The ‘D’ word

What’s the deal with women and dieting!

It frustrates me sometimes. You see I share an office with several humans of the female persuasion and witness their strange obsession with ritualistic dieting almost on a daily basis.

You see, I’m the kind of guy that likes to snack while I work. Slowly munching on a choc chip cookie or nibbling on some murku (crunchy deep fried Indian snack made with chickpea flour) while working allows me to focus for longer periods of time and avoid being distracted by the internet or mindless background office chatter. I’m also the kind of guy that doesn’t like to eat alone. Eating isn’t just the process of shoving food down ones throat to meet energetic needs (although one would get this picture from reading my thesis…). For me it is a positive stimulus, an explosion of flavours and textures that tickles my senses and changes my mindset and mood depending on what it is that I’m eating. If something tastes great I feel good on a number of levels and wish to share this same experience with the people around me. This has transformed eating into a bit of a social activity in my life. Needless to say, when I snack, I always offer everyone.

90% of the time the response or implied response from most of my female office mates is ‘NO! -that will make me fat/-keep me from getting thin’ (the other 10% ‘Yes’ reply is reserved for those occasions when I happen to be offering chocolate). I feel that ritualistic dieting completely destroys the wonderful aspect of life that is eating.

I had a discussion about dieting with a mate the other day. My argument was that it is pointless dieting if fate has already decided if you are going to be fat or not… just go with the flow and you’ll be happiest. He countered by saying that fate (if you believe in it) in that case would already have decided who will diet and who will not. To which I responded ‘…um…yeah…’.

I still feel a certain amount of pity for people on diets and to make myself feel better I have come up with the perfect solution.

(In my best Verimark-man voice)

“No longer will dieters ever have to be deprived of the joy of eating. Ladies around the world and gentlemen that use skin products I give you the ‘Poopchute actuator 5000’ (Figure 1).”

Figure 1: The PA5000 Miracle diet cure is an implanted

duct made from biodegradable PVC.

“With the PA5000 you can eat as much as you like and not gain weight! Simply flick a switch to divert unwanted food away from your digestive system at the oesopagus. You will chew, taste, feel and even swallow your meal in the normal way but all of the food will go right through to your anus without being absorbed in between.”

“If you decide to eat some broccoli after those 8 cheeseburgers all you have to do is flick the switch again and your body will return to normal and absorb all of natural goodness of the broccoli while simply letting the cheeseburger pass through. You may ask yourself ‘what about all of the wasted food?’. Do I have some great news for you!!! Call now and you will receive a free Faecapelletinator 5000! You can use the FP5000 to turn the cheeseburgers into handy 2cm cubed pellets which you can feed to your cat or some poor people. They are perfectly hygienic and packed with carbs and calories”

Phone now toll free on 0800 PA5000.

My Election Post

So everyone is sharing their election experiences or writing about the state of SA post elections and even putting in their two cents worth on Zuma and his Satan spawn cronies...

Here are my two cents worth.

The day before Election day!
I woke up very up-beat and positive (mostly because I would be getting Wednesday off, this almost never happens). I packed my things and headed home to Greytown (ca. 70km from where I study) after a day working on my thesis. On the way home I realised that my Cellular phone had been left behind, traffic was so bad that I decided I could do without it for a day. Just as we were getting near Greytown my little brother asked me if I have my ID book... CRAP CRAP CRAP!!! It was still in PMB! Screw it I refused to go back and get it. maybe they will let me vote with my passport which is in Greytown.

Election Day!
It was a freezing cold night, I had to use a blanket and duvet for the first time this year. The freakishly cold weather a sign of colder darker days ahead (politically speaking). Is this an omen? Will my voting be in vain? Like a small rebellion force crushed under the massively dominant and well equipped Galactic Empire.
Wait, maybe there is hope, let us not forget that the Rebellion in Star Wars came out on top against all the odds! A few local heros will undoubtably rise up and make a difference...
...ummm...
...no we are all equal in a democracy... even the local heroes get just one vote.

Perhaps the cold spell was a just sign of a looming winter.

So I woke up early and headed out to the polling station with my Brother-in-law. The Queue wasn't too long, 30 to 45 mins at the most. I got halfway down the queue before an official came by to check everyones ID book. He saw my passport and said he would query if I could vote with it. 3/4 of the way through the queue he returns to me and says 'bugger off you idiot, you can't vote with a passport...' or at least that's what he meant. So I organised to get my ID book down from PMB (it's a long complicated story...) and would be able to vote when it arrived in the evening.
I eventually cast my vote and felt that after all I had been through, I should at least make my X as big and bold as possible....It was huge!!! filled the whole slot (15mm by 20mm). It made me feel that much better. Hey at least my second visit to the voting station was greeted by a distinct lack of queue.

So on to Zuma and his uneducated posse.

As things stand, we are looking at ANC 64%, DA 18% and COPE 9%. It looks to be an ANC landslide once again. I've decided to try take a positive view on the direction of political affairs (unlike the doomsday 'Zimbabwe all over again' predictions made by others).

I think that ALL politicians are corrupt pieces of lion faecal matter (lion poo is apparently the worst kind...). The only difference is between those that have been caught red handed and the ones that havn't.
Zuma has (in my opinion) already been caught out. Okay, I admit, flaws and chinks in various processes have ended up in him becoming the president of the Republic of South Africa as opposed to him wearing an orange overall with numbers on it in a damp cell near Kokstad (Geez! being positive can be difficult sometimes...).
My point here is (take a deep breath), our new leader has been accused of so much that he has no choice but to take a morally correct stance in his position. He has to proove to South Africans that he deserves to have been let off the hook by the NPA. Everyone is keeping such a close eye on him from previous experience, that he will be crucified if he steps out of line just once.
Can we say that we know where we stad with Zuma? He is easy to read, predictable as hell and more than likely will be less of a wienee than Thabo. This man isn't intelligent enough to be evil. He has experienced poverty like no other man in the hotseat before him. I'd like to think that he will reach out to those hundreds of thousands of citizens that live in a 3rd world SA.

Perhaps SA needed Zuma. A simple leader for simple people...

Let me end off by saying that I don't respect Jacob Zuma. I am, however, willing to give him a chance to earn my respect. A chance that I feel we are all obligated to give to any human being. I will most certanily have more to say about Jacob Zuma in the future (let's hope that most of it will be positive).

Idiots.

The joys of a clueless person stumbling about his pointless life...

heheheeee

I find this incredibly funny for some reason... the longer I look at it the funnier it gets. There is just so much to appreciate here. That or I'm feeling particularly weird today (in which case I apologise for wasting your time).

Joy from Arb

Today I had writer's block. I was working so well too. I put some Enya on and just went for it.

All of a sudden I found myself retyping the same sentence 30 times over just looking for the best wording. It was 15:00 when I started correcting this sentence I looked at the time when I was finally done with it and it was 15:30!!!

I find myself in a strange situation here. I'm overdue handing in my thesis so I feel the need to sit at my desk and work no matter what the costs. Yet there comes a point when one stops accomplishing anything. You just sit there and check e-mail over and over again. I've even looked through the email titles in my Gmail spam folder on one occasion (I was quite disgusted, I'll not be doing that again in a hurry). In any case every time I have a writers block I find myself doing some mindless activity without even realising.

Todays mindless activity was making authentic fart noises with my mouth and hands to the tune of Enya's Orinoco Flow. It was fun (and if I might say so, I thought I was quite good at it...where's that microphone when you need it?). It's a good thing everyone else in the office is away on vac. I know I would be rather concerned if I heard one of my office mates farting to the beat of Orinoco flow.

Am I going crazy or is it common for people to do weird stuff when they have writer's block?
According to Wiki, writer's block can be associated with Bipolar disorder, mania, brain tumours, hypergraphia (the need to write non stop...) and depression. GEEZ!

Sail away
sail away
sail away...

Excerpt from my book

Despite what some may think, I am taking this book business rather seriously. The story is coming along quite nicely in fact. Okay it does need tightening up and there are loads of places where I just have 'fill in more details on the history between William and Ms Jane's dog...'.

All in good time I guess.

Okay I don't want to give too much away but Luke is a biology teacher for the grade eight class at Acorn Valley High. Teaching is really just a filler for him, he leads a much more sinister life after school hours. Let's just say some superhuman (but not impressively so) powers come into the picture... I'll leaving you with this excerpt.

‘Okay class, I’ve marked your tests from last week. The class average is 23 percent. It’s a bit lower than the previous one because most of you had no idea how pancreatic enzymes affect blood sugar levels in people with type two diabetes…’. Most of the students frown directly at their teacher or mutter something inaudible as he walks past after distributing scripts. All of their eyes go dark, almost black; the intense stares send a shiver down Luke’s spine. ‘Do I have to go through with this every time I return one of their tests’ he thinks?

A bell rings and the sound of hundreds of chairs simultaneously being dragged backwards on hard wood floors and student chattering fills the air throughout the school. A dark haired boy wearing an expression of frustration stops in front of Luke and points a pencil at his forehead ‘AVADA KEDAVRA!’ he shouts. Luke and the dark haired boy stand and stare at each other in silence for a few seconds before the boy starts backing away to the door with a slightly confused and disappointed expression on his face. He turns and runs off.