Concerning One October Night

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You only live once.

Coldplay are a phenomenal band. Their music tends towards the epic in a way that can only be fully appreciated once listened to live in concert with 100,000 others. It's funny how I listen to music alone, wishing I was enjoying it in a crowd, but only feel truly satisfied by live music when it makes me feel - among throngs of people - that I am completely alone.

As lines of the new album hit me, I remember the optimistic swells of that October night. I want to thrive. I want to jump. I want to fall. I want to be a comma, living without wanting, without waiting. Not stuck or unsure or ambiguous, but leaping.

Life's already here, man!

Concerning Something I Ordered

I ordered a book off the internet yesterday (from netbooks.co.za - a website designed to burn the eyes of anyone who's ever designed a website) and just received the cutest confirmation e-mail. It reads as follows:

"Thank you for ordering from Netbooks!
Your goods have been carefully removed from the shelf with white gloves and slowly unwrapped from their silk cover so that the shock of bright light does not stun them. Thereafter they have been gently wrapped in plastic and lightly heated, before being blessed on their journey by our resident Swami. Thereafter they were securely wrapped in the finest recycled cardboard to prevent any damage, and decorated with your Name. A specially padded truck has taken your parcel to the local Post Office, where the staff will stomp on it and play soccer with it. However, since it is so well packed, this will not matter."

I'll probably post about the book when it arrives. I love mail!

Concerning Post

POST is an amazing little coffee shop that falls under the creative jurisdiction that is 70Juta. Cnr Juta & De Beer in Braamfontein, this quaint, light bistro offers not only amazing delicasies, but is only a 5 minute walk from Wits (score!). If only they delivered! (sad).

Here's me and Jase enjoying our homemade lemonade and latte. Go to post! And ask Alan for his wi-fi password (he's kinda awesome like that - this post is brought to you by POST_Alan (password currently unknown - investigation pending)).

We love POST!

Concerning Bathi

I just got back from my Human Rights Community Workshop - we travelled to the NW Province and, as part of our assignment, visited a group of underprivileged kids in a disadvantaged community near Rustenburg.

This is Bathi, and she is 6 years old. Other than those two facts, I know only that she enjoys writing on people's faces with facepaint pens, and gives great hugs.

It's a beautiful thing, the love of a child. It's a beautiful thing to be unashamedly hugged by a kid who knows nothing about you - not even your name. So beautiful!

Concerning Brothers

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I have been so blessed to have so many brothers. Adam and Warren are the scary and protective ones. Matt and Devin the teasing, HP obsessed ones. And Daniel is the one I call when I'm upset and need a hug. They're all so awesome! Love 'em to bits! Plus they'd all make insanely good Amazing Race partners!

Concerning The Stage

The interning job I have at St Martin's School includes staging and coaching drama students. It's. The. Best. Job. Ever.

Man, I love doing this. Drama was such a cool part of my own high school career - it's such a great way to experience emotions and stories and life and other people. It's so great to be there when kids get a glimpse of the awesomeness too.

I'm so grateful to be here, and to be experiencing life in the cool way that I am. And I'm pretty stoked I keep getting reminded of that point with the words of inspiring writers from the mouths of inspiring kids :)

Concerning The Future

Once upon a time, in a city not unlike this one, there were two teenagers who, despite their competitive nature and completely different ideas about chocolate, became the best of friends. Drawn together by a love of electro-indie music and their closely matched skills in the art of craning, the two grew together as they journeyed through high school, college, and eventually a world tour that took them across 4 continents in nothing but a Toyota Hilux and a boat that the more crafty of the pair built with his own hands. They each eventually settled down, and continue to be besties to this very day.

Kids, this is the story of how I met your Uncle Daniel. I love him very much, and now you'll get to find out why :)

bubble wrap

I’ve decided to bring it down a bit tonight. You see, there comes a time when, really, we all find ourselves up at 1:30 in the morning with a bottle of cough mixture in one hand and a guitar in the other. As a good but strangely foreign friend once told me: you just write better songs when you’re drugged up on flu meds. I stand by that, current evidence vindicating.

But this isn’t a post about how I’ve just recently written what I think might be the saddest, heart-wrenching tome I’ve ever set to a standard 4-4. It’s a post about how life (and so much other stuff not included under the heading ‘life’) is like bubble wrap. Having not long ago had the pleasure of being left alone with a deliciously ample supply of what might possibly turn out to be the medium out of which the next Gaga outfit-slash-disaster is crafted, I’ve come to the conclusion that not only does bubble wrap deserve it’s title as Most Loved Packaging Material Ever, it deserves more. It’s just one of those things that has the ability to induce both divine satisfaction and deep, anxious irritation. The unmistakable contrast between the strangely worrying amount of happiness bursting a plastic bubble brings and the freakish paranoia that comes with trying to find one more bubble to pop when you’ve popped all you can and you can’t pop no more is wonderfully fitting when talking about life. And it’s wonderfully fitting at 1:45 in the morning.

Personally, I feel two extremes tonight. One the one hand, I’m an irritatingly keen and perky might-be-spiked bowl of punch for 2011. I love this year already, and am waiting with open arms for all that the next 350-odd days have in store for me. On the other, less thumbs-up hand, I’m achingly close to tears for whatever reason you can think of considering this is a blog and not a confessional. Your avid imagination aside, I turn to about a square meter of bubble wrap as a metaphor to both annoy and console me. It now lies tossed aside, most definitely used up (believe me, I checked, like, 14 times), and that makes me sad. But then again, I can still remember those heady, sun-kissed hours I spent slowly and deliberately popping the hell out of it.

Those were good times. I shall, for the next month or so, never forget them. I fearfully and with exhilaration look forward to better times ahead – for that fateful day when mom gets another parcel from Loot.com bound in that most sacred of protective packaging materials: that destined epoch when I once again experience the joy, laughter, vexation and heartache that is love. I mean, bubble wrap.

the kiff

It's a fact that there are many things which exist that I do not know about. I would list some, but I'm pretty clueless when it comes to stuff I don't know. It's also a fact that I can educate you about things that you don't know exist. Forthwith follows my WISHLIST OF THINGS THAT YOU DIDN'T KNOW EXISTED BUT ARE KIFF that has been growing for some time now. Not everything is expensive, but all of them are dubbed "pretty kiff" by yours truly. Hopefully (probably) I'll own some of these one day :)
1. The Global Puzzle
Price: $15
Site: Mental Floss
Link: here

How cool is this thing? I've totally always wanted to learn the countries of the world better. I used to do it here (freepoverty's site is really awesome, by the way) but this is cool too!




2. Air Mail Mighty Wallet
Price: $15
Site: X-treem Geek
Link: here


I love this so much! I have a heart for things that look like other things but are really the first things. Haha :)




3. Bluetooth Retro Handset
Price: $25
Site: ThinkGeek
Link: here


I saw this once in a store at Campus Square and have forever regretted not buying it. Although I don't think the model on the link wouldn't work with my phone (it doesn't have Bluetooth 2.0 capabilities, because 2.0 didn't exist when it came out), I've dreamed for years of the moment when my phone rings amongst a group of cool, sophisticated people, and I pull one of these out of my bag!


4. iPhone App Magnets
Price: £7
Site: Firebox
Link: here


With my own iPhone not so far off in the distance, I think this would make an awesome addition to any fridge. You could pretend your fridge is a giant iPhone! Someone should totally invent a giant iFridge! That would be awesome! :P


5. Ninjabread Men Cookie Cutters
Price: £7
Site: Shiny Shack
Link: here 

If I wasn't so frightened of invoking the wrath of my local Ninja gang by eating their image in cookie form, I would totally buy these.


 
6. 500XL Speakers
Price: £24.99 
Site: Shiny Shack
Link: here 

I want them! They're so cool! Plus, if I ever find out I have a giant relative, or wanna treat my pet elephant to some classic tunage, I'll be sorted! :) 

 
7. Gunbrella
Price:  £14.99
Site: Shiny Shack
Link: here
  
I like this for 3 reasons: (1) I don't own an umbrella, and it's raining outside. (2) This is awesome. (3) This is awesome. 






8. Vinyl Style Recordable CDs
Price: £7.99
Site: Shiny Shack
Link: here


Ahh I need new adjectives! These are cool and awesome too! :) I love making mix tapes for people (and love getting them... *hint*) and I think these would make them so much more... awesome!
 
9. A Retro Flip Clock
Price: £32.99
Site: Shiny Shack
Link: here


Eish, I don't think I would pay as much as R300+ for this, but I can't let my dreams of the phenomenon in Groundhog Day happening to me just die, can I? And how could it possibly happen without an awesome retro flip clock?




10. Ice Invaders Ice Tray
Price: $7.99
Site: Silly.com
Link: here


I just think these would be so much fun to eat - revenge I say! And there's nothing like killing an invader by putting it in your Coke and watching it melt to death!!







And that's that! Top Ten Things You Didn't Know Existed But Really Want Now! If I did this every time I spent the day sick in bed with the flu, the world would be a much happier, less ignorant, altogether kiffer place :)

i heart darwin

There’s just something about this time of the year – New Year, I mean. It’s already half-way through January and I’ve still got that endless-possibility look about me in the mornings – that idea that it’s Blank Page Time, Square One Hour. I’ll be lying if I said I didn’t form this opinion until Chris tweeted about it, but it’s true – this, second only to those crisp Autumn Saturday afternoons in May, is my favourite time of the year. I feel newer. And older. And shinier.

It’s the fact that this atmosphere that January fills me with (let’s call it ‘freshativity’) is so specific and unique that makes me think of how certain things I come across (specifically music) can remind me of equally distinct periods in my past. Be warned, the next examples do reveal my horrific taste in music when I was younger.

Old Linkin Park albums (like Hybrid Theory and Meteora) take me straight back to my geeky, loner days in Grade 7. Crunchy guitar and not-so-hardcore-anymore screamo moments made me feel appropriate amounts of antiestablishment-ness. Fall Out Boy’s Under the Cork Tree record, however, conjures up a slightly less lonely, slight more punky Judy. I totally killed this one, and it will forever remind me of how I spent the whole winter smitten with a guy who ended up breaking my poor teenybopper heart. Aww! Oh well. I guess Fall Out Boy’s mostly indeterminable drone-like lyrics and sore excuse for a bassist (let alone person-in-general) were a perfect fit for the clearly disillusioned child I was back then. Other albums include The Arrows EP, Relient K’s MmHmm, John Mayer’s Room for Squares, Regina Spektor’s Far, Harris Tweed’s The Younger and (duh) Sara Barellies’ Little Voice.

So considering that moments of my life are marked by artists (or so it seems), I have an urge to define my January 2011 Freshitivity Official Album, and it is – it is - the self-titled record of the new-to-me-fabulous Darwin Deez.

I’ll admit I might be jumping on the indie-folk bandwagon here, but I’m convinced that it’s more than just the avante-garde that makes me want to take this LP out to a nice dinner-and-a-movie with scrumptiously evil ulterior motives. This is my kill-album of the week, my I’ve-only-had-this-album-for-four-days-and-I’ve-played-it-fifteen-times kill-album of the week. An explanation:

It’s awesome. Darwin Deez may take some getting used to, but you have to believe me and wait it out. I recommend a full listen-through at least 3 times before you make any kind of decision about him, because my first impression was not the gushing I so freely pour forth today, oh no. I thought it was drone-like, that his voice lacked any expression, that the similarity of the electric guitar sounds in every song was due to laziness and that (for goodness sake) if you’re going to sell an album, do not put that guy’s face on the cover (moustaches… ew). But you see, that’s all changed.

Each of the ten tracks on the album (plus two bonus songs) are equally distinctive in both lyrical content and composition. The simplicity is intriguing – there are blank spaces everywhere, often just lines with net vocals (and who has the guts to do that these days?). The ideas behind the numbers slowly flesh out the more you listen, and leave me with a feeling that Deez knows how to put a conflicting emotions into songs with an ease that simultaneously frightens and delights me. “Deep Sea Divers” uses a haunting metaphor of scuba-diving to express how it’s complicated when you love someone and they’re just sad all the time, and “DNA” uses a double helix to describe the humiliation of realising you’re not loved anymore. “Up in the Clouds” and “Bed Space” also talk about lost love, but I’ve never got the feeling that this is a mellow or emo album at all – “The Suicide Song” (from the window ledge I fall / watch my necktie whip back in the wind / from the top of an office building / I can’ t even see why I should live) is one of the most upbeat, vibe-y recordings on the whole CD. Deez changes it up in a way that lets me listen and have fun, or look up lyrics and feel melancholy. It’s the choice that makes it cool, that makes it awesome.

My personal favourite on the whole album (which was 99.8% influenced by this – seriously, click the link, you need to) is “Bad Day”. And if you haven’t clicked that link already, you’d better do it now, because that is justification enough, and I won’t give you the satisfaction of a written explanation just to save you 5 minutes and possibly let you make the saddest missed opportunity of your week.

So go get it. Try it out. It’s not up on iTunes yet, but it’s here and here. And his cute site is here. Let me know what you think, but at least give Deez the time and opportunity he deserves first – the opportunity to become on of your favourites ;)

P.S. All credit to Dave (who is awesome) for the introduction. High 5!

my mouth is watering.

Oh no. What am I doing in this aisle again? I’m standing in the “corridor of corruption” in a petrol station snack-shop in Meyerton. I’m 45 minutes away from home, I’ve been crying, it’s stinking hot, and I’m staring at a Man Size Lunch Bar. It’s taking everything I’ve got not to sink to the floor and inhale it. Plus the ladies at the counter are staring at me because I’m the only one in the store and the pressure is getting to me.

When I got home after my encounter with the “aisle of iniquity”, I decided I needed to do something to take my mind off my stupid, not-really-that-big-in-the-big-scheme-of-things problems. I decided to bake a cake.

You see, I’m a baker. OK – scratch that. I’m not a baker. Not even close. I think my wickedly talented Mom and Brother home cook slash super kitchen people just tell me that to boost my self-esteem. In our house, I’m the one who’s asked to make a salad, not bolognaise sauce. I butter toast instead of frying eggs. I lay tables and chop yellow peppers into perfectly even segments instead of actually placing anything in a pan. My entire resume of culinary skills can fit into this small paragraph:

Cake; pancakes; popcorn; toast.

Oh my. It’s not even a paragraph. It’s not even a sentence. Microsoft Word has done that weird squiggly green line underneath it and suggests I revise the fragment.

Ordinary, yet delicious.

It’s kind of embarrassing. No, it is embarrassing! For one thing, my future husband is (more than likely. OK definitely) going to be shocked when I place no, not Nigella’s Feasts on the kitchen counter, but a binder full of take-out menus and a loaf of Woolie’s Toaster Brown. I was asked to make spaghetti once and I couldn’t even pay attention to the boiling water, let alone the actual meal. When Mom asked me to make one of those Royco Pasta Sauces, I mixed together the wet ingredients you’re meant to mix with the sauce powder and added them to the pasta. Without the Royco Pasta Sauce powder in the liquid. Seriously?

But you see, as indicated in all too short and simple a manner previously, I can make one deliciously fantastic chocolate cake, pancakes that will blow your mind hole, popcorn that’s perfectly adequate, and toast. (Well, it is just toast.) I love making the cake because it’s a really simple recipe, and frankly the separating of the egg whites from yellows combined with the mysterious way in which our oven temperature varies depending on the oven’s mood that hour is possibly the most thrill I get these days. And I’ve been doing pancakes ever since my Mom got sick of making them for us all the time and decided to pass on the torch. Or frying pan – whatever. Plus, the thing about pancakes is that I understand them. I know that they taste better if you leave the batter to stand for an hour (and even better the next morning). I know that if they’re tearing and heavy you add another egg, and if they’re tearing and sticky you add more flour. I know that a splash of vinegar may sound weird but without it they just don’t taste the same. It’s nice to understand pancakes. I like the feeling of security that putting a cake in the oven brings: that mixing eggs and flour and sugar and baking powder will result in happiness.

You would think this revelation would result in an urgent desire in me to expand my chef-y horizons followed by a fervent search through the yellow pages for a Saturday morning class taught by a struggling but adorable high-school dropout who just wanted to really live his life and that I know despite our differences and complete lack of fortune or blessing from society would really be perfect for me and really accept me despite my completely dismal abilities in the kitchen and we would live happily ever after and have four scrumptious little cupcake-addicted children (three boys and a girl), but no.

I like not knowing how to cook. I like the fact that I stood in that aisle in the Shell Snack Shop and knew that spending an hour making a chocolate cake to share with my family would not only take my mind off my problems, but satisfy my need for comfort food in a way that a Lunch Bar never really could (not even a Man-Sized one). I say that a future of me filled with burned rice and overcooked chicken is totally worth it if it means that when I really need to make a cake, I can do so much more than just make a cake. I will know that that cake will stand out not just because it’s awesome (and it will be, believe me), but also because it is a rare product of my unskilled hands. And to me, that’s worth so much more than a Lunch Bar.

If you think it might be worth it too, here are directions that won’t result in just a cake, but about half an hour of distraction, a house smelling so good you’ll have to fight off the neighbours with a stick and possibly high-pressured water pistols, and two warm, gooey things: the middle of the cake, and the middle of you.

Jo’s Choccie Cake

Ingredients

1 cup flour

1 cup sugar

1 heaped tablespoon cocoa powder

1 teaspoon baking powder

3-4 eggs

½ cup sunflower oil

¾ cup hot water

Method

Put the oven onto 180°C. Separate the eggs and place them aside. Also, butter a cake tin. (This is stuff I always forget to do at the beginning of the process and always wish I hadn’t. Now you can start.) Sift together the dry ingredients, and then add the egg yolks and the oil. Mix ‘em together. Add the hot water, and then, once you’ve whisked the heck out of the egg whites, fold them into the batter. Pour this whole concoction into the tin and place in the oven for like, 25 minutes. Lick the bowl, taking extra care to cover your face in as much batter as possible. Then get the cake out. If the centre is gooey, you’re in for a treat! Feel free to drown the warm pillow of fluffy goodness in melted Cadbury's Milk Chocolate or a viscous mixture of icing sugar, cocoa and condensed milk. Yum!

Edit (12/1/2011): I made the cake today! I had my friends Mike, Roan and Chris over for supper + happiness. There is still some cake in the kitchen - it will make for a wonderful midnight snack! There is added standard icing with cocoa in it. The centre is all natural goo :P

The cake in all it's chocolaty glory

The rivers of wondrous goo pour forth

 

there's a little voice that inspires me...

I’ve made a recent discovery about my personality. It always strikes me as surreal when I find out why my brain does some of the things that it does: it’s like I’m hacking myself, and it freaks me out. If I know that I’m doing something (like eating a chocolate croissant instead of a fruit salad) because of a certain reason (like my incredibly low level of self-control and inability to care about future consequences concerning my health and safety because of deep inner brokenness), does that mean I will really go through with the decision? Is my personality really something to be meddled with? Will knowing why I make certain decisions change the way I make them in the future? Isn’t the element of mystery that is so intricately wound into the way we function a sacred and better-left-alone part of how we operate as people?

(In the case of the chocolate croissant, the thoughts about meta-knowledge are usually sidelined by the chaotic blur of orgasmic sensations that come with eating said croissant. They’re freaking delicious.)

But what I’ve discovered is a previously unknown factor that plays into whether I like a certain song or not. Being a musician, or a pretend-one at least, whether I can sing along and/or find harmonies to the melodies of a song is a huge deal-breaker. When I look at my 25 Most Played automatically generated playlist in my iTunes, it’s filled with songs that I could probably arrange into 20-piece choir items at the drop of a hat.

And that’s kind of where Sara Bareilles comes in. Lately, I’ve been getting back into her album Little Voice, which I bought back in 2008 and completely fell in love with. Not surprisingly (although I learned the whole thing in order to cover it for a gig), “Love Song” is one of my least favourite tracks, partly due to it’s popularity on radio (it tends to kill things – radio, I mean) but also because it stands out so much from the rest of the album as a clearly poppy/conventional/sell-out track, a tri-category which no other song on Little Voice could possibly fit into. That’s why I like it being the title tune – it means you can just get through the pop and land up in Bareilles’ smooth, beautifully written ballads and her achingly catchy jazzy numbers. The second song of the 12 included on the original pressing is one of my all time favourites: “Vegas” is a well-structured bluesy piece in which the blurry piano chords mingle generously with relaxed electric guitar and freakishly satisfying background vocals to build slowly and perfectly to an epic karaoke piece that I’m dying to try out.

You see, the really cool thing about Bareilles is that – and look, I’m not trying to flatter myself here, but – we kind of have exactly the same vocal range. It’s probably the most quenching thing I’ve ever come across. I’d kill to be any kind of backing vocalist on a tour of hers: the expertly-placed snippets (all by the artist herself on the album) make for such good entertainment that it makes me want to become part of the First Wives Club and shoop-shoop my way into the streets New York City in a white pants-suit singing one of her songs. Tracks like “Love on the Rocks” and “Many the Miles”  (in which the backing is done by two guys – two guys! How cool would that be?) are just so… so much fun :) And they’re joined by the painfully beautiful “City” - a ballad with a cool acoustic/muted drums vibe in the beginning which reminds me of Relient K’s “Getting Into You” – and the awesomeness of the lyrics in songs like “Come Round Soon” – a balanced twist on your typical ‘woman scorned’ piece (although personally I would have cut off the held note after the bridge at least 4 beats earlier. It kind of turns into a screech!).

But on average (which this album most certainly is not), if you mix it all in with the great vocal manipulations, great production, great lyrics and great greatness, this album is one that inspires me to not only become a better pianist, but a better vocalist and song writer. I heart it! I highly recommend a listen all the way through!

Only thing I ever could need / Only one good thing worth trying to be and it's love. - "Bottle It Up"