I’m having the best birthday evar! Thanks to everyone who’s making it so awesome, but most of all to Lynnae for being the world’s best girlfriend!
Charly’s Bakery is quite surreal; when you walk in the door it feels a little like you just stepped onto a scene from Charlie and The Chocolate Factory. I will keep you posted on how good the cake tasted.
Over and Out!
J.
I have the luxury of not being a journalist.
Mail and Guardian on the other hand doesn’t have that luxury. That’s why when I saw this: “Krugersdorp school rocked by ‘Satanic’ killing” I sighed quietly to myself. The article would be perfectly at home in Die Son and uses phrases like ‘crazy-eyes’ and ‘satanic-like ritual’
Here’s the deal. A kid who was obviously a little fucked in his head took a sword to school and stabbed a few other kids (one of whom died) and some of the school gardeners (who no doubt were trying to stop him). That is all. There is no need to try and justify his actions with claims of satanism or his music interests, or, for gods sake, the amount of time he spends on the internet. I’m sure he also played violent computer games; just like pretty much every other fucking kid in his school, who, for record, didn’t stab anyone with a sword yesterday.
These sorts of things happen, and they are tragedies, and they are possibly preventable, but not by censoring the kind of music your kid listens to, or freaking out because they bought a cheap sword at the Chinese knock-off shop around the corner, or banning the internet in your home. The only way to (possibly) prevent things like this happening is to be more aware of your child’s emotional well being, and, should you think your child might be a little nuts, get them to a psychologist who can either help them, or send your paranoid parent ass home because your kid is actually normal.
It seems like society is always looking for an excuse to justify our behavior. We blame MixIt for infidelity and computer games for violent kids… but we forget that a 70 years ago kids were being exposed to far more violence in the form of a World War and had access to more artillery than our current defense force, but they didn’t go to school and shoot up the classroom.
There’s also a stupid trend where people claim an unstoppable addiction to idiotic things like smoking, pornography and alcohol. They claim they have a disease because they can’t not buy that next box of smokes, or drink that next glass of scotch. Like Kyle so brilliantly said to his father in South Park, “No dad, you don’t have a disease, you just need to stop drinking so much”. If you don’t have the willpower to stop smoking, rather just admit to having no self control than muddying the waters for people with real problems.
So please, journalists of the world, stop looking for reasons… back in the old days people were just plain old nuts if they stabbed their school friends … I liked those days. Can’t we please go back?
————–
Update: After a long discussion with Gavin, who knows a thing or two about mental issues, I must note that I agree that kids are doing this more now days than they were 100 years ago, and that the reasons for that must be something societal.
So maybe modern society (and everything that entails from bad foreign policy to violent movies) is to blame as the catalyst that triggers kids (and people) who are completely fucking nuts, to do stuff like this… but the key is, they were completely fucking nuts to start with.
The crux of my post was this; Journalism like this is likely to have a few thousand mothers confiscating their kid’s swords and slipknot CD’s, only further increasing the divide between them and their kids, which, will no doubt make them far less able to detect real signs of the kind of insanity that actually drives kids to kill their school friends, not to mention just plain old bad parenting.
Like Terri says, we want easy answers, not hard, complicated ones like ‘perhaps it’s a mixture of bad parenting and George Bush’s unjust war that kills thousands of innocent people every month, and violent movies and economic depression and the chemicals in our food and a bad case of ‘insane in the membrane’.
Lynnae and I set out relatively early and had breakfast on Table Mountain (Bacon and Eggs Baby!!). Thereafter we hiked via all the dams and then made our way back home via Nursery Valley. About 13km in total.
See the video:
That is all.
I started blogging about 10 years ago. Yes, way before the term ‘blog’ existed I had a website and I wrote stuff on it. I wasn’t the first either, I was just a guy taking advantage of the fact that the internet gave me a way to get my ideas “out there”… even if it meant that the only people who ever read my stuff were my 4 friends.
Problem #1 – Just because you’re on the internet doesn’t mean you matter.
Talking shit about people doesn’t make you famous or powerful. It seems that some people have confused ‘pissing people off’ with ‘having an influence’. If you’re going to talk smack you’d better have big balls to take the criticism. Also, don’t shit on your doorstep, it’s ugly and the people around you will find it hard to be your friend afterwards. As much as I’m all for honesty and freedom of speech, it needs to be leashed to a good dose of old fashioned decency.
Problem #2 – Sell outs
While I don’t take my blog all that seriously, I do take pride in it and wouldn’t polute it for any material gain, whether it’s pay-per-post or a stupid ‘viral’ campaign that results in someone winning a tshirt. If you want to run advertisements then by all means do so, but don’t sell your opinion to anyone, whether the price is a brand new car or a set of free stickers.
Problem #3 – Inane writing is clogging the tubes.
I’m not against anyone who wants to chronicle their life online. It’s fun looking back at your life through the eyes of your blog. I’m not talking about posts that are simply boring because the people who wrote them live boring lives. I’m talking about the kind of post that painfully chronicles your opinion on subject A, where subject A is something nobody cares about and your opionion only makes it more painful. We’re all allowed some boring posts every now and again. It’s an indulgence. The sad thing is that some people seem to repetedly push out these kinds of posts and never write anything even remotely interesting. That is why feed readers are so awesome; you can pick and choose who you want to read and leave out all the boring people. Still though, ask yourself this simple question before you hit “publish”… Will this matter to anyone, including myself, in 20 days time.
Today I had my geyser replaced… the old one had blown. ACME plumbing (name withheld because the guy who runs it is a douche) was assigned by the rental agency to do the job. ACME plumbing pissed me off from the very first moment because they never called back when they said they would, took too long to get the job done and originally misdiagnosed the problem which meant I didn’t have hot water for about 5 days etc.
So ACME arrives with his two ‘boys’. Wilson was the more senior of the two. Wilson was tasked with removing the old geyser, which isn’t such an easy task, but he executed it flawlessly while the baas went to go fetch the new geyser. About 2 hours later Wilson and his friend had drained the geyser, removed it, prepped the space and helped me strip the old geyser down to the tank. (I’m going to cut it in half and use it as a herb garden at our new house)
The baas arrived with the new geyser and then took Wilson’s friend to go to some other job. Wilson fitted the geyser, again executed like an expert. He improvised a few things due to the new geyser being a different size but everything was neat, the wiring was done perfectly and he tested his work methodically. We had toast and coffee and chatted about plumbing. Wilson was a regular guy. Probably the most accurate representation of South Africa: a working class man trying to catch a break, but never getting one. He had been a plumber for 12 years but didn’t have his papers because they cost money to get… and the boss wasn’t interested in helping. He explained how the boss kept a record of what time they finished every day, so if they finished at 4:00pm he would mark it down and on Friday deduct the collective hours from that week’s wage.
Then it came time to put the cupboard they had dismantled back together (The geyser is under the kitchen sink). Wilson put everything together expertly, taking care not to damage anything even though some of the chipboard was wet and brittle. I helped with putting the cupboard doors back on because it’s not easy to do by yourself. We struggled to get the doors level, partly because the one hinge was slightly damaged. We improvised a solution which worked well and we eventually got the doors perfect enough where we were both happy.
Just then Wilson’s phone rang. It was the baas; Wilson explained that he had been struggling with the cupboard door but that it was okay now. Wilson looked strangely at his phone. The baas had ended the call while Wilson was still speaking.
Seconds later the intercom rang. It was the baas. I had to go down to let them in as the front door wasn’t opening properly. In the lift he said ‘That’s what’s wrong with this country, everyone has two left thumbs and no nuts’. I bit my tongue.
Walking in the door he aggressively confronted Wilson, telling him that he must have messed up the doors and that the one was missing a screw. Wilson submissively tried to explain that he hadn’t lost any parts and that the one hinge wasn’t working properly. The baas sat down and ordered a screw driver. He removed the door and then started saying things like ‘You didn’t put it on properly, that’s why!’… only to swing the door closed and have it hopelessly skew. This carried on for a few minutes while the baas again and again explained that the job wasn’t done right in the first place. At some point he accused Wilson of damaging his tools. “What’s this rubbish?” he asked while removing our improvised solution.
Eventually I walked away, catching a wry smile on Wilson’s face as I left. The baas was a dick, and Wilson and I both knew it… in that moment we were one person. No amount of macbooks or fancy cars could divide us. Nyanga and Observatory became a little closer and the colour of our skin was irrelevant. We were one person laughing at the arrogance of another.
Eventually the baas closed the cupboard door and said ‘Right, lets pack up’… I stood there gob smacked. The door was completely skew and the gap was wider than it had ever been.
‘Um’, I said, ‘You can’t tell me you’re going to leave it like that’.
‘Well, I’m not exactly a joiner, I can’t be expected to fix cupboards’ he replied… ‘Don’t judge me on my joinery, rather judge me on the geyser I fitted’.
I laughed, ‘You mean the geyser Wilson fitted’…
Here begins my soliloquy, which I hope I can remember accurately. Racism and arrogance tend to make my blood boil but I’m always rather eloquent when it happens.
“You expect me to judge you on the geyser, that Wilson fitted, but you’ve been nothing but rude to him the whole time. Then you arrogantly decide you can do a better job at fitting a door, which apparently you can’t because when you walked in here the cupboard door was near perfect, now it’s completely wrong and you expect me to be okay with all that? Look, you can leave, I’ll fix the cupboard, but I want you to know that I’m disgusted by your attitude.”
Now it was Baas’ turn to be gob smacked.
“I’ll fix it” he said like kid after a beating.
He replaced our jury rigged improvisation and with a little bit of help from Wilson was able to get the door to a point where it was good enough to leave. It still wasn’t as good as Wilson and I had got it, but it was close.
“That ok?” he asked.
“It’s fine” I said.
I realise now that perhaps it isn’t racism that drives this guy to be such a dick, perhaps he’s just a douchebag bully to everyone around him that can’t fight back. I hope the universe treats him to a nice dose of karma one day. In the mean time, if you need a good plumber on a weekend, I have Wilson’s number.
I’m off to have a shower.
In keeping with recent trends we decided that this weekend’s mission would be to hike up Lion’s Head. It really is quite amazing up there and I recommend that every Cape Townian does it at least once a year. The view from the top is probably better than the view from Table Mountain since there is stuff to look at all 360 degrees around you. We were joined on our little quest by Joe, Mia and Brad.
The obligatory 58 second video:
Next weekend’s mission is bacon and eggs for breakfast at a secret location on the top of Table Mountain. I found my little camping gas stove, just need to plan what’s for lunch.
When in Rome!
So last night we finally signed and initialled all the bits of paper that basically say our combined asses belong to the bank until we pay off our newly incurred seven hundred and fifteen thousand rand, plus interest, debt. I’ve got to be honest, even though it’s hardly an expensive house, I did have those little voices in my head screaming something along the lines of “WHAT THE HELL ARE YOU DOING?”.
I felt very happy walking out of that office though. It was like taking a big step towards being a grown up… like the first time a salary clears in your bank account, or the first time you tell your boss to shove it. Steps towards being a big person basically 😉
Then we went home and opened the bottle of champagne. Although this last step was purely an administrative process, the fact that we signed something like 100 sheets of paper made it feel champagne worthy.
Lynnae had made a South East Asian curry for a shoot that day which we promptly consumed… It was so good it had me grinning from ear to ear. I’m telling you guys, being a grown up is underrated.
Hearting life!
Today was one of those wonderful days that reminds you what you should really be focusing on. We went for a hike on Table Mountain, played in the waterfalls, talked about the future and took in the amazing views.
I’ve got to tell you people, I’m in love with life and I don’t need a quasi religious excuse to justify it.
I made this little video of the goings on… (It’s filmed with my cell phone so excuse the quality)
The thing is, days like this really do let me get focused again. Life isn’t all butterflies and rainbows. The world will occasionally conspire against you and you’ll have your car dinged or maybe your house might get broken into… but we have to be careful not to let ourselves get so distracted by those events, or the threat thereof, that we stop focusing on the important stuff. Living life to the fullest.
Many years ago I was hiking on the same path we walked today. It was the height of summer and the sun was blazing down on me like an oven grilling chips… and I had run out of water. When I finally came across a tiny trickle of water I was ecstatic… I spent almost 45 minutes trying to sap up every last drop of water from the trickle on the rock face, even resorting to using my shirt to soak up water and then wringing it out into my mouth. It was painful, and as I stood there in the blazing sun, with my shirt off, back burning, and chewing on little bits of sand in my mouth, all I could think about was the fact that the water tasted sweaty.
Eventually I decided that I had got enough water and needed to move on. About 5 minutes later I was standing at the edge of a fully fledged stream, with enough water to soak my feet in, while sitting in the shade and where I was able to repeatedly fill my bottle in seconds.
Sitting there with my feet in the cool water was a moment I will never forget. It felt like the universe was trying to tell me something about the nature of mankind, and a little lesson about that nature… I believe I’ve figured it out… and today was a nice reminder.
Don’t get too distracted by the here and now, especially if things aren’t going well. Sometimes a better place is just around the corner. You just need to keep on going to find it.
This one should be short and sweet, it’s really just a brain dump of a conversation I had with a friend who had the all too common argument of ‘But It’s so expensive, I can’t afford R9500 payments’. It’s the same excuse I used for years, but it’s only semi true.
Housing is a commodity. All commodities are subject to supply and demand economics. There are millions of people who would love to buy a house and only a few houses.
Supply and demand says that when there is high demand and limited supply, prices go up… not everyone understands why though.
Think of an auction: The audience is made up of an accurate cross section of South African society. 90% of them earn less than R5000 a month. 5% earn around R10 000 a month. 3% earn around R20 000 a month, 1% earn around R35 000 a month and the other 1% earn more than R45 000 a month.
(I made those stats up because the StatsSA release is so racially oriented I was unable to find a non-race income breakdown. If anyone knows of better percentages I’d love to see them)
Ok, so we’re at this auction and there are 98% of the people earn less than R20 000 a month… and there’s only 3 houses for sale. That last 2% will outbid anyone in the other 98%, but they’ll stop when it starts hurting…. the housing price is therefore completely linked to the salaries of the highest income earners in the country. Now, people like my friend and I are lucky to be in or near that top 3% but we certainly aren’t that top 1%. Which means that whenever we want to buy there will be some fatcat pushing the price up… but with some belt tightening, we’ll be able to afford it.
Ask an older friend who bought property about their bond repayments… I know guys who are paying R950 every month towards their bond. The natural instinct is to say ‘Oh man, I wish I’d bought when the prices were still so low”, but the truth is, the prices were never low. My parents had to pay R120 bond payments when they first bough their house 29 years ago. They struggled. My mom says there was a time when the stopped buying cheese because it was a luxury!
It all boils down to this. Unless you are earning a salary in the top 1% of the population, it is going to hurt a little bit when you buy property. But soon enough salaries will go up and your bond payment will stay R9500 a month. I just know that one day, in the hopefully not too distant future, someone will say ‘Oh man I wish I had bought property when the payments were still under R10 000’.
(I realise that this summary completely ignores cheaper housing in cheaper areas, but I did that to keep it simple)
ps. Analysts predict that the housing price will skyrocket in 2010… but there’s a chance (Skye, block your ears) that we might be in for another percent increase in prime during August. Eek!
I made this for graphjam, but here it is in case they think it sucks.
arbitraryuser 