Ennui Eyes

258.

That's how many blog posts I've pushed out since I got serious on this platform at the end of August 2005.

The sound the Most Prolific Blogger award makes is "whoosh-thik", as it clips me on the shoulder and soars past towards others worthier on my google reader.

Genesis

It was our Honours year. 2004.

Razina (now a perspicacious Fourth-Estater with the Financial Mail) and I (Jane-of-all-trades who does a bit of wordswork) skipped out of our Journalism Theory class, our heads full of Anton Harber-isms and this Blogging thing. 

Off to the post-grad computer labs to get in on the action and become the cyber-bastions of Truth, the wwwatchdogs of the State, the free voices giving voice to the voiceless, wadda wadda, all that stuff you write for the entrance applications.

The first blog I ever really got into was written by Reza in Canada. "Musing Over The Ontological Status of a Boiled Egg". With a title like that, sure, it's gonna grab me by my metaphorical cajones. It's defunct now, but you can still go through his archives. Brilliant stuff.

While setting up my blogger account, I stared at the hulking grey servers making fresh pasta of the data cables, and I thought, "Hmm...you know what, that looks a lot like electric spaghetti..."

I'm now a blogger!! k3wl!!

My first few posts were hardly the stuff of killer citizen journalism we were creaming ourselves over in class. A kitschy poem that rhymed (yeah, I used to do those) and a list of words I found interesting (I recall flocculent, being one of them). You could tell I was farting fairy dust at the time.

And blogging bored me. Mostly because no one read me (what did I know of link-baiting and comment-whoring then. I thought that if I built it, Google would make them come). So I left it to die a slow, stinky death.

The becoming.

Then this guy decided to turn his weekly Randeree-roundup email into a series of  blogposts. Suddenly, my blog was up on his link list, it was being read. I should've been elated right? Instead, I was horrified that friends and strangers would be reading the twaddle. I deleted everything, and put up a little spring-clean notice. It was time to decide what the blog should become. 

A space for me to write to keep the rust away.

And you know the rest

Personal observations. Me, without too much me. Rare bits of social commentary. Travel stories. Ad-jamming. Obscurities. Little things I do in Photoshop and InDesign. Fun with 419-ers. Monologues. Trying to be a bit clever and fancy with the words. Amusements. A real salmagundi, the phenotype of what it's like in my head sometimes.

Ennui eyes?

It could be due to my current frustrations career-wise, that I find this blogging thing iffy and blehsome of late. I'm easily annoyed at people who poo-poo ponitificate all over the place (and I've used that term in conversation with at least two friends so far). I'm irritated by the judgements I see cast, the idiocy that gets the approved sticker from quality control and an undiscerning audience. I can't stand the sheer amount of inane convoluted verbiage (and I use that word ironically) that's out there. 

I don't want to feed into this.

I wasn't always like this. This critical, this angsty.

So I guess, I'm saying I'm just tired and a little jaded.

And maybe I need to eat more soya beans.

Day 2 and 3

There is a stillness in Ramadaan; a special type of quiet that wraps around us. A stillness that renders us malleable; a warm and pliable soul, ready to receive all of Good.

Those things that rub against our grain; loaded words that bring on brain-hives and the desire to strew expletives over the offender -- for no well-reasoned argument will dumb the donkey’s bray that offends -- we find those things have no place in this soft soul.

It is from the stillness that patience is to be born, with a certain measure of tolerance and the will to let things go. Water off of a sheet of glass.

But I must acknowledge how fortunate we are to have within our midst, those who abide in domiciles built from a certain amorphous solid, and who are only too keen to hurl projectiles at those who pass by. Well-meaning missiles, of course; targeting our ill-placed sentiments into something that loosely resembles one person’s notion of what constitutes a Mu’min.

Why, you need not scar your forehead asking of The One to guide you onto the path of Truth and Light, when you’re being herded onto a trail predetermined by one who simply knows better.

And everyone knows better. Except you, of course.

My patience is not complete. It has yet to be tempered into something better than glass.

(Coffee at Sehri, keeps you Merry. Salma will agree, that rhymes somewhat)

The Battle of Confetti - opening salvo

Off we go to ChinaMart, where mum can indulge her best-price antics.

aside- I cringe when she does this, and still get night-frights from the Bhamjee's Shoes shop name-drop debacle (no, we're not related to the family that owns the store, however this did not deter my mum from mentioning that I am late Abdul's grand-daughter, who used to be a friend of the family. Yes, we did get a discount. Yes, I was a walking vat of essence of mortification. Mummy, I know you're reading this.)

So there we were at ChinaMart having just stumbled upon a store that sold gift bags and papercraft-goodie-things for cheep-cheep.
Our mission that Saturday morning was to shop for wedding favour stuff.
I hate when people give ornamenty-garbage clutter at weddings. I know it's the thought that counts, but how about one that actively engaged some sentient process? The cabinet in our lounge is filled with such crap of this ilk; kitschy plastic fruit floating in a bottle, a little white porcelain ribboned giftbox that looked much like a Lilliput coffin, a cloudy chocolate mould my gran wouldn't eat because there was some prayer written on it in gold dust and about a million shot glasses which your typical teetotal-ling muslim family will never find a use for, all sandblasted with something along the line of "Thank you for sharing with us the day we finally get to shag without incurring hell-fire."

With all of that in mind, we decided on something a bit more utilitarian. But even utilitarian needs to look a bit pretty and flouncy for a wedding. Which is why mum and I were squashed in the corner of the overstocked shop digging through a box falling over with organza circles that niftily pull together to form a pretty and flouncy wrapping.

I managed to find something that wasn't too garish. However, mum wanted the organza with the big gold hearts. Big gold hearts are just ghagha to me. And big gold hearts on wedding favours are the ghagha-est of anything ghagha ever. If you don't know what ghagha means, think about big gold hearts emblazoned on gold organza, that's ghagha.

At this point I ducked her and went to look at the cardcraft stuff instead. I shouted over a box of wire-butterflies that I did not want the ghagha gold organza heart wrapping. The chinese lady at the door smiled to herself. Perhaps this was not the first time she had witnessed such mother and daughter exchanges.

My mum insisted. I was incensed.
She had that tone in her voice.
I'm a dutiful daughter.
We compromised.
We walked out with 100 ghagha organza circles printed with big gold hearts.

Do those who are that shade of moral-grey, also scare you more than barefaced thieves and murderers?

more ire (this could be a regular feature)

Last night may truly have been the "The Night of Power", for a pair of black pants that went deep underground about two months ago, suddenly resurfaced in the fresh laundry pile.
A miracle certainly, for repeated questioning of the house-mates drew blank stares reminiscent of Foetal Alcohol Syndrome.

Hence it was with great surprise that I pulled the pants in dubious question out of a pile of clothes that had been freshly washed. This implied to me, by no great leap of logical reason, that the pants must've been worn in order for them to have ended up there. Yes? It maketh sense no?

So who's been wearing my pants? The stretchy one with a centre seam down each leg, in a size that accomodates my somewhat healthy and strapping form? When all of the housemates, myself excluded, seem to be blessed with skinny genes, zooped-up metabolism and limited appetites, which compos mentis would deliberately wear a pair of trousers that is clearly identifiable as someone else's by the very virtue of its size?

I'm baffled.
It is by no means a spectacular pair of black pants. Versatile yes, unassuming and practical, but these are attributes that lend themselves to be definitives for any pair of black pants.

Again, why?
?
?

Why would you take someone else's pants without their permission and wear them when they aren't even in your fucking size?

The Intermittent Ire

What is it with fasting muslim people who get a kick out of forwarding emails with pictures of food as attachments under misleading subject headers, to other fasting muslim people?