• Flipping through News 24 this morning, I was knocked off guard by a headline that sounded more like a bad, early-nineties tabloid hangover than actual news, expecially when backed up against the intensely nationalistic content of most news slabs lately: This group of irate Durban parents have leveled charges against this swimming coach who they believe molested their kids during their weekly half hour pool sessions. Now, before I go any further, understand that the idea of this kind of thing makes me sick. Seriously, where do people get the idea that they have the right to go there? I'd never want to come across like I don't take this seriously, because I'd kill if it was my kid, and that's no lie...

• "An estimated 53 000 Chinese children have been sickened after the industrial chemical melamine was added to milk products, and four infants have died."

• We all know and appreciate just how mental a Monday can drive your average working class Joe. Nobody likes having to get up at a reasonable time, dress appropriately and sit down at a desk with a bunch of other people who don't want to be there either. If you're lucky, you have a job you enjoy enough to look past the cackling most people hear in the day of the week that snaps at the heels of the day of rest.

• Flipping through News 24 this morning, I was knocked off guard by a headline that sounded more like a bad, early-nineties tabloid hangover than actual news, especially when backed up against the intensely nationalistic content of most news slabs lately: This group of irate Durban parents have leveled charges against this swimming coach who they believe molested their kids during their weekly half hour pool sessions. Now, before I go any further, understand that the idea of this kind of thing makes me sick. Seriously, where do people get the idea that they have the right to go there? I'd never want to come across like I don't take this seriously, because I'd kill if it was my kid, and that's no lie...

• "An estimated 53 000 Chinese children have been sickened after the industrial chemical melamine was added to milk products, and four infants have died."

• We all know and appreciate just how mental a Monday can drive your average working class Joe. Nobody likes having to get up at a reasonable time, dress appropriately and sit down at a desk with a bunch of other people who don't want to be there either. If you're lucky, you have a job you enjoy enough to look past the cackling most people hear in the day of the week that snaps at the heels of the day of rest.

Music has far too many plugs and facets for it to be the kind of thing you could ever just puzzle-box together and offer one big explanation for. Reading Salambander's article on guitaring today, I started wondering what exactly it is that I'd have to say about music - where my thoughts would drift to if somebody ever asked what it means, or why I do it, or even something like when I started...

When I was a kid (alright, I'm still a kid, but when I was a little kid) I had a weight problem...ok I was fat, and it wasn't anybody's fault but mine really - I just didn't know when to stop putting away the cream donuts, apparently. Being blonde haired, blue eyed, and doughy makes socialising a little bit of a chore, mostly because other kids your age seem unable to stop running around the criket pitch and throwing balls at each other, like they're strapped to bombs that go off if they move at slower than 120 kmph or something

It was an awkward time, to say the least, but I had this older cousin who lived a few blocks away from me for 6 months, and he got to showing me a few chords on this gorgeous wine-red acoustic of his. After many weeks of hiding out in his living room, ignoring the football or frisbeeing or whatever other general idiocy was screaming it's head off in the park across from his house, I came to one very important conclusion:When it came to guitar, I sucked - hard!

Here's a great example of an embarrassing bit of role reversal:

I like to venture cross campus from time to time and make use of the university lab computers instead of my trusty little laptop, in my warm little cocoon room with my easy to reach coffee maker and duvets and curtains and such. I like it because there's actually a lot of thinking you can get done on a brisk walk in the midmorning air, past trees and pretty people, headphones jacked in and turned way, way up. It holds a certain, undeniable charm, and is a great way to break out for a bit.

Until you get to the labs and there's about a 20 minute wait for an available box, situated conveniently between two people you wouldn't ever let babysit your kids. And half the occupied 'pooters are being taken up by punks playing flash Afro-Mario brothers or watching Pop-music videos / porn or, my favourite, the space cadets staring blankly at absolutely nothing, scratching their chins intensely, just begging for a keyboard to the back of the head. There's something sticking to the bottom of my table and the aircon is blasting away even though it's more than a little chilly outside. My keyboard is wonky, the network's sluggish and the people standing in line are eyeballing my open MyDL tab and looking like they're literally going to pounce at any moment.

By this stage my room's sounding a lot better...

And then something happens that makes me realise two things: 1. not everyone in this lab is a complete and utter tool, and 2. I'm not actually the shining example of rationality and reason I might've thought. One computer, nestled subtly in the right hand corner, near the fire extinguisher and whiteboard still marked from some comp-sci lecture long lost, has been vacant since I got here because the image has been turned on it's side.

It actually took me by surprise when a friend from my dining hall informed me of the iminent release of Death Magnetic, Metallica's ninth album release and the first time they've had the guts to release something in about five years since the wonder-abortion that was St Anger. I didn't quite know what to make of it, and to be quite honest, I completely forgot about it in favour of more pressing matters, moving it quietly to the back of my mind to be turned over at a later date.

But something in me just wanted to know...

Metallica is generally thought of as one of those metal bands: the cliches of making it big in the rock business. Big noises, screaming guitar solos, huge fan base and a reputation earned during their days as travelling alcoholics. They had the alienation from their original supporters when they recorded their first music video ("selling out" in some way or another, apparently), the tragedy of losing bassist Cliff Burton to a flipped tour bus, and the drama typically associated with their time with new bassist Jason Newstead, who eventually left the band because he felt he was being stifled as an artist, or something. 2003 saw the release of what would come to be known as the worst fall from grace witnessed in modern day metal, or, St Anger...

Which is important to take into account, I feel, when trying to get a bead on Death Magnetic because the albums butt up against each other in the discography. Let's have a look at the details, hmmm?:

After St Anger's terrible results, Metallica realise that just because they'd been using producer Bob Rock since 1991 doesn't mean he has a damn clue about what to do with their music anymore. The failures on that album were everywhere: first off, this is Metallica, so don't even try to tell me there aren't any guitar solos. Rock and the band tried painting solos as some sort of cliche with which they wanted to do away, but come on! Metal is based on lead work, either in the form of guitar solos, or at the very least some kind of lead break every now and again, but no, not St Anger. It's a sparse affair, with an emphasis on slow, chugging guitars and stereotypical meandering drum beats. Kirk Hammit's ability to melt faces with his guitaring is sacrificed to the god of radio-friendliness, and this is very bad.

Jump ahead to 2008 and we find something a little more like the Metallica we all knew and loved growing up. Guitaring that sounds like it was slapped together by someone with severe emotional hangups and a thing for rusty kitchen tools is better than sounding like it was put together by your gran. I can't fault it, and that might earn me a couple of fiery replies from readers because apparently other people can, but I just feel that this reflects at least some of the talent they put into their earlier albums, and that's infinitely better than what we heard five years ago. Clean and distorted, slow and fast, from lead to skull-crushing solo to chord progression, it's all very tasteful, pretty experimental, and generally pretty damn good.

And let's stop for just a minute and thank whichever deity you prefer that Rick Rubin decided to master Lars' drumkit so that it sounds like an actual drumkit and not a collection of pots, pans and corrugated sheeting. The time changes in some of their heavier songs (That was just your life, All Nightmare Long) more than make up for some of the less interesting beats. It seems like, structure wise, the guys are thinking about their songs again, which I always felt was the one thing missing from their new work, so it gets my approval. Well mastered vocals, solid composition and elements of their hayday shining through, from Enter-Sandman-esque guitar effects to Don't Tread on Me drum chugging, I'd say this is, while not being the best thing Metallica's ever written, deserving of at least some high fives and a teary eye toward the future.

Two last things: I understand that the album having an "Unforgiven III" might be upsetting to, well, just about everybody who loved part 1 and 2, but give it a listen. I was a skeptic, but it's kind of winning me over. And two, I know I left out the fact that this album was new bassist Rob Trujillo's first opportunity to record with the band, but to be quite honest, I'm still in the process of listening to the whole album properly, and Trujillo hasn't done much yet. I wonder what Jason Newstead's up to lately...

It doesn't take the captain of the intuition team to work out how people feel after this weekends Thabo milestone, because, regardless of how far back the country saw this coming from, no-one liked what they saw. Lets run through this again, just in case ANYONE hasn't heard it enough times:

Jacob Gedleyihlekisa Zuma, former Deputy President of South Africa and current President of the African National Congress, freshly relieved of a roughly four year long corruption charge and packing thousands of "machine gunning" supporters from the SACP youth and other areas, begins a whole new ripple, and as his first action as a cleared man, goes for the throat: Thabo Mbeki's role as president of South Africa.

How? Well not directly, that's for damn sure.
No, we live in a country where it isn't considered nice to say when you've got your gun cocked and you're looking for a chair to snatch. Political advisors would warn against any kind of open hostility at all, actually; definitive political moves based on shortcomings of your party members, or any other kind of behaviour that would indicate you weren't so in line with your comrades that you'd take a bullet for them, even if they'd fired the first shot. There was a period of maybe a week or so when the man on the street knew the news before it was even a headline yet: Zuma's trial was going to be thrown out. The NDPP had slipped on a purely technical issue, having not allowed Zuma time to make respresentations on the charges before actually formally charging him. The judge, himself, admitted his decision was based on a procedural point, not on Zuma's actual innocence.

And like that, he was out, and setting his eyes on the man who ousted him from the Deputy Presidency when the original charges were laid against him: President Thabo Mbeki. And he did this by utilising his most intimidating resource: his followers.

This is how it must've gone down: Jacob gets out of the courtroom in the weeks prior to his being found innocent and says, in a voice loud enough for Pietermaritzburg High Court Judge Chris Nicholson to hear, "Y'know, I feel great that this whole thing's going my way like it is. Really, I couldn't ask for more..except to maybe establish who instituted this heinous conspiracy against me in the first place. It almost smells like that Mbeki character's doing..." Keeping in mind that Mbeki had (I feel rightly) let Zuma go (you know, when he held the position of this country's Deputy Pres, but was throwing Schabir Shaik My Super Sweet Sixteen sized partys on his private estate in return for whatever it is arms dealers deal in (I can assure you it isn't black market limbs)), we now have a situation where Nicholson is hearing from all over that these charges are the result of a conspiracy. Signs, floating in the air of high court unrest, start pointing towards a loan gunman, responsible for bringing a technically uncleared man to trial, and getting an already restless crowd to get Thabo's name on their tongues as the next witch to hunt. This sounds like something out of a bad day at the beach with a bunch of bratty children, all finger pointing and cheap ditch excuses for their transgressions, while the real culprit remains the picture of innocence.

So, the end result, in a very short time later, is: Mbeki has responded to the ANC's decision to let him go (a decision based on evidence I have yet to hear any detail on) by resigning. Kgalema Motlanthe was announced this morning as the country's replacement President until next April and the upcoming election. And Jacob Zuma? He's being photographed with his arm around our new leader and the biggest grin on his face. I'm not going to say the obvious about his next move, I think most of us have arrived at pretty much the same conclusion...

And the worst part? South Africans (bloggers and readers alike) have become identifiable in two groups regarding this issue: Angry or apathetic. And all I could feel when I read what had happened, how the court system had been twisted to land responsible people up where others should be, how greedy, arrogant men with too much money to spend on good lawyers were more entitled to freedom than those who worked their asses of  for their people, was this immense sadness. That's all. No anger. What's the point in being angry? And it's not that I'm apathetic. I love my country, and I'm not going to say I don't because that seems to be the only other option available. What's the point in writing about something that you've stopped being able to care about?

So here's an example of something that might leave you divided, depending on your view on fashion (pay attention, moms out there):

Floriday residents collected around 5000 signatures in March, this year, supporting a new city law being passed, which they apparently feel quite strongly about. In a country gone mad with liberal gun restrictions and heavy consumerism, one might hope against all better judgement within oneself, that a law being put to ballot in the sunshine state (I think it's the sunshine state?) would be as a result of careful planning, considered discussions and maybe a gander at the 2006 Homeland Security Bill (something I think I might discuss at length in another, when I've got the time).



You'd think they'd take the law seriously.

But, wait, here it comes, reality, racing back around to smack us all upside the head and remind us why America is commonly seen by those living outside of it as a case of the stupid leading the moronic:

“A 17-year-old spent a night in jail last week after police arrested him for wearing low pants in Riviera Beach, southeast Florida." (News 24, Baggy pants ban unlawful - 16/09/2008 21:28)

Oh yes. Oh this is just perfect. What you're trying to tell me is that these bored, card carrying, scratching-at-the-pensioners-bowling-club-door parents had absolutely nothing better to deliberate on, you know, with their kids huffing glue, mail ordering M16s and joining college fraternities which encourage anti-Semitism, homophobia and chuavinism, that they figured they'd pass LAWS against fashion trends? Exactly how bored were these parents?
I'd say pretty damn!

Lets look at this objectively, shall we? These parents decided, for reasons known mostly to themselves, that the best decision for the sleepy city of Florida to ban low riding jeans which show off the underwear beneath:
.
Now, depending on the scenario, one might be safe in assuming these are the same parents who come from any one of a million freak trend watching generations of hippies, punk rockers, disco queens, acid heads and mod-squadders:


So, the question I'm raising here is: how is exposing a little jockey any more stupid than some of the things these parents got up to in their day?
Seriously! Why aren't these same angered parents telling harrowing stories of nights spent in jail when some poor, overworked police officer arrested them for their giant pink afros, or their bell bottoms, or their stupid, white man dreadlocks, or their liberty spikes, or their leather jackets with eight million studs in them, or their hemp clothing...

Luckily enough this boy from Miami had someone with more than two brain cells to rub together as his attorney, so the charge got booted out as unconstitutional. That being said, should the validity of such a charge ever really have been a question in the first place?

Manto is officially short one huge game card, and, frankly, I'm breathing a lot easier!

This Tuesday, South African ministers of parliament heard, I'm sure with much under-their-breath cursing, that according to the the Medicines and Related Substances Amendment bill, the Health Minister would be granted a political say in the registration of medicines. This would be, they said, in conjunction with the present medical screening process, essentially making the entire approval a two layer affair, and affording the minister, currently Manto Tshabalala-Msimang, complete vito authority on any new medicines pending approval.

Regardless of whether they are pharmaceutically sound, called for by the public, or, most importantly, potentially life saving.

The Health Minister has been outspoken about the rising cost of private health care for some time now, at continuous loggerheads with the three major health care groups in the country to keep their price hikes to the same level of inflation. This is simple to understand, but what good does the ANC really think will come of turning the matter political and giving Tshabalala-Msimang straight up executive authority over approval of life giving medicines? This sounds a lot like treating the symptom rather than the cause. We live in a country beset with rampant health care issues, miseducation and a lack of resources. Hospitals are crowded, and that's when people are able to get to one in order to be treated. I understand the dire need for affordability, but saying that some minister, somewhere, far away from the Medicines Control Council (you know, the guys who get paid to screen drugs for safety and efficiency) should be able to axe these drugs before they reach the shelves, without taking into acount that people might need this medicine in order to retain their health, maintain their productivity, and generally hold on to the dignity they are promised in the constitution, is like handing our lives over to someone we've never even met.

The ANC has since backed down to the protests of the DA and the IFP regarding this matter. Mike Waters, DA Health Spokesperson, said, "We hope that this decision will finally put an end to a proposal from the health ministry that would have delayed or denied access to life-saving drugs to South Africans by politicising the approvals process." 


A close call, says I.

Ok, so here's a thing:

Seeing as there's little in the way of actual news presently which I feel particularly inclined to blog on out for the MyDL masses (or both of you who read my articles), I thought I'd scribble down a little something that relates to my world on a more personal level: music.

It's that time of term again when students start congregating on the lawn in front of my dining hall, satchels and carry ons at the ready, awaiting Greyhounds to take them all back home for the vac stretch. Clustering under trees or perched on top of walls, they can be heard chattering excitedly amongst themselves about home cooked meals, their pet guinea pig who they haven't seen since June, and all the little warm, fluffy things associated with moving back in with your parents for a week and a bit. And, I have to say, I share their sentiment.

However!

There is a dark, ugly force, lurking in the side alleys and back rooms of all of my home town's clubs. It is a character crushing mutant, which feasts on unsuspecting neo-hippies and worried parents. Waiting for you, behind the doors of at least two venues a weekend, savouring it's chance to pounce, neutralise, and take your sensibilities down to the bottom of it's swirling yellow pit of beer, cussing and stupid hairstyles.

It is the Port Elizabeth metal scene, and it will find you in it's leather clad grip before you know what's happening.


Now, before I carry on with this piece, let me clarify that I love metal, and, on occasion, have found myself really latching on to certain PE metal bands. I like some of them. And there's nothing cooler than a tight knit community of music lovers. Kudos to music movements, I will not lie, they are going to save us all.
Eventually.

But. come. on!
Upon closer inspection of the metal scene in my beloved port hometown, we begin to find gross irregularities with this self-proclaimed social force, and the values of brotherhood it claims to uphold. One need only talk to anyone even remotely seperated from the scene to find that, first and foremost, it's members are highly suspicious of each other. I heard tale last night from X about a relatively well established PE metal band kicking it's lead singer out because he slept with the drummer's girlfriend. No lies, I'd've done the same(kicked out the singer, not slept with the drummer's girl).
Except that I don't think I'd be in a band with people like that in the first place. I understand that group formations when it comes to decent bads often rely on melding together the best talent from a wide range of people, but really? I'd say at least get to know the dude before letting him 1. near your band, and 2. near your ladyfriends. But it's become such a race to show off testosterone fueled riffing and heavy screams, in order to out-brutalise the previous band, that bands are letting in people who should be seeking help themselves. I've had drummers threaten to kill me and my band members, sound guys notably screwing up my sound, before getting up with their own bands and miraculously having the best sound I've ever heard, and men, grown men, badmouthing their ex-band mates at house parties to fifteen year old girls.

Step 1. Get over yourselves, dudes. It's PE, you're not talking about CBGB's here. No one cares.

Then there's the style-cloning. I've heard some great metal bands come out of that sleepy little town, and for the sake of their anonymity (and saving my own ass from the guys that I don't like) I'm not going to mention names. But yes, there are a lot of great bands, and some very promising talent.
But I'm freakin' tired of getting you mixed up with Lamb of God, guys.

Seriously.

I just want some of these dudes to own up and say, "Listen, we actually don't spend enough time thinking about things like experimentation, or loud-soft dynamics to make something you haven't heard before, so we just take it upon ourselves to beef up our image, let rip as quickly as possible, and hope you don't notice any similarities..." Also, too many acts are getting up and literally sounding like the previous bands encore. Having your mountain of a guitarist bust out the same, tired Kerry King style guitar solo for every track can feel a little like a nine hour bagpipe marathon:


Step 2. If it's a choice between shoddy, original work, or shoddy, cloned work, I'd pay double to see you play something shoddy that I haven't heard before.

After reading about the Zimbabwean financial crisis for long enough, the average news-prosumer tends just to see numbers. It's a safe thing to assume, because at 2,200,000 % inflation, it's the kind of situation you can't even guess at living in, when you actually live in an economically semi-stable country.