a tale

Book store ... saturday morning ... an elderly indian man approaches unsuspecting book seller...

EIM : ahem are you the manager?

UBS : no sorry, she has already left

EIM : Oh then maybe you could help me?

UBS : Of course!

EIM : well, i am not from here, i am from canada and my niece, who is young, is getting married and i need to get her something. you see... she does not know very much ... anything at all ... about sex and those acts

UBS : uuuuuhhhhhh .... okaaaay - i can show you the section and you can look through the titles and see if there is something suitable

Unsuspecting Book Seller leads Elderly Indian Man to the section with Karma Sutra's and Yoga For Lovers and the like

EIM : weeell... i saw this one title over here can you come with me and tell me if it's good?

UBS : okaaaaay

EIM leads UBS Into the CHILDREN'S SECTION

EIM : this one -

hands UBS 'All American Girl : Ready or Not' by meg cabot (the woman who writes the princess diaries)

UBS : ummm this is fiction. children's fiction

EIM : yes but look at the title! 'ready or not'!?! are you sure it isn't the kind of thing i want?

UBS : No

they walk back towards the other section

EIM : ok , which one would you reccommend?

UBS : I really wouldn't know... you can browse through the titles?

there is a second of silence ... UBS takes this opportunity to run away

EIM, after 45 minutes of browsing, purchases 'Sex, Lies & Relationships'

THE END

i can't stop thinking about the moon

for some reason it's really bothering me

so ... quick poll -

who believes we put a man on the moon and who believes it was a ruse! a scam! ?

tears, diamonds and props to Djimon

i cried in my 3rd movie yesterday. first was 'amistad', second 'the green mile' (for reasons i cannot fathom) and yesterday - 'blood diamond'

firstly... - SOUTH AFRICAN ACCENTS! why oh why why why? why?!? it was funny. shaks said it was a little forced and i agree whole heartedly, but i suppose you need to compare it to other attempts...it managed to do something nobody thought possible - push nicole kidman's attempt in 'the interpreter' even further down the accent scale. according to a review i read, the SA accent is one of the hardest to learn and, like shaks and i were saying, it's not like charlize can even speak in her old accent * sigh* but still.

"Usually Hollywood movies about Africa and South Africa are a source of hilarity to local audiences as Hollywood tends to get so many details about this country wrong. Who can forget Joss Ackland's atrocious “Afrikaans” accent as the villainous apartheid-era ambassador in Lethal Weapon II, for instance? Or that ornamental Nazi eagle in his office (come on, which Department of Foreign Affairs official's office ever looked like that?) Or how about the Nazi-like paraphernalia adorning the podium as the celluloid Jimmy Kruger made his notorious “Biko died after a hunger strike” speech in Cry Freedom?

But what South African audiences usually find the most entertaining (or insulting, depending on your sense of humour) is when Hollywood actors attempt a Seth Effrikan accent. However, in Blood Diamond we're happy to say that while DiCaprio doesn't always get the accent right, he at least gets the character spot on. Or maybe the role was just well-written, as the screenplay at least seems decently researched with an eye for detail and an ear for the local tongue. “Doos,” DiCaprio's character murmurs when faced by an officious soldier, which had the audience I was with laugh appreciatively. DiCaprio has aged well enough to fit this role; no longer the fresh-faced boy star of Titanic, he is more credible as a tough action man than, let's say, the soft-faced Colin Farrell in Miami Vice. Cynical and opportunistic, DiCaprio comes off like an boer seun Han Solo, spouting the sort of political incorrect dialogue one imagine a character like him would in real life. "

apart from that, the only bone of contention is the fact that there are machine gun wielding soldiers all over stellenbosch! where where where are these people in real life?

i really loved the movie and i urge everyone to go see it. i found it violent, but to some i suppose it would not be that bad (considering we live in the world of CNN war broadcasts and play station) but I was shocked and sickened and i realised something i think i have always known :

the bad in this world is the result of some large power trips. that's all it is. some people who should not be listened to or given the right to make their own decisions are given power and it rushes straight to their heads. to pick on the obvious - george 'dubbya' and his bunch of world police : it's not a nation of idiots, its a nation controlled by an idiot. my deputy manager - power trip. rebels - power trips. saddam - power trips. apartheid - power trip. hitler - power trip. fundamentally, i think this power trip consists of somebody who experiences a loss of respect for other people directly proportional to the boosting of his/her own ego. and with this loss of respect it becomes easier to enslave (physically, ideologically), rape, murder.

how do you stop a massive world wide power trip? i'm daunted.

On a good note - I am awed by Djimon Hounsou ... he is in Amistad, GLadiator (to name a few) apart from Blood Diamond. He moved to the USA from Benin when he was 13, could not find a job and so was forced to live on the streets as a vagrant eating out of rubbish bins. Apparently his life changed when Thierry Mugler found him and hired him as a model. He now makes movies that educate people. (He is so awesome, I even gave him capital letters)

i hope that, if nothing, people will see this movie and open their eyes a bit more about africa, how what they do in their own countries can severely hinder or help someone far far removed from their own existences. and that someone, somewhere out there will make it their mission in life to help someone else speak in a real south african accent ;)

thank you charles and otto!

only very slightly stealing this idea from my friend ryan's last post (http://robgordon5.blogspot.com) where he thanked the inventor of the avocado peeler. this is a day where i need to say thank you to two very special men.

thank you, Charles I of England, for making your chef make a dessert that was 'fresh- fallen snow but was much creamier and sweeter' aka ice cream. thank you. even though you died because you were too selfish to share it with the world. 'The King wanted the delicacy to be served only at the Royal table and offered the cook 500 pounds a year to keep it that way. Sometime later, however, poor Charles fell into disfavour with his people and was beheaded in 1649. But by that time, the secret of the frozen cream remained a secret no more. The cook, named DeMirco, had not kept his promise.' so, by default i guess, thank you, DeMirco!

most importantly, thank you otto wichterle for inventing the contact lense! although leo da vinci had some pretty good designs, you were the one who saw it through and enabled me to see without wearing glasses the thickness of bottle tops. "Because of his open activities during 1968 and particularly after the August Soviet-led occupation, the "normalisation" regime punished Otto Wichterle by removing him from his executive positions and by gradually making his research work more difficult." its like mccarthyism ... how silly to stop people doing research and things simply because you are scared of an idea ... freedom of a nation but still abide by the harnessing of thoughts ... hypocrisy! i think that if your notion of governance is good enough, then it will not be torn down by anything else. (look at me descending into pompous political babble again! sorry... i try so hard!)

and so tonight, after work, i will go home and get into my pjs and, before i pop out my lenses, i will watch some Anderson Cooper 360 that i recorded firstly because i am a geek and secondly i can because i will actually be able to see. and then i will eat a bowl of ice cream simply because i can. its a hommage.

and now, you know!

globalisation and your argument is really stupid

like most 'academic' wannabe know-it-alls, i enjoy engaging in banter about issues. however, i tend to enjoy it most when talking with people who actually know what the heck is going on and i most definitely switch off when said banter turns into an argument where i have to defend myself to people.

saturday night / sunday morning i had the pleasure of taking part in a conversation with someone who had just decided she was feverently opposed to globalisation mainly because it wasn't 'pretty'. in short, her hometown wasn't what it was when she was 9. it had increased, building and construction was abounding and johannesburg no longer 'represented africa' because, according to her, we live in africa because we like open spaces. i hated to break it to her, but urban sprawl is a reality because, keep this on the downlow, but jo'burg is a CITY and cities generally have places. apparently globalisation is bad because her home town is less 'pretty'

growth will happen whether people want it to or not and, if it bothers you, then adopt a cause and do something (keyword) constructive like starting a call for more parks or protected areas. demanding that people stop movement towards growth is not a solution to anything. tom and i both find fake tuscan architecture visually affronting, but the fact is, it is cheap and provides more housing - we dont have to buy it and live in one, but if more people can, i really dont think it matters much how pretty we find it!

an ode to engineers

today tom and i went to give angelo (the lovely engineer who rescued us last friday with the flat tyre) a thank you present in roodepoort. as we were driving back, thomas ran out of petrol. despite gustav (his car's) incessant beeping, we did not put any petrol in and thus we broke down. we then pushed gustav up onto the pavement where we were shouted at by this silly security guard who told us that the traffic cop would fine us. unfortuntely, gustav did not have his wings with him and thus we, on command, were not able to fly away. we then trudged up some road in northcliff to the garage where the attendants laughed at us, so hard that the one almost fell over. we trudged back, clutching a large canister of fuel.

when we got back to gustav, we did not have a pipe through which to pour the petrol and so tom poured it over my hand (no, i am not high ... for some reason i only get high on jik - the one time i sat in a puddle of it at work and i could bearly function. it was scary hazy fun) i digress - and so this bakkie of engineers stopped and helped us.

i will never laugh at engineers again
i will never make fun of them when they do not wear shoes
i will let them have 'dress up friday' on campus ... even if they wear speedos and pink flippers

pondering the possible mutation of my sanity

... i am scared because there is evidence that shows that there are certain traits that are easily passed from generation to generation, sometimes even becoming advanced along the lines of genetic mutations

SOME of my family members are crazy

i'm talking insane

HIJACK!!!

konichiwa people

this is thomas. i am hijacking her blog.

ha ha

bye.

what to do what to do what to do

help me

what do you do when someone you really love and admire as she is a lovely person and so smart and funny and she is dating a complete twat?!?

i dont want to say anything, i guess, as we arent THAT close (we dont phone each other up every day and discuss our dreams and fears) and so i dont think i have enough of a swing vote or anything and i dont want to lose her as a friend

but WHY do people date twats? love is blind, yes, but surely NOT THAT blind

(and no i'm not being judgemental. he is a TWATTY PRAT. its scientifically proven)

the birthday of thomas subtitled comedy of errors

yesterday was (as he likes to call it) the day of st thomas the divine and since shaks and i couldnt go to gold reef city with them (i still haven't been it's an abomination really) we decided to go out for a celebratory drink after work.

we were driving merrily along (really merrily... we were singing 'funky town' by lipps inc which is the ultimate cheerily cheery song) when all of a sudden (!) out of nowhere (!) WHAM the road gave way into a huge gaping hole (of doom!). thomas swerved around it to avoid our certain untimely deaths. we shuddered to a stop on a grate and all hopped out of the car to gather around the car and look at it, as one is want to do in that situation since sitting in the back seat continuing to sing 'funky town' probably wouldn't fix the tyre.

the tyre was popped. completely. flat flat flat. i have never seen a proper flat tyre in real life (my 22 years on this earth have seemingly been truly secluded). i was thus impressed with the level of flatness. mikey and tom, adopting impressive levels of masculinity, propped the car up on tom's little jack and began using other tools to do other things. the jack collapsed. under the car for absolutely no reason! malice of the jack. so Shaks and i ran across the road to the garage aka service station (where we wanted to buy chocolate milkshake) but instead went about finding help. we found a man called gift who informed us that the garage did not have a jack (!) and that we would have to ask someone for help.

i made a beehive (hahahahaaa shaks will get this inside joke) for a man who had just innocently parked his car and was going to the shop.

"hello," i said, "do you have a jack?"
"yes," he said

and so he followed us to the scene of the breakdown where mike and tom gasped at the beauty of angelo's jack (apparently it was a beautiful specimen.) and they proceeded, with gift from the engen garage to change the tyre. just as we managed to screw in 2 of the 6 bolts with the spanner (or as tommy calls it, a screw tightener), gift dropped the spanner into the grate. we tried, as in the movies, to lift the grate and then to pick up the spanner using a twisted piece of wire , but neither worked.

we had nothing left to do but to run into the road and flag down another audi who duly did a u turn and came with their spanner and we managed to fix everything.

i am happy because we met such lovely people last night - angelo, the audi people, gift, the man who lived in the house next to the hole and other people (whom i christened marty and allan) who stopped to ask if we were ok.

and like i said, we got the easy version of a breakdown. we stopped across the road from a garage,we had a spare tyre, we had gift, we had cell phones with signal and we were together with angelo who was an engineer. we could have been on a dirt farm road with no cell phone battery, no tyre and scary creatures howling into the moonlight. it was like the time sarah c and i broke down and we were sad until we realised we had broken down in the parking lot of sandton and we went to have coffee until we were rescued

... i REALLY need to learn how to change a tyre (ok ok i need to learn how to DRIVE but its all the same really)

"vengeance of the victors"

(my LAST rant about Saddam... yes... but this guys comments from Newsweek is so good and he makes a great point)

by fareed zakaria

"The saga of Saddam's end - his capture, trial and execution is a sad metephor for America's occupation of Iraq. What might have gone right went so wrong. It is worth remembering that Saddam Hussein was not your run of the mill dictator. He created one of the most brutal, corrupt and violent regimes in modern history, something akin to Stalin's Soviet Union, Mao's China or Kim Jong Il's North Korea. Whatever the strategic wisdom for the United States, deposing him began as something unquestionably good for Iraq. But soon th Bush administration dismissed the idea of trying Saddam under international law, or in a court with ant broader legitimacy. This is the administration, after all, that could see little advantage to a United Nations mandate for its own invasion and occupation. It put Saddam's fate in the hands of the new Iraqi government dominated by Shi'ite and Kurdish politicians who had been victims of his reign. As a result, Saddam's trial which should have been the jedgement of a civilised society against a tyrant is now seen by iraq's sunnis and much of the Arab world as a farce reflecting only the victor's vengeance...
... Iraq is a tough place - but the Bush administration is not quite so blameless. IT thoughtlessly engineered a political and social revolution as intense as the FRench or Iranian one and then seemed surprised that Iraq could bot digest it happily, peacably and quickly. WE did not give them a republic. We gave them a civil war."

And that , in my opinion, is that