SAVAGED

The esteemed Rolling Stone magazine launched in South Africa recently, at the behest of a few wealthy hipsters with nothing better to do. Whether or not the South African music scene will benefit from Rolling Stone’s brand of music journalism is beside the point (although the fact that the hipsters chose Rolling Stone over Mojo or Uncut is telling). The fact is, until the money runs out, South Africans have yet another American brand making taste amongst its youth culture.

With the print version, featuring Van Coke Kartel doing the only thing they do well (a fashion shoot), came the obligatory online version, and a teacup-sized storm was unleashed when RSSA published an op ed piece by one of the supposed gate-keepers of the South African music industry, a muso-turned-radio-DJ named Jon Savage. Savage’s piece, despite being appallingly badly written and full of grandiose self-glorification, attempted to stir up some kind of debate about the state of modern South African music, and thankfully failed on all accounts.

I say ‘thankfully’ because God forbid someone as rabidly untalented and far too over-connected as Savage should have any claim to the state of the modern South African music industry (except perhaps as one of the many perpetrators of personality-less muzak that define modern SA rock music).

That being said, his unsupervised (and obviously unedited; great start, RSSA) time in front of his laptop has ‘everyone’ (read: concerned white rock fans) talking, and some of the comments, including Savage’s own, are revealing. Most respondents happily rubbish his piece, which at least says something positive about the state of critical reasoning south of the Equator. The odd few responded positively to his piece with what amounts to “fuck yeah!!!” After all, his diatribe against local music ended with some kind of call-to-arms: 

“So let's act like we've grown up! Let's break down the walls! Let's revolt! Lets hoist our fists mightily in the air and announce together ‘LOCAL IS NOT LEKKER!’ “

Yes, let’s.

Pressed for a response, he whined:

It feels like a) people haven’t read my article, or b) don’t understand what I wrote. The whole point of my article was to say that 10 years ago, you could HEAR that a band was South African when they were on the radio. Partly due to production, and partly due to not being exposed to enough of the international scene, and partly because there weren’t enough really top bands so the bar was set low! And therefore, loving music BECAUSE it was South African was necessary to help grow the industry. But now days, our bands are finally standing up on an international level in every way! We’ve got bands like Shadowclub, Zebra and Giraffe, Aking, Jack Parow etc etc – and many others who are categorically world class in every way and you can no longer distinguish between “local” and “international” bands because our bands are great! And therefore, the bar has been RAISED!!! We need to stop thinking of SA bands as “local” and we need to start thinking of them as bands!!! And local bands need to realize that the bar is no longer at Prime Circle level (a band considered to be hugely successful in SA), but we need to be aiming at Kings of Leon level (a band considered to be hugely successful on planet earth!!!!).

So,  apart from an over-reliance on exclamation marks, no clarity there either.

The point of all this, and this blog, is this: for over 40 years, white South Africans of a particular musical persuasion have wondered why South African rock ‘n roll has never been able to make an impact on international music markets. We’ve blamed apartheid, population demographics, lack of access to inspirational music through the apartheid cultural blockade (which is patently bullshit), lack of studio techniques, lack of equipment, idiot record companies (true), lack of talented producers and engineers (true, until fairly recently)… in short, everyone. 

White South African English-speaking rockers have never made it overseas in a big way, in the way that Australia produced INXS, Midnight Oil, or even pop legends like Kylie and Olivia Newton-John (not to mention AC/DC and the BeeGees). Or New Zealand produced Split Enz/ Crowded House. Or our other old Commonwealth cousin Canada produced Bryan Adams, Neil Young or Shania Twain.

Why?

It is kind of odd, you have to admit.

We’re not talking about white Afrikaans rock and pop. In their limited market, they sell outstandingly. And black South African music is, of course, hugely innovative and internationally successful.

But the sout-piele just can’t cut it. White South African English-speaking rock is of a dismally low-standard in the one crucial area that all music revolves around (although the way things are going internationally, not for long): songwriting.

Most SA bands have gotten technically more proficient. There are more rock bands per captia than at any other time in SA’s short music history, and most of these bands have access to cheap consumer versions of recording technology that enable them to record singles and albums with minimal expense. The whole landscape has changed, and in one area some SA bands at least are world-class: videos. There are a lot of talented visual people here, and some innovative, groundbreaking music videos have been produced.

But hardly any actual songs.

Lots of gurning and aping and shape-throwing and hipster-fashion and Cobain/Nickleback-esque white-angst, but nothing to really sing along to.

That’s been the bane of white South African rock music since time began, although along the way people like Robin Auld, Johnny Clegg, Bernard Binns (The Helicopters? Anyone?), Tully McCulley and Patric van Blerk have done us proud.

Is that what you’re kinda-sorta trying to get at, Mr Savage? Do you think mediocre nothingness like Zebra & Giraffe or aKing is world-class?

Really?

How exactly do people like you end up dictating to the heaving masses what’s cool and what isn’t? And how do you expect SA rock music to have any future if people like you are the tastemakers?

We obviously can’t rely on Rolling Stone.

They let you write.

And then they published it.

STORMONE

Have you noticed how social media is breeding a new level of social incompetence amongst younger people? If you’re teenagery these days, you’re more likely to engage with the opposite sex through some form of social media and its attendant technology than you are an actual person. Teenage social ineptitude is a common-enough ailment, and has been since Elvis invented the teenager in 1955, but there’s a new strand of it in the world today, and it’s fascinating.

What makes this even more interesting is the personality of the one person who virtually invented social media as a form of human interaction. Mark Zuckerberg is not by any means Mr Geniality, and that in itself accounts for Facebook’s personality: a place for shy geeks to spy on hot chicks without actually having to encounter them in the flesh and be rejected.

Interestingly, the use of Facebook seems to perpetuate social ineptitude, not dispel it. Guys are asking girls out through messaging, girls are using status updates to bitch at other girls, snide teenagery awfulness is IM’d, BBM’d, SMS’d, tweeted and (SO last-year!) MixIt’d. Girls and guys ‘like’ and ‘unlike’ each other and announce their availablitiy, jiltedness or successful coupling online. It’s a digitized storm of hormones, a ‘stormone’ if you will.

This doesn’t exactly bode well for future international relations, much less the propagation of the human race. In-the-flesh meetings are, after all, so boringly one-dimensional after you’ve spent half the night looking at someone’s pictures on their profile. Also, it’s much harder to think of the right thing to say than to type, don’t you think?

So thanks, Mark. The Geeks shall inherit the earth.

COMPASSION: SOUTH AFRICAN-STYLE (A TALE OF TWO ATTITUDES)

A friend of mine regularly buys food for street children, which she hands out of her car window whenever she's stopped at traffic lights and asked for help.
Yesterday, as she handed a store-bought cheese sandwich to an uncomfortably-young street child, a guy in the next car rolled his window down and hurled abuse at her for her actions. "It's people like you", he lectured, "that encourage these kaffirs".

Needless to say, the guy was white, and the street kid was black.

What do we do with this stuff?
Would we really rather glare menacingly through our windscreens at 'bloody beggars' than actually provide a little respite from the ravages of hunger? Fair enough, there's an argument to be made against giving cash, as we all know how that system has been abused by lazy parents pimping out their kids to get beer money. But food? Come on. Feeding someone is  quite different to enabling their vices.

And how about the race issue? The intolerance? The lack of compassion? The right this guy thought he had to judge the actions of a complete stranger? The sheer arrogance and lack of humanity his attitude betrayed?

Incidentally, her response as she drove off was, "It's people like you that are fucking this country up".

A QUIET 2011 SO FAR...

In lieue of a boring mailer, here's some updates on what's been happening with me in the last few months, and a few reasons why I haven't bothered blogging since mid-April:

1. I produced Melanie Lowe's new album I Choose Me in Durban, and we mixed it with Jake Odendaal in Joburg. It took a while, and it's only just started seeing the light of day now, but it's done.

2. I produced Melanie's friend Krystle Temmerman's EP "Closer To The Fire", which came out very quickly after Jake mastered it.

3. I had a great run of solo acoustic shows at this year's Festival of Arts in Grahamstown.

4. I've played a number of rock and solo acoustic shows around the country, including a few with the esteemed Barry van Zyl.

5. I jammed with with Just Jinger in Durban, the unforgettable Alistair Coakley in Joburg and with Ard Matthews at this year's Mr Price Pro.

6. I got to play guitar on Ernie Smith's upcoming album, as well as two songs on Natalie Rungan's newest album "This Is Me". I also played on Canadian Randal Arsenault's record and on ex-Idol Lize Heerman's yet-to-be-released album, both produced by the legendary Brian O'Shea.

7. I recorded three new full-band and 19 new acoustic demo's for my next record.

8. The video for "Maybe (Just Maybe)" was shot in Durban and finally released.

9. "Come Out Fighting" was nominated for a South African Music Award in the Rock Album category.

10. I read a lot of books, taught a lot of politics, stared aghast at TV news, stopped believing in a lot of nonsense, walked on a lot of beaches, watched a lot of Monty Python, started liking a lot of things for the first time, stopped saying sorry, drove a lot of miles, bought a lot of Tom Waits CD's, laughed a lot, marked a lot of test papers, bought a lot of books, sang along to  a lot Goon Show songs with my kids...

All in all, a relatively quiet few months.

THE CYBER-STRUGGLE

Recent and ongoing political upheaval (and dare I say it, revolution) in the Middle East is the first of its kind to be dubbed 'cyber-resistance'. From Egypt to Syria, people have been informed, persuaded and inspired, not to say mobilized, by social networking sites such as Facebook and Twitter. So much so that the ousting of Egypt's Mubarak has been labeled the 'Facebook Revolution', while the earlier protests in Iran following that country's 2009 presidential elections have become known as the "Twitter Revolution".

Whether this is media-hype or not is beside the point. The internet is a powerful tool, and Twitter and Facebook are the means to a lot more interesting ends than banal, vapid status -envy.

With this is mind, here's a bit of what-if: what would Apartheid in South Africa have looked like if the internet and its' attendant social networking capabilities had existed during, say, the 1970's and '80's? 

How would the banned and exiled ANC have used Twitter to rally the people of South Africa against the Apartheid regime?

How would the beleaguered National Party government have made use of Facebook to marshal the troops to hold back the tidal wave of Die Swart Gevaar?

It's an intriguing fantasy. Of course, humanity doesn't need technology to affect political discourse, but it sure helps. Kira Baiasu makes the point in a piece entitled Social Media: A Force For Political Change in Egypt, saying that social networking gives protestors invaluable anonymity, instant access to the masses and an opportunity to politicize an otherwise apathetic or disinterested body politic.

So allow yourself to imagine the Struggle on Twitter. Umkhonto we Sizwe's Facebook profile. The Robben Island group page. The 1976 Soweto Uprising sending out invites. End Conscription Campaign emails. Black Sash tweets. Chris Hani's status updates. 

Or, for that matter, AWB blogs, National Party 'likes' and SADF Google campaigns.

I'm not trying to be facetious. I would love your suggestions on what could've been.

Of course, the obvious next step then is, "Well, if not then, why not now?"

No wonder Julius Malema suggested closing down Twitter last year...

ANDRIES TATANE

Each time a man stands up for an ideal, or acts to improve the lot of others, or strikes out against injustice, he sends forth a tiny ripple of hope, and crossing each other from a million different centers of energy and daring those ripples build a current which can sweep down the mightiest walls of oppression and resistance.

Robert Kennedy, Cape Town, 1966

This is Andries Tatane, a 33-year-old maths teacher, a resident of Meqheleng, a poverty-stricken township just outside of Ficksburg in South Africa. 

Andries is lying dead in a friend's arms, having just collapsed after a brutal beating by eight riot policemen that ended in one of them shooting him.

You can watch his beating and death on YouTube if you want to.

Why was he killed? 

He had intervened in the over-zealous policing of a group of protestors. He stepped in front of an old man being sprayed with a water-cannon, took off his own shirt and told the police to spray him instead of the old man. In response, the police beat the life out of him.

This happened on April 13 2011.

Last week.

Not during apartheid.

Why were the people protesting?

After 17 years, the people of Meqheleng are still waiting for the State to provide them with basic amenities. 'Service delivery'. That's the buzz-word in these post-Apartheid Rainbow-Nation days. 

So, Andries Tatane is brutally beaten and killed by the government's police force. 

Police Commissioner Bheki Cele's new policing policy is 'shoot to kill'. Zero tolerance of crime. And zero tolerance of people too, obviously.

Andries Tatane, a brave husband, father and South African, who lost his life at the hands of the State by standing up for another.

Look familiar?

Please tell me you know this famous photograph and what it represents.

Please read the Deputy Chief Executive of the South African Institute Of Race Relations Frans Cronje's open letter to the Minister of Police, Nathi Mthethwa. 

So far, the police have failed to suspend the policemen involved, and neither Bheki Cele nor Nathi Mthethwa have offered to resign. 

What are we to make of all this, people? 

One thing is for sure, you can't ignore it. 

But somehow, most of us will. 'It's just the government', we say. 'It's just politics'. 

'It's nothing to do with us'.

Tell that to Andries Tatane's family.

A luta continua.

Devemos resistir.

Viva Andries Tatane Viva!

ROB(BING) HELL

The biblically-proportioned storm currently raging in the U.S. over 'Hipper-Than-Thou' pastor Rob Bell's new book "Love Wins" looks so different from out here at the end of Africa. Don't you think? 


More like a storm in a tea-cup.


Like jealous minor celebrities squabbling over who's boss of the sand pit.


And also, like what it probably really is, a massive payday for HarperOne, Twitter, Mars Hill, John Piper, Time magazine and everyone else who's risen to the surface.


The essence of it all is Rob's new book, subtitled 'A Book About Heaven, Hell, and the Fate of Every Person Who Ever Lived'. It's Famous Pastor musing, really, and an interesting addition to a debate that began organically years ago: what does it really really really mean to call yourself a 'Christian'? 


John Piper set Twitter on fire with a three-word tweet: "Farewell Rob Bell". Neo-Calvinist (read: tone-deaf Christian fundamentalist, pretty-much-everyone-goes-to-hell-except-people-who-buy-my-books") Piper insists he meant "Fare Well Rob Bell". Dagnabit, AutoCorrect sucks hey John?


If you live in America and are an Evangelical who thinks Rob Bell rules (and of course, Brian McLaren just goes too far), then this will all feel very close to home. You attack Rob, you attack Jesus, basically. Even you, John Piper.


Out here in Africa, it looks more like a publishing war, followed closely by a social networking Event. Cynical? Moi? 


People's ideas about heaven and hell will change naturally. 
On their own. Over time.


We do not need to be led into a revolution by celebrities.


We can think for ourselves.


And Christianity, as with all religion, will evolve.


Yes, I used the word evolve.

DISCIPLES

He that has a Gospel

To loose upon Mankind,

Though he serve it utterly-

Body, soul and mind-

Though he go to Calvary

Daily for its gain-

It is his Disciple

Shall make his labour vain.

Rudyard Kipling

In 1911 Pixley ka Isaka Seme pronounced, "Forget all the past differences among Africans and unite in one national organisation." The end result was the African National Congress, which, all current shenanigans aside, generally and successfully opposed political oppression in South Africa and served (and still does) as the source of political freedom for millions of South Africans. The nature of revolutions, however, is such that freedom fighters invariably end up as bureaucratic oppressors. Even Karl Marx dissociated himself from much of the 'Marxism' that sprang up in his lifetime. In terms of Kipling's verse above, how does Mandela feel today about the activities and public outpourings of modern ANC 'disciples' such as Julius Malema, Jimmy Manyi and Jacob Zuma? How would Oliver Tambo, Walter Sisulu or Chief Albert Luthuli react to the state of their 'gospel' today? And yes, ok, is modern Christianity really what Jesus was talking about? Would Frank Sinatra approve of the modern music industry? Would George Washington want to live in modern America? Do the disciples end up destroying the gospel of the saviour?

POLITICS, LIKE, SUCKS

How do you make people interested in politics?

And how do you then make them interested enough to get involved in politics?

How does a disinterested person become an activist?

Is it even worth attempting?

South Africa is/was a highly politicized country. Apartheid gave us all something to have an opinion about, a side to join, a cause to believe in, a future to fight for. Good or bad. We all cared, because the stakes were so high.

Yesterday, the students in both my Communication classes and Human Development classes gave a resounding thumbs-down to any kind of political interest.

“Do you watch the news on TV?”    NO!

“Do you read newspapers?”    NEVER!

“Do you go to political party rallies?”     WE JUST WANNA PARTY!

Last week at an otherwise great gig in Durban, the crowd just stared blankly during my songs that had political content (“Rant”, “A Luta Continua”, “Government Song” etc).

White, black, Indian or other, younger South Africans have not inherited the previous generation’s passion for political engagement. Most black kids I know love the ANC Youth League president Julius Malema because he’s a large personality, not because of anything inherently political he has to say. That’s normal: kids just want to be kids. We want to move on, not live in the past. That’s why Winston Churchill was voted out of office just after WW2.

So how do you politicize people?

How do you turn them on to their own political power?

How do you show kids that politics isn’t just boring old men in three-piece suits, but everything to do with their own future?

Above all, how do you encourage democratic people to act democratically, hold their own government accountable and actively oppose bad governance?

Your suggestions, please.

IDIOCRACY

My President informed the nation over the weekend that God has taken sides in South Africa, and that He is decidedly in the ANC’s corner. If that wasn’t enough, my President then said that a vote for the ANC in the upcoming municipal elections was a vote for heaven, and a vote for the opposition was a vote for hell. The Honourable Mr Zuma proclaimed the carrying of an ANC membership card as a sign of heaven’s blessing, and party spokesman Jackson Mthembu stood by these statements this morning with this: “We are, therefore, in agreement with the president that not voting for the ANC is tantamount to throwing your vote in burning hell”.

This has, of course, caused an uproar in our liberal democracy. As it should. Not because these statements are ‘offensive’, ‘blasphemous’ or even incendiary, all of which are matters of opinion. No, Mr Zuma’s remarks are merely stupid. We really are heading into Idiocracy, what with these “ANC=heaven” proclamations from On High, and Julius Malema eating sushi from Down Low. The burning question is: how did a nation like South Africa end up with people like this in charge? Do we deserve this? After all we endured and fought for and hoped for and prayed for? Is the legacy of Luthuli, Tambo, Tutu, Sisulu and Mandela going to be a cabal of tuna-munching, champagne-guzzling, bling-flinging morons?

Jackson Mthembu closed his statement with this absolute pearler: “Those who are ‘alarmed’ by [Zuma’s] expression are probably driven by jealousy for not having thought of the expression themselves.”

People of SA, these are our leaders!

They’re not blaspheming Anti-Christs, don’t let that distract you.

They’re just plain common-or-garden idiots.

The question really is, how do we get rid of them and get back to the business of forging a strong, vibrant, inclusive democracy?

Is that even still possible?

Your suggestions, please.

ON DISAPPOINTMENT WITH U2

U2 live at Red Rocks.

There was just nothing like it.

Watching that VHS tape on a suburban afternoon in my early teens was as momentous an occasion for me as my first glimpse of Elvis or my subsequent discovery of The Beatles. I couldn’t believe it: the pouring rain, the air of myth and mystery around this strangely-named wind-swept Irish band, Bono’s note-perfect soaring vocal. It was Day One of a whole new musical adventure for me, and I’ll never forget it.

In a way I’m proud to say that I got in on the (almost) ground floor as a U2 fan. By the time I discovered them, “The Joshua Tree” hadn’t even been released yet. I’d had a passing run-in a few years earlier, when I bought the cassette copy of “The Unforgettable Fire” on special at the Pick n Pay Hypermarket. I’d really liked “Pride (In The Name Of Love)” but the album turned out to be odd and inaccessible and nothing like the Top 40 stuff I was used to at the time, so I took it back and reclaimed my R7.50.

But that Red Rocks concert.

Wow.

Totally changed my life.

I was about to become a fully-fledged, card-carrying teenage melancholic, and U2 was THE perfect soundtrack. When “The Joshua Tree” came along in 1987, it was just more cement to an already solid foundation.

A friend taped his scratched vinyl copies of “October” and “The Unforgettable Fire” for me (one on each side of a TDK C90), complete with jumps that made me think the songs were just like that for years until I heard “Promenade” on CD and Bono didn’t repeat “a spiral staircase” 15 times.

I got older and gloomier, sadder and more self-obsessed, and U2 was just there for me all the way through it. “The Unforgettable Fire” was my theme music. I was too young to realize what was really happening to  my heroes: they had undergone the transition from nascent indie mystics to swaggering (and dare I say it, rich) popstars, while I went through a heartbreaking family tragedy at the worst possible age and clung on to “A Sort Of Homecoming”, “Heartland” and “One Tree Hill”.

All remained fine for a long while. I even liked the band’s reviled “Rattle And Hum”, and the movie inspired me more than ever to make music my life.

Then came “Achtung Baby” and The End Of U2.

I see now why they consciously undid their legacy, chopped down the Joshua Tree and embraced the swagger. It makes total sense, and over a long time I grew to love “Achtung Baby” and admire “Zooropa”. I even sort of liked the Passengers side-step. I was changing, becoming a morose, depressed man, and U2 were still my idols, even though I now felt left out of the party. U2 were suddenly sexy and ubiquitous. Everything I wasn’t. They were no longer “mine”.

They were gods.

My life changed radically in 1996. I embraced religion for the first time, and was relieved to hear about U2’s spiritual leanings. The band’s Christian hope leaked into everything they had done, and I finally saw what it was about them that I had always responded to. My soul soared with them, my spirit was comforted by them, I didn’t feel alone and weak with music like that in the world. I had heroes worthy of respect. They had dignity and values and seagulls coming out of guitar amps and they anchored my life.

Which is why I wish they had just stopped it there.

1996’s “Pop” was the first real commercial backlash against U2. I still really like that record, I don’t get all the negative slagging-off about it. But I remember being secretly a bit relieved when I read that the album wasn’t being well-received and that the PopMart tour was going badly. Good, so my heroes were just humans after all!

That would’ve been a good time for them to quit, I think. Bow out with dignity, on a relative high. Just like The Police did only 5 albums into their meteoric career.

But no.

It’s gone on and on. Best Of after Best Of, weak album after weak album, a systematic dilution of a hard-won legacy. “No Line On The Horizon” in the bargain bin. Songwriting awards for shite like “The Hands That Built America”. A Spiderman Broadway musical. Bono wearing Gucci. Four consecutive eye-peelingly boring live concert DVD’s. Three consecutive crappy album titles. Bono in Armani. Corporate sponsors. Gone is the soaring, goosebump-raising music, instead: turgid “White As Snow” and “One Step Closer”. And, horror of all horrors, “Unknown Caller”. Did Larry Mullen Jr. play that guitar solo?

Is this really the band that summoned down “Elvis Presley And America”? “40”? “Scarlet”? “Walk To The Water”?

I don’t even know if I’m a fan anymore.

They just look like four bored millionaires onstage these days.

I wish it had all stopped years ago.

My fault for taking it all so seriously in the first place, I suppose.

Bono and the secretive Allie in a corny Louis Vitton ad? Are you kidding? Reasons to be pissed off at U2 #56.

"ALL THE PEOPLE"

There was a brief time in history when Christians didn’t offend society. It seems that the early days of the very first church were so exactly like Jesus said church should be that everybody, in or out, got it and dug it. My friend Sean Tucker, in his excellent account of moving away from institutionalized religion, “Unlearning”, points to something I hadn’t noticed before in the history of that early church. The book known as “Acts” in the Bible mentions that this early church “enjoyed the favour of all the people”. These early Jesus-followers (there was no such thing as ‘Christianity’ yet) did what they said they would do, and society let them. They met together, shared their stuff, kept their word, helped others, formed a warm beautiful community of peaceful, useful people, and even others who didn’t share their specific religious beliefs liked them.

So what happened?

2000-plus years later, Christians and church-goers are ridiculed and, in loftier circles, reviled. And to Christianity’s great shame, this ‘loss of favour’ of ‘all the people’ is well-deserved. There are 101 reasons for that, and 1001 books written to refute or bolster that argument. This blog isn’t the place for that (knee-jerk reactionary evangelicals: take a deep breath, relax, move away from the computer, breathe… ok, calm? Wipe the foam from your mouth and read on.) Suffice it to say: church has gone wrong. Christians have turned modern Christianity into little more than a cult. How do those of us who still believe that of all the people who ever drew breath, Jesus of Nazareth had the best ideas, live out our beliefs in such a way as to regain that valuable ‘favour of all the people’? How do you make Bill Maher or Richard Dawkins raise an approving, admiring eyebrow when you say, “I think Jesus was right”?

Suggestions?

PS. Please check out Sean Tucker's book "Unlearning". You can find him at www.unlearning.co.za as well as on Facebook, and he writes a great blog as well.

MY NEW YEAR'S RESOLUTIONS

Another New Year.
Another new set of utterly unreasonable promises to myself.
Another opportunity to wrestle unsuccessfully with guilt, failure and self-loathing.
But that's all for February. January is the time for Resolutions! Viva Pie In The Sky Viva!

1. Exercise three times a week. (Chances: 17%)
2. Eat healthily. (Chances: 23%)
3. Conquer all To Do lists. (Chances: 41%)
4. Write songs more regularly. (Chances: 75%)
5. Read all books bought in 2010. (Chances: 7%)
6. Don't buy a single book in 2011. (Chances: -78%)
7. Listen to all CD's purchased/ MP3's stolen in 2010. (Chances: impossible)
8. Be a polite, considerate driver. (Chances: 2%)
9. Be a better driver. (Chances: 0%)
10. Pay all traffic fines. (Chances: 9%)
11. Nap every afternoon. (Chances: 98%)
12. Write Oscar-winning theme song to 'Avatar 2'. (Chances: 0%)
13. Lose tummy, regain 6 pack. (Chances: see 2 above)
14. No chocolate! (Chances: -100%)
15. Stop picking nose. (Chances: 67%)
16. Reply to all email from 2010. (Chances: 34%)
17. Reconcile ANC with the DA. (Chances: 3%)
18. Ummmm...
19. Aahhh...
20.