We have finally run out of words

I was cooking up something in the kitchen the other day while listening to background MTV. Well to be honest, someone else was watching MTV while I was cooking. The reason I don’t want to say that I was listening to MTV is because these days it’s quite an embarrassing place to be caught channel surfing. Think about it, most of the music is complete and utter rubbish. Advertisements make up around 50% of the broadcast content (you know the channel content is bad when you actually look forward to the advertisements… like SABC). As for moral values… well you can throw those out the window what with Beyonce constantly filling the screen with her… junk. I’m drifting; the point of this post is modern pop music.

Back to the kitchen...

There I was, innocently cooking a meal when I heard this terrible groaning noise accompanied by loads of uncoordinated bass tracks (seemingly put together by a ravenous three year old slamming his fists onto a jelly tot encrusted keyboard hooked up to cheap electro composing software…or Justin Timberland). I HAD to investigate, so I bravely left my meal prep to sneak a peek at the screen. Who could possibly make such an awful din (only worthy of an MTV line up)?

Well, the answer believe it or not, was Janet Jackson. I thought the groaning was perhaps a form of tribute to her late brother, you know, a sorrowful and mourning sister expressing her grief through the medium of agonizing vocals… I peeked for a few seconds longer to try making sense of the whole thing from the music video.

This was a very bad idea.

Mine eyes were greeted by a pair of bodies writhing against a wall. One Janet Jackson, the other, some scantily clad sweaty black dude…and no they weren’t mourning. This ‘music video’ was actually just a sex scene and the lyrics to the ‘song’ were basically Janet having an orgasm for four and a half minutes. What was the reason for this? All I could do was assume that the music industry had finally written and made several cover versions of every possible combination of words and lyrics for commercial gain. The options currently available to song writers at the moment:

1. Make up words (Rihanna and Nelly Furtado have taken this path)

2. Distort existing words so much that peoplebarely recognise them (Shakira and Lady Gaga seem to have this method down)

3. Just make random noises with your vocal chords to accompany music (Janet Jackson, above)

4. Distract viewers so much with raunchy music videos they won’t even realise your lyrics and music are complete shite (Pussycat Dolls and Madonna… just make me want to barf, it’s a miracle these tracks even get aired on the radio)

It seems as though song writers around the world have been hit by this phenomenon. There are no current tracks that appeal to me. None, nada, zilch… gone are the days of meaningful, emotive and moral music. A small part of me died as I copy/pasted the final track from my ‘New Music’ folder into the ‘Oldies’ folder.

I think 'American Pie' would be an apt song to describe days like this (by Don McLean not Madonna's treacherous cover version)

Most embarrassing moments ever part one: The nose that kept running

We all go through with these in our lives, the brief embarrassing moments experienced wherein an individual just wished that it could shrivel up into nothingness out of sheer society witnessed stupidity. I was in two thoughts about blogging about my most embarrassing moments ever. After some reflection, I came to the deduction that these happened sufficiently long ago enough for me to write about them without feeling like a complete artard. I’m not that same guy any more (or at least I hope I’m not…).

The first ever moment of embarrassment I can recall clearly in my life occurred way back when I was still in primary school (grade 3 or 4 or around the period of 1993-1994). Us Muslim kids had double school, we attended regular classes in the mornings and then went off to madressa (private Islamic education) in the afternoons. Our madressa group was not huge, 20-30 kids in all, and as a result we all worked in the same room under one or two teachers regardless of grade.

Let me get back to my story… On this particular day once upon a time, I was just coming over with the flu. Not keen to hear excuses, my parents sent me of to madressa armed with a solitary handkerchief. I knew that I had to endure the 2 hour class with a runny nose and hoped all would be well. Alas, the dripping nares ceased to desist, just halfway into our class and my handkerchief was soaked with… well you know… and I still had another HOUR to go!!!

What was I going to do!? If I had a long sleeved jersey, I could always use the sleeves and if I wasn’t so scared of the teacher I could have just gone to the bathroom and taken a bunch of loo paper to do the job instead. I didn’t do any of those things, my solution at the time was probably the best compromise I could come up with under the circumstances. I decided to twist the opposite corners of my handkerchief into nose plugs and stuff each into an offending nostril to hold back the downpour of snot.

GENUIS!

No…not quite… I quickly found out that my solution was NOT a long term one. My nose quickly filled with snot and the stuff was now dribbling back down my throat and making it really difficult to breath. I had to do something! ‘Just go and ask permission to go to the toilet Ebrahim!’ I kept telling myself but I just couldn’t bear walking up in front of the class with my makeshift nose plugs.

I HAD TO DO SOMETHING!!!

What happened next was something I had done out of desperation, despair and instinct (…all mixed together in puke coloured bowl). I pulled out the nose plugs, stuck them in my mouth and stucked them dry before quickly putting them back into my nose to absorb more of the liquidy ooze. By repeating the process over and over again I found out that I could keep up with the downpour and even use my nose to breath whilst sucking the plugs dry. AWESOME!

I carried on with my lesson as per usual after that, the whole nose siphon process became instinctual and all was well. Or so I thought till I heard some giggling coming from the popular girls seated in the front corner of the classroom. I glanced up from my work to see that they were looking in my direction. Not fazed at all, I turned around thinking that the source of their amusement came from behind me… and sure enough, there was a kid passed out and sleeping on his desk back there. I too found this amusing and started giggling at the sleeping kid all the while turning to look at him before glancing back at the popular girls sharing in their fun. The doodle below illustrates the situation quite nicely I think…

Their little giggles had now turned onto what looked liked lung popping efforts to contain massive outbursts of laughter. The mood was quite contagious and I too ended up in this state (unaware that throughout the ordeal I was continually siphoning out my nose with a makeshift nose-plug-snot sponge…). A little while later the sleeping kid woke up and moved away. Sensing that this was the end of our much enjoyed amusement, I calmed myself down and continued my work.

‘Wait a second’ I thought why haven’t the popular girls stopped laughing?

Bing! (a light went on).

It was ME!!! AAARGH!!!! I clenched my eyelids as tightly as I could before curling over onto my desk and hiding my face in my arms. What an idiot I must have looked laughing; sharing and making eye contact with the popular girls in the joke that I was the subject of…

…Sigh…

My underrated friend, Mr Curiosity

They say curiosity killed the cat. I disagree. In my younger years I lived my life following a path set out by Mr Curiosity himself. This is a post about a few of the situations I willingly put myself into as a pre-teen.

We are all guilty of the thought process “They told us not to…so we did” the first instance I recall fits into this category. I was around 7 years old and playing in the back yard of my dads’ store. There was a wild bee-hive back there then and I thought I could get some honey from it. I already knew that bees stung (thanks to a prank pulled by my older brother) but in my cocky state of mind thought I could kick the hive, leg it to safety, come back later and eat the delicious honey.

This is what actually happened.

I kicked the bee hive, ran as fast as my chubby legs could take me (…not faster than a bee…) towards the door getting stung several times on my face and ears on the way. I got to the door to find that it was closed, a few seconds delay to open the door cost me a few stings but I got inside slammed the door behind me and slumped onto the floor (heart rate ± 250 bpm) before the whole cry and run to dad procession. After all that I didn’t bother going back for the honey.

The next two situations I recollect are examples of how curiosity can have less than spectacular outcomes. Ever wondered what was inside a battery? How did that little cell make stuff move and light up? One quiet corner, an AA battery and bread knife was all it took for me to learn that the insides of batteries are indeed very boring. It was the same with deodorant. The can clearly stated:

“DANGER! DO NOT PUNCTURE, EVEN WHEN EMPTY!”

So there I was, knife in one hand, empty deo-can in the other. I brought the two together repeatedly in a less than safe stabbing action at arms length whilst wincing and peering through as narrow a gap as my quivering eyelids would allow me to look between. My ass cheeks clenched and my body rebounded as I dropped the can after finally piercing through the metal. All that building up… and nothing happened, NADA! I was relieved and annoyed at the same time to be honest.

The last story is as a direct result of the following equation:

Firecrackers + x = (Curiosity)²

Where ‘x’ is basically anything, anywhere, anytime…

This equation is applicable to all boys between 6 and 15 years old and is often paired with the following reaction:

Firecrackers + x => y

Where ‘y’ entails having an extra pair of undies nearby and the probability of ‘y’ occurring is directly proportional to the length of the fuse…

Amongst the hundreds of crazy things I did with fireworks, this is the one that stood out most (I’ll have to post specifically on this topic at some point in time, so many stories…).

Do you remember tom thumbs?

These little crackers hardly even made a pop. They did have something going for them though. You see I figured out that there was always some residual gunpowder left in the case after a pop. You could light this and get a teeny weeny split second flash followed by a puff of smoke…. OR, you could save up all the dead tom-thumb cases till you have a tupperware full, empty all the powder onto the floor in a big heap with a line of narrow powder leading to the big heap to act as a fuse (like in Tom and Jerry…).

The plan was:

Light the trail fuse

Run inside the house

Look out the window

Observe spectacular display of pyrotechnics from safety

What happened:

Light the trail fuse

Realise that it’s WAY to short given the reaction speed

Close eyes

‘y’

Extinguish eyebrows

Change undies

In the end I can honestly say that curiosity often landed up entertaining the cat, hurting the cat, boring the cat to death (figuratively speaking) and sometimes giving the cat an eye popping adrenalin rush. After all I’m still alive and in retrospect, curiosity induced situations from yesteryear have contributed more towards my life than my death. I’d still kill the cat for kicks though (or at most scare the number 2 out of it).

May day juice blog!

I was surprised and shocked when I found out that all of my favourite fruit juices are basically composed of apples, pears, grapes and oranges in different proportions with a bit of colourant to make them look like the fruits they are supposed to represent. The Juice Co. then slap a ‘100% fruit’ sticker on the bottle and hey presto, us innocent consumers are conned into thinking that we are drinking Heavens Ambrosia but instead are sucking down orange peel and pear seed juice.
If you want to enjoy real fruit juice these days you have to buy the fresh fruit you desire. Then you have to buy a juicing device (preferably electric), mushing the fruit up with a big spoon just doesn’t work. You now need to prepare the fruit for juicing (any seeds or unwashed pieces larger than a peanut will ruin your juicing machine…
After the prejuice prep, you start getting excited.
‘Oh yeah baby, not long now. I’m not going to drink anything else till my juice is ready. Oh yeah!’
(do a little dance in the middle of the kitchen)
‘No stupid juice company is going to beat my home-made juice, oh yeah!’

You turn the juicing machine on, it wakes up all the neighbours and leaves you partially deaf.
‘No worries. My own juice, oh yeah!’

You then realize that the 2 kg bag of imported star fruit you bought only makes half a glass of juice.
‘oh…..yeah…a…whole…125…ml…’ (sobs)

‘Never mind, I’ll just fill the rest of the glass up with ice so it’ll look like a full glass and it’ll be oh so cold. It’s sure to beat that commercial crap hands down’

So 3 hours after you decided to make your own juice (and R150 out of pocket), the moment of truth arrives. You sit down on the couch, put your feet up, put the TV on, lean back and finally, slooowy reach for the 100% genuine wonder juice you created.

Teeny sip ‘yum’
Bigger sip ‘hmmm…’
SLURP! ‘…needs sugar’

(5 teaspoons of sugar later)

‘Totally worth it, oh yeah!’

And I’ve never made my own fruit juice since…