The implication of the subject line would indicate that I work for a corporation. I dont. And I am not going to say what I work for. Lots of unresolved issues her. But we sell advertising and I am generally the douche extraordinaire who gets given shit to write. And I dont mind.

See some people have values and wont be held down by the power of the dollar. I say fuck that. A cup of coffee at your local chain coffee store costs and you could try paying it with a set of ideals. Save the values for your non-commercial relationships. Otherwise have a farm and befriend goats.

I need a job. No I am not going to post a video where I have my hair done, make expertly applied and tell you, while wearing my tightest tight bit why I am the best thing since sliced bread in my husky voice. You can tell that I have seen that. I am a copy writer and I am creative. But I am not desperate. I do a good job, I try not to say too much work related stuff because I hate long talking meetings and exchanges of what you think we should do. That is how I roll. I write and write pretty well and for whoever I think can pay me.

Maybe there is something immoral for selling your skills to the highest bidder. Being a reasonably decent novelist, you would think I had some “pure” values. Hardly. I like to say that I am morally grey. I can be bought for the right price assuming that we are talking about the same thing here. I will work and sweat and make you sound like sun rays emanate from your rear end if the price is right. I work fast as well. I did a 815 word advertorial in about two hours. With a headache and the strong desire to turn a stapler into a murder weapon. All things considered, that is pretty fucking amazing.

Its probably the last article I am going to write for that magazine. I could have gone on every single day of my life doing that, slowly going blind and bald from the sheer annoyance from the futility, if the price was moderately right.

So if anyone out there is looking for a half decent copywriter who doesnt like lost of chatter, who plays well with the other animals and growls occasionally to himself I might be the right person.

In the work environment I prefer to be treated like a cactus, watered once a month (Lets call this a pay cheque, But unlike a cactus, less is still less, so more is better for your health.) Left alone and I will do what I am called onto do. Not that Cactus plants do much. But you get the picture.

T.O.H.

 

 

October is breast cancer awareness month. More than 3800 cases are being reported annually in South Africa with breast cancer the most common form of cancer in South Africa.

Although breast cancer can be a death sentence if not detected early, early detection improves the chances of survival as well as options for treatment.

With this in mind The Organ Harvester would like to offer free breast exams as a community service and in the interest of community health. Because the Organ Harvester cares. About you and your breasts.

In fact all guys should be offering free breast exams as a vital community service. Hands that care.

Actually since I mentioned the words breasts its all words after. one giant blur.
So do your bit for breast awareness month boys, look after the ladies.

T.O.H.

One of the central characters of my novel is based loosely on an Apartheid doctor alleged to have committed a number of human rights abuses. The doctor now lives and teaches medicine in Canada.

 

Several years ago there were calls for the doctor to be charged with human rights abuses and war crimes for his alleged role in South Africa's top secret programme aimed at military conscripts. The programme known euphemistically as “The Aversion Project”

 

At its core the project was a psychotic, Calvinistic reaction by the right-wing government to combat “the spread of homosexuality” amongst white South Africans, males and females, although mostly male, serving in the South African Armed Forces from the mid 70's to late 80's. The programme was so top secret that many conscripts were not aware of the experimentation that went on at 1 Military Hospital when homosexual conscripts were placed under the care of one Doctor Aubrey Levine who ran the psychiatric section of the hospital and was in charge of the programme. The aim of the programme was to “cure” homosexuality amongst white conscripts because the military had a strict policy on admission of homosexuals in the army. They also had mandatory conscription policy for high school leavers.

 

Some of the treatment according to some witness reports include, hormone therapy, electro-shock therapy and in the most extreme cases, gender re-assignment surgery. In the latter, men were surgically altered to become women and women men. Patients were then given new identities and told to relocate and sever ties with their previous lives. Some patients, serving their mandatory two year conscription were left incomplete as their period of service had expired and there was no longer a need to continue with the procedures. The result many were left with no clear physical sexual status, neither male nor female.

 

The result is that many of these victims of Apartheid have either committed suicide or have buried themselves in their new lives because of the embarrassment of their condition and the public scrutiny they will be placed under. Some brave souls did try to come forward and have doctors from 1 Military Hospital charged before the TRC hearings but due to a lack of evidence, no one was charged or prosecuted and these victims of Apartheid are left in the shadows.

 

I wrote the novel The Rainbow has no pink because I think we still have many rotten things to over come and uncover. Dr. Aubrey Levine lives and works in Canada and professes his innocence to this day. Although the character in the book is loosely based on him, the book itself was inspired by his actions many have claimed he committed.

 

My question I ask, is Apartheid over? I mean truly over? What about the victims we still not have given an opportunity for justice? And what should we do about those Apartheid criminals living and working normally, here and abroad? I believe any injustice should routed out and perpetrators should be held to account, even if it means going into another country to find them and bring them here to face and answer charges.

 

Its the least we can do.

 

T.O.H.

its no state secret that cellular service providers in South Africa fist %$@&* the daylights out of us daily. Pricing is way out of sync for a developing nation and in spite the almost unexpected high level of market penetration, cellular service providers generally treat their customers with disdain.

I have been with MTN since 2002. I have 4 contracts with them. But in ten months time I will press eject. The truth is that MTN does offer more than Vodacom and I am not even going to mention Cell C and Virgin. But its more than the anytime airtime that you get. Vodacom doesnt really make that effort to differentiate on price. But I have heard fewer people threaten to kill Vodacom employees. Whereas with MTN there is the constant demand for someone higher up to respond.

MTN's service sucks so badly that sometimes you wonder if it is possible to go back to a time without cellphones. Their rates are out of this world, and in spite of spending thousands of Rands monthly you're just nothing but a cash cow. Well according to MTN anyway. It's like banks, you can close your account, but you need them more than they need you and they fucking know it. take your piss willy contributions elsewhere because they know you will be back. Better the devil you know than the devil you dont.

I am not going to stick around with my current bunch of over priced sods. They are about as responsive to my pleas as my ex girlfriend was when we were in a relationship. Damnit, I need one of those like i need a hole in my head.

Who knows Vodacom might make me regret ever deciding to spend that first thousand on the Ericsson 626. Or as it was known then, a brick with numbers. Keep watching this space. MTN prepaid is awesome. MTN Contract you might as well chew broken glass as a weight loss measure.

T.O.H.

My boss reckons that a life less digital is what we need to be more productive. I'm an effing copywriter, I am inspired by random Facebook updates.

"How can some people break up with you via their status updates. :("

Off course he disagrees. Billable hours and that crap. How many hours are you working whereas I believe in the whole what you deliver, not when you deliver. But can imagine a life without blogging, facebook and twittering. I mean I know about Hi5 but it just seems like comparing a Toyota Camry to a Merc.

The Ideal world would be where everything could be done from the comfort of your PC, mobile or wireless headset and VR Glove (Minds out the gutter please) and in double quick time with some sort of reliability. So that you could have more time to do nothing. That's what we all want to be able to do. To be able to do nothing.

Not have to work, or run or gym or whatever it is that takes Dr. Phil motivation. And that is the life Digital for me. I cant imagine a time without the digital add-ons. I have always been an impatient person, even as a child I couldnt wait for Christmas and my birthday. Or the mail. Or driving time.

The ultimate would be having the technology to beem somewhere without the pesky having to travel. wasting time in small towns where they have only seen an Indian Man on TV when ET invaded the World Trade Centre in Kempton Park and klapped that short Indian man's wig off. You should see those looks. Its like the look people would have if aliens landed. You want to touch them, but you're scared. Are they violent? Are they friendly? Do they want to anal probe us? Do they want to breed with us.

I'm indian, India has a population of over a billion. Do the friggin maths damnit!

Anyway, I am living the life less digital, I miss the future everyday.

T.O.H.

When you're paid to write for a living, well I wouldnt say pay so much as given a few shiney coins by the Master, for your writing, everyday has to start with something I like to call a little blog update.

The Master fails to understand how my brain works and how much of my time I need to be able to update my blog if I am to remain productive. My blog is essentially the warm up session before a big match. If I plan to write a few thousand words I need to do a blog update, stretch out the old vocab and mind and get things flowing.

People would say sex, but I tried that before. I am not one of them evolved males that you see on the cover of Men's Health and GQ. Or as I call them, Magazine Monkeys. When I have sex, I want to sleep and bask in the brilliant glory of having just lost a few million of my closest friends.

Ok crudeness aside, We all have our rituals. One person I know watches horrors while the other watches Dutch Porn, the stuff that makes you grimace.

So here I am, having been given a few articles to write and what do you know, I cant do a damn thing until I have updated this my last blog. It helps the Master is away.

T.O.H.

So I am not one for the fat guy running across the "burning coals" lets hug and cry afterward I finally got over my daddy issues approach to life, but there is something therapeutic about taking a leap.

Follow enough fear driven thoughts and before you know it, you're worried about the flour sack of what fucking ifs out there. Whatif she leaves, what if she finds someone else, what if they take my car, what if I dont have enough money what if I cant pay the bills, what if I dont find another job.

What if Bruce Willis doesnt save the day and you're standing with wa dumb expression on your face and the meteor hits. What if the whole universe stops and points and says what a douche bag, he what iffed himself to death.

Today after weeks of and possibly months of frustration, with the finality ringing in this week I finally said fuck it. I took the leap. I didnt consult, I didnt ask for opinions and I didnt bargain with myself. That's what we do, we bargain, I will give myself one more month, one more day, one more hour. Fuck it. I just got angrier at the whole fucking thing.

Being taken advantage of is cruel, but when you find out that you're the only one not in on the joke, you feel like a right old fool. And that was it for me. And I lept. handed in my resignation and felt instantly better.

I have never done the leap thing before. Not in relationships, friendships or jobs for that matter. Its always the case of wondering what lies beyond the great beyond. The hand goes into the mist and nothing. It gives us the shivers. We need certainty. We need to know.

We've lost our sense of exploration. Not discovering far off and distant lands but finding ourselves, finding what makes us happy and finding our small joy the things that make life worth stay awake for.

So ja, I have a writing career and I have a new novel on the way. I dont have a job after this month but somehow I feel tonight might be the first night in a while that I will be sleeping peacefully.

T.O.H.

I am a pretty decent writer. An award winning novelist, a finalist in a prestigious literary award, the richest in Africa. But The Rainbow has no pink hasnt exactly made the best seller's list. Not exactly Dan Brown in popularity but then I am not one of those I need to screw the church kind of people. But had Dan Brown been a South African with his book published in South Africa, he would suck so badly that he would have Steve “wie's jou papa” Hofmeyer playing Robert van Tonder-Langdon in the movie version Verwoed's Code.

 

Not that I am saying SA authors are bad. We're pretty fucking good actually, considering we manage to sell anything what with VAT placed on our shit and that books are more expensive than a kidney at your corner pool bar.

 

And although publishers work their asses off to promote the book, South African fiction is about as popular as Bafana Bafana losses. People seem to be repelled by the fact that South African are able to write. Unless its some self help book, or some kid going to school, basically you're screwed as an author.

 

I have tried pondering the reasons why its so hard to be a South African writer in South Africa, why South African writers cant make a living from fiction writing. And I just cant understand. Because overseas fiction sells here so the question of price is not true anymore. What I do think it boils down to is this perception that when we say South African we picture another Agter Elke Man episode where some douche bag extraordinaire has to say local is lekker. That whole phrase just brings up poor quality images, as if the product doesn't speak for itself.

 

So now I am exploring ideas on how I can get my novel out there and in the popular kids' shopping carts. Because with the joy of the Internet, its amazing how much we ignore what's out there. I need to get past that and get people to buy this book and make me a happy, successful South African author. Did I mention rich?

 

What do you suggest?

I have been testing out various OS on my laptop and I can only say this much, the K in Kubuntu stands for kak. Its effing horrible. Its like watching the Blue Bulls this season. After winning the Super 14 you would have thought they would plunder the Currie Cup and keep the sharks where they belong, somewhere languishing at the bottom. But no, they disappointed and trundled along to not so bad, not great position of gold medal mediocrity.

That's how i feel about Kubuntu. Sure I have heard the uber Geeks go on about KDE like teenage boys when Cindy Crawford did "that" Playboy shoot. No pun intended. But for geeks that might be awesome. For a simple retard like me who would like to know why my taskbar disappeared and where I could find it, I need simplicity, that's the secret of great technology. Simplicity, doing the basics better than before and then doing other shit your simple little mind cant contemplate and making it simple for you to operate. But since someone lost my Ubuntu Disk I have to wait for the new disk to arrive in about a months time. And I will be going back to Normality.

What are my real gripes? the interface reminds me of the bastard love child of Windows Vista and Mac if the two of them went on some heroin binge in some no holds barred lets not exchange names tryst. The kid that would be popped out 9 months later, would be KDE Kubuntu, a useless all promising non delivering Operating system which can never do anything except tell you it cant install or update or do anything for that matter. I mean its so useless if it were a cricket team, they might christen this bitch Proteas: Champions Trophy 2009. That is how much this has failed my expectations. I stuck my portable harddrive in and guess what? it copied half the information and there is no progress bar that tells you,6.8 GiB will be copied. You have to keep checking the properties which means after an hour your could have some of the folder, all of it or sweet fuck all. What is this? KFC?

Incidentally speaking of KFC and Champions Trophy, have any of you seen it? Its a normal Zinger Burger, normal chips and a Pepsi. So the lade behind the counter hands me a Diet Pepsi and says its all they have by way of Pepsi and i have to take it. She makes obligatory pointing gesture to the poster at which point I ask her, does she wonder what happens to people who offer me things marked sugar free and diet? She doesnt answer until I say change the order or I will suck out the bad stuff from your bones. I dont say it really. I think it though. Last thing I need is more negative publicity for Muslims.

"Hungry Muslim threatens to eat KFC Cashier's bones."

Anyway she gave me a coke and in the bag I cant really say anyone would know I didnt have the overly promoted Champions Trophy burger. Which they should have called the Burger that is actually a streetwise special but we felt like fucking you over anyway. But more on the Burger tomorrow.

I really miss my old ubuntu system. And I wish I didnt have to wait for the disk to arrive but since my ADSL Line has let me down with downloading the graphics programmes, I lost 989MB of data of a 1.1 gig download, I would rather wait for the disk.

By the way if anyone has Ubuntu on disk and the graphics design and multimedia programmes on disk, would you be so kind as to send it my way? Please?

I would also like to hear from some linux brains, why does Kubuntu suck ass so much? In terms of OS, it gets my official Douche Canoe rating for this week. Well done guys.

What would you do if you found out that your work computer had key stroke software installed on it, that your computer was subject to regulat "checks" from management who sifted through your compute which is actually their computer?

I tell you what, I would throw a slight wobbly myself. Wobbly by the way is not the legal term but lets just say, many men in black suits would be concerned.

With the advent of the Internet much was promised by virtue the speed of delivery of information. It also meant that you no longer had to stare out the window when you were bored, you could email your friends and family, surf the net looking from everything from blow up sheep to hot deals on Cialis. A legitimate concern of corporates is that they are paying for a resource which is mostly being used for purposes other than improving bottomline. The worry for most employees is that their rights to privacy do not extend to the office.

This perception is incorrect because firstly the right to privacy is a constitutional right and although it can be limited, there are limits. So unless your company has an Acceptable User Policy (AUP) there shouldnt be any snooping around your work computer, unless detective snoop can show a valid just cause. If an AUP does in fact exist then the Management factor is still limited in terms of what is allowed in terms of searching through your computer.

However since most employees and employers are ignorant and flippant over these rights, a bit of advice should suffice.

Firstly if you are in the habit of sending emails of a private nature - jokes, love letters, etc, stop using the work address. Rather get a private email address. So look at getting a gmail or yahoo account which is free and accessible from you wap browser on your phone. Yes there will be charges, but consider who had to pay for it before.

Secondly decide whether you need to use the internet for you job. The best thing to do is to rather save your surfing for private time or save it for times when you wont be caught and accused of worktime wastage. Also limit your surfing to sights that you wouldnt hide from a priest and your mother. If they would approve, those are generally safe sites. And just because you click delete history, doesnt mean that it cant found. The last thing you want is to be known as the office perv with a strange attraction to trannies in animal costumes. You know who you are.

In these instances best to look at investing into your own private computer and internet connection. Its tacky as a prospective employer to receive a job application from applicant's current employment's email address. Rather budget for your own set up and have the freedom to enjoy you Internet time without the hassle of an inquisitive boss.

Feel free to add your own tales as well as thoughts.

T.O.H.