"Arthur J Brown is depressed" Am I bovvered? Naah

According to News24, Arthur J Brown is depressed. I am sorry to hear that and I am also sorry that he was raped in the police van on his way to the choek. After all, rape is a horrible crime and shouldn't happen to anyone.
BUT, consider just how depressed all those pensioners and other victims of his activities are feeling.
He has helped himself to huge amounts (oops Allegedly) of pension funds of Widows and Orphans. Now come on Artie old feller - widder wimen and orphings! You left them destitute without a single twinge of conscience old man.
Did your greed know no bounds? And off to Australia raced your wife and kids so that she couldn't be arrested. Apparently a warrant for her arrest was issued - now I do understand that Australia is where all convicts used to be sent, but should she not have waited till she was indeed convicted.
All those houses and all that excess. Did you need to steal and misspend it all?
Apparently you did.
So, Arthur J Brown, go ahead and be depressed - frankly you deserve to be really down in the dumps old chum.
I hope that you don't get to serve one of those "soft" sentences that they reserve for white collar felons. House arrest and a bit of community service and a large fine won't do it. Nope, I think the worst that Pohlsmoor has to offer should fit you like a glove.

The sublime and the gorblimey

This has been a weekend of extremes:
Extreme horror, extreme magic and extreme laziness.
I'll deal with the horror and get it out of the way for you. I, will never quite get over the horror, in fact I believe I may have post traumatic stress disorder.
See, I went onto an Internet dating site - YES Kyknoord I know we agreed that this is the best way to meet psychopaths and stalkers but I have this sad streak of hopefulness that makes me forget and try again. So I did. OK? And I had a bunch of immediate hits. Now this should have warned me that there were some desperate dudes out there just a-waitin' for a purty gal to come along but did I take heed? Naaah of course not. And when the dude with the funniest mails to me didn't have a photo attached to his profile - was I suspicious - well a little but I thought maybe he was weeding out the shallow ones. So we built up a nice rapport we did. And then on Friday morning he said "would you like me to send you a photo of myself?". I thought: "Goodee he's not afraid of letting me see what he looks like" and said "Yes puleeez". Arghhh help me Haysoos! He had the most nauseating looks I've seen in many a decade. Complete with COMB OVER!!!!!!! I'm really not a shallow girl and all the folks who know me know I don't set much store by handsome, but too scary to look at is another thing completely. Going to dinner with him would be out of the question. It would be the equivalent to taking a picnic basket to a multi car pile-up with many fatalities and eating ones' sandwiches whilst watching the paramedics save their lives and such. Oh lordy when will I learn.
The up-side (as such) is that he lives in Joburg - the down side is he is nice and I have to think of a kind way to let him down. Serves me right. My friend Principessa says it serves him right because he saw my picture first and should have known that I would reject him. She is a funny woman.
The sublimely magical part of the weekend - a visit to Artscape to see the Merry Widow - a wonderful production by the Cape Town Ballet Company with a stupendous Latvian Male dancer in the principal male role and a fabulous local lass as the prima ballerina. Names of course all forgotten. I won't go on and on about it but the dancing was magical and the live orchestra stupendous and the choreography brilliant!
Coffee and hot fries with mayo followed at a Sea Point Coffee bar - not the thing of dreams but good for a bedtime dose of indigestion.
I spent the day on Saturday with my wonderful BFF La Lue who is an inspirationally "glass always almost full" kind of girl. We ate super lunch together (thanks to Woolworths) including the good red wine, and did a little shopping and more food and drinks and such and lots of giggles and .....well just great.
Lazy - ah yes - I spent the entire day on Sunday, lying around in my jammies watching tv and drinking coffee. I ended the day with a superb venison stew - made it myself from scratch I did - soaked the venison in red wine till it fell off the bones.

Xenophobia! Ugly word for ugly deeds

This morning on my way to work I drove past Sea Point Primary School and noticed a large bus parked in front of the school.
I saw that the bus was marked Police and then saw that there were policemen inside the bus shepherding the littlies off the bus and into school and then the pain of it all really hit me!
These were small children who had spent the night in terror and had no idea why; who may no longer have a place to call home; who will see fear in their parents eyes and know they are not safe anywhere. I can't even imagine how it must feel for a 7-year-old child to be sitting in school after a night like that and what is in their minds as the teacher carries on with the day.
I admit I cried.
I will also admit that for the first time since the fall of Apartheid I once again felt ashamed to be South African.

I am so tired of being tired and I am so NOT a yuppie

I have chronic fatigue immune deficiency syndrome. How do I know this? Because I was diagnosed by a whole bunch of beard-rubbing medical professionals, including the chief medical officer of the Old Mutual, a whole slew of blood tests and the like, way back in 1999. I was told by all these good men (and one excellent woman) that I was pretty much stuck with this state of affairs and that I'd never be truly well again and as for work - forget it - retire and enjoy starvation while I'm young enough to appreciate it!
Thankfully, there are a few really good medical practitioners in Cape Town who don't have this defeatist attitude and after two long years I was well enough to work again and although I admit that my AA+ personality-type is now more like a C- and I tire easily I can work a 10 to 12 hour day with the best of them.
Now I know that "frankly my dear we don't give a damn" is what you are all thinking and I'm with you on that, but here's what is pissing me off:
The damn disease has recurred (apparently it'll do that if you get too smug about the whole thing) and although I've got it under control (with the wonderful, albeit expensive help of Dr G who is a GP and homeopath) I do some days tend to look and feel a little on deadish side.
OK bear with me now I am getting to the point - slowly - remember I have CFIDS - what really has ticked me off this morning - and in fact ticks me off most days - is how the general public views this horrible, life-ruining, fun-sapping, drink-restricting, food-limiting scourge!
"oh you have yuppie flu" they explain to me, with what appears to be scorn, and then kind of brush me off with a look that says if only you'd be less of a clothes-horse and have ugly hair and wear cheap perfume and stop buying all those shoes, you would recover your health (which is only mildly compromised anyway fool - it's just the flu!). Well, here are a few facts:
NO I am not a yuppie, never have been, don't even like BMW's! I buy my jeans at Woolworths and shop at factory shops.
And for the last time you @#%*$ it is NOT the flu. I have Cytomegalovirus, Epstein Barr Syndrome, Toxoplasmosis and a few other nasty little devils. My liver just ain't what it used to be (and as a wine lover I can promise you this in itself is Hell).
Today I read a post on a very funny blog - the writer said her housemate suggested that because she is always sleepy she probably has CFS - her response was along the lines of "I ain't that cool or that deluded dude".
Well, just for the record - most of us CFIDS sufferers are always exhausted but sleep not only doesn't help, we are almost all insomniacs. To whit, last night I fell asleep on the couch for an hour (we don't concentrate too well so TV will do that to us) woke up and couldn't sleep again till 4.00 am when I managed 2 hours - then I had to get up for work. That just isn't cool and it doesn't help that I am running a low-grade fever, have a headache, upset stomach, sore throat and feel like what I scrape into the poop scoop every other day when I clean up behind my garden after my dogs (ok my mom comes to visit most days and does it before I get home from work - what can I say some mothers are truly angels!) but here I am, behind my desk, lipstick in place, hair all a-gleam (love my new haircut hairdresser angel) and dressed in my best non-designer Woolworths/monsieur price/factory shop best and looking forward to the wine auction I'm attending tonight.
So, next time some poor soul tells you they have Chronic Fatigue Syndrome or worse, Chronic Fatigue Immune Deficiency Syndrome (that means every bug you bring to work - we catch it - you carry on unscathed) don't brush them off with an attitude that says "your lifestyle, your problem" go fetch them some herbal tea and show a little sympathy - they will love you forever and help out next time you are not coping with YOUR workload.