In the early days of Electric Spaghetti, circa 2005 (when the template was ghagha green and orange and the profile pic of a young intern journalist with a floppy fringe that ate one of her eyes) I clicked on the navbar's 'next blog' button and tripped over the writings of a young man angry with Grahamstown's garden gnomes.
That, his observations on Zimbabwe and Muslim madness, general battery-acid outpourings and honest devil-may-give-a-flying-act-of-fornication renderings had me thoroughly absorbed.
His stuff was pure crack and I kept going back.
I left a comment once and he thought I was a man or an anthropomorphic water buffalo who'd taken to stalking him.
Subsequent emails soon sloughed off that heavy skin and a friendship was cemented.
For as long as I've known Hamish; from his days as Organ Harvester to Spaced Head and back again, I've seen how words work around and over him.
Fucking talented, with a blistering wit that shocks and awes with each attack, we knew he had it in him -- to go onto something great.
Those uppercuts and lowblows Life sometimes deal us when it's had a few too many, have left Hamish with the scars that are now proving to be his best features.
Read all about it
here (thanks for the link
Aasia).
Congratulations
Hamish Hoosein Pillay, on winning the 2008 Citizen Book Prize.
Well-deserved and long-overdue.
(As kids, we'd call people who didn't keep their fasts 'kotchcows'. I don't know the etymology behind this one)
