Ignorance Kills**

I met a wonderful man this past weekend.

Well not, met met. I came across his blog at LiveJournal. And connected to him through his words.

Bill writes in the most extraordinary way, his deviantArt gallery is scintillatingly beautiful to read.

Bill is also dying.

(as are we all).

Bill has brain cancer and Aids.


Oh boy, aren't you happyhappy you're a perfectly placed shiny, little button on Tannie's superbly tailored, crimpolene rokkie*** now?

Bill doesn't ask anyone for sympathy and words are his therapy. Bill also seems to be ecstatically happy with the love of his life, his boyfriend Brody. Yes, Bill's gay, get over it.

And that's where things get complicated. I've been raving on and on about this guy's writing, but why is it that people cannot see beyond the gayness? Why is it that they can only accept that his writing is worthy of merit when I say that between his double whammy of illnesses he managed to punt the Gaza cause, which is an issue close the hearts of most of the people I've spoken about Bill to? Is the fact that he can care about one of "ours" the only reason he is worth his weight as a human being and in turn worthy of our prayers? That's just extreme selfishness and self absorption. Another sickening trend I've noticed is that people can have a so what attitude about his illnesses, as though he deserves it BECAUSE he is gay.

I cannot accept this. How many heterosexual people could handle the idea of having both Aids and brain cancer? Who are you to judge him as a human being based on his sexual orientation? Not only gay people get Aids, anyone and everyone can. Surely judging is God's realm? So what if his illnesses are his "punishment"? If Bill is gay, how does that diminish from his suffering? How convinced are you that you won't be punished, with all your self righteous flaming heterosexuality, on the other side?

The point of this post is: God is not the monopoly of a select few. There is only one God, and He belongs to everyone. This same one God created Muslims, Jews, Christians,Hindus, Agnostics, Wiccans (lulz, inside joke here for Lily), black people, white people, in between reticulant-ish coloured people, and accountants. He created us all, with the same amount of dedication, care and love.Who are we to deny showing love, care and compassion to others of God's creation too?

Read his posts about Brody, who in my opinion seems like an equally remarkable human being, he looks after Bill and now that Bill is really sick, blogs for him too. How many people can claim to have been loved to that extent, straight or gay or asexual? Lust aside, is the love that they share, not the same human love and affection that every person on earth desires?

I don't see why people find the need to judge other people when they have not one smidgeon of understanding of what a person must be going through. I'm not sure I want such judgemental people in my life and my world. I wish the blinkers were removed before they ran their race.

Millions of people will stand on Arafat and ask for forgiveness in a few hours. I hope someone's prayer for us to retrace our roots and return to our divinely ordained path as a people with educated, open minds who think before we blab, people who know that to judge is not what our religion teaches us, is answered.

We are not alone in this world, we are representatives of our religion, behaving like bigots only reinforces stereotypes of barbarism. And we know were saved from that.


Edna Ferber, author of So Big (read the book!...or watch the movie, with Bette Davis (I'm a major movie geek, TCM is quality viewing)) once famously said, "A closed mind is a dying mind." Think about that. Use the minds you've been given.

Despite all my rage, I'm still just a rat in a cage.
rah*

**Alternative post title was Bill's to Pay.
*** rokkie= Afrikaans, diminutive form for dress, ie little dress.Tannie= Aunt

Twitter is Dajjal**...

...it has one i and people follow it around.

(And all of Blog-ville guffaws collectively to multiple lines of LOL or some combination thereof)

Yes, I'm aware that that is lame, even by my awfully punny standards. But it's one of those half baked ideas sitting in my head for ages and ages now. I have several of them, which, time pending, I might gift you loyal few readers with.

But back to my original point. Since bloggers are to social media as gerbils are to Richard Gere,I thought I'd ask the relevant demographic if there really is any point signing up for Twitter?

Besides stalking Billy Corgan and telling him in 140 characters or less how he's destroyed key ontological and other philosophical ideas for me? Or finding Neil Gaiman and telling him what I thought of American Gods?

Is there any need for greater procrastination online, especially since my pet hate is reading ridiculously, inane status updates on Facebook. And yep, I'm one of those who have to stifle the urge to want to "fix" status updates, when the content doesn't fit in with the sentence structure beginning with the subject. I'm not sure if I do need help, fixing faulty sentences is my job. Literally.

Ah well, let me know. I'd like to see some of your arguments both for and against it.

Maybe I should experiment.Right...Errr...

Hmmm, so let's test this sign off to see if I can conclude this post in 140 characters to check just how elastically economical words really are.

What's the tally there? Eyeballing (from work experience) I'd say it's around 120 characters sans counting spaces because I'm not sure if Twitter counts spaces as characters or not.Including spaces it's probably closer to target? Perhaps one of you addicts can pop it in to Twitter and get something more substantiative than a guestimate.


The dearth of dormancy.It kills.
Ad herbetudo,
rah*

**Islamic/Arabic term for the AntiChrist.Regarded in popular culture as " the beast we call the Desolate One. ...The First of the Fallen. The Spoiler of Virgins, the Master of Abortions!"

(You may not confuse the ** with the single * next to my name, because whilst I may be regarded as postively wicked in some circles, I too realise that there are some powers out there superlative to my own :P)

Immutable

Expression is wasted sometimes. I want this:

The Smashing Pumpkins- Stand Inside Your Love

Comments may be sent to me privately via teh_interwebz queenLestat[at]gmail[dawt].com should you feel the need.I will respond.Promise :P

"Recast as child and mystic sage",
rah*

Smacks of Wisdom

"Wanting to be someone else is a waste of the person you are."
Kurt Cobain

Dickens had it down;

"It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of Light, it was the season of Darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair, we had everything before us, we had nothing before us, we were all going direct to heaven, we were all going direct the other way - in short, the period was so far like the present period, that some of its noisiest authorities insisted on its being received, for good or for evil, in the superlative degree of comparison only."

(And this is where I make my apologies, because 1) I'm too lazy to go find my copy of A Tale of Two Cities and 2)I've got too many things running to Google, therefore please accept my apologies if the quote's a bit ad libbed)

I was thinking this quote sums up our current political clime quite succinctly. Our teenage years are proving to be quite challenging, but I still have hope that sense will prevail after this weekend. Lekota is no fool, and he probably has big business behind him all the way. In fact he might've been a candidate for the presidential race in Polokwane last year, but that Stellenbosch winery incident might not've worked in his favour. It is because of him that government put in place that declare all business interests clause into place, however that rule obviously does not extend to the Zuma and Malema camp, because they just use politics to get ahead of the law.

What many people don't seem to realise is that the last time there was this much internal strife and politics within the ANC, the PAC was birthed. The PAC was a credible political organisation for many years before the ANC became the "brand" of liberation rhetoric.Granted though, the PAC did have a more militant angle, however it was with utter shockhorrorawe that I was reminded of their history, when Pheko went up to congratulate our new president on his nomination and asked for the release of former APLA cadres still rotting away in SA jails. Next post, I think I'll treat whoever reads this to a summative history of the formation of the PAC and few interesting political tidbits like the Sobukwe Clause.

I find this utterly appalling, regardless of their political divisions and ideologies, MK and APLA were quite the same bunch of revolutionaries and fought for exactly the same things. Why are they still in jail? The TRC denied APLA amnesty on the grounds that the PAC would not release their real names and was submitting code names. The TRC was also running at a very delicate time in the restructuring of our judicial bases and so the PAC had a reason to withold names because how would they know how much their actions and intelligence might have been compromised. And now the ANC conveniently declares that the PAC forgot to fill in the presidential pardon forms. What I find strange is how any party would do that and not get their members out? Pheko made it quite clear that he hopes Motlanthe would take action on the matter and get them out.

But shame, the PAC's internal squabbles have all but annihilated them, and then the final straw was when we had one of our ridiculous floor crossing debacles and Patricia de Lille walked away with their seat, and formed her own party. Essentially giving a party who no one had ever voted for, a party with no real policy ideology (besides being opposed to the ANC), and a party wholly spun around the personality of that firebrand De Lille. In fact the PAC degenerated to such a state that when given their 2 or 3 minutes of tv canvassing time, they announced that we should "not vote for them this election, they'll be ready for the next one". That is political meh-ness of note. However, we should not forget that parties who had a strong following in the liberation years still exist the PAC is still alive, as is AZAPO, UDM and SOPA. Many of these parties still have their old guard intellectual members, whereas the ANC has moved from the intellectuals to the MK lot and the sort who find Malema non-offensive.

Should Lekota form his own party, and hypothetically take away 20% of the current ANC fan base, they'd still be left with a 40% (of the current 60% majority they hold). The largest opposition party is that bag of whingers (the DA) and they have what? 12% of a stake? In countries like the US and the UK the power balance shifts between 2 parties at about roughly 48-52% of a swing vote with the minor parties raking in a few points here and there. I do not think the policy practices of a two party state are healthy or very democratic, but in South Africa, we're new to this voting business and we should turn out at the polls en masse and have a right to vote for any party we choose. My problem is, with a 60% majority and the next biggest party holding 12% to form the opposition- what kind of democracy do we have?


Another lol, yet worrisome thing is that at the voting after the nominations were given, 40 out of 400 ballot sheets were spoilt. HOW?! There were two names on the list, how can you not tick or cross between the lines properly? And you're in parliament, in charge of all of us and you have no efficiency in even ticking or crossing according to instructions?


Interesting times we live in, and someday when they make the movie of the Fall of Thabo and the Rise of Zuma, I am almost certain this is going to be on the OST.



Coldplay- Viva la Vida. Think about this one.

Enjoy!
rah*

PS For the bandwidth challenged , see if you find this song as applicable to our situation as I do :)

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
rah*

I still <3 Billy of the 90s !

As if Zeitgeist wasn't bad enough.

As if this wasn't the single most offensive picture of all of 2007:


And then just when I thought you couldn't go any lower than shagging Courtney, he goes and does this:



WTF?!
Why did self respect die with the 90s?

Sadness :/
rah*

Why? How? Actually... WHAT?!

I blame The Organ Harvester.

For probably cultivating such a fan base and then laying the smackdown (so to speak) on the powers that be to demand equal rights.

Please, oh please someone tell me how is it possible that the dictionary on my humble, unassuming cellular phone has the word "Pillay" stored by default? But I had to add "phoned" and "phone" in as words.

Noodlew, mageno, intender <- that's what I get when I tried Moodley, Naidoo, and Govender. It was worth a try...right?

I think there might just be one too many charos in I.T.

teh_weirdness
rah*

Patriotism is...

me.

zOMG!

I cannot sleep because I am worrying about the ANC Polokwane conference thing. No, really. Despite my usual insomnia, my eyes cannot close and neither can I stop thinking about the possibilities of the outcome.

zOMG!

I mean what if Zuma wins? Will showering join beetroot and garlic and olive oil and lemon juice in our National First Aid Kit? What if Thabo wins? Will he cling to power and become Mugabe II? Well garlic and lemon juice concoction will still be available on the chronic medication list anyway. *shrivels into foetal position*

zOMG!

Lawdeh, I'm blogging about this *clutches duvet*. Talk about g33k!n355.I don't want to get into the ins and outs and of why we shouldn't panic. Because that would be hypocrisy at it's best. Personally, I think they're both a bit Blaaaaah and I wish we had one of those head to head presidential candidate debates like they do in the States.

zOMG!

I don't know whether the tone of what I am writing here is revealing the SHEER AMOUNT OF PANIC I feel. I think I am mad. Really.

zOMG!

I have this feeling of panic...like I quit smoking, imbibed a litre of coffee-neat and then went to OD on 3ph3dr4**. teh_panic! Consternation is not a good noun...sounds too fuddy duddy to reflect TEH_PANIC!!!

zOMG!

AAAAAAAAAAAAarrrrrrrrggh!!!

zOMG!

I hope it all works out, I need sleep. I can only imagine how Zuma and Thabo feel...I wonder if they have sleepless nights worrying about the state of the country and it's people like I have.

Nkosi Sikele i Afrika...we need it.
*counting sheep*

rah*

**please translate on your own- 3= e and 4=A. Don't need any more spam through Google searches than I already have :)

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
rah*

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 ;) )

I AM...

...one of those weird Japanese manga-style horror movies, sans subtitles....
No one really gets the point of it all, but everyone still recommends you watch it.

*sighness*
rah*




Oh PS and to the fucktard army, before you start,I do watch those movies.For your purposes substitute Bollywood Sudden Song and Dance Sequences out of nowhere for Japanese.

*credits to Wesley for the title in it's original form, and to Nicky and Nick who saved the Shire with me :)

Pensées de le Esprit

لَا الشَّمْسُ يَنبَغِي لَهَا أَن تُدْرِكَ الْقَمَرَ وَلَا اللَّيْلُ سَابِقُ النَّهَارِ وَكُلٌّ فِي
فَلَكٍ يَسْبَحُونَ

"It is not for the sun to overtake the moon, nor does the night outstrip the day. They all float, each in an orbit."
Holy Qur'aan Surah Yaseen, Ayah 40 (Chapter 41, Verse 40)

Now I'm no great Islamic Scholar or Tafseer expert, but this particular verse always reminds me that there is a time and place for all things in life. Everything happens within it's own cycles as is meant to be. The world is a vast and complex space, despite the chaos humans create, there is a natural order and a logic which we will never understand.

The world and life as we know it is a miracle and a beauty. And I think that as human beings we tend to be so caught up in our own pettiness that we ignore the little things and our own insignificance in terms of the larger whole. Sometimes we might think we're on the wrong road or we've taken the longer route and wonder what if we'd turned right at the intersection instead of left. But that is because we're human and I doubt we ever truely know why we are where we are and for what reason.

I'm not too much of a fatalist, because I do believe that although there are some things which are destined to be, we do have a large hand in giving our destiny a kick start. You know, every time I hear the word ''destiny'' I see that pained, mock serious look on Brandon Flowers's face. That's beside the point, anyways, I really do feel that we are nothings merely part of the machinery of the universe, cogs in the wheel of life if you will. And we should appreciate where we are now and what we have because we are lucky enough to have a God out there who is Most Merciful.

Just a random thought which I had, thought I'd put it out to the jury since I'm not much of an autocrat.


WanderingWonderer
rah*

Disclaimer
PS I know I'm probably going to get another lot of emails from various self righteous and parasitic imbeciles commenting on the nature of my previous post and now on this one, so I put the disclaimer out now and say please get a life. Some of us are real human beings (though judging by the species we'd much rather be elves or vampires).