July 2004 Archives

Wouldn't life be a hell of a lot easier if we just got rid of the admin? The right way of doing things? No, I didn't think to consult you about that, and you know what? I DON'T CARE. Let me live my life, you live yours, and I'll save a year of my life in the time I would have used being courteous, plastic smiling, mediating, considering, SMOOTHING SHIT OUT and BEING THE ONLY RATIONAL ONE.

After all, you've all gone through your entire life being fucking DIFFICULT and useless at sorting out your own shit without mewling every five seconds to people like me about how hard done by you are. Don't make your problems mine, because I know you wouldn't care if the situation were reversed. Why am I always being nice to you in the hope that a smidge of consideration should wear off upon you?

Oh, something or other fucked out. You stand there, arms flailing, confused looks, eyes pleading. Quick, find the first sucker to sort it out for you. Whine whine whine. "Oh please, please please fix it for meee-heee-heee." You're perfectly capable. You could have avoided the situation by being LOGICAL. Instead, you come crying to me.

Considering the fact that I am a member of the tiny minority that sorts out the rest of the crap for useless fools like you, cutting out the admin would perhaps only benefit myself. Of course, your resultant benefit of me finding the solution for your thankless self would be lost - so I guess this change would affect you. But judging from how little you care about putting me out over and over again, I suspect this rant will pass unnoticed.

Oh, your ears are sore? Let me solve that by shutting up.

You weren't listening anyway.

Some gems:

yes, I believe in love,

I'd like to read a story in the newspaper

"It wasn't radioactive"

ME:

In the caves behind my house

So Jo'burg is definitely happening - on Wednesday 4th August I'll take an 08.40 tut, go and draw a shoe-based self-portrait in art class, and then drive to PE and hop on a plane. This seems impossible. Man-made flight, this new-fangled things that kids these days get up to. I mean, sit down, an hour and a half later and you're somewhere it takes about 9 hours to get to by car. Another hour and a half and you're home again.

I'm thinking I might splash out and pay R14 for a little bottle of vodka to clink with my classmates on the flight. I know PE to Jo'burg isn't the big time but, quaint as it may be, it's my first time flying and I'm jittery all over for it.

I've been in Grahamstown for a grand total of 3 days, and so the journ work begins. The realisation that we have a month and a half to get a portfolio together has settled like a mist of unhappiness over my class - after the energetic vacation re-hash we all sat in front of our computers like silent zombies for a while.

Just trying something out. Keep moving.

I feel unsettled in that I should feel more settled. Grahamstown isn't home. Knysna doesn't really qualify either right now. London is far away in both months and kilometres. Maybe Jo'burg will feel more comfy - yes people, the FINAL *cough* date has been set for the 5th August, with us flying up (my first flight ever!) on the 4th, and leaving either on the 6th or the 9th. Too too exciting!

Something great (and worth being grateful for) is that the sleepyness and total torpor of Knysna resulted in a bit of a brain boom as regards portfolio and project ideas.

I do love Footballer's Wives.

In this, my most active day this week, I have achieved all of two things. No, make that three. I have got up in time to tape a movie - and 9am is no joke in Natalie-Knysna-Vac-Land. I have formulated an idea for today's blog. And I have dragged my lazy self down to my parents' work to type up said blog along with 3 (count 'em, 3) application letters for my 4th term intensive (due on Monday morning).

- aside, I don't actually know why I adhere to Journ's dealines when I still haven't recieved my course results but HEY -

I watched ten minutes of Waking Life, the movie I taped, this morning, before sleep stole me again. It's an animated movie based on actual film shot for the flick, which was then drawn over using some revolutionary tablet & electronic pen animation technique, whose inventor explained and demonstrated it all to us at the Design Indaba in February. It was one of the better lectures, but the finer points of the process elude me - I think it was one of those mornings when all I really cared about was getting out of there and hanging with Ian.
So I felt obliged to watch the damn thing and tape it for my classmates (nice girl, hmmm?) and in the ten minutes I kept my eyes open was pleased to find that I'd taped quite an interesting flick.
A few minor characters go on to talk about their own philosophical beliefs, explaining to the silent protagonist their views on existentialism and the like; but one blonde woman speaks about language, and touched on something I've been feeling.

She speaks about the evolution of language, how the first people who used language used it for 'water' and 'saber-tooth tiger behind you' and how we made the jump to descriptions of abstract feelings, and then she launched into the schpiel of how words are symbols, meaningless and dead. Sitting through three years of semiotics in Ling and Journ and Philos has left me with an intense hatred of the whole 'signifier and signified' relationship, every time I regurgitated it in an essay I'd spit the words out bitterly, angry at myself for ascribing to what is, I agree, a logical notion, often proved, beyond argument, blah.
But then blonde cartoon lady took the extra step, further beyond the point where my lecturers stopped.
Yes, you can never know if your perception of the word 'love' and that of the listener is the same, and you never know if the abstract term you refer to rings true with the same clarity to someone else. But when people connect through words - it's all we have - something almost spiritual happens, sparks fly, we feel validated.
My frustration at the clinical semiotic view of words has been voiced by someone else! Some fictional character in an arb, apparently annoying at later stages, animated film. Hell, the feeling she spoke about, that's what I feel right now - validated that someone shares that feeling. I wonder how many others saw that and felt that too - I wonder if she somehow knows that the sparks flew and the connection was made, between her thought process and mine? Probably not.

Maybe that's the essence of relationships, romantic and platonic. "I get you, you get me." That pointed index finger flying between your temple and mine. Even as I write this, I suffer the concern and frustration that goes along with any attempt to push words out of my mouth or through my fingers. Did I say it right?

 
I just realised that my birthday is exactly 2 months from now. Should you feel generous, any or all of the following items would be appreciated:
 
- First-class return BA flight to Lundun Ingilund
- Fancy unheard-of-megapixel-spec digicam, with lenses as used on the Hubble Telescope
- I-Pod with every song ever written/sung/covered/thought about by Chris Carabba
- Magical no-surgery-required double D cups, with which to attain all of the above should this shameless begging attempt fail
 
I would sell my virginity on e-bay, but...
I would get a job in 'computers', but...
I would ask my filthy rich uncle in Reno, but...
 

It's actually wrong how after you spend a week in Knysna, you begin to lose sight of how gorgeous it really is. I ate my lunch on the back porch today, only to realise I'd gone through my sarmie and beer without once looking up at the Heads on this sunny day - it's criminal, really. I'll miss it when I'm gone again.

So far the vac has been a mixed bag. I STILL don't have my results, which has left me fuming. An aquaintance ended his own life. Chased a bus in the rain for 13 kilometres at 4.30am. Went to MonkeyLand where I saw a white-handed Gibbon (oh the irony!) attempt to give a Cappucian Monkey head (wrong on SO many levels). Saw parts of the Eastern Head in Knysna that I'd last seen at age 5. Had the next-year-going-to-UK chat with my ballies.

The next week promises to be boring, but dammit, boring's what I want. Car going in for a service on Monday (Sparky's going to feel like a new car, I'm told). It's my dad's 54th birthday tomorrow - in true Grunewald style we're going to eat until we pop. Re-runs of The Young Ones on BBC Prime all week long. Yup, I'm pretty content right now.

Tune in next week for: 'I'm back in Grahamstown, I took Knysna for granted.'

On the way home yesterday afternoon to spend my time off SLEEPING *sigh*, I managed to stop in at two art exhibitions at the Albany (Elbow-knee) Museum. Well, only to one that's worthy to speak of really, the other just containted natural earthy type stuff, you know, paintings of pepperdews and stuff.
So while climbing many a flight of stairs and rounding many a bend to get to said hunger-inducing exhibition, I had to pass through the permanent 'space', 'Egypt' and 'introduction to invertebrates' installations in the museum.

I have realised that I am shit-scared of museums.

You never know what's going to LEAP out at you around the corner - I was, for example, faced with an enormous dead mutant crab, mounted in 'crouching claw attack' position, as I came up one flight of stairs. I met an impossibly huge clam shell on another floor, mouth half open. I think I heard it whispering "Feeeed meeeee..." but I quickly ran up another flight.

I have a theory that this phobia stems from the EXCRUTIATING experience of staring into a small TV screen sized window at the PE aquarium in the 80s, and coming eyeball-to-eyeball with a great white shark. I'm sure this was the trigger for my fear of all things 'exhibitionally educational'. Little kiddies running around such venues, squealing with delight at the mounted whale bones and such, make me shake them and scream 'run for your lives!', and do so myself, out into the street where no form of resurrected sea creature is likely to jump out at me.

Jokes aside, I really feel my heart in my throat in these places. Hmmm - maybe I should claim damages from the PE aquarium. Or start 'Museums Scare Me Anonymous'.

... has been a learning experience.
I've learnt that:
- an 8-pager on the first day can be more stressful than a 16-pager on the fourth day.
- an editor can pull rank at any stage, as they tend to do after we've all worked three 16-hour days in a row.
- I have amazing friends in res, who leave me Special-K bars and hang out my whites while I catch up on much needed sleep.
- I have been an ass to miss fest in the past, feel like an ass for committing myself to Cue during this exciting time, and will be an ass if I never come back to experience it fully at a later stage.

What is scary is how sleep deprivation affects my emotions. Right now I am level-headed, after having scoffed a packet of mini allsorts, but in about an hour the rush is going to hit. I will then switch onto 'prod ed machine mode' and run around like a headless chicken for a few hours. At around 1am, extreme tiredness will hit, and I will slump back into my chair and concede to all the style-guide breaking changes enforced upon me by editorial, and slap together as strong a front page as possible.
Only 5 editions left.

I am Cue girl, see me yawn.

"Hypocrisy is the vaseline of political intercourse" - Pieter Dirk-Uys