Ke Dezemba Boss

As my tweep @Dee_SK tweeted this morning: “In a couple of hours #KeDezembaBoss”; Words which inspired this little piece here. Enjoy:


Ke Dezemba Boss!! Words that we South Africans are all too familiar with come this time of the year. They will be ringing out of people’s mouths the country over – to the pleasure of some and the sheer annoyance of others. What do the words mean to you? Time off from the proverbial grind? A 13th cheque so you can go hard over the festive with your mates? Holiday cooking, Christmas shopping, laughter filled nights?

The words, “ke Dezemba boss”, to some are loosely translated to mean: anything goes. For example, where you doing donuts in your mothers Toyota Yaris T1 which resulted in her tyres growing gaping holes? Ke Dezemba boss!! Did you rock up 3 hours late for work with bodily fluids in your weave and dirt stains on your knees? Ke Dezemba boss!! Maybe you forgot to pick up your kid from after care yesterday and no-one bothered to call you because all the after care staff had left early to go partying meaning your kid got to do his first solo camping trip? Ke Dezemba boss!!

For some of you, this might be the perfect time of year to get wasted, go stand outside your life long crush’s window screaming out her name and professing your love for her in front of her entire neighborhood to the sounds Dru Hill. Just remember to finish off with the words “ke Dezemba boss”! If you’re gatvol with your job or your boss (no indication of my life, I have too much love for both), go flip em the bird and let them know what’s what!! Just remember to wait for your salary to hit your bank account first, and of course, as you walk off triumphant, middle fingers in the air let out a “ke Dezemba boss” for your fellow colleagues to hear.

Whatever you decide to use these 31 days for, just make sure to keep the fun safe. Buckle up, don’t drink and drive, be wise, condomize, say no to drugs, no sex and texts behind the wheel and always remember, keep it real!! I’m watching you. Just make sure we see you back here in the New Year, alive, safe and in one piece. That said; make it a great one. One to remember, after all: ke Dezemba boss!!!

You Should've Told Me

This is a deep issue for a Friday. So if you wanna not have deep stuff on your mind over the weekend, save it for next week sometime. The University of Cape Town has had a spate of suicides and attempted suicides in the past 2-3 years, sparked by heaven knows what. It brought back memories of when one of my classmates/friend committed suicide in high school and we were all left asking why. I tried writing this from a friend/family member’s perspective, but for me I think it sums up the immediate string of thoughts one has after learning of a suicide. Let me know what you think:

You never talked to me…I wish you had
You should’ve told me you were sad
That everything was going bad, and
That you felt like your world was crumbling all around you
That it was all falling apart and you didn’t know what to do
I probably wouldn’t have known either, truth be told
But that’s what friends are for
That’s what family’s for
To walk with you through the drama
Help deal with all the trauma
And the heartache, and the stress
And the pain that leaves you so depressed
It debilitates you, takes away your will to live
I wish I knew what made you do it
Maybe I could have helped you through it
Been the reason in the irrationality of the moment
I…I actually have no more words, except
I wish you would’ve talked to me.



*Suicide Crisis Line: 0800 567 567*

Title at the end: 2

I wrote this piece with the title as the first line, and then I remember my twomie, @BakiMooke saying she likes poetry/prose with titles at the end, so you’ll find it at the end. It’s a sad(ish) piece with a bitter sweet silver lining in the title (the last line). Enjoy:


These tears I cry
Seep into the sides of my smiling lips
Salted, bitter
Like the irony of this joke
I laugh because it hurts
It hurts because it cuts deep and rings true
Through my life, the pain and heartache reverberates
It moves to create a symphony, cacophony
Of noise, drowning out all joy
And reason for laughing
This is my life
And still I laugh, for tears do nothing for me
They merely pile on the misery
And oh how it loves company, but I deny it
These tears, they may seep into my mouth
Salted, bitter
But they do so through smiling lips
The tears of my laughter

Changes

So, I’m in a frustrated space right now. Life is throwing all of my well engineered plans clean out the window. As far as timing is concerned, I am using a precision engineered time piece while the world is on a sundial…powered by a dim fire lit in a cave. This piece is about…hmmm, I’ll let you decide what it’s about. Enjoy:


Change is a scary thing. Even with the most perfectly laid out plans; it can still be a bit unnerving. So what then of plans that fall by the way side? Those fairytales that are dashed by a what-if? A really promising job interview resulting in an email starting off with “we regret to inform you that…”, your marks falling short of the required aggregate for you to move on to the next stage, a lease agreement falling through, your business finance not being granted.

What happens then? What do you do when a spanner gets thrown into the cogs when your plans are so far in motion that it’s just too late to turn back? Do you walk away? Do you keep the faith and try to push through regardless of the shock of the stone cold facts? Maybe you just put it off for another week, or another month. I mean, it’s been two years, will another year really hurt?

I read a quote, given to me by a friend back in varsity which read “without death, there would be no deadline for success”. Time doesn’t stop for your setbacks, the clock is in motion and the grains of your life’s sand are running down. No-one knows what will happen tomorrow, if you’ll be there to see another sunrise, kiss the love of your life good morning, lift your kids out of bed, or be able to go out and face the world to make your dreams come true. Sure, feel the knock, let it shake you, maybe even stay down for a minute; but understand this: time waits for no man.

It might not have to be today, or tomorrow, or even next week but sooner or later you’ll need to make a move if your dreams are ever going to become a reality. The world won’t wait on you, ever. You need to stop waiting on it. Realize that every year, every month, every week, every day, every waking second you put your dreams off is time and potential advantage that you will never get back.

I may not know the answers to all the questions in my head right now. I do not even have all the answers to the questions I’ve posed here, but I do know this, God gave me hands, legs and an able body. He also gave me a mind, not always the sharpest or the brightest mind, but it’s a working mind. Tools that I will use. That said, I promise myself that regardless of what the world decides it has in store for me, success will be the only outcome.

Natural Selection

So, in yesterday’s piece “Generational Fix” I touched on the topic of how basic logic and reasoning seem to fail so many people, day in, day out. My homie, @Luigi_Schmidt suggested I should write a piece on natural selection. Thus, this could be seen as a, erm…tongue in cheek follow up to the depth and heaviness that was “Generational Fix”. Enjoy:

The theory of natural selection (as I choose to construe it for the purposes of this piece) states that a species will evolve over time selecting traits which will best ensure its future survival while weeding out those traits which are, for lack of a better term, liabilities. To this end, those walking amongst us lacking basic common sense (which actually isn’t all that common) and logical reasoning skills will find themselves, and any potential descendants of theirs extinguished from the human race.

Take for example those wonderful “friends & family” members of ours who forward chain mails with a little catch at the end “send this out to 10 people you care about, including me. If I don’t get it back, I’ll know how you feel.” Shock and horror! Let us logically break down how this is a problem. The recipient of this email now has to respond, using the exact same email, catch and all, to the sender. Add to that, now there are 9 other hapless victims added to the chain. Having sent the response, the original recipient will now expect 10 responses, including one from the original sender. If you truly believe that the sender will be hurt by your non-response you can’t not respond and they can’t not respond and so you get caught in a perpetual “chain” of back and forth forwarding of the same email – it’s a vicious cycle!! If you send, oh say, 30 of these mails, it is very possible that you could end up spending every waking moment of your life receiving and forwarding the same 30 emails to 90 people and cleaning up your inbox and outbox and eventually die at your desk of dehydration. Extreme, I know, but that’s how natural selection works. Now share this blog post with 10 friends!

Next, let’s take the example of the typical pedestrian. These individuals clearly harbor unrequited dreams of strutting the runways of the world the way they casually sash across the street as if they don’t see me driving down the road at the (legal) speed of 60 km per hour. You would swear they think I would be concerned if they get run over. News flash: in the battle of your body dawdling along at 18m per minute and my 1300kg car moving at 60kmh, you will come off second best. Always!

Finally, your typical examples like running with a knife/pair of scissors, setting yourself on fire, snorting fire ants up your nose, texting and driving, tweeting and driving, drinking and driving, and of course, unprotected promiscuity will all get you killed. You can take that to Julius Malema’s trust fund! If anything, I’m surprised that natural selection takes so long to take effect, we still have so many “geniuses” roaming the earth. Anyhow, in the wise words of my twomie, @beanbagboy, “It’s a traffic circle, not a Rubik’s cube!” Let us let sense rule our lives people, we’ll be better off for it.

Generational Fix

My editor, @ItsNutty, suggested the topic: “How the new generation has no-one to look up to”. I neither agree nor disagree with this topic, but it has sparked some related thoughts in my mind, hence this piece. Enjoy:

I read a quote which said “we so often complain about how utterly useless today’s generation is. Let us look to ourselves lest we forget who raised them.” Powerful words I felt. So often, people rush to blame society and “the decay in our moral fibre” for the degradation of the youth’s minds and behaviors. I will grant them the fact that over the years a lot of things have become more socially acceptable. Let me qualify my use of the term “socially acceptable” here to mean that society does not necessarily condone the actions of people, but more often than not will turn a blind eye to them thus ratifying them in a sense.

There are, however, still a few pockets of resistance to things which may be a little too liberal with non-political correctness. Two cases in point here are DSTV’s attempts to launch a 24-hour pornography channel as part of their offering last year. This was met with much a boo-ha by numerous, “morally up-standing” members of our society who threatened to boycott their DSTV subscriptions if the channel was introduced. Needless to say, DSTV canned that idea. The second case in point was the recent, erm…uproar from feminist SA about certain “sexually immoral” and “sexist” graphic t-shirts that a certain retail group had to recall from its stores.

Please, don’t get me wrong, I am not advocating for a 24-hour pornography channel on DSTV nor am I saying that I promote sexism, but what does that say about the quality of our upbringing if at the mere sight of a t-shirt that reads “you look better from behind” we all start making cat-calls and hooting our horns at every woman that walks by? In my view, that is the equivalent of boycotting Pick n Pay or Spar because I blame them for the high rates of drunken domestic violence in South Africa because they sell alcohol. It’s the same baseless argument, deriving your causes from the conclusion as opposed to drawing conclusions based on logical reasoning and evidence; a fallacy of false cause if you will.

I count myself lucky for having grown up in a family where I could look up to both of my parents. Above and beyond that, I had a strong set of aunts, uncles, grandparents and cousins to look up to. That is where I got my principles from. Not the television, not celebrities, not people’s t-shirts, not the internet, or any other media for that matter. I am not, by any means saying that everyone has perfect role-models under their roofs to look up to, nor am I saying that there aren’t any positive figures in the media to look up to. What I am saying is that we, as society, need to stop worrying about what is in the big bad world to corrupt our children’s minds, and start worrying about what we can do to give them a foundation that is strong enough to withstand the pressures of the world. We must look at the cause, not the symptoms.

We need to empower the current and future generations with moral and ethical codes that won’t sway and be corrupted by t-shirts, peer pressure and what they see on the television. How? It’s simple really. Mahatma Gandhi hit the nail dead on the head when he said “be the change you wish to see in the world”. I can’t affect your actions directly, but by virtue of the fact that we as humans are creatures of habit and conformance, when we find ourselves surrounded by conscious, hard working people, we too in wanting to fit in will tend to conform to their behavior. It’s human nature at its simplest. Not to say jump to the extreme of permanent “do-gooding” – we are human after all – but try being a better person for a month; see if those around you react to you differently, treat you differently, speak to you differently.

Right now, as an individual I may not have the ability to change the world and everyone in it, but I can change myself, how I live in the world and how I deal with others. Who knows, that might just change them, and then the miracle of human nature will take it from there.

Weavonomics

Inspired by a conversation I had last night (with my fiancé present), I decided to write this little piece on weaves and how I feel about them. While I am serious about a number of points raised below, please bear in mind that this piece was written for comical purposes, so please don’t be trying to get a brother fired…from my own blog…which I “own”. Anyhow, moving right along. Enjoy:

Picture it; Canal Walk Shopping Centre at Century City, about 10 minutes outside the Cape Town CBD having interesting conversations over dinner about being unemployed, potential franchise opportunities and how one should not be afraid to have a bit of fun with their money while they can. Then boom, out of nowhere like Nonhle Thema comparing herself to the big man upstairs the weave conversation comes up. Two girls, one guy.

As the man in the situation I was against the weave – because, in most cases, as the man in a relationship it is your responsibility to maintain your woman and make sure that she never longs for anything…the weave, by default, thus falls under your, erm…maintenance plan. I have long made it known to my significant other that weaves are not covered on my plan. It’s simple really, the economics of the weave just don’t allow for my conscience to feel comfortable with them.

I did some light research on this topic and found that a decent weave, if you know were to go, will cost you somewhere in the region of R350 – R500. If you go to the larney salons, you could very well find yourself paying upwards of a thousand rand. A thousand rand to put someone else’s hair on your head! I say if it costs more than R300, you must pay for it yourself, and frankly, if you have a thousand rand to put on your head, then surely things must be going well for you. Your life must be going so well in fact, that you certainly don’t need any of my financial support – in other words, I take it you are sorted for your monthly groceries, sorted on your monthly rent and electricity, sorted for your airtime and certainly covered on your transport requirements.

To this end I was asked, “Hau! Are you saying you wouldn’t buy a R700 pair of shoes?”, to which I responded “Maybe, but what does that have to do with a R700 weave?”

Apparently they serve the same purpose: to make you look good. Call me old fashioned, but I disagree. Expensive shoes, a nice suit or dress, even a flossy watch are all investments. They don’t need maintenance, they don’t need to be replaced every 2 months at a cost of R700+ and they certainly have no effect on your hairline – unless you’re a shopaholic who gets thrills out of maxing out their credit card…that will mess with your hairline, for days!

Besides, it goes back to my argument above. Yes, I would pay R700 for a good pair of shoes, if I deemed them worth it. That said, I would only do so with the knowledge that I can afford them – after my rent payment, after my cell phone and electricity bills are settled, after my car and insurance payments have gone off and certainly once I’m sure I have enough for groceries and petrol till month end. Then, and only then, will I maybe consider buying that R700 pair of shoes, and in concession, ladies, then and ONLY then, should you consider taking a thousand rand and placing it atop your lovely heads.

Woman Thou Art A Goddess

So, my cousin and new editor, @ItsNutty gave me a mine field of a topic for today: “Why not write about the effort that girls put into looking good but not their brain matter?” I must admit that I was slightly apprehensive about it at first, for fear of offending my female readers (since y’all are true examples of powerhouse ladies. #truestory); but then I thought, “bugger fear, challenge accepted!!” So, if you guys have any topic suggestions you’d like to read my opinion on, hit me up on twitter (@ngwanamosadi) or Facebook. Enjoy:


Woman, thou art a goddess
Athenian in poise and stature
Your glancing eyes, mature
Flicker across the room grab mine

And I am locked into you
Hair full, curves got me revving
Skin so smooth has me melting
Softer than any silk I’ve ever felt and
Those heels, heaven save me those heels

So apt for such artfully carved and shaped bases
To hold up the pylons of perfection
That are those everlasting legs
On and on and on they go

From a glance at you everyone in the room knows
Of the hours and effort and strain
Sweat and heart staking pain
That you put into achieving what stands before us

Physical perfection
And you’ve succeeded
But what now that you’ve got my attention
Will you keep it beyond the physical attraction
Will you stimulate me beyond the affection

Is it too much to ask
A standard too high to be attained
Should I be grateful and not complain
That I’ve found the epitome of every man’s desires
The envy that causes every woman’s disdain
I don’t think so

If you could be so applied to your physical beauty
Then surely, you could apply the same intensity
To highlighting your mental faculties
So as your breathtaking appearance does
They too can inspire poetic descriptions and utterances
Which take the mind away on journeys unimagined
To epic places only thoughts have access to

As your majestic body has
So too your mind those powers should possess
For woman, thou art a goddess.