Search me.

I have had this post lurking around in unedited form in drafts for ages, and somehow this week I managed to post it by mistake, and wouldn't even have realised it except that sleepyjane commented on it! Yay for sleepyjane! And yay for comment moderation, see, it is useful sometimes.

So here is the ubiquitous searches post. People out there in the world asked google for help, but google has a twisted sense of humour and sent some of them to me instead.  I get loads of searches for monkeys, sea monkeys, and hamsters for some reason. The post with the most hits by far has been my miserable rant about Schengen visas, which I wouldn't prescribe as recommended reading to anyone. It was full of bitterness, bile and confusion. And man it felt good to write.

Here are some of the queries for agony auntie Po:

1) African tickling - I didn't realise there was an African way of tickling. We used lion's tails, don't you?

2) la cucaracha gymnastics - This I would pay to see.

3) african huge butt -  Cliche. Next.

4) please state your business- As I have said before: "there's no business like Po business" because Po has no business.

5) Hamster panicking in cage- ah shame. Take your cat out of the cage and everything will be fine.

6) Jacob Zuma poem- Why, why would I waste the time? Ok fine I will waste the time. 

Ode to Jacob Zuma:   How do I love thee?

                                    let me count the ways.

                                  END

A limerick:  There was once a wise man called Zuma

           Whose shower had powerful vooma

        All the newspapers said

                  He was naughty in bed

                  But it turned out to be a rumour.

                    

7) how many hamsters in 2010?- you know, that is a good question. One that plagues me frequently. I have no clue. 42?

 8) wild sea monkeys - Kinky? I am quite wild but only on Saturdays at 3.15pm

9) sea monkey has my money- Give me one more week! I swear I will get it, just don't kill my hydrangeas!

10) africa monkey crisis- There is?

11)  filthy nasty home pictures- yes, yes, finally! A naughty one. I thought I wasn't worthy of a naughty one!

12) whack the monkey with your hand - ok that is too naughty even for me. No kinky monkey business on this blog.

Having a ball in Debbin.

I was perusing the archives of the hilarious 6000 miles from civilisation a while ago. I am not a stalker, I am merely broadening my horizons by learning about life in a far off and exotic city containing zebras which I know very little about. I only lived there 5 years after all. To be Capetonian you definitely have to be born there. It is one of those things. And I came across a post mentioning that Debbin, my dear armpit of a home town (it was always rather warm and moist) was named after bulls' bollocks.

This sparked off a memory which I have decided to share, because I do love to reminisce. About testicles.

It is entirely true about the balls. I know this because at the tender age of 10 we were given a history research project. We had to write about "the History of Durban". 

I set out into the school library and took up the first book I could find about Durban. It was an ancient tome, with a worn cover and mouldy pages. This book informed me that Durban was named eThekwini by the Zulu people because the harbour looked like bulls' testicles. 

I faithfully wrote down that fact, not feeling the need, in my cherubim state, to find out what the word "testicle" actually meant. I had no clue. It sounded impressive.

I have since found out that this was NOT the way to go about doing a school research project. It turns out you are supposed to get your parents to buy you World Book Encyclopaedia, and then get them to erm, help you with your project. Sigh, If only I had known. 

Anyway, I got back the project, with excellent results and a message from the teacher: "Po, do you know what the word testicle means?"

I did not and and asked my mom, who laughed and then went dark red. My mom is very shy. I learned about the birds and the hornets from Cosmopolitan. That magazine is an education.

Finally she told me. I was pretty embarrassed about writing a naughty word in my history project, but it turned out my teacher loved it because all of the other projects were word for word the same blurb out of World book. Score!

So my message to you is, if you want to succeed in life, slip in the word testicle now and then, and you will have a ball. If you don't, then everything will go balls-up. Come on, do it, grow some balls. Be on the ball. Play ball with me here. Get the ball rolling. 

Bollocks. I am shutting up now. I am not nuts.

NOPOST

No post. Today. In the mail. Or on this blog. Enforced blogging hiatus of one day has been implemented so I do some actual studying, instead of studying the  (much more interesting) lives of all these people that live in my computer.

People in my computer: I clicked onto that porn site by mistake ok? "Seamonkey fun" sounded innocent enough as a search to me.

I wonder if all you people exist if I don't read your blogs? 

Will I exist if I don't read your blogs?

Philosophy may not be healthy for one.

This turned out to be quite a long post, considering it is not a post at all.

Just saying.

Snow.

Snow. In October. How fucking cool. 

SNOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOW!!!!!!!

Es'kia Mphahlele has died.

I have just read that Es'kia Mphahlele has died. I wrote this post in appreciation of his writing, and his life, just a month ago. I am kind of in shock. 

He was a great man, a great South African, someone whom I feel was under appreciated as a South African icon.

He achieved unbelievable things in extremely difficult circumstances, and should be a role model to all of us.

I have never read any of his novels, but will take the time to as soon as possible.

If you get the chance, you should read his autobiography, it will teach you much about South Africa, and life in those times.

Rest in peace, Prof. Mphahlele.

There's an arsonist on my stoep.

I have blogged about the town that I live in quite a few times before. It is a lovely little town. I am quite fond of it. However I really do live on the wrong side of the tracks.

I can put up with the pavements being smeared with poo on a daily basis. I shit you not. I just watch where I walk very carefully. I have learned to live with the fact that I live on a road that is the main artery for the world's drunken people. I am able to live with the nightly singing-shouting-screaming-swearing-puking-drumming-(yes drumming)-smashing-punching noises because I have trained myself to sleep through (almost) anything. It took a while.

I can tolerate the fact that I live across the road from a pub run by the Portuguese mafia. I know that the owner is part of the mafia because he said so to some English guy asking for a job, right outside my window. "I am the mafia". You can't make this shit up. He used to hold one man Portuguese- and Russian-techno parties in his flat until 5am, but the noise police eventually put a stop to that. What a shame.

I tolerated my drug addicted, bike thieving neighbour. He moved onto robbing shops when his girlfriend fell pregnant. But this did not seem to be a good career move for him because he ended up in jail 3 times, including while she had the baby. They had spectacular fights most nights. She punched their window. Blood was smeared all over the walls of our block for days. She did it a second time. Blood again. This time they did not replace the window and put up a black plastic bag all through the winter. Eventually she left and he ended up in jail and his flat was sold. 

But. A while ago G told me that someone had been pooing regularly on one of the stairwells in our block. There have recently been further developments regarding this... pooer of bad deeds. It turns out this mystery person is living on this flight of stairs. The flight of stairs is his. Guess what, he is also a druggie and a thief. 

The other day some people from the floor above had the gall to use his stairs and asked him what the hell he was doing there, apart from smoking crack. He told them he lived there. They told him they were calling the police. He told them if they did he would set fire to the building. They called the police. He set fire to the building. I saw the firetrucks, and the charred mess in the stairwell, but I only found out the full story about the guy this week.

I have an arsonist living in my stairwell. An arsonist who smokes crack and poos in my stairwell. Fan-fucking-tastic is all I can say.

This disturbs me. All that other stuff was peanuts. This guy can burn us all to death if he wants. I object.

I am going to say it again because I like the sound:  we really really really really should move. I have said it before. I have lived here three years and thought I was immune. But it is all getting a bit too mad.

Burn after reading.

I have had a few queries and misunderstandings as to certain aspects of my identity, ie. do I have a rack or a nut sac (did I just say that? No, it was just your dirty mind).

I didn't put any of those details on my profile. I actually had these rather idealistic reasons for that. I hate the way we live in a word of labels. I hate the way people have certain major categories and assumptions about us based purely on our sex, age, race, hair colour etc  before we even get a chance to express ourselves. I think I just wanted a chance to be read without people jumping to conclusions about what I would have to say.

That said, I have never hidden my sex, age or race on this blog, I just don't think these things have to be its defining characteristics.

This is sounding a bit like drivel, so I have decided for today and today only to reveal myself to you, dear internet. As of tomorrow this post in its current form shall be obliterated, never to be seen again. So here I am:

There you go. I admit it is not that clear from the photo that I am a GIRL, you are going to have to trust me on that one. But you can clearly see that I am as white as the driven snow (ok see-through as a freaking gecko) and that in my spare time I moonlight as a starfish.  Update 28-10-08: I am a llama.

What more could you possibly need to know?

Randomitus

All my creative juices were squeezed out of me after my screamplay. I am just going to jot down a few random ponderations today:

1) I have discovered one positive thing about having an operation FOR NO GOOD REASON WHATSOEVER!!!!  Ahem. Sorry. Focus. Yes. I make everyone's day in the gym! You should see the faces of the people who sit next to me on the rowing machine. Everybody gets to whack the machine onto level 10 and laugh at me tugging away on level -33, trying to rehabilitate my weedy arm. Even huge muscular men seem to get a kick out of whipping my ass on the rowing machine. Go figure.

2) I bitch about the weather in the UK all the time, because I am a miserable whingeing Saffa who cannot cope with such low temperatures. I have crap circulation ok? However, October has been the month with the best weather all year.

 Last week when I was writing my UNISA exam it was sunny and I was sitting outside the venue, basking like a lizard. I looked over to my right and saw a girl curled up in a miserable ball. She was wearing a bulky hoodie pullover, with the hood up, and a huge winter coat over that, with that hood up too, and she was wearing huge winter gloves, and she looked like she was in hell. And I was thinking, you poor dear girl, you are in the wrong country. Go home! You are dying of cold and winter hasn't even started yet! It gave me perspective as to my own suffering. It aint gonna stop me bitching about the cold though.

3) Is it wrong to laugh when a new University year has started and an extremely drunken girl has forgotten where she lives?  Mwahahaha.

Maybe so, but serves her right for screaming about it AT THE TOP OF HER LUNGS at 2am in the morning.

Just saying.

Smallish Brittin - unleashed.

Here it is, my screamplay called:

Location: Buckingnim Palace

Queen: Gordy, do you mind if I call you Gordy, would you like some tea?

Prime minister (played by Smeagol - ask Ches): Don't mind if I do. And some cake please, can't have tea without the cake, my pressssscious, I mean, your Highnesssssssss.

Queen: Indeed. So remind me why you and your Parliamentarians are here again?

PM: We have had a report from an Average Brittish Man that he overheard his neighbours plotting a dastardly attack upon the Palace. We are waiting for him to come in and tell us the full story.

Average BRITTiSH man (Will Smith): Yo yo yo Whats up homies, here I am, yor average Briddish man getting jiggy with it, nah nah nah nah nah nah nah nah.

Queen: What on earth is he saying? What is your name young man?

Will Smith: Will Smith, your majesty

Queen: Ah, William Smith, a fine BRITTiSH name indeed. But why do you speak so funny?

Will Smith: Wot, me? Oim just a regular Briddish lad, innit? Innit? Am I bovvered, my china plate?

PM: Oi, Queenie, wot the hell is 'e on about?

Queen: Dunno, guvner. Oi, guvner?

PM: Wot?

Queen: Why we speaking like commoners?

 

PM: Dunno. Just seemed appropriate.

In walks The Baddie. He has a towel on his head.

PM: Oh my god, look, it is a forriner wearing a turban! He must be the man come to kill us all!

Queen: Oh my, where is our trusty secret agent [Mr Bean] to seize him and save us all? He seems to have disappeared.

PM: you there, forriner! Freeze!

Baddie: What the crap are you on about, I'm not foreign, I'm from Wolverhampton!

Queen: Where on earth is that?

Baddie: Why you saying I'm forrin? Iz it becoz I iz black?

PM: you aren't black.

Baddie: All right then, a shade of unroasted coffee beans.

PM: you are wearing a turban.

Baddie: you numpty, it's a towel! I just came from the sauna. I heard something about a terrorist and came to see wot was going on!

Enter the tabloid dignitaries: We heard something about a baddie attacking the Palace, and thort, wot a good tabloid moment! So we have come to save the day!

Tabloid dignitary B: Look there is someone wearing a turban, he must be the baddie! Get him folks!

The tabloid dignitaries attack the Baddie. 

The emperor in his new clothes (David Beckham): Oi people we are BRITTiSH, we can't go around behaving like football hooligans!

PM: But David, some BRITTiSH people are football hooligans.

David: all right then. But we BRITTiSH always know what to do in a crisis situation, don't we, folks? 

Queen: Yes, yes indeed we do.

They all sit down and have Tea, closely followed by Cake.

PM: I wonder what happened to our superbuff secret-agent [Mr Bean] who was supposed to be on standby to save us all?

Queen: Isn't he the man who has been curled up asleep on that armchair the entire time?

THE END

I swear that is what it is like living here, every day. Even the part about Will Smith. Especially the part about Will Smith.

Smallish Brittin

Scrap the township scenario. I have decided to immerse myself in my current cultural surroundings and turn it into art:

- a screamplay by Po.

Location - Teeny tiny island north of the Sahara that is rarely seen by birds and other projectiles due to an ever-present raincloud.

CAST:

The Queen, played by: The Queen (there can be only one)

The Prime Minister, played by: Gordon Brown

Other important Parliamentarians, played by: lots of important white males whose names all sound the same. I can't remember.

The emperor in his new clothes, played by: David Beckham

tabloid dignitaries, played by: Jade, Jordon, Pete, Cheryl, and lots of other people famous for...for...for...for...for...for...for...for...for...for...for...for...for...for...

being in my screenplay.

The main protagonist, played by: Tea

His sidekick, played by: Cake

The superbuff superhero turned sideskick's kidekick who will kick everyone's ass, played by: Mr Bean

The baddie, played by: someone forrin, preferably wearing a turban.

AND, yor average hedge trimming, beer glugging, "only fools and horses" loving BRITTish man, played by: WILL SMITH

Tune in tomorrow for all the action in Buckingnim Palace.

There's no business like Po business

So I was editing my screenplay yesterday and...

I just had to say that, isn't it something we all want to say? And doesn't it sound just horribly pretentious? Everybody wants to write a screenplay, right?

Well no, not me. It is not something I have ever wanted to do. I love to watch movies. But I do not have a visual imagination, I think in words. 

I am in fact writing a screenplay against my own better judgment. I have been attending writing courses, and the third in the set happens to be a screenwriting course. When I told my classmates that I would NOT be joining them because the thought of trying to write a screenplay terrifies the tokoloshes out of me, they ambushed me with PEER PRESSURE and so I signed up. Who would have thought I could experience peer pressure from a group of people mostly older than my parents? 

I thought it would be good for me to put myself completely out of my comfort zone and try something very difficult and challenging and scary. The only problem is, well, it's scary.

I have come up with an idea for my screenplay. Apparently Alien was pitched as "Jaws in space." I am pitching mine as "the curious incident of the dog in the night time in a Pietermartizburg township, with a little sprinkling of Forrest Gump."

I have never been to a Pietermartizburg township. I have only been to Pietermaritzburg twice, both times to some boring museums. But this matters not right? I just have to convince my English classmates that my characters are realistic, not an actual person from a Pietermaritzburg township. I mean let's be realistic, this thing is never going to see the light of day. Gosh, what if one of my classmates has been to a Pietermaritzburg township?

I am struggling to come up with ideas for conflict. Apparently the main character must have lots of it. All I have come up with so far are the usual AIDS, poverty, school bullies, space aliens from outer space that take him into outer space in their spaceship from outer space, and dead parents. I need something new and... sparky. 

I need help. Can anyone come up with some better ideas for conflict? Preferably not involving any more aliens (from outer space), zombies, vampires or daemons. Space monkeys I may be able to stretch to. Space seamonkeys, now there is a fine idea.

Phone update.

This weekend I figured out how to remove the pictures on my phone.

Update. 19-10-08  9:00pm:

As I walked past the phone I saw this:

Later: 9:15pm:

9:27pm:

9:40pm:

9:55pm:

I think my phone is possessed.

Pooky was scared too.

(with apologies to Winston Churchill).