Lior's Blog

Noise Monitor

2010-04-01T21:47:00.005+02:00

Shushing the unshushables is a tough job. Betsy Ndlovu has been zipping it for almost 4 years as the noise monitor of a luxury day spa and hospital in Johannesburg. She can handle anything from whispering to dripping taps, echoes and even the occasional ‘voice in one’s head’ which tend to frequent the minds and corridors of patients in Ward C. In this hospital with all its DSTV channel bouquets, flower bouquets and bridal bouquets, Betsy is the law. “Frankly I don’t care for all this schmanciness”, admits Betsy. “If you’re going to be sick, you had better do it quietly”. Betsy detests visiting hours. “All this commiserating, boo-hooing and feelbettering – it just makes noise”. Betsy laments that a single emotional embrace between a patient and a visiting relative can reach the same decibel level as a vacuum cleaner. She produces the noise meter from one of her invisible inner pockets. “Noise monitoring is not an exact science”, explains Betsy. “There’s still a lot we don’t know.” Betsy takes me down a random corridor hunting for noisemakers or ‘busybodies’ as she calls them. “In the old days we used to carry nightsticks and soft rope for gagging, but now a verbal reprimand and a Lindt chocolate suffices”, Betsy sighs wistfully. We journey fourth into the rectangular unknown, creaking in near-perfect silence.

Personal Trainer

2010-03-10T22:51:00.001+02:00

The armoured red shirt meets his client at the gym’s cafe – where he swills down an espresso and a shake of undetermined constituents. What an oddity their meeting is. His garish muscles threaten to rupture from the sleeves of his golf shirt (now leotard) and invade the Middle East. His eyes glint from the depths of his deep tan which is ‘full body’. He uses the term ‘full body’ quite a bit now. Margery’s ample 50 something body sways blithely with womanhood and overflows into the cafe with few regrets. She is consumed by frumpiness and frizziness despite her black jogging suite. “Let’s start with an assessment”, the trainer offers, delighted with the amount of syllables he has managed to cram into his new sentence. Of course the assessment had begun and ended when Margery had negotiated the turnstile on her arrival.

The trainer woos Margery with words like ‘orbitrex’, ‘gyrotonics’ and ‘glutes’ as she wades through the treadmill distractedly. The clients with master’s degrees were always harder to get ‘on board’. Margery is then paraded around the gym as she lifts weights into the air for ‘upper body’, lunging and reaching in an elephantine underwater ballet. Five, Six, Seven. He is the handsome zoo-keeper, she the manatee. Onlookers catch a glimpse between pants and grunts - drawn to the shapeliness of the trainer and the spectacle of the trainee. On the step machine the trainer initiates a conversation about the dangers of carbohydrates and spray tanning while Margery replies with the occasional gasp. David Guetta’s ‘Sexy Bitch’ blasts from the speakers drowning out the uncommonness between them. “Same time next week?” Margery winces in agreement unravelling her posture into her now damp jogging suite. The trainer has not broken a sweat. It is doubtful whether he ever has.

Birth

2010-02-25T22:27:00.001+02:00

From the crumpled depths of a hospital bed, a mother is contemplating rose petals and razor blades. “Jesus God!”, she screams announcing another contraction. Under different circumstances she might be praising or thanking the almighty but now she begs for mercy. “You are in labour”, the midwife informs her as if it were a revelation. The mother wrenches her fists against the bed as her concave abdomen flops to one side, relieving her vena cava of burden. The CTG machine whooshes with fervour, monitoring the foetal heart from a harness of straps and probes embracing the mother’s stomach. “Jesus God!” she implores again. The divine reply comes in the form of squelching bed sheets that signal that her ‘water has broken’. The first of many euphemisms. The midwife reaches into the mother and declares that she is 7 cm dilated and ready to be moved to the delivery room. “Jesus God!”, the mother thanks the midwife for her analysis.

In the delivery room 3 midwives monitor the perineum for signs of life while shouting “Push!” in Zulu, Xhosa and Portuguese. The mother is encouraged to bear down as if ‘going to toilet’ - which happens anyway. She holds her breath and squeezes down through her open legs releasing the air in a weary moan. “Jesus God!” she applauds herself for effort. Finally the baby’s head breaks through the mothers legs negotiating its entry with a series of safe dial turns. In a matter of seconds the midwife delivers the shoulder, body and feet with a final celebratory splash of meconium onto the linen saver. The pink wet blur fidgets hysterically redeeming its humanity with a gurgling cry. “Its a girl” says the midwife for the 8^th time on her shift. The mother is jubilant but depleted, feeling the maternal tickle of pethidine for the first time. The baby is suctioned, cleaned, cord clamped and cut. The placenta is extracted onto the bed where it glistens with alien impropriety. “3.4kg”, announces the midwife, referring to the new being in the room. Another miracle of life in cubicle 5.

Soccer mom

2010-01-25T00:43:00.000+02:00

Soccer mom rips through Ballyclare drive, match bound and impatient for victory and a non-fat latte. Her 12 year old son lounges in the backseat of the Mercedes ML 430 exploring puberty on Mxit and nursing a Diet Coke. The caffeine will help reverse the effects of the violin lesson which ended 10 minutes earlier and sugar is bad for him. Her son has rather taken to the violin, golf and ‘Zoo-loo’ she brags to one of the other mothers. “It’s better than Afrikaans”, she offers with no apparent substantiation. Soccer mom says that she can now say ‘cappuccino’ and ‘biscotti’ in Zulu but quickly admits that the words are very similar if not the same. The mothers sip their lattes from the stands regarding their sons with vicarious tenure. Soccer mom fiddles with her blonde pony tail blinding the other mothers with her Ed Hardy diamante in the sinking African son. To her former classmates, Soccer mom is unrecognizable. Her ample hair and body has contracted into a laboured tightness and translucency that shimmers with the slightest provocation. Her expression is even and flavoured mocha, caramel and freezochino while her arms are an unmatching but enviable brown. Mauritius. For two weeks. “Go boy!”, she shouts aimlessly at the distant herd of players unsure of which one is hers. Some-one had scored a goal. “Thats my son”, she tells the brooding cohort of spectators who grunt dispassionately in agreement and defeat.

Thank you for not smoking, you prick

2009-11-13T13:31:00.000+02:00

I have oft been compelled to do what is right.

After another carnal game of Badminton at the community sports centre I find myself in the basement washroom facility faced with the usual encumbrance of ‘wee and wash’ in unfamiliar territory. The cubicle walls are a collaborative artwork of bible quotes, drug dealer contacts and assorted testaments of love and sodomy. The puddle that oozes from the throne’s base precludes me from becoming intimate with the receptacle and I am forced to aim and fire out of range. After a slow trickling victory I notice a handwritten sign above the cistern. ‘Please flush the toilet’ flashes in a strobe-like fluorescence – an immaculate message directed at me alone. Of course I obey. I do not intend to disrupt the natural ecosystem of human waste. And you asked so nicely.

On the way out a sign above the wash basin (which is more of a giant ashtray peppered with human faeces) reads ‘Wash your hands’. The ‘please’ has been omitted - it is now a command. No suggestion of how rosewater hands smell the dandiest or how flesh eating bacteria can make your penis fall off, simply the naked imperative. Do it for your fellow countrymen. Do it or die. “You’re not the boss of me”, I half sneer at the basin. “How could you possibly tell me what to do? You can’t even take care of yourself!”

Underneath the printed lettering some-one has pencilled in something. It now reads: ‘Wash your hands, you scumbag’. Suddenly I am self-conscious and introspective, remembering all the times I sneezed without covering my nose, the times I smoked cigarettes indoors and the time I used my I-pod during takeoff and landing. I once threw a nectarine pip out of my window and rationalised it as biodegradable. Biodegradable? I could have killed some-one. I suddenly have visions of children, bleeding from the eyes, spontaneously combusting - disfigured by some new disease that will later be traced back to this very basin. Traced back to me. I am patient 0.

I wash my hands vigorously with the last sliver of soap, wishing that the hot tap hadn’t been dismembered for I could do with some scalding water.

Reactive Mind

2009-11-05T23:53:00.003+02:00

Delirious from hypoglycaemia and the indignity of another failed ‘Pheasant Woman’ novel, L. Ron Hubbard conjured up Dianetics which combined both aspects of his poorly controlled Diabetes and the future Heretics he envisioned would audit the minds of the innocent in an attempt to rid the world of depravity and recapture the monolith. Unfortunately, all the allegories involving molecules, experiments and hard fact were too cumbersome and required narcotic free rationality so Hubbard decided to promote his new science (fiction) by establishing a foundation. Like the rusty sign that indicates the red light district of Nepal, L.Ron too had gained legitimacy through advertising, donations and shock factor. By 1950 he was bigger than the foundation for gluten intolerant Negros and was gaining momentum fast.

The practice of ‘auditing’ which has been described in various Dianetic journals as a ‘lukewarm lobotomy’ combines Freudian psychoanalysis, vivisection and Pepsi. “Basically it’s a spectrum from scalp massage all the way to decapitation”, says one auditor who used to work for the Inland Revenue Service. “Sure there have been casualties, but if you want to find those engrams you gotta dig deep”, the auditor confesses remembering how he once extracted an engram with a spoon without anaesthesia. “But the psychiatrists are much worse”, he offers. “Not only were they behind 9/11 and sub-prime, but they also raped and murdered Michael Jackson”. “Raped”, he mouths silently for emphasis as blood begins to trickle down his left nostril. I politely run out of the building.

Specialty Horoscopes

2009-09-26T11:19:00.002+02:00

Medicine March 21-April 19

Unfortunately the House box set you ordered (complete with cane and Vicodin prescription) will not be delivered on time prompting you to swab the neighbourhood trash cans for evidence of Neisseria and foul play. You will see red when a fellow colleague manages to attach his name to a new fashionable bowel ulcer but you realise that you are actually more beautiful than he is and have an eternity of bowel ahead of you with which to be immortalised.

Pathology April 20-May 20

Don’t lose focus. The pinks bring elation, the purples bring malice. The pinks bring excitement to your life. The dots sometimes possibly bring elation. The squiggles may mean something too. Spiculated.

Psychiatry May 21-June 21

This month brings vague nebulous feelings of despair and elation. You will meet a patient claiming to be a ghost, a ghost claiming to be a patient and a chair claiming to be one of the Jackson five– in each, the tea-lady will accidentally diagnose and treat them correctly using your Samsung DVD manual instead of your DSM IV manual. Sprinkling Valproate on your cornflakes does little to steady the highs and lows of patient consultation.

Aneasthetics June 22-July 22

This month you will drift in and out of success, luck and consciousness. Taking coffee without propofol puts you on edge and you tend to defibrillate first, ask questions later. You connect your iPod to the Boyles machine to smooth over the usual beeps with some Enya. Unfortunately ‘Orinoco Flow’ sends the surgical team into a brief coma which you expertly reverse with neostigmine. Your new book ‘Cooking with Morphine’ is an instant bestseller in Tajikistan but your fame is eclipsed by a jealous colleague who shoots to stardom by comparing the sedative properties of Norah Jones and Halothane.

Family Medicine July 23-August 22

Hugging patients does little to thwart the ebb and flow of real diseases this month. After 17 analogies, allegories, fables and Xhosa slang words the petrol attendant is still confused about his hypertension and how many litres you would like to put in your car.

Radiology August 23-September 22

Left in the dark once more, you must retrieve the secret fragments of dust that the elders request. The ability to see through others has left you cynical, sedentary and above all, pale. Several emergencies will plague you this month including a particularly obstinate cappuccino machine.

Obstetrics and Gynaecology September 23-October 22

Unfortunately the cosmos don’t work on a 28 day cycle and tend to favour only half of you this month. While delivering an alleged second twin, an unsuspected ‘third’ assailant snatches your favourite Rolex in utero in what is later described as an ‘unprecedented violent attack on an Obstetrician’. You use the press to catapult your career in the ‘Gynecologist to the stars’ direction you had envisioned in medical school. Sadly many of the starlets who were celebrities back then are now golden oldies.

Paediatrics October 23 - November 21

The child in you embraces what is now damp.

Orthopaedics November 22-December 21

This month you will learn how to put yourself back together again. Distracted and displaced, you can barely remember that C- for woodwork that catapulted you into this job in the first place. After changing the oil in one of your patients you realise that no amount of nailing can mend your own broken heart. You attempt to create a new heart using an avocado, some dental floss and plaster of Paris but abandon the project when your angle grinding skills are needed to install a new toilet in the department.

Dermatology December 22-January 19

Beware the superficial. This month an emergency pedicure will turn pear shaped requiring scrubbing, swabbing, dabbing and if critical, an ointment of sorts. But let’s hope it doesn’t come to that.

Surgery January 20-February 18

This month is a cut above the rest. What you put into the abdominal cavity, you will get out. Not only will you be featured on the cover of SAMJ, BMJ and those salmon cutlets from I&J, but you will also be featured in ELLE/ERCP as a centrefold highlighting the ‘you’ side of varicose veins. One night when diagnosing diverticulitis and ordering Nandos over the phone you discover that yelling at patients has the same effect on them as cutting them open (and to a lesser extent placebo). Without good evidence, you decide to test this theory daily for the foreseeable future.

Plastic Surgery February 19-March 20

This month you are the celebrity. You will successfully change Hellen Zille back into Louis Luyt complete with peck, buttock and eyelid implants. Your Essay ‘1001 uses of human fat’ will earn you time on Jerry Springer where you can promote your new controversial prenatal facelift surgery. You will break several mirrors this month mostly by staring at them for too long and growling excessively.

Death of a Car Guard

2009-06-16T20:50:00.001+01:00

The air is as hot as ironed laundry in the shade of the Jacarandas. It is summer in Johannesburg. The suburban street is quiet save for the distant hum of the main road. A dog walks alongside a child on a tricycle which squeaks as she peddles on the sidewalk. I parallel park in a space between a bakkie and a sedan and begin to roll up my window when a calloused crocodile stump penetrates the disappearing gap of the window and lunges blindly towards me. “My Baas!”, hisses the weathered, pock-marked face spraying the window with saliva like a cobra. “My Baas!”, crows my assailant quivering and groping – the stench of his hand beguiling me. “I am Johannus”, he announces from the floor where he now kneels, perhaps beneath my car. “I will look after you, and your car”, he shrieks licentiously, now facing the window with his pathetic, beggarly eyes leering straight at me.

I hear a grey Lourie call from the canopy of trees above the street and reach for an uzzi which has been modified and loaded with 5 cent pieces. I empty the first round into his chest which fragments and splutters before collapsing under the weight of the contribution. “My Baas”, he offers one more time overcome by cunningness and depravity. “No”, I reply, addressing him for the first time. I empty the second round into his head which explodes with a final smirk and soils the nearby wall with copper-streaked blood.

The Curtsy

2008-07-14T22:48:00.000+01:00

At a local rally in Harare, President Robert Mugabe is believed to have curtsied in front of thousands of supporters. The gesture came moments after the announcement that sanctions had failed to dim the light bulb that is Zanu-PF. The function, which had been organized by the War Veterans Automobile Club convened to celebrate the redundancy of the $100,000 bank note, which appeared to rain from the heavens like worthless confetti.

Guest speaker Robert Mugabe had only been inciting the crowd for perhaps 40 minutes when he took a step back from the microphone and meandered into the center of the stage. At first it appeared as if one of his syphilitic knees had given way but then, unexpectedly, he did not keel over and die but instead his half-squatting form deliberated into position as if giving birth or passing a stool. His knobby fingers and their dyed knuckle hair began to fumble with the edges of what appeared to be a very loud shirt. And before anyone could stop him, before anyone knew what it was or whether it was good or bad, the President was curtsying - curtsying like a polite 12 year old girl might in the presence of the Queen. Curtsying and smiling.

Several henchman in the vicinity nearly choked on their strawberries (indeed the event was catered by Marks and Spencer).

It was reported that many of the young Veterans had to be given additional (f)arms in order to better understand President Mugabe’s episode of ‘heat stroke’.

Extinguished

2008-02-03T22:26:00.000+02:00

Today residents of Santa Cruz were shocked by the by the bizarre murder of yesteryear singing sensation Belinda Carlisle. The 49 year old vocalist was discovered hanging from an energy saving light fitting by a cell phone charger, allegedly not plugged in. 58 year old Alicia Erwin discovered Carlisle at 4pm when she apparently came round to borrow some low GI butter. “It was just awful seeing her floating there. She looked so peaceful. I had to prod her with a broom to make sure she wasn’t sleeping. But then I smelt the smoke” Erwin found that much of the desert style parlour had been burnt with what police would later discover was jatropha seed biofule. Carlisle’s Pomeranian ‘Nooka’ was among the carnage. The dog had ostensibly sustained smoke inhalation injuries but on closer inspection a white, dog-eared segment of paper was protruding from his mouth. Ten A2 sheets of paper were later extricated from its tiny canine jaw. Forensic analysis revealed the papers to be nuclear power plant plans, drawn up and shelved in 2002. No suspects have been named in what has been described as foul and ‘dark’ play.

Darling leave a light on for me
I'll be there before you close the door
To give you all the love that you need
Darling leave a light on for me
Cause when the world takes me away
You are still the air that I breathe
I can't explain, I don't know
Just how far I have to go
But darling I'll keep the key
Just leave a light on for me

A Magical Outing

2007-10-22T02:29:00.000+02:00

While I’m sure the memories of Ms Frizzle and her supernatural school-bus are dear to us all, I am referring rather to the posthumous outing of Albus Dumbledore by JK Rowling. The information was revealed to fans at New York’s Carnegie Hall on Saturday. “Dumbledore is gay”, announced Rowling to a momentarily petrified audience. She then went on to explain how he was in love with his evil rival Gellert Grindelwald. Unfortunately Grindelwald, a former Durmstrang-expellee, was interested in little else but nasty things once he had acquired the famed Elder Wand. Dumbledore’s love had gone unrequited – stifled somewhere into his (in retrospect) camp beard. But it wasn’t always like that. Albus and Gellert were meant to be great together – well at least good. Dumbledore no doubt had visions of them skipping through Hogsmead gowns billowing in the air, overcome by butterbeer and fire whiskey, tearing behind his designer half-moon spectacles. Albus learned to forget such feelings. He soon discovered that nothing helps repress occult sexuality quite like a good old fashioned male wand-romp, one in which he would acquired the Elder Wand, banishing Grindelwald to the Nurmengard prison.

Of course it all makes sense now. In our limited necromancy we realize that not only was Dumbledore a homosexual, but he was flaming. He never had a relationship with another woman, he wore a lot of purple (note the luster of the fabric) and his only companion was a bird (also flaming). I just wish he had come out in one of the books. Perhaps Harry plus guests weren’t quite ready to hear it. Sure we can handle Hippogriffs, Snidgets, Bowtruckles and Minotaurs, but what about gays? Do you know any spells?

Do ut des -

2007-08-22T00:30:00.000+01:00

Ten people were now crammed into the small consultation room – one of four in the antenatal clinic. I noticed that there were no windows or ventilation slats above the door: it was a room within a room. The air was filled with a sour aseptic odour, warming up with each communal breath exhaled by the room’s occupants. The door had been closed on account of the weather, and out of respect perhaps: we were in a private room after all, sealed off from the patients waiting in the hallway. A rudimentary examination bed, two plastic chairs and a veneered desk hugged the walls of the room and the students dispersed themselves amongst them. The lucky ones were sitting on the examination bed which was covered in transparent plastic, now opaque with fine scratches. The rest of the students squashed themselves backwards, into the wall, standing and leaning with effort. The further from the center the better. The ones in the front were always picked on: names were asked, politeness demanded, nodding was necessary. Two students managed to find space on the cluttered desk where they sat hunched over in waiting. The desk had packets of condoms, sheets of birth control pills and clean syringes all neatly partitioned and stored by cardboard separators. Some STI pamphlets lay folded and piled on the desk but toppled over silently when one of the students whipped open his bag, apparently to find something to eat. I caught a glimpse of the pamphlet: an exposed pubic region with text in blocks of primary colours. The stuff that fear was made of.

Sister Peppy or Dr Pepper or whoever was speaking deliberately and fervently. I only caught the gist of what she was saying because I wasn’t really listening. Daydreaming I suppose. It was a long drive out there. I was tired and my mind wandered to more immediate and prosaic things, things that concerned me beyond the clinic’s isolated needs. The word ‘community’ was repeated several times and suddenly I felt the conjured eyes of the clinic’s 200 waiting patients grow into thousands of expectant eyes – eyes that were depending on my lukewarm indifference to Sister Peppy and her plans. I shut it out. It was too late to care about anything, I had already passed my threshold and was sated. Perhaps with food or some other filler?

My eyes drifted to the wall above the desk, Sister Peppy’s desk, where various HIV posters and A4 sheets of paper with nursing schedules and friendly morale boosters like ‘I can only do 12 things at once’ shielded the paint beneath them from view. ‘Hope Worldwide’ was now being discussed somewhere in the room and I noticed that this organization, too, was represented amongst the chaotic wall collage that extended out of human reach toward the ceiling. Meetings could be held with them. Things could be done. Somewhere in the room someone suggested a ‘partnership’, a ‘coalition’ – the word ‘strive’ may have been used. Some-one mumbled the word ‘community’ again under their breath but it was hard to tell who had said it, or if, for that matter, it had been said at all. But I had already stopped listening. My attention turned abruptly to the postered wall where I allowed my eyes to go out of focus. The blur seemed to hum with the buzzing fluorescent light overhead and it seemed like only a moment passed before we were shuffling awkwardly out of the clinic into the harsh sunlight of the day.

Galaxy

2007-07-14T00:48:00.001+01:00

In a surprise press conference David Beckham has announced that he will join Tom Cruise’s ‘club’ of Scientologists in a bid to assimilate himself and his family into the American way of life. Struggling not use the word ‘football’ or ‘Mars-bar’ for fear of offending his new Californian hosts, Beckham explained that Scientology was exactly what him and Posh need to break into the American social scene.

“Tom has already promised us we can meet Oprah yeah. And Deepak Chopsticks. And he’s a good guy yeah. Katie is just great. Great cook”

Beckham went on to explain that he had loaned their youngest son Cruz David Beckham to the Scientology club for the weekend. He’s around three years old.

“Lotta stuff you should teach a young lad. But I ardly ave the time. Maybe they can show him yeah”.

Under all the bright lights of the press room David Beckham could hardly fit another thought in his tired brain. He rose bashfully and dismissed the reporters with a single Dianetical wave.

Face

2007-06-03T00:46:00.001+01:00

Madeleine McCann has a face. She has been abducted. She may be alive or dead. These are the terms by which she exists for us. Her face is known and we commiserate with its innocence. She is on all news channels, the internet and radio too. A photograph of her has been blessed by the Pope.

If only all children had faces. They don’t. Thousands are kidnapped or brutalized or sold into slavery. Millions die. Somewhere in Africa a faceless baby is found in a garbage dump wrapped in a Checkers packet. From far away its faceless, lifeless body looks like a doll. Aids and starvation have become tired now. The Pope hasn’t set foot on this continent in years.

It is a doll.

Yoga

2007-05-21T01:10:00.000+01:00

The instructor wears nothing but a pair of black lycra hot shorts ill-disguised beneath a salmon pahmina which flicks its tassels coquettishly in the air. He is a man, of sorts. Today he is clean shaven, based over, with eye-liner to boot. ‘Hello darlings’, he lisp-shouts into the small crowd of people in the studio - now on mats. A general greeting is mumbled and returned unanimously. ‘Ok everyone! Let’s start with a simple Half-Cobra or Ardha-bhujangasana.’, he announces, spluttering out the last bit in an effeminate Indian accent. Soon everyone is contorting on the mats – mimicking the instructor’s compromising and often theatrical positions. In the background, incense fills the mirrored studio with the scent of cloves and a meditative ‘hum’ wafts from the boom box speakers. I am told to embrace ‘peace’, ‘love’ and my ‘vaginal chakra’. I’m suddenly aware that I don’t have a vagina, and neither does he. Unperturbed, I begin to hone my camel pose – a rather lopsided affair. When the session is over, the instructor thanks the class, Buddha and God and scampers out of the studio with a camp fluttering of a pashmina trailing behind him.

Shortbus

2007-05-20T00:54:00.001+01:00

For those of you who have already had the pleasure, ‘anorgasmia’ denotes the state of not being able to achieve orgasm. In John Cameron Mitchell’s film Shortbus, Sofia played by Sook-Yin Lee dives headfirst into the sex club of the same name in order to achieve the impossible – her first orgasm. Debaucherous threesomes, remote control vibrators and a kiss with a gay man do nothing to boil her sexual experience over and she remains on one side of a barrier which separates her from womanly happiness. The film ensures that the rules of sexual discretion are bent (along with actors who flout them in several compromising positions). Although intimacy is revealed underneath the raging sexuality of the characters, this emotional depth is largely lost in the films culmination, which unlike Sofia’s elusive orgasm, fades into the lime-lit background orgy.

Glamorama

2007-05-08T22:52:00.001+01:00

He stares into the mirror at his naked body. His halved stomach reeks of imperfection, he thinks to himself. Thousands of abdominal crunches haven’t defined him enough, haven’t scratched the banality, that is his front. Bending backwards, he strains to cast shadows upon the blocks of his abdomen in the fading afternoon sun. He fails to see them. He lifts his arms upwards hoisting massive pectorals around his neck and faces his head towards the window. Occasionally, he roles his eyes to the side catching glimpses of his pirouetting self in the mirror. “Baby, I’m cool. Be cool. “, he mutters into the reflection, a tear seeping out of one eye – the one not seen in the mirror. He’s smiling now, towards the window - avoiding the reflection. He dislikes how it translates. Closing his eyes he imagines himself wearing a Brooks Brothers suit, sipping martinis in SoHo. Everyone compliments his outfit. Even Madonna. Suddenly his eyes open and he’s in darkness. All he can make out in the reflection of the mirror is the glittering of confetti which pours relentlessly from the ceiling above him.

Ad hominem

2007-04-19T00:05:00.000+01:00

He pulls rabbits out of his pockets and implores me to do the same. His white hair and mustache belie the brightness of his blue eyes. His eyes fix mine, not with decorum but with glee - a buoyant liveliness fascinated by all that surrounds him. A white cape ensconces his person and billows behind him as he gallops. I imagine that every patient in the entire hospital knows his name and has had visions of him in their sleep. They have seen him from around the corridor. From their beds. He comes to them and saves them with a kind word in their own language. Occasionally he pirouettes and performs miracles at their bedside, but not this time. This time he merely contents them with the joy of being alive, of being human still, and vanishes with a flurry of giggles.

Threat

2007-04-10T01:07:00.000+01:00

At the turn of the century the world should have ended. Planes should have fallen from the sky, bombs should have self-detonated and the ensuing nuclear holocaust should have driven those lucky few into the underground bunkers they had the foresight to build. But the world didn’t end. Computers soldiered on into the new millennium with the precocity of a young bespectacled Bill Gates - bleating and beeping on January 1st. Crates of strawberry jam and freeze-dried meat were unpleasant reminders of the non-disaster and its debasing anticipation. But why did we prepare? Perhaps it was the immediacy of the threat – counting down in our disseminated computers – that lead us to action.

It would seem that the raw need for self-preservation is an abstract motive for survival. Global warming threatens the planet but exactly who will be affected and when seems unclear or at least partly undefined. There is no ticking bomb, no fear and thus, no action.

Hotel Zimbabwe

2007-03-24T17:55:00.000+02:00

Famine, torture and economic meltdown are abstract concepts. But everyone can relate to a pink diamond, one which becomes Djimon Hounsou’s last hope of saving his family from civil war in Sierra Leone. And who can forget Don Cheadle - the hotel manager who risked everything to save over a thousand Tutsis from death at the hands of Hutu militia in Rwanda.

When the smoke of Zimbabwe has dissipated into distant memory, who will revive its history? And more importantly, who will play Bob Mugabe in the inevitable Hollywood epic inspired by his tyrannical reign? No doubt screenwriters are working feverishly to incorporate 30 years of tumultuous history into a 100 minute film in which we may or may not get to see Scarlett Johansson naked. Will Bob’s unlikely death be the signal to start filming? Idi Amin had died ignobly in exile in 2003, long before Forest Whitaker dared imitate his despotism. It is more than likely that a deceased actor may need to be exhumed for the role of Robert Mugabe to help capture his indefatigable spirit. And thus Bob will be granted an impossibly extra amount of immortality so that the world may remember his Zimbabwe.

Uncle Sam

2007-03-16T02:13:00.000+02:00

Gays in the military? Uncle Sam didn’t foresee this. Strangely, the automatic rifle and nuclear submarine he had personally given the thumbs-up to (the thumbs up being the only other gesticulation he had mastered in addition to his famous inflexible point) but the gays, somehow had slipped through his fingers. Now Uncle Sam, being the god-fearing man that he is, knows that a man can’t shoot straight ‘les he is straight’. He remembers a certain ‘twinkle toes’ in Vietnam who ‘damn near got his head shot off by Charlie cos he wasn’t thinking through the barrel!’. At times like these Uncle Sam would slip that queer white top hat of his over his eyes, think of his wife Charlemagne and pray to god so that he may forgive them.

Parting

2007-03-13T01:28:00.000+02:00

The silence between them hangs in the air persistently. They begin to smirk at one another stretching their faces in unspoken tension. Neither seems able to continue the pretense of conversation. The younger woman begins to rise, gathering herself into her yellow handbag. From an adjacent table a 3 yr old looks on with wide blue eyes. ‘So, keep well then’ the seated woman just manages to verbalise. ‘I will’, replies the other. The standing woman motions her head to the floor in an imperceptible bow and disappears from the restaurant’s terrace.

Greasing the wheels…

2007-02-11T22:24:00.000+02:00

With words like ‘happy’ and ‘loving it’ already part of the McDonalds Corporation’s proprietorship, its no wonder that they’re trying to get their oily hands on words like ‘healthy’ and ‘wholesome’. I am appalled and baffled by a new McDonalds marketing campaign that portrays the fast food giant as some kind of health spa. One giant billboard sports a cyclist riding a bicycle with orange slices for wheels and urges one to ‘Make fruits a daily target’. Fruit? At McDonalds? I think one of the McFlurrys has fruit in it. No wait, those are Astros. Another ad features an athlete running through an apparent jungle of vegetables hinting at the Golden Arch’s selection of ‘Veggies’. Now while McD’s does offer an enormous range of 3 salads, one must not forget the perfunctory lettuce, gherkin and onion fragments that grace their more popular ‘sandwiches’. Why I am calling hamburgers ‘sandwiches’? Because that’s what McDonalds is now calling them. A string of adverts renounces the German relic ‘hamburger’ name, unveiling the elegant, proteinacious sandwich as the perfect complement to an active lifestyle. Funny how a Quarter Pounder still looks like a squashed, cheesy, artery clogging burger. But then again, appearances can be deceiving. Ads on their website have a gymnast endorsing milk and a swimmer encouraging you to drink 8 glasses of water per day. Both of these liquids are apparently found in above trace quantities in several of their product lines.

The campaign’s slogan reads: ‘Its what I eat and what I do’, which I have taken to mean ‘I know its bad for me, but I’ll eat it anyway’. Unfortunately ‘Just Eat It!’ was already taken.

Windy City

2007-02-05T00:24:00.000+02:00

Crime is no more out of control than Manto’s wig in the Windy City. That’s Port Elizabeth for all those who’ve never had the pleasure. Not the pleasure of Manto of course, but the pleasure of visiting PE. It’s no secret that the ministers congregate regularly amongst the pebbles of the Port Elizabethan coastline to skip stones, grunt and occasionally talk politics. This tradition began many years ago when a freak Ricoffee shortage forced Thabo and the other ministers out of cabinet in search of new ‘pick-me-ups’. Thabo often reminisces how nothing can clear his head like the fresh sea air. Sea air and Ricoffee. Ngconde Balfour agrees. He is often caught squashing sandcastles or chasing see-gulls into the water. Manto has taken to the sea-life in the rock-pools. She constantly explores the natural world for new ingredients to make salves and elixirs. One day she will cure the common cold, she giggles to herself.

They each sniff the salty vapour with upturned noses. The wind howls against their heads, these heads of state. And they forget our troubles.

Naming Rights

2007-01-22T01:57:00.001+02:00

Condoleezza, Condoleezza, let your hair down! Or so it might have been. Alas The Brothers Grimm chose the name ‘Repunzel’ for their Maiden in the Tower. But what of Condoleezza and her concomitant rice? Has her name - with its surplus e’s and z’s - not earned a place in rhyme and verse? For surely even the brightest of children could guess ‘Rumpelstiltskin!’ long before they attempted to utter the cascade, nay assault of syllables that is Ms Rice’s appellation. Like an unexpected bout of jaundice, babies are assailed by the apparent ‘gift’ of a name soon after birth. Apple Martin, Fifi Trixibelle Geldof and Moon Unit Zappa are three such babies. Spawned from ego and folly, these Tourettsian names were initially a casual joke but now they continue into the future like wrinkling tattoos – outdated and unwanted. Poor Condoleezza. All her life all she ever wanted to be was ‘Connie’ – the girl whose name would fit on a nametag, the girl who had dreams not of world domination but of starting a family and baking pecan-nut pies.

My Humblest

2007-01-15T00:38:00.000+02:00

Excusing the inexcusable can be tough for anyone. Whether you cussed in front of your grandmother or invaded Iraq by mistake, guilty parties are expected to ‘say sorry’ in a step toward self and world betterment. Living in South Africa however has confused the shit out of me as to when it is appropriate to be sorry. In South Africa, when you push your way through a crowd of people you say ‘sorry’ to each person you brush past or bump into as if they all had cancer or something. Even in casual conversation ‘sorry’ can be used to interrupt some-one as in ‘Sorry, do you know what the time is?’. As if making someone look at their own watch would make their fucking arm fall off. The word sorry can also be used for general gaining of attention, much like snapping ones fingers or whistling. And although I do prefer verbalizing to the coarse, ape-flailing or snapping of ones limbs, screaming ‘Sorry!’ at a waitress when you want the bill is nothing more than a pathetic and fervent apology. But why are we so pitiful and apologetic? What have we South African’s done to accumulate such guilt? Oh, that.

X-miss

2006-12-25T02:10:00.000+02:00

X-miss Guatemala lives in a hut by the sea,
She eats clams and yams and makes cucumber tea.
The sand and the moon and the wind are her friends
And even her left hand she sometimes pretends
Is a valiant knight with a tenacious steed
‘El Perlita’ – Gauatamala’s finest breed.

But her hand grows tired and lax in the dark,
For she remembers now what this day does mark.
One year exactly since that fateful night,
When tequila and cheek had caused her to fight
That puta Yolanda – the daughter of a judge,
The one with a sharp tongue and a tireless grudge
Against her beauty, charm and pledge for world peace,
For Yolanda was tactless, frumpy and obese.

And so Miss Guatemala fell from grace
Disappearing from her village without a trace.
Now she is queen of her hut, shore and dune,
She hopes she can be beautiful again soon.

The Gents

2006-12-09T00:31:00.000+02:00

After switching on the light, I enter the bathroom from hell. I am immediately assaulted by the colour pink, which has seemingly infiltrated every stuffed animal, bar of soap and useless trinket crowding the window sill and bath tub – also both pink. The frayed, stain coloured carpet matches the gross wallpaper and I think I’m going to be sick. I advance on the toilet whose seat I notice is covered by a crocheted woolen seat cosy that once might have been pink. I wonder whether ‘seat cosy’ is in fact the correct term for this artifact and also play with the terms ‘seat warmer’ and even ‘bum cosy’ in my head, before sitting down. From my compromising position I notice a sign above the toilet that says ‘If you sprinkle when you tinkle, be a sweetie and wipe the seatie.’ I cringe, first at the maniacal rhyme of ‘sweetie’ and ‘seatie’ and then at the prospect of urine, spattered and misplaced, somewhere in the bum cosy beneath me. I shudder and flush. No matter how much pearlescent pink liquid soap I use, I can’t get my hands clean again.

The Surgeon

2006-11-30T22:36:00.000+02:00

In the background a heart monitor beeps in an off-key harmony. The lights are so bright that when you walk inside the operating theater, you squint immediately, blurring the edges of everything. Even once your eyes have adjusted, the outline of the surgeon remains blurred somehow – the light always seeming to come from behind him. On the outside he wears green scrubs, a rubber apron, a mask and a clear plastic visor. His hands are white latex gloves. The patient lies beneath him, unconscious but alive. Only a shoe-box sized part of the patient is exposed to him, the rest is covered by pine green cloth. The face must be distracting to him. The surgeon closes his eyes and takes a deep breath near rumbling the gurney before him. It is time to begin. He needs only to articulate an instrument and it is placed in his hand. It is placed in his hand with an upward glance at his face, for the approval which never comes. With abstruse precision he cuts, sows and enchants flesh into the healed form. When he has sown up the last piece of this unnamed rectangle of skin he gazes upon it. The meticulousness of his work impresses even him. No-one can do what he does.

Very Marked

2006-11-27T13:52:00.000+02:00

I suppose this rant is a delayed reaction to a mishappen childhood, in part lost to hours of mid-morning infomercials. Isabelle Jones was like a second mother to me. She would teach me to cook and clean and re-upholster in a flash – things one scarcely picked up from Kideo any more. And even at 8, I was beginning to watch my figure. Celebrity trainers such as [Insert Name] proved that contraptions like the Orbitrex, Abflex and other ‘exes’ could tone, strengthen and save money all at the same time. But my faith in all things good was further fortified when the Verimark scientists invented Bioslim. This natural product (endorsed by the National Hoodia Grower’s Association) nullified the bulky moving parts one once needed in order to shape up. ‘Fat-trapping, Fat-burning and Feel-better’ were the sentiments echoed by the after pictures of a month’s course of Bioslim. Together with Thigh Crème and the Electro-convulsive Muscle Contractor (whose brand name has slipped my mind), one could ‘work out’ on the couch in the company of the very gurus who had guided your journey to the new you. And now that you’re on your way, you’ll need to spray on some new hair, Microsteam some shrimp and don an invisible bra, for you have a date tonight.

the Collection

2006-11-01T01:40:00.000+02:00

Stamps; coins; coke cans; toy trains; matchbooks; ticket stubs – why do we collect this shit? It’s insane! One day they will invent a drug that will put a stop to these compulsions. It’s like those people who turn the light switch on and off 17 times before bed for fear that the world will implode if they don’t. Hoarding is legitimized madness.

In a room overrun by junk, he shows me to the bottle-top collection. It consists of eight shoe boxes piled on the window sill where the curtains are always drawn. "Over a life-time", he mumbles into the dust as he stoops over a Reebok box. He digs his hand into the dusty pit of chinking tops and pulls out one at random. He examines it in with a puzzled look on his face, perhaps remembering the day he acquired it, or perhaps not.

With child

2006-10-30T23:43:00.001+02:00

Even when I was very young, the concept of a ‘nuclear family’ somehow didn’t appeal. During an innocent search for ‘Chestnuts’ in the World Book, I stumbled upon the Chernobyl nuclear power plant disaster of 1986. With descriptions of exploding mice and cancer of the thyroid, World Book put me off these power plants and their associated families. I imagined the parents, the boy, the girl and the golden retriever somehow surviving the fallout when everyone else had evaporated.

Everyone wants children, wants to have children. Like one might have someone to dinner or have epilepsy, yes, have children. It is quite trendy. I remember buying a pair of red jeans – the height of 90’s fashion, or so I thought. But children can’t be donated to the Salvation Army when they no longer fit - when they’re passé. Today couples choose between having children and buying a Lexus - creating life or having cruise control. I can scarcely choose the right flavoured drinking yoghurt from the supermarket shelves. Be fruitful and multiply with sex, test tubes and Branjelina, for there are children in this world just waiting to be had.

Eency Weency

2006-10-23T00:17:00.000+02:00

I was at my desk, humbly pouring over some notes on asbestosis, when I heard a scratching sound coming from behind me. Expecting to find a playful cat, I swiveled round on the office chair only to find a gargantuan spider! The brute was crawling over a salad bowl – a gift now bubble-wrapped and forgotten about in the office clutter. I yelped and ran out of the room dusting myself off vigorously in a reflex attempt to rid myself of its hideousness. But had I really seen it? Sometimes the candle light plays tricks with one’s eyes. I re-entered the room and resolvedly threw my shoe at the vacant salad bowl with a satisfying ‘gong’, but there was no spider. As a safety measure I sprayed a ring of Dyroach (a brand leaving little up to one’s imagination) around the desk separating my half of the room from his. Without a Dyspider on the market as yet, one simply has to make do.

And so I continued to pour over my notes with stilted apprehension, ever conscious of the abyss behind my swivel-chair. And then the scratching returned, or had I simply imagined it? Exploding out of the chair with fear I find the beast once more! Perched on the rim of the ridiculous salad bowl, it waits and watches. God it must be big enough to eat babies, no, children – it is vile. And how dare it have so many legs – I get by with two. This is no catch and release stream. I grab the trusty Dyroach and blast his insurgency with a satisfying ‘Pssst’. I hate spiders.

Dreams

2006-10-22T00:53:00.000+02:00

How is it that what Martin Luther King had and what I have are the same? I believe they’re called dreams. His were about equality for all; mine are about cats and porridge and blurred vacant silences. One can, apparently, dream of becoming a doctor. Last night I dreamt that I was a ceiling fan in an aerobics class. I know it sounds saucy but these women were terrifying. They were large, possibly of Eastern European decent. Their beefy arms thrashed the air in tune with Madonna as the sweat poured down their hapless faces. What does it mean? Am I an angry Eastern European woman? Why can’t I dream of being president or winning Wimbledon like the other boys? In my dreams I never see myself. I fall, am chased, make love and then, wake up.

Cheese and rice

2006-10-13T00:16:00.000+02:00

Before pissing we made Number Ones,
And so we may advise our sons,
To use the john and not the crapper,
For young nymphs avoid the latter.

Poor God is gosh and Jesus gees,
Their new names aim to please,
The frail bastard, now sod,
The one who still believes in god.

Gad she’s hot! That lass is nice.
Why seek breasts when boobs suffice?
Beware the penis in the nude,
For even members can be rude.

The frikkin problem with this shoot,
Is that purity is a vain pursuit.

All dressed up

2006-10-03T23:31:00.000+02:00

How closely related is the fox stole to the boob-tube? Clearly the thread counts of these garments differ. Their cost too. One is summery, the other not. But there is something else, something you have ignored. They don’t sound the same. Boob tube. Boob tube. Boob tube. My mouth kisses the air, like a dumb goldfish. It rhymes, but not in that wholesome way that little Bo Peep and sheep do. No, boob-tube is blunt ended – a device one might say, its rhyming name a functional coincidence. The boob itself is a palindromatic misnomer. I suspect it has been wrapped up but secretly flaunted for this reason. Fox stole on the other hand is not acquainted with the boob. Fox stole sips martinis and rides in limousines. The reassuring x followed by the soft st brushes your cheek like the fur itself. It is a whispered word in winter and puffs out in the night air like pipe-smoke.

They are worlds apart.

Retraction

2006-09-29T01:17:00.000+02:00

Jacob Zuma has apologized for his statements about ‘The Gays’. This comes after the ex-Deputy president blurted out some hate speech against homosexuals this past Heritage Day. Most South Africans merely slaughtered chickens to mark the day as ‘different’ but JZ had other intentions. Among the things not on JZ’s ‘Happy List’ were gay marriage and safe sex, both apparently useless in a society that bathes regularly. The former however was stated as being ‘intolerable in any normal society’ – a statement no doubt to have caused a Zulu blush or two. But why the stance? When your future is as flakey as your impala loin-cloth, why bash gays? Mugabeen there, done that. No thank-you. And then why retract it? Perhaps even by JZ’s calculations one in ten South Africans was a lot of ‘homos‘ and even homos can vote, can’t they?. Or perhaps JZ was considering the icy prospect of going to jail. After all, homophobia and prison cells don’t make good bedfellows.

Eiffel Brown

2006-09-26T00:06:00.000+02:00

I am about to jump off the Eiffel tower. I am waiting in line for the Down Elevator. The R Kelly hit "I Believe I Can Fly” is playing in my head and I am considering the irresponsible lyrics when all of a sudden a trio of Korean men break from the queue. The three of them, scamper to one of the brown metal pillars, cameras pendulously whacking into everything. In this department size matters. They have discovered with Eastern serendipity a series of small graffiti. The three gaze upon the “Tina 4 Jarred” and “Luv Paris 2001” as if it were scriptures. They accept that their purpose is not to decipher these texts, but merely to add to them. Out pops the Hilton Hotel branded Bic pen followed by scratching and panting. They leave their mark. Each of them aims his gargantuan lens at the speck of writing and zaps it for all its worth. They clamber like kids in a pissing contest to shoot the piece of Eiffel brown. Then each in his homogenous, stout golf shirt poses with it and smiles glass noodles for the camera. I stare at the miniaturised horizon of Paris. It’s curious from this height, no, a curio – a snow-globe trinket hanging from a Chinaman’s neck. I wonder how much they cost.

Face it

2006-09-24T00:08:00.000+02:00

Jacob Zuma, or JZ as he is affectionately known as, is free. After a pesky rape trial from which he emerged unscathed and smelling not only of roses but of Palmolive soap too - due to a lengthy ruminative shower – he is off the hook once more. This time JZ used Nivea’s Pampering Shower Oil which makes even the most open-and-shut cases glide right off you. Now he’s on an undeclared crusade to become the next president of South Africa. But how can he? He’s just so ugly! Usually I’m all about manifestos and policies and letting the best man win, but this time I have to put my foot down. Jacob Zuma is too ugly to be president. His head is shaped like a squashed sack of mielie meal with a smooth, prominent forehead like an alien’s. I figure the doctor may have used braai tongs to pull him out at birth instead of the customary forceps, explaining the squished elongated skull. Then there are the eyes – beady and purple each surrounded by two sphincters that appear to control the amount of light let in. The left sphincter can occasionally be seen mouthing the words to Awuleth' umshini Wam' – Zuma’s trademark song. His flattened mushroom nose and wide thin mouth lend him a feline quality. But he is no lion, merely a puss in boots with an entourage. Please don’t vote for him.

Tyre Damage

2006-09-19T18:45:00.000+02:00

I am at Tiger Wheel and Tyre after a puncture. Sales reps swarm around me, greet me – this stranger with money. Everything is black plastic and shiny fake granite smoothed down with use. Everywhere tyres are displayed on neon pedicles like jewelry. It smells of industrial solvents and glue not fit for children – that new car smell. I am assured that after what I’ve been through I need to have my wheels re-inspected, re-aligned, replaced. I am reminded of the tragedy that awaits a carefree attitude, the price of folly and negligence. The terms ‘driving’ and ‘dismembered’ are used interchangeably by the reps as they stare down my ignorance. “Danger to yourself and others”, squeaks a pimply teenager draped in a company golf shirt. I imagine the car, veering off the road into a pram causing a bystander to release the balloons they were holding as they gaze upon the collision. Already shaken by the prospective carnage, I catch sight of the acne on the rep’s face. “Whatever you think is best”, I whisper, brandishing my credit card at the boy. He squeaks in acceptance and then disappears or is stood on; I cannot tell.

Ode to the Carrot

2006-08-17T18:19:00.000+01:00

The carrot is phallic,
Orange, hardy, organic.
Innocuous bristles on skin,
Like an adolescent’s chin
It juts, and points, upwards straining,
Confidence feigning.

Daily bread of rabbit, and mule
You lie interred in the cool
Dark, and point without thought,
Creased in your taut,
Peelable skin.

You are eaten.

Test

2006-07-28T23:46:00.000+01:00

I’m not sure what I look like; there are no mirrors in this room. There are no distractions at all. There is a desk, a chair and the work which must be gotten through. I stay indoors although I am not sick and brood in quarantined silence. Trips to the bathroom and meals, if deserved, punctuate my internment. I gauge time by the strength of the sun and more recently, the length of my fingernails.

“It is all a test”, I hear suddenly. Turning around I find nothing but a wall, protective and beige, and I exhale a sigh of relief that nothing is there – I haven’t been disturbed.

The Addict

2006-07-22T00:25:00.000+01:00

For those of you who don’t know what Brasso is, its that stuff your maid uses to clean the brass in your house. I believe their may even be variants for silver and wood? No, not wood, just silver. It has a pungent, metallic smell, faintly nostalgic of a pensioner's bathroom. On inspection it appears milky grey with the consistency of runny shampoo. I suppose cocaine is equally innocuous, easily mistakable for the humble baker’s daily flower. But Brasso, a product whose name leaves little up to the imagination, is ostensibly habit forming as well. Susan, bless her, has fallen. She has started using the polish three times a week. I cannot fathom how often the average brass trinket needs polishing, but I am convinced that it is less than three times a week. On my way out of the house I see Susan crouched in the corner of the kitchen, behind the door, almost supine on the tiles, feverishly rubbing some senseless ornament. Our eyes meet, hers wide and crazed. I notice the piles of dirty washing surrounding her, somewhere in the distance a cat meows for its breakfast, but she ignores all of it. Did I imagine her nostrils flaring? Oh my god they are flaring! Sucking up the Brasso like the once used vacuum cleaner in the cupboard. Backing away from her, I trip over one of the cats, eliciting a bilious meow. I run to my car and drive away. Later when I return home the trinkets shine from their shelves, reflect light in my eyes, and Susan is nowhere to be found.

Goodbye

2006-07-16T23:29:00.000+01:00

Don’t you just hate goodbyes? I am reminded of an old school friend who would end a conversation by saying “Well I’ve had enough of this conversation.” Click. And just like that, I had been hung up on. I remember standing with the receiver to my ear as nosey onlookers gaped at me. “I’ll see you again tomorrow. Ok then. Cheers”, I spoke to the engaged tone and then demurely hung up. I just couldn’t end it that abruptly - not in front of all those people. The girl who hung up on me wasn’t angry or anything, she just decided to shed her conventional pleasantries. Later she shed her bra too, amassed dreadlocks and her alternative proclivities disappeared into a haze of bong smoke. I never saw her again. All I wanted to say was, “I’ll see you soon. Sleep well. Uh huh, uh huh. That’s nice. Thanks for calling.” But all I had was the raspy click of the receiver and the whine of the engaged tone like a recently deceased heart monitor. “Goodbye”, I murmur to the darkness.

The Game

2006-07-07T00:05:00.000+01:00

This is surely to be a very risky piece of writing. I say this because I know how far gone the rest of you are. I am no stranger to alienation, so what’s one more dark mark next to my name? I hate soccer. This loathing began with mild indifference when the sport occupied the same void in my brain as the 16 times table and other such inaccessible data. I think I may actually have relished the ‘extra time’ my abnormality afforded me, tallying up the ‘bonus’ TV shows and gratis hours I could play with my cat.

When one is as ‘different’ as I am, one can’t help but look back for answers. I remember running with my brother’s asthma pump in the Cross Country athletics in Grade 4. No, I didn’t have asthma but I did have the tendency to develop spells of what was later diagnosed as ‘apathy’. It was convenient for me that the two disorders were indistinguishable to the watchful eyes of the sports master.

Its not that I hate all sport. I played some junior tennis matches for the D team and even helped out the chess team sporadically in primary school. I just wasn’t much of a team player.

I wonder now if I’ll ever be part of that ‘team’. Just days ago I sat in the ‘Rat and Parrot’ pub in Grahamstown during the England/Portugal match. The place was overcrowded but I happily took a seat with my back to the projector facing the mob of angst-filled supporters. I was amazed by the camaraderie. I watched grown men with faces contorted, screaming “Come on boy!” - their fists thrashing the air. The worship of the players annoys me. I grow irritable. I hate David Beckham’s versatile hair mousse. I loathe the red/green blur of the Portugal supporters. I look at the fathers and brothers created in front of me and ask them if I may join in.

Going around

2006-06-27T23:37:00.000+01:00

Today I heard my mom talking on the phone. The characteristic “Hmm, Hmm. Ja….ja.” assured me that no-one had died or even been dismembered today. But then I heard “Ja, Its going around” and I almost choked on my Chocos. It was going around. I remember when, as I young lad, I inquired about Sally Singer - the bouncy new girl in my Biology class – I was swiftly cut down. “She gets around”, they told me. “Watch yourself”. Wanting only to borrow her eraser at the time, I was confounded by the warning and used Tipp-ex instead. ‘Getting around’ didn’t sound all that bad to me. Perhaps she had seen the Sphinx in Egypt and gone up the Eiffel tower making her a terrifying traveler. Suddenly the photo of me on Michael Jackson’s knee at Madame Tussauds seemed embarrassing and wanton. At least no one knew then, just how around I’d been.

Now I am equally confused. Whenever I hear ‘Its going around’, I know that people are referring to illness. I remember I first came to the realization when, upon confessing that I had a cold, my friend Ed said “Yes, its going around”. I was stunned at how Ed became privy to such information and so inquired accordingly.

“My doctor told me”, he said. “After he saw my sister’s tummy bug”

I began to panic. I was unsure whether colds and tummy bugs were ‘going around’ simultaneously or whether cold/tummy bug were in fact the same thing, taking me around with them!

I was fascinated to learn how a disease gets ‘around’. I remember when I had the flu. For a while it was just me. But then it started spreading. John and Sarah got sick too. I could say: “I have the flu. It’s going around”

Some people would cringe and one even looked into the air around them for stray germs. Either way, the panic and my concomitant sickliness seemed to earn me more “Feel betters” than the regular flu.

So why did those jocks dismiss poor Sally Singer? It beats me. It seems that going around only brings joy to those who have you.

Who invented the silent letter?

2006-06-25T23:55:00.000+01:00

On the island, lightening gnashes into the calm like a bomb. And, like the column of light, the silent letter makes no sound itself. It is a ghost, chalky and white. But why is it there, this benign unknown?

What if they aren’t benign? What if they don’t speak, but listen? Perhaps the silent letter is in fact a tool of espionage! But who are they working for and what do they want with us? Their actions seem to be motivated by greed, lust and Arkansas. They apparently assassinated JFK because he didn’t give a damn. They made Elvis disappear for the King had too long a reign. They took Donald Trumps hair from him as he slept in his yacht.

Every silent letter is a suspect. Know who to trust…

The Jellyfish

2006-06-19T22:56:00.000+01:00

Carte Blanche isn’t what it used to be. The expose show that used to catch parliamentarians with transsexual prostitutes on hidden camera seems to have softened up in recent times. I remember the days when Ruda didn’t wear make-up and her asexual candor let you know that ‘this was the truth’. It seems that the show is Oprah flavoured now, with more ‘human interest’ stories and less of the smut and scandal we fell in love with in the beginning.

I say this after watching a segment in last night’s show about Norah Vincent, a lesbian who decided to infiltrate ‘the world of men’ by dressing up as a man and observing male behaviour for 18 months. Her book called ‘Self-made Man’ details her disclosure. On the cover there are pictures of Norah/Ned in both female and male versions just in case you thought the whole thing was a hoax. Personally I found the whole concept a little stale. I mean any man knows what men are like. Why do we need to have a lesbian dress up as a man and then only do we believe what men are really like? It made it sound like this woman was privy to the inner workings of the CIA as she casually observed their every move, disguised as a pack of cigarettes.

Perhaps if I don a dress and rouge up my cheeks, I can get girls to confess to all sorts of things. Just think of the power that transgender people wield! Their motives may appear ‘confused’ to a naïve observer, but operatives like Mrs Doubtfire and Tootsie were calculated agents able to assume the sexual impassivity of a jellyfish if required. And just when you least expect it, a phallic, yet fallopian tendril appears out of nowhere, and stings you where it hurts.

Youth Day

2006-06-16T22:41:00.000+01:00

Tonight I saw the film ‘Sarafina’ for the first time. I am partly embarrassed as this locally produced film was released in 1992 and only the melancholy of Youth Day, fourteen years later, seems to have convinced me to finally see it. In the cinema I was upset to see the poor turnout a day after the film’s re-release. Perhaps everyone has seen the musical apartheid protest film with Whoopi Goldberg. God knows it must have even been screened on SABC3 by now. But I hadn’t seen it. It was ironic watching the film in Hyde Park – a center colonized by the opulent white crème and a sprinkling of rainbow nation on top.

I have discovered that the only way one can ‘remember’ something like June 16th is by holding onto a small piece of it. Usually the piece is iconic and very popular. June 16th 1976 is Hector Pieterson. The photograph, taken by Sam Nzima, depicts Hector being carried by Mbuyisa Makhubo running alongside Hector’s sister Antoinette. He was one of 500 casualties that day. I’m not sure everyone remembers that the schoolchildren were protesting against Afrikaans as a forced medium of instruction. I don’t think anyone remembers the sight of bloodied school uniforms face down in the street or the smell of petrol bombs. Surely no one remembers the live ammunition or even the courage of the Youth that faced it in broad daylight.

The museums are for the cultured, the interested. A holocaust survivor comes to our school. School trips to the museum. Films, pictures, songs. What do I have left? What I have learnt? Let me have Hector Pieterson, so that I can remember.

Please Forgive Me

2006-06-14T21:14:00.000+01:00

Today I almost killed someone. On the drive home from the corner grocery store, I almost drove into a beggar. Alas I must confess that it was no error in judgment, no momentary incoordination, but rather a loss of self control. I was angry. Hopefully the absence of ‘premeditation’ will appease the casual reader. Its just that I saw this cretin, masquerading about the white line, smiling from ear to ear like some spastic jelly-tot shaking his tin like a rusty cowbell. Of course I use the term ‘spastic’ loosely. I don’t want to confuse this chap with the ‘sick’ variety that mimics everything from Polio to Sleeping Sickness in a single change of the robots. They partially deserve more money for braving peak hour traffic in spite of their indeterminable conditions.

And you don’t have to be a rocket scientist to realise that an amputee needs more money than some-one who has the flu. And that a woman with a baby deserves more than that old man on death’s door. And those darling children look so innocent and needy. But perhaps your hierarchy of who gets what works a little differently to mine. I’ll assume that we all have limited small change in our cars and can’t give to everyone and so decide who gets what. I at least think that giving one child is worth at least three old people. And a blind person is worth at least two women. I find that I can maximize the feeling of wellbeing and goodness by choosing recipients which are more pathetic or deserving.

Somehow I think they know this. I say this because I’ve noticed a competitive change in the field of begging, an effort if you will. Ironically I see less resolve in much of the employed contingent of our society. For instance, ‘Led Begging’ has become quite popular in Rosebank and Hyde Park. Basically an able bodied assistant guides a blind or obviously ‘sick’ person to your car window so that the impaired may receive money from you without being run over in the intersection. Perhaps it is this ‘teamwork’ that instills in the giver a familial nostalgia and one decides to ‘help a brother out’ in the only way one still remembers how.

And of course I give to the ‘Homeless Talk’ vendors. They wear a neat yellow jacket and they ‘sell’ me something right? That cute little newspaper about homeless people that everyone reads? Those vendors probably pay tax like I do, and may even belong to a union. Ands that’s when I realise they don’t need charity! I don’t even have a job as consistent as theirs! For god’s sake! There are people starving in Africa somewhere and you want me to buy a newspaper? Begging is a cutthroat industry. A career move as foolish as Homeless Talk could mean losing one’s intersection and worse yet, one’s integrity.

In

2006-05-29T22:24:00.000+01:00

I was once described as ‘cultured’. It was disguised of course in a flurry of other compliments thrusted upon me by an anonymous peasant. It perplexed me a little. I had heard the other peasants converse about the ‘cultured’ - their alternative inclinations, their poor physique and homosexual complicity. They spoke of ‘gatherings’, music, cigarettes, wine.

Later I wondered how I had gotten into all of this. I receive an esoteric handshake from another cultured person in public and curse my uncouthness. I reflect on the Latin Colere, (meaning to cultivate) but it sounds like ‘cholera’ so just I wipe my hands on my jacket and smile. Some-one’s talking about the cricket again.

Snap

2006-05-28T21:53:00.000+01:00

Now that everyone has a camera I feel better. At least now, one needs not remember an event at all so long has one has pictures to verify the event's existence. Are memories stored in your head or in a photo album in the cellar? I feel that people have an abject and rather desperate need to collect memories. Who hasn't encountered the old timer at the local pub recounting war stories, love stories - how romantic to have lived such a life! But hang on, couldn't I just collect such a life with my camera, snap by snap, each one a further memory of a full life.

The question is: Is a picture the same as a memory? Is a photo of Big Ben the same as seeing Big Ben? Is it the same as smelling London's streets and hearing its characteristic bustle? Books offer 'Armchair Travel' - a way to visit Guatemala from the comfort of your chair in Atlantic City. But I pay so much to 'see' Guatemala for real? I wonder whether other things could be experienced via the 'armchair' route such as boxing, sex and sky-diving.

With the advent of digital, there has been a flagrant looseness in the use of cameras by the world. In Europe I recall fellow tourists that would almost ‘shield’ themselves from an actual event by holding up their camera and snapping in defense. A stimulus as innocuous as some-one pulling a face was defended with a healthy click. Thankfully the individual snapping was not harmed as she herself did not directly look at the spectacle with her own eyes. She also gained a photo, a memory that will be reflexively shoved down her best friend’s throat as soon as she whips out the dusty album decades from the incident.

In the Louvre, I stood in the room with the Mona Lisa. Crowds of people (more than a hundred) scramble in front of it. I stand at the back, peering for a glimpse of its greatness. There is a cacophonous clicking sound and like gunfire it falls upon the painting. The continuous strobe of flashes was enough to induce a seizure. And for what? A piece of Leonardo? A piece of his fame? No, I am being melodramatic. All those people wanted was a memory of having experienced Great Art, something they can tell their grandkids about some day.

Winter Parting

2006-05-25T22:13:00.000+01:00

Partner, parted, partition. I turn these words over and over with a silent tongue until they cease to be words anymore. Soon it becomes meaningless, a mantra - soothing even. As I type this very post, Eduardo flies at an altitude of some 30 000 feet - bound for Paris. My day began with a goodbye.
I am not sad. I'm just hollowed out. The vacant feeling frightens me but I know it will pass.
What excitement this parting conjured up! Secret gifts and hidden letters - a flurry of emotion from each of us. In the face of solitude I feel a magnetic closeness to him. What is the sweet without the sour?

G*y

2006-04-21T15:04:00.000+01:00

I stumbled across some gay slang whilst researching AIDS orphans the other day... I think we all need to be aware of such jargon lest it be used against us for good or evil:

1.

Homothug: A gay man who associates with Hip-hop, Rap, or a gangster lifestyle. (Eminem is considered a latent homothug)

2.

Rice Queen

a non-Asian man who prefers Asians (sometimes considered pejorative).

Yestergay: A person who identified as gay in the past, but who no longer does so. (Popular covers by Paul McCartney to follow)

Try to use one in a sentence today. It is only by frank, popular use that such lingo will infiltrate daily conversation becoming ubiquitous, like vaseline.

The full list can be found at Wikipedia.org

Nonsense!

2006-01-31T01:06:00.000+02:00

As I was going up the stair
I met a man who wasn't there
He wasn't there again today
I wish, I wish he'd stay away.

2006-01-31T00:56:00.000+02:00

I am Yam

2006-01-30T14:39:00.000+02:00

Why write to this impetuous blog which no one reads?
Catharsis it may be, but on my soul it feeds.
Alone in the dark I regard the screen,
The cursor insouciant yet I am keen,
To reveal my latest disquieting claim,
That nobody alive will remember my name.
Oh Blog! Damn your patience to hell!
Where were you when my last tree fell?

Nautilis Jam

2006-01-16T00:35:00.000+02:00

Squish-squash goes the nautilis under the steamroller's hoof.
Up and down like a cat on a hot tin roof.
Why does his shell shatter like bone,
When all our sins he doth condone?
Give his mushy flesh one more breath,
And save one mollusk from an untimely death...