Koos Kombuis's Blog, page 5

No Mass, please, we're British!

"God and religion are two very very different things." — Sinead O'Connor on Sky News (September 15 2010).
With this simple sentence, the manifest of the Post-Religionist generation was posted on the billboard of human consciousness.
This simple statement has done for modern spirituality what Martin Luther's 95 theses, hammered to a church door in [...:]

To BEE or not to BEE…

This blog post is about the difference between two kinds of human achievement. It is about the difference between the pursuit of excellence and the drive to conformity. It is about the difference between Woodstock 1969 and SA Idols 2010.
I am not a fan of singing talent competitions of any kind. With the possible exception [...:]

The bokkie stops here

There are two words commonly used in South Africa which I really, really can't stand. The one is the word "comrade". The other one is the word "bokkie".
"Bokkie" is often used in insipid Afrikaans love songs by commercial singers (presumably because it rhymes with "sokkie"). In that way, it fulfils the same function that the [...:]

Ode to my cereal dispenser

I am writing a treatise about my dead cereal dispenser. I know that this may sound like a boring and irrelevant topic, but according to my sources in the ANC, all journalists, columnists and bloggers will, in the near future, be forced to write about boring and irrelevant topics. It is what the proposed [...:]

The power of nothing

I am a science-fiction lover. If this statement does not interest you, read no further; this blog post will mean nothing to you. (It might mean nothing to you anyway, but we'll get to that later.)
Science fiction is a bit like quiche; people either love it or hate it. I happen to love it. I [...:]

The dark side of the mall

Why do bad things happen to middle-class people? This is a question which has fascinated philosophers for centuries, or at least since the Masterbond scandal. Aren't middle-class people supposed to be insulated against the harsher realities of life? They have short-term insurance. They have channel TV. Their children spend two-thirds their lives safely ensconced in [...:]

Soon, the jihad may come to a church bazaar near you!

According to the annual Minority Rights Group report published a few days ago, "religious intolerance is the new racism". What that means, in a nutshell, is that people are no longer hating other people on the grounds of the colour of their skin, but by the kind of scarves they wear, what day of the [...:]

The thing with my mother-in-law (and other conspiracy theories)

There is no such thing as unbiased media, as the thing with my mother-in-law proved. Well, actually, it's not strictly necessary to draw my mother-in-law into this debate: anyone who had the misfortune of watching Sky News after the Germany vs England match would be able to tell you just HOW hysterically biased the media [...:]

Love in the time of vuvuzelas

When I woke up on the morning of June the 11th, I had a strange premonition, an indefinable feeling of exhilaration and dread.
I glanced at the date on my Blackberry screen and I knew: this date means something important, but what? Where had I seen it before?
After some mental arithmetic, I worked out [...:]

How many black intellectuals would it take to change the light bulb in Steve's head?

The realisation hit me around one o'clock in the morning, as we were jiving to the crazy guitar notes of a hastily assembled jam outfit called "The Albert Frost Trio" in the packed auditorium of the so-called "Club Al Capone" at the KKNK festival last Thursday night.
I had accompanied my friend Theresho to the dancefloor [...:]