Everybody knows generalisations are the heartbeat of truth. Leonard Cohen, the greatest living poet, said: “Everybody knows the dice are loaded, everybody rolls with their fingers crossed, everybody knows that the war is over, everybody knows that the good guys lost.” So the panel of pundits at TopEditor have put together the generalisations of 2007 […]
Llewellyn Kriel
Posted inLifestyle
A rhinestone Xmas
DAMN! I tried so hard to have a happy Christmas, but the best I managed was a somewhat disjointed crazy kinds-in-the-kitchen porridge of highs and lows. I can’t say I expected much from Christmas itself. Since I’ve aged and grown more and more disillusioned with the general direction this most glorious of lands is taking, […]
Posted inGeneral
Warahulu: An anthology of scariness
Is there a word for the ability, no, the power to move people, to stir them to act as you want them to? Persuasion: “cause to believe, provide a sound reason to do something” doesn’t quite capture the essence. Charisma: “compelling charm, attractiveness that can inspire devotion”; closer, but no coconut. Inspiration: “divine influence, fill […]
Posted inLifestyle
Santa Claus gone bye-bye now
Shopping, any kind of shopping, at this time of year is like taking a course in suicide bombing for beginners, or how to make your own nuclear device with household detergents. There’s a fair probability you might get injured. After two hours of futilely looking for two very run-o’-the-mill power-tool accessories, I grabbed copies of […]
Posted inGeneral, News/Politics
Denzel Washington and predictions for 2008
Denzel Washington once said to me: “The wonderful thing about predictions is they’re simultaneously the front door and the back door. You can be wrong a thousand times, but you only gotta be right once.” After the party in Polokwane, which, by all accounts went fairly well and a moerse lot of animals died, we […]
Posted inLifestyle, News/Politics
Where have all the fun ones gone?
Of course, now that the RPs (reluctant punters) have made their bucks on the Zuma pot, the world is abuzz with predictions. I made a cool R250 on a Zuma win — c’mon, at 10:1 it was a straight gimme! Anyway, with my new wealth, I went shopping at Northgate. I was looking for Andrew […]
Posted inLifestyle, News/Politics
Democracy, ubuntu and other myths
Don’t give me this fiction about “the nation” watching Polokwane breathlessly awaiting the outcome. For the majority of South Africans watching their backs, their children, the weather, their pennies, their travel and the odd soapie is labour enough. Some big party a zillion kilometres away in a place they’ve never heard of and care less […]
Posted inLifestyle
The pinfall wizards
If you subscribe to DStv, you can watch at least 13 different soapies in any given week. The “soapie”, this overused word, as vapid and asinine as the stuff it describes, has created a Las Vegas-type culture in the desert-minds too whacked out after a day of shopping, washing, dusting, picking up the kids or […]
Posted inGeneral
FET: Failed Education and Thinking
By Chayse Kriel I have been at school for 11 years now and am entering my final year as a matric pupil at Glenwood High School, one of Durban’s best high schools, steeped in tradition and known for its high standards. I have been fortunate enough to have been given a sound upbringing at home, […]
Posted inLifestyle, News/Politics
BAC when we were bulletproof
“It’s only a perception that crime is out of hand,” I was told when I agreed to accept a directorship as communication director on Business against Crime — Gauteng in 1998. “Your job is to change that perception.” I had been headhunted from the Chamber of Mines by this august Section 21 company. BAC had […]
Posted inLifestyle, Media, News/Politics
It’s too much about the colour of the critic
Racism, no matter how disguised or nuanced, remains one of the ugliest and most deeply entrenched dark sides of human nature. It’s been in society since time immemorial. And it was naive of us to dream it would ever disappear — least of all in South Africa. It has taken on a million faces and […]
Posted inBusiness, Media, News/Politics
To skill a mockingbird
It is a tragic human failing that we find it so easy to take our elders for granted. Maybe because I am easing into that category with alacrity; maybe because I massacred so many brain cells as a piece of furniture at the Fed; but all the hype around skills shortages and development and training […]