Mudberry!

Swaziland is making huge strides to compete with giants like Apple, Google, Samsung and Microsoft by going local. Welcome Mudberry (TM). As you can see from our picture, it's already a big hit on the local African market.

Proud Mudberry User

Hey you!

Hey you! Are you having fun, or is the fun having you? You're tired of the old, are you fond of the new? When it's late at night and you turn out the light, is it still alright, do you still remember what to do? Oh I miss those times, I really do. Hey, you! Do you still long for a fu-wong, yearn for a mouth full of taste? Delight is too precious to waste. Call me. I want to eat some more tofu with you. I really really do.

posted from Bloggeroid

catching the plague

catching the plague

What is love? You meet someone, you dream someone, you sleep someone and then your heart is in your mouth, full of the burgeoning dawn. Your doom is already muscle-thighed and moving: she loves me, she loves me not, will she or won’t she? You can no longer sleep at night, your pulse is racing with the rush of the new. You get a kick out of her; does she get a kick out of you?

  Being in love is a recognised human condition, a measure of the state we’re in. It involves a lot of hugging and wave after wave of adrenaline. It rages like a fever. When Olivia, in Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night, realises that she is falling in love, she exclaims, ‘How now! Even so, can one so quickly catch the plague?’ And when Dr Faustus, in Marlowe’s play of the same name, kisses Helen of Troy, he immediately realises that he is lost: ‘Ah, her lips suck forth my soul: see where it flies!’

  There is no surviving an outbreak of love. Once infected, you’re gone.

  But where is love? The poet Roger McGough wrote that ‘the act of love lies somewhere between the belly and the mind’. Most would probably place it in the heart, but I think it’s more a sparkle in the eyes, or the surprise of a smile, or the warm, moist, open-mouthed invitation of a kiss. Faces spark the whole thing off. At least they do for me. Some men are butt-men or leg-men or breast-men. Some others drink so much that they settle for whoever they can get. But me, I check faces, peer through the trapdoors of the soul.

  I dream dreams; I see visions. But there’s a difference between dreaming a dream and dating one. Being in love is living on the edge, balancing on the very brink of chaos: does she love me? Of course she does.

  Whoosh! There’s a flow and a flux, an energy rush. Love is coming: get on the runaway train; board the bus; fly the plane. Romance is always just around the corner. There’s always a heart looking for you. Life is a dating agency.

  When I was just a young boy, I didn’t understand this love thing. If I saw a couple kissing it was more a 'Look mummy, they’re eating each other.’ But when I became a man I put away my childish things, sighed moodily and gave myself up to passion.

  In our modern age, phone numbers are the digits of love. You’ve got it bad girl—that’s the fifth call you’ve made today...

  But that’s the whole point of love: communication. No man is an island. We’re people people. We need each other. Loneliness burns down the wires and drives people into Internet chat rooms or onto porn sites. Loneliness opens the dark dungeons of the human psyche.

  There is no antidote for love, and only the dangerously depressed will ever look for a vaccine to prevent it. No, love’s a hot-wiring of the spirit, an intoxicating home run, a favourite shirt in the wardrobe of our days.

© Kenneth Rowley, 2003-2012

   

She's my (prose poem for Valentine 2012)

She's my familiar pleasure, my discovered treasure, my depth-plumbed measure of what it means to be a man. Long-limbed, lithe and lively, she is lovely to let me stir the cream with the cocoa. We share what we know, grow to be sure of what we can, plan and cook and hatch fast and slow in the slack lane of love. Ambassador me, envoy she, we meet in the shadow-lanes behind the cafes of passion. The steam erupts from our thousand cups. And we never order lonely plates of chips.

posted from Bloggeroid

The problem with (not only) Swaziland

In an ancient rabbinic text there's an interesting commentary that describes four kinds of person. The first kind says, "What's mine is mine and what's yours is yours." This, says the rabbis, is the ordinary person. The second kind of person says, "What's mine is yours and what's yours is mine." This is the fool. The third kind of person says, "What's mine is yours and what's yours is yours." This is the saint. The last kind, the fourth, says, "What's mine is mine and what's yours is mine." This is the thug. All this might seem pretty rudimentary, but here's the crunch: the rabbinic text then goes on to say that the first kind of person, the 'ordinary person', is a Sodomite, i.e., the kind of person who lived in Sodom and Gomorrah, the cities of the plain, the cities that were destroyed by God and have gone down in history as a byword for evil.
   Sodom and Gomorrah and the other cities of the plain were not judged and found wanting because of their homosexuality-- homosexuality was only a symptom of what was wrong with them-- they were destroyed because they didn't pursue justice. You see, the attitude of "What's mine is mine and what's yours is yours" always maintains the status quo, ensuring that the rich stay rich, and the poor stay poor. In fact, the cities of the plain refused hospitality to strangers, taking the "What's ours is ours" philosophy to the extreme-- no Good Samaritan story was ever taught in their schools. Jewish tradition says that workers were paid according to their status, so the rich were paid more than the poor even for doing the same work. Likewise, having possessions was seen as such a sign of success that things came to be valued above people, especially above poor people. During the building of the tower of Babel (the tower's builders were S&G's founders) a worker falling from the tower and dying of his injuries wouldn't cause much concern, but if a single brick fell to the ground, the authorities went out of their way to retrieve it. It doesn't take much to see that we're living in the same kind of world today, with R2 million churches side-by-side with 67% of the population living in dire poverty; it's not only politicians, bankers and lawyers who want long pointy shoes, tailored suits and big cars.
   It's worth remembering that Jesus began his ministry with an announcement of the Jubilee, and ended it with a stunning sermon told from the view of the dispossessed:  "I was hungry and you gave me food; I was thirsty and you gave me drink; I was a stranger and you took me in; I was naked and you clothed me; I was sick and you visited me; I was in prison and you came to me." This is the correct attitude expected of those who enter the eternal Kingdom. We came into this world with nothing; we'll leave this world with nothing; everything we have is always lent to us by God.

Webian OS: the future?

As you know, I like variety and also like trying out new operating systems, such as Jolicloud OS and Peppermint OS, both of which have been compared and reviewed on this blog before. My opinion was, and still is, that Jolicloud is perhaps the best bet for a netbook and Peppermint for an under-powered laptop. Well, now there's a proof-of-intent prototype, Webian OS, which is available as a live CD.

The live CD lets Webian piggy-back on top of your existing OS without modifying it, and also gives you the opportunity of doing a normal boot if you wish. What you get is a browser instead of a desktop-- i.e., your 'desktop' is now a full browser window: there are no icons, no menus, or anything else to click on.

Is it any good? Well, it's refreshingly different and it does force you to start thinking in a 'cloud' way. For me, that's a blessing since I'm not distracted by 'desktop' tasks while I'm doing 'cloud' stuff. It's also very fast (even running from a disc)-- it makes Joilcloud, for instance, seem like it's stuck in a jar of treacle or molasses.

But this is just an incomplete prototype at the moment, so it does lack necessary things. Just what is necessary is part of the reason for the shell being released right now-- the only add-on built into Webian at the moment is the ability to send feedback and suggestions to its creators. What is necessary for me is the ability to save bookmarks, the ability to save a page on the web (i.e., dropbox or Ubuntu One or 4shared etc), the ability to print a page or a document, and a proper exit from the shell rather than having to reboot to access the desktop (a logout perhaps).

Webian OS, I think, shows enough promise to excite.

Remixing the art

Remixing the art, as opposed to the art of remixing... Originally, vinyl singles had an A side & a B side, the B side being a different song usually written & recorded specifically for the single. Frequently these B sides were very good-- sometimes becoming bigger hits than the A sides. The Beatles' Penny Lane/Strawberry Fields Forever single is just one example. Then came CD singles & our first experience of remixes rather than different tracks. Frequently these remixes were no good & we thought, 'What the heck? We're being cheated here!' But we didn't realise for a while that remixes have little to do with the original song. The remixes were often there to provide a better drug experience (think House, Rave, etc). Then the remix became the single itself to revive interest in the original single & album it was culled from (think commerce here). Nowadays of course the single is moribund, replaced by the video of the song. The record companies haven't realised this yet & so they are complaining about 'music piracy'. I think if they started selling albums in video single form, they would probably start making money again.

posted from Bloggeroid