(no subject)

It's rude not to announce yourself.

Across the world, across history (and because of it), there are rules to meeting strangers and familiars alike. Whether you raise your hand or bow your head, give your goodname or the name of the your god(s), intentions are blessed with announcements.

Next time you're too lazy to think of a line for the subject field, imagine how you feel when you receive a call to your cell phone from an unknown number. Confused. Interrupted. Irritated. Curious. Suspicious. Bewildered. Distracted. whatever your level of paranoia or curiousity, it's wasted energy. In the age of excess information, it's proactive and self preserving to want to know in advance.

If you're at a complete loss, and the brain wont' do its push-ups, do like Bouncy Know-it-alls, and say my name.

big sister is watching you

i have been warned.

"Dear Jezebel,

Your complete lack of ardour, ferver and zeal with regards to braaing
is making me troubled and upset. should you continue with your snide
comments about our national cuisine i shall be forced to braai outside
your bedroom window for twelve solid days ensuring a complete and
eternally braai-smoke flavoured jess henson.

you have been warned.

regards
the patriot.

p.s. yes. they are serious. very. damn. serious."

(um, here's what they're talking about. Vegetarians, at least, might sympathise with my lack of sympathy for the event...)

kissing with your eyes open

Meta communication

Who’s saying what? And how?

Fusion. Confusion. Almost the same thing these days. Especially for what comes of human relating.

Women are working, men are rediscovering their inner children, and children are old before their time.

Not surprising, then, that traditional roles are taking on the tone of their darker, less practised understudies, and if you’re not engaging, you’re more than likely twisting your undies around overworked hands…. Because these days, casual sex can express love more aptly than commitment claims to.

You can see it (Lie With Me : Clément Virgo) and read it (Needle in the groove: Jeff Noon). These rarely mentioned, illicit encounters, occurring by accident or intent, undercover, form a subconscious dialogue that informs contemporary communication. Our lives are still fragmented, but now we use many mediums...

Love is as virtual as it has ever been, and lust as tangible. But our experiences are following suit, with a vast array of media rewiring the way we communicate.

licks like....

"Like groove to the hips
Like smooth to the lips
Like sugar in the mix
Like butter to fingertips"

michael franti
spearhead

paper and pen

(chat with another significant other)

i am resurrecting the sensual art of letter writing. no. that's not a group, goddammit! The real thing - paper and pen.

remember the depth and tone, the smell of it, and ink smudges? the curve and cut of HANDwriting? (do you even know what that is?)

erm. so. can i have your skype address so i can trace your email so i get to facebook and get your cell number so i can call your mom to find out what your postal address is? i know you don't know.

oh, you don't publish your cell number on facebook? me neither. well then, can i have your-

{other is offline}

bad poetry compliments of (and dedicated to) facebook

is it rude
to befriend a dude
you've never been friends with before?

is it unreal
to let people feel
they exist on the face not the floor?

mine and others' bad poems içi
(o. but you have to have a face.. that's the irony!)

and yes. i do bi-publish. seems its the only bi- i engage with these days...

face it, it's unreal.

There is irony in this post. See if you can read between the lines.

Who would have thought Facebook would make billions? Not me. it's a simple enough idea, one that underlines the inanity in us all - Facebook let's you compartmentalize your life into little proscribed chunks of information - it's made pixels of people and people seem happy to be belittled. Have you noticed? Oh, you're on Facebook too?

So is everyone. Well, in some places. Not that location matters much on Facebook, or time. When old schoolmates that you haven't thought of in fifteen years except when you see someone who reminds you of them once in a long while somewhere in Asia of iets gets in touch, then you know that things are connected. But are they? Facebook communication has reduced emails to one liners with a handy conversation format that let's you simulate realtime talk. First loves swap an email or two, and thereafter, we watch each others' status updates. That’s not friendship! Why all this marketing euphemism?

Facebook approximates reality the same way that the age of enlightenment sliced it up - with classification.

you have "friends", "events" (even if you don't go), wish lists (even if they don't come true), social time lines (even if you lied - and to be honest, most of us with half a pea for a brain did, because the limits of the information fields are so severe that we got bored with the truth), and gifts (that make the producers all their bloody money!). These are not real words - these are not real lies - I mean, lives. We’ve mimicked our humanity online. It’s a crying shame, coz its draining businesses everywhere as their employees while away the day translating their lives into little applications.

Funny thing is, Facebook's success is absolute proof of the inadequacies of contemporary lifestyles- we are trying to reinvent ourselves within the confines of our realities.

How’s that for a post modern paradox!

(did you get the irony? go here)

Getaway

Friendly tourists - puleez.
Go home and be friendly in your own country, why don't you?

Spreading goodwill back home where your cash and your culture really counts will do a lot more for world peace than toyi toying in solid solidarity with the Big Issue seller for half a minute and then leaving him with a (com)pat (riot) on the back and his hopeful, new, eurosmile to the glum, glass-eyed stares of the Third World at rush hour. Till your next annual, exotic African getaway, at least.

new SA

checkitout

this is an out of office autoreply that i got this morning:

"I am currently out of the office. Should you need help urgently, call me on my cell. I will also be checking my email twice a day. I'll be back in the office on Mon, 9 July, 2007.

Ngisaphumile eofisini. Ngizobuya ngoMsombuluko, 9 July.

Ketswile ko ofisini, Ketlogutla ka laboBedi, 9 July.

Andikho e-ofisini, ndakubuya ngoMvulo 9 July.

A ni nkona a officini sweswi, Ndzi ta voya hi wawubiri 9 July.

Ek is tans nie op kantoor nie, maar ek sal Maandag die 9de Julie weer terug wees."

i was kind of ashamed. i can only do that in four languages. and only three of them are widely spoken in Africa.

facebook gives online communication a facelift.

it's amazing how facebook functions are streamlining internet communication. It’s balls to the wall for saying things loud and clear and quickly. the inbox is for slow mail or long texts or group mail. chats are still evil.

Its new applications are developing so rapidly, their programmers must never sleep. ever.

i wonder if facebook is recognised as a common noun by Word's spell-check already...

I wonder who’s making money out of selling all the info we reveal…

mind your Ps

pffff/ the internet is also proving that high speed virtual communication doesn't have time for unnecessary punctuation.

chat doesn't have spellcheck (unless you use firefox. why don't you try it?)
capital letters become a matter of natural selection, rather than a survival of the fittest. even i has been demoted.
and words that were once really long are reduced to a symbol, if anything. k?

i like it.
but i'll never dump my semicolon; it's the only way for me to be professionally paradoxical...

quality time

amazing how much time we spend watching each other on social networks. i'm in the middle of a local vleisbook tsunami, and don't think i exist in flesh anymore....

imagine if we used half that energy to connect with people in person. what a novel idea....

face it

facebook encourages stalking.
facebook encourages narcissism and self involvement and vanity and ego.
facebook makes YOU big brother. and everyone is smiling along softly, feeling important. at least, virtually.

virtual family

the internet does too connect people. i have proof.

besides true tales of long distance internet love affairs that become marriage (and you have to remind yourself it's the emotional connection that makes it work, not the digital one), i've seen it in real life.

example one : a sister of a friend who has repeatedly introduced herself to me as if we'd just met me, finally found me on facebook. we rallied a few words online about live music in cape town, and the next time she saw me at a gig, she was warm and familiar. see?!

and. the argument must go on...

today yaniv called me. i don't know anyone called yaniv. i heard the accent, i heard the name, i didn't know the number. so i launched into hebrew. it turns out he shares my family name (MITRANI)(for those of you who thought you knew me!) and lives in Durban. (another unmet-yet cousin?) imagine. this was skype's doing.

trivia:
i learnt something about my own lineage from this total stranger today. apparently the surname mitrani either has bulgarian or turkish origins. (remember they're not far from each other at all, and form part of the silk and semen route that ravaged pure blood across the east's middle!) mine are turkish. his are bulgarian.

just when i was saying i hadn't made any new connections over the internet. or tried.


go figure....

god versus the internet

ooer. havn't been here in a while. obviously been a lack of wit in the shitty. i mean city. but read one... this will maka yu smaaile
between one: Zane Henry and other : yours duly

the conversation went something like this. (online, mind you!)

one : "...wish I had enough conviction to forthrightly dismiss all these techno-friendship gimmicks."

*

other : "mm. i keep justifying it as a 'networking tool' (even though i haven't made any new connections through it) while i allow myself to be fascinated by our collective and respective egos."

*

other : "do you think the internet is replacing god?"

*one : "the Internet replaced God a long time ago. We were all to busy surfing YouTube to notice."

(and he waxes wordy to prove it: )

"
www.= we will worship
.com= church of mendicacy
http://- heightened textually tinged proselytisation
URL: Uber Religion Limbo "

downer

gravity. gets you down

vote online. the new democracy!

Thing about the proliferation of myStuff (personal digital information uploads) is there’s so much content out there to consume, the only way to know what’s worth your bandwidth before it’s chewed is through mass opinion polls popping up all over the internet. The digital highway offers individuals a chance to vote honestly, subconsciously and freely. It might even be more effective than democracy. www.hotornot.com is a good example of the aggregating power of collective opinion. (But it’s also very telling of how ageist we are)

I bet digital opinion polls are going to be marketting’s next darling.

old age, anyone?

Wow. hotornot.com pitches old age at anything past 40. eish! so I’ve only got eleven years to live!

beware the erotic apple

apples have cameras, you know? so now everyone can take pictures of their friends while they swap mp3s. wicked.

wicked in more ways than one.

don't be another Paris next time you go home with the girl or boy next door for your first time. Adam and Eve might have done the dirty in the open, but only the animals were watching. a lot more young porn directors with cheap date budgets are starring in their own films. and you never know when they'll make you their leading co-star...

Magical Muizenbeg

A far cry from the maddening crowd

I once thought it was the dregs of the peninsula. A cheesy holiday town. A seedy lot of leftovers from another (better) time. Until I started spending time there. Which proves that a drive-through is not a drive-in. And you won’t get the picture until you watch the show.

There are secrets here, man! And I’m going to tell you some of them!

Empire
Coffee shop and eatery by the sea

Better than Olympia, and of course co-owned by the same souls (with such grand and antiquated names like that it had to be…). A two-level eatery just off the beachery. Easy. Open. With waiters that slide down a spiral staircase and patrons that carry staffies up them. Good food. good vibe. Barefoot but classy. Have a sunny Sunday molo breakfast there while you still can. Because it’s high summer!

The Beach

No need to mention :

• Its warm waters. Its everlasting expanse of sand. Enough exercise for all your chocolate brownie sins!
• Its people-friendly waves. (which wet suits complain sublimely about, of course, but if you’re too lazy to chase the winds and the waves around the peninsula, you aint a surfer, baby).
• Its earthy mix of peeps. From toofless, topless, tanned toddlers to gangly old grannyvaalies in their bikinis.
• Its awesome sunrises that last all day and leave lots of light hanging in the sky at sunset.
• The easy ocean stroll to other watering holes (the Bell. Punani. I mean Polana. Et cetera) (and no, I’m not mentioning Cape To Cuba because the first and last time I went there, the waitroids were so forking precious about their prettiness that I nearly puked into my mediocre meal.) (but that was a long time ago. So maybe you want to update me?)

A blerry nice Bookstore

With a mature man who fancies himself the father of the hood, and perhaps the sugardaddy of some sweet literary souls…? Visit this learned Daddio and his vinyl store in the back. Go plunder!

Arty Hearty Street with all things nice.

I haven’t explored it yet. But it is calling. Set amongst the itsybitsy suburban houses, it’s a lane of love and luck and lushus pots and paintings and gifts and dance rooms and idunno wot. Watch this space.

Lekker ou convenience store.

With a bit of everything. Jou ma se tuisgebakte koekies, frozen lollies for fifty cent, bananas, fish heads (frozen, for sure), chokolits, and I bet even an old stylie arcade game. But I didn’t linger longer cuz my peeps done laak their lollies mushy. Replete with a u-shaped counter through which you can spy and chat up the man of the store.

Froots and fish on the side of the road

You know, watermelon season alone is reason enough to take a coastal drive and pick up a few pinkhearted melons. Be they froot or booty. (Noman. I don’t actually advocate the anomaly of picking up unknown fruit, but if you do hitch a hiker, choose a sweet one. And protect yourself. Melons make lovely mess!) (do it nekkid!) (kaalbutt) ok, I go now.

Add your add-ons. I’m sure there’s millions more moments and madnesses I don’t know about Muizenberg. Like its assortment of film production companies…. Jo?

iAfrica

"
jhblive: "What are you most Proudly South African about?
Simphiwe Dana: "The people of South Africa. The African brothers and sisters. Regardless of what we've been through, I love that we have managed to get back our identity and dignity." "

taken from www.jhblive.co.za

bitter taste of irony

a street man is more likely to acknowledge you than a man in the street is.

sing it, soulmen!

"money talks and bullshit walks along the corridor of propaganda"

nine
entropy

crusty

what i want to know is why the city's milk is turning?
and who made cottage cheese with their curds and whey....

Hand Job

here is delightful proof that manual administration is still an essential part of the information age's success!

mood searches are on the rise as an intuitive approach to web surfing and customer satisfaction, but as the first result of this Family Do search on www.stufftodo.co.za points out, we still need content aggregators.

isn't a family proof that something is going RIGHT in the nookey chambers>?!

one2three

Where is the happy art?

Where is the happy art?

Are we only miserable? Is it all introspection, spitting at the system and sitting pretty in our collective dissolution?

Where is the happy art that celebrates simple things like sunlight, and lifetime?

pop the bubble

What IS it with Beyoncé? She’s this grand icon but everyone’s forgetting that she must be spending the equivalent of a small developing country’s GDP on hair straighteners annually.