Blue Persons Solidarity Front - An Introduction and Manifesto

I know you've all been thinking it. But he's the only one who's been brave enough to blog it.

Yes, I am a Blue Person.

We Blue Persons have been oppressed for centuries by anti-cyanites who will not allow us to re-settle in the homeland promised to us by the BIG BL-- millenia ago.
Incidentally, our promised land is Greenland, which is 81% ice-capped. It's chilly, obviously but it's home.

Anti-cyanites have long maligned our people, attributing our tones and complexions to questionable sexual practices involving asphyxiation. They have written us down in history as baby-eaters and unscrupulous businesspeople, and made us scapegoat for every wrong in civilization's evoloution. However, the stigma is gradually falling away and many of us are finding success in the entertainment industry, our only challenge being the big-budget sfx productions, where we can't work in front of the blue-screens for obvious reasons.

The Blue Persons Solidarity Front is a collective of like-minded Blue Persons who believe that cyan-toned individuals in all their hues can successfully integrate into greater society by embracing progressive ideas while maintaining their Blue Person values.

We also call for Microsoft to change the background colour of their "blue screen of death" to something else, a gentle peach perhaps, as we find this association offensive and deeply anti-cyanitic.

the well-meaning spammer

There's a road to a place that's paved with this stuff:

From: [id withheld to maintain privacy of offender]
To: undisclosed-recipients
Date: Nov 29, 2006 12:23PM
Subject: FW: Please forward and R2.00 will be donated

Subject: Guys, please let us help this little girl, for God knows and hear her cry.

Hi, my name is Surita Diputs Naidoo and I live in Chatsworth, South Africa.
I am 8 years old, and I have been in a hit and run accident with a taxi.
My 14 year old brother was killed instantly, and my father later died at RK Khan's Hospital, Chatsworth.
My mother and I are now living with my grandparents.
The doctors have told me that I need corrective surgery as my face and arms were badly burned in the accident.
Fortunately, my plight was brought to the attention of a wealthy Herbal Importer in Reservoir Hills, South Africa, who, with the help of IBM, have promised to give me R2 for every person this e-mail is forwarded to.

Please send to as many people as you can and GOD bless.
Remember, have a heart.

Surita Diputs Naidoo
Unit 9
Chatsworth
Durban
South Africa

Well-meaning spam: when bad judgement happens to good people.
Now when i hear the phrase "wealthy Herbal Importer from Reservoir Hills", the first thing I'm going to ask is "How much for a bankie Boss?".
I sure hope the Omniscient Entities at IBM, Microsoft, MacDonalds, Pepsi, Coca Cola and [insert multinational developing-world-pillaging corporate goliath here] will use the software given to them by the aliens/David Icke's reptile people to track this email to my blog and give unfortunate Surita Diputs Naidoo from Unit 9 in Chatsworth two whole rands for every person who reads this.

Remember, have a brain. God knows and hears your cry.

at the office...(1)

Rowena: "Saal, can you start a sentence with But"
Saaleha: "I know they said that you can't. But you can."

That is so profound in so many ways.

the 'Ville weekend

Gran needed weekend company and I was keen to drive - anywhere - even if it was down Main Reef Road towards Azaadville, maintaining the ridiculous 8okm/h limit while dodging cars that should've been pensioned off to scrap heaps when the Nats were still in power and taxis who use their hazards as indicators (whats it gonna be mfwetu, swerve to the left, swerve to the right? tata ma chance eh? I always a enjoy a good game of Life Lotto).

Ex-Sig. once told me about the perfect drive, where clutch, engine, human and road come together in zen flawlessness. I thought of that moment of universal balance as Billy Corgan asked me to tell him tell him what I'm after so that he could get there faster. Spinning Killers, Peppers, Pumpkins and Live, my quintessential music to drive by, I experienced that one complete union of Drive. It didn't matter where I was going, just that I was getting there.

--
The Azaadville weekend's opening salvo was my gran's delightful six-rounds of "Why haven't you found any one to marry? Why are you so fussy? You missed out on [insert crazy x here] and Ayesha's nephew and etc and etc. Amina-mummy saw you at the walimah and said you're looking old and must just settle down now. How do your friends and cousins find husbands and you don't? Why doesn't your mother tell you anything?" My kevlar failed me against the hail of gujerati-laced bullets.

The possible methods of madness as discussed with Speedy led me to duck and seek refuge upstairs where I found myself looking over at the dome of the darul-uloom. The lighting of it is a recent addition and the embellishment gives off the green of a nuclear-aftermath, rendering Azaadville's usual blink-and-miss quality null.
And then the battle of the muezzins begins for Asr, the four voices rousing the locals to supplication. Even with a mosque a few doors away in Homestead Park, I missed the energy of the plural azaan in Azaadville.

In classic 'Ville Saturday Night fashion, supper had to be from Spicy's at the corner of Taj and Azaad. Watching the denizens cruise by while i waited for the order of chicken tikka, I noticed how the Azaadville stare is an entity in its own right and can never quite be replicated in any other town.

Dawsons, the 24-hour convenience cafe is another new addition to the sleepy hamlet. Cool a concept as it is, I wonder which of the hassle-deens (an inside joke from my family's days as purveyors of hazeldine and clover milk) wake up at 3am with munchies, niqaabi's with a leaning towards Peter Tosh perhaps.?Naoozubillah, I'm wicked. No wonder no one will marry me. ha ha.

None of my friends are around this fine Saturday night and I fill time by filling a sheesha, apple and mint, which succeeds only in rounding off my already thrilling evening with a yuck-ick-vomity-headache.

Sleep. Wake. Sunday. I'm striking little lines through seconds until I hit the high-tar back to the city. It's lunch, goodbye gran, I love you but I have to go hide in my head whenever you start talking.

A quick visit to my buddy Batman before I leave reminds me that all hope is not lost for the 'Ville and the pod-people haven't completely annihilated all forms of intelligent life.

Main Reef road is not as taxi-ridden on Sundays and I play only the occasional round of minibus dodge-em.
The tar and Billy sing, "I hear your winter, I hear your rain, I've failed your summer ways and I feel no pain...."

~fin~

on mortality

I woke up breathing. A friend died.
Claimed, as the young are of late, in a car accident.
Gray matter will not absorb this. It sinks in bursts and rejects, eyes leak in fits and starts. The young don't die. Even as I watched Mahmood driven away in that green van in 1999, I denied it then. We the living, we the living young, we the living free, it'll never happen to us. Sickness and old age, I've seen my dad and grandfathers dispatched. But youth, no, youth is forever. Youth. Delusioned, immortal youth.

And now I think of the boy who listened to the Dave Matthews Band and John Mayer, who called me Cinderella when I almost lost my shoe outside the hall at Naazia's wedding, who liked the words I used and who I promised to take out for ice cream when I got my drivers license. The one who married just this year and had all this Life laid out in front of him. I think of this boy. Ahmed. I think of him and go on living. Delusioned.

capsule bloemfontein

The coffee cup placed in front of me has an authentic granny-crocheted doily beneath it. This is Bloemfontein.
I'm sharing a tuna tramezzini at De Rebus in the city centre with Sally and Anina, tannies* who are the encyclopedic reference to the concept. Anina reminds me of a tropical bird, brightly feathered in a blue suit, ornamented with chunky baubles and the most elaborate eye makeup I've ever seen; stripes of bronze and azure with shadings of a lilac-marine accenting the outer corners of her lids. Sally is simpler and wholesome, like a bowl of oats.
"Are you married Saaleha," they ask in that concerned inquiring inflection. While their questions are warmed by their Afrikaans intonations, the tone could belong to Aunty Khadijah in Lenasia or Sandringham's Beryl Rabinowitz.
I reply in the negative and steer the conversation towards Anina's weekend church camp and Sally's teenage son who gets irritated when she asks him technology related questions.
We speak about traditional Afrikaans upbringing, and I draw parallels with my own small-town Muslim-Indian molding. Discussing the death of conservatism is inevitable, and I'm somewhat saddened that while we stride positively forward, we tend to leave behind the modesties of the old-fashioned.

My return flight to Johannesburg is delayed by two hours because of inclement weather. I bemoan my fate to anyone who'll listen on mxit, "Pansy pilots scared of a little drizzle. What happened to gung-ho bravado?".

I bought From My Sister's Lips by Na'ima Robert earlier that morning before departure, and to file down time, I lose myself in the sincere testimonies of these women and their heartfelt and soul-driven submission to the Will of God. I'm suddenly ashamed of my own stubbornness and begin to strike off what were in fact pyrrhic victories gained in my jihadunnafs. Aluta Continua.

Eating eats time, and carrot cake seems like the best way to move along the process. I think of diets and gym routines and then I realise, we all want to lose in order to gain societal approval. What kind of world do we live in, when we have to be less in order for people to like us more? That was my in-transit musing of the day.

It feels like I've been born in this airport, time is so still and vacuumed. I want Home.
But the rain smells earthier in Bloem, like Gaia spilled over her bottle of eau de toilette and a rainbow on the runway reminds me that patience is still very much a virtue in a drive-thru world.


*tannies: afrikaans word for Aunts

the return to mIRC...(2)

It’s my masochistic streak that pulls me towards Zanet on IRC, or perhaps it’s my misguided sense of idealism that there may still exist a community of iconoclasts and anarchists for justice who believe the world could do with a vigorous shakedown.
But again, I emerge disappointed and disillusioned at the quality of the South African educational system, the family dynamics of our communities and the socialisation processes of which all of these chatters are product.

Here, I walk through the mindfield of generalisation (I’m fully aware that not all chatters can be lumped together, so consider this the disclaimer. It is not my intent to be vitriolic)

Barely functionally literate, I am astounded that many are even tech-savvy enough to operate computers, cellphones and software applications.
Even if you believe IQ tests are flawed and culturally-biased, you will agree that most of these kids (who are first language English speakers) would have a tough time on any sort of test that involved general knowledge, literary comprehension and advanced vocabulary.

What follows is the verbatim exchange of a waste of irony and perfectly good sarcasm-

handSum_dude: Hi
me: Hi
handSum_dude: how u
me: well and you
handSum_dude: kewl aslr
me: 23 f jhb
handSum_dude: ru hot?
me: Eh?
handSum_dude:?
me: what do you mean?
handSum_dude: R u hot?
me: By whose standards?
handSum_dude: Lyk goodlooking
handSum_dude: By u own standards
me: Well, no one makes the sign of the cross at my approach so I’m fortunate like that I guess.
handSum_dude: By u standards u hot
handSum_dude: Ment ur
me: ur? What is ur? Universal retard?
handSum_dude: Your
me: Oh
handSum_dude: Bye nice chatin
me: Ok
me: Handsum eh?
handSum_dude: Wat
me: Is that like a euphemism for wanker? You’re quite brave to have that as a nick
handSum_dude: Y?
me: Well, you’re being honest, lots of chatters hide behind nicks that declare themselves as gorgeous, attractive human beings, and you’re just telling it like it is. Hello World. This is me.
handSum_dude: Ya.
me: Respect man, respect.

-fin-

*in all my years chatting, I’ve only been asked what my ‘r’ was twice and both occasions were fairly recent. I don’t see how race is fundamental to an online exchange. We recently buried an apartheid stalwart (google "groot krokodil") and people who ask such frivolities are better off munching mud too.

on if we could see what we carry

In a world of manifest metaphor, we carry our baggage by our sides and on our backs. Into suitcases, hold-alls, carry-ons and duffel bags, we cramp and stuff once significant others, bruises taken as children, rejections suffered at the hands of those more than us, dreams we were slow to claim and the crumbs of daily inadequacies that flake off to line the inseams.

We struggle with our mis-matched luggage; backs stooped, gaits shuffled; into cars, onto busses, taxis, shifting for space around our legs in coffee-shops, cinemas, cubicles at work, restrooms and parks.

Some people’s baggage precede them - taking up too much of your elbow room while others clutch them tightly to their chests, afraid the bones will fall out. We all move around each other in concerted rhythm; this sluggish dance of dragging trunks and lockers, weighted down by chunks of heart, reams of unwritten words; hard-drives of emails we never pushed the button on and what-ifs that clutter in-between.

We see each other for the mules we are and search for some luggage carousel’s re-assuring loop to offload and walk away straight backed; leaving hang-ups and let-downs to circle unclaimed.

soul'd (memories of ramadaan)

Ramdh, "burning of the feet from heat"

Ramadha, 'intense heat"

Ramad, “the heat of the stones arising from the intense heat of the sun”

Heat.
And yet Ramadaan brought a coolness of spirit; satin pools offering respite from the insistent fingers of the sun.

And the whisperings of the Shayateen, kept far from us, we're told, during the fast, which amplified to me just how much of our baseness is our own, the internal conflicts - civil wars.

Praying in evening congregation - hundreds of souls binded by the lifting of one finger, "God is One", wired firmly by the "Aameen", in one supplicant voice - I held Hope by the shoulder, "we will smash through our schisms, if only we all prayed together."

And don't tell me that women should not pray like this, don't tell me that masaajid and congregational Eid salaah are not for those born without a y-chromosome. These are times of Fitnah, only because we've kept mothers away from that which will feed their children.

And as swiftly as Ramadaan shades us, that is how it leaves us, open; with a longing for 11 lunar births to whole the soul. May its legacy live on in the little things we forget; give off yourself in ways that will not lessen you- smile without motive, acknowledge those with hands cupped at traffic lights, be kind to all who join you on your path.