Strengthening Workplace Health Strategies Through Benefit Plan Audits

In today's competitive environment, employers are increasingly recognizing the importance of workplace health strategies. A key component of these strategies is the benefit plan audit. This process not only ensures compliance but also enhances the overall well-being of employees.

What is a Benefit Plan Audit?

A benefit plan audit is a thorough examination of the employer's health benefits program. It evaluates the effectiveness, compliance, and financial integrity of the benefit plans offered to employees. Regular audits can uncover discrepancies, inefficiencies, and areas for improvement, making them essential for any organization.

The Importance of Benefit Plan Audits

1. Compliance Assurance: Benefit plan audits ensure that employers comply with federal regulations and industry standards. This is crucial to avoid penalties and maintain a good reputation.

2. Cost Efficiency: By identifying wasteful spending or underutilized benefits, audits can help employers optimize their budgets. This can lead to significant savings that can be redirected toward enhancing employee health programs.

3. Employee Satisfaction: A well-managed benefit plan contributes to higher employee satisfaction and retention. When employees feel valued and supported through their benefits, they are more likely to be engaged and productive.

4. Health Promotion: As part of the audit, employers can assess the effectiveness of their health promotion initiatives. This aligns with the recommendations from the CDC workplace health promotion, which emphasize the importance of fostering a healthy work environment.

Integrating Audits into Your Health Strategy

To effectively integrate benefit plan audits into your workplace health strategy, consider the following steps:

• Schedule Regular Audits: Make audits a routine part of your benefits management. Annual audits can help keep your programs aligned with current regulations and employee needs.
• Engage Stakeholders: Involve key stakeholders, including HR, finance, and employee representatives, in the audit process. Their insights can provide a comprehensive view of the benefits program.
• Utilize Technology: Leverage technology to streamline the audit process. Many software solutions can help track benefits utilization and compliance, making audits more efficient.
• Communicate Findings: Share the results of the audit with employees. Transparency fosters trust and encourages employee engagement in health and wellness programs.

Conclusion

Conducting a benefit plan audit is not just a regulatory requirement; it's a strategic move that can significantly enhance workplace health initiatives. By ensuring compliance, promoting cost efficiency, and increasing employee satisfaction, audits play a vital role in shaping a healthier workplace. For more information on how to conduct a benefit plan audit, visit benefit plan audit. Embracing these audits can lead to a more robust health strategy, ultimately benefiting both employers and employees alike.

ping

Fauci, and Faucism, represented the apotheosis of what the managerial/academic/journo class desires: An excuse for sweeping power, based on (alleged) expertise, in which they could ride roughshod over those stupid proles and flyover people while preening about the allegedly superior moral and intellectual qualities that justify their rule.

Then it turned out that they were wrong about nearly everything and — as Fauci’s diaries demonstrate — knew it at the time, at least at the top.

— Glenn Harland Reynolds (here)

Is anyone shocked to find out from his diaries that Anthony Fauci is a self-absorbed megalomaniac who gloried in the attention and praises heaped upon him during the pandemic? Of course not. He is a prime example of the Luciferian passions of pride and vainglory and the damage they will do if unchecked.

Here's an interesting take on the self-proclaimed American elites as well as a personal reaction from one of their followers that will also shock no one but which serves to illustrate our depravity and the increasingly bitter divide in America.

#history #politics

In Het Wild

Het is zo heerlijk kamperen in het wild je tent erin opzetten een mooie plek aan de bedding bij de oever in de vallei tussen beschoeide wallen zwemmen in de stroom daarin tot rust komen verder trekken Het is zo heerlijk kamperen in het wild met je tentje op maat makkelijk in gebruik vlot opgezet voelen hoe de natuur op je inwerkt zitten zitten voor het tentje onder de flap in de beschutting van een bosje aan de monding van de rivier Zo heerlijk kamperen, ik hou van kamperen in het wild het woeste van de natuur aan mijn voeten vissen zwemmen stroom opwaarts vogels drijven met de stroom mee in de vallei nabij de kust waar de rivier uitmondt in zee in het wild waar zaden waaien met de wind mee groen ontkiemt in vruchtbare aarde bevers knagen aan stammen de jacht nooit stopt uit zaad en vruchtvlees bomen en struiken ontspruiten het gras buigt bomen wiegen rijpe vruchten hangen overal aan alle zijden in de wildernis nieuwe vergezichten op de vallei en oevers het is altijd zo heerlijk kamperen in het wild

Nandita zu Besuch: 17. Juli

Erst heute wurde mir bewusst, dass schon ein großer Teil des Sommers vorbei ist. Im September beginnt bereits wieder ein neues Studienjahr. Ich frage mich ständig, warum die Zeit so schnell vergehen muss und warum wir keine Möglichkeit haben, etwas langsamer zu leben. Die nächste Frage ist, ob ich tagsüber inzwischen weniger schaffe, weil ich langsamer geworden bin, oder ob eine Stunde heutzutage einfach insgesamt an Wert verloren hat.

Heute beschlossen wir, den Alexanderplatz einfach in Ruhe zu erkunden. Ohne Wegbeschreibungen, ohne zu viel zu filmen – einfach den Moment anzuhalten, Berlin auf uns wirken zu lassen und später darüber zu reflektieren. Ich muss überhaupt noch viel mehr auf Deutsch reflektieren, damit ich mich in dieser Sprache immer mehr zu Hause fühle. Manchmal ertappe ich mich dabei, dass ich wirklich auf Deutsch denke. Oder dass meine inneren Dialoge auf Deutsch stattfinden. In diesen Gesprächen suche ich nur selten nach Wörtern. Irgendwie läuft das Denken viel flüssiger als das tatsächliche Sprechen.

Der Alexanderplatz klingt für mich wie ein typischer europäischer Stadtplatz – voller Menschen, Geräusche, Gerüche und Sprachen. Wenn ich nicht wüsste, wo ich mich gerade befinde, würde ich denken, dass ich irgendwo in Europa bin. Ich hörte viele verschiedene Sprachen auf der Straße, und Deutsch gehörte tatsächlich nicht zu den häufigsten.

Noch interessanter wurde es, als ich einen vegetarischen Burger essen wollte und wir einen der vielen Burgerläden auf dem Platz betraten. Kaum waren wir drinnen, hörten wir sofort auf Englisch: “No dogs here!” Ich antwortete höflich, dass wir nur etwas bestellen wollten und anschließend gleich wieder hinausgehen würden. Kurz darauf kam ein anderer Mann, berührte mich und sagte ebenfalls auf Englisch: “You cannot be here.”

Während Mindaugas versuchte, sich durch den Bestellautomaten zu arbeiten, dachte ich nur: Wenn ich in Deutschland schon irgendwo hinausgeschickt werde, dann möchte ich wenigstens auf Deutsch hinausgeschickt werden! Der Mann war erstaunlich aufdringlich und wiederholte ständig, dass wir dort nicht sein dürften. Während der ganzen Szene waren unsere Hunde völlig ruhig und bellten überhaupt nicht. Die einzige Person, die bellte, war dieser Mann. Ich erklärte ihm sogar, dass ich nicht sehen kann und deshalb Hilfe beim Bestellen brauche. Aber irgendwie hörte mir niemand zu.

Schließlich stellte Mindaugas fest, dass es dort ohnehin keine vegetarische Auswahl gab. Also verließen wir das Restaurant freiwillig.

Sehr witzigerweise wiederholte sich dieselbe Szene in einem anderen Burgerladen. Auch dort musste man das Essen an einem Bestellautomaten auswählen – ähnlich wie bei McDonald's. Der Automat stand allerdings weder im Essbereich noch zwischen den Tischen, sondern direkt im Eingangsbereich. Trotzdem durften wir mit unseren Assistenzhunden nicht einmal für eine Minute dort stehen bleiben, um in Ruhe unser Essen zu bestellen. Ach, Berlin – du überraschst mich immer wieder! Statt Burger zu essen, gingen wir einfach draußen spazieren. Ich konnte die Skulptur eines Mannes ertasten und anschließend am Roten Rathaus sowie an der Marienkirche entlanggehen. Natürlich durfte man auch dort mit Hunden nirgendwo hinein. Ich sagte zu Mindaugas: „Ihr dürft nicht hinein, und für mich ergibt es ohnehin keinen Sinn – ich kann ja nichts sehen.“ Es war außerdem schön, den Straßenmusikerinnen und Straßenmusikern zuzuhören. Ihre Musik vermischte sich mit den Geräuschen der Stadt und mit den Melodien anderer Musiker. Erstaunlicherweise gelang es all diesen Klängen, gleichzeitig zu existieren, ohne sich gegenseitig zu stören. Ich versuchte, die einzelnen Melodien voneinander zu trennen – fast so, als würde ich Gegenstände sortieren. Dabei suchte ich immer nach dem Moment, in dem ich einer Melodie nicht mehr folgen konnte und meine Aufmerksamkeit ganz von selbst zur nächsten wechselte. Das fühlte sich unglaublich friedlich an. Obwohl wir uns nicht überall willkommen fühlten, wurden wir auf der Straße wie alle anderen Besucher ganz selbstverständlich aufgenommen. Hier fanden Straßenmusiker, Touristinnen und Touristen, Geschäftsleute, die unterschiedlichsten obdachlosen Menschen, Alkoholkranke und viele andere ungewöhnliche oder verlorene Gestalten ihren Platz. Und irgendwie gehörten sie alle zu diesem lebendigen Stadtbild.

Ich war außerdem überrascht zu erfahren, dass der Name des Alexanderplatzes einen russischen Ursprung hat. Der frühere Ochsenmarkt wurde zu Ehren des russischen Zaren Alexander I., der Preußen im Kampf gegen Napoleon unterstützte, in Alexanderplatz umbenannt. Eigentlich hat sich die ursprüngliche Bedeutung des Platzes gar nicht so sehr verändert. Früher war er ein Handelsplatz – und irgendwie ist er das bis heute geblieben, auch wenn der Handel heute ganz anders aussieht. Meine Berliner Freundin hatte mich gewarnt, dass es dort am späten Abend nicht besonders sicher sei. Tagsüber wirkte jedoch alles erstaunlich friedlich.

Noch etwas zu der Skulptur des arbeitenden Mannes: Seine Schuhe waren zerrissen, und das erschien mir als ein schönes Symbol für die harte Arbeit. Auf dem Platz gab es außerdem noch eine weitere Skulptur – die einer Frau, die einen Stock oder ein Werkzeug in der Hand hielt. Ich stellte mich neben sie und nahm mit meinem Blindenstock dieselbe Haltung ein. Es gefällt mir, nachdem ich eine Skulptur ertastet habe, ihre Haltung nachzuahmen. Für einen kurzen Moment habe ich dann das Gefühl, als könnte ich nachempfinden, wie es wäre, selbst dort zu stehen – regungslos, Tag für Tag.

Nandita kam erst spät am Abend aus Bitburg an – erst gegen neun Uhr. Sie war mit Regionalzügen unterwegs und musste so oft umsteigen, dass ihre Reise insgesamt mehr als zwölf Stunden dauerte. Mindaugas und ich lachten darüber, dass sich diese Fahrt wahrscheinlich ein bisschen wie eine Reise durch Indien angefühlt haben musste. Wie erfahrene Berliner empfahlen wir ihr, nicht bis zum Hauptbahnhof weiterzufahren, sondern bereits am Potsdamer Platz auszusteigen und dort die S9 zu nehmen. So konnte sie noch etwas Zeit sparen. Wir trafen uns nach einer langen Pause wieder. Inzwischen hatte Nandita schon richtig gut Deutsch gelernt. Wenn sie auf der Straße jemanden etwas fragen musste, tat sie das ganz selbstverständlich und mutig auf Deutsch.

Als wir schließlich am Hotel ankamen, hielt uns ein Mann an und fragte, ob wir irgendwo einen Hund gesehen hätten. Zuerst verstand ich gar nicht richtig, was er von uns wollte. Nandita reagierte jedoch sofort und antwortete, dass wir keinen Hund gesehen hätten. Dann überraschte uns der Mann noch einmal. Er sagte: “Ich spreche nicht mit dir, sondern mit dieser Frau.” Dabei zeigte er auf mich. Nandita erklärte ihm daraufhin, dass wir beide gerade erst angekommen seien und deshalb nichts gesehen hätten. Da war ich endgültig von ihren Deutschkenntnissen überzeugt! Früher waren wir ein perfektes Team, bei dem die eine sehen und die andere sprechen konnte. Jetzt wird für uns beide alles noch viel einfacher.

restlichen Abend verbrachten wir einfach gemeinsam in unserem Hotelzimmer und unterhielten uns lange. Draußen hatte es plötzlich angefangen zu regnen. Eigentlich wollte ich den Alexanderplatz noch einmal bei Nacht erleben, aber das konnten wir genauso gut auf den nächsten Tag verschieben.

Well, what? Why are you looking at me like that? Never had a bad night before? last night was a complete disaster, yes. Heartbreaking, really. before you start judging my writing, perhaps have a look at the state of your own life. and yes, my advertisement still stands “one patient human willing to tolerate endless complaints.” payments included, if you’re interested, all you have to do is find me. which admittedly, makes it a terrible advertisement. anyway, enough nonsense. ive been sleeping with wrist ristranters for the past couple weeks, you get used to strange things surprisingly quickly. last night i decided, for reasons i still cant explain, that I’d sleep without them. smart choice i know. without my housemate waking me up with iced water, i’d have been in a considerably worse state by morning. i guess my own brain wasnt enough trouble, so my hands decided they’d audition for the role too. safe to sayy, the restraints are back. i also had a strange dream when i went back to sleep after that, it was about her favorite flowers. lily of the valley. they dont usually grow where i live. i dont think they do. they’re annoyingly delicate things that need more attention than i have patience to give. but anyway. i was driving far too fast down the wrong side of the road, and that not the strange thing in the dream. i stopped somewhere, looked around and somehow i was on a motorcycle instead of in my car. dont ask where the car went, its a dream. if i have to explain how dreams work, im amazed you remember how to breathe. anyway, i saw them. hundreds of lily of the valley flowers. growing in the middle of nowhere. i hate flowers, i always have. i couldnt care less about them. yet there i was, standing in the middle of nowhere, actually looking for the prettiest one, and thats funny to me, because even in my dreams, the things i hate the most somehow become worth tolerating if they’re for her. i put it in my pocket, got back on the motorcycle, and headed to give it to her, i never made it to the door. i collapsed before i got there. then i woke up, i was talking to myself about the dream, and my housemate overheard, and thats hardly unusual anymore. Instead of pretending he hadn’t heard me, he decided to join in and tell me about his dream. let me remind you, i did not ask. but he told me anyway, he told me that it was him, me and two of my friends standing inside a tiny room connected to a long hallway. The hallway was completely red, and these. “things” were talking through it. ghosts, jinn, whatever you preferred supernatural subscription service happens to be. they didnt have faces. Just smoke where a person shouldve been. It wasn’t strange that they were there, he said, it was that everyone acted like it was perfectly normal and he found it normal as well, these things walked past, greeting everyone and thanking us for letting them in, like they were invited. i interrupted him and asked in his dream, so you dont act idiotic, i interrupted everyone in the dream and said, “ what if they take over our bodies?” one of the others just shrugged and said, “I don’t know” then everything became strange enough that it woke him up. great. great. as if i needed another reason to sleep badly. im locking every door tonight. and judging by that dream. he might be getting wrist restraints too.

Anyway, i will lock every door tonight. not because im scared of ghosts. i just dont trust someone who casually dream about letting them in and then tells me about it before breakfast.

Sincerely, Professionally making bad decisions since birth.

P.S. If this becomes a problem, expect a completely unnecessary report about lily of the valley. history, facts, meaning. the entire unnecessary package. yes, i hate flowers, No, im not joining their little fan club. Relax, this is not me discovering my soft side, so dont start making assumptions.

Originally published in City Press on 29 April 2015 By Roger Young

Original URLs (both currently 500 on live News24):

• https://www.news24.com/you-are-walking-on-graves-20150429
• https://www.news24.com/Archives/City-Press/You-are-walking-on-graves-20150429

Full text recovered from Wayback Machine

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They waft into the market place through dappled light. Under the main tent, boutique vegan craft food. Salmon smoked with rare, indigenous, never-heard-of wood, bread made from impossible elements, perhaps vapours inspired by obscure Scandinavian folklore, jauntily fried foods, moustachioed men selling mustards. This is their domain, one that they at once own, yet dismiss.

The five girls — their hair bleached in shades of pastel, their loose batik midriff tops, their wide-brimmed black fashion hats — settle in the middle of the walkway to confer (“German sausage or Montagu nuts, Annabelle?”) and expand luxuriously as if in their own private boudoir.

Two men dressed in farm overalls approach carrying baskets of fresh produce to deliver to one of the stalls. They encounter the girls, who do not move. It's not that the girls ignore the gardeners, it is simply that to them they do not exist.

When finally one of the men manages to penetrate their inane chatter, they leap aside, as if magical creatures had just stepped out a doorway from a mythical world.

This is the Oranjezicht City Farm, which stands on part of what was the farm belonging to the biggest slave owner in the Cape Colonies, Pieter van Breda, a man who quite possibly, as this was the custom of the time, would have forced himself sexually on his female slaves.

This is unremarked in Oranjezicht City Farm's own literature. The website's mention of his offspring Michiel van Breda's private orchestra is treated with a Victorian flutter, rendering it charmingly old-timey without baring the fact that this orchestra was comprised of imprisoned slaves who had been roughly torn from Asia, Madagascar, Mozambique, southern Tanzania and the east African coast, as well as the Khoe and San from the supposed hinterlands beyond the Liesbeek River in the Cape.

Men and women desolate and constrained, in direct line of daily physical harm.

Much is to be learnt from this passage on the website: “On sale days, the bell sounded and a flag was hoisted, the signal for ships' officers, burghers and their wives and children to visit the estate to purchase fresh fruit and vegetables. Produce was brought to a tree in the cobbled yard, where it was weighed on a scale hanging from an oak tree. The original hooks for this scale are still present and visible...”

The bell in question is a slave bell, as the website submits, but its main task was not to bring out the gentry to shop — much as they still do here centuries later — it was a call to these men ripped from their families to backbreaking labour in the unrelenting sun.

The history of an inanimate hook is more important than the lives given to hoisting it.

And here, as they loll about on the lawns sipping their beetroot, ginger and chai latte smoothie and allowing the light to shine on their greying heads and expensive accessories, it is a small wonder that no one observes that the only people doing any labour on the adjoining farm are the only possible descendants of those slaves present — people working for between R100 and R140 a day, when the Oranjezicht City Farm market is rumoured to bring in between R12 000 and R16 000 a week.

The Oranjezicht City Farm fits neatly into a new wave of breadbasket revivalism, from the new vegetable garden in The Company's Garden (that we're still calling it this is itself a problem) to wine farm tourist brochures that paint the history of the Cape as a pastoral wonderland and whitewashes the histories and hauntings that form the fabric of life in Cape Town today.

Remembering a graveyard

But how do you talk about all of these voices lost to history because they were invisible to the official record keepers?

This is the task relegated to monument makers and memorialisation initiatives — the District Six Museum, the Slave Lodge, the oral historians, those who run the walking tours of the Cape's slave sites. It also falls now to the University of Cape Town (UCT) and those gathered by its recently announced Rustenburg Slave Memorial student competition to memorialise the Dutch East India Company graveyard that once stood where the School of Economics and All Africa House are now.

This graveyard existed when Cecil John Rhodes purchased the land, but in the 1930s was covered by tennis courts. Although clearly marked on the original land surveys, the site was only uncovered during construction in the late 1990s and mid-2000s. Since 2008, it has been marked only by a glassed-in section of the cemetery wall's foundation on the ground between the two buildings.

The press release states: “The rediscovery of the Rustenburg burial ground provides UCT with the unique opportunity to remember and commemorate these forgotten people and the experiences through which they would have gone.”

At the competition launch, heritage activist and slave archivist Mogamat Kammie Kamedien said: “We have the official story we find in the archives, but there's also, from my perspective, the narrative from the bottom up.”

Historian Nigel Penn spoke about the special oppressions that occurred in the Cape Colonies around sexuality, and the sudden loss of the slaves' ability to communicate in their mother tongues.

“There is a real, haunted history to this special piece of ground that we're standing on,” he said.

It's clear that the Rustenburg site is an opportunity to memorialise not just the graveyard itself, but the hauntings and silences that surround Cape history. Based on the visible memorial evidence, it would seem that Cape Town has failed its slave and Khoe past.

The memorial in crisis

The Memorial to the Enslaved on Church Square, created by Gavin Younge and Wilma Cruise and unveiled in 2008, received criticism on three counts: its similarities to Berlin's Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe; that the memorial seemed to cower in the shadow of a colonial statue; and that its creators were white.

The Justitie Plaats memorial has faced similar charges. The Treaty Tree in Woodstock memorialises a British treaty rather than the thousands sold into bondage under its branches. The Prestwich Memorial at the start of Somerset Road marks the old underclass, slave and outcast graveyards that stretched from Strand Street to Gallows Hill. It houses an ossuary, but its entrance is hidden behind an information panel. Visitors are mostly oblivious to the remains of about 3 000 people that sit on shelves mere meters away.

The past is always present, but in Cape Town it seems it is not present enough. The archive is faulty; it would be pointless to embark on a project such as the Stolpersteine of Europe because we have no names to grace the blocks.

Another site of slave history has recently received a new, albeit temporary, memorial. The Slave Tree site, where economic activity around slavery moved after the building of the Slave Lodge (where Van Breda most likely did most of his trading) was the centre of the economy of the early colony (and therefore is the fulcrum of South Africa's economic and labour structures). It used to be marked by a small, almost illegible plinth.

Nadya Glawe, who lives nearby, felt the site needed to be made more visible. Utilising a partial grant from World Design Capital and getting all the city permissions herself, she erected a wooden tree memorial. Tested at AfrikaBurn, and distinctly of that aesthetic, Glawe's tree has borne her many criticisms.

Asked why she chose, for a memorial to brown people, to make the tree white, she relies that the whiteness of the tree had nothing to do with race, she was simply providing a blank canvas for people. It was her hope that they would write messages to their ancestors on the branches and leaves. It has not been embraced to the extent she hoped. While there are some messages of support, the most telling message reads: “This tree is too white.”

Glawe's frustration with the outcome is real — she honestly believes that she was drawing attention to a site that needed more overt memorialisation, and that no one in the city was doing anything. Now she feels attacked for attempting to make history visible. When I tell her that an activist I spoke to wanted to burn her tree down, she welcomed the idea.

“I didn't make this for me, I made it to draw attention to the site, if destroying my memorial makes for a better memorialisation, then I am all for it.”

The restless bones

After the launch of UCT's gravesite competition, attendants are taken on a site inspection. The space between the two buildings feels thin — it's about 5m wide and perhaps 20m long. As we make our way to the site, a young guy in a baseball cap says under his breath: “Should we even be walking here? I mean, we might be walking on my ancestors' graves.”

During question time, someone asks if the ground is sacred, if there are still bones here. Sally Titlestad, a co-author of the historical report on the site, says that no evidence of human remains have been found, but there is a good chance, due to the nature of the soil, that they might have decomposed beyond exhumation.

But Kamedien has a different take, intimating to me later that according to oral history they were, at some point, “dumped in the harbour”.

There is no archival evidence of this. But the absence of measurable evidence cannot be used to discount a site's significance.

In the case of the shrine of Sayed Abdul Malik, near St Cyprian's School in Cape Town, no archeological evidence was found to support the claims attested to in cultural and oral history, and yet a negotiated agreement was reached for a heritage project at the site.

In the Prestwich ossuary, I am struck by this piece of information listing the accidental uncovering of burial sites: “On the Grand Parade when the Post Office tunnel was excavated in the 1960s; in Vredehoek when a driveway was being reconfigured; below the site of the new 2010 Green Point Stadium, Mechau Street; Buitengracht Street; Chiappini Street; Milnerton beach and Melkbosstrand.”

I am struck by the breadth of these sites, struck that some may be slave sites, some may be Khoe, that some traditions demand that we refrain from empirical examinations, that we respect the burial site. The measuring of skulls has done much damage.

All that is left to do is to listen to the voices, historical, fragmentary, whispers, hauntings, shivers, rages, echoes, hunches, that which has passed out of hearing, that is no longer physical, and to reflect these voices into the present, to respect the palimpsest of this moment, to listen. To live in Cape Town is to be haunted.

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Head pounding.

Boom Boom Because I’m Boom Boom

Sex dreams all night. Her from behind. Her from in front. Legs wider. My legs. Hands and tongues. One where I was the man and the woman. That was weird. No resolve, just constant and all night.

Worried about Ray.

Why do I think it’s my responsibility? I can help, but I cannot own. Last dream, I was helping him get into bed and he fell on the floor. I was a forklift strai lning to raise his dead weight. Why do they want home so bad when they can’t even drive themselves. He’ll have to have some serious problems before he accepts reality.

Sounds like me: I can do the impossible. Until I can’t.

Want to hug. Need a hug. Afraid I might be broken.

Dream I was speaking to a thousand people on stage. Miss public speaking. Miss teaching. Feel unplugged from my reality. Like I’m a leaf in a river. I used to feel like a man tied to the front of a speeding train.

Dreamed about roofing Mike T's house. I was there again at lunch loading the shingles. I was there again when he said ‘bbq to thank everyone who came to help’ and I couldn’t go because a someone else needed help roofing that weekend. ‘That’s okay, I’ll invite you to the next one.’

There never was a next one.

He did take us to that Victor Borgman concert. I was so tired, I fell asleep.

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Hah. You’re a failure if you just find something you can tolerate or enjoy and just do that. But it’s how man exists for 6k years. All of a sudden we’re all supposed to be clawing constantly.

All of a sudden men want to be women and women want to be men.

Contentment is a crime.

Name of my self-improvement book all about the satisfaction of just making things.

Ever see those IG videos saying ‘want to know how I went from selling my paintings for nothing, to $9000?’

News flash: they didn’t. Or if they did, they hate painting now.

I have a friend whose dream was to be a national portrait painter. He practiced and perfected, bought a farm in Virginia and started work local politicians. Worked his way up to congressmen.

Hated it.

Moved to Florida. Started painting Disney paintings. Got really good at it. Was approved as a ‘Disney artist’. Sells originals and prints I t be park. Makes lots of money.

Says he loves it.

I see it. impressive work. But it has no soul. Paintings telling the same story Disney has been telling for 100 hundred years. Our brand is value. Our brand is expensive. Our brand. Our brand our brand.

$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$

I hate money.

He’s just painting advertisements.

Which, great, if he’s happy.

But I pulled one of his prints out of the closet. And it is indistinguishable from AI slop.

He’s essentially a less-unique version of Thomas Kingcade. Art as business.

$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$

Meanwhile I think of Chuck, Picasso, or a dozen other household names who defied convention and made something worth seeing. Worth investing in. Worth believing in.

 I will never be famous. Or rich. Or probably even content. But what I am and will always be is proud that I got up every day and made a thing. Good bad or ugly. I loved. I lived. I tasted life and gave convention the middle finger as best I could.

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HOW can one image take SO long to work?

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Client says 'nice job'. Assume they're being nice because I am a moron. Take a damned compliment, man.

At $125 an hour, I should be able to accept a compliment. I can certainly cash the check.

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I'm so scared to open whatsapp again. What I'll do if she's there. I know I won't be able to resist it. I won't. And so I'm scared. of myself. Of hurting anyone else. So deleted is shall remain.

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Sleeping alone tonight. Going to try to give her the space to rest and not be disturbed. She needs it. Quiet and peace and restful sleep. THinking of going out to sleep in van.

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“Love Will Tear Us Apart” Joy Division

When routine bites hard, And ambitions are low, And resentment rides high, But emotions won't grow, And we're changing our ways, Taking different roads.

Then love, love will tear us apart again. Love, love will tear us apart again.

Why is the bedroom so cold? You've turned away on your side. Is my timing that flawed? Our respect runs so dry. Yet there's still this appeal That we've kept through our lives.

But love, love will tear us apart again. Love, love will tear us apart again.

You cry out in your sleep, All my failings exposed. And there's a taste in my mouth, As desperation takes hold. Just that something so good Just can't function no more.

But love, love will tear us apart again. Love, love will tear us apart again. Love, love will tear us apart again. Love, love will tear us apart again.

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This dream wasn't about one person. It wasn't even really about sex. It was simply sex in every possible direction, all night long, without resolution.

The lack of a specific woman or emotional connection stands out. There was no courtship, no affection, no shame, no climax—just an endless current of sexual expression. That makes me think the dream is less about physical desire than about life-force itself.

Sex in dreams is symbolized creation, union, intimacy, or the joining together of different parts. Others, and our selves. Here every scene shifted before it could resolve. It felt like raw creative and emotional energy searching for somewhere to go.

The strangest part was becoming both the man and the woman. It suggests my unconscious wasn't focused on another person at all. Instead it was exploring both masculine and feminine aspects inside. The dream blurred the distinction between giver and receiver, pursuer and pursued. Rather than choosing one role, I experienced both.

Considering my recent dreams, there may be a pattern developing. Several have revolved around authority, calling, discovery, and spiritual identity. This dream seems to descend beneath those themes into something more fundamental: the energy that drives life itself. Before that energy can be directed toward purpose, it first appears in its most instinctive form.

The absence of resolution may be the real message. The energy is present, abundant, even overflowing, but it hasn't yet found its destination. It remains potential rather than fulfillment.

If there is a spiritual lesson here, it may be that God often works with the same life-force that can express itself sexually, creatively, emotionally, or spiritually. The question isn't whether the energy exists, but where it will ultimately be directed.

#deardiary

Job search lack of success anxiety is starting to kick in. Can't do much of anything until that's settled, it feels like. Am bothered.

I chopped much of my hair off with scissors in front of the bathroom mirror. Too much, really, but it's hard to stop once I get going. It'll grow back, it always does. I've bought blue hair dye but I might wait until I have a new job. Vaguely respectable. Very vaguely. Tonight I'm making Japanese style cabbage pancakes with tofu mayonnaise. It's a very vegetable heavy, veganised bastardisation of okonomiyaki and almost a necessity when the veg delivery box includes a cabbage larger than my head.

I got the deal again and so I spent $15 to get a month of hinge X, and with that I have gotten a pretty good amount of matches I would say. I guess I just wanna quickly remind myself that the success on apps is not a reflection of my desirability at all.

A long time ago I recall watching a video of someone who had a hundred or so mousetraps, and they had set them all, and laid them out on the floor of a room. Then they triggered one of them. Of course it bounced up in the air, and landed on another. Those two flew, and landed on two more. It caused a chaotic chain reaction that lasted a few seconds.

Imagine if the room was zero gravity. They would never stop.

Imagine if they were not mousetraps, and not in a room. If they were satellites and debris varying in size from as small as a grain of sand all the way up to the size of a school bus. All in low earth orbit traveling at thousands of kph.

The oligarch tech brats continue their reign of self serving incompetent neglect, blatant stupidity, and fear inducing manipulative lies. If they keep on launching more and more of their terrible ideas into space; an unstoppable chain reaction becomes more and more inevitable.

I think of those Star Trek episodes when the crew would find themselves in a time anomaly, and would end up interacting with earthlings of the past. In other episodes they would find a primitive species on some other planet. They would be careful to not expose any of them to knowledge that they were not ready for. I feel like that has happened to us here on earth. Not from an outside source or a time traveler, but from ideas that evolved too quickly. They could have been so beneficial for everyone on earth, but too many awful people (the 1%) have taken those ideas, and have figured out how to use them only for their own benefit by exploiting the rest of humanity.

Originally published in City Press on 20 October 2015 By Roger Young and Gugulethu Mhlungu

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It's as if Isaac Mutant and Pieter Hugo have been galloping towards each other for all eternity. Mutant violently sceptical of anything masquerading as publicity or even decency; Hugo clawing his way to some outer edge where he can transmit raw human experience, free from the hand-wringing of intellectuals.

Both are close to breaking point as a result of the constant misunderstandings of their work and intentions — Hugo the Fetishiser, Mutant the Misogynist.

Dirty, the music video, is that, then: the two men breaking. A temper tantrum right out there on the outer edge: juvenile, filthy, unnecessary, gloriously crass and downright beautiful — if not visually, then for the purity of its rage. In it, Mutant takes himself places you never thought possible. The mistake has been to think of him as a “Cape Flats rapper” instead of a “mercenary poet”. In much the same way, Hugo's profession presents a set of presumed ideologies: white man photographing in Africa equals fetishising and appropriation.

I find Dookoom, Mutant and the others scattered around Lefty's, Cape Town's famous dive bar, just after they've wrapped shooting Dirty. They're covered in various layers of grime. Hugo, who directed Spoek Mathambo's breakout video, Control, is trying to explain the stills on his iPhone of two Mutants making out.

“We thought really long and hard about this, and, for me, this is a video about the lack of acknowledgment in the coloured community of the homosexual nature of the prison gangs.”

Mutant pricks up his ears, scratches his chin, remains silent. Hugo continues: “I'm doing it because, when they first sent me the song, I honestly felt unsettled. I was so drawn to it, but acutely aware that this was the voice of a sexual predator.”

Later Mutant says to me: “Actually this motherfucker has a point. You get gay people, right. But when you go to jail, a heterosexual dude, the 28s like, they're not gay but now the straight rules don't apply.”

The video for Dirty puts front and centre the spectre of menstrual blood, narcissism and sexual fetishisation; Mutant so resplendent in agency that any notion of exploitation becomes laughable.

“I wanted to present myself as that thing, that idea of the black man you whitie intellectuals are always gaaning aan about, you know, like what that Gillian Schutte woman said.”

Mutant is referring to the columnist's reaction to last year's Larney Jou Poes video. She wrote: “He is the black man whom racism was constructed for — to keep in check; to keep shackled and away from the pristine white women; the man with the animalistic sexuality; the man with the huge, hard, throbbing cock; the man who threatens the colonial male's self-esteem and sense of sexual prowess.”

It is, of course, the “hard, throbbing cock” that mostly impressed Mutant. “I looked at myself differently after that. Because I would never act like that. I wouldn't have acted like that [in Dirty], definitely, if she didn't write that thing...” But of course, in the tangled mess of looking at each other, Schutte, in her referencing of white fears, could be accused of fetishising Mutant, as much as Mutant could be accused of fetishising Lilith in Dirty, the track he constantly refers to as a “love song”. “It's a sexy track,” he says. “It's all the wrong things but it's not necessarily wrong.”

“I don't expect people to like this,” says Hugo. “But I want people to talk about it ... The art I'm into is stuff that pushes boundaries. I'm interested in expanding my experience and my mind. To me, it's taking the piss. It's undermining that machismo in hip-hop.”

Dirty is hard to watch and, for that reason, I think there is a strange beauty to it, in its righteousness of anger, in the celebration of menstrual blood, in its raw horror. But by playing with stereotypes to comment on the colonial gaze, many will see it as reinforcement of that stereotype.

It is ironic that the genius wordsmith Mutant — denied practically every opportunity for full self-expression in his life — will in this moment, where he took control, be crucified. Already there has been talk that he has been exploited by Hugo's white gaze.

“There's no way I can feel exploited,” says Mutant. “Pieter presented his ideas to me and the crew, and I was down with what he suggested. The whole point is not being afraid to explore new shit. And having the freedom to do so ... No, not every person of colour is a victim of racism, just because he does something that is not considered in good taste.”

Says Hugo: “Everything I am interested about in art is confrontational and about enlarging my understanding of the human experience. Which is messy. And opaque. That is why political correctness is phoney. Dishonest.”

— Roger Young

Watch the video, which is extremely explicit, here.

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Dirty's rapey tropes

By Gugulethu Mhlungu

“We have been nurtured in a sick, abnormal society, and we should be in the process of reclaiming ourselves, not the terms of that society. This is complex. I speak not about condemnation, but about recognising what is happening and questioning what it means...”

So said feminist thinker and author Audre Lorde when asked about her thoughts on bondage and discipline, sadism and masochism.

She went on to explain that the origins of sadomasochistic sex were as important in our personal lives as in public. That we must be willing to ask: “What am I doing? What am I choosing?” Her point was that, even when we exercise what little agency we have, we can and often do choose to partake in the power structures that oppress us.

In their Dirty video, Dookoom employs the racist tropes of jungle porn, the fetishisation of menstrual blood, the harmless but desirable white woman, as well as the image of the virulent black man with his dangerous throbbing penis in an attempt to subvert all of these. However, they show why Lorde insisted that the political ought to be personal too.

In an attempt to subvert the stereotypes of coloured maleness, Dirty in fact only seems to reinscribe them. This is particularly important in the context of a privileged, white, male director like Hugo, where even if they “collaborated”, which they no doubt did, the end product traps any intended subversion or counternarrative in a trope created by white-supremacist heteropatriarchy. And this is the danger of using the master's tools to destroy the master's house: it requires that we must enter the house first, and risk being co-opted, which is always a very real possibility, and clearly occurs in the Dirty video.

Lorde was also the same thinker who presented a paper called The Master's Tools Will Never Dismantle the Master's House. Lorde said: “I urge each one of us here to reach down into that deep place of knowledge inside herself and touch that terror and loathing of any difference that lives there. See whose face it wears. Then the personal as the political can begin to illuminate all our choices.”

At no point does the idea that we can easily be co-opted by supremacy and existing power structures deny that agency is not possible, but the presence of agency (of choosing) does not make structural oppression irrelevant. So Mutant wanting to be the guy he is in the video, to stick it to Gillian Schutte, does not make Dirty's lyrics less rapey, make the video's imagery less stereotypical. In fact, in the end, Dirty will be perceived as stereotype and little else.

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Source: City Press / News24 — 20 October 2015

Authors: Roger Young & Gugulethu Mhlungu

Related: Dookoom — Dirty (video, explicit)

Tags: dookoom, dirty, pieter hugo, isaac mutant, city press, south africa, hip-hop, censorship, art

Originally published on VICE by Roger Young, 2014

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Watch: DOOKOOM — “Larney Jou Poes”

South Africa's “coloured” population is one of the most diverse groups in the world: a multi-faceted, mixed-race section of society descended from slaves bought in by the Dutch from West Africa, Indonesia, Asia, as well as from the captured indigenous peoples Khoe and San (or Khoisan), whose language—Afrikaans—is a Creole mash up of many languages. Unlike in the West, the term “coloured” is not seen as an antiquated racial slur, but rather was cemented by the National Party government during the government-imposed segregation of Apartheid. It came to classify a group that was in-between: not white, not black, and treated, in the stratified world of Apartheid, accordingly. They continue to face discrimination and limited economic opportunity. Many coloured and black workers still work for less than $5 a day.

In that economy, white farmers remain rich and separate from the country's black and coloured workers, and black politicians have become wealthy and out of touch with their constituents, giving large groups of people little recourse. In 1994, South Africa's peace ambassador, Archbishop Desmond Tutu, coined the phrase “Rainbow Nation” to describe the multicultural future of love, racial harmony, and democracy which everyone expected to emerge after hundreds of years of slavery and nearly a century of fascist, race-based totalitarianism, but that reality has not exactly come to pass.

Among the enduring problems is the land issue: It was expected—and, some would argue, promised by the African National Congress—that whites would have to hand over the land after the end of white minority rule. Many believe that the redistribution of land is the key to South Africa's future. Land grabs by settlers began in the 1600s as they moved into the country's interior. First the Dutch and French took lands traversed by the nomadic Khoe and San, then the hybrid Afrikaners from the late 1700s onwards (and the English), took the land from the Xhosa and the Zulu, not to mention various other tribes and cultural groups. The Land Act of 1913 cemented the disfranchisement of the “non-whites” of South Africa by disallowing them the right to own 90% of the country's land. Although it was repealed in 1991, in practice little has changed.

Enter DOOKOOM, an incendiary, South African electro hip-hop outfit whose freshly released video for “Larney, Jou Poes” has the white-slanting civil rights organization AfriForum calling for its ban. The song, whose title roughly translates to, “Hey Boss, You Cunt, Fuck You,” is deliberately provocative, designed to play on the country's longstanding racial tensions. In a riot of pitchforks, tractors, and burning tires, the video features “coloured” land laborers apparently getting ready to burn down their boss's farm. Its depiction of black and coloured liberation is so terrifying to white people that AfriForum—whose stated mission is to protect the rights of minorities but who in practice act in the interests of white, South African Afrikaners who feel threatened by the fact that the nation is no longer white-minority dominated—has felt compelled to label the video as Hate Speech, and have summarily filed a complaint with the South African Human Rights commission. AfriForum's main concern is the security of white farmers, isolated on their lands, who continue to face waves of violence and murder from the unemployed, the poverty-stricken, and the just plain criminal as the country's economy becomes more and more unequal.

DOOKOOM is a reaction to the chaos of contemporary South Africa, as dictated by its history. You can hear it in the clanging beats, discordant synths, and aggressive raps. Isaac Mutant, one-fifth of DOOKOOM, was probably in his late teens when the oppressive regime of South Africa crumbled and Nelson Mandela walked free.

I say “probably” because Mutant doesn't give much away. He's run with some of most notorious gangs in apartheid's dangerous, leftover projects of Mitchells Plain (on the outskirts of Cape Town). He's released three albums that spawned underground hits passed around on tapes, then CDs, and then on torrent sites—none of which earned him a penny. He's performed with the likes of the locally legendary crew Plein Madness, and he guested on Die Antwoord's first album. A couple of years ago he performed with Public Enemy. According to British pop culture writer King Adz, after his guest spot, Mutant simply refused to hand back the mic, taking over Chuck D's verses of “911 Is A Joke,” and leaving the Public Enemy leader to stand on the sidelines looking on in bemused admiration.

Rapping in a mixture of English, Afrikaans, and Sabela—a secret prison language that's evolved among the coloured gangs—Isaac Mutant has paid his dues. He's operated on the industry's edge. Frustrated, tired, and about to give up, he had a critical turning point when he met British-born producer and beatmaker, Human Waste, a man who was in a similar position. Human Waste had been producing hip-hop in South Africa for some time, and while a lot of the crews he was working with were achieving success, he was tired of the old-school boom bap sound they continued to pursue.

Alongside L i L i † H, a disenchanted dream-pop chanteuse; Roach, Mutant's hype man, bodyguard and DJ; and artist Spo0ky, who crafts their visual identity, they gave birth to DOOKOOM, dropping the project into a South Africa that is—20 years after the advent of democracy—fractured and riddled with a strange mix of fading hope, fear, mistrust, and intense energy.

DOOKOOM are determined to unsettle, and this is never more evident than during their live performances. The music is loud, grating, and angry. They wield knives and broken bottles and jugs of blood. They scream at their audiences and call for their deaths. A DOOKOOM show is a test of endurance until the crowd breaks through and embraces the anger—then suddenly there's a joyful abundance of hate and love and fear and energy and screaming. Somehow, it all slots into place. Given that Cape Town's live music scene is dominated by a bunch of fedora-wearing hipsters playing psych-rock and cutesy rap, DOOKOOM are a revelation. They're nothing that South Africa has seen before, but just what is it that DOOKOOM are trying to achieve?

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Some helpful terms:

• “Tik” is a street drug that is basically crystal meth but not as well made.
• A “naai” is literally “a fuck” but means “person I don't like.”
• A “Sangoma” is a practitioner of traditional and herbal medicines, who also consults the ancestors.
• “Broe,” “Bru,” “Bruh,” “Bra,” are all different levels of ironically saying “My brother.”
• “Kak” means “shit” but also means “very.” You can be kak angry or kak happy. K.A.K. is also an acronym for Koloured Ass Krooks, a term Mutant uses for a loose affiliation with a series of rappers and general troublemakers.
• “Poes” means vagina, but it's also the equivalent of “cunt,” but can also be used in the same way as “kak.”
• “Zef” a word popularized by Die Antwoord meaning a style so bad that it's good, a kind of meeting point between aspirational white trash and nouveau riche aspirations. For instance: Harmony Korine's films are zef as fuck.

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What is DOOKOOM conceptually and what does the word mean?

Isaac: DOOKOOM is a fucking band.

Human Waste: It's also like a cursed person. It comes from a sangoma [a Zulu term for a traditional healer], then it got changed in the Cape to being more like a bad, evil thing.

Isaac: DOOKOOM is basically a kaffir, it's a myth: it's not really what people think it is. I grew up in the ghetto, so this whole mystery surrounding a DOOKOOM—there's always something negative attached to that word or that person [but] it's not necessarily the truth. The mystery surrounding that kak is usually an outcast. I think everybody in DOOKOOM feels like [an outcast].

So let's deal with the inevitable Die Antwoord comparisons. Who wants to go first?

L i L i † H: DOOKOOM's not hip-hop. DOOKOOM's not fucking rap. It's got nothing to do with anything.

Human Waste: I guess the question is also, like, Isaac is authentic and Ninja is an art construct or whatever.

L i L i † H: DOOKOOM is just as art as Die Antwoord. We're just saying different things.

Isaac: The only comparison between DOOKOOM and Die Antwoord is they breathe and we breathe, broe.

People in South Africa hate Ninja and are always writing about how Die Antwoord utilize cultural appropriation.

L i L i † H: DOOKOOM's shoes are just dirtier than Die Antwoord.

Human Waste: Look at her go, she's a quote machine!

So you have no beef with Ninja?

Isaac: No, I did a job for him and he paid me. I was never part of Die Antwoord… I featured on a track. He got me some fucking Jagermeister. Anybody that gave me Jagermeister, I got no beef with.

So I just want you to break down for those who are unfamiliar: “Larney Jou Poes.” What does “larney” mean?

Roach: The word “larney” is my boss, my overseer, the person I have to answer to every day. The last part is self-explanatory, “Jou Poes.”

Human Waste: “Fuck You!”

L i L i † H: But “jou poes” is not really “fuck you” so much as…

Human Waste: Well directly translated it's…

L i L i † H: Your vagina.

Isaac: It's like “you cunt” plus “fuck you.”

So let's talk about the rainbow nation? How's that working out?

Human Waste: Pretty good for white people.

Isaac: It's not that peaceful. It's not that rainbow.

L i L i † H: You can't really have a rainbow with just black and white, can you?

But didn't Nelson Mandela fix all this shit?

Roach: He's dead; he's a dead motherfucker.

Isaac: Nelson Mandela's a rock star.

L i L i † H: He's the Kurt Cobain of South Africa.

Human Waste: Quote Machine!

L i L i † H: Leave Nelson Mandela alone, man. He tried his level best, bruh.

Human Waste: You can't deny the fact that like there's a lot of angry black people who do not like Nelson Mandela at all, who actually see him as an Uncle Tom sell out. And you don't hear that in the media ever.

L i L i † H: Dude, it not just angry black people, it's angry white people as well. I went to fucking Benoni [Johannesburg suburb with a bit of a zef reputation] a month ago, and there's people fucking living in tents on the main road. Poor white people living in tents, so people are being fucked. It doesn't matter if they're white or black, whatever. There's no rainbow nation. Everything's fucked and we're tired of smiling and going, “Yes everything is fine, just come on holiday to our country and spend your money here.” You can't say anything unless it's pro-Africa, pro-South Africa. You can't be dissatisfied with post-Apartheid.

Isaac: Otherwise it's hate speech. You're not allowed to be fucking angry. Or you're not allowed to do a track like “Jou Poes My Larney.” So fuck the rainbow nation, my broe; it's a fucking farce.

When AfriForum said they were going to file hate speech charges, they are speaking the same language as you, yet they see coloured Afrikaans as different to white Afrikaans.

Human Waste: Ja, well people will always hate each other. Like Londoners hate each other, like I hate Tottenham fans, even though they're my direct neighbors.

Human Waste: Humanity is a family. If one part is taking the piss, like some white people especially are doing, like your uncle who you may have to slap up occasionally because he's acting out of order, you still love him—it's the same thing.

Isaac: White people just need to have sex with coloured people, man, that's what I think.

What does coloured mean?

Isaac: Originally, you get coloured as in a person with a certain color. But that is out the window because a white person can have a tan and have color. So you can't be a brown person because black people are also brown, so what the fuck? So there's all these things, all these chapters and boxes concerning that fucking coloured thing. It's a very interesting question. It's a bit too deep.

L i L i † H: Can I tell you what coloureds are, they're the future, bra. They are, everyone's gonna be coloured in like three years time. Just have a one night lock-in at Assembly and everyone will be coloured by Wednesday.

Isaac: Let me answer this seriously. Coloured people are the leftovers of society, leftovers of everyone else. If you didn't fit into some race… then the leftovers of all other races were classified as coloured. So now you would get half black, half white, half Indian, half Indonesian, half Chinese, half this, half that, those people were coloured supposedly.

What else are your songs about?

Human Waste: Addiction, sex, anger.

Isaac: Poes.

L i L i † H: Fear, blood.

Isaac: Fucking. Ma se poes [your mother's vagina], tik, more tik. Alcohol and tik. Cocaine and tik.

L i L i † H: It's not about cocaine. We're an emo band.

Human Waste: We're actually very emo.

At your Assembly (a popular Cape Town venue) gig you performed “Die Slow,” and Isaac was screaming “I want you to die” in the audience and they were yelling it back at you.

Human Waste: It's a beautiful song. That's a deep song. It's energy.

L i L i † H: It's a conversation.

Spooky: We encourage you to explore all these feels that society says is terribly wrong.

Human Waste: Anger is one of the most important ones. What are you gonna do with your anger? Are you going to go home and beat up your wife, or punch a wall, or shoot your girlfriend?

L i L i † H: No, rather just go to a club and just fuck out with us for 40 minutes. Just fucking cry and drink and dance and push people over and let us cover you in blood, and then fucking go home and just be like OK and better. It's fucking therapy. At our last gig, in the middle of all that chaos, people screaming at each other, and there was this couple in the middle of all it, just making out. It was beautiful.

Spooky: But also anger is the most inspirational energy. Anger is there to make you change the condition.

L i L i † H: It's being able to look a stranger in the eye and you're both fuckin' sweating and crying and that's the most natural interaction.

When you were making the video of “Larney Jou Poes,” how was it getting the farm workers to say “Larney Jou Poes!”

Isaac: Ja bruh, they actually fucking had the opportunity to say “jou poes” to their fucking larney and their larney would pay them. That's like Apartheid is still there bra. It's like a new thing to them, for these people to say that to their fucking larney. Irrespective of what color that motherfucker is. And then the possibilities just opened up. The next day they told me, “What the fuck bruh, you guys did something to us.” For the first time in their lives the new South Africa fucking dawned on them, my broe. It's allowed. You can say that kak, bruh. It's a small thing to us.

Human Waste: The farmer actually had to come in and say to them, “You can do this, it's cool, you're not gonna get fired, you have my blessing to say 'Fuck me.'”

So AfriForum are going to take you to court.

Human Waste: It's hilarious is all I can say. I mean hate speech when a black person talks about their anger towards a systematic abuse over generations? Farm workers are going on strike now trying to get like R65 a day, which is like $5 a day for backbreaking work under the African sun, and there's nothing hateful about that. That's OK, you can do that, that's no problem. But if you say you're angry about that fact, then you get taken to court because that's hate speech. That's ironic. It's kind of funny.

L i L i † H: We're just shining a torch on a pile of shit that's been in the corner the whole fucking time.

Isaac: They can fucking afford the lawyers and kak of course. How do you think they got enough money for that?

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DOOKOOM's EP, A Gangster Called Big Times, is out now.

Roger Young is a music and culture writer and filmmaker living in Cape Town. Follow him on Twitter.

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Source: VICE / Noisey, 2014

Tags: afriforum, apartheid, censorship, dookoom, larney jou poes, music, noisey, south africa

This review originally appeared in New Edge Sword & Sorcery Magazine Issue #6, released on December 7, 2025.

Profane Altars: Weird Sword & Sorcery

Edited by Sam Richard – Weirdpunk Books – June 15, 2024

Review by Robin Marx

Profane Altars marks the first Sword & Sorcery anthology released by Minneapolis-based weird horror and splatterpunk specialty press Weirdpunk Books. In his Introduction, editor Sam Richard acknowledges that Sword & Sorcery fiction is a departure from the publisher's usual output, but professes a lifelong love for the genre sparked by '80s barbarian movies. Given Richard's professional network, it is perhaps no surprise that the contributors to this volume are primarily horror writers. Sword & Sorcery has blended horror with fantasy since its earliest days, however, so the admixture here is not particularly jarring. Tanith Lee and Karl Edward Wagner are cited as inspirations in the book's promotional copy, and that distinctive flavor of S&S dominates Profane Altars.

The anthology opens with “Two Mothers” by Emma Alice Johnson. In this story, aging swordswoman Lorai straps on her harness and sword one last time to deal with an infant-snatching menace afflicting her village. While S&S readers tend to expect propulsive action, this moody dark fantasy story adopts a decidedly measured pace. The reader is made to feel the weight of Lorai's age and her sense of weary resignation as she embarks on her final mission. While the atmosphere is exquisite, the story is marred by a confusing editing mistake where the feudal title “baron” is inserted on two occasions when “barren” is intended. Infertility is a crucial plot point, making the error especially regrettable.

Adam Smith's “Maybe Just Us” is a grimdark tale of a well-meaning squire in service to the fanatical Haloed Knights. When Ella intervenes in a desperate battle, a violation of the laws of war, his master must pay a harsh penalty. While packed with vivid detail, the language also has an ugly, off-putting rhythm to it. This story didn't work for me, but fans of Warhammer 40,000-style fanatic knights and hallucinatory prose will find both in abundance.

“Knight Rumors” by Matthew Mitchell is a series of five vignettes, each describing a single knight: the Badger Knight, the Bean Knight, the Bag Knight, the Banquet Knight, and the Bloom Knight. Despite their odd monikers, most of these knights are described in awed, hushed tones by members of the terrified populace subjected to their bloody depredations. The longest of the vignettes, “The Banquet Knight” is also the most narrative chapter. The titular knight is ordered to kidnap a boy and raise him into the ideal consort for a monstrous queen. The Banquet Knight abducts and fosters the youth, but—for reasons that remain obscure until the thundering finale—treacherously denies the boy the training commanded by the queen. While each of the five vignettes has its own appeal, “The Banquet Knight” stands apart from the pack, with a melancholy and weird tone that recalls Tanith Lee.

Sara Century's “Never Threaten a Spider” is one of the book's more traditional Sword & Sorcery entries. Exiled mercenary woman Viy is sent to the forbidding Dead Man's Bog, tasked with retrieving an enchanted jewel from the tomb of a forgotten queen. This entry benefits from a real sense of place, with the swamp presented as a threat to human interlopers but a sanctuary for other forms of life. The title is unfortunate, however, as it spoils the nature of the primary threat Viy faces. It's also inaccurate, as said spider is not threatened at any point in the story! Title gripes aside, Century delivers an entertaining Sword & Sorcery tale.

“Queen of the Fire Arch” by Charles Austin Muir is another solid Sword & Sorcery contribution, one that heavily emphasizes the sorcerous aspect of the genre. The story is related by Danak, a devoted servant of Queen Kavastra. After Danak proves instrumental in treating the magical affliction responsible for nearly killing the queen, she accompanies the queen's warband on their strike against the sorcerer behind the curse. The longest story in the anthology, “Queen of the Fire Arch” packs a novel's worth of adventure into its 38 pages. It boasts epic arcane duels, bizarre magic, unexpected reversals of fortune, and fun monsters. Ral-Bazure, a body-swapping Shadow Demon who becomes Danak's unlikely ally in the story's third act, makes for a compelling supporting character.

Edwin Callihan's impressively titled “The Song of the Nameless Phallus” opens with a scarred and menacing mercenary arriving at a bordello for an evening's entertainment. Initially wary, Olna—the sex worker selected to attend to the stranger—coaxes him into sharing the tale behind his most recent scar. He tells of encountering a village where the women have all disappeared, abandoning their husbands and children. Following footprints into the hills, the warrior discovers the entranced women dancing and fornicating around a singing chromium phallus placed atop an ominous—one could even say profane—altar. The story develops in even stranger directions from there, introducing cosmic horror elements reminiscent of Clark Ashton Smith and concluding with an intriguing personal transformation.

As with the opening story, “Light from a Dead Star” by Sam Richard involves an aging warrior woman once again taking up arms. After burying her dead lover, Taura hauls her axe and armor out of storage and embarks on a quest for vengeance. Needing a new handle for her axe, she incorporates an antler taken from the corpse of a dead god. A relic from one of her past adventures, the antler plays a pivotal role when she reaches her destination. The prose is as grim and relentless as Taura's journey.

While some entries fall more on the side of dark fantasy or grimdark rather than conventional Sword & Sorcery, Profane Altars is a worthy contribution to the contemporary S&S scene. Since the release of Profane Altars, Weirdpunk Books has followed up with the release of two zines entitled Profane Sorcery, positioned as a “spiritual companion” to Profane Altars. This is an encouraging sign that Weirdpunk and its stable of writers aren't finished with Sword & Sorcery just yet.

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My brother is getting married in 3.5 weeks and I have nothing prepared or ready. I thought I had all this time, but then my dog got sick and I spent so much of my extra time doing craft projects with her instead of making my pottery wedding gifts!

Today, I finally made some decisions about prioritizing my brother’s things and ended up spending almost six hours at the pottery studio making them. I don’t think any of it will be ready by the next kiln firing, but they will have to be ready for the one after. Otherwise, nothing will be done by the time I have to leave.

It felt good not only making a list, but also checking how long each thing took me, taking my time making them and perfecting each item. I forgot how easy it is to lose track of time at the studio and doing something I love. I also managed to throw my biggest piece yet! I love how everything turned out but I did not have time to get through everything and I don’t have enough shelf space for everything, so I need to figure that out next.

I also felt very proud of myself because I managed to work through 2-3 projects at the same time, which is not something I had done before. I usually focus on one thing until it is completely done, then another. I was shocked at how much fun it was to start multiple things on the same day and move from one to the other at different points.

I can’t make it to the studio tomorrow, but hopefully I can continue progressing through my projects the rest of this week.

Thank you for your message. I am currently out of office with no set return date. I will get back to you when the time is right.