sa male prostitute unplugged

"We are the hollow men, the stuffed men..."

This guy, sa male prostitute, has it in for his alleged former clients and, boy, were I in their shoes (or socks), I'd be running scared. The male prostitute and blogger Independent Democrat (ID) leader Patricia de Lille just happened to be reading when she developed a desire to regulate bloggers names — would you believe it, a luxury German sedan-driving Simon Grindrod (see post below), Afrikaans singer Andre Schwartz, fashion designers Dion Chang and Henja Schaap, Gospel singer and theologian Dominee Jan de Wet, SABC producer, presenter and writer Leon van Nierop, Media24 journalist Peet Bothma, actor Chris van Niekerk, Springbok rugby player James Small, Sunday Times correspondent and SABC producer Barry Ronge, and Nataniel le Roux, the enormously talented and wickedly humourous Afrikaans singer and one-man show ('cept this time it was, according to sa male prostitute, a two-man act).

I don't know whether this is a good thing or not, but you can thank your lucky stars you probably don't understand Afrikaans. The upside is that nobody's going to be calling Simon Grindrod a big dick from now on...

No thanks to the mainstream South African media for links to this sordid, somewhat sad blog. Self-purported paragons of virtue quick to name and shame those not of their liking, the lack of a connection to sa male prostitute was conspicuous by its absence and denied the public access to information about which they can make up their own minds.

Yup, they're supposedly the journalists... De Lille, wannabe leader of a meaningful opposition and desperate to shield herself rather than Grindrod, comes out smelling as hypocritical as all hell, and any alleged client of the prostitute who has belittled gays while cowering in the closet deserves everything coming to him.

What can sa male prostitute do to prove his allegations? Either have one of those named make a definitive statement supporting his reports, have a third party issue statements corroborating his claims, or keep on dishing the dirt. If one or more public figures have put themselves in a compromising position, it's difficult to believe sa male prostitute cannot prove it.

If he can't...he (or she) has given us all pause for thought.

Addendum: Ek is ‘n voormalige manlike prostituut wat na 10 jaar besluit het om die eeuoue bedryf vaarwel te roep. Ek het in die 10 jaar ongeveer 50 bekende Suid Afrikaanse klante getrakteer. Ek het besluit om vanaf 23 April 2007 te begin ommy klante bekend te maak. Ek is tans besig met die eerste 10 name op my lys van klante. Baie van hierdie klante is ook deur ander manlike sekswerkers in Suid Afrika en oorsee getrakteer.

Ek het besluit om uit te praat, aangesien die publiek nie hoegenaamd bewus is van die tweeledige lewe wat hierdie mense voer nie. Die meeste van hulle plaas hulself in ‘n "glaskas" terwyl dit woekker tussen die lakens met verbode vrugte.

sa male prostitute

In some ways, whether this guy's genuine or not (and why should he not be given De Lille's ham-fisted response?) is beside the point. He points to the hypocrisy inherent in the double lives lived by many of those he's named.

Many are openly gay and so are not hypocrites, but De Lille has obviously seen Grindrod's alleged sexual proclivities as a potential embarrassment to her. And she is a hypocrite.

The Independent Democrats site shows them to be far from tech savvy webheads. It is a gesture at a site, containing outdated press releases and meaningless galleries of equally irrelevant photographs. These people know nothing of the Web or of blogging.

Pat's hypocrisy is nowhere more evident than on her internationally accessible site:

ID President Patricia de Lille has called on Government to look into ‘urgently implementing legislation that will regulate MXIT and Internet blogging, where members of the public can with impunity slander and defame individuals and organisations they do not like.’

De Lille’s comments follow a surge in activity among young children on MXIT, which makes them vulnerable to sexual predators and paedophiles.

The ID leader says she has been ‘horrified to hear daily stories from people whose marriages have been destroyed and about children who are led into situations where they are molested by grown men, who use MXIT to lure these girls and boys into their traps.

‘We are already struggling to repair the social fabric of our society, and to tolerate a platform for this kind of sexual predation and deviance against our young children is inexcusable,’ De Lille says.

The most recent MXIT crises is the circulation of pornographic images of young girls.

‘This has gone too far and it is time for Government to intervene to protect our most vulnerable. The right to freedom of expression is not absolute,’ says De Lille.

Another worrying development in cyberspace is the abuse of blogging, which allows anonymous individuals to post slanderous and defamatory comments with impunity about anyone they choose, without the legal consequences they would face in other more reputable print and electronic media.

‘We recently came across a blog with slanderous comments about a famous rugby player, a respected reverend in the church and a prominent entertainer.

‘This blog also included one of our senior politicians, Councillor Simon Grindrod. He reported this matter to the Caledon Square police on Tuesday 15 May and they are currently investigating it,’ De Lille says.

It's all about the kids, innit Patricia. Bullshit. It's about saving your own sorry ass as you irreversibly slide to irrelevance.

Slander is spoken defamation; libel is published. It is oral. Defamation is false. If this blogger did defame Grindrod, why the hell did you ensure his purported sexual antics found a global audience? Do you want your councillor out (politically, I mean)?

To those who matter, i.e. most South African voters, homosexuality is an aberration. Does Grindrod embarrass you? I ask because you sure as hell have gone a long way to ensuring the end of his political career.

And you then blame bloggers. In the name of "the children." Sies.

As ethekwinigirl comments below: "That's politics."

Added: It seems, and I've heard independent circumstantial or anecdotal corroboration of this, there are people that want sa male prostitute shut down and are willing to go to any lengths to do it. He writes Sunday:

Information pertaining to three alternative active blogs (mirrors) will soon be made available. This blog will be duplicated. Certain people on my client list want to destroy it because it contains information connecting them to male sex workers.

My interest in this story? See the Kathy Sierra debacle below. It's a particularly intriguing free-speech issue as much as it is about familiarizing generally clueless South Africans in Web use and how their seemingly unrelated social lives might come to haunt them from this enormously powerful medium.

Nothing you say or do is anonymous. The Web is as much a part of our lives as Final Fantasy. Could the blogger be identified? As was pointed out in the Sierra case, sure. In that case, the villain of the piece, a 30-something British expat living in Spain, turned himself in.

Happy Birthday Bob

Bob Dylan flies back to Budokan

Yeah, I know... one too many mornings and a thousand miles behind. So what? I've never been one to post birthday wishes to celebrities, but things have changed. Besides, my youngest daughter found a great article on the life of Bob Dylan, born Abraham Hershel Rosenthal yesterday 76 years ago.

Didn't have time to make a card either, so the old snap above will have to do. Pinched it from the post below. It's from his last Cape Town concert.

One thing about Wikipedia — you can take it as Gospel. Uncyclopedia, from which these remarkable facts about His Bobness originate, ain't half bad either. Dylan's apparently well over 3,900 years old, killed Davey Moore, framed Rueben Carter and wrote every single song ever. Ever. Ever ever. Ever. Forever. Even songs from before he was born. So shut up and quit asking.

"I've never seen a happier man in my life. I couldn't get him to stop smiling and laughing."

Barbara Walters of her interviews with Bob Dylan.

In related news, BBC2 will air a new documentary on The Traveling Wilburys tomorrow night.

Boy! I can't wait.

This is the radio station that's just realised John Wayne is dead.

Note: For those not in the know — as we in the music industry like to say, Bob Dylan turned 66 yesterday. Just one more 6 and ya'll know what that means.

Addendum: For those unable to appreciate the synchronistic nature of blogging and the relationships it fosters, I visited Bruce to find him honouring the 30th anniversary of Star Wars with his customary incisive commentary and pithy insight. Also, a good punt for Hayao Miyazaki's 1984 Nausicca of The Valley of the Wind. Given the time of his post, he blogged it eight hours before me. Given our time zones, it's pretty much a together thing.

Now, I have had occasion to suggest to Bruce that he and I should quiz our mothers more closely on their pasts as I believe us to be brothers both in thought and, probably (knowing him as a somewhat bent and twisted youth) deed. Neither of us have, as far as I know, but I again — on stumbling across (in his entry) phrases used above, marvel at the way the Web works. It just ain't something that can be regulated.

Scorpions Bust ID Leadership

"I've not been intimate with any High Court judges." De Lille

An anonymous former male prostitute is threatening to name all 50 men he claims to have had sex with over the past 10 years. He mentions the names of 10 prominent South Africans on his blog. They are, among others, a well-known dominee, a former Springbok wing, two entertainment critics, a famous entertainer, an actor, two fashion gurus and a member of the Independent Democrats.

"Following a raid late last night by the Scorpions and the Assets Forfeiture Unit's pre-dawn seizure of three houses, four SUVs, three luxury German sedans and a pair of moth-eaten green underpants, Independent Democrat (ID) leader Patricia de Lille and her live-in lover, Simon Grindrod, were arrested earlier today and charged by the SAPS with child pornography, assault, attempted murder, rape, theft, and defeating the ends of justice.

"We've been following De Lille's criminal activities for a long time," South African Police Commissioner Jackie Selebi told a packed media briefing at Caledon Square in Cape Town late this afternoon. "We have evidence to suggest she is linked to international gun-running, drug-smuggling, blood diamonds, anthrax production, stock manipulation, forex fraud, and Thai sex rings."

"Not to mention farm murders, child rape, carjacking, creative accounting, and smoking in a public place," he added absentmindedly.

A lack of evidence, the untimely deaths of witnesses, a retinue of high-powered attorneys, and intimate friendships with several High Court judges have frustrated previous attempts to have De Lille and Grindrod convicted of any major crimes.

Editor's note: "I've not been intimate with any High Court judges," screamed the harridan at me from the back of the van. "Not you, you dumb bitch" I muttered. "Grindrod. He's been cheating on you for years."

"With the assistance of Interpol, the FBI, and Pieter Jantjies (a petty thief and police informant from Lavender Hill) to whom the South African public and I extend our deepest gratitude, we pretty much have her on the lesser charges for which we have arrested her," the South African police commissioner told local and international journalists packing the press office at the South African Police Service headquarters, about a quarter mile from South Africa's parliament."

Sunday Times | Top Cop Nails De Lille


De Lille and Grindrod taken into custody…

The ID member's name was seen by ID leader Patricia de Lille, who saw his name on the blog. The prostitute describes in his blog how they allegedly had sex.

News24.com | Sex blog could expose 50 celebs

Indeed. This is South Africa, a harsh and unforgiving country peopled by drunks with fast cars and an exotic array of sexually transmitted diseases. Despite a life expectancy of only 45, we seldom leave good-looking corpses. De Lille is one of us and she is not long for this world. She is a criminal and she will be put down like a mange-infested dog.

Who cares? Not I. And what of the veracity of the reports now flooding the local and international media? Nobody knows. The article from the Sunday Times is probably but one example of the new lows to which our MSM will rise. De Lille, most recently the darling of white South Africans opposed to ANC two-thirds majority rule, is now painted evil, twisted and extremely bent.

"She is, after all, a politician," the editor of the Times breathed airily into the phone when I called to check on their lead for tomorrow. "Circulation's down. It's those damned bloggers. We have to do something."

Unlike the local scandal rag and being a journalist of note, renown and repute, I have no axe to grind with De Lille or her Toy Boy and will report only the facts. Like good bloggers everywhere, I will entrust the miserable woman to her fate and the even-handed Jackie Selebi, a man of unquestionable integrity and honour.

And, need I add, a Great Son of Africa.

On the blog, its author describes himself as a former male prostitute who decided to quit the industry after 10 years in which he had about 50 well-known South African clients. He says he decided to speak out about these clients because "the public is not aware of the double lives these people live".

"I serviced well-known news editors, SABC [South African Broadcasting Corporation] editors, television presenters, politicians, sportsmen, singers, actors and more ... It was rough sex and I will reveal it ALL," he writes.

Mail & Guardian | Tell-all sex blog targets SA celebrities

Well, there we go then... I didn't know of the blog till now — hence its quotation in maroon. I must say, having done fuck all for a long time and facing re-election woes, De Lille's attempt at shill is more a John Dean scream. And her hastily mustered blog conscience is exposed for what is is. They say any publicity is good publicity, but we all know that ain't so.

Riders On The Storm

"...not only rivers of water but of air."

"The clearest way into the Universe is through a forest wilderness. ... I went out for a walk and finally concluded to stay out till sundown, for going out, I found, was really going in."

Whiskey River quotes John Muir and 3375537 finds a Little Ghost.

It's all a bit much for me, I must say. Muir, that is. He's no Jack London. Or Winer for that matter. Too twee. But so what? He got it. Better still...

"Every one of the crossing energies operating in a forest has its own timescale. From the ant to the oak tree. From the process of photosynthesis to the process of fermentation. In this intricate conglomeration of times, energies and exchanges there occur "incidents" that are recalcitrant incidents, unaccommodated in any timescale and therefore (temporarily?) waiting between. These are what Jitka photographs.

The longer one looks at Jitka Hanzlová’s pictures of a forest, the clearer it becomes that a breakout from the prison of modern time is possible. The dryads beckon. You may slip between — but unaccompanied."

John Berger | Into the woods

Found that at wood s lot. In February. I've a selective memory. So what?

David tells us everything is miscellaneous. I understand (ehem...) where he's coming from and going to, but I don't like his language — yeah, okay, that's a bit rich, coming from me but you know what I mean.

I take the Google definition of "miscellaneous", lifted from Wikipedia: "...etcetera is a continuation of a set of things while this word deals with the incategorization of things."

We're all little ghosts but somehow, some ghosts have more substance than others. Yesterday, Whiskey River related the story of the monk who asks his master to show him who he — the monk — is. The teacher ignores him. The student eventually leaves. His master calls out his name and he turns on heairng it. "There it is!" exclaimed the master.

The first time I heard that story, the monk asked his master the same question. His master gave him an almighty smack about the head. The monk got it. Right away. And that's the version I prefer.



The irony of a global miscellany is its incategorization. The miscellanous nature of everything (and if we're not to take titles seriously, how are we to take them?) precludes passion — a love of the meeting of rocks, hard places and absolutes. When the tree, alone in the forest, falls — it tears and shrieks and cracks and roars and groans and whistles and whooomphs! to the soft forest floor.

Period.

If it does not, we become nothing but flesh and bone, hanging inside skin. The last Roman on our collective purple couch. In the forest, Jitka might remember time as an abstraction coined by us to explain one of our greatest mental muddlefucks. But it doesn't matter. In the forest as in the world, everything has its time and its season.

That said, I do not disagree one iota with David's thesis. While nothing, we are everything. And when going out, as I've found, we're really going in. And, to really flog a fast-fading horse, life's no journey — it's a fucking quest.

Yeah. As John Muir might have said: "We're not only rivers of water but of air."

We all have reasons for moving. I move to keep things whole.

Whiskey River quotes Mark Strand

The Bassoonists

The Sopranos

"'A little bassoon', he says? Oy yoy yoy yoy yoy! How can a good Catholic boy insult the pretty lady so? For Frankie, I want a nice big hat."

The Krautrocker

Fuck all that we've got to get on with these | Got to compete with the wily Japanese | There's too many home fires burning | And not enough trees | So fuck all that | We've got to get on with these

So there I was, fleeing the west coast in search of a storm when SAFM hosted a discussion on advertising. Jeremy Maggs spoke to some guy who sounded like he'd had a heavy night, needed a drink, and would have preferred to be anywhere but on radio. He's the chief creative director of some hot-shot ad house. I don't remember what he said. Nor do I remember what the woman following him said. I know they both spoke of the 'new media' in glowing terms — South Africa is light years behind when it comes to using digital media. I know they both used the word 'forward' a lot; as in "our strategy going forward" ... well, that's actually about it. I think they learn it at college. Inject 'going forward' into whatever it is you're saying and you'll...umm...go forward. Drive a shitty Porsche. Or something.

The Catholic Encylopedia tells me:

"The primitive condition of man in the New World was a problem which European culture four centuries ago was not yet capable of solving."

Not any more, eh? Problem solved. Democracy (global pseudo-liberal facism) rules. We go forward.

Can't stop lose job mind gone silicon | What bomb get away pay day make hay | Break down need fix big six | Clickity click hold on oh no brrrrrrrrrring bingo!

But this is all beside the point. I'm not really quite sure what the point is beyond Jeff Ward's essay that's not on blogging and Tom's righteous beef with the JSTOR gravy train's UNISA marketing model. Jeff's not sure his article's up to scratch.

Clueless bastard.

Jeff carries a big camera and wields a heavy intellect, but I know what he did last summer and fear no reprisals. Besides, I mean it in the nicest possible way.

It was Benjamin’s aim to uncover the source of "modern myths." His method was to store and comment on a diverse range of quotes, about 850 of them, sorted in folders. The several attempts at conceptual apparatus, beginning with the mechanism of "dream interpretation," remain unrealized. The hazard of this method, as identified by James Elkins, is that it presents the text as a commodity snatched from the circumstances of its production. But the real danger, in my estimation, is the obliteration of the past by superimposition of the contemporary. In a strong sense, this is the root of Benjamin’s melancholy: the present is always an unfolding catastrophe.

The expose of 1939 closes on this note: novelty is the attribute of all that is under sentence of damnation.

That's the one side of it. The other side? "...money changes everything."

Make em laugh make em cry make em dance in the aisles | Make em pay make em stay make em feel ok

Pink Floyd | Not Now John

Who among us does not know it? "Everything is nothing; nothing everything" formed the basis of my teenaged angst. But it's the first time since Niek Hockx defined blogging as a way of putting stuff up on the Web that somebody's really nailed it to the wall.

Or to the spaces between bloggers.

But fuck all that...

By the time we got to the eastern side of the peninsula and Kalk Bay, I'd turned off the radio. We weren't going forward any longer. The rain squalled across a bay partially covered by ill-tempered cloud. The sun, fleeing the storm, shone increasingly weakly on the advancing front. Sitting the other side of the railway line, trying to get some shots of crazed bodyboarders making merry in the icy slurry, the wind burned my face. Rain...no rain...rain...pale memory of sun...click (Achtung! imagery). And so on. For three hours. The result. Aching limbs and a greater appreciation of Jonathon's essay, Travelling on Foot. As Loren observes: "I’ve ... discovered that the only time I can write poetry is when I’m walking."

Filling those spaces between spaces, we all play a little bassoon now and then.


"I too play a little bassoon."

We shall prevail! To begin with, we shall destroy the civilization you set such store by, and in which you are petrified like fossils in schist. The western world is condemned to death. We are the defeatists....Laugh if you like, but we are the ones who will always offer our hand to the enemy.

Louis Aragon

Capping my day, Tom Shugart makes a sustained return, riffing off Frank's allusion to Bill Graham, the promoter who started the Third World War with the unlikely likes of Country Joe McDonald's Country Joe and the Fish, Jefferson Airplane, Janis Joplin, the Grateful Dead and an electric array of eclectic others. With Tom tipping his cap to Jeneane, Denise, and Dervala, it remains for me to ponder where we'd all be without our Shelley.

Next up, HDR imaging by and for blind bassoonists...

Either Way...

Lightining over Kenilworth...

"There was a young actor there," Donleavy told me, recounting a table of drinks he shared with "Hollywood gentlemen" on a recent, but rare trip to New York. The actor had laughed uproariously at Donleavy’s tale about the dog in the high-rise. This, combined with the author’s impression that Depp is the sort of man who "could find his way out of a deep remote forest landscape with just a penknife" convinced him that Dangerfield had found his worthy player.

I wondered at Donleavy’s characterization of Depp’s strength. And also why such talents would be important for a character whose more immediate objectives tend to be escaping a narrow alley blocked on one end by angry creditors and on the other by a woman or two scorned and disgraced.

Elizabeth Kiem | J.P. Donleavy at Levington Park

Words held no security with Hanwell Snr, served as no anchor, bore no relation to the things of the world. A darker shade of this same tendency is called "psychopathy." He took out a few filthy photos from the Far East and told amusing, believable anecdotes set in Kerry. This, to a stranger, would appear to fit well with the copper-wire hair and the close eyes. Hanwell wished himself more of a stranger. As it stood, he could only wince inwardly at this second, false personality, while making a good show of laughing along as Bill made a friend of all the young soldiers whom Hanwell himself had not yet managed to befriend. "Good sort, your old man! Lively, good for a laugh!" Said approvingly, and probably true (Hanwell tried hard to be generous in his interpretations), if you happened not to be his son. If you happened not to be his son. Bill walked out two hours later, merry as Christmas. Wasn’t seen again by Hanwell for twelve years.

Zadie Smith | Hanwell Senior

Leslie links to amazing shit. Sometimes, she doesn't link. But if you read her blog, you'll get there anyway.

Or maybe you won't.

She's kinda like Mark Woods. BlownAPart.

Chris Locke pointed me to her some years back. You'll find Frank, Tom, Peter, Brian, and a host of heavy hitters in the comments feature.

Need I say more? No. But these two links — they reminded me of a post Leslie put up God knows when. About when she was fifteen.

That's why I used the lightning shot.

Stormy Weather...

Things to do in Kalk Bay...

We were expecting our first big storm of the winter this weekend...


...when it's dead.

It got rained out.

Bummer. So I started redoing all the surfing shots I screwed up with Picasa. It's an ugly job.

Somebody has to do it.

UNISA Sucks Like A $5 RentBoy

Rooikrantz cliffs...

"For him that stealeth, or borroweth and returneth not, this book from its owner, let it change into a serpent in his hand and rend him.

Let him be struck with palsy, and all his members blasted.

Let him languish in pain crying aloud for mercy, and let there be no surcease to his agony till he sing in dissolution.

Let bookworms gnaw his entrails in token of the Worm that dieth not, and when at last he goeth to his final punishment, let the flames of Hell consume him forever."

Marc Drogin Anathema! Medieval Scribes and the History of Book Curses (Allanheld & Schram, 1983) Quoted in Joan Reitz Dictionary for Library and Information Science (Libraries Unlimited, 2004)

Yeah, those are my words. The headline, that is. But the quotation echoes my sentiments as well. I wanted to share my weekend with you. Unfocused and directionless, it resulted in some interesting photographs...

Never mind. I'll litter this post with thumbnails.

Unfortunately, the thumbnails I'd like to post belong to several people who, to all intents, purposes, and the average student studying at the University of South Africa, live untouched by the realities of the common man's experience.

I'm speaking of plagiarism here; a loathsome, venal crime recognized by the law and scholars from every walk of life — including the Socratic university of the streets.


Platboom dunes...

Okay, let's get down to business. I'm fucking angry and, despite my daughter's fear of being victimized for this post, intend nailing those responsible for dismissing her first assignment written for AIS103-F (Introducing Information Records and Sources), an applied information science module overseen by the Department of Information Science at one of the world's largest correspondence universities.

Sarah's had problems with these people before. Last year, she signed up for and completed a National Certificate in Archival Studies. She wrote seven subjects, attaining an average of 95 percent.

She's yet to get her certificate. Several queries e-mailed to the university have resulted in inarticulate responses by clueless bozos demanding, among other things, money. She paid for the course, damn it, and passed with distinction. What more do they want?

Sans certificate, she embarked this year on a bachelor's degree in information science. In front of me, I have the essay that has her upset. It's the usual university crap...

An aside: a while back, she was asked to define 'academic writing' and cited in her bibliography one K Gocsik who, in 2005, described it as "...writing done by scholars for other scholars." Sarah, of course, incorporated this piece of knowledge into her own definition — using, I might add, her own words.

I thought of AKMA, Dr. Weimaraner, Jeff Ward et al.

"Academic writing's generated by people without lives recycling an extremely limited conventional wisdom," I told her. "But don't write that. My friends would get very upset."


Unknown sailor...

Back to the point. Sarah's essay is 'academic writing', as defined by Gocsik. It's basic stuff, but it's good. That she received 78 percent for it is by the by. Marks, as you well know, mean nothing to me. I don't do academe.

But that too is by the by. What has me wound up like a coiled spring — or venomous snake teased by its so-called handler — are the reasons given her for her lowly mark. Her lecturer, Bosire Onyancha, ascribes her poor performance to two primary, typewritten reasons, namely:

1) "You reproduced the study guide notes thus you did not use your own words."
2) "You did not provide citations (consult Tutorial letter 302 for INKALLE)"

In the text, he states: "You have just reproduced the study guide notes word by word. You must use your own words."

So now you know why I'm so hacked off. He's accused my daughter of plagiarism. Nobody — and I mean NOBODY — accuses my daughter of plagiarism unless they have grounds to do so.

On reflection, perhaps Mr. or Ms. Onyancha is unaware of the implications of groundless, thoughtless, baseless accusations of plagiarism. Which leads me to believe...

Nah...

Sarah's assignment is here. An original work, it must be cited if used.

The University of South Africa's Department of Information Science is free to post a copy of their study guide, highlighting my daughter's plagiarism.

More, I invite them to point to the supposed lack of citations in Sarah's work and spell out how her method of citation differs from the tutorial letter to which they refer.


Seaweed...

You might think I'm an overwrought, overly protective father. I'm not. I'm a professional blogger and, if you ask Frank, a good Catholic boy and a hard man to boot. What got me going was Sarah's protestations at my umbrage.

"You can't blog this. I mean, the person who wrote the study guide (Introducing Information Records and Sources, University of South Africa 2006) could be the plagiariser."

I stopped, noting the name of the author or compiler, Dr. M. K Minishi-Majanja.

"Whaddaya mean? Nah... You can't just accuse this person of plagiarism. You're doing the same thing Bosire Onyancha's done to you. Plagiarism, especially to academics and writers, is a heinous crime."

"I'm not accusing Onyancha or Minishi-Majanja of anything. I'm just saying that either Dr. Mabel Minishi-Majanja or Joan M. Reitz, the Librarian, Instructional Services at the Ruth A. Haas Library of the Western Connecticut State University is a plagiarist."

"Huh?"

"Well, look here," said Sarah, motioning me to the PC, her study guide, and the Dictionary for Library and Information Science, published by Libraries Unlimited, an imprint of the Greenwood Publishing Group, in 2004. "I've no idea who came up with these definitions first, but you just need to look..."

I was looking. At Reitz's work — online. She offers definitions; Minishi-Majanja offers the same as text.


The reserve...

In Study Unit 4: Printed and Other Information Sources, the good doctor writes of the monograph: "'...complete in one physical piece, usually written by a specialist in the field.' ... 'Monographic treatment is detailed and scholarly but not extensive in scope.'" Of fiction, our learned academic opines:

"From the Latin fictio, meaning to 'make' or 'counterfeit.' Literary works in prose, portraying characters and events created in the imagination of the writer, intended to entertain, enlighten, and vicariously expand the reader's experience of life. In historical fiction, characters and events usually bear some relationship to what actually happened, but any dialogue is reconstructed or imagined by the author. All fiction is fictitious in the sense of being invented, but good fiction remains 'true to life.' In Western literature, the traditional forms of literary fiction include the novel, novelette, and short story."

I wonder what our leading information scientist would make of "fictive", as in "...adopted in order to deceive"?

Our esteemed doctor of informatics does not place the italicised sentence in the position indicated. She positions that particularly phrased piece of information in her textual dissertation on genre, which she describes as "...a type, class, or style of literature, music, film, or art." ... "Today, literary works are classified by form (novel, short story, poetry, drama, etc.), [and] by theme (adventure, fantasy, horror, mystery, romance, science fiction, western[s], etc.)"

"Popular fiction, on the other hand, refers to serious works of narrative fiction widely read when first published. Popular fiction is superior in quality to pulp fiction but not as enduring as literary fiction (e.g. the novels of Jeffrey Archer...".


Dreyersdal Farm...

"Well," I said to Sarah, "I've seen enough. "I wonder what the Departmental Chair, Professor Matchet, would make of the doctor's work?"

"Or Reitz's?" asked Sarah.

"Indeed."

Neither the one cites the other — Minishi-Majanja devoting six pages to a bibliography covering 50 pages of text. Who is diddling whom in this game of give and take?

A technical writer in need of a well-paying gig, I've had my share of writing ripped off. Others have made money from my work. They've spread it across the Web and it has, in some cases, endured. I've tried to view it as flattery; but I can't. It pisses me off. Eric Alterman knows this. I slagged the high-flying MSNBC blogger for plagiarizing Paul Thompson's magnum opus three or four years ago. Alterman by Name and Alterman by Nature I called the two posts. I wonder where Eric is now. "Everywhere," Google tells me. I see he was termed "the most honest and incisive media critic writing today" in the Catholic National Reporter.

The Nation tells us:

"Eric Alterman is Professor of English and Journalism at Brooklyn College of the City University of New York, the "Liberal Media" columnist for The Nation, senior fellow and "Altercation" weblogger for Media Matters for America, (formerly at MSNBC.com), a senior fellow at the Center for American Progress in Washington, DC, where he writes and edits the "Think Again" column, as well as the World Policy Institute at New School University in New York. He is also a history consultant to HBO Films."

So it goes... To many, he is an academic. To me, he remains a plagiarist and, as I said of plagiarism in October 2003, I say the same now. "Whether it is the practice of one or one thousand writers, it detracts from the value of that which is written by everybody else."


The Learning Centre...

Dr. Mabel K Minishi-Majanja publishes widely. She writes prodigiously and is averse to pulp fiction, "...[s]ensational fiction of no enduring literary value, [and was] popular from the 1920s [until] the 1940s. [Pulp fiction is w]ritten for the mass market, usually according to formula, ... printed on poor-quality paper, bound in soft cover, and easily recognized by the lurid design on the front cover. Popular genres include romance, adventure, westerns...."

A cursory scan tells us her brush is broad and her canvas is vast. She covers everything from trade editions to reference books, all in macroform.

Oh, good grief. Quite how anybody teaching information science in the Information Age thinks they can use others' words and get away with it is beyond me. Have these people so desperate to label and categorize not heard? In a world saturated with information, Everything is Miscellaneous.

David quotes a snippet from a review by Susan Crawford: "It’s not so much that everything is miscellaneous but that nothing need be. Shards of information are forever being gathered online, creating individual ‘knowledge’ that is revelatory. Weinberger finds music in the spaces between the notes, in the intersections and gaps and collections that make up online group-created knowledge."

Would that more listened to the music.

Why do I cast more aspersions at Dr. Minishi-Majanja than I do at Joan Reitz? Because while a Google search reveals Joan Reitz knows nothing of Dr. Minishi-Majanja, the good doctor uses — in a PowerPoint presentation entitled Reference Techniques — her access of Joan Reitz's publication in June 2006 as an example of citing electronic publications.

Somehow, it didn't make into her book. Introducing Information Records and Sources. Published in 2006. By the University of South Africa.

Which — without any evidence thereof — accuses my daughter of plagiarism.

UNISA sucks like a $5 RentBoy.

I can say that.

Not because I have experience of rentboys.

Because I'm no academic.

Let me state, here, now and forever more, that the only thing AKMA, David, Jeff and other academics of my acquaintance have in common with plagiarists (or rentboys) is that they do not swear when they write. Sorry, let me rephrase that. They do not commit their swearing to writing. Often. Or something like that. They are bloggers and, therefore, like my daughter, honest men.

No, that doesn't sound right...

Note: Should UNISA wish to pay the requisite royalty fees to Ms. Reitz, they can do so by remitting an agreed to amount to:

Libraries Unlimited
88 Post Road West
Westport, CT 06881
United States of America

Alternatively, they can contact me on 021-555-7950 for my banking details.

Afterthought Of the past twenty-five years, I spent a large part of the first thirteen rewriting, subediting, proofing and / or reading academic and legal texts. They are not new to me. Nor is 'fair use' or plagiarism. There was the famous case of Silke on South African Income Tax being 'published under another cover' by Butterworths... well, sort of — it was all settled in court after the usual fashion; nobody won. Theft births only losers.

The Network Noose...

A lynching or...

What you see...

When Ruthie says come see her | In her honky-tonk lagoon, | Where I can watch her waltz for free | 'Neath her Panamanian moon.


...a premeditated murder

...and what you don't.

An' I say, "Aw come on now, | You must know about my debutante." | An' she says, "Your debutante just knows what you need | But I know what you want."

Bob Dylan | Stuck Inside of Mobile with the Memphis Blues Again

I didn't have a PC at the time, but I watched the show. Following the meankids takedown of Tara Hunt, Sierra hit back Bush-style when her turn came around. At the time, she was receiving death threats from — as I think Shelley pointed out in one of her many sober, sensitive, and bluntly telling posts, sources far removed from the bloggers she egregiously and unjustifiably named in her infamous broadside.

In the post quoted below, Leslie alludes to Sierra's possible Higher Purpose. Watching the nauseating CNN clip — the theatrics of the media in the States is so bad it's good, one doesn't really have to guess what it was. It seems Sierra got what she wanted; tried to go one better, failed, and slid into self-serving duplicity.

Perhaps Sierra's Jessica Lynch — she's about as real as Saddam's martyred statesman — might one day realize the purpose her self-promotion has served. She's dished up the Web on a platter to every self-serving huckster wandering the Blogosphere.

Secondly, she's impugned the names of people I know and like. Chris, Jeneane, Frank, Kat. For at least five years, they have been virtual Chuck Yeagers, pushing the outside of the envelope in ways Sierra would not be capable of appreciating.

(Well, maybe Kat didn't. But she sent Jeremy along.)

They, in fact, made possible Sierra's Judas trick. But she wouldn't understand that.

I hope she and all who sail with her get to spend their thirty pieces of silver. They won't count for much in the end.

They're selling postcards of the hanging | They're painting the passports brown | The beauty parlor is filled with sailors | The circus is in town...

Bob Dylan | Desolation Row

...an' now people just get uglier.

Mind you, this should improve things. The ever elegant Jonathon Delacour may be back.

Sierra Nevada

Llandudno, Tuesday.

"And if someone were to dig deeply into the K.Sierra situation they might find that it's a whole lot more complicated than anyone thought. They might find out that a bunch of very important (self described) people were pissed off about stuff being written about them and got K. all worked up into a huge fear state so she would act as their mouthpiece. Maybe. That's one possible scenario. But we'll probably never know, will we?"

When I grew up and fell in love, I asked my sweetheart, "What lies ahead? Will we have rainbows day after day?" Here's what my sweetheart said...

"Gornish helfn."

It's Leslie's fault. I swear. She knows too much.

I put through a call to Father Christopher and caught the answering machine.

"The Father, Son and the Holy Ghost | They caught the last train for the coast | The day the music died."

"You're kidding me?"

"Nope."

"But I thought Angel had just returned..."

"...from the coast?"

"Yeah."

"Will I be pretty, will I be rich? Here's what she said to me...

"Bye-bye, Miss American Pie..."


Sea Point, Tuesday.

"Are you the answering machine?"

"Nope. I'm HAL on wheels."

"Gornish helfn!."

"Wikipedia tells us it's '...a popular song written by the Jay Livingston (music) and Ray Evans (lyrics) songwriting team.'"

"What?"

"K Sierra Sierra."

"Fuck 'em."

I saw Satan laughing with delight the day the music died.

"What about Angel?"

"She'll be back."

"Yeah?"

"Yeah."

I think so too. Still... I think Leslie's onto something. This is bigger than most care, know, or realize...

Don't want to think about it right now.

Got my badge though...

"...fire is the Devil's only friend."

...so in America when the sun goes down and I sit on the old broken-down river pier watching the long, long skies over New Jersey and sense all that raw land that rolls in one unbelievable huge bulge over to the West Coast, and all that road going, all the people dreaming in the immensity of it, and in Iowa I know by now the children must be crying in the land where they let the children cry, and tonight the stars'll be out, and don't you know that God is Pooh Bear? the evening star must be drooping and shedding her sparkler dims on the prairie, which is just before the coming of complete night that blesses the earth, darkens all the rivers, cups the peaks and folds the final shore in, and nobody, nobody knows what's going to happen to anybody besides the forlorn rags of growing old, I think of Dean Moriarty, I even think of Old Dean Moriarty the father we never found, I think of Dean Moriarty, I think of Dean Moriarty.

That ain't poetry, old friend. That's the last line of On The Road.

It's how it always is.

Birds of Paradise

The Politics of Experience...

Well, they'll stone ya when you're trying to be so good, | They'll stone ya just a-like they said they would. | They'll stone ya when you're tryin' to go home. | Then they'll stone ya when you're there all alone. | But I would not feel so all alone, | Everybody must get stoned.

Bob Dylan | Rainy Day Woman #12 & 35

Andrew Feldmar, a well-known Vancouver psychotherapist, rolled up to the Blaine border crossing last summer as he had hundreds of times in his career. At 66, his gray hair, neat beard, and rimless glasses give him the look of a seasoned intellectual. He handed his passport to the U.S. border guard and relaxed, thinking he would soon be with an old friend in Seattle. The border guard turned to his computer and googled "Andrew Feldmar."

The psychotherapist's world was about to turn upside down.

The Tyee | LSD as Therapy?

The headline poses a good question. That said, and being a South African armed with Google — which permits unlimited access (within a reason dictated by those who would do no evil) to the diseased world of Bush, I have no problem with U.S. admissions' criteria.

In fact, from the point of view of someone 'on the outside', I find reaction to Feldmar's unfortunate incident somewhat perplexing. The disquieting fact is not that foreigners are being 'locked out' for reasons beyond even Kafka's imagination, but that increasingly socially-and-economically crippled Americans have been 'locked in' — to a quarantine or jail of legislated isolation.

The U.S. has become its own Guantanamo Bay and its own jailer. It is, as John Brown so eloquently puts it, our global Cho Seung-Hui. The intellectual anemia, cultural kwashiorkor, and delusional dementia suffered by the average American are now complicated by an administration suffering a severe, self-inflicted cholera of contempt...for anybody, everybody, and themselves.

And yet... yet there's nothing quite as unsightly or pathetic as someone slitting their wrists in public. The flip side of this brownshirted-strongman zealotry is the media-friendliness of its Courtney Love or Britney Spears bathos and banality.

Shave your heads, man. Re-member your inner Auschwitzes before you become your own 'suiciders'.

Don't get me wrong; I do sympathize. I realize it's tough. But it's tough on Americans rather than on those they supposedly 'exclude'. Fascism is a tough nut and, in the U.S., its ouster will be made the more difficult by USians — rendered silent in their cocoon of cosseted, impenetrable ignorance — being unable to see it permeating their lives and lifestyles.

I'd get depressed were I on the inside but, then again, look what Xanax, Zoloft and telephone surveillance did to the so-called anti-war movement. Yet the situation is bad enough to engender dispair and strong medicine is called for.

Where to now, my American friends? The patient appears 'etherized upon a table.' Or is it, as with the self-'efaced' Cho, the post-mortem slab?

Fear not the alien; look out for yourselves — the enemy is always within.

If one were to measure progress on the number of suiciders, if that's your definition of success, I think it gives — I think it will — I think it obscures the steady, incremental march toward democracy we're seeing. In other words, it's very difficult — you can have the most powerful army of the world — ask the Israelis what it's like to try to stop suiciders — it is a difficult task to stop suicide bombers. That's the — but that's one of the main — that's the main weapon of the enemy, the capacity to destroy innocent life with a suicider.

George W. Bush

The man certainly speaks for himself. He sounds stoned...