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by Toast Coetzer

Waking with the Ctrl-Enter-Del-blues again, jargon-fried and drunk (not on information, but still on last night's ciders), I make my way to the conference in my '69 Beetle, warp-drive not by definition of speed, but by defintion of noise, driven like a submarine-deathtrap where I inhale the trapped fumes of old, dead forests. Somewhere in the east there's a hazy day, ten hours of it already, hanging fairly loosely in another well-controlled fire's smoke. I'm beating the living shit out of my computer but it keeps fucking up at the all-important hurdle of booting up, and when it does, the world turns and turns and turns and fucking turns until Bill and the Microsoft massive call it quits, network down, no email. I pick up the phone, the line's dead. The world is going to end. It dawns slowly on me, then I reach for my cell and SMS my massive that I can't cope anymore, I need my email, I need it now. I need input. I need coffee.

Face flat on the table I check out the world, the caffeine slowly popping through my dead cells like that plastic bubble packaging material that everyone digs to pop. Highway Africa, it speaks to me, Highway Africa. Obscene amounts spent on lavish dinners and award ceremonies (and now, a sumo wrestler… oh sorry, it's Vicki Sampson) and lasers projecting logos onto a church (God and Satan are tossing as to who will get the honour of sending down a rod of lightning for whoever authorised that) and those bloody golf shirts (like we'd play golf in them) and so on and so on. You do of course, know this.

At a corporate meeting, not long ago:
"Let's spend our license payers' money on this silly dance routine by these talented dancers and then we beam it to the whole of Africa."
"Fuck, that's a great idea. That way we can show all our viewers what we spend their money on - useless self-indulgence." "Spot on, and what is more, we can then also have great parties before and after and have these really kiff discussions about how we can get the internet for all of Africa and we can send tribal leaders SMSs to tell them where to go and pick up the maize we've airdropped."
"Shit you're good. That way we can help to give Africa the gift of information: - they'll be able to download the latest Lauryn Hill tracks, they'll be able to participate in a world economy based on freedom of movement, freedom of information and freedom of fuck, I don't know, everything. Wow. Anyway, where's Thabo (a fictitious Thabo, OK) today?"
"He's stil at home, the electricity is down in Sandton - he can't get out of his house because his security gates can't open."
"Another shit day in Africa, hey."

You do, of course, know this. It's clear to me now. My caffeine is where it needs to be, in my eyes, they're glinting in sick yellow. I have one purpose for the week: I need to convince Marj Murray that she must give me one of those kiff jackets. That's my main purpose for the week. I also need to drink and eat as much as possible free stuff, because from next week it's me and my landlady again. I need to put up posters in support of anti-dotcommunism (yes, it was me, no, there is no deeper meaning, yes, I was bored, no, I will make no official statement) to prove that I am, in fact, a hypocrite. You do, of course, know that. You're here after all.

(previous publised in Highway Africa Internet Conference paper, 2000)