Things that have happened lately – A List

• Albert moved to Johannesburg (which – yay! –means I’ll probably never see him again)
• My father had a heart attack (which sucked, obviously)
• I did not vote in the national elections.
• My feet turned into this
  

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

• I broke down in tears because there was no milk for my coffee (and now I’m sorry for everyone whose PMS I ever laughed at, because this? Is so much worse.
• I got made up to look like an Indian (possibly an Indian. Not really sure what it’s meant to be. I think I looked pretty, though.)

 

• I talked Marcel into letting my cousin make-up him. She didn’t turn him into a pirate, which I think is unfair.

 

• My dad got into a fight with a blesbok (which is a kind of antelope with really sharp horns and a nasty temper). It nearly disembowelled him, and he tore his shoulder to hell. This was after the heart attack, mind you. It was Monday, in fact.
• I found out I’m having a boy, contrary to expectations.
• I started writing again
• I installed Windows 7, which not only takes the Cake of Awesome, but eats some of it and smooshes the rest into your face so you look like a clownhead.
• I installed Windows Live Writer. Can you see I’m having fun with it?

Justice and Mercy

There’s a debate going on at the moment, regarding prisoner’s rights in South Africa. A lot of you may not know that a very large percentage of our prison population is HIV positive, mainly because they picked up the ’slow puncture’ in prison.
Large numbers of prisoners are dying in prison, and many have now made the case that these prisoners should be allowed to go home and die with their families.
Which is all well and good, and a clear case of tempering Justice with Mercy, as is right and proper.

But is it really? We are so very concerned about Mercy, that it seems to me that Justice has fallen by the wayside.
Where was Mercy when these men raped children? Where was Mercy when they brutally murdered people in their homes, or shot them in cold blood because they were ‘inconvenient’?
The answer? Mercy was nowhere to be found.

My Wise Sister-in-Law said (wisely, of course) that you can’t pay with more than your life. Which is very true. Many of these men would not be dying now if they hadn’t gone to jail, so in a sense they are paying with their lives.
But here’s the thing: 99% of them do not care. It’s a well known fact that if you go to jail, unless you’re very fast or you have some serious connections, you will be raped. Repeatedly and violently. And there’s a very good chance you will get AIDS from it.
Everyone knows this. But they still do it. They still think they can do whatever they please, to whomever they like, and there will be no consequences.
I’m not saying that male rape in prison is a good thing, don’t get me wrong.
It’s a horrible thing, and I wouldn’t wish it on my worst enemy.
But it is a consequence.
And when the government is so concerned with tempering Justice with Mercy that Justice has gone out the window, we need those consequences.

Think about this: in Saudi Arabia, consequences for crime are clear, immediate and more often than not severe. Allright, some of the things they consider crimes are not in the Western mind, crimes at all, but the point is that there are consequences. If you murder, you die. It’s a simple equation, and it works.
Because they are less concerned with the rights of the criminals than the rights of the citizens.
In the West, it’s often the other way ’round.

If our Mercy was more tempered with Justice, the world might be a different place.

So I’m officially 22

Can’t say it feels much different from being 21… My birthday was on the fourth. So far my twenty-second year is not going well. Still can’t write, have barely enough money to breathe etc. etc.

 

In other news, am having much fun at work, and am still alive. It’s my sister’s birthday today, and she is going to kill me because I haven’t gotten her a present yet.

Help Jenny

There’s a girl in America who suffers from a disease no-one can diagnose, and it’s killing her slowly.
Her family is looking for people with comparable symptoms, who may or may not have had some success with treatments.

These are the symptoms:

• a. Has had similar rapid weakening, going from healthy to paralyzed very quickly
• b. Teenage girl, with recent onset of menses (periods)
• c. Have had similar treatments: IVIG, plasmapheresis, multiple
  forms of steroids and Cytoxin (an immunosuppressant), a “mitochondrial
  cocktail” of antioxidants, and lithium and riluzole
• d. Recent HPV vaccine
• e. Possibly family history of neural diseases, such as seizures and/or palsies
• f. Possibly had an auto-immune condition in the past, such as a rare skin condition like pityriasis lichenoides
• g. Possible heavy-metal exposure, for example aluminum or environmental mercury exposure.

E-mail jenjensfamily@gmail.com if you are a patient, family or physician and recognize these characteristics as being similar.

Her family’s blog is at http://jenjensfamily.blogspot.com/

Mugabe declares war?

So, was just on the phone with Albert. Apparently everybody’s favourite syphilis-addled tyrannical dictator has just declared war on the rest of Africa.
Well, the man’s completely out of his tree, so I don’t think it’s actually impossible.

I just really, really don’t want it to be true. Because if for-real war breaks out in Zim-against-the-world, South Africa will be standing bang behind old Mad Bob. Because they were all terrorists together in the war against colonialism/imperialism/apartheid, and once you’re brothers in the Struggle you’re brothers for life. And it doesn’t matter that the only difference between a freedom fighter and a terrorist is that freedom fighters have already won – because here at the arse end of Africa, the terrorists have all won. And they’re sitting in positions of power remembering the good old days when they could necklace people for telling the truth about them.
Do you know what necklacing is, by the way?
They put a car tyre around your body. They fill it with gasoline. And then they light you on fire, and turn up the music so they don’t have to listen to you scream.
If you’re a man, that is. Only then do you get off that easily
If you’re a woman, you can expect to be raped a few times before they actually get around to the tyre part. Like Maki Skosana, who was still a child when they forced broken glass into her vagina and set her on fire.

And these are the people who run the country, who decide whether we go to war or not. People longing for the glory days of murder and mayhem…
People who believe, whacked-out as it may sound, that Mugabe is actually an okay sort of guy with some good ideas – they’re even adopting some of his land reform practices here! The same land reform practices that saw white farmers murdered, milliions of dollars worth of crops destroyed and the people of Zimbabwe set on a downward spiral of opppression, starvation and abuse. Brilliant, right?

Weekend coming up…working again

Going to be at work this weekend. Just like last weekend and the weekend before that, and the weekend before that, and the weekend before that…

Well. So, Albert might have a new job. Yayness is me, as this will mean that I will once again be able to sit down. Boredom does strange things to that man.

My so-Called Life

So, last week, I was off for two days. I come back, and there is no internet. Oh, how I suffered! Working Sunday late shift in a hotel with no internet? Not fun. And then, on Monday…no internet. Still. Picture me sitting in front of computer, burning incense for the Internet Gods.
BERNICE: Oh, Lords of All Knowledge, wherefore hast thou forsaken me?
THE INTERNET: Because you just said wherefore in cold blood. Also, don’t you have work?
BERNICE: Work? What is this work? Why do you use these big words that hurt my brain, O Internet?
INTERNET: Because you are an idiot. Go away, and try to do some actual, y’know, work?
BERNICE: I will now ponder the meaning of these wise revelations from the Internet. Ommm, awarreeeya, gangalosh, rrrrammarooooja….
PEOPLE AT WORK: Is she going into withdrawal? Do we need to call an ambulance?
The internet got fixed just before I knocked off on Monday for another mysterious two days off (I suspect that they just didn’t want me to have the weekend off because there’s a big conference coming in and we all know how much I love conferences )
And now, finally, I have internet. Yay for something to do at work!

Oh, yes. And CSS, the company Albert was working for…no longer exists. As of Tuesday, he’s officially unemployed. First thing my mom said? ‘You know you can always move back home, honey.’ I love my mom, but sometimes I could murder her with a sock and two peanuts.
And yesterday I broke my father’s computer. Well, not exactly broke broke. It just…doesn’t work anymore. And it’s kind of my fault. And my flash, which contained the newest draft of my book, all my Maya fic, a lot of dribs and drabs that I’ve written over the years…corrupt. Completely skrood. I’m going to have to format it if I ever want to use it again. All that lovely data…Lady Luck’s a bitch.

In other news, Gabriel? Very good. For a given value of good. My personal value of good is basically: Does it have Teh Eye Candy?
The answer here is a resounding YES! Everyone is hot, from Gabriel the tattooed arcangel to the fallen angel-cum-hooker (pun srsly not intended). Best yet? Gabriel has glowing blue eyes just like the Fremen from Dune! *cue fangirly love-fest*. Plus I think the same actor might have actually played in Dune. As Paul Atreides, actually. Let me know if anyone knows for a fact that that’s not true.

Quentin Tarantino has more issues than the Daily Planet

Seriously. Watch Death Proof and you’ll see why. He’s a genius, of course, but he’s also more than a little mental, seems to me. He has this skill with that moment where you realize something really horrendous is going to happen to a character, but they don’t. And he draws this moment out for ages, while you’re sitting on the edge of your seat screaming at the screen like a demented person, hoping that by some miracle they’ll actually listen to you for once.
Alas, they never do.

In other news, I am reading The Neutronium Alchemist by Peter F. Hamilton. As brilliant, if not more so, than the one before. Al Capone takes over the world, for crying out loud!
This book is the source of much joy, and also many panicky phone calls to my brother along the lines of ‘this and this and this just happened and please you have to tell me if Character X is going to be okay!’
But also, the book sucks rotten eggs. Because I am almost finished with it, and I won’t be able to get the next one for three weeks! muttermuttersulkfret.

In other other news, I have decided that reading too much grown-up Heinlein and too many bodice-rippers when I was young has permanently warped my mind and left me with the morals of an alley-cat. Haven’t decided whether I care or not.

So today started out terribly.

As you all know, I’m blind as a bat. So when my glasses are not where I expect them to be…well, I tend to start freaking out.
This morning, they were not only not where I expected them to be – they were, in fact, nowhere to be found.

I woke up Albert. I made coffee (and if you think making coffee by touch is fun, think again). We moved the bed a grand total of six times. We interrogated the cat. We checked the garbage and the stuffing of the PC chair.

Alas, for the glasses were nowhere to be found, and Merlin waxed pretty much the opposite of verbose.
Eventually, though, the glasses were found. Yes, the quest ended in joyous success.
And I was twenty minutes late for work, but Sheron was already there so that didn’t matter much.

And tomorrow, there will be siblings, and computer parts, and all things wondrous. Yay!

*Much Later*

Have had bad day. The other girl lost my pen, which I had to buy because they don’t supply us with stationery that works, and then I got shat upon for saying she had to buy me a new one. While I’m expected to buy back a flashdrive which someone stole out of the office, and nobody says a word.

I really really hate this job.

Bad boyfriends

Writing is like a psychotic boyfriend, now that I think about it. You know the type – your parents love him, your sisters adore him, your friends think he might be ‘The One’ for you. And none of them notice the way you walk hunched over all of a sudden to keep your heart from breaking, and the bruises that are the reason why you suddenly wear a lot of make-up.

Writing is a lot like that. Sometimes, when it’s good, it’s very good. But when it’s bad, it’s worse than anything you can imagine.

I haven’t been writing for a year and a half now. It’s like being in heroin withdrawal, with the added bonus that your drug of choice doesn’t work anymore. I still love writing. I still love the feel of a character or a story inside of me, waiting to come to life. I imagine that that’s what being pregnant must feel like.
I just can’t do it anymore. I am filled with ideas, pregnant with them…but when the time comes to put them on a page, I just can’t do it. I write perhaps two pages and think to myself ‘what utter shit. Nobody will ever read this!’ and it’s true. Because somehow, somewhere, I seem to have lost the confidence in myself that made it possible, even when I despised myself and wanted to die, to write and get myself out of there. Writing was my lifeline back then, lifting me out of myself and taking me to places where I could be whoever I wanted to be, do anything I wanted to do. And it doesn’t work anymore.

Because since this thing happened to me – this thing that turned my art against me – writing has been my pain. Not my drug against the agony of life, but the cause of it. And that’s never happened to me before.

And I still want it. That’s the worst part. Maybe I’m just too stubborn for my own good, unwilling to give up on the idea that I will be a writer, or maybe I’m meant to get through this and go on writing, someday even something worth reading.

And that’s why writing is like a psychotic boyfriend. You know he’s only going to hurt you. You know he’s bad.
You know that ever time he says ‘it’ll never happen again,’ never is really only ‘until next time’ because it will happen again.
And you still go back.
Because despite what the world wants you to believe, there are more important things than being happy. And art is one of those things.