A Very Eventful Week.

Right. So lots of stuff has happened this past week or so. It's been a rather tiring roller-coaster ride of events and occurrences, and I'm quite ready for a bit of the olde quietude. I'm going to have to bullet-point all of these because I'm rather dizzy and not up to actual paragraphs (see point 4).

this week, I have:

1. helped launch an art exhibition at work, for which I spent a good three hours helping to put up 44 litho-print board-mounted photos with prestik*. Have spent countless hours since picking the damn things off and unbending the corners and reapplying them to the boards.
2. Won a photography competition. The prize is a stonkin' new canon photo printer and paper and ink cartridges, but best if all I'm getting a spread in Charged Magazine and I get to call myself a prize-winning photographer. I'm totally getting a t-shirt made.
3. Been to a birthday braai on Saturday night, only to fall momentarily asleep at the table at around 11pm. Just a microsleep, but it was noticed- by the host. Mortifying!
4. Gotten some sort of flu virus/ tummy bug thing that has laid me low and rendered me both nauseous and dizzy. Lovely to have to deal with in this heat. Also I have my period. So, altogether feeling supersexy and fun.
5. Spent all day cleaning and rushing arund to perapre for a braai at the Hotties' place on sunday, only to start feeling completely out of it and claustrophobic and nauseous, due to the virus thing.
6. Switched on my cellphone to discover my SIM card decided to shuffle unceremoniously off this mortal coil. So, now I'm out of contact with everyone, feeling isolated and also a bunch of my numbers have been lost.

I'm quite ready for a quiet week. But not much hope of that with bloody Christmas round the corner... Happy Holidays to you all. And a merry Cristmukkah.

*totally not my idea, yet somehow I'm getting blamed for its failings. Someone please offer me a job.

musings upon the Complications of Time Travel

click on the nice image I created, to make it large.

So, here's a tidbit for you.

For as long as I can remember; way back to the days of long braided pigtails , dark brown T-bar schoolshoes* and He-Man episodes on constant rotation; I have been fairly obsessed by the very notion of time travel. I find movies on the subject very unsatisfying, because they tend to languish in the same tacky fish-out-of water scenarios or the whole "if I unknowingly impregnate my mother and actually am my own grandfather is it still incest?" issue. And it's a pertinent issue as researchers have actually managed to move minuscule invisible particles an almost immeasurably-small fraction of time back into the past or into the future using a multimilion-dollar, gigantic big fuck-off particle accelerator, which means that realistic everyday time travel is just round the corner, really.

Sometimes, late at night, I lie in bed and picture what it would be like for someone from the past to be dropped in our timespacecontinuumthingy. Think about it. let's be conservative and imagine a difference of a hundred years. No, fifty. think about all the technological advances, cultural changes and fashions that have occurred. iPods. Computers. Cellphones. G-strings. lingerie adverts on billboards. Scandinavian Death Metal. Portable Chihuahuas. Sushi. Your average hipster from 1957 would probably be nonplussed to say the least. Go back to our hundred-year-ago dude, and think about cars and tarred roads and, you know, daily bathing, and we have a man or woman facing total mental meltdown, sitting looking at a cappuccino, muttering "buh. buhbuh. buh-buuuh."

Which could be entertaining, in a way, but I suppose not enough for a feature-length cinematic experience.

And what of travelling to the past? Well, aside from the dangers inherent in it (viral strains, unwashed beardy men who want botty sex, Mongol hordes, swordsmen or people with arrows, dinosaurs), I personally believe it would suck a very great deal. I mean... what kind of cuisine could one expect to find? No playstation, no wii, no 24, Lost,or Heroes, no magazines or modern literature**, a probable lack of toothpaste of deodorant, and a total lack of comfortable shoes***. The past is a place best left right where it is.

Would be cool if we could send Paris Hilton there though. And watch what happens. The Simple Life: Cholera Epidemic sounds pretty cool, don't you think****?

*the black maryjanes were much cooler, but came later.
**although also no chick lit or FHM, so that's cool.
*** I have it on good authority.
**** surely to be followed by Survivor: Dark Ages

Dear Fake Cancer Child....

This morning, as per usual, I found in my facebook inbox the following chain email:

"Hi, my name is Amy Bruce.

I am 7 years old, and I have severe lung cancer . I also have a large tumour in my brain, from repeated beatings Doctors say I will die soon if this isn't fixed, and my family can't pay the bills. The Make A Wish Foundation has agreed to donate 7 cents for every time this message is sent on. For those of you who send this along, I thank you so much, but for those who don't send it, what goes around comes around. Have a Heart*, please send this. Please, if you are a kind person, send this on. PLEASE HIT FORWARD BUTTON NOT REPLY BUTTON.

YOUR'S FAITHFULLY,
AMY BRUCE
amy.bruce@makeawish.com"

Dear Amy. First off, I don't like your tone. Alternately whingeing and threatening, with an added edge of attempted guilt-induction. You're starting off on the wrong foot with me here, young lady, or, should I say, viral hoaxster. Because frankly, m'dear, I believe for not one instant of a moment that you are actually some poor scamp with not one, but TWO deadly cancers, and also BEATINGS. You're sorta cornering the market in pathos. I mean, only the most churlish of people** could be mean in this sort of situation, right?

The thing is... this whole email forwarding thing... how does it work, exactly? The whole 7 cents thing I mean. How do they keep track of that? Is there some sort of email tracking device or embedded cookie or some shit? Is that even legal? And what if someone gets the same email three times. Do they count as one donation, or three? And what currency is that in, because you don't mention where you're from. Are you British, Amy? American? South African? You know, real people come from places.

Amy, if you're really real, and I doubt you are, because I'm not seeing the Make A Wish Foundation getting involved with a clumsy scheme like this; but Amy, if you're the real deal, I'm sorry you're sick, and get beaten, and have no money. But really, do you think this is the best way to go about it, using the same old tired template that a million fake email hoaxers have used before? You need to rethink your plan of action.

But, you type really well and are quite erudite for a seven-year-old***. So there's that, at least. Good luck Amy Bruce. But stay away from my inbox.

http://www.hoax-slayer.com/amy-bruce-charity-hoax.html

* But I don't, Amy, I'm famously heartless.
** that would be me, then.
*** with a tumour, from the beatings.

Sexy Sex Sex. And Moving.

I moved house this weekend, which was an exhausting thing. Moving ranks up there with losing a loved one and getting married as one of the most stressful life events*. It also doesn't help when a pipe bursts in the apartment above and floods your boxes with suspiciously yellow water. Nor when the landlord keeps you waiting three-quarters of an hour outside the now- empty apartment for your deposit. Next time I move, I'm hoping to be able to afford some burly movers, or in the very least henchmen, to carry all my stuff for me. As it was I had to rely on my Hottie.

There's something sexy about a man carrying heavy things that you can't though, isn't there? as feminist as I am, and as much as it pains me to say so; the mere fact of a man's genetic tendency towards denser muscle mass makes me go all gooey. Also, when they bend over, in nice jeans. Mrowr. Ahem.

Which brings me to the sexy sex. Sex. Apparently you're all obsessed by it. The whole planet is. We're either doing it, watching it, talking about it, condemning it, chasing it, planning it. Some people believe if you enjoy it too much you're destined to an eternity of suffering. That seems a bit harsh, considering it's a bit of rubbing and some endorphins. Probably, they are worried about the nakedity. Personally I don't think god would have made it so nice and so much fun if it was such a terrible sin. That would be incredibly petty and warped of him**. Her. It. I digress.

There's this theory that if you can think of a fetish, no matter how bizarre, then it is being indulged by at least one person in the world. So, people who get off on having goats watch them pee on strawberry icecream? We're on to you. And now I know there must be people who like to wank to old episodes of Knight Rider-- but only the KITT scenes. You never can tell about people, can you? Sometimes the quiet ones are the ones with a Shetland and a rubber chicken suit in the back room. And the ones who posture and pose and talk about their prowess are... well... mediocre. I'm told.

Sex though, eh? Silly, when you think about it, but a fun way to spend an afternoon. Here's wishing you all good, healthy, refreshing, fun, funny, tiring sexual relations. The type that makes a stressful life event all better.

* I did occasionally pay attention in university.
**yeah, that's right, religious sex-haters. You just called God warped and petty. I don't think he'll like that much.