UNDERCULTURE

Danni’s packed up her stuff. The last bits of it are moving out today, leaving nothing but emptiness and questions behind. I’m still reeling from the shock and suddenness of it all. How did we get from looking at wedding venues to this? How did we get from words like forever and always to words like isolation and loneliness? I don’t know and I guess I’ll never know.

I wish I had something profound to utter, something poetic to say but I don’t. I’m not even angry or disappointed, I’m just… I don’t know. When I was a kid, I always looked into the eyes of lonely adults, those who’ve lost a battle by loving someone a little too much. I looked into their eyes and always wondered what melancholy adventure, what secret passions turned to tragedy, lay behind their rheumy orbs. I guess I know now.

So the question is, what now? Well, I suppose I don’t have much choice but to stand up, dust myself off and head out into the wild yonder armed with nothing but wit and some Rohypnol (purely medicinal). I shouldn’t be worried. This will be fun, right?

After all, I am now on the wrong side of 35, fat, bald and with nothing much to offer than a keen ability to play computer games and drink beer. Which dens of inequity and halls of debauchery can I visit where I will not appear as the creepy old drunk guy, the debaucher of the young, now past his prime, drinking away his misery?

The answer is nowhere. I cannot hide who I am. I cannot pretend that I am anything but who I am. In case, I am too tired after repeated heartbreaks to even try to pretend. The trick, it would seem, would be for me to embrace my inner creepy old man.

(Talking of creepy, I’m also re-starting my life-drawing sessions at EPSAC for anyone who’s interested. It’ll happen every week, on Tuesdays, from 19:00. R35 gets you in. Let me know if you’re interested. I’ll also be doing a lot more coaching.)

But this only opens up the discussion to the deeper questions: now that it’s been decided to embrace my inner creepy old man (and, ladies, I recommend that you do too. Embrace my creepy old man, that is), how do I go about it? Should I get a lovely pencil moustache? Should I take up smoking again? Is it now time to move to gin and tonic as my staple drink?

And when should I start drinking? Is 10:00 AM too late? Or should I still moderate my drinking and keep it to after-hours? Importantly, where should I go? Obviously the bar can’t be too dodgy because then there’d be no ladies (and it’s all about the ladies) and I couldn’t be creepy (it’s integral to the my newfound identity). This is such a difficult path to navigate. I count on you, gentle readers, to help me out.

I’m also very rusty with my pick-up lines but I still have got a few that work. I’m planning to open up with: “hey, are your pants made of mirrors? Because I’d like to bone you.”

There has been something growing on my mind of late. It is a dark and expanding shadow not unlike that of an obese man free-falling. As I drive around and observe this cultural hellhole I call home, seeing its ignorant masses moving to and fro I realize with a cold chill that Port Elizabeth cannot survive the Zombie Apocalypse.

It won’t survive maybe a little bit. It is doomed to fall. What safe havens could we possibly create or find? In Greenacres? In Walmer Park? I shudder to think of poor Motherwell… I fear the worst and, luckily, I’m not alone in that and we have a plan. I’m not sharing it, quite obviously, because we don’t want our potential survival strategy to be thwarted by all you freeloaders. But I might be persuaded to let on a few tricks and tips and nifty Port Elizabeth Zombie Apocalypse Survival tips. I will reveal them for either pictures of breasts or cunning tips from like-minded zombie survivalists.

Tip 1: When the Zombie Apocalypse happens, barricade yourself indoors and stay hidden for about three days. Everyone else will be scrambling to get out. You don’t want to be caught in the press.

Tip 2: fill your bath with water and make sure you have plenty in the case the water system dies out.

And, talking of water and crisis’s, Port Elizabeth is currently facing a very imminent danger, one that’s not nearly as fun and replete with the undead: we’re in a drought and the water levels are getting dangerously low.

Luckily, people are getting together to pray for rain.

Yeah, that’s sure to work. Idiots.

[Edited 22 January 2010]

Well, would you look at that? It looks like I’m single again.

Danni’s called off the wedding. She’s moving out and taking everything with her. OK, as has been pointed out she isn’t really taking everything, but she is taking the only real thing worth anything to me, namely herself. She says she needs to find herself, find her space or something. I don’t know and I don’t know is she knows either. At the end of the day, it doesn’t really matter because whatever she’s going to do because she’s going to do by herself. No help needed from me.

It would be unfair to say that I didn’t see it coming. No one with my kind of cripplingly low self-esteem can enter into a relationship and not enumerate, seek and identify all the possible reasons it wouldn’t work. But in her case, it was pretty easy: she was much younger, prettier and smarter than me.

Still, I wish I’d been wrong.

We don’t need to get into the reasons she left but, unfortunately, there’s no real way to argue the other side without sounding self-serving. And, since there’s no way that I can convince her that she’s making a mistake without it looking like I’m taking care of Numero Uno, I’m doing what is (hopefully) the right thing: letting her go.

Good luck Danni. I hope you sort out what you need to, hopefully without breaking a heart in the process.

So ends yet another chapter in my life. Let those of you who said it’d never work rejoice! To those of you who never saw what she saw in me, it looks like you were right.

But to you, my friends, those of you who dared to share a little hope for love for me: thank you, that was very sweet. But we really should know better by now.

Sit down, children, sit down and let me tell you a story. Let me tell you a story of a man, his house, his internet connection and some fucking morons.

The time was October and the only sound to be heard in the house was the sound of single-player games and second-hand porn movies copied from one hard drive to another in some time long forgotten. It was the sad sound of a man with no Internet connection.

And there is no sadder sound. After all, how can a man call himself a man if he’s not able to beat some prepubescent kid into submission using his superior mouse clicking skills? Or how can he look himself in the mirror knowing that there is an Internet filled with hot girl-on-girl action, DVDA and massive strapon orgies and he is unable to access it? How could this man ignore all the vast potential of the ready-to-use Wikipedia and Google to stop dead any argument in its tracks?

The answer, of course, is no: a man could not do continue to live like this, and a decision was made to change his destiny. It was time to get an ADSL line installed.

But there were two problems. Firstly, the installation and modem and all were quite expensive (a good two grand all told). This problem was easily solved through some timely prostitution.

The second problem was a little trickier: the house he lived in didn’t belong to him. The owner was some sort of famous cricketer who we will call Wobyn Piettersenjensen. Not that the hero of the story gave a damned because, well, because it’s fucking cricket. All you need to know for this tale is that Wobyn owned the house and he had his aunt look after it while he wasn’t there. We’ll call her Shmenise.

But they were not alone: they employed a letting agency, Homenet Astra to handle their affair. They have, since then, changed their name but I don’t know what it is and I couldn’t be bothered to find out. All you need to know for this story is that they are the letting agent.
Now, back to our hero: Not wanting to waste all his hard earned money on getting someone else to have an ADSL line (some things you can’t take with you, even when you’re still alive), he decided to check what could be done.

First, he phoned the letting agents and asked them to ask the owner if he was willing to pay for the line installation. After all, it was an improvement to the house. The answer came back: “No”.

Fair enough, it was their prerogative.

He then moved onto plan B: he phoned the letting agents and asked them to talk to the owner and confirm that he would be in the house for at least another year. The thinking was: the money spent on the line installation would be ridiculous over a month (this was, don’t forget, October and the lease expired at the end of November), but it would be manageable over a year.

“Oh yes!” they said, “you’ll be here for a long time still. There’s no worry about that.” To which our hero replied: “that’s all well and fine, but could you please check with the owner still? Thank you.” He then went on to Telkom to order the line, at least partially satisfied that he wasn’t going to get it in the shorts.

And by “getting it in the shorts” I mean “getting fucked by some ignorant cunts who don’t really give a toss about you”, of course.

All went well with Telkom, they said that they’d be there in a week (and this isn’t the fairy tale part: Telkom, despite everything I’d heard, was surprisingly helpful, fast and on-the-ball, but I digress). Satisfied, the man, dreaming on hours of online gaming and unrestricted access to unimaginable amounts of hard-core fisting, phoned the letting agents again.

“Are you really sure I’m not going to have to move out?” he asked. “Have you spoken with the landlord? Is everything ok? I ask ‘cause Telkom’s coming next week.”

“There is no need to speak to the landlord, they said. You have my word. Go ahead.”

And so it came to pass that mid-October, the ADSL line  was installed and all was good with the world.

Until the end of October, not even a full fucking month after the first phone call with the letting agents, that is. And it was a simple phone call with a simple message: “the owner wants to sell the house. You’ll have to move out.” What? No lubrication? No Rohypnol? Absolutely nothing? Ouch! I see: Prison style.

“Ok, but what about the ADSL line? Will you at least pay for the new line installation and line transfer since I operated on your say so?”

“Yes, of course, we’ll look at that.”

Needless to say, neither the famous cricketer nor the letting agent paid a cent to assist in moving the ADSL line.

Who cares or knows why they did that? Were the letting agents not informed, even after being specifically asked to confirm with the owner? Did the owner know and just simply didn’t give a fuck? Did they both know but didn’t want to mention it so that the house didn’t stay empty?

At the end of the day, it doesn’t matter: through either incompetence or selfishness, they lost a grand or so of someone else’s money. My, erm, I mean the hero’s money. It must be nice to not have a conscience or even the willingness to come to the party. Nicely played, fuckers.

My mom has cancer and not the nice kind where unicorns bring you cake. It’s the kind that fucks you in the soul. In other words: the normal kind. And for some reason that I can’t quite put my finger on, I haven’t felt like being very productive since then, but I thought I should bring you up to speed.

It started with the discovery of a quite advanced colon cancer sometime in August. It got operated on as a matter of emergency. The tumour was removed but, unfortunately, it had metastasised to the liver: multiple lesions.

The lesson here is early detection. Sure, it’s easy to say and to talk about but it’s quite another to actually go through. And in that, my mom was simply being a perfectly normal human being. After all, who isn’t reluctant to have some doctor poke around your innards? We all do it: there’s no need to check it out – It’s just a little tummy trouble – I’ll take some medicine – It’ll be fine. But sometimes it isn’t and the little delay bought the tumour just enough time to spread.

Fuck that fucking thing right in its fucking face.

But, undaunted by the metastasis, she followed through some chemo to which she responded very well and the cancer seemed to quieten down its rampage. All was good. They (my mom and my step-father) then flew off to Belgium to find some high-quality care (no offence to the South African Health workers but, comparatively, it’s chalk and cheese. I know the local guys are doing their best). They also found a surgeon, one of the best in the field, who said that they could remove the lesions in the liver.

The operation was set for 30 December 2009.

The operation did not go as planned and on 31 December, while everyone else around the world was getting plastered on champagne and eating lobster and caviar, the surgeon gave his report: the cancer had metastasised to the peritoneal membrane. It didn’t show up on the scans because the lesions were all a millimetre or less. It cannot be operated on.

The only real option now is chemo which can do nothing be delay until we find some other, more experimental procedures. Chemo, by the way and for those who are unfamiliar with all of this (as I was a few brief months ago) does not cure but merely slows things down a bit, and never without consequences on quality of life and the rest of the body. It destroys everything in its patch: good and bad cells. It’s a bitch of a thing.

Some of you know the story so far, of course, and many of you have offered your support and assistance. I thank you. I thank you from the bottom of my heart. Now is the time for practical solutions, teamwork and support. I don’t think we, as a family, could have gotten this far without the emotional and practical support from all those around us. It is in these times that you see the strength of friends.

Danni alone took on a massive and daunting task just so that I could go and see my mom. Her effort and support is not forgotten.

It is also in these times that you get to clean house and to be finally ignored and abandoned by those people that never really gave a rat’s arse in the first place.

And, on that note, please don’t bother to tell me that you’re praying for my mom. Prayers do fuck-all. Prayers never have and never will do anything. This has been amply and repeatedly demonstrated in double-blind trials and by the billions of disappointed, broken-hearted shells of humans raising their voices to the heavens. If you’re telling me that you’re praying for us, you’re essentially telling me that you’re doing nothing. If you want to do something, tell a story of what my mom’s done for you, or just tell her how much she meant to you. We’re already knee-deep in woo-woo claptrap obscuring the essence of what it means to be human in the face of adversity. It is emotional strength, true bonds of family and friendship that we need, not more fucking guardian angels, bathing in light or prayers.

It is far too easy to avoid real human connections behind hippy phrases, glib New Age (rhymes with sewage) words. What is needed now is emotional honesty, the rest of it we can do away with. Don’t tell me it’s God’s will or that everything happens for a reason. The evidence is to the contrary: the universe is big and dumb and does not care. Shit happens to good people and bad people alike. Shit just happens. Assigning blame to some incomprehensible and mysterious force beyond our ken, or some vindictive invisible fool doesn’t change the facts one single iota.

Similarly, one of the things that has most amazed and frightened me was the enormous turd pile of “alternative” treatments on offer for cancer sufferers, from magnets to acupuncture to laying on hands. I think it’s safe to say that for every single person suffering from nature’s little “fuck you,” there are five more selling snake oil and miracle cures. These people make me so frothingly angry, I could just spit.

Alternative medicine! Ah! Alternative to what? Stuff that has a remote possibility of working?

And there’s the irony, of course: my mom is a great believer in all of this stuff. Right now she is probably sipping some strange tea, covered in magnets while someone bathes her in light. These guys are offering her “cures” and all they’re doing, in my opinion, is stealing the one thing she’s short on: time. I’ve voiced my opinions on these matters to her and my step-father, of course. But they’re adults and they will do what they want. We must also carefully consider her will, her positive attitude, her strength. Luckily, she has those in spades. If she wants to follow these treatments, I’m certainly not going to argue.

Still, it doesn’t abate my rage at these “mystics” and “enlightened hippies” who peddle their “mystical” treatments. These people will never check themselves, check their results, improve their treatments. They won’t review their processes and say “wait a minute, this doesn’t solve anything.” They’ll just chalk it up to the cosmic forces, to god or just blame my mom for not believing enough. The next day, they’ll be right there, snake oil smile on their hypocritical lips, proclaiming that they can cure anything. Fucking bastards.

Meanwhile, we will have been robbed of the one thing that makes any sense on this mudball: a little time with the people we love. And there’s so preciously little of it as it is.

But, I hear them say, modern, western medicine has failed her too. What makes their treatment any more legitimate than ours? They can’t cure her either! And I answer: western, or conventional medicine, has become a convention because it works. Sure, there are a few charlatans but most don’t do it for a quick buck. Most importantly, it isn’t base on faith. it’s based on repeated trials. The processes followed are followed because they show the best results. They’re not peddling false hope in order to make themselves feel special and spiritual. They’re offering solutions. Not perfect solutions, sure. Not guaranteed cures, obviously but something that works just a little bit.

People are quick to point out that Chinese people still use acupuncture and Eastern medicine, as they have for thousands of years, so it’s got to work, right? If that were true, why do they ship billions of dollars of medical equipment and medicine from the West? Please! The only reason all these “alternative” treatments have even had a chance to have a place in the sun is because we’ve gotten so used to being able to cure and heal that we can’t believe that there are things against which we are still powerless.
And so to those people that love to point fingers at conventional doctors from within the voluminous folds of their organic tie-dyed clothes, I say: they’re buying us time. Do you honestly think that if some guy hadn’t been hacking away in the operating room my mom would still be here? What the fuck are you doing?

After all, what more can anyone of us ask for than a little time?

I love you, mom. Fight. We are fighting with you.

I absolutely love this guy’s writing. Enjoy.

Spurned theology’s first reaction is almost always violent. Whether it is the spectacular display of an outsider’s still-beating heart, or the public torture of an apostate, religion is historically eager to leaven its spiritual threats with the stink of burning flesh. When threatened either by a competing belief system or by science, no religion has ever allowed itself to simply fade away without first trying to address its detractors through physical confrontation. Invariably, however, there comes a time when a religion can no longer rely on force to safeguard its existence. The meme becomes increasingly wily, and as its ability to ingratiate itself into the social fabric of a region begins to fail, it tries to embed itself into a variety of legal and educational systems. Concurrent with a religion’s escalating physical impotence, is its inability to assert a literal interpretation of its sacred texts. With the loss of strict literality comes even greater threat, and the response is to feign some level of reasonability or exclusivity to escape skepticism. But rather than fall for it, religion needs a first rate smack down.

Edit [03 December 2009]: Research shows that people use God as a ventriloquist’s puppet. I could have told you that.

This is the second piece I intend to submit to the Spier Contemporary 2010, the other being A Home Away From Home. As with that other painting, it attempts to reflect on the disassociation and isolation of being a foreigner, an expatriate and an outsider. The subject is Death from James Ensor’s 1888 Christ’s Entry into Brussels (Death is on the bottom left of the crowd, with a green hat and coat).

The reasons why are pretty straight-forward: I feel that masks and symbols, especially those of monsters and beasts are all too often overlooked as part of the artistic arsenal in search of the new and the sensational. Art is about the monsters and beasts, the masks and the symbols that we wear and become. I think James Ensor understood that and, therefore, I feel a link to my homeland both through theme and through much more pedestrian geographical reasons.

The purpose was, therefore, to echo back to Mr. Esnor the noise his symbols made, and bring to him a revision of the horrors and beasts lay far from home.

A large version can be found here.

I hold, in my hand, the October 1 Algoa Sun which has, as its headline, “Trick or treat up the street but Halloween as a sinister side.” It leads in almost immediately with a statement by a former superintendent and an “expert on the occult.”

I didn’t read further to know that I had, in front of me, yet another shining example of Port Elizabeth’s unbiased and keen-eyed journalism.

Our Scooby Gang ex-superintendent then waffles a bit about the supposed history of Halloween (cue dramatic music). This is mostly hacked out of common knowledge and/or Wikipedia and, therefore, quite redundant to include here. He does go on to say, though, that Port Elizabeth “has committed Satanists” who use Halloween parties “as a cover up.”

He is supported by a Word of Faith member (and we all know how sane they are) who claims that Halloween allows Satanists to “move freely.”

Awesome. From the way that these guys are spinning it, Satanists follow every single bit of the Nosferatu of Marilyn Monson caricature. They are obviously far too fucking hideous to be seen in daylight except on a special day when it’s ok. This is the same shit these delusional paranoiacs have been feeding us for decades: the Smurfs are evil and that playing your favourite Meatloaf LP backwards would enable Satan to speak to you.

I’ve met Satanists (or people who claim to be satanists), they have their heads stuck up their asses as much as any other hardcore believer. Some believers believe in talking snakes and worldwide floods, others believe in flying horses for prophets, and some believe that they can cast spells. That’s all very cute, completely ineffectual and absolutely pointless, but cute.

If you have a belief in something ridiculously dumb then that’s great, but don’t start pointing fingers at other people who believe dumb stuff. This is especially true if what you believe about them is pulled straight out of works of fictions.

I swear to the FSM that I once met someone who swore blind that they saw the fucking Necronomicon. They stopped short of telling me that, when they saw Satan, he looked a lot like Al Pacino. But, hey, let’s not let that stop our Scooby Gang of the ex-superintendent and his Word of Faith sidekick! Together they fight the forces of evil!

They then follow up this bizarre segue into crazy I-see-satanic-people with a page 4 article about the Central Ghost Tour. This, in case you don’t know, is a woman, Rose, who takes groups of people walking around central at night, showing you all the “haunted spots” and telling you stories about them. They were making a bit of a song and dance about it, seeing as though it is Halloween but it was pretty much a non-story.

I went on it a while back, at the behest of my then girlfriend. I was a good sport and enjoyed the walk but, needless to say, the talk and the stories were absolute drivel. I would have expected smoothing gruesome and unexpected but, no, nothing of the sort. it was all the same old tired shit about jilted lovers and murder most foul straight out of folklore tales. And It’s very hard to get excited about the ghost of a suicide victim from the 1800’s when all around you the night life of central, with its high incidents of robberies and violent murders, continues unchecked.

Needless to say, we didn’t see a single ghost, chains rattling or not.

And I suppose that’s my main gripe: if you’re going to believe in silly, silly things, like satan and ghosts, or that Halloween is “a veritable candyland of murder and mayhem” for satanists, then please - please! - spare a thought for the rest of us who have to read or listen to that crap and have the common decency of believing in something interesting.

Good
I’ve finaly decided what I’m going to be doing for my birthday: I’m taking my friends out for a night of strippers and shooters at the Golden Curtain. Sure, it’s not the classiest establishment and, shit, it’d be nice if there was another strip club in PE but, you know what? When you’re living at the end of the earth, you shouldn’t look gift horses in the mouths.

I don’t think that analogy is quite right when referring to strippers, but you get the idea.

I finally got ADSL at home. I can finally unlock the awesome power of the Internet while naked at home. Go me!

Go naked me!

Also, I think that congratulations are due to Brad, Jeanine for the birth of Ella. She is an adorable and cute little girl. I can’t wait to see her grow up to punch her way to a cure for diabetes (sorry, inside joke).

Bad
As I mentioned, I’ve signed up for ADSL and, even before the installation was completed, I had my first fight with Telkom.

Did you know that, even though each Telkom Direct store is equipped with phones, they are not allowed to answer them? I fucking kid you not! I spoke to ladies (but don’t hold me to that, she did have a beard so I have my doubts) in the store and then later at the call centre. They’ve informed me that they have a policy not to answer the phone because it is bad customer service.

That last sentence is not a typo. Their thinking is that customers in the store don’t want to see the staff talking on the phone. So, instead, they force customers to take time off work and drive to the store, wait in a queue, ask the 10 second question and drive all the way back.

With that attitude, their customer service could only be improved by replacing the hold music on their call centres with the sounds of pigs being slaughtered.

Ugly
Fuck cancer. Fuck cancer right in its stupid cancer face.

It’s been a while since I posted any new art here but I’ve got a good excuse. Firstly, we’ve been quite busy setting up a new exhibition at the Ruwarch Art Gallery in Campbell Street. It’ll be running from 15 November to 15 December, but I’ll be giving you updates about that a bit closer to the time. Secondly, I’ve been knee-deep in paint for the upcoming Spier Art Competition. I’m planning to submit two entries, this is the first one. I call it “A Home away from Home.” I tried to deal with a personal theme.

To expand on that: I am a Belgian expatriate and, like all long-term foreigners, I have ceased to belong in either place while, functionally belonging in neither. This painting tries vainly and bluntly to combine the elements of Brussels with the sun-bleached sea of Port Elizabeth.

But nature and the universe will not allow such a yearned-for juxtaposition: like with all paradoxes, dark things and evil stupid things come out. A dream slowly, imperceptibly, becomes a nightmare.

A large version can be found here