Now? Not So Much

Bender from Futurama: Not really what we are talking about.

Now don’t ask me why, but last week I found myself knocking back shooters in Claremont, the preferred stomping ground for students and young revelers who haven’t quite worked up the courage to party in the city itself yet.

The night had started innocently enough, with a quiet ale at the local watering hole near The HQ, after which I had planned to go home, have some milk, catch an episode of Flight of the Conchords before having an early night in.

I know – very rock n roll, very sexy – but hey, this is what gets me excited these days.

In any event, things did not go exactly as planned, and instead of shaking my head in amusement at the antics of Jemaine and Bret in the comfort of my lounge; I found myself shaking my head in bemusement at the antics of Jonno and Big Dave, two jocks who started shoving each other on the dance floor of a semi deserted club on Claremont Main Road.

Now as far as I can work out, Claremont currently has about six clubs or bars all within walking distance of each other. And by walking distance, I mean you could literally spit outside the window of one establishment, and risk hitting the doorman square in the face as he is busy standing outside the other one. Since most of these doormen seem rather juiced up and irritable, I would strongly advise against that though, but it does give you an idea of the close proximity and level of choice one has.

Because of this choice, the market is understandably saturated, and so many of these places resort to blatant bribery and lies to get patrons through their doors. At our first stop, the doorman was practically begging us to go inside and create a vibe, promising great music, scantily clad UCT students, and copious amounts of cheap booze. Upon entry however, he was proven to be a liar, as we were greeted by a Johnny Clegg dance remix from 2004, together with a fat brunette with a tiara on her head dancing by herself. Granted, the drinks were dirt cheap, but 1 out of 3 was a fairly poor effort on the doorman’s part, and so we decided to move on to another venue.

Club number two fared no better though. There, after ordering a fairly strong round, we found ourselves doubled up, thanks to a 2-for-1 deal the barman with dishonest eyes had failed to mention to us. We weren’t exactly complaining about this, but it did seem to be a delaying tactic designed to keep us there, as I could literally count the number of other patrons inside. This included a group of five guys who were diligently watching a football game which had occurred days earlier, together with a couple who were vigorously sucking each other’s faces, whilst a third wheel sat with them, watching intently whilst gently touching himself.

Finishing our drinks, we headed off to club number three, which to its credit, had a semblance of a decent vibe to it. The drinks were affordable, there were more than 20 people inside, and the music didn’t completely make me want to put a bottle through my neck. Counting against it though was the caliber of clientele. About two minutes into my dancing to Chris Brown’s “I Can Transform Ya”, I was accosted by an overly aggressive female, who reeked of cigarettes and vomit. “My friends think you should dance with me” she bellowed in a voice several decabils lower than my own, and it required the welcome diversion of Jonno and Big Dave’s altercation, to allow me to slowly moonwalk my way out of there.

We did eventually manage to make a night out of it, and I ended up punishing a good few bars that evening. This of course resulted in a rather dreadful morning after, one in which my skull seemed determined to crush my brain for reasons unclear to me. Suffice to say, I’ll be sticking to milk and Flight of the Conchords in the immediate future. Sure, benders can be fun, but usually only when you’re 18. I think that ship has sailed for me, I’ll now be returning to Jemaine and Bret’s cheesy music videos instead.

Oakes signing off.

Please?

Trees: Getting killed so Shaun can get junk mail.

Every day I received an assortment of mail in my letterbox, usually made up of utility bills, religious pamphlets, as well as handwritten letters of abuse from a Mr GS Pope, a strange old man who lives a few blocks down the street, and who seems to despise me for no rational reason. Recently however, I have also noticed the presence of a green envelope which finds its way into my letterbox at least twice a week. DirectAxis is a credit provider which promises me access to unlimited wealth, and they feel compelled to point this out to me several times a month now, in their green encrusted letters.

I figured they must have murdered hundreds of trees by this point, simply to let me know that I can get R50 000 within 24 hours, at an interest rate of 252%, or something equally ridiculous.

Now, I love money as much as the next person, but the thought of repaying the equivalent of R125 000 over the next five years, so you can splurge on R50 000 now, seems like the type of financial prudence that currently has the US industries on its knees, giving virtual BJs to the government in exchange for bailouts.

DirectAxis seem quite adamant that I should lend money from them though, and besides a disciplined mailing regime, I also get text messages on a weekly basis. I have been getting calls from private numbers as well, and it wouldn’t surprise me if they were behind that too. Well, it’s either them, or people asking me for money, which would of course be an equally appealing prospect.

I’m intrigued as to how they managed to get my details though, and I suspect it’s another example of my bank selling me out. I remember taking out a loan many years back, to use as a down payment on my very first luxury yacht, and I’m assuming my details are added to some sort of database. Clearly the powers that be at FNB are then selling off this information on to the various credit lenders, who then nudge, wink and show a bit of leg at the consumers on this database, hoping to entice them into further lending.

This, together with the usual banking issues I face, leads me to glance more and more longingly toward Capitec Bank. I’ve heard some fairly decent things from them of late, (being named one of the top global “Great Brands of Tomorrow” is a step in the right direction, and they seem keen to shed their image as a poor person’s bank)

For now though, I seem destined to continue receiving my DirectAxis junk mail. I may well collect them all and turn them into paper machete, using it to construct a giant 10 foot model of myself, which I can then leave outside the window of GS Pope’s house, so as to further enrage him. Bastard.

Oakes signing off.

Not Ideal

Quick one, I may in fact be offline for a couple of days, whilst I sort out some technical issues. Sit tight, hope to have this sorted out shortly, and hopefully we can chat again in a few days. Suffice to say, the R250 a Day Challenge is now dissolved until further notice. Boo.

Oakes signing off.

Not One Of Our Better Ones

And that’s it then. Let’s hope the next few days are better than this one which, to be frank, was pretty f**king shit.

That is all.

Oakes signing off.

Please?

A typical day in Cape Town.

Can there be anything quite as annoying as the wind we are currently experiencing in Cape Town? The gale force howling we have been hearing these last few days, is of course what locals refer to as the “Cape Doctor”, a fierce South Easterly wind which is meant to clean the city of any smog, fumes and other harmful toxins, blowing them all into the poorer suburbs of the Western Cape instead.

In theory it is supposed to clean Cape Town but all it seems to do is blow the city’s rubbish all over the streets before having it all settle, frustratingly enough, onto my car. I staggered out my flat this morning to find what appeared to be someone’s grocery shopping sprawled across my windshield. There were yoghurts, dried fruits and – more disturbingly – a brown sticky substance which I hope to God was some sort of chocolate mousse dessert.

They of course all managed to find their way around the dozens of other cars parked in the street, in between the two heroin addicts who sleep on the pavement, and under and over the various trees which line our property, before deciding to nestle nicely on my car.

I know I’ve written about the wind before, and I know I’m probably sounding like a stuck record now, but I really do detest it. Even as a young boy watching the hit cartoon series Captain Planet and the Planeteers, the Russian girl with the power of Wind always rubbed me up the wrong way, to the point where I secretly wished the Asian bird with the Water power would drown her during an alcohol-fuelled argument over one of the boys. Sadly, it being a kids television show, they never did have that drunken fight, but I have continued to be annoyed by both the kid, as well as the shitty element she controlled.

So much so, that I have even spent considerable time researching how to reduce the effects of the wind in the Cape Town city centre. Based on my findings, I’m fairly sure we can successfully divert it with approximately five strategically placed windmill constructions, which will catch the wind as it heads toward my bedroom window, and gently but firmly steer it towards Port Elizabeth instead.

Why Port Elizabeth? Well, the people who live there are fairly reserved and soft spoken and so would not kick up too much of a fuss. Also, I know of at least two people who I don’t get on with who currently reside there, and so this would also appeal to my sense of vengeance.

Seriously though, is there anything we can do to prevent getting blown over on a daily basis? I don’t care about blue light convoys getting banned in the Western Cape, I want Helen Zille to focus her efforts on making the Cape Town Gardens area a wind-free zone. This is becoming a huge problem now.

As my neighbor is fond of telling me, the only good thing about the wind is when you are breaking it. Just make sure to light a match straight after though.

Oakes signing off.

Hating That

If you avidly read this blog as much as I do (after I write something, I generally stare at it for hours thereafter) you would of course have noticed that this site went crashing last night.

It seems to be okay now, but the geeks at my hosting company seemed non-commital on whether this may happen again, so just be prepared if things come tumbling down this evening.

Just thought I’d let you know. Does this count as a daily post?

Maybe.

I’ll see how I feel later.

Oakes signing off.

Seriously

Cell Phones: Trendy and cool.

I remember proudly walking around with a brick-sized cell phone attached to my belt during the year 2000, a time where I completely fancied myself. Back then, brick-sized cell phones were all the rage, it was during the cell phone boom in South Africa, and you were considered to be un trendy and slightly pathetic if you did not own one.

A truly multi-purpose gadget, I remember using my Nokia 5110 to leave missed calls for my friends, hit people over the head when they annoyed me, and even used it to send an sms to cute girls I wanted to rub my winky on, but was too shy to speak to in person.

Back then, air time was ridiculously expensive, Vodacom and MTN were bending us over and giving everyone a hefty rogering, and you could easily end up paying the equivalent of a month’s rent on a hour long cell phone call. Being a traditionally stingy nation, South Africans proclaimed the sms as the desired communication tool of choice, as it worked out to about 99c to send a 90 character message. Unlike Twitter’s famous 140 characters though, 90 characters never really got you very far.

Usually, you would just about manage to describe the length and girth of your winky, before running out of characters and having to pay an extra 99c for the pleasure of sending a two unit message, which would then take up 10% of the recipient’s cell phone storage. (Hard to believe, but there was a time when cell phones only stored about 20 messages) Obviously this was a lose lose situation, and so people developed a short hand method of communicating via sms.

And so, “that” soon became “dat”, “before” evolved into “b4”, and just like magic, every man and his dog was soon “Lol”ing at anything mildly amusing, saving the “ROTFLMA”ing for the very special moments in life.

Although this was a horrible time for someone who insisted on speaking eloquently, I grudgingly accepted it, both in terms of the economic value in speaking like a retard, as well as the fact that it was quite an inconvenience typing out long words on a cell phone key board.

That was then though, and this is now. Today, I am completely underwhelmed by people who continue to persist in communicating in this manner, especially with the use of BlackBerry keyboards and predictive text. Don’t even get me started on people who use computers to update their Twitter or Facebook status.

Quite frankly, if you are using a fully fledged computer keyboard to update your Facebook status, and you still insist on using “dat” instead of “that”, I will make it my mission to track you down and kick you firmly in the throat. Come on, it’s one extra letter, type the damn thing out. You know how to spell, you are not a cretin.

There is nothing cute about writing like a six year old. Especially when you are a thirty seven year old. Keep this up and you will be needing a colonoscopy, specifically to identify the foreign object found up there, namely my foot. Lol. Or not.

Oakes signing off.