Posted inLifestyle

Viva, Darwin Awards, viva!

Aside from the internet’s usefulness in being able to complete every quiz crossword ever, being home to the blogosphere and providing P2P connectivity and downloadable music and movies, the Darwin Awards are the greatest social contribution it has made. Without the Darwin Awards, which far outshine trinkets such as the Oscars, Olympics and Nobels, how […]

Posted inMediaNews/Politics

Round one to the Sowetan

The axe finally fell at 12:15pm yesterday (Friday) when the publisher and CEO of the Sowetan, Bongani Keswa upheld my dismissal as ruled by the earlier internal disciplinary hearing. To recap: I had been working as senior revise sub-editor (a kind of final quality checkpoint) for 18 months on the Sowetan. During that time I […]

Posted inMedia

Dishing up the sloppy seconds

Everybody makes mistakes. I know that only too well. How the hell I am alive today I have no idea. I am a Monarch of Mistakes, Emperor of Errors, Pharaoh of Fuck-Ups. Some I have walked away from unscathed. Some I barely stood up from. Others I have survived by nothing short of God’s interference. […]

Posted inLifestyleNews/Politics

‘The roots of fear’ and the leaftips of hope

Sharon Begley, an outstanding reporter/writer for Newsweek, wrote an exceptional piece on the roles and rules of fear and hope in American presidential politics (“The roots of fear”, December 24 2007). Against the backdrop of South Africa’s mostly superficial Bakelite* political analysis in which the same tawdry arguments about personalities and so-called “policy planning” (an […]

Posted inGeneralMediaNews/Politics

Bring on the building blogs

If taken in earnest, blogging provides a generous platform for research. Generous because responses are free, and, while the “research” can hardly be called scientific, it is a toe-tip test of the pool’s swimmability. In my relatively short (though, may I say, rather spectacular) adventure in the blogosphere, I have gained insights I would have […]