Weathering Google and Yahoo

“What does next week look like, any blizzards?”

“Google it.”

Ouch!  I was just trying to make conversation.  It is times like this that I wish I was some animal and live in a forest, where there is conversation 24/7, creatively divided into night and day sounds. Mama said eavesdropping is bad, but sometimes the ear mistakenly catches it.

Squirrels warn each other about loggers preparing to flatten trees to build a nuclear plant; snakes say I don’t give a damn, I’ll just worm my way into their backpacks; deer rush to a meeting on how to out fox the cunning leopard; elephants lap water at the river while devising plans of warding off attacks from arrogant lions.  Can you imagine, lions trying to attack elephants, the obesity of height and infrastructure?

The city.  Being born and raised in Philly, Rio or any other city has many disadvantages including the inability to listen to the wind.  Women that fetch dead wood from forests to make fire have that skill. They sense danger through unusual animal movements and change of the wind’s DNA that indicates that rain is on its way.

Yahoo, Google and the whole fraternity have killed the art of conversation and listening.  Maybe that is a cop-out.  We gave it away freely, but the weather?  If we can’t talk about the weather, we then cease to be human.  Animals find it funny because speech is supposed to be a higher trait, which distinguishes humans from them.  

We need the weather to give the mouth some exercise because it is the only free thing to talk about, everything else is a no-go area.  No jokes because the next person won’t find it funny.  We cannot talk about race, religion, women, men, height, hairstyles, food, advertising etc. without offending somebody.

The weather is all we have.
By:  Nonqaba waka Msimang.