29. Buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo buffalo
Sanibonani friends,
Anyone else in need of some happy, heart-warming, feel good content right now since 2020 has felt like the Most. Dramatic. Year. Ever?
Good.
Me too.
So here it is.
A song from the country where I was born — South Africa.
Sung in the beautiful language of the true custodians of this land — the Zulu people.
Oh and there’s baby rhino too.
Here’s five more things you may find interesting and/or meaningful.
1. A Quote
“What the pupil must learn, if he learns anything at all, is that the world will do most of the work for you, provided you cooperate with it by identifying how it really works and aligning with those realities.
If we do not let the world teach us, it teaches us a lesson.”
— Joseph Tussman
2. Dream Job
What a fantastic way to participate in capitalism.
3. Take All My Money
I (and my American Express card), thank you for 50 years of incredible design, Margaret.
“I have been asked about my work many times over the years. And while some questions are easy to answer, others - especially those about inspiration - can be very hard. My work is personal as well as professional. Inspiration is the key, but it takes many forms: a memory, a person, the feel of a fabric, the place where it is made, as well as from an image in my mind. So much is down to intuition and a feeling of what is right at that particular time. Realising that inspiration is the work.”
4. Kurt Vonnegut’s advice to the people of 2088 ..
.. also applies to the people of 2020.
Written in 1988 as part of a Volkswagen ad campaign for TIME, Kurt had this to say:
Ladies & Gentlemen of A.D. 2088:
..
The sort of leaders we need now are not those who promise ultimate victory over Nature through perseverance in living as we do right now, but those with the courage and intelligence to present to the world what appears to be Nature’s stern but reasonable surrender terms:
1. Reduce and stabilize your population.
2. Stop poisoning the air, the water, and the topsoil.
3. Stop preparing for war and start dealing with your real problems.
4. Teach your kids, and yourselves, too, while you’re at it, how to inhabit a small planet without helping to kill it.
5. Stop thinking science can fix anything if you give it a trillion dollars.
6. Stop thinking your grandchildren will be OK no matter how wasteful or destructive you may be, since they can go to a nice new planet on a spaceship. That is really mean, and stupid.
7. And so on. Or else.
Cheers,
Kurt Vonnegut
5. The Tokyo Toilet
If you know me, you will know just how deep my love runs for Japanese toilets. I once skipped duty free completely at Tokyo airport, just to spend extra time with my loves. A quick and extremely rare s/o to my British builder for calling me completely bananas and unwittingly saving me the £6000 it costs to install a Japanese toilet in a London property.
That said, here’s an update on public loos in Tokyo:
Public toilets will be redesigned in 17 locations throughout Shibuya.