Skinning him with newspaper

…after a few skins to get him crispy I shape his head details and gloves, then start with the plastering and final shaping.

Gotta rant sometimes you know

Like yesterday’s diatribes.

But isn’t it weird how the moments of the days of our lives twist and turn like the weather? Well, if you’re a volatile idealist and free-spirited soul like this ranter is, that’s how the cookie crumbles. But the seasons change, summer’s in full-swing here, the days are hot and we get our regular afternoon highveld rainshowers and for me it feels like the days are nested within themselves as in one unbroken continuum, like life is just one big day, like today: huge intermittent stresses with PHP-coding and databases not working earlier on, then out and about for food and resources (I get most of my art materials for free, other people’s junk) then I’m kicking off afternoon art classes for a few sweet dearies in my neighbourhood who are now all fired up about starting to paint, fall asleep for an hour, then sorting out a client’s website database hassle in the mid-evening (almost had a minor nervous breakdown tonight doing that) then suddenly it all comes right and I am in love with the planet again.

So later tonight I lose myself in paper-mache sculpting a boxing dog amongst other odds and sods, that will roll on until about sunrise and when you wake up to go off to work I’ll be climbing onto the bed for a brief doss (don’t sleep much, and even then, lightly) and tomorrow it’ll be a mix of digital and analogue and so the show goes on.

A major stress slaughtered: my client’s website’s database is now working and the rest is basically just a walk in the park (Murphy’s Law permitting) and that’s how it should be - PLUS I’ve recovered from the solo Valentine’s Day ordeal (seeing all the kids in the class pic below was a mind-blower) and my head finds itself back in the here and now. Phew. Mood swings aside, I didn’t mean to offend anyone re: yesterday but that’s how it goes. Some things just cannot be bottled up.

It just freaked me out

I don’t know whether it was the hangover from last night (I got a sudden impulse to walk four kilometers to a pub at about nine yesterday evening and dived into a festive Olde Hag’s Valentine’s Eve with live pub bands, happy folks, etc. BUT I just had an epiphany over the pic in the post below (and a few others I saw on Fifi’s FB page, too). Girls seem to be better at preserving childhood memories than us guys (well, I told you that I lost every single thing that I owned in Finland a few years back over a faulty female decision… photo-albums, personal effects, working equipment, art collection, everything). It was material erasure. You are left with nothing in a foreign country because of a poor life decision and the family of your lover betrays you deeply, against said lover’s promises to the opposite. Promises. You live in railway stations and parks and have not a friend in the land, you are alone… you try handling that for at least two months. And I’ll call you a man.

I’m a low-status person. My mind lives and operates in the abstract so in a sense I am almost “mild autistic” but on the other hand I can be very extroverted and outgoing. But all that regular folks treasure and value, like mortgage bonds, car installments, a corporate job working for and with a bunch of programmable robots and idiots, I don’t. I detest that. So the chances are probably that I hate you, maybe I’m a tad jealous of you too, but I want not for all that stuff that you think will fly you to your Shang-ri-la. Because it’s all false high-status. I’ve seen how “high-status” men shrivel like prunes or shrink into their seats when you assert something to them with an air of complete, unpretentious naturalness and modesty, and that assertion is invariably something of an abstract or metaphorical nature. It might just be an observation or a silly little theory, something with a twist of the philosophical behind it, but “high-statusers” have fragile egos that are easily dented by the natural intellectual, irrespective of how the intellectual appears. No. The shoddier or weirder you appear (and I look both, bad) the more you’ll shake “high-statuser” and the more these A-holes will resent you. The high-statuser spends his life following the herd up the ladder. I am the snake, the serpent in this game.

They might even hate you enough to put a hit on you. Have you ever had people put a hit on you? I have. At least twice that I know of. But I’m still here to tell the tale, and how I handled both those hits makes me feel like a winner, regardless of fucking “high-status”. They’re fucking wankers man. It’s just a pity that women fall for them and their bank accounts because in the old days it was somewhat different, the woman would, through her steadfast support, etc. step in from the ground floor and endure the ride to success with the man, nowadays they want instant success and god help you should you falter or fall because the woman will leave you in an instant. Finding a woman with loyalty is like finding a gem. But most men today are weak fuck ups anyway so it kind of balances out nicely.

My class photograph, Std 3, 1969 (compliments Fifi, from her FB page)

 

We’re an average age of ten years old, all of us, in this pic. That’s me, back row, 4th left. Left of me is Andrew, right of me is Phillip (we three louts) who became my best pal two years later. Far right in the second last row is Sebastian who was the fastest runner in our high school much later. Sebastian and I used to steal petrol out motorcars every Friday night in Std 9 because Lawrence owned a car and if you wanted to ride, you supplied the petrol. I was no mean sportsman at school but when Sabs and I were pinching petrol and we got a cop alert, I could keep up with him sprinting to the getaway car with half-full or whatever gerry-can in hand. We travelled the whole South Coast and Transkei in a Fiat 850, hunting for waves, four-up in this tiny car including surfboards, bags and food. But back to the pic: Fifi is on the far left in row second to front. Always the class honey pie and cute as hell, Fifi also got the leading role for the school play which featured a painted castle as backdrop. Can’t remember the name of the play but the theme song went, “Open up the shutters let the sun come through, flowers in the garden waiting for you, pull back the curtains…” Something like that. These are all honey pies and good guys, no idiots in our school (except I became one later, much later) but if you wanted to know which little girl really steals my heart, thinking back now, it is Linda (tall, just behind teacher to right) she is what I consider to be utterly utterly beautiful not only in looks, but in ways. She was tallish, grey-blue eyed with soft, fluttering eyelashes like a young mare, with an ever-so-slight gap between the front teeth, demure, shy, languid, dimpled, and just so goddamned gorgeous, feminine, a real little lady but not prude, I remember she’d give off shy little giggles every now and then, and she hung out with a shorter friend (can’t remember her name) and would cup her hand over her shorter friend’s ear and whisper something to her, you know, when little girls like to confide in their pals about, say, a little boy – and giggle. You, Linda; you were other-worldly to this hopeless romantic, come to think of it you were breath-taking, I get all weepy thinking of you. You, Linda, should have been my Valentine’s last night. Perhaps in another life. So now you know my tastes in women. I have had a lump in my throat and watery eyes all evening from just looking at this photo. Moving. Utterly, utterly shaking, stirring to the soul. It is at moments like these that I feel caught up in the eternal moment, when the moment just freezes and feels like an eternity. And Love is the one necessary constituent for these moments of lucidity to happen. There MUST be love. My god, this life is beautiful! I just wish I could share it with someone worth sharing it with. Like a Linda.

What awesome days! What beautiful people. Look at the little girl with the bandage on her arm and plaster on her knee, bless her!

We schooled in Westville, Durban, and this era-1969 was when apartheid was rock ‘n rolling along and three men were about to supposedly land on the moon and most of our families had black domestic servants. Artie (Athalia) was our maid and like my second mother and her son Kenneth shared the same bed with me for eight years. Little black kid! – in the height of apartheid? His English was better than his Zulu and my Zulu was almost on a par with my home language English. I could read and speak and understand Latin properly at age fourteen, I’d read 150-page full-on Latin books, borrowed from my grandfather… Kenneth was younger than me and hadn’t started school yet but when he did he went off to Kwa-Mashu and I never saw him again and this broke my heart. At eleven years of age and a best friend disappears, it hurts. Even if he was black. So all you fucking idiots who scream Marwinsing WAYCISS go FUCK yourselves you cunts, go fuck yourselves… because you know nothing… about me. I am an enigma. And I like it like that. A black that I hate I will call a kaffir to his face and a white that I hate I will call a cunt to his face and that’s how it works here.

Boxing dog – adding the meat… (newspaper and wrapping tape)

What hiz listenin’ to RIGHT NOW

Melissa - Mercyful Fate: an underrated Danish band from the 80s who’ve since split but who still (individually) produce magnificent allegories in good ol’ fashioned acoustic metal… you go boyz! Listen… (and weez all had a good nite @ Ol’ Hagz and my left foot had a Jolly Good Time too!) Secret p/w: King Diamond (ex-Mercyful Fate) Abigail: do yourselves a favour and… listen…!)

Boxing dog workings

My first decent-sized paper-mache piece, early in-progress pics. Initial wireframe. We’ll see what comes out of this. In pic 1, mid-left hand side you’ll catch a glimpse of basically what I wish to render/re-create. Boxing dog. Amen Bubu a.k.a. Bosco, He of the finest that ever lived! (but right now it’s Saturday night which means union rules down tools itz… Ol’ Hags wif Robz ‘n krew – bye!)

Interesting things happening on the home front

My left foot, coming right from a week ago (thought it extremely important you know this) - thanks to ice-packs!

“Eat buggers eat!” (‘coz you never know where your next meal’s gonna come from but it always does… innit?)

First Vodacom, now Cell-C have gone rubbish

I have a theory, and I call it The Theory of Perpetual Consumer Demand. It's not original, but I've got my own version of it wrought from The School of Hard Knocks. Some of the more cognizant and percipient among us will notice that large companies seem to keep their customers in a permanent state of need of service, i.e: our demands for economic (mega-capitalist) reasons are never quite fulfilled. One man who is a master at deploying this economic strategy in South Africa is one Alan Knott-Craig, former CEO of Vodacom and now CEO of Cell-C. I closed my Vodacom internet airtime account because of this man. Vodacom were charging exorbitant rates and delivering poor signal quality and their branch staff were useless, Affirmative-Action types. So I moved my account to Cell-C and immediately noticed a pick up in service, their signal quality was strangely enough more consistent, and I was generally happier with Cell-C.

Recently Alan Knott-Craig moved over to Cell-C and coincidently enough it seems my signal quality has gotten poorer, I'm getting frequent signal drop-offs and spend half my time on the computer logging my internet dongle on and off to try catch signal. I think Alan Knott-Craig is a curse to the South African consumer, if you search his name and Vodacom on this blog you'll find a few articles excoriating this man. They milk you, these corporate big-wigs, and you get nothing back of value in return.

The Saga of Karbuncus (Part IV)