SOWETO—For my money, which lately consists of fistfuls of rand with pictures of buffalo gracing the bills, no sporting event invites greater tension and drama than a local derby. So when I realized that I would still be in Johannesburg for last Saturday’s match between the two giants of South African soccer, the Kaizer Chiefs and the Orlando Pirates, both based in Joburg’s predominantly black township of Soweto, it was an obvious must-Trot experience.

No matter how big a match gets, no matter how high the stakes, whether a league championship, a world final, or a match between college rivals, the contest against a faraway side is a shared experience for the local fans. While a Red Sox vs. Yankees “Armageddon” series may induce more coronaries in New England than a mandatory government program to provide intravenous injection of chowder (those crazy liberals!), the respective communities on each side experience the drama, for the most part, with their comrades in fandom.

Similarly, if the Russians win the world championship, Canadian hockey diehards only have to tolerate seeing their great rivals on the ice, in the stands and in the streets of Moscow on TV for a split-second before switching off the tube and leaving the bar in Moose Jaw. They skidoo home with similarly depressed friends; they commiserate with work colleagues the next day at the water cooler. Perhaps they field an obnoxious telephone call or two from a newly installed world leader eager to taunt his cowboy-hat-totin’ counterpart, but that’s about the extent of it. The embarrassment of losing is felt from a distance, and can be minimized with little effort.

But when the team you’re battling is supported by your neighbours, your work colleagues, sometimes even your own children, things get interesting. Throw in decades of history and a religious rivalry or two, and you have the ingredients for sporting drama at its highest level.

Look, I hate military-metaphors-applied-to-sports as much as the next guy, but indulge me just this once: The local derby, pitting two sides from the same town against one another, is a civil war. There’s no distant enemy for locals to demonize and root against—the home front is muddled and confusing. In these situations, the fear of defeat trumps the hope for victory. You’re rooting for your side not to lose, because the consequences of defeat are impossible to escape. Seeing the opposition celebrating in your street, which is also their street—now even more their street because they won and you lost—is brutal punishment.

Now, let me be clear that Chiefs-Pirates is certainly no Celtic-Rangers. The Glasgow contest is arguably the granddaddy of all derbies, couched in a thick layer of unlikely history, wild passion and that whole Catholic-versus-Protestant subplot that pushes the tension beyond what any reasonable Glaswegian football fan should have to endure twice each year. But the Orlando Pirates, founded in 1937 and the oldest professional soccer team in South Africa (yes, they call it soccer here—they’re just as gauche as North Americans!), and the Kaizer Chiefs, formed in 1970 by former Pirates player Kaizer Motaung (and the namesake of a rather mediocre British rock band), have cultivated over the course of thirty-two derbies a local rivalry that’s probably the most intense in African club soccer, with last fall’s derby in Durban televised in more than forty countries in Europe alone.

I was aching to see the match live, in front of what is always a 40,000-plus sellout whenever these two teams meet, but due to a stadium renovation in Joburg for the 2010 World Cup, the game was moved to Mafikeng in North West province, several hours away.

I was nevertheless able to talk the official Sportstrotter fiancée and several of her colleagues into venturing to Soweto to watch the telecast among local fans. Soweto, short for South Western Townships, is an urban area created by the eviction of African residents from Johannesburg before and during apartheid. Most white residents of the Joburg’s northern suburbs would never set foot here, and several people I met were shocked that we were going to Soweto on derby day. Yet, almost every black Joburger I met recommended the trip, assuring me Soweto would be safe and the locals welcoming. We decided to incorporate the match into a fascinating tour of the Sowetan townships, courtesy of Billy Nkosi, our guide from Africa Prime Tours, who led us through some of the most historically significant locations from South Africa’s anti-apartheid struggle.

But the real draw of the trip for me was the match, and after two aborted stops at half-empty tourist bars, we convinced Billy to take us to The Rock, the hip bar in Moroka township. This was what we were looking for—fans of both teams glued to the bar’s lone TV screen, wearing team jerseys and drinking Carling Black Label. (For some reason the Black Label enjoys a better rep among Sowetans than in Canada—here it’s called “Zamalek” and is a huge local favourite.)

It was definitely the Pirates fans at The Rock who were more overt in their team pride. Known as “the ghosts,” most Bucs fans there were decked in black and white jerseys and several tooted on long, plastic blow horns, an omnipresent instrument of African soccer crowds. One fan showed me a fantastic Pirates tattoo covering his entire upper arm.

The Chiefs fans were less ostentatious—until David Mathebula converted a goal-mouth pass from Shaun Bartlett to put the Amakhosi (Zulu for “chief”) ahead 1-0. All of a sudden, the bar was full of Chiefs fans! Who knew?! The Pirates fans countered the friendly jeering with chants of “ladies first.”

In fact, the spirit of the match was friendlier than I’d expected—the rival fans chatted throughout the game, and many seemed to know each other. The taunting was comical and if there was a mean-spirited sentiment in that bar, I certainly wasn’t privy to it.

(The rivalry has not always been peaceful, and a Chiefs-Pirates match in 2001 produced the country’s greatest sporting disaster when forty-three people were trampled at an overcrowded Ellis Park in Joburg.)

Unfortunately for the Pirates fans, the “ladies” who scored first ended up as the only ones invited to the party. Despite an injury-time sequence that ended with the ball in the back of the net, the Pirates couldn’t manage a goal—the aforementioned play only saw the ball in the Chiefs net after the goalie dropped the ball following a swift boot to his nether regions that had him flipping and writhing in pain.

Still, when the game ended at 1-0 and the Chiefs fans danced and shook their bottoms in front of the Pirates fans, both groups could be happy about one thing: unlike Chiefs keeper Itumaleng Khuna, neither group would be spending the rest of the day with an ice-pack on their collective balls.

The world’s spookiest weapons, care of Popsci. Link.

Attack of the Chinese truffles. Link.

CRTC to the ‘bandwidth restriction’ rescue? Maybe they could look into our ridiculous cell phone rates at the same time. Link.

Some good commentary regarding electric bikes; I am conflicted about these supposed green machines. Why don’t people just ride a normal bike? Too much effort I suppose. Also check out “Geared Up,” the cycling article in this issue of The Walrus—great piece. Link and “Geared Up” link.

The NYT blog “The Lede” is fast becoming one of my favourite blogs. Bookmark it now. Link.

Webware was reporting the closure of the site Brijit and it occurred to me how many Web 2.0 sites there are out there. Where the hell are they getting their money from? There has to be a contraction at some point. Link.

Be still my Trekkie heart — smart house control unit. Link.

In support of Jared Bland’s interview with Bigfoot, here is the Flickr search for the big guy. Link.

eBay and Craigslist are swapping lawsuits like spit. eBay owns about a quarter of Craigslist. eBay created Kijiji (a Craigslist-clone classifieds system but covering both urban and rural areas) while being in bed with Craigslist.

Sound a little slutty to you?

It did to Craigslist. So they started to sneak around behind eBay’s back in revenge. When eBay found out it went into hysterics. The only known cure for hysteria, as everyone knows, is a lawyer.

eBay sues Craigslist. Which begets more hysteria. Craigslist sues eBay.

eBay’s codename for Kijiji is “Craigslist Killer.” How arrogant of them. Staring down their monied noses at ethical little Craigslist. I’m wearing my TEAM CRAIGSLIST T-shirt right now. Well I would be if I ever wore T-shirts. My favouritism might only be because I found my French snow-shovelling saviour on Craigslist and yesterday I got sniped while trying to buy some Edwardian shoes on eBay. Do you know how hard it is to find size-11 shoes from 1905?

The criticism consistently leveled at sweet, volunteer-driven Craigslist is that it is urban-elitist: It only services major cities. If you are from Elderslie or Nelson and you want to sell your marble chess set asap for money to buy a Bluefly prom dress, you’re screwed. eBay’s genius was not in thinking up a service that fills that gap but in buying itself into bed with competition. Was Craigslist really so naive?

The worst thing would be a hostile takeover of Craigslist. It would be devastating. There is a history and social network there that would truly be missed. Like losing the Five Cent to a Dollar store in Tara when I was 12. The Best of Craigslist is the home of some of my favorite rants of all time. Craigslist needs to build on and develop these most valuable assets to bail itself out of trouble. eBay has the money and power to be a serious threat. What would become of an eBay-owned Craigslist? Would it continue mostly unhampered like a Yahoo-owned Flickr? I think that the volunteer-powered Craigslist is integral to its success and utility so I’m pessimistic.

eBay, while enjoying its’ fair share of stunts, has no such vibrant culture. And Kijiji is a well-timed and -funded transmutation of print classifieds into a rural-friendly, no artsy-crap, Craigslist. Its strength certainly comes from small towns. My cousin from Kemble swears by to put snow-tires on his various cars.

And me?

I go to Kijiji when I want to sell a horrible faux-oak ceiling fan for $20 (true story).

I go to Craigslist when I want a tenant who is sparkling and won’t pee on my carpets (again, true).

I go to eBay to buy my Edwardian chemises. (I am planning my ’09 fashion season.)

Despite the apparent uniqueness of these services, a sea-change is coming in the online classifieds game. Neither my dalliances with fashion nor the hysteria of small and giant corporations can stop it. The itinerant capitalism machine will come out ahead, no matter what.

Interesting piece from The Tyee on the burning of books. Link.

From the New York Times: Older blog entry revolving around the value of an MFA and then a good follow up. Old Link and new link.

Shameless plug: I’m volunteering at the Trinity Bellwoods Park (Toronto) Farmers Market. It’s every Tuesday from 3 p.m. to 6 p.m. Swing by to get some good grub. Google Map.

From Portfolio: The cost of text messaging is more then the cost of downloading data from the Hubble telescope. I hate my cellphone carrier, don’t you? Link.

Much like Damien Hirst, Bigfoot considers his work “No dark, just misunderstood and ahead of time”

(Much like Damien Hirst, Bigfoot considers his work “No dark, just misunderstood and ahead of time.”)

This month marks the release of the third book in a series of collaborative memoirs by Bigfoot and Walrus contributing illustrator Graham Roumieu. Bigfoot: I Not Dead is a tender yet violent addition to Bigfoot’s ongoing self-exploration project, sure to please both fans of his previous work and those who aren’t yet familiar with him but enjoy furry creatures, mutilation, poetry, existential anxiety, and/or hard-learned life lessons.

Readers in Toronto should be sure to attend the book’s launch, which takes place Thursday night at the Gladstone Hotel as part of Pages Books’ “This Is Not a Reading Series.” Michael Winter, Nathan Whitlock, Douglas Bell, The Walrus’s own Jeremy Keehn, and others will speak about what Bigfoot means to them. Second floor, 7.30pm, free.

I reached Bigfoot last week at his home in the woods.

How has your life changed since your first book came out?

Bigfoot hang dirty laundry on line for all to see. Some things just needed be aired out on wind of disclosure. Others so heavy shit-encrusted that they fall off of line into mud and now scrutiny birds pick bits of corn out of it and neighbor steal and put on Ebay. Not totally regret writing books but wish sometime to go back to old technique of whisper secrets into hollow stump. (more…)

An ebook I somehow missed: Cybook. Link.

Seeing the light for the first time since 1960—bring forth the sunken medieval Spanish city. Link.

Newfound spider named after Neil Young… Why? I just don’t know—I’ll have to ask Lucy. Link.

The prices of newspaper companies are going down down down. Maybe someone will realize their worth is in human capital. Hopefully that same someone will know how to convert it into something more viable as well. Link.

EXTRA

Interesting analysis of Tweet as a news source with regards to the earthquake in China. Link.

JEJU-DO—I’ve been meaning to respond to a reader of my post on weird Korean stuff, who suggested that I should have included kimchi. There’s a good reason I didn’t. For every item on that list, I’m sure you could find at least a few Koreans to vouch for its weirdness—someone to say, “Listen, I agree with you: It’s a little off that my kid wants to stick his finger up your ass.”

I don’t believe there is a Korean person alive or dead who would concede that kimchi is weird. Nor, having lived in Korea for more than a year, am I able to do so. (Smelly, yes; weird, no.) In Korea, kimchi is more than a foodstuff. It’s a national icon, a cultural treasure, a palpable expression of the country’s feisty spirit and determination throughout history to grow and protect its own unique soul—to resist wholesale assimilation into the more megalithic cultures of Asia, through culinary defense. It’s a cure-all, a protective shield, a magic balm and a goddess of plenty. Without kimchi, Korea would not be the same country—there might be a nation in the same place, and it might even be called the same thing, but it would not be Korea. (more…)

Interesting piece in the New York Times regarding the divide of the sexes in Saudi Arabia. Link.

Here it comes… the first documented genetically modified human embryo. Link.

Got this from Read/WriteWeb: Brand Tags add tags to brand logos and it publish them in a tag cloud around the logo. Link.

Though a few days old: Barnes and Noble heart Zinio. I do like Zinio’s product (digital magazines) quite a bit, but their pricing structure for publishers is terrible. I am hoping that in the next six months someone will merge a digital magazine format with current or future e-ink reader. Then, I think, things will start to change. Link.

Kibera is the Zsa Zsa Gabor of slums: famous for being famous (it was featured in The Constant Gardener), its beauties and blemishes endlessly exaggerated by local and international media alike, Kibera’s half-million or so residents play host to a small army of earnest NGO’s, exploitative religious groups, intrepid journalists, bedazzled tourists, and visiting celebrities eager to connect with the other side of the tracks—like Barack Obama, who passed by on his way to his grandma’s in 2006.

I like it, too. But it had been a couple months since my last visit (my appreciation for the place is predicated on not having to stay), so last weekend I decided it was time for another incursion.

Nice siding, was my first thought on arrival. Brand new sheets of aluminum glittered everywhere in the sunlight, formed into long lines of shack that had sprouted up to replace the hundreds burnt down in January’s violence. The old festival atmosphere I knew and loved, of fish cookers and CD pirates and preachers and hair-weavers all spinning a raucous economy out of thin air, was back. No more machetes and smoking ruins. The riots were but a dismal memory; now, the only people running amok with evil designs were barefoot toddlers. Even the alcoholics had cheered up. (more…)

Here Mashable, take my vagina. I’m obviously not using it right.

According to Mashable, the In Touch of the social networking scene (bold and uppity upstart with a handsome Twitterface), I am not actually a woman.

On Mother’s Day Mashable churned out another one of their highly-re-bloggable social networking list of links. The focus of this new list is a bizarre niche group rarely mentioned on Mashable—women!

I felt special. All past slights undone. Mashable was finally compensating for their status quo sexism by exploring “some of the most popular social networking sites for women.” If felt like maybe the Mashable Twitterhead (aka Pete Cashmore) cared about me after all.

But I was wrong. I got all amped up for nothing.
And I was not alone:

I (Rubybeck) agree with AskFrasco. I was excited to see a post focusing on women, but sorely disappointed with the content. This post should be more aptly titled “Top 10 Social Networking Sites for Moms.”

Indeed. It seems that to Mashable a woman is defined by her incubating and birthing abilities. I, socialnet czarina, had only heard of one of the sites they listed. One! And the sites listed would be better placed on an April Fool’s Day post than on one for Mother’s Day. Cafemom was bad enough, but ParentsConnect? WTF.

And then it dawned on me. According to Mashable logic I must not really be a woman. I should just hand my vagina, my uterus—heck my whole endocrine system—over to Mashable because I am not using it right. Even if I did pop out a kid, I would never–ever–use these sites. My main life interests would not shift from historicization and social-net culture to parenting and motherhood. So obviously, even if I bore children, my lack of monomaniacal focus on child-rearing would make me a horrible mother.

In the end, Mashable would be doing the entire world a favour taking these simultaneously useless and dangerous organ-weapons off my hands. Or, um, out of my body.

The single problem here is that the Mashable Men assume that, once birthing, female interests shift to some generic, home-based mother category from whomever they might have been before. Even if this new breed of thin-framed, notebook-totting patriarch uses 43 Folders for excellent file system organization, a devalued housewife is still a devalued housewife.

So thanks Mashable Men for using Mother’s Day to remind me of how insignificant I am to the denizens of social networking because my destiny is to sacrifice my identity for the production of others greater than me. The men can then be free of my menacing feminist critiques to handily carve up the cultural landscape in the mirror image of themselves. I’ll never forget how special you’ve made me feel.

The Vatican’s documents through history: From the interrogation of Galileo to the document that kicked Martin Luther out of the Catholic Church and changed Europe forever. Link.

Voice-to-skull weapons web page removed by the US Army. Why was this even online? So many questions… Link.

Sorry. I accidentally hit send … you know … I sat on my phone DURING A BATTLE IN A WAR ZONE! Link.

The Economist’s take on Xerox’s reusable paper. Link.

Here are shots of yesterday’s Walrus luncheon and debate at the University Club of Toronto, titled “Canada and the Surveillance Society: Whose Camera Is on You and Why Don’t You Mind?”

Stimulating discussion was provided to the well over 100 attendees courtesy of writer Hal Niedzviecki and world-renowned futurist Robert J. Sawyer, with the talk moderated by the CBC’s Carol Off.

For upcoming Walrus events and tickets, including June 12’s The Dark City (part of Luminato) see walrusmagazine.com/events.

(Photos by Laird Saunderson).

Though I haven’t posted in a little while, other than the now-Daily Toast, I wanted to get this down before I forgot:

The more I read (consume is a better word) every bit of commentary and editorial about the democratic nomination in the US, the more I feel I’ve seen this before.

The MTV movie Election with Reese Witherspoon echoes what is going on down south. One candidate, determined and hard working, on every school club, running against a popular rival, who can cruise on equal footing with the burn outs, jocks, geeks, and freaks in their high-school student council election. The unifier vs. one who will not give up to the point of destroying everything around her.

Read the description of characters from Election taken from Wikipedia and see if you can match them up with the personalities in the primaries:

Reese Witherspoon as Tracy Enid Flick is an ambitious student determined to win her school election. She believes in hard work and ambition. Her drive can be attributed to her desire to be better than other people and she shows contempt for those who have wealth and popularity but don’t appreciate it. Her contempt leads her to be malicious to her competitors, and to violate her own ethical standard by lashing out against Paul Metzler in spite of all his hard work and dedication.

Matthew Broderick as Jim McAllister is a teacher who truly enjoys educating. His passion is with his work and the study of ethics. He cares about his students, but has contempt for those whose ambition gets in the way of their humanity. In spite of his lofty moral ideals, his contempt for Tracy renders him unable to live by his own ethical standard.

Chris Klein as Paul Metzler is a kind, generous, and extremely popular star athlete running in the student election. His inherent fortune, popularity and high ethical standard serves as the foil for both Tracy and McAllister, since he has what both of them strive for but cannot achieve. His generosity and kindness eventually contribute to his electoral defeat.

A) Howard Dean B) Barack Obama C) Hillary Clinton

Jack and his new ride. Who said we didn’t see this coming? 1978, right after the first oil crisis. Link.

Self-publishing, -printing, and -selling online through Pothi, an Indian startup. It doesn’t look like they have much traffic yet, but a nice simple concept that could work. Link.

Wow. The Centre Pompidou has almost 60,000 pieces of art online. There is a ton to search through—I wish they had a feed-stream or something to encourage browsing. Link.

I don’t know if I missed this, but Google has an archive search, that lays out a timeline for a searched item. I do love my historical-graph thing-a-ma-bobs. Here is a search for: e-ink. Link.