Category: Blog

The friends you make

After a conversation with one of her colleagues on solo-kids/kids-with-much-older-siblings, my mum called to ask if I remembered the imaginary friends of my toddlerhood.
The memories of the androgynous twins Boonza and Goonza are nebulous. I can’t quite picture them except for swatches of denim, shirts and short hair.
Except for their odd names (a career in branding eluded me even then), and faded features, I know nothing else of the twins. The years are long and many, and I’ve always been terrible at keeping in touch.
Do you remember your imaginary friends? Have any of them stuck around?

Who’s your dada?

For the down-low on Dadaism, get the wikipedia notes here.

This experimental ‘antiverse’ uses selected phrases from spam comments garnered from my foodblog.

Amison walked exactness
Kleenex sticking
tanned arm
his man
Belle began
her tongue
fed animals
Kill one knife sheath
very still
Harry who
chills down
tonight gone off
backup
very basement
your neck and bunnies
dark cord that eyes flicked
his smile noise grew and stared
told her you inside
but ignorance slid
Popeye imitation
slip house and were clay
crouched imps beware
neighbors breathing
slit eyes was hoping
religious experience
everything became water
ghoul began
cold waves
Damn quiet

The heavens will comply

Today is Slie’s last day at frayintermedia.

She joined us as an intern in 2007 and became a permanent staffer after serving her time. We fell into an easy friendship, jamming out spoken word in the smokeroom while she taught me bits of Xhosa and decided I was black enough.

She’s moving on up to a great position as a communications someone-or-other at an organisation in Pretoria. I have no doubt that she will step up and up and on and on. She has the determination and drive to succeed for herself, and for her child.

Her little boy’s second name is Xhosa for ‘rain’, and that’s what’s inspired my first rhyming poem in years.

I know a rainmaker;
a claimstaker,
a groundbreaker.

I know a deep thinker;
a float neversinker,
an eyeswideopen blinker.

I know a rainpath guider;
a light strider,
a feetforward glider.

I know a rainmaker.

And I don’t mind the drizzle.

(the post everyone has done/will do) Some year eh?

For sure.

For so many of us.

Newly-married people. N00b-Earthling-rearing people. Single people. Mingling people. Committed relationship people. Constructs-beyond-definition people.

Your 2008 was all about travel, epiphanies, discoveries, major milestones, messing-up, doh!-forehead-smack s, loves, losses, newness, learning, changing, life-getting, brain-using, creating, destroying, beginnings, endings, more opposites and juxtapositions etcetera etcetera.

And then there was, in no particular chronological order; burning foreigners, madness in Mumbai, load-shedding, horrible crimes and angry tears, bloodless coups and we get a new president and health minister, bail-outs, Zimbabwe had a mindfuck of an election(wait, there was an election?), they switched on the LHC and then it broke or something, the US got their audacity to hope, Somali pirates don’t say ‘Arrr’ apparently, Trevor’s getting married, will you COPE?, The Rand gets a drubbing, Bush ducked the now legend Size 10’s, Satan holidays in Gaza and civilians are incinerated in their beds, etcetera etcetera.

Some year eh?

I went and got married, and yeah, life tends to change just a tad when you do that.

Somewhere between fate and free-will, it happened. Beyond the febrile caricatures of what we thought it meant to love to the real deal of not being able to imagine a life without the grocery lists, the saturday morning errands, the socks on the floor, the waking up to your completion made manifest beside you; snoring and kicking your shins.

And it’s just so much to feel sometimes, yet it’s only just a scratch off of what is to come.

It’s fucking beautiful and I am so so so grateful to the Almighty for where I’m at.

Happy fat included.

Muharram Mubarak, Love and Prayers to all, especially the bereaved, the abused, the oppressed. Amandla.

“Wham, Bam, Is that it?”

419 scammers are just no fun anymore.

I’d like to blame this on the global down-turn or something I could throw shoes at, but it could just be that some people aren’t quite inspired enough anymore.

From: “MISS J.SMITH” jsmith_12008@yahoo.co.jp
To: jsmith_12008@yahoo.co.jp
Sent: Mon 29/12/08 19:21
Subject: Fwd: Urgent Calling For Help,
Hope this mail  meets you well, please permit me to introduce my self to you, my name is miss jean smith, the only daughter of Late Mr/mrs Williams Smith. I am seeking for your assistance to help me transfer the sum of ( $7,000,000.00 ) Seven  Million  United State of  American Dollars that I inherited from my late father to your  bank account . I am willing to offer you 15% of the total fund as a mode of compensation after the transfer for your time and effort. All the necessary documents concerning this fund is intact.
please  get back to me asap through my private email address (jsm_900@yahoo.co.jp) for more details concerning this fund and I will equally send you my photos so that you will see and know whom I am.
Waiting for your cooperation. Yours Faithfully, Jean.
—

from: Saaleha Bamjee-Mayet
to: jsm_900@yahoo.co.jp
date: 29 December 2008 23:58
subject: Re: Urgent Calling For Help

Dearest Jean,

Darling, I’m just not feeling you, you know?
What you’ve offered me here is like a glass of Coke left out in the sun all day; a flat and sad fly trap.
Where’s the fizz darling?
Where’s that hook, that x-factor, that A-Ha! moment that will pounce on my naiveté and make popcorn of my good sense?
I’m getting none of that with your, “I am seeking for your assistance to help me transfer the sum of ( $7,000,000.00 ) Seven Million United State of  American Dollars that I inherited from my late father to your  bank account”.
Where’s the drama sweetheart?
No plane crash in the Alps? What of the bloody coup which left you the sole heir of amassed ill-gotten fortunes? Tell me you found God in your omelette and your blackened soul must now make amends!
There’s no arc here baby. Nothing I can look forward to or mull over.
You gotta make me believe. You gotta make me feel like I’m worth something; that you’ve contacted me because you were searching for someone benevolent, kind-hearted, godly, who loves orphans and believes that heathens must be stoned to death slowly.
What I’m really saying is that you’ve got to come to market with something a little less insipid.
How can this be an ‘urgent calling for help” when there’s really no sense of “now!” in it?
Reading this made me feel like I just got laid by Keanu Reeves’ equally wooden clone; a most unsatisfactory one minute I can never redeem.

Warmest regards,

Saaleha