Introduction

 

 Modern lives are being remorselessly crushed beneath the blind executive rump; its twin buttocks are management and accountancy, between which escapes the thin mephitic steam of marketing. Michael By water Third Oldie Annual 1997.

Contents of this blog at times challenges mainstream, politically correct orientations and commonly-held world views internalised by society, so brainwashed by media and marketing. The writer brings examples of his fiction and non-fiction projects, some in process, some published. Hopefully it offers an antidote to the  endlessly thumping Muzak/Newzak that seems to overwhelm much of the world.

 I hope it provides also a robust and sometimes humourous counterpoint to the sanitised jargon and inanities dished up by the sausage-machine journalists and their newspapers, magazines and TV channels; and the anaesethics injected via publishers' "best seller" displays at your chainstore bookshop .

The blog points also to many other writers, South African or otherwise, some of whom are obscure, or forgotten, or astoundingly unknown or unappreciated, via quotable quotes, little chunks of their writing and references to their works. It is also a kind of hymn to the glories of second-hand bookshops.

Wordsmithery offered tends mainly to non-fiction, notably biographical and historical works and social and political commentaries.

Sometimes you'll find opposition to the notion of progress; a rejection of "experts"; a rejection of materialism and consumerism --  and a pointing to humility, plain living and fixed moral values. And trenchant humour – in my view that most difficult of tasks for writers.

Eternal truths and the astringent provocations of robust commonsense are not popular, or readily found, in the world today. Hopefully this experimental blog, for all its faults and quirks and hiccups, will help in the battle against the status quo -- and point you in some off-beat, entertaining and fresh directions.  

Well, you may say, isn't this blog marketing? One hopes though, that the stench in this case is more like the smell of rue, that powerful, pungent pest-repelling herb, and not like the noxious clouds billowing out of the giant cesspits which surround us.

A Wagtail Cottage Media Project