“We will no longer accept money out of undergarments”

I love this…

In SA, a lot of people keep their money in their bra or panties rather than their pockets – less likely to get stolen that way! It’s not unusual to be in a corner cafe and see an auntie reach into her bra to pay for a half loaf of bread and some milk at the end of a long day.

Which means they have been up til now.

So now people who store their money that way will have to remove it and place it in a wallet before entering the store. What’s next? Washing our hands before we touch money? Which by the way, is already dirtier than poo (worldwide). Read this if you don’t believe me.

(Found this sign picture, by the way, on a facebook group I reluctantly belong to called South Africans in the USA. What’s great about this group is it’s really pro-SA, friendly and not full of racists. There’s a theory that South Africans who go to the US rather than just running to the country that colonised SA and messed it up centuries ago are simply nicer people, although I’m told Florida has it’s share of gremlins…)

Female Ejaculation: So easy according to the LA Weekly Backpages

I don’t think equality is the same as “being the same” – not when it comes to orgasms. I have had entire orgasms without touching myself. I have known men to get hard while feeling nothing. I think this means we are different and this weird diagram stuff just inspires idiot guys with dirty fingernails to think they can follow a set of Men’s Health instructions and make us cum. It’s just not true. It’s more interesting than that!

I wish they included a diagram of my brain.

This is what the site you go to promises. Apparently some British guy knows it all. And he’s made over 300 women squirt. That’s a lot of laundry.

The Far-Out Factor: Los Alamos, CA

I stopped in Los Alamos trying to find a hamburger place and wound up booking into the cheapest motel in town … The Alamo. A shower. A bed. After sleeping in my car at a music festival campsite I needed that.

I also still needed a hamburger. So I crossed the street to one of the town’s three bars – the only place apart from Subway that seemed to be serving food. You can see the lights of it to the left of the motel sign.

A basic American Motel. $55 a night. Comfy and relatively quiet except that it’s next door to a party with live tuba music tonight. Not complaining – I don’t mind noise so long as it’s not a lawn mower or a car alarm.

It’s a classic old place, called 1860, run by two very nice people. The woman is called Ana. The guy’s name escapes me. The Barman, Manny, is awesome. It’s a genuine old saloon and the hamburger was amazing. They have local craft beer on tap, and fast internet. After 36 hours offline during a time when I can’t really afford to be, it was incredible to be clean, showered, fed, sheltered and drinking cold brew.

Local people at the bar were friendly and through my travel-tired haze I managed to carry on a kind of conversation about whatever… you know. Touch typing. South Africa. The World Cup. Music Festivals. Motels. Beer. I was pretty happy talking to strangers and catching up with friends on facebook.

That is, until the town drunkard decided to take a seat next to me. He was drinking something bright red and seemed to have nothing better to do than ask me inane questions.

“Working hard?”
I shake my head and smile.
“No, facebook,” I say, ruefully, guiltily.
“Having fun, sweetie?”
His breath smelled of 20 toasted cigarettes and stale booze.
I smile nervously, and turn back to the screen, hoping he’ll go away.
He leans in, reading past my shoulder, one of the posts on my page.
“Why do you have it at that angle. Can you see better?”
His nose is packed with popping veins from what appeared to be his primary social activity: Drinking heavily.
I realise I have to answer him, or seem rude.
“No, it’s just to keep the light off other people, and for privacy.”
He scowls at me and almost shouts: “I wouldn’t want to look at that stuff. Why would I?”
So why do you? I want to say. Instead I just say “Okay.”

He keeps going, with one dumb comment after another, touching me sometimes as he speaks, and is really beginning to remind me of one of those old men who stare at your tits when you’re jogging and call out: “Having fun?”. I always want to stop, and say “No, but I’m glad YOU are!” And then smash their testicles with a rock.

I realise he’s not going to quit, so I wave at Manny for the check and shoot my boyfriend a quick message: Being harassed by a guy here, so going to go back to my motel. Will reconnect there. Small towns… ha.”

Distracted by another (very nice) old guy to my right, I lose track of Red-Nose Redneck for a bit. Next thing I know I catch his hand on my keyboard. He’s pulling a maniacal face and miming banging on my keyboard. I slam it shut. “Stop it!” I say.
“You stop it. Sitting here playing games and talking to someone in FRANCE. That’s not real life” he shouts.
His equally booze addled old buddy joins in: “This is a bar, not a coffeeshop”.
“I don’t think that means I have to talk to you,” I say. “Just leave me alone.”
“That’s not life,” the guy keeps shouting.
“So what is? Alcoholism?” I ask.
And that sends them both over the edge.
Manny tells me to take it easy, and them to leave me alone.
They ask for the check and say they’re never coming back. I ask for the check.
They keep shouting at me. I keep telling them to leave me alone. Assholes.

Manny brings me the check.

I pay and find myself suddenly in tears as Red-Nose Redneck leaves and his creepy old friend stays and keeps hurling comments at me. I shout back, calling them assholes. Why didn’t I just laugh it off? Don’t know. Overtired, I guess. And surprised. I know the type, you see, the type who’d call you rude for refusing to talk to a smelly old stranger in a bar one minute, then accuse you of being a slut for speaking to him at all the next.

Ana the host and the owner tried to persuade me to stay – and drink a beer alone in a lounge. Last thing I felt like… sitting in bright light alone. They’re sweet people though. Not their fault who drinks there.

Instead of staying to please them, I walked back to the motel, calming down realizing that tonight’s drama had brought me full circle. I needed really badly to get away from technology for a while. But the thing is, there’s only one thing worse than the constant assault of information, the noise of constant communication signifying nothing, the gaggle and the disconnect, and that, unfortunately, is being around people who use it as an excuse for their inability to function, who never WERE ON the grid, who haven’t liked a new song since they turned 30 – who’ve become their grandparents.

I hope that when I get really old I’m not old that way. I hope I don’t simply reject whatever I don’t understand.

Finding beauty

I just had to go somewhere. Screw classes. Screw film school politics. I can sleep in my car. Drove past Santa Barbara to a state park beach. $10 – I’ll nap til the afternoon and be on my way.

Writing in the sky

I saw it too late to read it. I hope it’s not important.

Cause I’m dead if I find what I’m looking for: Joshua Tree

Joshua Tree isn’t my favourite U2 album. Boy is. But it has a song on it that means as much to me in my thirties as it did when I was a teenager. It’s like the Teen International Anthem (and just as cheesy.)

It’s like the Karoo. You can see forever. And there’s nothing.

I Still Haven’t Found What I’m Looking For.  When I thought I had, I always turned out to be wrong. So now I assume I haven’t and, when I remember, I keep looking.

The danger of film school is, well… film school. You get so obsessed with making films that you forget that you need to keep experiencing life, keeping your eyes fresh, so that you can make films worth watching. At least that’s the theory – I may have just been skiving off from writing my thesis feature screenplay when I signed up for this day hike. And I don’t know yet whether any of the images I absorbed or stories I imagined will come to anything. But here, for the record, are a few of them.

If you’re trying to find what you’re looking for, Joshua Tree is a bad place to lose it. No water, spiky plants, hot hot heat, peyote… and it’s damn easy to get lost. Luckily that’s exactly what most of us need in a world jam packed with useless instructions.

At the base of Ryan’s Peak, people are encouraged to post haikus about their experiences. I nearly posted my favourite one, but it’s not related. Still here it is: Haikus are awesome / But sometimes make no sense / Refrigerator

OPEN HOUSE: Stunning views! A fixer-upper on prime real estate, surrounded by nature. Very private.

“Partially furnished.”

So… old burned out car. a tree. Some sand. So what?

Look closer. There’s a glove lying on the ground. What the hell is that doing there? Is it connected to the next photo?

… and if the glove IS connected to this photo… doesn’t that hurt?

The only thing still working here is the brakes. This is one of three cars we found abandoned in a 2 mile stretch of desert. Nearby to the house. And a broken wind-mill. And a failed mine. There’s a story in there somewhere.

Here is where Worth Bagly bit the dust at the hands of W. F. Keys May 1947.

“Desert rose, dreamed I saw a desert rose / dressed all in ribbons and bows / like the silence she called to me”

I didn’t quite make it up. I refused to take a hand-up – I’m like that with rocks. But I did discover something. If you put your ear to the rocks, it’s dead quiet inside them.

That’s not the only new thing. I saw my first blue jay (the bird) and my first chipmunk. I thought chipmunks were a made-up animal. Turns out they’re little grey things.

Isn’t that beautiful?

Anyhow. Against all odds, I wound up in Joshua Tree – a place I never thought I’d visit.

I’d forgotten how good walking was for my head. On the drive home, I dozed off in a state of semi-conscious bliss and coming home, solved a problem with a script that had been driving me insane for weeks.

And along the way, another story.

Not even in the town of Joshua Tree but about 3 miles outside it, stranded in the middle of nowhere… Sushi? It’s closed. And for sale. But someone thought they could persuade the people of Joshua Tree to eat Sushi. Someone had a dream. It’s like Salmon Eating in the Inland Empire. Just as crazy and beautiful.

I wonder if this is the secret of great artists – continuing the exploration and the journey. Now all I need is the great art to go with it right?

America rises above the bombers

Just finished a column for News24.co.za that makes me realise how different the America I arrived in is to the one I left, thanks to Obama.

Miss you. I miss you like I miss measles, acne, or broken bones, you spineless brat.

What happened in Boston is terrible. The way America has responded, however, gives me hope for humanity. It’s like America has grown up. That’s what my column is about.

America: Bigger than Bombs

I at first assumed the bomb attacks in Boston would play straight into the hands of the Islamaphobes who’d love to just “kill ‘em all”. But it seems like Americans – in general – are rising above it.

“Al Qaeda is a real threat. But terrorism has no religion.” Well put, by Al-Marayati, a member of the Faith-Based Advisory Committee of the president’s Homeland Security Advisory Council. Of course, the people who really need to hear his words won’t be listening to them. Events like the Boston bombings play straight into the filthy hands of those who are longing for an excuse to attack or oppress muslims in the name of fighting terrorism. As news of the bombings came through, muslim Americans were not only mourning the loss of lives, but simultaneously praying: “Please, don’t let it be a Muslim.”

It hasn’t been posted yet, but when it has, you can read it here
UPDATE!!! 12.40AM FRIDAY

Seconds – not kidding – after my column went live, news came through on twitter about a gun battle with two very similar sounding suspects in Watertown, Mass. Some responses from twitter…

NidalM Abdullah Mohiuddin: “My reaction to hearing the names of the #watertown suspects:”

Terrible but true Relief for many here. Makes sense given the complete lack of responsibility taken. Al Qaida generally likes to boast. UPDATE: Turns out it was the work of two stupid kids who happen to be Muslim but weren’t organized. Of course, this makes the prejudiced types really gleeful.

Could be fake. I could fake this easily. But if it’s real it’s freaky.

Dutchguy000 Kristian Tuinzing  – “Bullet hole in my wall from Watertown shootout. My head was there minutes before. #watertown pic.twitter.com/mqtHREc2Rp”

Cum recycling in Hong Kong

I know this is juvenile of me but it’s Saturday and I’m home alone working.

LITTER CUM RECYCLABLES: As the friend who posted it said: “What exactly is being recycled?”

Never knew a city with a shortage of that. I wonder if people in Hong Kong are better at putting their shit into the right bins.

America’s political confusions

I find myself confused today, about America. Surely by now, they must know what’s right and wrong? But no, they’re human too.

The Anti-War people. They’re not going to oppose the war, per se – that would never wash. They have to paint it as selfish or they’d be mauled. America has become more conservative in many ways than in was in the 60s (when it comes to this issue, not race, or gender, or sexual orientation.)

This means someone’s son or daughter is over there, dying for the cause of… please remind me what it is, cause it sure as hell isn’t freedom. It’s not me who’s being disrespectful here. It’s the person asking someone to give their life for no good reason.

 

The pro-war people. Do they seem to have more expensive banners – or am I imagining things?

A car in the expensive film school I go to’s parking lot. I thought, being left wing, that “Miss me yet” was sarcastic. Turns out it’s pro-bush. Ridiculous.

But I guess if you go ski in the aspens and your parents bought your car for you, you would be a republican.

Oh, and this is the same car. The guy is also anti-gay – unless he’s a pro-gay scout fan. I remember being forced to learn Die Stem at Brownies in South Africa. Whites only brownies. The Scouts should be ashamed of their history, but weirdly are not. If homophobia is timeless… I have no words.

 

Kasra Shokravi’s pictures of beautiful Tehran

People here in the USA just see Iran as this Bogeyman. Remember, when you argue that Israel is right to want to initiate war, that this is what you are bombing. A place with real people in it. With beautiful people in it. It’s not right to say “it’s worth it” as if the value of 10 people killed could be weighed against the value of a theoretical 200 saved.  I have never been so recently sickened as I was when someone I thought of as a friend argued that the USA, in the greater scheme of things, saved lives by nuking Japan. Highly unlikely that this is true.

A G-Cleff – a musical symbol I sometimes still draw kinda squonk. Music, somewhat universal if you allow for the misunderstanding of quarter tones, has always driven cultural revolutions. Alienate the kids who drew this by killing their famalies, and it’ll drive them against you too.

Kasra says this writing says: “Kamiar” and “Maziar”. They’re names. Probably a couple of neighborhood kids.

I want to go there. Don’t mind covering my head. Just don’t want to have to duck and cover.

I’m not a fan of any kind of fundamentalism, Muslim, Christian, Jewish, or Atheist or anythingist. I don’t believe in stoning a Woman to death because the Bible, Q’oran or Bahagava’d G’ita says to do it. I would never kill people. NEVER. This is because, unlike most people, I’m not some kind of selective psychopath who believes war is necessary, and that killing is noble because of some theoretical life saved.

I’m no fan of Iran’s policies towards women, or even the rest of the world. I don’t think Iranian people will change their minds about your political opinions because you bomb them though.

That’s not how it works.