Tuesday, December 6, 2011

Apologies, Excuses, and Blatant Capatalism

  Ahoy-hoy, my dastardly lovelies, I must apologise profusely and wholeheartedly in great volume and intensity both for my lack of bloggity bloggishness. Let's just say culminating factors: lack of migraine meds; work for new long-form animated pie-project (audible gasp of anticipatory joy-shock!); more suckishness on the friend front (why must these arseholes persist in stinking so?) and other less interesting tidbits. (Apparently I can add "crappy ear wax" to my House of Many Ills, as I had to have something vaguely pornographic-feeling done to my left ear in aid of it not HURTING SO MUCH THE FUCK anymore. I'm also still putting off and putting off having remedial root-canalling (Hey, whaddya know, "canalling" is a real word!) done on my one awful tooth, tooth problems apparently also genetic in origin for me. I'm calling shenanigans and saying someone pissed in my corner of the gene pool right now.)

   Lessee, what has happened in the many weathering moons since last I showed my sorry nought around these parts? Somehow, having more to choose from makes it harder to choose.
   Dooswyn number 1 (Bertius Baarstens), the former salem witch hunter who came to drive the pea-soup spitting devils from my ever loving soul with a holy "Get thee behind me, Snofferol!" has sent me a heartfelt letter of apology. Of course, this was after he had contacted my nearest and dearest in the dark of night, hoping to stage an spooky intervention for me, and got promptly e-bitchslapped by all of my nearest and dearest and some who were simply nearest at the time. He was deluged with emails, smses, phone calls, smoke signals and I believe not a few fairly sincere prayers- all in my shining defense, in his wondrous "fuck you", and not a little bit in praying for his soul. I'm not going to say some of what was said wasn't a little bit, ahem, large in the vowel, but it certainly did the trick, for he responded not two days afterwards with his apology which I genuinely believe to have been in earnest, and accepted happily.
   I really am much too lazy to hold a grudge, and I tend to love my friends like I love my animals- deeply and almost inappropriately, which is why it freaks me out so badly every time I'm accused by one of them of Stanism (the sting never goes away, really...), and why I will almost always choose to apologise for something I wasn't the cause or fault of (or majority cause or fault of, case depending) rather than have it hang over my head that I've lost a friend to limbo. Luckily, I did not have to sell my dignity to my Stanic overlord in order to set this one to rest, and I can sleep a little more comfortably now, knowing 'tis only but Dooskoenyn 2 (Baartin Botze) that lingers yet in purgatory.

   Oh no wait, another friend just up and decided he no longer wants to see this adorable face ever a-motherfucking-gain, yo. No explanation, nothing but a "I need peace, I will contact you when I feel like talking again. Don't even reply to this email." Geez, mister. I give up. Upon hearing this news, no less than three people asked me if the aforementioned friend knew Bertius or Baartin at all. I'm starting to smell foul feet afoot. That may just be me, though.

   I am starting a new project with my slightly less sinister overlord over at Fopspeen Moving Pictures, Charles. It is to be an animated mini-series of my own design. Can you feel my bowels prolapsing at the sheer intensity? AMAZEBALLS IN MONKEYGLAND AWESOMESAUCE. I'll feed ya tidbits here and there, such as I deem tid-worthy and what-ho, and maybe sometime next year I'll be able to announce the launch of my new series! Hot diggity pig, won't you be all chuffed and amazed to be able to say you knew me back when I was just a little person? Figuratively I mean, I was a nigh on 5 kg newborn, this glitter-ball aint never been no little person, if you know what I'm sayin'.

   I am stinkingly flattish, squarely, rhombuslike and trapezoidally broke, and I have very few things of value I can sell for upwards of R5. Those fever few things that might fetch R5.50 and upwards all have names (Yes, the laptop is called Dexter, my new instant camera I got for my birthday is Henry and my external harddrive is Lance.)
   So I looked into the options available upon, within or without my very person. This is what I have come up with.

My Body.

   While Secret Diary Of A Call Girl made high-class hooking look like fun with relative ease and glamour, I was rather disappointed to find upon doing the research that the job does not automatically assure you Billie Piper's hair/face/body/personal stylist, nor is the job fun or associated with any flavour of ease or glamour, be it relative or no. Also: illegal. 

My Ovaries.

   This is actually a path I have tried going down before, albeit not entirely for monetary reasons. Men, I reasonably and logically figured, donated their end of business all the time, and I was at the time low on enriching and fulfilling experiences, so I signed myself right the hell up. Did not hurt, no sir not at all, that they offer a donation of about six grand at the end of a month and a half long process to harvest your little unscrambled eggs just as a little thank you to circumvent that pesky little law that forbids you from "selling" them, per se. Unfortunately, my pre-existing condition of hyPERchondria precluded my from being selected, and as such there are no little mini Loraines running around unchecked in this world as of yet. It's up to you to decide whether this is a sad or wholly comforting thought. 

My Blood.

   This dream was over yet before it was begun. Damn you Americans and your media that pervades my every waking hour, leading me to hope- nay, almost believe- that South Africa would see the justice inherent in paying for blood donations. Nonesuch, I'm afraid. Poo. And also, they too are not fans of all the medication I must take for my hyperchondria. 

My Kidneys.

   Another one dead in the hangar. Illegal no matter which country's pop culture I turn to for solace. And I have like zero black market contacts since Ziggy went and got his house blown up in that zany meth-lab mishap, (Oh that Ziggy, he's a card!) so unless I want to go hand out in shady bars pretending to be more drunk than I am wearing a sign that reads "have own bathtub full of ice and roofies/eyedrops, willing to split 40/60", I'm shit out of luck. 

  But then I had a stroke of average intelligence. 

   
   Now granted, I have no actual middle name. But there in lies the average intelligence, you see! I can auction off the right to name me in a middling fashion! To do so with any kind of success (and to cover what fees I would assume there to be in changing one's name legally- yes, I would do this whole hog), I would need to publicise this properly, no? What thinketh you, my mighty blog legion? I am more than happy to live out the rest of my days as Princess Consuela Banana-Hammock if it meant a couple of extra Gs... or Hundreds... or Tens... in my pocket. Really, I am that broke. Did you not see the effort I went to in my geometry metaphor a couple of more sane paragraphs back?
   I'm going to think on it. If there's a logistically viable way to do this that will raise a satisfactory amount of money, I think I'm going for it. I always wanted a middle name anyway, thought it was really spiteful of my parents to have denied me such a small favour. Joke's on them, I signed all of my important documents Grades 2 through 5 as "Loraine Heidi Birkenstock." Mwa Ha Ha Ha Ha. Yes mother, that means that all of those "Free Foot Rub" and "Dish Washing Session" vouchers you got for Mothers' Day were legally invalid. I ought to sue for compensatory damages.

   And lastly, before I blow outta here, I must mention this: I love Regretsy. For those of you unhip to the wonder that is Regretsy, allow me to educate your punk ass. Regretsy is a comedy website that finds some of the worst hand-made disasters on the crafting site Etsy, and makes me spill my perfectly fine alcoholic beverage all over my keyboard through my nose from snorty laughter. What April- the woman who runs the site- also does throughout the year, is find ways to help a lot of people in need. Most of her books sales go into a fund she keeps to help people in need, and with such a large community of truly amazing people over at Regretsy, so many people and causes are a little better off because of April and the Regretsians' efforts in raising money. (This includes the monthly "April's Army" sales on Etsy, where crafters donate crafts and sales towards one dedicated goal, usually a community member in desperate need of some help.) 
   I am subscribed to both the regular Regretsy posts and the "secret" Club Fuckery 4 Lyfe posts, but I mostly only lurk on the message boards and pop in for a comment or two. This year, April has organised the mother of all charity drives, both in terms of spirit and the mammoth nature of the task. She organised a Secret Santa type toy drive, whereby people could buy a toy (or to be more precise, donate a small amount, and have a toy sent on their behalf) to a child or children who would not be getting much of anything else this Christmas. The fundraising did so well that April would have been able to include monetary gift to each family as well, making their Christmas just that much closer to a happy time. Unfortunately, she used PayPal to take in the donations, and (as redundant as this may seem), used the "donate" button, which has set loose all manner of flying manure. 
   Essentially, PayPal forced her to refund most of the donations one at a time, keeping their part of the fee. Then when she did that and instead used the "buy now" button to have people buy the toys directly, they did it again, and kept the fees a second time over, freezing not only that account but also her personal account and creating a whole boatload of other redtape bullshitbullshitbullshit in the process.
   Go over to the link and read the full story, and spread it around as much as possible- this needs to go viral.

   And now, I promise I am done, and I promise to be a good blogger and blog more like a decent human being in the future. The wedding is coming up, so that ought to be big fun, and then there's probably some drunkenness not long after that I'm sure. Either way, plenty of material to keep you posted on. I'm thinking of doing a give-away around Christmas, just to pull the lurkers out of the woodwork, but we'll see how the name-changing goes first. 
   Happy Tuesday, and Video of the Day!

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