Politics? Nah, let's stick to beauty.

Which way up, you decide.

Not much to say today - actually, that's not true. I had written a post about the upcoming African National Congress (ANC) election for a new president of the ruling party. But D decided what I'd said was far too contentious and I was likely to get sued. I did say that sometimes I liked to live on the edge. He said he didn't think this particular edge was a good place to be living. So... what I can tell you is that we live in interesting times as the current president of both the country and the ANC, Thabo Mbeki, goes head to head with his former deputy president, Jacob Zuma. One is a manager and a pragmatist with a strong Thatcherite bent and some very odd views on AIDs/HIV. The other's is the people's man, who's recent past has been dogged by charges of corruption and allegations of the rape (unprotected) of an HIV-positive woman.

"Politics, n. Strife of interests masquerading as a contest of principles."
Ambrose Bierce - The Devil's Dictionary

"In politics, absurdity is not a handicap."
Napoleon Bonaparte

Let it not be said that life is ever dull. But let it also be said that while comrades in the ANC may be at each other's throats and stakes may be high, beauty nonetheless abounds in all sorts of other places.

"Though we travel the world over to find the beautiful, we must carry it with us or we find it not"
Ralph Waldo Emerson

Simply beautiful.

"Beauty is an ecstasy; it is as simple as hunger. There is really nothing to be said about it. It is like the perfume of a rose: you can smell it and that is all."
W. Somerset Maugham