Hugh Masekela, probably Africa's greatest jazz trumpeter, died a natural death the other day. He, who in essence fled the - at the time - bloody country of his birth for many years, was able to return (from the land of Louis Armstrong, whom he i.a. befriended) without compromising his often hurtfully truthful themes in his works. (As in one of my favourites, "Stimela", describing the coal train, taking miners to Jo'burg for another months-long life-endangering stint to drill for coal & gold & phosphor.)

He seemed to have always been a very generous guy. He liked to speak & sing in his performances as well as display his mastery on the trumpet, as he does (both) in this South African song* of, for me, one of the best Blues singers Berlin (in fact: Germany!) has ever produced: Joy Denalane...

Rest in Peace, musically holy man!

So, here's the text for an Introduction to constructing your Inner Hype Resistors, a fictitious course I'd like to give any who are up for it. Not that I'm an expert on hype or the history of agit. propaganda through the last century or so, or on what the exact difference is between hype and fascist disinformation of the Nazi era. Or anything.

But I am, and for the longest time, have been a doubter; and you probably need a basic practical experience of healthy doubting, on a daily basis, before you take this course...

Here is a starting set of resistors for you to build as soon as you can. Each has two sections - first, how recognise the hype - in form of a question you need to honestly put to yourself - and last, how to then build resistance!

Hype can be...

• DISTRACTING... = Do "breaking" news of some sort make you follow that "new ball" a little too effectively at a time when life seemed complicated, but perhaps solveable? If it's unexpected & perhaps even shocking, it may well be intended to distract you, to pull you away from the (truths of) other more general problems, for which a solution may be in fact be obvious or just around the corner; it's just that the hype mongers don't want you to see that. Resolution: Keep your eyes on the old ball! Focus your attention on what you find truly important & ignore the rest for the moment, or in a crisis. Finish up that thought/deed. You can always come back to the "new" big thing later.

There's a historic German brand of chocolate called KINDERSCHOKOLADE, which could be literally translated as "children's chocolate".

Which would, however, be wrong: It's not chocolate made esp. for children - they even used to advertise the "healthy" milky filling! - and I once heard a rumour that the name came to be by accident, deriving from its inventor being a Mr. Kind or similar name. Once the chocolate factory named the chocolate that way, they at once made the fake healthy-children orientation the marketing strategy. The misdirection - though reduced by legal constraint! - still works today, since you always have a hugely pleased boy (until recently) holding up the choc sticks on the box covers, with a full glass of milk - so good for you! - nearby.

I bought some the other day, and was reminded of this semantic scam, and realised that this is how a lot of hyped news - as in the real "fake news" as propagated in the West now by many populist-right-leaning/screaming/tweeting politicians - works.

Something sounds like something likeable and safe(r), but in the end is a monstrous non sequitur.

Some current examples:

• In Germany you can't buy once-normal prepaid sim chips for your mobile phone any more. I mean the kind where you pay once, stick in the chip, then use the phone in any way you want until the prepaid "charge" is used up, then "recharge". All telecomm companies here now only offer a fixed-rate monthly "prepaid" rate, where a monthly recharge is expected from you, otherwise the card stops working. The only real difference to a normal-tariffed contract is that you can cancel this one at once by no longer paying! Seems to me the cartel watchdogs were asleep here!! ("Normal" prepaid is still available in many other countries, e.g. mobile-savvy South Africa!)

As long as all sweet-toothed consumers of these fantasies love 'em! And keep buying this "healthy" stuff in droves, please.

Actress Julia Roberts, once again voted World's Most Beautiful Woman by PEOPLE, turned 50 yesterday. She still has that killer smile, although she makes use of it more seldomly nowadays - older and wiser, it seems to me.

I suppose most cinemaphiles love Julia, and can name the movie that did them in - into their personal "love her forever!" phase. <3

For me it wasn't the movie she is most cited for: Pretty Woman. She was overwhelming in that, cementing her particular non-classic brand of beauty. However unreal the plot might have been - every man was pretty sure, he would have clicked just as Mr. Gere did, in his rich-man-for-poor-girls role.

No, my personal wowing cinematic kick in the gut was Erin Brockovich. Single mothers are the true heroes of Western society, I feel, and here the super-mom not only does right by her kids, as well as she can, but her sense of what's right locks jaw on the terrible thing she's discovered working for her new boss. And then, with his flabbergasted help, she takes on the legal world without so much as one page of a bar exam in her pocket. This movie was a lot more grown-up, and her role pressed all the right buttons for how I love a woman to be...

Other faves of her long - & still strongly ongoing! - career for me: Pentagon Papers, Notting Hill (!), Closer, Ocean's 11/12, August: Osage County.

P.S.: When she came into the world, I had just begun tuning into U.S. (TV & comic) culture as a child. I have had a long-running positive resonance with that culture, and many other aspects of that country. But right now, I notice how that good feeling & basic trust is beginning to slowly shatter - if Trump or Pence can bring the world to the brink of ruin in just a few months or years, that's also the fault of a much-too-traditionalist recipe of dealing with the world's incongruities, countrywide. Always repeating parrot-like a Dream, that essentially always tells you whatever the country does as a whole is right, is not particularly astute! This inherent nationalism is breaking out all over over there and all nationalism tends eventually toward extremism. As we Germans have (hopefully) learnt from having gotten badly burnt - twice in the "nasty German" half-century before Ms. Roberts started on hers...