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voices from behind


Composed: Wednesday, January 4, 2006,
Delivered: Monday, March 5, 2007

Dear FutureMe,
Unless he’s in your life, he better be out of your head.


It’s the feeling you get when you come across an old diary. You wonder what foreign tongue dribbled its ink in slashes and dashes here; the ascenders and descenders wiggling in sanskrit-samba on the page. You hold the paper within sticking distance of your contact lenses, as if mere proximity will decipher this marriage of rambling thought and tactility. And this for the next page and each page after.
Strange, the stranger one becomes as years tack off.
Invite a you from every year to a party, expect the room to spin with the eclectic meld of personality and characters.

And it was like this when an email from the past dropped into my gmail.
Saaleha circa early 2006.
Evidently, this chick had some issues at the time.
And when I read what “I” wrote back then, one of the voices in my head riposted, “eh?”.
And the others guffawed when the memory-dam breached. “Oh. that.”
(Embarrassed silence amplified in the little-monarchy-in-my-head)

And the fifty-cent epiphany:
The things we lose sleep over now, are the things we won’t dream about in the future.
All will come to pass, even the issues that look set to fail us.

the well-meaning spammer

There’s a road to a place that’s paved with this stuff:

From: [id withheld to maintain privacy of offender]
To: undisclosed-recipients
Date: Nov 29, 2006 12:23PM
Subject: FW: Please forward and R2.00 will be donated

Subject: Guys, please let us help this little girl, for God knows and hear her cry.

Hi, my name is Surita Diputs Naidoo and I live in Chatsworth, South Africa.
I am 8 years old, and I have been in a hit and run accident with a taxi.

My 14 year old brother was killed instantly, and my father later died at RK Khan’s Hospital, Chatsworth.
My mother and I are now living with my grandparents.
The doctors have told me that I need corrective surgery as my face and arms were badly burned in the accident.
Fortunately, my plight was brought to the attention of a wealthy Herbal Importer in
Reservoir Hills, South Africa, who, with the help of IBM, have promised to give me R2 for every person this e-mail is forwarded to.

Please send to as many people as you can and GOD bless.
Remember, have a heart.

Surita Diputs Naidoo
Unit 9

Chatsworth

Durban

South Africa

 

Well-meaning spam: when bad judgement happens to good people.
Now when i hear the phrase “wealthy Herbal Importer from Reservoir Hills”, the first thing I’m going to ask is “How much for a bankie Boss?”.
I sure hope the Omniscient Entities at IBM, Microsoft, MacDonalds, Pepsi, Coca Cola and [insert multinational developing-world-pillaging corporate goliath here] will use the software given to them by the aliens/David Icke’s reptile people to track this email to my blog and give unfortunate Surita Diputs Naidoo from Unit 9 in Chatsworth two whole rands for every person who reads this.

Remember, have a brain. God knows and hears your cry.

the return to mIRC…(2)

It’s my masochistic streak that pulls me towards Zanet on IRC, or perhaps it’s my misguided sense of idealism that there may still exist a community of iconoclasts and anarchists for justice who believe the world could do with a vigorous shakedown.
But again, I emerge disappointed and disillusioned at the quality of the South African educational system, the family dynamics of our communities and the socialisation processes of which all of these chatters are product.

Here, I walk through the mindfield of generalisation (I’m fully aware that not all chatters can be lumped together, so consider this the disclaimer. It is not my intent to be vitriolic)

Barely functionally literate, I am astounded that many are even tech-savvy enough to operate computers, cellphones and software applications.
Even if you believe IQ tests are flawed and culturally-biased, you will agree that most of these kids (who are first language English speakers) would have a tough time on any sort of test that involved general knowledge, literary comprehension and advanced vocabulary.

What follows is the verbatim exchange of a waste of irony and perfectly good sarcasm-

handSum_dude: Hi
me: Hi
handSum_dude: how u
me: well and you
handSum_dude: kewl aslr
me: 23 f jhb
handSum_dude: ru hot?
me: Eh?
handSum_dude:?
me: what do you mean?
handSum_dude: R u hot?
me: By whose standards?
handSum_dude: Lyk goodlooking
handSum_dude: By u own standards
me: Well, no one makes the sign of the cross at my approach so I’m fortunate like that I guess.
handSum_dude: By u standards u hot
handSum_dude: Ment ur
me: ur? What is ur? Universal retard?
handSum_dude: Your
me: Oh
handSum_dude: Bye nice chatin
me: Ok
me: Handsum eh?
handSum_dude: Wat
me: Is that like a euphemism for wanker? You’re quite brave to have that as a nick
handSum_dude: Y?
me: Well, you’re being honest, lots of chatters hide behind nicks that declare themselves as gorgeous, attractive human beings, and you’re just telling it like it is. Hello World. This is me.
handSum_dude: Ya.
me: Respect man, respect.

-fin-

*in all my years chatting, I’ve only been asked what my ‘r’ was twice and both occasions were fairly recent. I don’t see how race is fundamental to an online exchange. We recently buried an apartheid stalwart (google “groot krokodil”) and people who ask such frivolities are better off munching mud too.

Afrigator