Shiver me timbers...

This made me laugh this morning...

(Found via Jezebel)

Summer-loving in the wintertime...

I haven't posted anything on here in about a week or so, but regular service should resume tomorrow. Or the next day, it's all very jet-lag dependent.

Came home from beautiful Cape Town today, you see.

Depressed is not even the word.

Miss the boy, miss the amazing friends, miss the weather, miss the atmosphere.

*looks sulkily out window at grey skies*

This lil' video is from a Capetonian band I love, whom you might know from their (unfortunate) collaboration with Shakira for the World Cup. But please, don't hold that against them, we all make mistakes, eh?! It's such a cute song, methinks. Plus, it's the only thing putting a smile on my face today. Right, I'm off to mooch around the house, eat copious amounts of biscuits and annoy my mother. Over and out amigos!

The more I see, the less I know...

This is how I'll be making all my relationship decisions (If I ever have any to make again. *le sigh) from now on. Seven kinds of wonderful in a pretty chart.

(Found here on The Morning News).

Christ.

Yesterday, while innocently browsing the web, looking for anything (and I mean ANYTHING) to distract me from paying attention to the fact that my wardrobe is currently masquerading as a dump site, I came across these images from Vivienne Westwood’s latest menswear collection. It could only be described as a sartorial car crash. And I think that may be a little too kind, to be honest.

The words Factory, Paint, Explosion, and Fabric spring to mind to say the least.

The very least.

Images from the train wreck below, make up your own mind...

I really didn’t see this one coming. I mean, I know La Westwood is a bit “different” as the Mothership would say, but COME ON. Does anyone really want their man to look like Little Boy Blue (had he fallen under a bucket of bleach, that is)/ a ventriloquist's dummy come to life, I wonder?

This one has a touch of the Bibi Baskin, circa 1993 about it, no?...Much love for the Beebster but sleeping with her tribute act is a little too far for me, I'm afraid.

Would you be ok with your man candy rocking up in this little number? Because if you are honey, I suggest you get out of the relationship now. Before you come home and find him cavorting about in those nasty red knicks he got you “for the laugh” last Christmas. Trust me on this; it’ll save time and the cost of 10 gallons of red wine plus your body weight in chocolate later on down the line.

Once I had recovered from the initial visual assault, I realised that maybe Vivienne is on to something here though. I stand firm in my belief that encountering one of these creations on any man-shaped object may be the most effective form of contraception known to humankind. I see your pills, coils and implants and raise you toupees, bad spray tans and drop-crotch chequered pants, Scientists of the World!

(all images from WWD)

Down With The Kids.

At the start of next week, I will be celebrating surviving another year of my life. It may not sounds like that great of an achievement to you, but when one is as unlucky as me, you learn to be appreciative of this kinda shizz. I mean, I fell ass-over-tit on the street three times yesterday, in an admittedly spectacular display of perambulation failure.

The thing is, I'm kind of freaking out about this particular birthday. It's my 23rd celebration of this nature. I have very mixed feelings about this number. It just seems such an awkward one. It's like the sloppy-kiss-from-an-elderly-insane-aunt of ages. Nothing in your power can stop it from coming, but it just makes you feel a little bit pukey.

Anyway, with all this resting uneasily in my subconscious, and increasingly, in my conscious too, I somehow ended up on a double date last night. A double date with a guy I'd never clapped eyes on before. A guy who turned out to be about 18 and fresh out of the Ed Hardy Academy for Douchebaggery. *le sigh*.

In case you're wondering how this unfortunate scenario came about, my friend Laura had met this "really cool guy" during the World Cup, but he'd been away and they hadn't had a chance to meet up since. She casually threw in that he did have a "baby face" during our pre-date gallon of wine consumption (in preparation for the inevitable awkwardness and bad jokes). She clearly hadn't noticed in her World Cup beer-addled state that the kid finished primary school about 20 minutes ago, and I probably have more of a 'tache than he will for at least the next 10 years.

And my fancy man wasn't much better either. For starters, he was wearing a white and red Ed Hardy diamante studded belt. Now call me small minded, but I really don't think there's ever an appropriate social situation for a man to don diamante. Unless he's participating in Strictly Come Dancing or some such, in which case I don't think we'd be on a date in the first place, let's be honest. This creation was eye meltingly ugly. Strike One.

Be assured, however, the Little Belt of Horrors was nothing compared to the "fun" carding situation outside the bar, when our two Romeos had more than a little trouble proving they were of the legal age. It is not right that I felt like some kind of sugar momma at 22 years of age. When we finally got in, my beau demanded to see my ID, as part of the ritual "Who are you supposed to be?" conversation. This conversation is highly amusing when you are 16 and sneaking into nightclubs, to get trollied on two blue WKDs and spend the rest of the night having your best friend hold your hair back while you wail about how Gary who works in Spar (Gary being the pinnacle of romantic attainment because he has an electric blue Seat Ibiza with tinted windows) ignored you all night. It starts to wear itself out a little by the "ripe" old age of 22, however.

My man was disgusted. "Wow, you're old", he pronounced, feeling no need to sugar coat his horror at my geriatric state. I believed this was as bad as it could get. I was wrong. More wrong than Snooki heading up the UN, or Tom Cruise in general. I spent the rest of the night answering questions about post-college choices (choices they'll be making in 5 years, perhaps) and grinning along to jokes about my impending Alzheimers. Again, I'M 22 FOR THE LOVE OF GOD. This merriment continued until our two buckos had to head home at 1.30, because they were "wrecked from partying all weekend" (Read: Before Mom gets pissed). Just what I need to get Birthday Week* off to a good start. Must shuffle off now, time for a cup of Horlicks before my afternoon nap.

* Although I'm not entirely comfortable with acquisition of my twenty-third year, the attention whore in me prevents any chance of letting it pass quietly. Awkward age or not, you can be damn sure every man, woman, cat and dog in the city will know about the glorious day of my birth.

Can we just discuss...

..This woman's urgent need for a reality check.

Michelle Duggar recently announced that Child No. 20 - Jello, J-cloth, I can only hazard a guess - would not be "out of the question".

Even though the last child was born four months premature and had a head the size of a pool ball.

Aside from the fact that these parents should be locked up forever for crimes against child-naming (Jinger or Joy-Anna anyone? Thought not.), it would be more in her line to invest in several economy sized tubs of Frizz Ease for her family.

Even though the words "dumpster" or "black hole" could surely be used in relation to her vajayjay at this stage.

Somebody, somewhere tie her tubes please.

Permanent Error.

What kind of f**ked up world are we living in.

Last week the Colombian and I attended the opening of a Pieter Hugo exhibition in Woodstock. There, I witnessed some of the most horrific images I've seen in my time here. I know that's a pretty big statement in a country so riddled with human rights abuses, but this was something apart altogether. Although I feel like a hypocrite writing this on my laptop, the urge to inform people about this, even if only one person reads my blog, is somewhat stronger.

For the past year Hugo has been photographing the people and landscape of an expansive dump of obsolete technology in Ghana. The area, on the outskirts of a slum known as Agbogbloshie, is referred to by local inhabitants as Sodom and Gomorrah, a vivid acknowledgment of the profound inhumanity of the place. When Hugo asked the inhabitants what they called the pit where the burning takes place, they repeatedly responded: 'For this place, we have no name'.

Their response is a reminder of the alien circumstances that are imposed on marginal communities of the world by the West's obsession with consumption and obsolesce. This wasteland, where people and cattle live on mountains of motherboards, monitors and discarded hard drives, is far removed from the benefits accorded by the unrelenting advances of technology.

The UN Environment Program has stated that Western countries produce around 50 million tons of digital waste every year. In Europe, only 25 percent of this type of waste is collected and effectively recycled. Much of the rest is piled in containers and shipped to developing countries, supposedly to reduce the digital divide, to create jobs and help people. In reality, the inhabitants of dumps like Agbogbloshie survive largely by burning the electronic devices to extract copper and other metals out of the plastic used in their manufacture. The electronic waste contaminates rivers and lagoons with consequences that are easily imaginable. In 2008 Green Peace took samples of the burnt soil in Agbogbloshie and found high concentrations of lead, mercury, thallium, hydrogen cyanide and PVC.

The photographer's website is here.