How to Write your own Inner Dialogue
Here are ten reasons why I think zombies that work for NBC follow and study my life, read my mind and then add a few dirty jokes and then tell Liz Lemon how to be like me. I base my study and suspicions on watching the show, 30 Rock, and by studying GIF’s on-line. I’ve known this for years, but I am finally about to speak out!
1. We both celebrate Anna Howard Shaw Day on the 14th of February annually.
2. I have a friend, like Jack Donaghy, who analyses me, and every year I take up knitting for a week!
3. I have a friend that I have food conversations with.
4. I think my own ideas rock!
5. I have an angry badger face too!
http://i.perezhilton.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/01/30-rock-gif-19(1).gif
6. I probably play too much Sims…
7. I often feel like what I say gets quoted out of context in the media and by my friends to make me look mean.
8. I don’t have my wedding all planned out 20 years in advance.
9. I say really cool things.
10. I ruin things with my THINKING.
Knitting Image Sourced from: http://16sparrows.typepad.com/16sparrows/2011/11/page/2/
How to Accept a Refusal
A Portuguese Man
There is this Portuguese restaurant that I keep dreaming of. I think by now it can easily be the third or fourth time. I somehow recall having eaten pizza there one day. It was one of those odd little backstreet places where the owner is legit but not very passionate. So the pizzas were kind of “catered to local tastes” meaning, everything on it came out of a tin and they serve iceberg lettuce and frozen veggies. I remember eating these little side plate sized pizzas with a friend and how surprised we were at how good they actually were.
Last night I dreamt my car broke down in the wrong part of my hometown. It was night… think Blade Runner kind of street-vibes. I think I was giving someone a lift and on my way home. I got out of my car and it was raining. Raining like that time in Seoul when my Australian friend and I got caught in a monsoon and walked home in this torrent of rain. Our clothes got so soaked that it started almost hanging off our bodies. We were laughing hysterically and I was drinking take out coffee in-between involuntary gulps of acid rain.
Anyway, back to my dream. I arrived at a tiny little plaza (I assure you, my hometown, ESPECIALLY in the back streets has NO Plazas, just bins that smell like wee and trouble) with actually the most gorgeous little eateries and the back of this same Portuguese restaurant. It was so romantic all these people sitting in these warm restaurants, their laughter spilling out into the rain in warm yellow glows. I had barely arrived inside the restaurant and the owner refused me entry for no apparent reason, so I went in the back (don’t know why) and found a basket of freshly baked rolls and chorizos and started talking to his wife who let me have a roll and a sausage. It was warm and delicious… and I kept thinking, “Why won’t they let me eat here? This is the second time I dream about how they won’t let me eat here.” That standing meal cost me quite a sum of money. I emptied out this brown paper bag in which I kept my money on the table in the kitchen and along with the money these weird grey ants toppled out on to the table and devoured the money in a frenzy that took like 4 seconds to obliterate the contents of the bag. I stood and stared in amazement while the wife stood staring at me expectantly. Panic took over as I started thinking who I should call to help me. I don’t remember the last part of the dream so well, but I think my ballerina friend came to my rescue for the car, and I think I prayed and notes of money came back and I paid for my meal.
This re-occuring restaurant only exists in my dreams. I have no idea why I keep dreaming about it and why I keep getting refused. All I know is the more that large hairy Portugese man grumbles saying , “No more customers!” the more I want to go and eat his blue-collar faux Portuguese food. I want it! Even now.
***Incidentally there is a toxic bluebottle jellyfish called “Portugese Man o’ War” which makes finding pictures of Portuguese men on google very hard, so I settled for an old South African favourite, Vasco da Gama, who, I’m sure, never ate ice-berg lettuce.
Image sourced from: http://www.biography.com/people/vasco-da-gama-9305736
How to Be Like Nan Frankie
One of the special gifts that come with age is the gift of frankness. That unadulterated ability to shoot from the mouth via the newly enforced hip.” Hurrah!” says I as another less sure-footed youth skulks away after having received a double shot of truth from my lips as they (my lips) perch over a full cream frothy latte. My favourite newly aquired abilities include,
pulling up my hipster jeans in public.
openly agreeing with people when they tell me my hair looks great.
not answering my phone if I don’t feel like it, even if I’m busy doing nothing, and actually a bit bored at the time, and not feeling guilty about it afterwards.
telling off marauding youths in shopping centres, and feeling like a cool girl slomo walking away from an explosion afterwards, never looking back. Not even once.
establishing boundaries with my over-achieving strategist Afrikaans student.
having mutual respecting between the creative attempts of my boundary challenging student’s strategies to ruin my social Sunday afternoons and mine to undermine them.
easily telling guys that I’m not interested in, that I’m not interested in them. Openly.
being friends with everyone.
not being friends with some people.
openly admitting that some movies suck.
openly adoring awesome movies even when no one else likes them.
laughing loudly in public.
telling people how beautiful they look without flirting.
deciding that Bill Murray is the fundamental epitome of cool and that he looks like your dad.
sharing that movie your dad co-starred with Robert Pattinson in with your friends while announcing that your dad is way cooler than him.
you deciding how cool you are without taking any votes.
Happy weekend awesome peoples. Enjoy the awesomeness and play unhip music loudly in your car with the windows rolled down. Go out without make-up and wear shorts to the beach without shaving your legs. Embrace your inner Nan Frankie!
My song for today, which doesn’t relate to anything… but who cares?
How to Flog a Zef Horse
The Zef namesake
…and so, the culture shock post on Micheal aka Mike Butler has awarded my blog the most traffic in all of it’s humble history and an appearance on the first page of google. Yay! An unearned merit, I think. However, I’ve wanted to do a little update.
Ever since the appearance of Zefkinners three weeks ago I have started following on-line rave/rage pages on it and it’s anthropologist. It’s amazing how the facts only match up on tiny spots of the map. Jacaranda FM sports a picture of Mike with a short blib on how he is a student at Vega Advertising school and how Zefkinners was started up as a school project. In the interview sent to me by Jozi Underground, which was created by school chums of Mike, he states that the blog was started as an in-joke amongst friends.
Zefkinners was shut down quickly after one of the stars of the show found her own pictures on the blog. Lawyers were called, big words thrown about and Butler moved his business to a new location, continuing his work under the Gazebo of Zef, still hosted on tumblr. He insists that his intentions were never to harm anyone. That it was an expression of his fascination with real Zef (as opposed to glossy Die Atwoord/Jack Parow zef). Several anarchic comments point to his rogue vigilance to continue his project under the Gazebo until he ends up in court.
This little media stint has definitely sparked off much dialogue. We all loved to guiltily laugh at the stars of the Zefkinners roadshow, but I often wondered how hard I would have laughed if my dress-up party pictures from 2005 appeared with a smirky quib posted beneath it somewhere between pages 12 and 14. What would my stage name have been? How authentic could these pictures really have been had they not been taken from the unsuspecting? I would love for Mike to continue his project legally, but how authentic will it remain when some infamy-hungered would -be stars send in posed pictures to claim their Warholian 15 minutes? I ponder these things as I sneakily up my Facebook security settings.
Read what Why Ed had to say. Oddly Yolisa Mkele from Times Live and Leané Meiring from Volksblad disappointingly have scarily similar stories to tell on the topic. Visit The Gazebo of Zef by clicking here, if you want to see a zef picture of a snowy white kitten surrounded by some chicks.
How to Encounter Zef and Experience Culture Shock and What to do with the After Effects
So… I already posted today, but then I came across a little gem shared by a friend on Facebook. I looked, scrolled down and back up again and thought, “*shrug* why the heck not?” The blog is hosted on Tumblr and the caption author does not divulge much of himself other than a love and fascination for what he calls, “Zefkinners“.
Zefkinners roughly translates as common /tasteless/low class children and refers to low income white Afrikaans speaking South Africans. The blog is made up of “100% real, unedited” photographs of Zekinners with 100% fake- names and captions beneath. I presume that groups such as Die Antwoord have fired-up an interest in what has been a growing class of people after the fall of Apartheid in 1994 when many state subsidised companies, who favoured white candidates for employment, either closed down or started implementing affirmative action.
I’m torn on my stance with regard to this. I have always felt that groups like Die Antwoord abuse a low-income struggling people as a marketing gimmick. Likened to the circus freaks of the mad science Victorian era. Is it exploitation, awareness or appreciation? None-the-less, an interesting anthropological study. To meet the Zefkinners, click on the link here.
Last night, we scoured this blog from top to bottom, but it’s hard to keep up, as pictures are posted at lightning speed. At just two weeks old, Zefkinners is already standing over 16 pages tall. After a quick mail to Michael, the founder, I was encouraged to use a few of the images from the blog, and it was tough to choose from one of the stars. So now…as a special treat, here is our darling, Hetta, to which my housemate and I owe many tears and …err…joy. The caption reads, ” Hetta Achieving Miracles. Just for the record, Bertie, King of the Coast, came in as a very close second. Make sure to check out the rest of Hetta’s pics on page 14. Just a quick warning, the language, though innocent for the most part, is not always very clean, so tread with caution.
For more info on the 23 year old founder of Zefkinners, click here. To see what The Whitman Independent has to say, click here.
Image used with the permission of 2013 Zeffkinners.
*** Zefkinners has closed down and has been revived under the title “The Gazebo of Zef”. Click here for the new link: HERE
Happy Birthday Ella Fitzgerald!
One of my favourite albums is the one with Ella Fitzgerald and Louis Armstrong singing Gershwin’s Porgy and Bess. It is definitely worthy of masses of candles, unwise amounts of bathwater and bubbles, both in tub and in glass! Here she is performing Mac The knife. Happy 96th Birthday Miss Ella! We still love you, like always! I will still leave the bathroom door wide open with the music booming. I will still cook pasta to your tunes and I will still reminisce to your music when it rains.
The image is not my property, but was sourced from: http://awesomepeoplereading.tumblr.com/post/35845958086/ella-fitzgerald-reads-and-sings on 25 April 2013.
How to Repel an Unwelcome and Very Hairy Suitor
I don’t know what your personal goals are for going out to your local watering hole with your house-mate after a long day of tutoring, but I would rather have my bum meticulously shaved in a blizzard with a bare Minora blade by three drunk Sherpas at the top of Mount Everest after having fallen into a thorny bush than be tagged and chatted up by sticky old men while having an innocent drink with a dear friend. Even if one is French! Life is too short! Perhaps this prospect will change somewhat in another 50 years’ time. Perhaps by then I will find aforementioned “business”-men as attractive as a young Sean Connery, but I’m hoping to have my own silver-haired fox by then. So, actually no thanks, not for me. Not ever.
These long-toothed panthers purred and paraded. Making comments about how young we apparently looked (no kidding!) and complementing our eyes (amateurs). The European’s very opening line was, “I am French!” which he announced a few seconds before telling us that he had no intention of bothering us and then proceeded to comfortably seat himself next to my friend, who’s beautifully youthful eyes screamed for help to myself from the other side of our invaded territory. Even the Mexican waiter didn’t push very hard to sell us those tequilas when we ordered two tall glasses of water.
Thankfully I earned my now obsolete thesaurus of dirty pick-up lines years ago at Uni when I was waitressing at an arty on-campus place. All the sexual innuendo (in some cases quite lacking in subtlety) soared past our ears like a symphony out of tune. I laughed hysterically while, I am sure, my friend was actually praying. Too bad our company was too determined to notice how they were the butt of absolutely every joke we made. Frenchie’s conversation steered to much kinder topics after I pointed out his wedding ring, which made him at least bearable.
Eventually, water downed and disdainful faces made, we skedaddled to the ladies before making our grace walk out the door. Our honour and territories in tact, though our innocence slightly scorched. Questions remain. What were they thinking? Do they ever have any success with their amorous pursuits? Can they read body language or understand English? It’s pitiful, and unflattering.
Dear old man/men. Take the money you wanted to invest in getting me soused and invest it in your grandchild’s university fund. Go home to your wife and your children. Drive home sober and plan adventurous holidays with your doting wife after retirement. Alternatively study topiary and re-do your garden or collect bonzai trees and take up a foreign language. An actual one. Collect French oaked red wine or join a gentleman’s club and discuss politics. Read a book! At least then , instead of writing this post about you, I can actually respect you. No offense Picasso!
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