Of babies and babies

This morning on the train I opened Virginia Woolf's Complete Shorter Fiction and this picture fell out.



I wonder who the kid is and whether he grew out of the mole in the centre of his bald head.

In the spirit of babies, the sister told me this morning that she felt Curtis-the-Fetus move. They find out next week if it's a boy or a girl. The last time I saw him he looked like this:



You can see the family resemblance.

Play misty for me

I woke up this morning to find the entire city shrouded in mist. Where the mountain usually is there is just this wall of white. By the time I got to work it was lifting a little, and the tiny peaks of Devil's Peak and the cable station were visible.

It was ethereal.

Oh shit

Graeme Smith has been rushed to hospital with a possible finger break. As if the team needed any other disadvantages.

Dear Universe...

There is only ONE space required after every full stop.

Please make the idiots who write to me stop screwing with my formatting.

Thank you

love

Liz

PATTOTE - Better living through grammar nazis.

Habitat for Humanity

This Saturday I'm going to help put a roof on a house. I'm very excited, and refuse to be afraid of heights for a good cause.

Then for the Two Oceans marathon I'm going to be one of the Green Teams, giving out water and encouragement to runners.

I'll probably kill myself. Heh.

Shampoo will make you happy

I'm quite fond of the new Sunsilk shampoo ads. You know the one where some contractors put a hole through the bathroom mirror, giving the man and the women who live opposite each other a nice fright. And then, in true romcom fashion they start getting to know each other, they're picking out each other's clothes and then the mirror is replaced - just as he's about to bring her a bunch of flowers.

I would very much like to see a movie based on this advert. Of course I'd also like to see a movie based on the music video for Daniel Powter's Bad Day. I'm a sucker for a schloopy movie, particularly if it stars Mark Ruffalo.

The only problem with romantic comedies is that they all start running together and the plotlines get all mixed up. So instead of the motherless boy setting his father up on a radio show to find a new wife, he finds the potential new wife lying in a coma in a nearby hospital after she repeatedly haunts his apartment. That was a pretty good movie - oh wait.

PATTOTE - Better living through weekly conditioning.

Soapie memories

There was a time (although it may be staunchly denied) that my family sat down very faithfully everyday and watched Santa Barbara and Rustelose Jare (as The Young and the Restless was called in the days of simulcast). I don't know if it was a lack of channels or a predisposition for contrived drama that prompted us to do it, but between 5 and 6, that's where we were.

Interestingly, I mostly remember watching it with my Dad. The Father and I companiably sat through Santa Barbara, which was bizarre and weird and pretty bloody funny. With all seriousness we'd curse Kelly to the nearest diamond mine, hoping against hope that this time she would stay dead. We'd laugh at Gina, of Mrs Capwell's Cookie's fame, who's lighthearted evil deeds were nothing in comparison to the big honcho himself - CC Capwell. But our favouritest character was the much maligned, but ever redeemable, Mason Capwell. The red-headed stepchild loved only by his mama. I missed one all important episode after Mason's long sought love Mary died, felled by a trapdoor in the roof that blew over in a strong wind. The Father (who gets dewy at the end of Sleepless in Seattle) caught me up about the funeral: "It was very nice. But the best part was when CC told Mason that he loved him and was sorry for his loss."

After Santa B, it was The Young and Restless, which I fear we watched just for Jack's exploits and because it filled up the 20 minutes to supper at 6. I was always up and down to fix the radio for proper reception so that we could get the simulcast English. I don't even remember what it was about mostly, except that the same whiny characters are present during its new timeslot on E.

Now I've moved my penchant for investing too much time in imaginary characters (TM Marissa) to Isidingo. I will not rest until Lee and Rajesh get back together. And now that it's come to light that Barker has been secretly hiding Lee's presumably dead mother in a mental institution, I seriously can't afford to miss an episode...

PATTOTE - Better living through imaginary people.

Mmmm, salticrax

News24 ran this column today about dodgy words and the South Africans that use them. I've long wondered about what kind of a person calls a Christian bookshop chain "Cum Books".

Hit list

I'm enjoying this song at the moment. It's from the One Tree Hill soundtrack, which I've never seen, but the album rocks.

Lightyears Away by Mozella

It's almost like you had it planned
It's like you smiled and shook my hand and said
"Hey, I'm about to screw you over big time"
And what was I supposed to do?
I was stuck in between you and hard place
We won't talk about the hard place

But I don't blame you anymore
That's too much pain to store
It left me half dead
Inside my head
And boy, looking back I see
I'm not the girl I used to be
When I lost my mind
It saved my life

It's how you wanted it to be
It's like you played a joke on me
And I lost a friend
In the end
And I think that I cried for days
But now that seems light years away
And I'm never going back
To who I was

Cause I don't blame you anymore
That's too much pain to store
It left me half dead
Inside my head
And boy, looking back I see
I'm not the girl I used to be
When I lost my mind
It saved my life

I think that I cried for days
But now that seems light years away
And I'm never going back
To who I was

Cause I don't blame you anymore
That's too much pain to store
It left me half dead
Inside my head
And boy, looking back I see
I'm not the girl I used to be
When I lost my mind
It saved my life

That life seems like light years away
Light years away
And that life seems like light years away
Light years away

PATTOTE - better living through mopey lyrics

This is what I crave

Litnet (thank you, Marissa, for pointing me in this website's direction) has published an amazing interview with Latin American writer Carlos Fuentes.

Two things stand out for me in this interview:

1) He highlights the idea that the west owes Islam a great deal ie medicine, alphabet, language sources. This struck me because of the totally bizarre conversation I had with my tv repairman the other day in which we compared Christianity and Islam.

2) That the true writer has to be on the outside, always watching, always observing but always alienated. A weird kind of objectivity that allows imagination to mix with reality and create something new.

I love Latin American writing (particularly Isabel Allende - Zorro here I come) because of the magical realism that permeates even the shortest of short stories. It is inextricable, the product of a society that still lives so close to its roots in myth, superstition and legend, and remembers its place as descended from the oldest civilisations in the world, even as they get torn apart by bloody coups.

PATTOTE - Better living through admiration of the greats.

Besotted? Me?

Awwww, who's a pwetty girl? Who's a pwetty baby doggy? Who's a pwetty pwetty sweet ickle girl? And is your mummy crazy? Yes, yes she is.



PATTOTE - Better living through food-obsessed labradors.

Trashy tomes

As always, after finishing a book of mighty weight and import I've turned to my old trashy standby - Nora Roberts. I heard an opinion yesterday that there is no such thing as a guilty pleasure, only losers don't admit when they like something unpopular. So here it is:

I LIKE NORA ROBERTS.

How you know you're reading a Nora Roberts book:

There's a beautiful, strong-willed, talented, independent heroine.
There's a handsome, strong-willed, talented, independent hero who's great with his hands.
There are three beautiful, strong-willed, talented, independent heroines.
The heroines are a cool blonde, a tomboyish brunette and a feisty redhead.
They're based in Ireland.
They have relatives in Ireland.
They're magical beings reincarnated in Ireland.
There's a huge Irish/Italian family.
The men and women split into careful groups.
They talk about each other.
The men swear a lot and dig their hands deep into their pockets.
Or jerk their shoulders.
Or lift their chins.
Somebody is murdered.
The hero and heroine meet over the corpse.
The heroine goes it alone and the hero is pissed.
He uses his handy source in the police department to surprise her.
The handy source doesn't care that the hero is an ex-cop private eye with unlimited resources and numerous fake ids, as long as he scores free Orioles tickets.
There's an ex-convict junkie mother somewhere in the picture.
When the hero proposes to the heroine he makes sure she wants kids (Two, with an option for three).
They live happily ever after - with impossible wealth, a great sex life, smart mouth kids, a completely improbable job as a private eye astronaut scientist and plenty of Sunday lunches with the totally atypical in-laws.
You meet them in a following book.

It's her predictability that makes her comforting...

PATTOTE - better living through slushy romance.

Stumped

Why I love cricket:



Why I hate cricket:



PATTOTE - better living by wasting Warne

Heh

The rolling about and laughing slays me every time.

And then they all get wiped out in a freak lighting storm...

Just picked up this article on spoilers.
I remember as a kid asking my mum at every scary moment: "What's going to happen?" Followed very shortly by: "What happened?", because I was too busy talking to watch and find out for myself. Eventually the mother banned all talking during the movies, good training for my future career as an annoyed movie watcher.

Now I trawl all websites for any spoilers I can get. TWoP is particularly good for those. Although I always regret it afterwards. At least I've stopped downloading advance clips. I ruined an entire season of Gilmore Girls for myself like that.

PATTOTE - Better living through ruining the surprise for everyone.

Liking Annie Proulx (as strange as that is)

Just finished The Shipping News, by E Annie Proulx. I saw the movie before I read the book so I didn't know what to expect. For some reason it feels wrong to say you liked a Proulx book, because her style is so very unlikeable. She finds the ugliest part of any given situation and highlights it as much as possible, with no apology or regret. The people are fat and disgusting, hot stinky breath covers everything, sex is not so much sex as undisguised rutting and the children are all annoying brats. That is why when she ends the novel with a positive idea - that love does not require misery or pain, but slips in quietly while you're worrying about something else - it gives it even more weight.

Accordion Crimes has been sitting on my bookshelf for a while now, maybe I'll pick it up when I'm done with Virginia Woolf. Who's afraid of Virginia Woolf? Me! Me! Me!

PATTOTE - Better living through writers who acknowledge the existence of gay cowboys.

Where the blog are we going?

I received two blog addresses today from two friends. Is this a sign of the times? Are we heading away from pouring out our souls to paper? Are diaries supposed to be interactive? Should people be reading our thoughts. If we were meant to be clairvoyant, wouldn't we be?

I'm going to swing both ways for the moment, keep a blog for the mundanities, keep a diary for the real stuff. I guess we'll see which is more boring soon.

PATTOTE - Better living through 24 hour access to everybody's every thought.

Save the world by eliminating...well...everybody else.

I have a dream. My dream extends across the world. It embraces the environment, cradles our abused and downtrodden eco-systems, coaxes and appreciates our beleaguered weather patterns. My dream involves peace, harmony, charitable co-existence and the complete and utter annihilation of people.

Originally when I set up People Attempting To Take Over The Earth (PATTOTE), I was just going to throw a bloody revolution and take complete control of everything. I had a long list of how my being in charge would help everybody, most of them revolving around the abolition of personal vehicles.

1) You will either be a pedestrian or a mass transit user. No cars, trucks, mopeds, scooters, heelies or other inane bewheeled devices equal no being run over by uncontrolled children or blind pensioners.

2) The new pedestrian rules will insist on everybody travelling in one direction on a given pavement. Up one side, down the other, simple.

3) There will be no dawdling on said pavement. The minimum speed will be a brisk walk and to discourage the soon-to-be-illegal practice of window shopping, shops will have to have shuttered windows. But lest you think I'm being excessive, the shutters will bear the great pictures of history. Or possibly propaganda. I'm undecided. It doesn't matter, you won't be able to stop and look at it anyway.

4) Single file. All subjects of the newly ordered and anally retentive regime will be required to march..er...I mean...proceed at a brisk walk, one behind the other. And if your brisk walk is too slow for those behind you, a quick overtaking maneuver will be allowed. But hold formation before and after said maneuver.

To my mind, control depends on two factors: keep people cold, hungry and ever grateful for the little you give them, and control their pedestrian habits. This will naturally spill over into their homes and create a nice robotic environment. Bliss.

Of course, that was the original idea. When I was still prepared to give humanity a chance. Now I say drive everybody into the sea. I'll retreat to my private island where my favoured few will take care of me. I might let them repopulate the earth. If they promise to walk in single file, not dawdle or window-shop. Is that really asking too much?

PATTOTE - Better living through my way or the high way.

Petrol Humour

A petrol attendent asked me recently if I wanted my windscream cleaned. He'll be allowed to live come my hairy coup.
PATTOTE - Better living through inadvertent wordy faux-pas(s)