Christmas Peace

and i ran..i ran so far away

Flock Of Seagulls - I Ran

as i lie here this christmas morning with pain in my feet, i should be worrying about fueling the generator. worrying how long PHCN will give us light. worrying if i have to go physically threaten the guy at the gate again to pump water.

i should be worrying about all these things. but sometimes, you just. can't. shout.

so. because i couldn't shout, three days ago the missus and i packed up and blew town and arrived Cape Town.

so, as i lie here this christmas morning with pain in my feet from being dragged through over fifty shops in two days, it's nice to not have to worry about the small things in life.

merry christmas, blogspot. wish you were here :)

It Sounded Just Like...

Rhymes richochet off the inner walls of my lungs
and go past my tongue faster than bullets come out of guns

Kurupt/Lost Boys - Music Makes Me High Remix 

have you ever wondered what an experience sounds like?

yeah, i said sounds. i believe experiences have their own aural cadence which can be translated perfectly to song. who says moments in life should only be interpreted by how you felt?

testify, somebody.

well, today we're exploring five popular scenarios. what we all think they'd sound like and what they really sound like. evolve or die, people.

*

Having Sex All Night

you think sounds like - Sexual Healing (Marvin Gaye)

gasps of passion. poetry in motion. repeated bouts of pleasure framed in the moonlight. acts of heroism and vigor all done to the breathless chants of 'heal me...my..darling'

really sounds like - It's All Right - (DMX)

rivers of sweat and damp sheets. leg cramps, faked orgasms around 1am and a persistent smell akin to a box full of damp kittens. desperately checking the time while one partner chants 'it's all good, it's all right, f*ck all day, f*ck all night!'

Arguing With Your Partner/Worse Better Half

you think sounds like - We're Not Making Love No More (Dru Hill)

plaintive arguments. tortured looks of betrayed emotion. holding your loved one tight as you both sob in each others arms and whisper 'we don't  even talk no more!'

really sounds like - Scream (Chris Cornell)

fingers pointing two inches away from the other person's face. cords and veins bulging in necks and foreheads. slamming doors, stomping footsteps and the recurring plaintive question being yelled down the hall 'WHY do you KEEP screaming at the TOP of your HEAD?!?'

Dancing While Drunk

you think sounds like - I'm Really Hot (Missy Elliot)

it's amazing. three glasses of vodka, two glasses of punch and one un-named drink later and you're burning up the dancefloor. you're moves are perfectly in sync. everyone else has formed a semi-circle around you and are cheering and screaming that you're 'doing it, doing it and doing it well!'

really sounds like - Pjanoo (Eric Prydz)

there's music everywhere.

there's music in your head, in your mind, in your brain. the music has taken control of your body and you cant stop moving. in every direction. at the same time. everyone else has formed a semi-circle around you and are laughing and screaming in time with the crazy tune in your head....

 Singing With Earphones On

you think sounds like -  I Surrender (Celine Dion)

 earphones deep in your head, your eyes are closed as you summon your sweetest notes from deep within. without trying, you match the notes you can hear; even surpassing them. you take the American Idol stance, legs apart, one hand stretched out as you hit that impossibly high note and the world explodes into colour. 'I Reeeeeach to Yoouuuuu!!!'

really sounds like - The Llama Song (Burton Earny)

earphones deep in your ears, you belt out the notes like blender with rocks in it. glass shatters around you, milk curdles and mothers cover their babies' ears. as you take the American Idol stance to reach that high note, the world goes mad and God intervenes to save mankind from your voice.

Wearing A Brown, Purple & Orange Outfit

you think sounds like - Turn My Swag On (Soulja Boy Tell 'Em)

you are a walking enigma. people turn to stare in awe as you somehow make the colours work. it's like you simply hopped out of bed and turned your swag on.

really sounds like -  Turn My Swag On (Soulja Boy Tell 'Em)

you are like a walking car crash. people stare in horror while the sun turns black. the words fashion and style cease to exist in the dictionary as you are spotted by more than ten people. The devil shrieks in panic as he spots you.

Quote Me On That : The One On Optimism

My Optimism wears heavy boots and is loud.
Henry Rollins

I was doing some research this morning looking for quotes for a branding opportunity. And one of the values was ‘optimism’. Now usually i’m one of those people who believes decorating an office with quotes are a pretty depressing thing. To me, it’s like decorating a cage. I mean, it’s still the grind right?

But this morning, jumping from website to website looking for quotes on the value of Optimism, a truth began to form in my head. That the belief and hope of a brighter tomorrow isn’t a sign of weakness or refusal to accept reality...it is the nutrition for a soul that needs positivity to excel.

The idea of quotes has given me an idea for a recurring monthly ‘Quote Me On That’ series where i dig up the best quotes on a new topic, value or whatever. I think it could be fun.

Kicking things off I’ve compiled  seven of my personal best quotes on optimism i discovered this morning.

I hope it makes your week like it just made mine.

1.    1. It's better to be an optimist who is sometimes wrong than a pessimist who is always right – Anonymous

2.    2. The average pencil is seven inches long, with just a half-inch eraser... in case you thought optimism was dead - Robert Brault

3.    3. Optimist: Person who travels on nothing from nowhere to happiness - Mark Twain

4.    4. An optimist is a man who starts a crossword puzzle with a fountain pen – Unknown

5.    5. Optimism is a happiness magnet. If you stay positive, good things and good people will be drawn to you - Mary Lou Retton

6.    6. Being an optimist after you've got everything you want doesn't count - Kin Hubbard

And the best one of them all...

7.  A pessimist sees only the dark side of the clouds, and mopes; a philosopher sees both sides, and shrugs; an optimist doesn't see the clouds at all - he's walking on them - Leonard Louis Levinson

What's In Me?

i've been talking in my sleep

Matchbox 20 - Unwell 

you ever hear that joke about the man that kept dreaming of the secret to all of life's problems?

a man would go to bed and every night and in his dream he'd see the solution to all of life's problems, right there, as clear as day. unfortunately by the time he woke up every morning, he wouldn't have the slightest recollection of what the solution was. so one day, he takes the initiative and puts a pen and a pad next to his bed just before he falls asleep. that night he again dreams of the solution to life's problems. immediately he wills himself to wake up and scribbles the solution down on the pad. satisfied, he falls asleep with a smile on his face.

he wakes up the next morning and remembers excitedly what happened the night before. he grabs the notepad and flips it open to see the solution to all of life's problems.

...and discovers he's written his house address.

*

i've been having dreams just like that.

only in MY dreams, i'm dreaming scripts. plot. dialogue so intricate i'm actually impressed in the dream that all this is coming from my head. then i wake up and the whole thing is vapour.

i know where all this is coming from, of course.

in the last three weeks i've seen one chap win a hundred and fifty million naira and another win a mind-boggling forty-five million pounds.

say it to yourself. Forty Five Million Pounds.

well, i'm realistic enough to realize life wont give ALL of us freebies. some of us (well, most of us) actually need to toil the earth and make that money, lubricating the wheels of enterprise with blood, sweat and tears.

see how i get poetic when i'm depressed?

the more i think of it, the more i'm convinced we all have that X factor in us that is pure genius and will make us ridiculously rich if we can just...nab...the damn thing. i'm not talking about your day job. your day job is what you do cause you've gotta do something to eat.

i'm talking about what you dream of at night. a chain of corporations with your name on it. designs and patterns so vibrant they could make you cry. music so beautiful you can live it.

a story so epic you cant remember it when you wake up. :)

i know somethings in me. i just don't know what it is.

Trick or Tweet

This year halloween fell on a weekend
Me and geto boyz are trick or treatin'
Geto Boyz-My Mind's Playing Tricks On Me
Happy halloween, bloggers. Anything scary happen so far?
Me, I've been home, taking it easy. Later tonight I've got a good scary movie planned to frighten the missus (Session 9; an absolutely TERRiFYING movie) even if she is notoriously difficult to scare.
But I'm just saying, there's absolutely nothing wrong with a good scare now and then. And in the light of this I bring you nine ways to get your scare on.
1. Watch Nightmare On Elm Street. even though halloween is usually associated with axe murderers, indulge in the brain numbing terror of Freddy Kreuger. He is Psychotic, athletic and had blades for fingers. The good news is he can only get you when you sleep.
The bad news is you WILL sleep.
2. Listen to Michael Jackson's Thriller. one of the greatest songs of all time from the best selling album of all time. Filled with howls, shambling footsteps and THAT LAUGH at the end. Won't terrify you, but might scare you when you discover how hard it is to do those moves now that you're older.
3. Read some Stephen King. my favourite author hands down with high definition imagination. Allow me to suggest the novel 'Salem's Lot'. Great pacing, fantastic characters and Vampires like you've never seen them. Twilight this aint.
4. Type in the words '2012 phenomenon' in wikipedia and slowly freak out. Wonder if it's remotely true and prepare to see the movie when it hits cinemas on november 13.
5. Tune in to African Magic and catch a home video. stare in horror at the bad acting. Be terrified at the length of the movie. Be afraid of the fact that these movies increase every year. There is no escape.
6. Read any nigerian newspaper and notice the rising number of kidnappings. Be afraid that even a vulcaniser's son was kidnapped. Be amused that he had to pay 30k to get his son back. True story.
7. If you haven't done one in the last ten years, do an HIV test.
8. This is a good one - wait till everyone goes to bed then watch the movie Dawn Of The Dead (2004). Turn the volume up.
9. Listen to news on Swine Flu. Wonder. What. Happens. If. It. Gets. Here.
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I Will Not Be Frozen

yeah, you can try

but I've found the antidote  
music is the cure

Little Boots - Remedy 

Yes. My leave is over.

it's interesting to see work is just as frantic as it was when i left it a month ago...I'm back and already in the deep end. a presentation on Friday, clients screaming insults over the phone and me creating copy for a  campaign AFTER seeing the artist's images.

it's like a drug. a poisonous fracking drug.

once again, i've turned to music as my savior from madness...and i heard the above little boots song on my ipod. apparently from this month's UK billboard top 40, it's a great work out song...even if not everyone online thinks so.

here's a little parting bit of geek news for all music lovers out there. almighty Google have incorporated a new 'music search' feature into google search that now lets you find the lyrics of any song just by typing in a phrase, sentence or line from that song. so even if you don't know the name of the song but cannot get that chorus outta your head, you can still find that tune.
Kewl, no?

Straight From The Heart

Here's my heart
It's been broken,
It's been wounded
But I'll give it all to you if you will love me
...If you will love me
Out Of Eden &The Winans - Here Is My Heart

This is a long post. Get a snack.
*
A lot of ex's used to tell me I had a heart like stone.
How ironic.
They came pretty close.
*
The thing with heart problems is doctors tend to be nervous about it when they talk to you. Lots of hmmm's and ahhhh's while they listen to your heartbeat over and over without saying anything concrete. For two years I'd heard a whole lot of phrases, terms and gibberish till one had stood out.
Angina.
Now angina is a general term for cardio-related chest pains, much the same way the term 'flu' is a general description for cold infections. So yes, there's angina. I feel pain. But what's causing it? Enter another funny word; Arrhythmia.
Arrhythmia is a fancy word for saying your heart is showing off. Everyone's heart is supposed to beat say, Bop-Bop, Bop-Bop,Bop-Bop. There's a pattern.
My heart is doing a Bop-Bop Beep, Bop-Bop,Bop-Bop Beep.
See? It's like a Timbaland edition heart.
Now I never knew about the arrhythmia. I just thought I had a really strong heartbeat (some of you reading this right now are going 'hey waitaminute. I have a really strong heartbeat!)
So when you put it together, what do you get? You have angina, pain, which is the effect. Then you have arrhythmia which is not a cause in itself, but is causing the angina.
So what's causing the arrhythmia?
Yeah well. I'm STILL asking that.
Over the past few years I've done a few blood tests, cholesterol tests, HIV tests (they didn't tell me that was what it was for!!!) And ECG's. An ecg is when they hook you up with those white discs and wires and try to get a reading from your heart. Once, they put me on a treadmill and made me run for 10 minutes while they kept ramping up the speed.
Very Six Million Dollar Man.
But the one test I'd dreaded, which I had never done, was the echocardiography. Call it the echo for short. This is a test that uses sound waves to create a real-time beating image of your heart. Like an ultra scan for your heart.
Well, I finally got around to doing it last thursday. Got to the hospital, took off my shirt, lay down, had that freaky jelly smeared on my chest and the machine touched me. My eyes went wide as the image appeared on the screen.
Its one thing to watch Discovery Channel and see A heart beating. That's cool. Its geeky. But when you're lying on a bed seeing YOUR heart beating on a tv over your head, its something...more.
I lay there looking at the heart pounding away...strong and relentless like the wrath of God. I could see a valve opening to let stuff in (blood? Air?) and I could see how it grew and shrank with each beat.
It looked huge. Somehow more real than I'd imagined. The doctor did something with the machine and for the first time ever I heard my authentic, timbaland heartbeat.
And in my twisted, geeked out way I wondered absently if I could convince him to let me use it as a ringtone.
*
So there I was on the bed all emotional while the doctor asked me all the same questions (are you an athlete? Does physical activity bring you pain? No doctor, I have sex just fine) and once again, acting nervous.
He explained my heart was pretty normal...only the left wall seemed a bit thicker than normal.
I
crazily heard a million female voices screaming 'heart of stone! Heart of stone!'. I battled to keep a straight face.
So, the doc explained. Was there a history of timbaland hearts in the family? Did I have healthy relatives that had suddenly just keeled over?
Over the years I'd learned to answer these gruesome questions quite calmly. And honestly. I put my heart into it. :D
So as the missus and I left yet another test with fewer answers and more questions, I patted myself on the back for finally doing the echo. Seeing my heart had made me realise two things.
1. It had been made by Someone.
2. And since I'm pretty sure He has the manual to fixing it...I should probably hand it over to Him to look at it.
Because you all know.
 They don't make these 1979 models like they used to. :D


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Seeing Things Differently

And the sun will set for you
And the shadow of the day
Will embrace the world in gray
And the sun will set for you.

Linkin Park-Shadow Of The Day

Man, I am so addicted to Flickr. It's true we can't all be photography maestros like Cereberus...but if you love having fun taking pictures, check out flickr.

Now then.

Whoever said health is wealth was misunderstood.

'Health is wealth' doesn't literally mean good health is wealth. It means when you AREN'T sick you aren't putting money in doctors pockets so people like Bumight will have to go get a real job.

Two and a half weeks into my leave, I realised I still had boxes to tick in my 'things to do while on leave list' one of them was suck it up and go see an Ophthalmologist.

I've been wearing glasses since 1991. As far as dependency goes, I've accepted my fate; me and these babies are bonnie and clyde. If I aint going anywhere, THEY aint going anywhere.

However in the last two years, I've noticed lapses in visual detail. Put plainly, my eyesight has been getting worse and I was still making glasses based on my old prescription.

So, last week, I went to see the eye doctor. I guiltily sat in his waiting room, looking around at all the (mostly) hideous glasses on display and wondering if I'd one day be caught wearing these thirty years from now.


Seeing where I'm coming from, that's not impossible
.
I walked in when it was my turn, answered all the polite questions and we were off to the eye chart.
The eye chart is a cruel thing. Its an unflinching, insinuating assortment of letters determined to make you feel blind, stupid or both. A long time ago, I'd squint and fight for my honour.

Well, 10 years later and a few lenses thicker, I have seen (literally) the error of my ways.

My lenses are a minus two point five...and that's since my last eye test five years ago.

So we did the chart. Then the spooky machine where you looked down a road and saw (or if you're really f**ked up) or didn't see the little house at the end.

Then there's the piercing beams of light prodding your cornea as you look up down left right in the head brace machine.

After all this, the doctor sat down solemnly and scribbled away in my brand new file and delivered the news.
'Your eyesight is exactly the same'.

Well, not exactly. My left eye, hah hah, actually got better. Stepped up from a minus 2.5 to a minus 2.2. So even though my prescription was 18 years old, it was still relevant.

I felt very good as I walked out of the doctor's office. I mean, sure, I'm still short sighted. I will probably wear glasses for the rest of my life (his reply to my questions on corrective eye surgery confirmed THAT) but there's a good feeling in knowing that you aren't, you know, going blind.

Also tells you just how real your imagination can make a thing seem. I was sure my eyes were getting worse. But I'd been wrong. And that gave me the stones to book the next test I'd been putting off for the past two years.

An echocardiography.

Stay tuned.

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