In Germany recently a man married his cat. She was on her way out, he said, and he loved her so much he only felt it was right to marry the female feline.
We read so many stories of this nature. A man marries a goat in full wedding regalia – him in a tuxedo, the poor goat in a pretty white veil.
One can only imagine the two sides of the church – his relatives on one side, the goat’s family and farm friends on the other.
God knows what happens on the wedding night; or maybe even God averts Her eyes.
The one thing these stories have in common, besides the assumed act of bestiality, is that it’s always men betrothing household pets or barnyard beasts. I have not yet come across a story of a woman walking down the aisle with an alligator. Why is this?
There’s that old chestnut telling us that a woman who strives to be equal to a man is an underachiever, but there might be a mite of truth to it.
Something that you might not know about men: Every man is a geek.
Some men try and hide their geekness, heaping scorn upon those regard the Matrix as theology or quote the philosophy of Gandalf, but those macho guys who can tell you the 1987 SA/New Zealand tour team roster… well, geeks come in all flavours.
We are Star Wars geeks, comic book or computer geeks. And yes, some of us are sports geeks.
The sports geek is an odd anomaly. He realises his geekness and that it is unattractive to the broader spectrum of the fairer sex, but his unfortunate male mind tries to combat this genetic disposition not by striving to understand the wants and needs of women but by focusing on a perceived less noticeable area of obsession.
As Ben Elton lamented, what is the difference between the guy who holes up in a dark room, calls himself Eldritch the Magician and plays Dungeons & Dragons on the weekend, and the guy who pays £70 for a football jersey with some photocopy machine’s name on it?
The Geek Gene is what makes the male brain obsessed with trivia; not random but specific facts relating to their chosen field of geekness.
While women multi-task, men fixate.
This genetic affliction is apparent from a young age when boys start to collect. Stamps, coins, bogeys.
I knew a guy who kept all his empty cigarette packs in a box under his bed!
I, personally, had an impressive collection of Chappies wrappers – ‘Did you know?’ 428 through 967 if I recall correctly.
It’s not all sad though. The fact is that museums or libraries probably wouldn’t exist if it weren’t for this male inclination; our obsession with collection.
As we get older we move on to amass towering mountains of useless trivia – each U2 record title and the year it was released; how many times Italy has won the World Cup; how often Bugs Bunny says, “What’s up, doc?” in Space Jam.
Even gay men suffer the effects; hence the desire to open an antique shop overflowing with knitted toilet roll covers and intricately designed teaspoons.
A gay man with a doily collection is still a man.
Depending on how patriarchal their culture is, men either grow up promiscuous or polygamists.
Just ask yourself: how many women refer to notches on their bedpost? What better way to prove your manhood than by publicly displaying your collection of wives? It’s not our fault, it’s genetic!
It’s not about the sex – women are not objects to be dominated, they’re objects to be stuck on the shelf above the DVD library.
Unfortunately, this Geek Gene directs the way we relate to the world and each other.
It is the reason our conversations are so emotionally scant and shallow – how can we understand something as vague as emotion when our brains are wired to compile lists of facts and statistics?
It is the reason we never understand what our wives and girlfriends are trying to tell us – put it in a bullet list in descending order of importance and our unevolved EQ might start to kick in; but probably not.
And it is the reason men around the world propose to donkeys and ewes – in these extreme cases, once we have realised that no woman on the face of the planet would spend a fraction of their time in our company, it is the only option left available.
The City Lives!
I realised not long ago that I never appreciated my city until I left and came back.
Something that struck me while travelling was that people from Durban or Johannesburg, when asked where they’re from, always reply, “South Africa”. Capetonians will, without exception, say, “Cape Town”.
A friend of mine half-jokingly says that if South Africa went to war he would think twice about getting involved, but if Cape Town went to war he would be among the first to sign up. It is this slightly skewed form of patriotism that makes our city unique in South Africa.
There are only a few cities in the world where the citizens feel linked to it in an almost genetic, almost spiritual way – where the people of that city feel as though they have the streets and buildings, the good and bad running under their skin.
Cape Town is one of those cities.
The stone and grime and crime don’t just belong to an individual – the city has a soul that is made up of the thousands of souls that inhabit it. The amalgamation of these minds and spirits possesses the avenues and structures like a ghost, a mist that swirls in through the windows and cracks and animates it all!
The city becomes more than the sum of these souls; it becomes something different.
The city lives – it has a mood and voice; it has flashes of inspiration and bouts of depression. We speak through the city as the city speaks through us.
Our thoughts and actions are like seeds that we plant in the place we call home. We grow our city.
The grumbles from Durbanites and Joburgers about our cliques, our attitude and how we’re always banging on about our mountain betray their lack of connectedness with their own habitats.
Our Mother City is not something that we long to “get away from” for a holiday – we take off from work at 2.30 on a Friday to spend quality time with her.
For Capetonians this is not just a place, it is an extension of our lives and voices and hearts. When the city is hurt we are hurt. When it lifts its head in glory our heads are lifted with it.
Everything we are was grown within the womb of this Mother City and although some leave her side for adventures on other shores, we always feel the same warmth and love when we return to her embrace.
Something that struck me while travelling was that people from Durban or Johannesburg, when asked where they’re from, always reply, “South Africa”. Capetonians will, without exception, say, “Cape Town”.
A friend of mine half-jokingly says that if South Africa went to war he would think twice about getting involved, but if Cape Town went to war he would be among the first to sign up. It is this slightly skewed form of patriotism that makes our city unique in South Africa.
There are only a few cities in the world where the citizens feel linked to it in an almost genetic, almost spiritual way – where the people of that city feel as though they have the streets and buildings, the good and bad running under their skin.
Cape Town is one of those cities.
The stone and grime and crime don’t just belong to an individual – the city has a soul that is made up of the thousands of souls that inhabit it. The amalgamation of these minds and spirits possesses the avenues and structures like a ghost, a mist that swirls in through the windows and cracks and animates it all!
The city becomes more than the sum of these souls; it becomes something different.
The city lives – it has a mood and voice; it has flashes of inspiration and bouts of depression. We speak through the city as the city speaks through us.
Our thoughts and actions are like seeds that we plant in the place we call home. We grow our city.
The grumbles from Durbanites and Joburgers about our cliques, our attitude and how we’re always banging on about our mountain betray their lack of connectedness with their own habitats.
Our Mother City is not something that we long to “get away from” for a holiday – we take off from work at 2.30 on a Friday to spend quality time with her.
For Capetonians this is not just a place, it is an extension of our lives and voices and hearts. When the city is hurt we are hurt. When it lifts its head in glory our heads are lifted with it.
Everything we are was grown within the womb of this Mother City and although some leave her side for adventures on other shores, we always feel the same warmth and love when we return to her embrace.
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