Seismic shifts …

Taylor Swift is conquering the world.

Not the least of it, fans known as Swifties invaded a London pub in their multitudes to see the bar stool she once sat on.

Geologists say her concerts have actually caused minor earth tremors nearby

Swift, 34, is a seismic phenomenon. As a teen she was ripped off by a promoter. Since then she has wised up and got herself over $1 billion from writing songs and performing them without what are called in showbiz the side-hustles of sponsoring perfumes, booze or sports shoes.

Next in the earning stakes from music only is our old favourite Bruce Springsteen, 74, but he has been at it for 50 years.

Springsteen played in Zimbabwe, alongside Tracey Chapman, Sting, Peter Gabriel, Youssou N’Dour and our own Tuku and Ilanga in the 1988 “Human Rights Now!” concert which didn’t make much difference in the cosmic cause it espoused.

Ms Swift is in our troubled modern firmament as we terrestrials obsess over war, political dishonesty, rights violations – here in Zimbabwe too – and the whole nine yards of all that’s going wrong on earth.

Her meteoric album The Tormented Poets Department is not everyone’s cup of tea but billions of insatiable Swifties everywhere can’t all have been unwillingly taken hostage.

Of personal obsessions, they used to tell us in rehab there is always some ‘greater being’ to guide us to recovery. They prefer this to be the almighty God of Christendom, but it could also be god, the great outdoors. Or it could be that some greater being built the pyramids 4,000 years ago.

*Egypt’s Great Pyramid of Giza weighs 6 million tons, lies over a ‘footprint’ of 5 hectares and rises 150 metres high, constructed with 2,5 millions blocks of stone.

*How did humans alone carry blocks of stone weighing between 2 and 50 tons up to the top?

*Its exact centre is on an axis facing true north within a fraction of a single degree.

*Its geophysics and precise location mathematically reveal the polar radius of the planet  (the distance from the north and south poles to the centre of the earth) and the length of the equator.

*Inner passages, chambers and tombs are architecturally immaculate by present standards.

Is it too far fetched to suggest there are forces out there – including the healing of music – that still cannot rehabilitate the perpetual human folly of war?

The World At Large (to be continued)

The Americans have agreed to give $68 billion in weapons to Ukraine, Israel and Taiwan. Zimbabwe has had six different local currencies since 2008, each failing in turn. This was one of them: a Z$ 100 billion banknote that quickly became worthless and couldn’t by  bread let alone a weapon of any sort.

David Pecker, former publisher of the US tabloid The National Enquirer, has been testifying in Donald Trump’ ‘hush money’ trial. He speaks of “catch and kill” whereby you pay for a story then kill it – throw it away – to protect the subject, Trump in this case. It is something new in the battered craft of journalism.