We like texture

I had to skip on working this afternoon, even though I am in dire straits.

This is because I subscribe, through no fault of my own, to the Vampiric Work Ethic.

During the daylight hours, my brain shrinks to the size of a tangerine, and I am good for no more than fart jokes and a leaky nose when put in front of a computer with the word proccessor running.

But at night! Ah, the night. Its satiny caress turns me into a monstrous typist that can tear through word counts at up to half the normal human rate! Yes, believe.

The difference is enormous. I am focused, the flow of fart jokes stops to a mere trickle, giving way to a veritable flood of work-related information, some of which is actually quite helpful really, when you think about it. And you can. Because it is dark.

The flipside of the coin, is that you constantly seek sustenance. Literally every paragraph has to be sucked out of some poor, unsuspecting burger-pie or cappucino. I sink my gleaming fangs into these delicacies and pump their life-essence to my brain, now swollen with bacon grease and brown sugar, which makes short work of spewing forth the rhetoric that is called for.

We are few, but our numbers are growing.

The other question I would like to address is the way we address our parents. Now, I am in the particularly unfashionable position of still resorting to "Mama" and "Papa", which, basically, is just a touch more favoured than "Mommy" and "Daddy", if at all.

Can I not hereby make an international appeal to respect these terms as well as the Italians do? Silvio Berlusconi does not have a "father". He has a "papa" and of course: "MAAAAMAAAA!". These are always the last words to leave an Italians lips: "Mi Morte! Fettucine! MAAAAMAAA!" (pardon my made-up Italian)

anyway, you get the harshest looks when using these words. It's not that I am stuck in early childhood. Okay, I am. But anyway, there was just never a logical transition from the one to the other. No one ever took me aside and said: "Okay, skipper, we're moving on to grown-up version now". Besides, after knowing someone as one thing your whole life, it's a bit like taking a life-long Christian and saying, "From now on, it's 'Big J'. Jesus is so BC."

Unfortuneately, in this case, I feel I am part of a dying, or at least very unfashionable breed.

Ciao!
Post a Comment

(interview with Karen Little. the atmosphere is very tense. i am smoking a pipe. and i don't cough. not even once. that is how serious this is.)

Niel:

1. Why a toothbrush?

Because it's green. And I like flicking the bristles with my fingers. Although that might seem gross. Old toothbrush flicking?

2. I'm stealing this question from ~d, but what do you love and hate about Holden Caulfield?

I don't hate Holden. That would be real lousy. I'm not sore about anything he did. He's real swell.

And I identify. Not the hookers and pneumonia, but I'd like to think I look at things the same way. Looking for something, behind something, behind something. Although a lot of the time I just eat.

Anyway, to plagiarise myself, he makes me feel like me. somehow.

3. Do you honestly, truly believe that Lock, Stock is better than Snatch? Why?

Lock, Stock is scientifically proven to kick Snatch straight in it's commercialised nuts. See, Snatch is like Police Academy 5. Millions of zany characters with larger-than-life personalities. And oh, they swear funny too. I am laughing. The spittle is running down my chin.

Sorry bout that. Lock, Stock is darker than Snatch, and allows a few of the characters to actually develop properly. Plus its got poker.

Tyrone is overrated. So is Snatch.

Not very scientific, is it? But I do feel strongly.

4. What kind of a journalist do you see yourself becoming?

The kind that gets paid to ponder, and then barf my thoughts into a column every Wednesday, which will be read by morally frustrated university students and corrupt politicians.

Ah, heaven. *puffs on his pipe*

5. If you had to live either in a world with no pictures, or a world with no words, which would you choose, and why?

A world with no words. For me, so many words stand in relation to (very specific) pictures that without them, they would lose so much meaning.

If we only had pictures, people could just grunt and hum* their emotions in appreciation to or revulsion of pictures. I think I would like that. The Observe-and-Shut-up universe.

*interview ends*

Thanks Karen Little. Leave your comments and I will ask the first five commenters five brand-spanking new questions of their own. If you've already done this meme, however, please leave a star at the top of your comment and I will skip you. Unless you want to do it again, of course.

* although when you think about it, these would then be words themselves.
Post a Comment

decaf coffee still gets you high!

2000 left for tonite, hombres.


(strip from the perry bible fellowship)
Post a Comment

i am maxed out on caffeine and sugar which is why i have finally figured out the ultimate pick-up line which will succeed-without-fail.

you have to say it real fast and kind of pull your face back with your scalp muscles and say:

i Want you in a bad way, Scully. < slurp slurp>

see what i did there? italicised the bad, so it's real bad. like now you know for 100% sure it's not in a good way. no questioning the bad motives. nope.

so, uhm yeah. endless frivolous cavorting follows. that's right.

An appeal: cross your fingers, hold your thumbs (the Afrikaans tradition) and all for me to finish up my essay tonight. i am the lax drone in the hive, always (although gm and ej seem to keep me company), but i NEED to get this done. i need to be this different person that refrains from designing infallible pick-up lines that just does shit. poof! it's done. you know? like that. so, uh, consult your rabbit's feet. ask them a favour. also, four-leaf clovers (plz Jolani), bone idols, any lucky trinket you got.

stop blogging? hell no. but i should cut loose for the time being.

i'm falliiiiiiiinnnnngggggg....

or should that be failing?
Post a Comment

i want to thank whoever made it rain tonight... and made me feel like a kid.
Post a Comment

I have a shaggy beard. Right now, I am pouring the good liquor from the top of the cabinet. It cost me about R70. I have to type 1000 words tonight or learn to cook without electricity. Standards don’t matter. What I write, they will print. Do people read the Big Issue.

?

It is 2009. I am a freelancer. I don’t shave very often.

I phone up Craig.

“listen man, I only need a title. Hit me”

“LP Show Sells Out Budokan”

“No, it’s about dogs.”

“Oh. There’s a march tomorrow. It’s about GM crops.”

“You want to cover it?”

“No, I want to join. Are you coming?”

“I guess not.”

“Why?”

“I don’t care, that’s why.”

“That’s pretty fuckin’ selfish.”

“Yeah… title?”

...

"It’s a dog’s life… If you can afford it.”

“You are God.”

“Then come to the protest!”

“Sorry, God.”

...

“Goodbye, my son.”

“Bye. Amen.”
Post a Comment

I went to the BP.

People are powerful, more than they realise. They can kill, they can make love. I could have done any of those things. But I wanted a burger.

At that moment, a burger represented everything I wanted out of the now. Because of economy, because of pocket money, I could go to the BP and get it.

I made the transaction, but when I got outside, the world was colder than before I went in. Wind and chill and the dark. But the burger was warm. I held it in my hand for a while as I travelled. I started to eat it, and soon all that mattered, was that inside my leather peel I was warm. Because of one burger. All there was to think about in the world was inside my mouth. I only had to chew it, consider it.

And then, no more tar to travel. Back where I started.
Post a Comment

Yes, today I didn't take the easy option. I played soccer in the rain, and then photographed it!

Woohoo.

Anyway, these show my soccerbuds Ashwell, Sokkie, Andre, Craig and Jerome breakin' it down in the field of battle.


(Ashwell disarms Craig [Sokkie] with a very droll joke)


(Jerome faces off with Craig [Smiley])


(Jerome takes on the whole field. Not fond of passing, this guy)


Anyway, this is what a wet soccer player/photographer looks like:


Post a Comment

No, really. Unlike Gerhard, I am not that into trees and bees. However, I have seen some very beautiful things just lying on the ground these last week.

Post a Comment

dream pollution.
Post a Comment

I almost never took these.







This one is sadder. I call it "Auschwitz". Maybe "Rwanda" is more appropriate.


Post a Comment

hellojournal-i-am-drunk. (i promised to be honest & i know who might be reading)

best time to psychoanalyse myself.

i am some kind of infant.

just now i was curled up on my good friend ej's couch, while he and gerhard listened to good music.

and yes(!), i felt protected and all that shit.

and know what?

much indulgence of childish escapism so much of the time.

children's books, easy-to-understand images and things (I call them texture), love the feeling of lying on my parents' bed...

what would freud say? didn't get past oral stage, or throat or somesuch. anyway, it's fun to be aware and i always have been, just not as acutely of this boy dream i live out so often, until this week.

ooh, look! an insect! if i can resist the urge to pull of its wings it can be my mentor.
Post a Comment

Please consider the following words:

a hail of domestic projectiles.

cusp.




Ahhhhhhhhhh....... was it good for you? Ice-cream or smokes?
Post a Comment

Post a Comment

Please watch The Shining. Then you will understand my irrational fear of hallways.

I was at the Journalism department on Sunday night. EJ was there with me, and a classmate (let us call her Annie) was upstairs.

EJ left, mumbling some excuse.

I was left alone in the Department, with Annie upstairs. She had been there all day, just typing and typing.

Noise upstairs. Ghoulish moans, along to the typing. She was singing to some music (playing on headphones, I think) but not bothering to form the words properly and singing eerily out of tune. A manic disregard for what her vocal chords were doing.

And typing all the way. What was she typing? Could it have been:

All work and no play makes Annie a dull girl
All work and no play makes Annie a dull girl
All work and no play makes Annie a dull girl
All work and no play makes Annie a dull girl

???

It could, and I was disturbed. I also couldn't hold in my liquids anymore, and I had to go to the bathroom.

The lights were off in the hallway. I was very conscious of the fact that, if I rolled a tennis ball so that it dissapeared around the corner, it would probably come bounding back. I had to keep my hand on the wall to convince myself everything was real. That I was, in fact, frightened.

I turned the corner. Nothing.

I went into the bathroom and closed the door behind me. The tiny window reminded me of similar one I had seen in a movie. It would be possible to crawl through it, but there might not be enough time...

I made faces in the mirror to relax myself. One of them wasn't mine at all. It was the face of a little boy sitting on a bed, holding his hands to his face, choking on horror as his father, in another room, was face-to-face with a hideous spirit.

I became very conscious of the fact that the wall to my right was made of very thin wood, and that a single well-aimed blow of the axe would go right through. Someone could chop through. Someone could be in that room with me, in a matter of seconds.

I finished as quickly as I could and returned to my seat in the computer room. As the chairs and computers on the other side started creaking, and Annie inexplicably resumed wailing in some prehistoric language, it became too much.

I rushed to the nearby stairs and shouted: "ANNIE, ARE YOU THERE?"

Seconds...

"JA, Niel, what's up?"

"Oh, uhm."

"Nothing. Just checking."

That day I posted that "I want to watch a horror movie." I didn't want to be in one.
Post a Comment

"You pay them no mind, Billy. It was an excellent serum."
Post a Comment

I've decided to start investing in tiny increments for an island for us all.

Yes, let us agree upon it that this is what we need. The other island, also known as the world, is accelarating with manic speed as it nears the "shithole" category. People, the daily grind is becoming the weekend grind. The weekend grind is becoming the ever-grind. At night, I grind my teeth.

So, a little spot just off of Madagascar has been found for all my friends, all readers of this blog and a randomly selected contingent of 70s rock musicians. (Robert Plant, my fingers are crossed for you).

Anyway, our primitive economy will be based on a simple unit of currency, the Backrub, which will inevitably gain value as global markets realise how awesome we are and oh-they-are-so-jealous-so-they-will-buy-our-phony-bonds-and-stocks.

Yes.

Please start packing, as I expect to have raised all the cash I need as soon as the next lottery draw takes place (Wednesday, I think). I put the moves on the show presenter in a sleazy club in Claremont last night, for the greater good of "our island home" (Churchill was in fact referring to us, not Britain, in that significant speech)

There will be no work and long afternoons of wine-drinking and smokin' hot backrubs until our subservient-bourgeois memories have been erased of toil. Wizard!

I want to watch a horror movie.

Post a Comment

This is Thinus. Up till this point, his conservative brand of poker was serving him pretty well on Friday.

Post a Comment

A while ago, I switched on comment moderation to edit mistakes in my own comments.

Only now have I realised there was a backlog in comments, which I gladly would have responded to otherwise.

Mike, Arcadia, Karen Little, EJ, Black Orchid and others: your voices will be heard from now on. I appreciate you took the time to comment in the first place.

Comment moderation: off.

I'll post soon, when my head stops hurting. I'm going to try my friend Gerhard's primitive whiskey-based cure-all in about half an hour. Irresponsible? I hope so.
Post a Comment

Guys, let me introduce you to the Hitchcock-Caps Theorem.

I believe this is the springboard to an illustrious career in linguistics.

Okay.

Compare the emotive effect of the following two sentences:

"where are the birds?"
vs.
"where are The Birds?"

Is the second sentence not completely more creepy and sinister? Or am I an impressionable young lad? Only if you discount the HITCHCOCK-CAPS THEOREM.

observe:

"what do you see through the rear window?"
vs.
"what do you see through the Rear Window?"

eek! yes, i was as freaked out as you. and as the hair on our arms (sorry ladies!) begins to settle, we must acknowledge the frightening power of the HCT.

lucid sedative.
Post a Comment

Post a Comment

I'm sorry.

I am evasive.

I see someone I know, but not very well, walking up to me. I make an abrupt turn to the left. On rare occasions, I might even turn right.

Thus evading them.

It is because sometimes, I get shy. It is because, sometimes, I can't stand to talk to someone I suspect has better things to do.

I don't want to waste their time. I don't want to embarass them by remembering their name when they don't remember mine.

I don't answer the question "howzit?", and I don't ask it either. I just give a warm greeting (genuine, by the way) and move on. Not stopping, like someone on a treadmill at the gym.

I haven't figured out this behaviour 100%.

For sure, sometimes it's some stupid jock I know, but don't want to.

But at other times, its people whom I've connected with, but where the intensity of that connection just... waned.

Or we've only recently met and I can't acknowledge the potential for something by actually talking to them on my own.

It's really sad, sometimes.

If you go through some meaningless conversations with people, you sometimes end up in a really good place.

But you still have to be daring. Daring for me = normal. Not constricted inside.

After the wave I will walk past and mutter under my breath.

I'm a happy person.
Post a Comment

I am in love with this comic by Derek Kirk Kim.

Treat yourself and read the whole thing.

Go on.

Go on now.

Scoot, geddyup.

click through to Same Difference
Post a Comment

a carpet of dead birds.
Post a Comment

Murder is wrong. Murdering people like this, however...

well, I can dream, can't I?

www.godhatesfags.com

these people are a shame to humankind. they go to military funerals to celebrate the deaths of American soldiers in Iraq, because, wait: "God is punishing America for siding with the fags."

they are sick, and I wish people like this didn't exist, but they do.
Post a Comment

I understand you.
Post a Comment

egomaniac.
Post a Comment

Just a reminder that from time to time, I will post random catchphrases that I find yummy for their texture.
Post a Comment

One word, guys: poloclavas.

They're going to make me rich. Like polonecks, but flip them up and *poof*... instant terrorist suave.

Perfect for blending into chic, urban environments (where a rolled-up balaclava would fail) and then switching to guerilla attire with which to blow them all to pieces.

Oh yes, massive pockets of wealth coming my way from Al-Qaeda, the IRA and Jacob Zuma supporters any day now.
Post a Comment

Sweet seduction in a magazine
Endless pleasure in a limousine
In the back shakes a tambourine
Nicotine from a silver screen.

Doesn't she say everything there is to be said about urban culture?
Post a Comment

sometimes procrastination finds YOU.

uno sms'ed me earlier today, innocently asking if I wanted to participate in a 30 Seconds tournament at 6.

well, folks, it dragged along until 10, but at least now I'm R80, a video contract and two theatre tickets richer. we got third place.

then, when I got back to res, i was rounded up as the last contestant in a Ching-Chong-Cha tournament with a R5 buy-in. I got knocked out in the first round, but I stayed to see my room-mate take home, you guessed it, R80 in prize money.

that leaves me in somewhat of a pickle for my all-important plagiarism essay for tomorrow. oh well.

squeak.
Post a Comment

I love poker night. This is Elian, a poker bud who loves to bluff. He took my money yesterday. Bastard.
Post a Comment

I hate Frank Sinatra. I just do.

Calling his music beautiful is like referring to a well-designed plastic bag. When I listen to his music, I only hear Vegas. Mr Frank, I'm sorry. I'm sorry you represent silly commercialised aesthetics. I really am.

invective.
Post a Comment

I should have been a dancer.

The towel came off my head, and when the mist came out I was in a movie-dream.

I rushed to the computer to update the internet.
Post a Comment

I took notes the other day, the better to blog with. But... I lost them.

Hmmm...

It's disturbing now, that, I'm not really anonymous no more. Sure, my name and pic were always up and everything, but I thought I was getting into a foreign web landscape where history starts afresh and we have only connections on the web/psyche/sub-post-deep level.

But in all likelihood, the only people reading this right now, are people that I know.

fuck (small 'f', don't be alarmed)

YOU KNOW WHAT?

I still want my reader to feel special, so here is the deal: I will not tweak with the honesty switch. In other words, if I was drunk, I will let you know.

We have two worlds, us bloggers: this one, and the "real"/overbearing one. I'm not going to be made to feel uncomfortable because of what I write in my corner of the web. No. If I seem vulnerable, if people start to "get" me, that's a feather in the cap, Catch 22-style. Or just tough.

Where else am I going to explore freeform stream-of-consciousness? Doing it my head almost doesn't cut it anymore.

Oh yes. On Friday, I was feeling very witty. We were walking to the pub in windy-wet conditions, and I thought I might venture the following carefully constructed anecdote:

"Yes, this weather is very depressing. At least now we can say our impending drunkeness was meteorologically induced."

Guys, I think it's very clear that I was trying very hard. And, from Murphy's equation for humour, we know that:

given objective funniness ₣, there is an inverse relationship between how hard you are trying, ∑ and general positive reaction and laughter∫.

So, ∑ x ∫ = ₣

And sadly, because ∑ was vastly > than ∫, ₣ turned out to be one of the greatest dissapointments of Friday, and indeed my life. I've only recently managed to put a stop to my pathetic whimpering and my appetite is recovering only as well as possible under the circumstances.

Thank you for asking.
Post a Comment

Tonight I couldn't take my shoes off to walk on the gravel.
Post a Comment

I live in a university residence for men, slash cowboys. Every now and then, weird shit happens.

Slice of life.
Post a Comment

A slice of life, this time...

I'm studying to be some kind of monster. I mean a journalist. Of course.

What it's like?

Hmmmmm...

It's like this, see.

Life becomes a maze full of terrifying monsters called "people". Everyday, you have to grapple with these monsters because they have something you want: information.

Getting this info can be terrifying. Best case scenario: uncomfortable. Yes. That is the case for the incredibly introspective, which is my clan.

Anyway, it gets more complicated when you have (or are perceived to have) something they want. To some, you have a magic wand that can make their PR worries flutter away.

It's been hard. Once or twice I've waved the wand. Placated the "subject". It feels pretty rotten. But I was on deadline... what to do?

Deadline. There's a beautiful thing.

It's one bitchy general, for sure. And it's made me do wondrous amounts of work I never thought I could.

Here's the thing: as a journ-in-waiting, I have to write everyday. Isn't that wonderful? Whether I want to or not.

But after-the-fact, I'm always happy to write. I love having written something (to borrow words from some salon.com writer). So if I have to trek across this small college town and speak to boring, devious or otherwise undesirable characters to write my share of words every day, I will take the plunge.

Besides that, I'm learning.

When I'm confident enough, I'll post some pics. Pics taken with the benefit Photojournalism classes that have made me thrice the third-rate photographer I was before. We'll see.

In the meantime, I remain a writer, dabbling with a new medium and new ways to talk to an intangible audience.

Who knows, eh?
Post a Comment

I had two options:

• take a quick, needed shower
• make my second ever blog posting

I'll cleanse yet, before the day is done. For now, there is something much more urgent at hand:

I have to end the farce before it is too late. I have to come out of the closet...

Yes, I hated A hundred years of solitude. Sorry, world: Marquez and I are not checkers-buddies.

I said it. I'm out. Now all I have to do is tell my parents. My mother will never forgive me. My father might understand. He knows that disliking Marquez is 100% genetic, although he might still blame himself. His bad genes.

I'm glad I could share that with you. As a lover of literature, its always hard to come out of the Marquez closet. You never know who might abandon you.

Already I feel alienated. I better top up on Drinking Yoghurt. Healing comes in five flavours.

Post a Comment

Hey friend,

You were wandering in the wild wild web, got bored and decided to take a chance on me. Idiot! I am undependable; in six months this blog probably won't be here.

But self-deprecation isn't my thing. Texture is. The feeling you get just by participating in interesting realities.

Like watching people argue. That's an intense mother. Yes.

There is of course, the old-hat example of the beautiful flying plastic bag in American Beauty. I hope that can bring it home.

And I'm so lucky. An entire genre of movies has been created just to make me feel something: Lost in Translation, Garden State, Example 3 (damn!). Anyway, they're there for all to see, or experience as meaningless, as many people do.

I have been several shades emotional this last weekend. Different urges, memories competing for something I couldn't call a prize. Just the honour of being "what old Genius here is thinking about". Makes me feel special, you know?

Awwwww..... Thoughts, you shouldn't have!

The List:
1. For some reason wanting to tell all my friends that I love them.
2. Why this is not possible.
3. Poker, and how to bend its mechanics to my will (I lost 50 bucks this weekend).
4. The coolness of people, the niceness of understanding science (I have grade 9 science. Everything is new. Fond memories of discovering fire)
5. Miscellaneous.

This will be my most emotional and inaccesible post ever. That is a sincere promise that I can not keep.

Good night, and good luck.

(Did it work? Was I profound? Was I? I will buy some Self-Approval Drinking Yoghurt now)

Post a Comment