race of your choice. Because you lack the nerve, the judgement and the skill to win a race on your own merit, we will have to intervene and somehow handicap the other drivers. Monty favours the use of a sniper rifle to take out tyres. This idea has major drawbacks, though. For one thing, we don’t have a sniper rifle, and to buy one, even if it’s second hand, would cost in the region of 30 thousand. And what if Monty should miss and hit a driver, or a spectator? No, I don’t think that is a viable option.”

“So what do you suggest?” Derek had decided not to open the floodgates, and had perked up and was showing an interest. “You must have something in mind.”

(This is an extract from Strandveld Private Investigators.)

To view my longer work as an author, including Strandveld Private Investigators, you can find me on Smashwords here.

Mary Had a Little Lamb

Mary had a little lamb. When it was six months old Mary’s father loaded it, along with 149 other little lambs, onto a truck and sent it to the abattoir. At the abattoir it received a blow to the forehead from a captive bolt stun gun. Then its throat was slit and its little heart pumped blood into a receptacle until it stopped beating. After being hung up to drain its head and feet were sawn off and it was skinned. It was cut open, top to bottom, and heart, liver and kidneys were removed before lungs, stomach and bladder were disposed of.

Mary’s little lamb, which was now a carcass, travelled down the line suspended from a meat hook until it reached a cold room, was weighed and stamped, and left hanging in the company of thousands of other carcasses for a week. After a week it was transported in a refrigerated truck to a supermarket and butchered into a number of cuts. Legs of lamb, lamb chops, lamb cutlets and braai ribs were neatly packed on polystyrene trays, sealed in kling wrap, weighed, labelled and put on display. At least a dozen different consumers bought bits and pieces of Mary’s little lamb and took them home to barbecue or roast. None of them knew that Mary still cried when she thought about her little lamb.

From the Nursery Rhymes and Fairy Tales collection.

To view my longer work as an author, you can find me on Smashwords here.

Paradoxical Materialism

“The stinking rich will always be with us,” I said. “It’s in the Bible.”

“I thought it was the poor who will always be with us,” said the other guy. “Jeez, how long is it going to take this idiot to let us in? All he has to do is push a button.”

“Not so easy,” I said. “There must be a hundred buttons to choose from in that digital fortress.”

We were sitting in the other guy’s car looking at the big sliding gate, waiting for Cupcaked to work out the difference between his arse and his elbow.

“It’s in both the New and Old Testicle,” I went on, “So every exploiter of labour, whether Christian or Jew, feels perfectly justified in paying his workers a pittance, while amassing as much personal wealth as he possibly can. God gave him permission. Ah, at last!”

While the gate got out of our way, the other guy started up, engaged gear, and then stalled the engine. We began to roll back towards the street and there was a long blast from a passing vehicle.

“Nice driving,” I said. “You nearly managed to put a dent in the newest and biggest Merc in the country.”

Cupcake met us in the driveway and indicated where we should park. He seemed pleased to see us.

“I need to show you around,” he said, leading the way towards the house. “You see this?” pointing to the big pond with water feature at the centre of the circular drive. “It’s full of koi, 2k apiece. Two thousand rand for one fucking fish!”  And he spat on the water in disgust. A fish immediately surfaced and made short work of the insult.

We skirted a bed of dwarf cypresses and followed him across an expanse of meticulously raked gravel.

“This is supposed to be a Zen garden,” he said, dragging his feet and then trampling a bonsai oak. We arrived at the front door and stepped inside the grand residence.

Modern, airy, full of light.

“You see what I mean?” said Cupcake, as if we knew what he had been ranting about in his head. “Marble throughout, even on the terraces. Rosa Aurora imported from Portugal”

“Cold in winter,” said the other guy, trying to be helpful.

“Underfloor heating!” snapped Cupcake. “This is the fucking atrium. His Highness likes to lie here a lot.” There were some very comfortable looking recliners. “Looking out to sea by day, and up at the fiery firmament at night, glass of single malt in hand.”

“Single malt?” I said. “Sounds promising.”

Cupcake gave me a hostile look and said, “This is what I mean. This place starts corrupting you the moment you step inside.”

He led the way to a sitting room with a fireplace.

“You see that mantelpiece and the surround? Granite. Stolen from the Acropolis, or the Parthenon, or somewhere. This is the sound system.” He opened the door of a cabinet to reveal electronic equipment. “Speakers in every room. The place is wired so your remote works anywhere in the house. What do you want to listen to? Graceland?Now let me show you the fucking summer lounge.”

The summer lounge also served as the dining room.

“You see these art works everywhere? Very classy, you think. This guy must be a connoisseur. Such good taste. Like fuck! All this cunt does is sign the cheques. The architect designs the house, the design company furnishes it, down to last detail, and the landscape guru sorts out the garden. This is how it works. And check this thing.”

We were heading for the kitchen and in a corner of some interim space stood an old fashioned jukebox.

“This is a genuine imitation jukebox from the 1950s. Art deco crap. You put your dime in, the mechanical arm selects a 7-single, and you’re listening to Fats Domino or Little Richard, crystal clear because it’s all digital and not really the real thing.”

We breezed through the designer kitchen and out to the breakfast nook, which was a kind of glass-walled rondavel jutting out into the garden.

“Now let me show you the master bedroom and hot tub spa,” said Cupcake.

“Don’t bother,” I said. “We’ve got the picture.”

We went and stood on the main terrace and looked out over about a thousand hectares of lawn to the lagoon and the sea in the distance.

“You see those tall palms next to the swimming pool?” said Cupcake. “They were brought in by helicopter. And the pool is kept heated twelve months of the year, even though he is hardly ever in residence.”

“Very nice,” I said. “Now how about offering us some of that famous whisky?”

We made ourselves comfortable in the atrium and were soon joined by Cupcake bearing a tray loaded with a bottle of single malt, ice, Sparletta and glasses.

“This is the life,’ I said.

“Yah,” said the other guy. “This isn’t work. Only a fool would complain about a job like this.” He was looking at Cupcake. “What’s your problem?”

“Problem?” said Cupcake. “This house is my problem, mate. This house is a beautiful woman without a vagina. You know what I mean?”

We looked out at the distant strip of blue sea, with the line of white breakers in front and the blue sky at the back, and thought about it.

“Sorry, I don’t get it,” said the other guy.

“Not a bad metaphor,” I said, savouring the subtle blend of highland peat and sheep’s piss infused in water from a bonny brook. “To fall in love with the beautiful exterior, only to discover that one can never get at the honey pot inside must leave one feeling desolate, man, desolate.”

“Okay, now I see,” said the other guy. “You’re not content with living in luxury if you don’t also possess the fortune that makes it possible.”

“Oh, for Christ’s sake!” said Cupcake. “That’s not what I mean at all. What I mean is that all this is initially seductive, but it’s superficial and largely worthless. I’ve been housesitting the place for three weeks now, and it’s making me suicidal. It’s like living in an empty waiting room, it’s so impersonal and cold. And it doesn’t make the owner happy, either. You should see him. He’s 50, fat, got an ulcer, and just had a triple bypass. He’s divorced and his kids only contact him when they want more money. And you should see his neighbour up the road. One of the richest men in South Africa and a real miserable looking bastard who wouldn’t piss on you if you were on fire.”

“Hey,” I said, “That must be the old dude we nearly crashed into. Does he look like a malevolent toad? Like he’s got no chin he’s so obese?’

“That’s him,’ Sid Cupcake.

“So would you prefer to be looking after some poky two-roomed apartment in a dilapidated block in a rundown part of the city?” asked the other guy. “Where the entrance smells of dustbins and broken plumbing, and there’s a screaming baby next door, and dope fiends overhead trying to kill each other?”

“No, I wouldn’t,’ said Cupcake. “But that’s not what I’m getting at. Look, for the first week or so I couldn’t believe my luck and I was beginning to think that this way of life was what one should aspire to. But then I started to feel uneasy and restless. There was something wrong. It took another three days of worrying about it before I suddenly realised what it was about. The materialism paradox.”

“Too much value attached to the goodies money can buy?” I said. “Tell that to a man who lives in a shack.”

“Why is it a paradox?” asked the other guy.

“Because,’ said Cupcake, “I realised that the millionaire who owns this mansion is, on a certain level, far less of a materialist than I am. Or the man in the shack.

“How so?’

“Look,” said Cupcake, “Let’s take my old Corolla, for example. It’s a crappy old car and it gives me a lot of grief, but I can’t afford an upgrade. When it performs, I’m grateful; and when it misbehaves, I curse and threaten it. I have fond memories of having sex in the back seat, and every dent in the bodywork has a story to tell. You see, I have a relationship with that car. Now take the millionaire. He has a sports car and an SUV standing in the garage. They are hardly ever driven and their owner looks upon them with a total lack of sentiment. He sees them for what they are: disposable commodities that come with a price tag. He values them for the advertising hype about performance, craftsmanship and elegant styling, but only because it confers status. And it’s the same with everything else. This house, the contents, the garden, the fish – they have value for him only because he can afford them and put them on display. He doesn’t relate to the material world the way we do.”

“Well,” I said, “I suppose you could be onto something there. It’s a different way of looking at it. But surely you’re not suggesting this millionaire has a superior value system to yours?”

“Of course not,” said Cupcake. “What I’m saying is that he has become detached from the material objects he possesses. What he values most is the prestige associated with conspicuous consumption. He judges his own success not by how much he enjoys the fruits of his wealth but by the respect, admiration and envy his wealth is able to command. That’s why people like him are driven to make more and more money. There’s always someone able to behave more ostentatiously than you, though, so satisfaction is forever fleeting. I can see what it’s about and it fills me with feelings of meaninglessness and futility. I can’t take this sinecure any longer.”

“Hey, take it easy, man,” said the other guy, getting up to fill the glasses. Cupcake was showing signs of psychological distress, and on the point of becoming seriously distraught. “Keep a grip on the here-and-now. Hold on to the reality of genuine materialism, not that other kak. Here, drink this. This thousand-bucks whisky tastes better with lemonade and gives you more of a kick.”

“Yah,’ I said. “Just because this scumbag materialist has lost his soul down the toilet doesn’t mean we can’t try an wake the dead in his marble-floored mausoleum. We could start with a pool party. Tomorrow.”

“A topless pool party sounds cool,’ said the other guy. “With a venue like this a whole new world of possibilities could open up. What sports car did you say this creep has got in the garage?”

The flicker of interest in Cupcake’s eyes was encouraging. It meant that futility and meaninglessness hadn’t gained the upper hand just yet.

To view my longer work as an author, you can find me on Smashwords here.

My Affair with Florence Nightingale

When I was in my twenties, I worked as a hospital orderly for a period of about three years. This nursing career was not a continuous one, though, because in those days I was incapable of holding down a job for more than six months. I came and went a few times at False Bay Hospital and at Groote Schuur, and I did a stint in the septic ward at Joburg General. Hospital work was broken by intervals of other employment or just plain unemployment.

I can’t say that I enjoyed being an orderly. The work was menial and poorly paid, and carried virtually no status value with it. Only the hospital porter could be considered inferior to me, and I was ordered about by all and sundry. (Porters are the men who push patients about on trolleys, and have been known to molest female corpses en route to the morgue.) So why did I subject myself to those three years of lowly labour?

Well, maybe there was a certain amount of job satisfaction that helped to make it worthwhile. As I rolled a patient from one side to the other, allowing the nurse to change the soiled bed sheets, I used to think, Man, this is more rewarding, more meaningful than … than …. Ah, what the hell, at least I was making myself useful. And that wasn’t really why I was doing it. No, I was doing it to learn about the big picture. This was a crash course in sickness, ageing, suffering and death. It was about observing human behaviour so that one day I might feel sufficiently qualified to make a statement about human nature and the Condition. And it provided me with any amount of material that would be invaluable to an aspiring writer.

Most of the time the ward was busy with a combination of routine and emergency activity. But there were quiet moments, like after meals, when there was a lull and a hush, and I was able to jot down my notes. Using the trolley parked at the foot of a patient’s bed as a writing desk, I recorded highlights from the day. Sometimes it was high drama, but mostly it was just snippets of conversation that appealed to me. And I became something of an expert at getting patients to tell me their life story. It didn’t matter that most of it was bullshit; I was fascinated and entertained, and grateful for the rich store I was amassing. 

When my inglorious nursing career came to an end in 1980 I had a whole shoebox full of notes but not much else to show for the experience. Oh yes, I had also acquired a degree of empathy for the down-and-out, the good-for-nothing and the loser. For the common man.

And people would remark on what an unassuming, self deprecating person I had become, and I would tell them to try wiping a thousand arses, and they, too, would learn a little humility.

Anyway, to cut to the chase and to get to the point of this post, I eventually got round to sorting through my notes, putting them into order and editing them. The result was an 18 000 word eBook entitled Henry Fuckit’s Nursing Notes. It is available from Amazon and Smashwords.

Henpecked and Pussy Whipped

When I posted this piece on BooksLive in 2013 I was attacked by some furious feminists and was accused of misogyny.

Back in the 20^th century it was called henpecked.  A nagging wife would wear the pants and rule the roost, and treat her spouse with a lack of respect that sometimes developed into contempt. Taken to extremes, a woman’s sadistic delight in the humiliation of her husband could lead to murderous consequences. This is what happened to Tommy Taljaard, his fat wife and their effeminate son.

I Visited Myself