Murphy’s Law in action

South Africa has a number of large supermarket chains and, like in America, there is often one or two of them anchoring certain of the local malls. Here in Cape Town, Pick ‘n’ Pay is one of the dominant chains (where I do a lot of my shopping), Checkers is another (which I perceive as being a bit downmarket), and Woolworth’s is the premier “luxury” food shop, the place you go for the best quality produce and exotic cheeses. This morning I planned a trip to Woolies, with a stop at the nearby Checkers for some packaged goods. It did not go well.

I drive an SUV. Clearly aware of the prejudices against the vehicles and those of us who drive them, I try to be particularly circumspect when I drive and park, taking particular care to align my behemoth properly in the space. So, can anyone explain to me why, when I emerged from the supermarket this muggy, sweltering morning with a trolley full of perishables and a miserably aching ankle, the space available to open my car door was slim enough to give Nicole Richie pause? And, since I’m built more along the lines of the “before” pics of Kirstie Alley, getting into the car was a bit of a challenge, particularly with that sore ankle. And the cause of this inconvenience? Another gargantuan example of the automaker’s art? Would you believe, a VW Citi Golf, parked catawampus in its space, making ingress to my car…and egress from the parking space…an exercise in white-knuckled creativity?

The sore ankle was a large part of the problem, since the car is right hand drive and I must support my not inconsiderable weight on it as I fling my left leg and haunch up into the driver’s seat. Having my manoeuvring space compromised by the Piggy Parker next door made it all the worse. So why did I come out shopping if my foot is still so sore, you ask? Well, it wasn’t particularly tender when I left the house and, had my experience at Checkers gone according to plan, it would have been fine at the end of my excursion. But things at Checkers did not go well…and I never even made it to Woolies.

One of the things my husband says he loves about me is my practicality. I tend to plan things out…even such mundane things as shopping trips. My plan was to arrive at Checkers at opening time, dash in and pick up a few things, and get out before the store got crowded and the lines at the cashiers got long. From there to Woolies for a few things only Woolies carries, and then home in time to catch the latest instalment of All My Children (several years delayed from the US). But you know what Murphy said…

I hadn’t planned to buy produce from Checkers, but on entering the store, I saw a terrific display of white seedless table grapes (Hubby will only eat seedless grapes), so I grabbed a bunch and bagged them. I’m planning stuffed peppers for dinner this week, and the peppers looked to be in good nick…and there were fresh apricots, loose so I could choose my own (the pre-packaged punnets always contain about 50% unripe and sour!). Now, one of the ways that South African supermarkets are different from American is that loose produce must be weighed and the bags sealed shut and tagged in the produce department…the fruit is not weighed by the cashier at check out. To this end, there are scales and employees manning those scales at every produce department in every major market in South Africa. Or at least that’s the way it is supposed to be.

Once I had my fruit bagged, I headed for the scale. A young man in a red T-shirt with a Checkers logo on it was busy hefting a huge plastic bag onto the scale…and I mean huge…the size you’d ordinarily need a small wheelbarrow to move about. The bag was leaking copious amounts of sticky wetness all over the scale, the stand, the floor…and it stank something awful. It was easy to deduce from the smell that the bag contained decaying produce, most particularly rotting grapes. When he had hefted the nasty goo-dripping bag onto a nearby trolley, he turned to me expectantly…and I looked pointedly at the disgusting mess on the scale.

Correctly interpreting my glance, he looked for something to clean the surface of the scale with and grabbed a plastic bag from one of the rolls of bags in the produce department. Of course, his efforts to wipe it clean succeeded in only smearing it around so he tried another tactic…a larger wad of plastic bags. I looked around for a “regular” produce department employee…they usually wear turquoise blue uniforms and aprons…but nobody was around. I did, however, spot a different scale. Unfortunately, the young man couldn’t make this scale work at all. My foot was starting to get tired, for I had been on my feet nearly 15 minutes by this time, and had barely begun my shopping.

To my left was the produce department, brimming over with employees, but not a produce department worker in sight. I asked a deli worker if she could help me, and she grabbed a “cleaner” (grocery stores have regular employees whose only job is to roam the store and make sure it is clean, mopping here, collecting refuse there, etc) and asked the cleaner to find someone to help me. Eventually she found someone, but she could not make the scale work either. She beckoned me to the other scale but I balked. “It’s filthy,” I told her. “I don’t want to put my bags on that thing.”

Sure enough, she found the scale in the same sticky, stinky condition as before. She dashed off to find something to clean it with while I, hobbling now on my sore foot, crept over to the scale…only to find, by the time I got there, that a line had formed! By the time I got to the scale, I was third in the queue and she was weighing the produce of another customer! Eventually I got the bags weighed and tagged and I headed off to the packaged goods section of the store for some things I knew Woolies didn’t carry.

By the time I was finished with my shopping, I was weighing whether or not my foot would stand the trek down to the Woolies at the far end of the mall or not. I had to stand in a queue to get a cashier (something I had hoped to avoid by arriving at the store early…my plan thwarted by the fiasco in the produce department), but finally it was my turn and when she rang up the total, I handed her my Visa card. She put the card through and a message came up on her terminal screen: “verifying transaction”…machine-speak for verifying my credit card had enough headroom to charge a few hundred rand worth of groceries. Problem is, two minutes later (an eternity in nano-second driven machine time), it hadn’t verified…or rejected…my card. The cashier pushed a button to resubmit the transaction for approval and a little blue window popped up on her screen: her credit card terminal was off line. So what does she do? She keeps me standing there for fully another five minutes (while the queue behind me grows and grows and grows…) as she repeated tries to resubmit my transaction on a machine no long functioning. Just as I figure out what she is doing, she rings for a supervisor who comes over, reads the “off line” message on the screen and tries to submit my transaction for approval on a machine she knows is off line and non-functioning!

To give her credit, she didn’t make multiple attempts, she just wrote down the total of my purchase on her hand, grabbed my credit card and said she had to use a different terminal, then walked away. With my credit card. And so I had to hobble after her…in a direction away from the exit where my car was parked…to complete my transaction.

By the time it was done and I had my credit card back and my groceries bagged, my foot had started to swell. I checked the time and All My Children had already started…I was woefully behind schedule, every step on my right foot was like a sabre stabbing me from the heel to the knee, and I hadn’t even been to Woolie’s yet. Hobbling out the door, pushing my trolley in front of me, I headed for the parking lot, only to find the little VW snuggled up to my driver’s door like a lover.

Murphy was right.

What part of "I don't have it" did he not understand?

If there is anything worse than a complacent civil servant, it is the witless customer service rep whose mind is incapable of thinking beyond the narrow confines of his ordinary job.

This morning my power went off and, after checking my DB board to make sure it wasn’t a problem with the house, I called my local power utility.

“I live in Table View and my power just went off,” I said.

“What is your account number?” he asks me.

“I don’t know,” I said. “My husband pays the bills, he is out of town, and I don’t know where he keeps that stuff. But I live in Table View…are there any outages here?”

“I can’t tell you that without your account number,” he drones. Honest to God, the man had no inflection in his voice!

“I told you, I don’t have it, but I can tell you my street address…”

“I can’t locate you without your account number,” he tells me. Right…Table View is this tiny little remote village that cannot be located without a multi-digit number to which I have no access…NOT!

“I can give you my street address,” I repeat helpfully. Ya know, when my tenant was trying to get her power turned on, they demanded a street address which, once they received it, they promptly told her was non-existent! What is going on with these people? My husband works for the same company and, believe me, there are plenty of really, really smart people working there. Maybe they refuse to hire intelligent people for the customer service area like the telephone company in America that told me I had scored too high on their test and was therefore too smart to be a directory service operator.

Anyway, this drone continued to demand my account number which, inevitably, pissed me off. And, contrary to my normal behaviour with anyone, service people in particular, I shouted at him. “I DO NOT HAVE IT!” I yelled. “I have a street address! My husband is out of town! I don’t have access to his papers! My power is out! Now if you can’t help me, let me speak to your supervisor!”

He put me on hold for a mercifully short period of time, then returned to say his supervisor was on another line, but if I would leave my telephone number, she would call me back within five minutes. Yeah, right. But I gave him the number anyway. About 15 minutes ago. I’m still waiting for her to call me back…

…and the power is back on.

Dumber than dirt...

In today’s sex-saturated media, can anyone seriously believe that a Britney Spears sex-tape will do any kind of lasting harm to the pop princess’s slutty, trailer-trash public image?

C’mon folks, a tape like this took Paris Hilton from being no more than a scrawny, skanky heiress to being a famous, scrawny, skanky heiress, and Pam Anderson’s career certainly suffered little lasting ill-effect from the release of a similar tape. Can Britney’s career fare any worse?

I get the impression that Fed-Ex, as he is now being called, is a veeeery long distance from being one of the intellectual heavyweights of Hollywood. Not that Britney is the sharpest knife in the drawer, mind you, but she’s got that control freak mother of hers and a battalion of legal sharks swimming in her waters, helping to keep her feather-brained choices from taking too much of a toll on her fortune. Like marrying Jason Alexander without a pre-nup…or marrying Kreep Federline at all. But Federline takes the cake for being the intellectual midget of the moment…the guy who pissed off the Golden Goose to the point that she’s taking all of her golden eggs and going home.

I mean, just how stupid can one person get? He was smart enough to recognize the smell of money when Britney flashed those big baby blues at him, crass enough to dump his heavily pregnant girlfriend and their toddler when Brit’s money started winking seductively his way, and quick enough to make his union with Brit legal, thereby securing himself access to her fortune. But either he didn’t read or understand the pre-nup he signed or he was arrogant enough to figure he’s find a way around it when the time came, or he just figured Britney would put up with his crap. Whatever his reasoning, he may have secured access to the cash cache, but as any strategist worth his salt will tell you, winning the battle is only the beginning: now you have to secure and keep the territory won.

And that’s where Federline has shown himself to be dumber than dirt. Oh, we can add some modifiers as “arrogant” and “over-confident,” too, but the bottom line is, dumb, dumb, dumb. Who in their right mind, after all, manages to land on their feet in a bed of soft, cushy roses and then immediately proceeds to kill the bushes that produced them? Federline could have had his bed feathered for him for life, had he just observed a few very simple rules of relationship conduct: 1) don’t look a gift horse in the mouth; 2) don’t kill the goose that lays the golden eggs; and 3) don’t shit where you eat. Even a puppy knows that last one!

So, after two years of repeatedly pissing off the keeper of the purse strings, after regularly embarrassing the meal ticket with his less-than-committed behaviour, after publicly dissing the diva, the only surprise is that he was surprised when she gave him the old heave-ho. But, like the low-life, scum-sucking loser that he is, rather than consider himself fortunate for his brief ride through the good life on Britney’s back, he’s decided to retaliate for her having the impertinence to divorce his faithless, talentless, conscienceless ass: he’s threatening to release a sex tape of the two of them unless she hands over the kids and a hefty sum of cash. He couldn’t be more stupid if he put actual effort into it! Assuming he is not arrested and charged with blackmail and he succeeds in putting the tape up for internet view, what makes him think it’s going to harm Britney…or make him any money he can keep? She has legal control of her brand (her image), the tape is half hers anyway, and this kind of sleazoid reveal is exactly what her sagging career needs for a boost, if Pam and Paris are anything to go by.

Geeze, Federline, why not just shoot yourself in the head? (But be sure to have someone help you point the barrel in the right direction.)

Home again, home again…

The lavender farm in Franschhoek

Wednesday was our third wedding anniversary and to celebrate the occasion (as well as Hubby’s new job, which starts on Monday next), we took a few day's sojourn to the local wine country.

The village of Franschhoek is less than a two hour drive from Cape Town, but a world away. Joburgers, who think Cape Town is a laid-back, “hang loose” kind of place, must find Franschhoek to be standing still. But Franschhoek isn’t the quaint little village it likes to think of itself as being…oh no. It’s appeal is as studied and contrived as Disneyland’s Main Street, USA, for all that many buildings on the main road through town are truly masterpieces of the art of building preservation.

Franschhoek Village

This place is a village only in the sense that it is fairly small in size…but don’t look for the support services you would expect of your average farm village. I didn’t see a musty old hardware store or a farm equipment dealer or repair shop, no forge for mending unhappy implements, no drilling company or pump and irrigation sales…a village for the support of the neighbouring farms, Franschhoek definitely is not.

An old house in the village

So what is it? The main street is lined with one well-preserved ancient Cape Dutch building after another, In most cases only the façade is fully intact, the rest of the building having been gutted to serve as home to a long queue of trendy restaurants that range from “just ordinary” to “truly superb” in quality. I’d like to say “with prices to match,” but our seven meals, unfortunately, lead me to believe that restaurants in Franschhoek range from eyebrow- raising to “quick, call the paramedics!” in price.

Hubby is a man who enjoys his creature comforts and when we take these little holidays they are usually short enough to allow us to afford four-and five-star eateries and accommodations. But sometimes you wonder why the stars were granted. The eponymous Reuben’s, known as not only the best restaurant in town, but the best in South Africa, deserves every one of the five stars in its crown. But don’t expect cuisine…fine or otherwise…from The French Connection, despite the recommendations and stars. Any restaurant that feels it must notify its patrons that it is a “bistro” and to therefore not expect greatness in the fare, should be approached with caution. We found the food…particularly the lamb and the French fries…overdone and the portions rather skimpy (a ham sandwich with one layer of nearly transparent ham?), and the woman at the table next to us sent her entrée back to the kitchen because her roasted kudu was refrigerator-cold. How many stars is that kind of gastronomic offering worth?

Pond at Bread & Wine Restaurant

Accommodations are likewise “luck of the draw,” the stars meaning considerably less than one might ordinarily expect. I expect a certain level of luxury and upmarket appointments in a four star accommodation…certainly a queen-sized (if not a king) bed, and definitely a real shower, certainly not a hand shower in the tub (and no shower curtain). I have long come to expect mosquitoes every place I go in South Africa…we don’t seem to have gotten the word about window screens yet…so checking the ceiling corners for mossies before turning in is a nightly ritual nowadays. But we didn’t sign up for an army of creepy little roommates! On our second night I was jolted awake by an overly friendly spider which Hubby then had to hunt down and slaughter, the third night I found a little slug merrily running laps around the inside of the bathtub rim, and every night a battalion of two-inch long centipedes marched across the bedroom carpet, defying both squishing with shoes and picking up with tissue…and refusing to die even after being heavily dosed with Doom. Ya know, to my mind, the fact that the proprietors of this establishment thought it prudent to supply our suite with a can of Doom says volumes all by itself.

View of Franschhoek Mountains from Lavande

All negatives aside, though, the Franschhoek Valley is as beautiful a place you could ever hope to see. The craggy, majestic mountains encircling the fertile river valley, kilometre after kilometre of lush green vineyards and silvery-sprigged lavender fields, rustic thatched-and-whitewashed homes…it’s as delightful to the eye as the wines are to the palate.

Boekenhoutskloof Winery

Lavender fields at Grande Provence Winery

It was an enjoyable few days and aside from my sore foot and ankle rather slowing me down (adventurous pursuit of photographic ends is a bit difficult to do on crutches!) we had a lovely time. Lovely enough, in fact, that we plan to return to Reuben’s (even if one meal there did cost more than my maid’s monthly wages!)…but first we need to find a nice guest house with showers. And big beds. And no free-loading, uninvited roomies!

On the road again…

No, not travelling…sprawled face first on it.

Well, it was a driveway, actually…and a gravelled driveway, at that. And for the past ten days or so I have been dosed with pain killers and confined to anyplace where I can keep my right foot elevated, preferably higher than my heart. So I’ve been spending a lot of time in bed. With my foot up. Stoned.

This isn’t the first time I’ve bunged up an ankle and ended up on painkillers with my foot strapped up and propped up. Early in 2001 I managed to fall off my porch (don’t ask…I haven’t quite figured out how yet, myself) and landed butt-first in a big geranium bush. Unfortunately, as I plummeted the entire metre from porch step to geranium-cushioned earth, I heard a sickening crack in the region of my left ankle…a breaking bone has its own distinct, stomach-turning sound. Alone and in excruciating pain…thank goodness one of the cars had an automatic transmission…I drove myself to the emergency room and emerged several hours later, one hand clutching a shocking hospital bill, one foot encased from toes to knee in Velcro-strapped black plastic.

It took months for it to heal, despite its being a fairly mild break, as breaks go. Of course the doctor put the Fear of Surgery in my heart by warning me that if I didn’t keep my Darth Vader boot on at all times, they’d have to go in and “pin” the bone together, a fate I emphatically wished to avoid after seeing him demonstrate the procedure on my x-ray. So I hobbled around on the ugly, clumsy thing for the prescribed three months and emerged, eventually, almost as good as new.

Fast forward five years and a Monday morning in Cape Town. I went out to pick up the mail and found the neighbours’ little bulldog, Xander, peering up at me through the bars of my front gate. Xander’s predecessor, Lexie, wandered away from home and ended up dog-napped, never to return, much to the heartache of the two little boys who live across the street. So, being a good neighbour sort of person, I took it upon myself to escort Xander home and close the gate that someone had carelessly left open.

This is another one of those “I dunno exactly what happened” deals. I closed the gate and turned to walk down the gravelled driveway, as I have done dozens of times in the past, and after only a few steps my right foot struck something hard and I suddenly went flying. Instinctively, I stuck out my other foot to steady myself, and struck something else! The next thing I know, I’m skidding on my hands and knees on a driveway full of sharp gravel, a sharp pain shooting through my right foot…thankfully without cracking sound effects.

Pumped full of adrenaline from the fall, I picked myself up and limped across the street to my house, looking back to determine that I had fallen over a large white stone that had somehow become detached from the driveway’s border. It didn’t take long, however, for the throbbing and swelling to begin, and so I called Hubby… “I’ve either broken or badly sprained my right ankle,” I told him over the phone. “I’ll be right there,” was all he said. And he was.

By the time we reached the hospital, I couldn’t bear any weight on it at all. X-rays, however, revealed no broken bones, just lots of blood in the spaces between all the little bones in my foot. A bad sprain, the doctor told me, along with instructions to stay off it and to keep it propped up, preferably higher than my heart.

It was two days before I had the courage to remove the elastic bandage, but I was desperate for a shower, so I took it off and, with the help of a wheeled office chair, rolled into the bathroom. Once the bandage was off, I was horrified at the sight of my foot! Fat as a purple and blue balloon, with five plump little sausages sticking out of one end, it was alarming! I quickly showered and wrapped in up again…the compression helped keep the pain down to a dull ache…and rolled back to bed, where I’ve pretty much been confined ever since.

Two days ago I discovered I could put enough weight on it to hobble to the loo and back, and last night, fortified with painkillers and Hubby’s strong arm to lean on, I managed to make it to a dinner out, but today I’m back on the bed with my now purple, blue, green and yellow foot propped up and mildly throbbing.

But next week is our third wedding anniversary and Hubby has booked a getaway in the winelands, a few days and nights at a lavender farm in Franschoek, and you can bet I’ll have this foot thing under control, one way or another!

Hubby moves up the corporate ladder!

It's been a while since I've blogged and I won't make any excuses except to say that I've been rather tied up with things that sort keep me from ruminating...which is necessary before a good blog can form itself up. But Hubby has recently had a event of which I am inordinately proud...

The Western Cape has suffered from electricity supply problems for just about a year now. Not only has the unprecedented (and unexpected) migration to the Cape from other regions of the country caused unanticipated demand to the existing infrastructure, the local power plant suffered a shut down of several months for repairs, throwing us into months of rolling blackouts and unplanned interruptions.

Koeberg Nuclear Power Station, Africa’s only nuke, provides about half of Cape Town’s power needs, the rest coming overland from upcountry coal-fired stations. Cape Town, being the most outlying location on the national grid, continued to suffer from unplanned outages whenever there was a disruption on the grid. In addition to seeing to the repair of the damaged Koeberg generator, Eskom, South Africa’s national power utility, responded to Cape town’s travails by embarking upon an ambitious plan to increase generating capacity in the Western Cape, a plan that could eventually end Cape Town's virtual dependence on the national grid.

First, however, Eskom had to replace the damaged rotor in one of Koeberg’s two generators…and they had to do it fast. The reactor powering the undamaged generator was scheduled to be taken down for refuelling in just a few months, and there was no way that Cape Town could enjoy an adequate electrical supply with both generators out of service. A replacement was located in France, but the massive 200 ton behemoth defied conventional methods of transport. My husband was appointed Logistics Manager on the “Generator Recovery Project,” and tasked with finding a way to transport the rotor not only to Cape Town harbour, but up the 30+ miles of urban and suburban roadways to the power station as well. The generator went down on Christmas Day, 2005, and on 5 April, 2006, after weeks at sea on a South African naval vessel, the rotor arrived. Hubby arranged the loan of the naval vessel and crew, a 12-axle trailer and two tractors to transport the rotor from the harbour to the power station, and a pair of massive mobile cranes to offload the rotor from the ship and onto the trailer, and later from the trailer to the generator housing. It was a Herculean undertaking, but ultimately successful. By the time the second reactor had to be taken off line for refuelling, the rotor had been installed and the damaged generator was repaired and on line. And Hubby returned to his regular job as a Senior Engineer for the PBMR project. http://www.engineeringnews.co.za/eng/sector/energy/?show=84289

Eskom, however, was determined not to get caught with its pants down again. Construction of two gas-fired power plants near Cape Town were fast-tracked and nebulous plans for a second nuke at the Koeberg location were firmed up. Cape Town, the fastest growing location in South Africa, was no longer going to be a poor step-sister on the grid: the Mother City was slated to have enough locally generated power to at least meet her needs, and possibly enough excess power capacity to meet peak seasonal demands without depending on the national grid.

Ground was broken in Mossel Bay, a small town on the other side of the Cape Peninsula, and at Atlantis, an economically depressed settlement only a few kilometres from the Koeberg power station, for the construction of the two gas-fired plants. Hubby was restless after his success with the rotor project, and his present assignment was moving ahead at a snail’s pace, affording him little professional satisfaction and precious little opportunity for advancement. Looking at the company intranet one afternoon, he found a division that was seeking to fill four Chief Engineer openings. With his rotor project success recently tucked under his belt, he applied and, just a month ago, flew up to Johannesburg for an interview.

Most new job offers are anything but instantaneous. Usually you interview, you come back for at least one more interview, then you wait interminably until either you get a card saying “thanks, but no thanks” or The Phone Call. Less than an hour after Hubby left the Johannesburg offices, while he was still in the car en route to his hotel, his cell phone rang and the division had an even better offer for him than Chief Engineer (in a location that would not require us to leave our idyllic Cape Town home). Seems the Atlantis gas plant, which is presently half built, needs a Site Engineering Manager…and once that site is up and running, there will be a promotion available, 12 to 18 months out, on the new nuke that will be going up on the Koeberg site…was he interested? They faxed the formal offer to him at home the very next day.

Requesting a transfer, offer in hand, turned out to be a bigger drama than going to Joburg and interviewing for the new job. The whole of Eskom has less than two dozen turbine specialist engineers, and of those, only two are nuclear qualified…Hubby being one of them. When he presented the offer and the transfer request to his boss, all hell broke loose! Not only did the boss refuse to sign the transfer request, he tried to turn the meeting into an impromptu criticism of Hubby’s performance. Strangely, his boss claimed that the project really needed Hubby’s rather rare skill set, but when Hubby said he would consider staying for a salary increase and promotion (there are three open management slots in the department), the boss turned him down…and heaped a bit more character assassination on him. Great way to keep the talent, eh?

The new organization, however, was keen to have him and, once the transfer was signed (the boss wasn’t allowed to refuse…the transfer request was just kicked upstairs until someone in authority signed it) Hubby discovered that his new boss was someone he knew and had successfully worked with for five years at another location. Because the gas plant was only half built, Hubby was concerned about offices and local infrastructure, and didn’t even know if he was going to be the sole engineer on site or if he would be assembling a staff. Imagine his surprise when his new boss chatted with him a couple of days ago and revealed that there was already an engineering department of 10 on site! Last Friday his present department gave him a going away party and he has been accosted half a dozen times since by engineers in his old department volunteering to come to work for him at the new location.

So, at the tender age of 34, he’s broken into the engineering management ranks, his first assignment giving him a staff of ten in a brand new facility. He tries hard not to show it, but I can see that he’s proud of himself, and with good reason. Here’s hoping he finds management everything he has hoped it would be!

Lifestyles of the Crazy and Famous

I am among the growing numbers of people who think Tom Cruise has slipped a cog or two and is now paddling his canoe up Cuckoo Creek. Craziness, however, does not necessarily mean a person lacks intelligence or the ability to think and plan well…it just means the person’s thinking and planning are carried out within a framework of standards, beliefs, and perceptions that the bulk of us do not share.

Yesterday it was announced that Cruise and Paramount had, after 14 years, parted ways. Since there was a controversy as to who bounced whom, I spent a little time perusing a variety of websites dedicated to celebrity news, hoping to gather enough diverse crumbs to piece together the most likely scenario.

All things considered, I’m taking Paramount’s version of the event. In the Wall Street Journal Viacom chairman Sumner Redstone remarked “His recent conduct has not been acceptable to Paramount.” Reducing euphemism to Corporate-Speak, what Redstone is saying that due to his increasingly nutty personal behaviour, Cruise’s box-office appeal is declining and, now that contract renewal time affords an ideal opportunity to divest itself of what is beginning to look like a growing liability, Paramount doesn’t want to be chained to a sinking stone. In plain English, Tom’s crazy behaviour is starting to drive people away from the box office and Paramount wants to ends its association with Tom before its profits are hurt. Continues Redstone: “…we don't think that someone who effectuates creative suicide and costs the company revenue should be on the lot."

Yah, he’s cost Paramount a chunk of money…it’s reported that he gets a 25 percent cut of the gross of his movies…one quarter of every coin you spend on a ticket…and the cost of the production has to be borne by what remains. His antics have caused his box office to decline, so fewer people are seeing his movies than in the past…but his budgets aren’t declining. Apparently the production costs of MI3 exceeded the US box office take, of which Cruise got 25% off the top, leaving Paramount to make up the difference. The movie may have been a box office hit, but it left a dent in Paramount’s bottom line. Had Cruise not poisoned his well, more of us would have gone to the movie and maybe Paramount would have made a buck.

One of the problems with this kind of production deal is that misbehaving stars like Cruise, Lohan, or Gibson don’t actually bear the brunt of their behaviour. If they have a substantial cut of the gross of the film, success or failure are immaterial because they make money whether the film does or not…and whether they behaviour influences the ticket-buying public or not. So, Cruise can insult women with post-partum depression, talk down to his host on national television, and revert to his simian ancestry on Oprah with relative financial impunity…even if we stay away from his movie in droves and the thing is a box office flop, he still gets 25% of the take and Paramount drowns in red ink.

Shame…I used to like Tom Cruise movies, but I have to side with Paramount. As a movie-goer, I find it difficult to watch Tom on-screen without images of his embarrassing couch-hopping or his incredibly supercilious pillorying of Brook Shields or his arrogant behaviour towards Matt Lauer overlaying his on-screen character. I don’t want to go to his movies anymore…I don’t want MY hard-won money to fund a silly pseudo-religious cult that was founded by a crazy conman-cum-crappy science fiction writer. I don’t want to be a party to the kind of insanity that publicly scorns the users of legitimate medical treatment absent solid scientific reasons. And I especially do not want my ticket money ending up helping to fund the exploitation of the innocent.

Yes, I’m talking about Suri Cruise. The fact that her daddy is virtually certifiable at this stage does not mean he is bereft of guile and cunning…or greed. “Crazy like a fox” is a phrase that comes to mind here. With the world hanging on the imminent birth of Shiloh Jolie-Pitt, Crazy Tom had the business acumen to realize that his little gift to humanity would be upstaged by the arrival of Brangelina’s babe, so he took the sly tack of hiding Suri from the world until it was sated with Shiloh and suddenly remembered that there was a little Cruise cruisin’ around, sight unseen. And, once Shiloh’s pictures were sold, the value of Suri’s photos could then be established…and if the offers weren’t high enough, she could continue to be hidden from view until the value inched up enough to surpass the benchmark figure of Shiloh’s photoshoot.

Aw, do I really think he is that mercenary and calculating? Yup, I do. Over the past year or so it has become increasingly obvious that Cruise veered sharply off the path of compassion and common sense sometime between his divorce from Nicole and his ensorcelment of Katie…oops—Kate…Holmes. His suffocating control of Holmes, from dictating what she will be called to how she would be permitted to give birth (silently and without drugs!) bespeaks a bone-deep misogyny and ingrained controlling nature that has flourished since the departure of the strong (and strong-willed) Kidman. Pity the girl child raised by such a father…a man who can do no wrong in his own eyes, a man for whom the accumulated wisdom of the world fades into subordination to his own concepts.

Yup, I got to go along with Paramount. They took a sound business decision to unhitch their wagon from a falling star, to a man spiralling out of control for lack of rational touchstones outside his own microcosm of incestuous thought and support. Tom Cruise and Company can contradict Paramount’s announcement with claims of having quit rather been fired, but the fact remains that contract negotiations broke down when Paramount balked at renewing their old, profit-bleeding deal (confirmed by Cruise’s production partner, Paula Wagner). Whether Cruise then walked or Paramount chucked him out the door is virtually immaterial: Paramount made the decision that Cruise wasn’t worth the cost to them anymore and calculatedly made an offer that they knew Cruise had to refuse. Damned by faint praise, as it were.

So the question now becomes, what is to happen to Crazy Tom and his entourage? Will he feather his nest by leaking the occasional multi-million dollar pic of little Suri? Will Kate Holmes ever make another movie? Will Tom? Does anybody really care anymore?