Take Your Phil

Four instances of phenomena just took place: 1.) I opened up this post with an unnecessarily fluffed up sentence; 2.) By posting this I’ve inevitability become THAT blogger who only posts once every few months; 3.) I got you to jump a little bit at the sight of my shocking title; 4.) Like many folks who splatter their brains online in Cape Town, I’ve posted my first ‘food blog’ entry.

I’m a bacon lover. The taste, the smell, the frying sound mimicking applause when you slap it on a pan all adds to the culture of bacon loving. Unfortunately it looks like that may need to stop, or at least change soon. Why? Cancer.

According to the The World Cancer Research Fund (WCRF), a list of processed red meat products usually contain a carcinogenic by-product, sodium nitrite, which could increase the risk of pancreatic and colorectal cancer:

Beef jerky (perhaps not biltong?)
Sausage
Hot dogs
Sandwich meat
Frozen pizza with meat
Canned soups with meat
Frozen meals with meat
Ravioli and meat pasta foods
Kid’s meals containing red meat
Sandwich meat used at popular restaurants
Nearly all red meats sold at public schools, restaurants, hospitals, hotels and theme parks
Bacon

Bacon…brings tears to my eyes. Here’s a full report. I’ve risked botchalism and tape worms my whole life, but this may be pushing it. If bacon products are “too dangerous” for human consumption, you’ll find me at organic food markets all over Cape Town, screaming at vendors, demanding they prove that their bacon is “NaNO2 free”.

Last time I featured how much fun drummers seem to have. Today, I’ll feature musicians that not only have fun on their choice of instrument, but also thoroughly entertain (through complete ridiculous fun and appeal):

I can only imagine that weird moustaches, dirty hair and afro-lamb chop fusions were popular in the 1970′s. Exhibit A:

How do you take a song about drug abuse and make those listening to it forget that it’s about drug abuse? Easy – an oddly lit room, matching suits, and an almost ceremonious gathering around Mick Gallagher as he shreds on his keys at around a minute and half in.

Keep those fingers warm and those hearts beating, my fellow homosapiens.

If you’re one of those people who complains about Monday, then you’re on a fast track to be being disliked by me. As I not too long ago not so famously tweeted “It’s Monday. Try not to complain, but if you do have a reason to, get a solution and move on. Mine is custard, and I’m moving along now.”

That being said, and quite arrogantly referencing myself at that, I do feel that Wednesdays bring with them some level of despair. It’s the middle of the week, the fuel price hikes of Wednesdays, you’re tire and grumpy, and your bowel movements kick in at inappropriate times…they don’t? Moving along. I decided to bring in a feature that would help curb the Wednesday – Feel Good Selection. While I’ll never dispute the ukulele being a top of the range happy maker, I’ve found some joy in drummers having fun:

He is known as the the mad drummer, and after this little Youtube sensation went viral, Steve Moore found himself touring the world, playing at international drum festivals, and even making an appearance on The Office.

The look on the drummer’s face – perfect.

So in a flurry of passion and excitement, go ahead and drum your desk, scare everyone around you and scream “I don’t hate Wednesdays as much anymore!”

First world male homosapiens are curious animals. We work to eat copious amounts of food we don’t need and then work to make the kilojules we worked to consume null and void. Some of us are just too ‘modern homosapien’ for members of the opposite or same sex to engage in courtship apparel with, so we work towards a state of being super humans with bulgy muscles and heart rates slower than a government official in an air-conditionless office. This, my curious homosapien friends, is the curse of the gyming trinity.

To explain it in less obnoxious terms – if you’ve ever fallen into the trap of joining a health club, you will notice and probably fall into one of three groups of people:

1.) Those that really need to be at the gym to look like:
2.) those who want to be at the gym to look like:
3.) those that have been at the gym too long.

Those of us that fall into category 1 are probably the most honest and brave. At least there is a worthy purpose of improving one’s lifestyle. If you do get to the less impressive category 2 however, you may end up being ambitious enough to attempt council with those in category 3, and when you’re in category 2 you feel like a disgraceful spec of waste alongside the muscly muscles in category 3. The downside of being in the rip roaring category 3 is that anything outside of the standard diet, consisting of 12 eggs, 2 chickens, 1 banana, a rice cake and 3 whey protein shakes (daily), would automatically place you in the dreaded (and feared by all in the muscly muscles) category 1.

Do you understand the dynamics here and see why health clubs are essentially society’s Bermuda’s Triangle?

My guess is to simply not take in more kilojules than the homosapien body needs to function.

* Disclaimer: I understand not the dynamics of the female species in health clubs and would not attempt the offensive assumptions that some males do; and I am in also probably caught in one of the aforementioned categories of the cursed gyming trinity*

We all love to ridicule the cosmopolitan city slickers, who all have a blog aiming to change the world but eventually fall in the category of a bi-century poster. I seem to have become one of them but at least I’m acknowledging it, embracing the irony if you will. Since I actually paid to have the domain (still slave to the WordPress umbrella) and design, I guess I can give a heartfelt commitment to post more, but that would probably be a lie. So I’ll just stick with being the occasional city slicker who will annoyingly flood your Facebook and Twitter stream with my bi-century thoughts on how we should change the world.

(self ridiculing image compliments of shoeboxblog.com)

It has passed. I’ve given it some time. Now I’d like to bring up the past and complain…and probably sound like a disgruntled wife or girlfriend.

I watched November crawl by and had to endure the onslaught of the world’s manliest men who could cure prostate cancer by growing facial hair. For the other 11 months in a year, do we poke (if you’ll excuse the unfortunate word) at more sensible ways to raise cancer awareness – like, say, going for a medical exam? Because, if you ask me, the best way to know if you have an illness and treat it, is to actually find out if you have it. Science. Medicine. These are not social media trends, they’re practical.

Much like my curious brain being splattered all over this web page, this contempt for a facial hair craze has another side to my slightly rational argument above. It just wouldn’t be fare not to mention it – I suppose I’m a little jealous. Try being a 24 year old male with an inability to sport nothing more than a few white tufts on my top lip, quite affectionately known as “bum fluff”.

There it is – my love for December is directly related to the end of November, a month where I’m both jealous of and annoyed at the futility of an internet campaign. That being said, if I wasn’t a seemingly hormone deficient homosapien male and felt the need to experiment with facial hair, it would probably be for more than one month of the year.

We’re fresh out of the 2012 US election race that saw Barack Obama break the hearts of around 50 million republicans and annoy a very grumpy, very republican Donald Trump:

And while I wouldn’t like to side track onto masters of the hair comb over and the division in American politics, I would like to bring us back to something that unites the US in an explosive, heroic, bomb blasting display of democracy – patriotism. We’ve seen it through war, politics, evolving religious evangelism, sport, consumerist pride, and of course fast food…Yes? No? Well it’s definitely been nourishment for Hollywood’s billion dollar foundation, and in 2012, I think It’s gone a bit far. May I introduce “Iron Sky” and “Osombie”:

Because being invaded by normal aliens and killing normal Nazis just isn’t enough?

Because saving the world from a terrifying terrorist and burying his body in the ocean once just isn’t enough?

Other than the obvious pallid exterior, there is a lot more about me that makes me a White. You could say that several aspects of my personality whip me straight into a stereotype that ‘we’ would argue against till we go from white to blue in the face. Because that’s what ‘we’ do after all, we complain…boy do we love to complain. So let me splatter my brains all over your desktop for a moment as I divulge into the curious mind of the small town kid with an unfortunate hypocrisy in South Africa – I will recount two separate incidents to show you just how White I am. It lingers…

In Simon Kilpatick’s national bestseller “The Racists’s Guide To The People Of South Africa”, Whites are described as enjoying endurance sports to “pit themselves against other Whites and gauge their self worth by comparing speed and times”. Surely then, if exercise has a certain reflection on my self worth, my need to become a sweaty, weazing little ball of suncream and neon clothes is justified. So this is exactly how I found myself in the afluent suburb of Bergvliet on a Saturday morning – gracefully choking down main road, slamming one foot in front of another in a bid to prove my self worth. My pursuits to fitness were shattered when a call of “Excuse me, sir! Can I Ask you a question?” from behind had me swing around and pause. Who wouldn’t? A gentleman in his late 20′s, wearing an outfit suggesting that he was not out for an early morning jog, had gotten my attention.
Curious to see what the gentleman wanted to ask me, who was now trotting enthusiastically in my direction, I waited. He arrived with his hand extended, introduced himself as Kelvin, and once again asked me if he could ask me question. Resisting the temptation to fool around and tell him had already, twice, I merely nodded. In a space of 10 minutes I had heard Kelvin’s story of having recently completed a jail sentence in Polsmoor for drug possession and murder, how he had now converted to being friends with Jesus, and how I was the first White person he had spoken to in years. I also heard that he needed an immediate cash injection of R500.00 to pay for his rent. By now, like most Whites in my position, I had immediately regretted my decision not to implement the “I’m going to pretend like I didn’t hear his calls and stroll along” tactic. Fortunately I could justify the “I’m going to pat my vital organs to indicate a lack of financial resources” technique on the grounds that I was merely on a morning jog, or graceful choke down main road. Kelvin then accepted my situation and had a wonderful suggestion to follow me home in order to procure, amoungst other things, the financial injection that I apparently had on stand by. With the White alarm bells ringing, I quickly wormed my way out of the situation with a very stern rejection. But the situation lingers…

The second incident that has me writing this, involved a Sunday afternoon commute to work. As a small town kid being uninformed of the apparent dangers of public transport on weekends, I was none the wiser as I stepped out of Cape Town station and began my walk towards Gardens with a back pack and two bulging pockets, filled with free goods to whoever had enough ambition to ask sternly. One such gentleman, I suspect, had this motivation as he changed his direction of walking to match mine. After several worrying minutes I decided to employ the “paranoid White who will look around many times and attempt to waver an assailants suspected pursuits by crossing the road back and forth” technique. Needles to say, my newly found admirer continued his pursuit and gained several meters on me – White alarm bells were once again ringing. Eventually I attempted a subtle increase in pace, which I realize now must have looked like an outburst of a sprint, to which my suspected assailant must have found too much a task to match. All that was left was for him to throw some accusations along the lines of me being White and unfairly assuming he was following me, followed by a gracious “I was walking in the same direction. Breathe, bru!”. My commute ended with a stop in the hardware store. I now carry my guardian angle, severe irritant pepper spray on every commute, clutched firmly in my hand, hidden masterfully in the gigantic bulge in my jeans. The moment lingers…

And there it is. An account of my reaction to what could have been,or at least as the White in me chooses to believe, petty crime. Good thing I didn’t fall victim to a robbery, I’m not sure if I would be ready to move to Australia on the grounds of it “just not being safe anymore”. What still lingers? ‘We’ benefited from a past we conveniently mask with current injustices in a select group of political wombats, ‘we’ seem to fear the poor, and for this – I’m so White at times, that it embarrasses me.

I love Youtube for a number of reasons
1.) A platform for viral content
2.) An outlet for time wasting
3.) Witty comments…but we’ll get there.

There was a song about the bitter pill of a relationship that ended exploded in 2012. A song based on the melodies of Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star and Baa, Baa, Black Sheep. A song that eventually managed to violate everything that was sane in every little bit of musical tolerance I had.

Gotye’s ability to make the most basic of songs catchy is noted, but the ability of radio stations, social media, tv stations, and my neighbour in a quaint block of flat all have the ability to over play and sing it to a point of nervous breakdown and possibly even suicide. Fortunately Walk Off The Earth, who I’ve posted about before, put a fresh spin on it.

After it exploded and gave the band some notable recognition, we thought the obsession of covering an already over played song had peaked. Meet The Waffle Stompers:

Your move, planet Earth.

Top comment
“If that ukulele was a woman, this video would be frowned upon by youtube”

Happy Ukulele Friday, people of the four sting magic makers.

I used to dream of being a revolutionary wordsmith, who would gloriously smash ideas together in an artistic grouping of lexicons, creating ripples of thought patterns through his readers. So far I’ve managed to ripple those thoughts in such a way that probably has a reader thinking “too many fluffed up words, he obviously thinks he’s fancy”. I’ve also come to realise that living on the 10th story of an apartment building, dedicating life to writing about the hypocrisy of the homosapiens scuttling about in  the world below is something that Hollywood and possibly even Bollywood propagated as a romantic notion. It’s still fun to dream of it though, so I’ll dream on and keep making fun of the world I live in.