meh...

I haven't posted anything in I think over a month mostly because I've been too happy to complain about anything (someone's doing a good job ;)) and partly because I've been too lazy to type...but now that my lecturers and fellow students are on strike (again) I have time to plague the internet with my sense of self-importance. Why else would anyone start a blog like this? I think that my fleeting thoughts are mostly strokes of such sheer genius that I have to share them with the 2 other people that read my blog. Now let me talk about this strike thing. Or rather complain...

My lecturers went on strike this week and at first I was happy. I was hoping it would last a couple of days or at most a week so that I could have some time to breathe and start some of the many, many, MANY assignments I have never even looked at. It seems that my prayers were answered a little bit too well. Now I have no idea when the strike or rather 'downing of tools' (apparently the strike was illegal so they stopped calling it a strike and carried on) will end. I'm not very worried. I guess the time lost will be recovered by eating into my holiday but for other students it's kind of unfair. Imagine you're just about to graduate then boom; Str...er...downing of tools. I get why the lecturers are pissed off. I would absolutely do the same thing if I was paid- or rather not paid- the way they are so once again the fault lies with the government. I say 'once again' because almost all the problems we have as a country are the fault of our government. Think of a problem and you can almost certainly find a way to trace it back to the government. Unemployment, inflation, bad t.v.(not really). Democracy is so over-rated...I think we need a new political system. Dictatorship is not a plan and democracy is just dictatorship in heels and a minidress.ANYWAY, I try not to get too heavy on my blog because I am a happy person. Kinda. I'm also afraid that the secret police will come after me.(Do we have secret police?)

unfairy-like tales

Sometimes the random things I tweet make me think more deeply about the issues...when I say 'the issues' I wish I meant world peace and a cure for AIDS but alas, my mind is sometimes not such a noble place. The issues in this case refers to fairy tales. So, the tweet was about how Snow White blacked out (i was referring to what happens to many a young lad/lass during their late teens and early twenties when alcohol and large sums of money-or cheap liquor- are are readily available) and Cinderella was on hallucinogens. I'm just saying, the chick believed she rode in a pumpkin for God's sake. In my mind I see a seriously shroomed girl sitting on a pumpkin and yelling at a rat to hurry up lest they get late.
So I started remembering the origins of some nursery rhymes. Those cute songs you used to sing...not so cute. Most of them are about murders, betrayals and other things children should never sing about that happened in England a couple of hundred years ago. Jack and Jill is possibly about the beheading of Marie Antoinette and her husband King Louis the 16th, 'a ring a ring o' roses' is about the plague (yes, when you said 'atishoo we all fall down' you were actually saying 'we all got the plague and dropped dead'), pop goes the weasel was about killing traitors...the list is endless (ok not endless, just long).

side bar: rub a dub dub Though I don't know the origin of this nursery rhyme, it bugs me. If you don't know the rhyme GOOGLE IT and explain to me what 3 men are doing in a tub. It sounds nasty...especially since one of them is a candle-stick maker O.O

ANYWAY, this got me to thinking about an alternate reality where there's a reasonable explanation for what happened in those fairy tales we loved so much as kids. Sadly none of them have happy endings. I think Snow White may have been roofied by one of the dwarfs who was paid off by prince charming...SO...maybe I will write my own slightly altered, not for kids version of fairy tales, give you a little taste of what probably really would have happened if our beloved princesses had actually lived (think of the fairy god mother being some old witchdoctor with kamote (sp)). We'll see.
***By the way, if you're wondering why or how I know the origins of nursery rhymes, don't. I am a very deep well of the most useless information and I'm not even sure how I know these things. Only one thing is for sure...I will never need to know more than half the things I know.You know?(Sorry.couldn't resist :) )

Designer Babies

There's something I watched on TV a while ago about scientists working to find a way to manipulate genes so that people could chose what kind of children they want to have. It IS an appealing thought. You can make sure your kids are beautiful, tall, smart...have dimples...whatever you want, but its kind of unethical. I'm one of those people who believe in only letting technology help us to a certain extent. When it comes to making babies, I think the natural process is best (hehe!) i.e. pick a hot spouse and hope the genes of your unattractive great-grandparent or daft cousin don't somehow manage to manifest themselves in your baby. In related news I heard that Kim Kardashian got married recently. Quite honestly I think if she had a baby by anyone (even his excellency the president. That is a disgusting thought though *shudder* ) the kid would have to be attractive but when I saw a picture of her husband...WHAT! Their children will not be accepted into the society. They will be outcasts. Too gorgeous for normal human beings to comprehend. Ok, enough with the hyperbole. There was a point to this story...other than to state that those two humans are genetically gifted to the point where its almost unfair. Its like they took a large portion of the world's prettiness and ate it, then left the rest of us to share. Unequally. Ah yes,the point. The point is, these are smart people. You want attractive babies, have them with an attractive person. Two pretty people cannot beget an ugly one (unless the father is not really the father, something which is apparently more common than we think).
Maybe in a few years they'll perfect the designer baby idea and we'll have a Hitler situation. Think about it. If they make it available to everyone it will at first obviously be expensive so the poor and the religiously-inclined will be left out of it. There will be a class of intellectually gifted and attractive people who control the world because they are also rich. How long will it take before they decide that they're better than everyone else and its world war 2 all over again (how does world domination keep finding its way into my posts???). Anyway, I'm not particularly bothered. I'll be dead by the time the 'beautiful ones' have grown up and taken over the world. I wonder if they'll find this post (the way we find hieroglyphics) and say that I was making a prophecy. People seem to love such crap. Though if they continue to read up to this point they might hunt down my descendants to pay for my insolence...hehe...I should stop talking now...

Of nails and nipples

You may have started reading this thinking its some raunchy story involving nudity and maybe some S&M. I'm sorry to disappoint you but as it is the holy month of Ramadhan I have no such story to share...

DISCLAIMER: I would like to state that I am in no way insinuating that I have such stories to tell during any other month of the year...and even if I did I wouldn't tell you :)

Anyway, I've been on this subject before but it was about the Tyrannosaurus Rex's devolution into a chicken, which by the way still cracks me up -excuse the pun (chicken,egg...cracking...get it?If you don't think that was funny you have a problem). Now I want to ask people who believe in evolution some questions. This has bothered me for quite a while... why do men have nipples? I seriously need to know. They have no visible function. Is it an aesthetic thing?Nipple-less men look weird?If no men had nipples it would be a common thing so WHY do men have nipples? Another thing. Should we have nails? Since we have knives and stuff and I highly doubt there are people still grasping onto tree barks for their survival (or whatever monkey-people did) so we should have very tiny or no nails. Except for women prone to violence. Those ones require long sharp nails and long hair preferably located in the middle of the head to allow their opponents to grab on and pull. They also require loud, high-pitched voices so as to scare off would-be opponents with a vast vocabulary of obscenities...I can totally be a narrator on National Geograpic...anyway. That is all for now, but I'll be back with more things to complain about soon (I hope).

Side bar: Saum Maqbul to my Muslim brothers and sisters and don't forget to watch out for Lailat-ul Qadr during the last 10 days. Masaalam.

Don't read until you've watched the last Harry Potter movie

I have some complaints about the last half of 'Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows'...

1. I believe that the title of the movie was misleading. It should have been called 'A movie loosely based on the book-'Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows''. Ok...I understand that the movie can never be as good as the book but seriously??? In some ways I can't blame the director or whoever is in charge of the story-line 'cause they cut stuff out of previous movies and there was a snowball effect (haha! An African talking about snowballs :)) I should say mudslide or something...) but I was disappointed. I can't help it.

2.Why oh why did they change small things in the movie? It annoyed me. The Ron-Hermione kiss happened in the wrong place, it was supposed to be Crabbe and Goyle in the Room of Requirement, Nagini was killed in the wrong place and at the wrong time, why did Harry drop the resurrection stone? What was with the pensieve?? As noted by a good friend of mine, the pensieve seems to have been made more portable. It was like the way people used to use floppy disks and now they use flash disks. Oh...more things; WHY did Snape give tears instead of memories?! What was with the almost gay scene between Voldemort and Harry? Why didn't that curse in Bellatrix's vault also cause the stuff in the vault to burn akina Harry? Why did Harry have clothes on when he went to 'kings cross' after he 'died'?(hehe...my reasons for being annoyed at this are purely professional) I have a million more grievances but the more I type the more depressed I get.

3.Why did they make Snape look like a member of Kiss(the rock band)? I spent a large portion of the movie half-expecting him to chuck an electric guitar from under his robes :) lay off the powder and eye liner people!!!

4.Harry and Ginny had no chemistry whatsoever.

5.I didn't see Fred die. We just see his body. Not nearly as dramatic as I wanted it to be.

6.When Voldemort was killing Harry why did he have to say 'avada kedavra' the way he did? It was HILARIOUS!!!It totally took away the 'Oh my God!' feeling I was supposed to have. I laughed so loudly that the people in front of me looked back as if to say 'you heartless bitch!'...but it was so funny!
So yeah. The last Potter movie...not so bad. It had its moments. Like Snape's memories. I was moved. In the book I felt so bad about it that I may or may not have shed a tear. Just one. That didn't necessarily come out...moving along swiftly...its the end of an era. I feel like I grew up with Harry, Ron and Hermione so its kinda sad that their journey came to an end but I guess everything-good or bad(....good being the books and bad being the movies...hehe!)- has to end some time.

The pants dance

I like to lie to myself sometimes. This year, the lie was that I would like to spend my free time doing something constructive. So what did I do? Volunteered myself for some project for one of the student-based organizations at my uni. I have regretted this decision almost from the moment I made it. Unfortunately, I am quite lazy. Especially when I'm on holiday, and it doesnt help that the organization's headquarters is a million kilometres from my bus stop. I guess its a good lie to tell myself 'cause I have to keep hauling my lazy ass out of the house to do something constructive, but its so annoying. True, if I accepted that I am a lazy person and embraced it, I would be a fat and useless (but still awesome) person buuuut...its tempting :) Anyway,maybe if I keep pretending I'm not lazy, the hardworkingness (not a real word) will grow on me and I'll be those over-achieving people we all look up to and hate a little bit at the same time for making us look bad. I honestly don't know how I became lazy. As a child I WAS the ambitious type. A million sports, music, academics...blablabla...I was a pretty amazing child. I love baby-me. I think if baby-me could see me now she'd be a bit ticked off that all her hard work has gone to waste but whatever. What does she know. She's just a kid. I hope when I have kids they're like me until I turned 18. Then they should be like other more polite and well-mannered people :)
On a positive note, I have lost weight! YAY! Its like 1 kg and impossible to notice but considering that I have not managed to lose even one gram since high school I am celebrating with cake...'cause...you know...I can lose the weight I'll gain from eating it :). The thing I like about weight loss is I can fit into this pair of jeans that I like without doing what I call 'the pants dance'. I doubt that guys know what this dance is but ladies who are not particularly thin know what I'm talking about. That thing you have to do when trying to get into a pair of pants that fit you last week but are suddenly tighter. You tell yourself that its not you, its the pants and commence the pants dance which may involve some jumping, wiggling and writhing on your bed. Sometimes the pants dance does not work and you have to start thinking...maybe its not the pants o.O

I've never been good with titles....so I'm not going to bother

I have tried with all my might to ignore this but I can bear this internal anguish no longer. A few months ago, a popular brand of toilet paper re-branded (believe me this story is not going where you think it is). Due to the fact that I am neither a journalist nor a lawyer,I am not sure whether I'm allowed to state the brand name or not. I don't want to be sued (haha!as if enough people read this blog. But anyway. My paranoia and sense of self-importance won't me say what brand it is). So anyway, they re-branded and decided to make their logo (mascot?) a cat. It is an adorable little thing but what the hell does it have to do with the loo??? Are they saying that the t.p. is a soft as a cat? If that's what they're trying to say, how did they know how soft a cat feels on a persons butt? Are they doing some kind of sick animal testing? What other animals have they tested? How many people agreed to be testers? WHY did they agree? If they mean something else, what is it?!?! I want the PR person of this t.p. brand to come out and state their objectives 'cause I'm very confused and saddened that the feline race (I doubt that they're a race but whatever :)) are being associated with such crap. Literally. Another ad campaign that pisses me off is this one for this bank. It's like a pirated version- not even made in China. Made somewhere off the coast of China- of the 'old spice' ads. The 'old spice' ads= genius! The bank ones= lame. When you steal ideas at least make sure they measure up. Really, people. COME ON!

This is not really a rant. More like a short story on the dangers of using t9 or predictive text while texting;
So I was supposed to meet my...someone...in town today. When I get there I start texting 'im in town' while walking. I think I somehow got distracted and accidentally (like the dyslexic I try not to be) switch the letters w and n. Where is the danger in this you ask. Well kids, you see in predictive text the word that makes the most sense with the letter combination of the numbers 8669 is 'tony'. I almost sent a text saying 'im in tony'. The someone would probably have found it kinda funny but what if I'd been texting my mum???