On Blogging Anniversaries

I've been a blogger for four years. Who'd've thunk it considering how lax I am about it? I've decided it's time to maybe unveil myself a bit.

Here goes:


[Image source]

I suppose I should lay off the partying and stuff eh?! Identity theft is becoming more and more common these days. I'd probably win awards for most alternative costume at Grab-a-Granny nights.

I heart teh_interwebz,
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P.S. Moral of the story: never believe anything The Organharvester says. LOL!

Happy '09

I hate New Year Resolutions, which I make up as I go along and by June I am still compiling them. But one that I will try to do something about this year is this blog.

I purposely missed its birthday this/last year, not for a lack of love but for a total overdose of whatever-ness. This blog started off as a completely anonymous and below the radar room for my ramblings and in many ways still is. Whilst I did not have as much time as I would've liked to spend on it, I have had a good run from it and I do occasionally feel compelled to throw out my two-cents to the universe. (Which occasionally results in the universe sending out imbecilic halfwits to throw their two-cents back into my inbox lol.)

I do think that it's time for a re-vamp (no pun intended)of this screen,but I do not have time to read many blogs or comment and I have been told by blog-addicts that I am linked on various other blogs and I should return favours and such. I do have a link list on the side, if you wish to be added, removed or url changed please drop me a line and fill me in on the relevants. And if anyone's died while I wasn't taking notice and is no longer around, let me know about that too please, kthanxbye.

2008 proved to be an interesting year, some good, some bad, lots of sad. Perspective is: losing an uncle and becoming an aunt in the same week. Life changes, life grows, life dies. We all learned, we all changed.

However, the most OMGAWESTRUCKGAWDWHATDOIDONOW moment of 2008 was when yours truly received this in the post:



(some strategic Paint-jobby editing to protect the innocent, anonymous and inboxes)

(If you ever wanted to know why I take ages to reply to some emails...there's your answer too...)

I have the neatest handwriting writing ever on screen. you should see it on paper lol.

Here's wishing everyone, all that is good for them for 09.

Happy Happy :)

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Once Upon a Time

A young queen_Lestat woke up to a very rainy, as is tradition, 7th Birthday. The dashing prince Kurt Cobain was still alive in those days, much to the delight of many. However, as qL opened her eyes, she noticed a little package on the side of her pillow. Suddenly, it dawned upon her that it was her birthday and that this was not a dream.

qL smiled with glee as she opened the package to find a box set of the most beautiful looking books she had ever seen. And she had seen a lot of books by that age already. The books soon came to be her favourites, because it was still a good three years before the Royal Family of Weird and the Defenders of Against the Onslaught of the Blaaaaahnians, were to present her with the treasured family heirloom, also known as The Lord of the Rings box set. The books she was presented with on this fateful day was none other than the complete works of a certain Beatrix Potter.

Beatrix Potter revolutionised the concept of children's books and literature, was a keen business woman and an independent individual who fought against every possible form of social barriers to make a name for herself as one of the most influential writers of her age.She contributed to hundreds of children reading books, by making her books child friendly, self illustrated and non threatening/intimidating to children.




Happy Birthday Beatrix Potter (28 July 1866-1943), wherever you may be, from every single child* who found joy and comfort in Peter Rabbit, Flopsy, Mopsy, Cotton-tail, Squirrel Nutkin, Jemima Duck, and Little Pig Robinson.

*rah

To whoever gets that sign-off : ;)

Lighters for anyone?

April 8 1994. The body of rock icon and the face which defined a generation was found dead. RIP Kurt Cobain. *Lights a lighter for a moment*. I have a knack for remembering dates oui? He actually died on the 4th or 5th April, but I had no time to pay my respects then. However, that wasn't really what this post was supposed to be on.

I've had this extract going in and around the revolving glass doors of my mind for a while now, and wanted to share it with whoever reads the stuff I pin up here.

"When people are happy they have a reserve, she had told Elizabeth, upon which to draw, whereas she was like a wheel without a tyre (she was fond of such metaphors), jolted by every pebble -- so she would say, staying on after the lesson, standing by the fire-place with her bag of books, her ‘satchel’, she called it, on a Tuesday morning, after the lesson was over. And she talked too about the war. After all, there were people who did not think the English invariably right. There were books. There were meetings. There were other points of view. Would Elizabeth like to come with her to So-and-so? (a most extraordinary-looking old man). Then Miss Kilman took her to some church in Kensington and they had tea with a clergyman. She had lent her books. Law, medicine, politics, all professions are open to women of your generation, said Miss Kilman. But for herself, her career was absolutely ruined, and was it her fault? Good gracious, said Elizabeth, no.

And her mother would come calling to say that a hamper had come from Bourton and would Miss Kilman like some flowers? To Miss Kilman she was always very, very nice, but Miss Kilman squashed the flowers all in a bunch, and hadn’t any small talk, and what interested Miss Kilman bored her mother, and Miss Kilman and she were terrible together; and Miss Kilman swelled and looked very plain, but Miss Kilman was frightfully clever. Elizabeth had never thought about the poor. They lived with everything they wanted, -- her mother had breakfast in bed every day; Lucy carried it up; and she liked old women because they were Duchesses, and being descended from some Lord."

Virginia Woolf in Mrs Dalloway

Mrs Dalloway was published in 1925 and is written in the stream of consciousness style of Virginia Woolf and the High Modernists. The story basically follows a day in the life of a Mrs Dalloway who is preparing to be hostess to the Prime Minister and centres around her thoughts as she goes about her daily chores and getting the house in order for the arrival of the Prime Minister. Mrs Dalloway also formed the basis of the storyline for the book and the movie The Hours.

This passage often makes me wonder, just how far has society and social consciousness come since 1925? Women still have their own opinions, and each age thinks that the women of their age have more rights than those of the age before? Do people think about the poor any more now than they did before? Or does it not matter as long as we have what we want? Are people expedient? Does caring for your fellow members of society only extend as far as what you can get out of them?

I still do maintain that Kurt Cobain was the Virginia Woolf of our generation, both gifted artists, both tortured and both with a keen misanthropic streak. After all, if you're not a Vampire or and Elve, you never will see what a despicable race the human tribe is.

I'm going off To the Lighthouse
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Remember,Remember...

I am usually one of the first people to warn against the dangers of reductionist theories when it comes to history.

But...

To all the rebels,the idealists, the believers in the mantra of: what we sow today we reap tomorrow,the anarchists, the ones who are willing to fight for your causes without fear. To anyone who thinks our days of fighting for freedom are over(and to those who believe they're not),to anyone who is willing to sacrifice themselves to make a difference.

To anyone who believes in the power of the greater good of the people outweighing the corruption and oppression of governments the world over.To anyone who believes in the importance of the freedom and independance of the media. To all those who believe that they contribute to educating people about the importance of all of the above.To anyone with an ounce of Romanticism and poetic depth left about their souls,





Happy Guy Fawkes to all of you!

She who advocates anarchy without violence
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Smells like Eid Spirit

This is the Ramadaan-Eid post. The sort of mention it lest you feel like you've missed an important obligation of sorts (guilt trip into submission type) one.

Warning: Semi-vacuous rambling to follow.

I kept all my fasts, helped around like the domesticated pet that I am, and generally behaved. I'm almost disqualified from the realm of childhood due to the fact that I have a signed employment contract. But I'm still young enough (for now) to be considered Eidi-worthy. I've missed several birthdays and anniversaries tags in between. One of which was Anne Rice's on the 4 October. Happy Birthday bitch, lotsa love, rah*.

Following the whatseemstobeaanannualRamadaan spider spotting spree (the one I described last year was about the same size), herewith are the pictures (circa Ramadaan 2007) of the mofo I somehow found chilling out on my room door.

(Apologies for the quality, it was the best I could do considering the semi-darkness and not wanting to go paparazzi on the Celebrity Spider's ass.)





I just left it alone as usual, it vanished, Lord knows where to, but it did. I haven't seen it since, and neither have I spawned any extra superpowers. Well at least not any more than the ones I already possess.

Re: Facebook. It bloody sucks, it's glorified email. (We will not go into details regarding it's complexity to use and the fact that I can barely use the freaking thing or the way it clogs your inbox with merde soos Person X has inhaled click this link to view more.; Person Y has exhaled click this link to view more.)I've possessed it for the last week and I am dubious as to it's importance on the Internet and life in general. And as for all the "omg it's so kewl, you can liek write on people's walls and stuff!!!!! you HAVE to get Facebook". It is my very un-humble opinion that the wall phenom is nothing more than Instant Messaging for voyeurs. (I just don't respond to stupid messages and I don't have lots of time to spare, so I'll reply sometime or the other if you left a non-stupid message)

Perhaps weblife's greatest irony is that the very same people who insist you get with the web 2.0 vibe, have /quit Facebook (including the same people who create your account -_-). There are also other twits who insist on telling you how amazing it is, and who begged you to get on,but they have absolutely no interaction with you (according to quite a few of my Facebook baccalaureates this is quite de rigueur, it's nothing personal (and I'm guilty to a certain extent of it too),which I suppose is fair enough). We've come to the conclusion that they've added you as a "friend" purely to increase their friend count.You serve no other purpose there.Shallow and fickle are not the only words I could think of to cover this trend.

I have stated this before, and I think I should restate my case.People who mean anything to anyone and who are of any importance and consequence in and to your life(be they people you know in real life or from the vast and infinite black and white pixels of the /Online Realm)...you don't need/shouldn't need a website to alert you to who they are. I made a mental list of some of these people the other day. And I am grateful to have these folk in my life in whatever form they take.

Okay, sure there've been obscure people from a life lived long ago, who've found me.Through a fake name and alles! Nice to see them, nice to know that they just needed to take one look at my display pic and see my 'name' for them to know that it could only ever be yours truly. But for all the miles and memories in between, is there anything left there to touch base with again? I certainly do not have the time or the will to want to write detailed biographical tales of all my major life epics spanning the last almost 2 and half decades.And I don't suppose they do either.

My point is, is that whilst some people are just merely acquaintances they find themselves on your list of friends as though they are of integral importance to your life. It might be a matter of semantics, but queen_Lestat is not the sort to leave such matters be. She tends to suffer from a debilitating syndrome called Overthought. Most of her inner circle, would agree that this condition is better than Underthought, though that's a whole other debate. Ponder and Muse... sounds like a good name for a cosmetic brand./me trademarks it!

But ye, web 2.0 is a capricious vagrant, with about as much ability to discern between antipodean elements as a drunk-whilst-parallel-parking-female-on-a-cell phone. The queen Declareth it such.

I should call this post finito now. I've infringed on my own disclaimer.

I assume I need no conclusion.
/quit
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PS (there's possibly only 5 people reading this now, who will instinctively know where *that's* adapted from.Those 5 are not on Facebook ;) )

The Eagles (Almost Wouldn't) Have Landed

This day in History:

4 July 1776

America gets it's independence from Britain after a bloody revolution.I think it was one of the last battles/wars ever fought on American soil.America has gone to war in other countries though, but never really had a battle in their own backyard ever since.

However, on this day, the King of England at the time, one of the Georges (III probably because George V kicked it in the 20th century and IV would've probably have been too young). Anyways the George King (III?) wrote the following in his diary as his entry for the day, on this very day that America was proclaimed independent:

"Nothing important happened today".

I think his son replaced him on the throne because he later went insane. Go figure...

Thought I'd share that
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PS got the America's funniest home videos theme song stuck in my head now for some reason.

Hope You've Reached:

To the angst-y White boy...hope you're fucking happy now.
Thank you for saving the by then dying art of guitar music.

Today marks 13 years since the death of that 90s icon. Why I remember this I have no idea. I was pretty upset though back in the day. His death was relinquished to the back burners of SA media, because the 1994 elections were apparently far more important :P.



I only found out on the 19th April 1994. I drew one of those dopey Nirvana smilies for art class that week, got kicked out together with Sharon Naidoo and Divendren Reddy, who did the same. I was in Standard 3 (Grade 5). My first trouble with the law I suppose. Kurt made me do it.

















RIP
rah*
PS: To the thing, who not only killed you, but who was ALSO SO manly that she turned Mike Stipe gay...

Of Ageing Bodies and Eternal Words

Happy 40th birthday to the Vampiric looking genius, Billy Corgan. Someday when you Google me, remember that I hoped you had a great one. Keep the music coming.

Happy birthday to dev too (cos I won't hear the end of it :P)

Happy 50th ChroniclesofBlaaaaahnia post to queen_Lestat(I should've glammed up and done something readable but anyways, someday I shall compensate.I'm a slacker though, be warned.)


Keeping in with the Zeitgeist
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