I’m not normally pessimistic about things. In fact I’m a glass half full kind of gal, but there’s one thing I really hate. I mean REALLY hate: Cape Town drivers.

Just a few rules please in case you fall in to this disability category:

1.       Indicators are not optional

2.       It’s not illegal to say thank you (which is just a friendly wave or an erect finger if you’re rather lazy)

3.       The white lines in parking areas are there to outline where your four tyres should stay between and not a suggestion.

4.       The right lane on the high way is in fact the fast lane.

My main gripe as of late is that if you bump into a stationary car, or scratch the side, at least leave a note. The note doesn’t even have to be your contact details, it can just be a polite “Geez I didn’t see your parked car before I drove into it” kind of a letter.

Maybe  if someone bothered to write a note I’d feel less inclined to show my anger via erect middle finger, and maybe I wouldn’t be so intentional as to turn the inside light on at night while flipping someone off  to show my anger, and maybe I would be more forgiving of the general Capetonians unfortunate shortcomings as drivers.

There is nothing worse than happily walking up to your car (that’s parked between the lines) and finding the colour scratched off it anywhere. It’s horrible. It makes me feel bad for the poor car that didn’t deserve that kind of punishment at all. It’s like getting your clothes back from the (overly) expensive Laundromat and finding that your favourite pants are now stained a different colour.

Now that my once clean and unscathed car is sprinkled and seasoned in anonymous injuries I’m considering buying a bike instead. The problem is that then I’d have to worry about being mowed over by many a non-side-mirror-looking-flippin-drivers.

So much for the glass half full view of life.

queer travel

I suppose this is a touchy subject for some. Luckily the some that would get touchy about this aren’t the kind of people the advert is targeting and aren’t the kind of people that read this blog.

Ambiguity is an awesome thing. I wish people where more (cleverly) ambiguous then it might be more entertaining to speak to strangers. “I love eating dogs” That one was my favourites, said by my little cousin at the ripe old age of 17. Genius. She meant she loved dogs that were eating, like they were cute or something (its not cute).

Butt (see what I did there)
But I like this advert because we all (and especially the gay community) like to think that the butt is completely indicative of the gay community. I’d like to think that we all know why. If you don’t, don’t worry about it or alternatively ask a priest or someone with a high religious standing. They should be able to fill you in.

The other side of America. Brilliant. Mount Roushmore is being alluded to here as being the straight, solid, predictable side whereas the other side is the different side. The “gay” side.
I realise its a pun but I also realise that sometimes puns can be pretty awesome too.

Things always TURN.

It was a bright and sunny (non windy) day in Cape Town.  So one could easily imagine why this day was spent with a number of people cheering on a small rugby league at the rugby club on a fine Saturday. The sweet smell of cut grass and braaing meat filled the air. Cheers and chattering filled my ears like a dull hum. But unlike the skinny (but lovely) bitch next to me, I hated being there. Hated it. I paid my dues as I was there, as promised, in supporters gear complete with lumo headband and super short shorts. The grass was too fresh or the meat smelled too deliciious for me to enjoy it or something so like a dedicated mate that I was, once the game was over I left.

Like many people I convinced myself that all I wanted to do was “chill” , “relax” and for those in matric in 2006, “chillax”. What started out as an innocent (enough) game of 30 seconds turned into a bit of a death match complete with dignified ‘loser hats’ (my idea) which were skilfully made out of pick n pay bags and sticky tape. You see once there are a number of different bottles of wine and a number of different yet extremely similar girls stuff happens.

Soon there were whip cream moustaches and silly dares before the slightly intoxicated clan of girls decided that it would be a genius night to head out. Where did we go? Gay bar, because that’s what girls do when they want to go out and not talk to boys.

Problem1: The bartenders at said gay club are ripped and toned and are dancing in their briefs on the bar.

Problem 2: The bar tenders at said club cannot dance.

Problem 3: The bar tenders at said club cannot dance because they are straight.

(Note to self: not many straight men have a rhythmic bone in their body)

So you see… what started as a night of femaleness and independence soon ended up as a perverted yet funny account of girls imitating the pants less dancers on the bar. So we moved on to club two.. a straight one.

The party mood had taken over so completely that after we had a mini photo shoot and a few straw duels on the bar and after we crashed a batchelors and after we drank them dry and after we all had the  time of our lives that something would go wrong.

“Something”

Luckily (said extremely sarcastically) I would be the owner of that ‘something situation’.

So after the funness and the joy of being a young woman in all the ridiculousness that follows adolescence I had a three part stagger-trip-fall into the club.

It was quite an interesting trip, the kind of trip that could be rather entertaining in slow motion. My knees weren’t the only things torn open, nor was the beautiful dress that I was wearing. It was my dignity. My poor dignity was also torn and bleeding as I entered the club having my entire bum up to my middle back exposed. The worst part is I had no idea. None. So I continued as usual: dancing, running, chatting.

How long was I like this? I don’t know… that’s the worst part.  So after an unknown amount of time I was  noticed by a friends boyfriend and swiftly wrapped up in a table cloth. I wish he had told me what he was doing then I  wouldn't have fought him so hard. My bruised ego was easily mended by a juicy pity boerie roll that I ate like a sad child eats an ice cream.

Dignity? Hello? Where are you?

Sigh... I should have stayed at the rugby.

dum drunk

Drinking and driving is not a joking matter and everybody knows it but somehow there are still those little brained folk that shout at you for not drinking and make it their personal mission to piss you off enough so that you do end up feeling the need to have one or two. The kind of tiny brained people that force a shot of ‘oh so delicious’ warm tequila down your throat and expect you to thank them. Unfortunately these are the types of people that the drive alive campaign should be targeting and unfortunately these aren’t the types of people who don’t really look at responsibility as being a particularly good thing.

I like this advert, its hard hitting straight to the point. It says “if you drink and drive you will crash and potentially die”. It’s true. It’s well executed. Its simple.

But the people who need to see this are the people that won’t take this as a message that occurs to them.

Being one of them lamo dorks I can’t just point out a problem without suggesting a solution.  I propose quite simply that to get hold of the remaining percentage of reckless, brainless, typically enjoyable but inconsiderate drivers the agency should... MAKE BEING THE DESIGNATED DRIVER COOL.

 Its brilliant right?!

 Somehow that cowboy slash kung foo do gooder Chuck Norris is a legend and he, well, does good.

And somehow that boerie eating Jan van die span (player 23 campaign) is cool too.

So why cant we make that sober fun goer a person that more and more people would be pleased to be?

Scare tactics don’t work as well as we’d like to think I mean, how many smokers continue to smoke knowing full well that it could kill them,people still don't put sunscreen on knowing how the sun is delightful and evil, and how many  how many people still swim knowing  that jaws is waiting to attack?!

The short of the long: Scare tactics only work in video games. 

New age and new experiences

I have a spectacular friend who is confident, hilarious and quite a catch, she’s the easiest person to introduce to other people but when she drinks she’s a train, she’ll run you over.  She is a force that is travelling at a constant pace to somewhere that she only knows. She has been following the 12 step program for a few months now and I have not been run over by the train since.

I have always thought that AA meetings were for people with severe problems. The kind of problems that Tim Burtin probably has to be able to come up with his horror type movie style. To me the people who attended these meetings were all like the characters in fight club, intense and parasitic like Helena Bonham carter’s character.  It was only when I went to the meeting that I learned that I am terribly ignorant and quite ashamed for expecting that the meeting would take place in a smoked filled, ill-lit basement. Instead it was uplifting and enlightening. 

I went to an AA meeting in a Church in Kloof, it was filled with ordinary people, young and old and many people from different countries. At the end of the meeting the chairperson said to us that we should remember that the people we see and the things they say should remain anonymous. I almost feel bad for reporting back on this, like I’m a rat. The rat that used to get beaten up in school for snitching to the teacher about who was copying other kids homework.  That damn rat!

At the start of the meeting the twelve steps are spoken about:

AA Steps

1. We admitted we were powerless over alcohol - that our lives had become unmanageable.
2. Came to believe that a Power greater than ourselves could restore us to sanity.
3. Made a decision to turn our will and our lives over to the care of God as we understood Him.
4. Made a searching and fearless moral inventory of ourselves.
5. Admitted to God, to ourselves and to another human being the exact nature of our wrongs.
6. Were entirely ready to have God remove all these defects of character.
7. Humbly asked Him to remove our shortcomings.
8. Made a list of all persons we had harmed, and became willing to make amends to them all.
9. Made direct amends to such people wherever possible, except when to do so would injure them or others.
10. Continued to take personal inventory and when we were wrong promptly admitted it.
11. Sought through prayer and meditation to improve our conscious contact with God as we understood Him, praying only for knowledge of His will for us and the power to carry that out.
12. Having had a spiritual awakening as the result of these steps, we tried to carry this message to alcoholics and to practice these principles in all our affairs.

Then a speaker will share his story for the floor to respond to. This particular speaker is a good looking well built Englishman that was super trendy and spoke like he was talking to two of his best friends and not to the 40 people who were crammed inside this room. He took us all on his journey through alcoholism from the beginning of binge drinking in his early 20’s  right to the point where he locked himself up in his flat to drink bottles of shampoo or anything that had any alcoholic value. It was a journey that people drew a lot of similarities from. He was truly amazing and exceptionally strong as are many of the other members there.

I quickly learned that their addiction was not only their common link but also their strength. One of the members said that he had more in common with the people in that room than with people he had known for years because their addictions were a binding link in a shared struggle that they each battle every day.

 I say it was an uplifting experience because many of them would make jokes and allude to things that only they as alcoholics would appreciate. One of the members had commented on another for swearing so much while he shared his story and his response was “well I didn’t want to water any of it down”. Laughter exploded and echoed down the corridor.

A running theme that night was the exploration of dreams, many of the members explained that they were having dreams about using and waking up feeling so pissed off with themselves for relapsing. An older woman with deep sunkissed skin and the reddest of all red hair voiced her  thoughts that  well now that she has control over what she does in her dreams she could be capable of just about anything. I cannot even fathom being in control of all of me, never mind my dreams, my hair is a big enough of a struggle.

One young chap a at the ripe old age of 21 had only recently recognised his addiction a few months back and was quite shocked especially since he had initially gone to rehab for an eating disorder. “bummer” he said, “one addiction couldn’t be enough for me”.

It was a lovely place filled with lovely people. I almost wish that everyone was a recovering alcoholic or addict just so they could be as warm and grateful as this bunch of sharers. It was like going to Church but the people there actually respected each other and genuinely cared about each others progressions, they drew from others strengths and their struggles and use it to grow.

At the end of the meeting we held hands and recited a fun loud chant of togetherness (well they did, I just smiled foolishly like a typical ‘newbie).

how to sell sex cleverly

My second advert that I quite like is a KY gel advert.
How do you sell sex or "personal lubricant" without showing any skin?? hmmmmm... use a pussy cat and a hole to represent, well... you know... "it".
If you dont know what I'm talking about then please call both your parents right now and ask them to explain. I'm sure they'll happily oblige, alternatively stop reading now.

After exploring adverts from the inside out these last few weeks I have begun to notice a few things:
1)puns- advertising is covered in them and they rarely work but are fun to point out as crap
2)problem solution ideas- wowee as a student who engaged in this kind of idea creating I now see why this is indeed a crap POA.
Now, after ditching all I know I now have to recreate what I think is "good".
So now to me "good" is the ability to sell a product without the actual product.(If this is true or not still needs to be established but at this point ITS TRUE)
So to sell lubricant without the usual parts that is a wee bit tough and somehow it can be done!


A cat that was so smart that it covered itself in this awesome product that it managed to squeeze itself through a tiny hole to get some action. Brilliant.
Now I begin to think... what else could I use KY for?????
Hmmmmm....