Skin Art

I'm rather worried. The thing is I want to get what I like to call a 'writer's tattoo' and I'm worried about the consequences, how it will turn out and all that jazz. My plan is to go to a tattoo parlour and ask them to design a rockstar flavoured quill for me. I want the tattoo to be placed in between my thumb and index finger on the back of my hand so as to look like I'm holding a quill in my hand. I'm worried that it might turn out wrong and I'll be stuck with a random smudge on my hand or it won't look as cool as I think it will. There's also the little matter of some companies not hiring people with tattoos on visible parts of their bodies (not that I intend to work for some company, mind you). Also, people sometimes have a negative attitude towards tattoos. Some people believe it's defiling your body and that it's unnatural. My mother figures that tattoos are for stupid people who have nothing better to do with their lives. Every time I tell her that I'm getting a tattoo she says that I should go ahead if my aim in life is to be an idiot. She says it in a very patronising tone just to rub it in. A friend of mine told me about some tattoo technology that allows the ink to stay on your body for approximately three months before totally wearing off. I think I should try that before making my decision. Hmm... that last scrap of information sort of makes this whole post rather pointless doesn't it... Ah well, such is the life of a mad man.

Life's Wonderful

Just the other day I decided that life is filled with magical moments just like all the great stories tell us. The mediocrity of everyday life makes us forget this great truth. I'm a bookworm of sorts and every time I meet people and they ask me about my life they are shocked by the way I reply. I narrate the story of my life as if it was an epic fantasy novel. I'm a homebody who reads books the whole day but I think my life is more exciting than a guy who goes clubbing every night and that's that, nothing else matters in life. My argument is thus: I get to see the world through billions of eyes and my inner life is so rich it's scary. The guy who goes clubbing every night lives only one life and draws from less sources than I do to enrich his life. I draw inspiration from books, movies, people around me (yes, even from the guy who goes clubbing on a nightly basis) and from the physical environment itself. I have great life coaches like Stephen Covey, Albus Dumbledore, Gandalf Greyham, Spiderman, Obi Wan Kenobi, Aslan, Richard Rahl, my mother and goodness! the list just goes on and on... So I say let's all cheat at this life business and encompass a billion lives into our own and leave the world having experienced all of the world's wonders. For the past couple of days I've been going around just loving my life and thinking how magical it is. If you're Christian it's a bonus! Christians have Jesus Christ who is so much fun being around it's downright bliss. Think of it... Christianity tells the greatest tale ever told in the world and lo! it's not just a tale, but it's the gospel truth. Many atheists have all sorts of reasons for not believing in God, Jesus' divinity and all that stuff. I just think they're missing out. Religion aside, people really should not settle for mediocre lives - we should all rage against that sort of thing and be happy people dammit!

I say this again; I'm an idealist - bear with me.

Lover's Lane

Yesterday I was walking down the street where I live and I must have run into about four couples snogging all over the show like no one's business. I felt like puking at the sight of it all... then I came to the realisation that I was actually jealous because my love life's a bit non-existent at the moment. Instead of going home and drowning my sorrow in ice-cream I dabbled in some poetry and this is what I came up with:

A THOUGHT ABOUT EVE ON SAINT VALANTINE’S DAY

“… a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife, and they will become one flesh.” – Genesis 2:24

One day I might be walking down the street…
And all of a sudden there you will be,
As if waiting for me
On that day the sun may or may not shine on our account
Dear God knows, the birds may not even sing
Our meeting may take place in the dead of winter or in the blossom of spring
I would guess the month to be October – things always seem to happen at that time of year
Who is to say it won’t be a dark day of terrible loss and violence
A call to persevere: pure, untainted love founded in a pool of grief and sorrow

The world seemingly passing us by, but from the corner of eyes doubting our little ‘fling’, secretly wishing us ill
You and me, kind of like Fisher’s Lock and Key Hypothesis
No words that I may ever mutter or commit to scraps of paper can do your beauty justice
Your open mind inspiring faith, courage and belief

My love for you, child-like; pure and simple
Because I will give you my all – no more and no less – you may prove to be my fall
I don’t care because I love you
We may be ripped apart by tragedy
And the world may say our ‘doom’ was inevitable, “It was too good to be true”
Stuff the pompous lot with turkey stuffing because I don’t care
I simply and utterly love you

Passive Income

I came across the concept of passive income last year when I read Rich Dad, Poor Dad by Robert Kiyosaki. The paradigm shift I had after completing the book can be compared to being in Primary School and one day realising that girls and their cooties aren't that bad after all. I found that I had Poor Dad mentality when it comes to wealth; go to school, work hard, make it into university, get your degree and somehow become wealthy. I don't want that kind of life! I want excitement and adventure in my life. The thought of living a conventional life makes me want to puke my guts out.

I must say the whole idea of a passive income still scares me and I'm still not too sure how to go about it. I'm just a snot nose kid in varsity with no actual real world experience. The top seems pretty high from where I'm standing. Brian Lee's blog helps keep me focused. He's a real person who's making passive income work for him. He's not a millionaire but he's creating enough financial freedom to do what he loves (making films) without worrying that it's his bread and butter. He is working to learn and making the money he has work for him. I think that's very exciting! Doing what you love for nothing but experience and knowledge and taking what money you have and investing it in a way that allows you to have a steady income without you having to spend hours of your most precious asset (time) slaving away for some company.

So I'm taking the plunge; right here, right now. Financial freedom!!!

I'm just thinking now that most people must think the "passive" in passive income means that you can loll about doing nothing and earn money. That is not the case at all. PI takes as much effort as any other business venture (if not more) but the reward is greater because you eventually get to a phase where your business is running for 24 hours (i.e. making money 24 hours) without you having to be there for 24 hours. I don't believe God created man only to have him sit in some office for 8 hours a day wasting away his life working on projects he cares nothing for. Authors sit in an office the whole day but they're spending all that time hammering away at the craft they love more than anything in the world. If you're deep into accounting or something by all means work at it. What I hate is that people allow themselves to settle into some mediocre station in life they really don't like but end up accepting. I think one should practice the craft you love or die trying to. Then again I'm an idealist.

Ghastly Gatekeepers

I lead a... strange life, and as you can imagine, this does not go down very well with tellers, cashiers and bus drivers.

These gatekeepers are always fierce and menacing. Every time I check out books at the library I have to go through these scary people, every time I pay for a chocolate bar I'm faced with their scowls. It's like I have 'Pick On Me' written on my forehead! What makes the whole thing really terrible is that they torment me in an implicit manner - their cunning is downright freaky. Maybe I'm just paranoid....

Seriously though, service in Jozi is pretty bad. You always hear big companies go on about how important their customers are and that as such they are number one priority. I guess they forgot to tell the people who have to deal with the customers. There are terrible customers whose brains don't function, but why should we suffer because of them or because the cashier's boyfriend is a womaniser who seduces unsuspecting ladies with his pot-belly and moustache?

That's my rant for the day. It's well within my rights to get a touch annoyed when people glower at me when I'm paying for my chocolate bar!

Spellbound Mercenaries

Magical lands like Narnia and Fantasia never fight their own wars without 'recruiting' children from our world to aid them. These magical lands have a sly scheme going on I suspect. Instead of going the expensive route and hiring trained mercenaries they recruit children from our world who have a sense of adventure . Their influence penetrates every nook and cranny of our society, they make sure that books with buzzwords such as brave, epic and honour are continuously being published and are ready for children to pick up and read at all times. The fantasy, horror and science-fiction genres serve as a vehicle to brainwash children. Adults are discouraged from reading "that sort of drivel" and those adults that do read about Faerie and deep space usually turn out to be the sort of people about which the rest of society whispers, "Just humour her won't you dear" - the sort of people who spend too much time on the internets ;)

Our world is a cheap child labour market for our neighbouring magically endowed cousins. They never pay the children they recruit a single penny. What they do instead is enchant them with the beauty of their castles and noble ideals, such as brave kings dying for helpless peasants. Magical countries abuse the fact that one can visit them for decades and it would seem no time at all has passed when you return to our world. After having spent years of your life fighting some strange country's wars they send you home with something trivial, like a vial full of liquidised starlight. I mean really now! It's all just a conspiracy. It simply must be, or my name is Pete - which I assure it is not.

Disclaimer: As far as I know it's not really a conspiracy. It's just one of those things that comes to mind when one has too much free time.

(I would have added this disclaimer even if the CIA didn't show up at my doorstep and force me to).

Songs About Boys Trippin' on the Phone

Maybe it's just me, but almost every time I switch on my radio I'm bombarded by songs about boys trippin' on the phone and how the singers aren't going to put up with these boys' cheating ways anymore. Then you get some boy singing about how sorry he is for cheating and that he now realises that he can never feel the same way about any other girl. I wish they'd all trip over a microphone cord at a show and fall into the crowd where I can get at them with a hammer. It seems to me that all contemporary mainstream music is about the relationship dynamics between guys and girls. Do people have nothing else going for them? Is there no higher existence for mankind than a romanticized manner of hunting, gathering, breeding and basically just surviving through the ages? Man is always glorifying the fact that he has a highly advanced neocortex that distinguishes him from lower animals. Humans still blindly follow their lower animal instincts though. We still have wars to satisfy the greed of chubby dictators who sit in their offices the whole day.

It would be endearing to hear someone sing about how much she loves her granny or how much joy her XBox 360 is giving her. Take Avenged Sevenfold's A Little Piece of Heaven as an example of something refreshing. It's a song that touches on necrophelia and it's presented in a very entertaining way. It's like having your granny, bless her soul, tell you a ghost story that's dark, scary and funny in all the right places. It's still a song about a guy and a girl, but with a demonic twist and there are no boys trippin' on the phone in it.

Prince Caspian Movie

As you might have gathered by now, I'm an avid C.S. Lewis fan. I read The Chronicles of Narnia as a junior in High School and that was that - little did I know that I was playing with fire back then. In my first year of varsity, I stumbled upon The Screwtape Letters and that's when I came to know Lewis as an English professor and the greatest Christian writer I have read thus far. Lewis' books on Christianity are the USN to my spiritual growth and I recommend all of them to any Christian who wishes to gain more insight into their religion. If you are uncertain about what you think about God and you are not sure why you should bother with Him, Lewis' books are definitely for you.

A few days ago I was discussing the Narnia books with my good friend, Dean and we talked about the deeper allegorical meaning behind the seemingly innocent children's stories. It's wonderful how much you learn about Christ reading these stories as an adult. The Prince Caspian trailer is out and I'm very excited about seeing the full-length feature. Many people I know didn't think too highly of The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe movie but I loved it and if the trailer can be trusted Prince Caspian looks like it's going to be thrice as good.

A Word to the Wise

If there's one thing on Earth I hate having it's girl trouble. I hate it, I hate it, I really do! When you're twenty girl trouble isn't as serious as your dad divorcing your mom after forty years of marriage and ten kids. Girl trouble in your twenties is a mean, petty and selfish affair. Take for instance my plan that seemed brilliant a month ago, the sort of thing Aristotle would think of, but which seems idiotic in hindsight. Here's the score: I'm in love with this cute blonde whose hair looks like Aslan's mane as it's described in the Narnia books. But I wasn't going to see her for two months as she was planning to spend her varsity holidays in the Freestate. (Some free advice; don't bother falling in love with people just before the holidays, especially if they plan to go spend an awfully long time in another province). My ex-girl (whose hair doesn't vaguely resemble any talking beast's mane as it's described in any series of books I've read) came up from Cape Town to Jozi for the silly season and my not-so-brilliant plan was to have a fling with The Ex till the end of the holidays when she has to go back to Cape Town. By then my cute blonde would be back from frolicking on the farms of the Freestate and I would be free to romance her as I please. Now for most guys there's nothing wrong with this plan, it's just that I had to go and be born different. The crazy thing with me is my strange mental design. I'm the sort of person who if he feels nothing but sticks for a girl gets no pleasure from normally enjoyable activities like snogging on her mother's prized leather couch while her dad's in the next room reading the paper. For me dating The Ex turned out to be quite a chore, it was like having to wake up at four in the morning and going for a jog. I had to hold her hand when we went to the movies, hug her every two hours or so, and mumble a few incomprehensible words every time she mentioned the word love. I felt no passionate spark when I kissed her, not even the rush of adrenaline romance novels promise you. I would have been better off staying at home and staring into space. The Ex seemed oblivious to my plight, she was high on squishy emotions and enjoying the rush. All of the things about the relationship that seemed bland to me were tons of fun for her. This made me feel like a real scoundrel, especially after reading C.S. Lewis' The Great Divorce where he touches on the evils of the sort of pity that "cheats girls out of their virginity" and in my case prevented me from setting things straight with The Ex and telling her that I'm not into her that way and I'm sorry for wasting her time. If you're anything like me, that being: a) you inherited unique genes from your grandparents, b) your parents had a method of raising you that can only be described as eccentric at best, and c) you went to the sort of high school where you learned to respect (by which you actually meant 'worship') girls, then please just do yourself a favour and rather put all your effort into pursuing your cute blonde girl whose hair looks like Aslan's mane as it's described in the Narnia books.

Welcome to My Humble Home

"I've got hugs for you if you were born in the 80s..." - Acceptable In The 80s by Calvin Harris

I heard this tune sometime last year on the radio and I thought wow! that's cool because I was born in the 80s and so were most of my goodbuddies - it felt like having your name on the front page of the morning paper. With that seemingly random scrap of information I'd like to welcome you to goodbuddies inc. - all the 80s people collect your hugs at the door. If you weren't born in the 80s just act like you were and I promise to turn a blind eye. I hope that you will find your visit here to be a bit disturbing. For all your effort there's cake at the end.