Please can we work together on these social issues. If someone else gets something right, rather build on it and make it better, than be jealous and break it down. It really doesn’t have to be a zero-sum game. Everyone can benefit.
Perhaps there is a valid reason for discontinuing the project that has been poorly communicated. Perhaps it’s just biased reporting. But if the responsible officials don’t respond to the reporter’s requests for comment, it is rather difficult for the reporter to present the government’s viewpoint.
Quite a while ago I posted a story about a photoshoot I did for a friend’s fashion-school project. I mentioned that “Grant will be performing mysterious and arcane photoshop machinations to the photos.” It was not a lie.
I finally got hold of those bits that went into his fashion magazine, and have his permission to present them here.
Fear|Hope
Sad|Angry
Happy
Fear
Anger
Hope
Unlike the usual Creative Commons License covering stuff on this blog, the above gallery copyright rests with Grant Davison. All rights reserved. Etc etc.
If you want to use the stuff for something, let me know and I’ll ask him. We can probably make a plan.
Little Neil, being me, is actually all growed-up now. I suppose that, despite what I like to think, I’m not all that happy about being 30 years old. This conclusion is obvious when one considers that I hired a jumping castle for my 30th birthday party.
But so what? Jumping castles are awesome!
If you couldn’t make the party because you’ve gone overseas (or just never made the migration to Joburg) I missed you. The more jumpers on the castle, the merrier it would have been.
Not only was there a jumping castle, we also had Zoo Biscuits, Chomps, Creme Soda, and Sparberry. Adam and Nadia seemed to think that Pick ‘n Pay’s No-Name brand Creme Soda and fake Raspberry soda didn’t cut it. “It just doesn’t taste as good,” they (especially Adam) argued.
“Elitists!” I labelled them.
As retribution for my venemous attack, they left behind the bottle of Sparberry they brought. Now I have a full bottles of both varieties of imitation raspberry drink—disgusting. Why didn’t people drink the stuff? It was a 3-year-old’s party. At least the Creme Soda was polished off.
Even 3-year-old children cannot survive on crisps and sweets alone, so we also provided a vodka-soaked fruit punch. To this day the remains of it lurk in the fridge, although about two-thirds of it was consumed on the day.
Hamburgers were prepared as lunch. Since 3-year-olds should not be allowed near fires, the grown-ups cooked the burgers on the braai. By grown-ups I mean, my dad Tony and Angie’s dad Bill. None of my friends complained about the burgers, so good work Dads!
Peculiar jumping castle sports
The jumping castle provided plenty of laughs, but kids these days have such short attention spans that they were quickly looking for something else to do. Fortunately the party organisers had prepared for this eventuality by arranging for incredible party games—with incredible prizes! Of course, along with the short attention span, these kids have become so cynical and they disputed the magnificence of the Made-in-China Bought-at-Crazy-Store plastic toy prizes. I guess they all want cell phones or something.
Pass the parcel about to be initiated
Game playing did take place, and the worthy games master, my mum Annie, made sure that no cheating took place. We had Pass the Parcel (won by Jenny) and Pin the Tail on the Donkey (won by Rachelle). The parcel was thoroughly wrapped as only Mum could do—layers within layers within boxes within other boxes within more layers. Every seemed to expect the prize to actually be in the parcel, and so it wasn’t long before they were complaining that the “incredible prize” was most likely to be a small piece of fruit, or possibly a nut of some sort.
Ungrateful bunch.
Pinning the tail on the Donkey Ass (despite treachery)
Pin the Tail was no less tricksy with my mother at the helm. The donkey was twisted and turned and cunningly rearranged so as to fool the participant. Expecting such trickery, I pinned the tail on the donkey’s neck. The trick for me was that there is no trick. Very Zen. Thanks Mum.
On the cutting of the birthday cake, I was compelled by those gathered around to make a speech of some sort. Boy did they regret that. I think I make good speeches, but I’ve never been too fond of impromptu speeches. They need to be prepared. Plus I was fairly tipsy by this point in time.
So basically I complained that everyone liked me too much because they had all accepted my invitation (almost no-one declined it), thus destroying my budgeting for the party and rendering me insolvent… but it was worth it I quickly added, realising how piss-poor the preceding sentiments sounded. But if you cut through my issues with spending money, you’ll see how I was actually really pleased with the turn-out. Hopefully everyone who was there had a lot of fun. I know I did, and the fun would’ve been diminished if it was me alone with a jumping castle (fashioned after a clown, so in fact the fun would have been creepified).
Although I ended up not hiring a clown, Dave provided a clown service absolutely free, and provided a beautiful demonstration of how to use the jumping castle in a most exciting manner. Thank you Dave!
There was also the incident of the destruction of my son’s favourite soccer ball, and I have the ruffians Quinn, Gareth, and Chris to thank for this. They devised a number of peculiar jumping castle sports, and one of them seemed to involve the ball. The ball rebounded off one of their heads, struck a rosebush, and deflated. Their excuse-making is best illustrated in pictures. The rest of the party pictures reside on Flickr. Click here to see them
I turned 30 recently. I had a party, but I pretended that I was three years old. Naturally, there had to be a jumping castle.
There was going to be a jumping castle and a clown, but in the end I decided to combine the two by hiring a clown who was willing to be jumped on by fully-grown adults.
There is a lengthy story to go with this too, but lengthy stories take time to write (hell, uploading and titling the photographs took long enough). Plus, I received many gifts and need to thank all the nice people who gave them to me. Hopefully, a longer story will be forth-coming. But if not, the photos tell the story well enough, I think.
If the longer story never emerges, perhaps this notice I gave to my neighbours might help you piece it together:
A party is happening at No. 14 on Sunday, 9 August, starting at 1pm. We are celebrating Women’s Day!
Not really. It’s a birthday party. But we may also celebrate women although that wasn’t the original intent of organising the party.
I don’t expect it to be too disruptive, but there will be music and a jumping castle. Noise from my home is likely to be elevated above normal Sunday afternoon dog-barking levels.
Roughly 35 guests are expected, so you may find the road inside the complex becoming a little congested. I hope this will be bearable for one afternoon.
If you find yourself becoming incensed by any aspect of the activities taking place at No.14 on Sunday, please let me know. I’m a reasonable man. I’ll make you an offer you can’t refuse.
The Camera Club Johannesburg (CCJ) hosts a curious competition they have dubbed “The Hubcap Rally.” I’m not entirely certain of the origin of the name. Perhaps the first one involved taking photos of wheels while travelling to one’s destination.
The origin of the name aside, the competition itself is a little tricky. In this day of digital photography, people aren’t too phased about pressing the shutter-release button 100 times to get that 1 half-decent image.
The Hubcap Rally gives you the finger on that approach, and says, “Take 24 photos, and submit the best 10 at the end of the day. No deleting any.”
That seems easy enough.
“Oh really? Perhaps I forgot to mention that each photo has to meet certain criteria. I’ll need one abstract, one close-up, a few external, a few internal, a landscape, some people, and so on. How you like me now?”
I still like you fine. I’ll just need to be a little more versatile in my approach. Look at the subject a little differently to how I usually do it. And hey, I’ve always got post-processing in photoshop.
“Nope. As it comes out of the camera is how you submit them.”
Dammit you’ve got a lot of rules. I’ll just have to be extra careful how I compose my shots, and make certain the camera settings are all right before I take the photo.
“One more thing. There is a theme. Your series of photos needs to stick to the theme. When the competition is judged, your ability to stick to the theme counts 50% towards your final score. The other 50% is the quality of the photos.
“Every year it’s different theme. This year I’ve chosen ‘The History of the Voortrekker’s and the Voortrekker Monument.‘”
You psycho.
As if there aren’t already ample photos of the Voortreker Monument out there.
Now there are more. I present my panel of photos. In some bizarre twist of fate, I actually won the competition (though by a very narrow margin). They say constraints stimulate creativity, and the Voortrekker Monument would have been a constraint for me by itself, even without the other limitations.
Johannes Gutenberg invented the printing press, which is generally considered a Good Thing—unless you are one of those heathens who proudly proclaim that, “I never even read my Matric set work!” followed by a sort of guttural grunting sound.
Another Good Thing is the public domain. People who know me know that I’m not even slightly impressed with this Intellectual Imaginery Property concept. One cannot own ideas. One cannot steal ideas. If concepts were not allowed to flow freely from one individual to another, we’d still be living in caves and still not too sure about how to cook food, let alone hunt it or cultivate it. Corporate copyright and patent jackasses—get over yourselves! The media wants to be free, ideas want to free, and you guys have got a little tube of silicon gel trying to plug a massive crack in the wall of the world’s largest dam. Good luck with that.
Project Gutenberg is yet another of those Good Things. That’s three now, and if you’ve been paying attention you might realise that I haven’t just been sprouting off random facts and opinions. I actually have a point.
Project Gutenberg ensures that books and other written works that have entered the public domain remain there, and are easily accessible. Getting a copy of some obscure, 100-year-old, out of print book was a challenge before Project Gutenberg. Now you just search and download the ebook, available in a bunch of formats, suitable for your PC, dedicated ebook reader, or cell phone. There are also audio versions of some books, if you’d prefer (but I haven’t checked any of those out).
So I’ve started reading books on my phone. There are a lot of public domain books out there, and I’ve got some catching up to do on the Classics. Never been that interested in them before, but now that I’ve managed to intertwine them into new technology, they seem suddenly fresh and inspiring to me.
I admit I haven’t paid anyone for an ebook yet—but I probably will in the not too distant future. Even though I haven’t forked out any legal tender for ebooks, I felt bad about being a total freeloader on the system. Project Gutenberg is a project, right? I correctly guess that that meant one could volunteer to do something towards the project.
I’ve started proof-reading a couple of pages a day over at Project Gutenberg’s Distributed Proof-readers site. Essentially, I check scanned pages for Optical Character Recognition (OCR) errors, and make corrections to the text that the computer guessed the scanned pages contained. I like to think of it as noble work, but honestly it’s rather dull. Perhaps I should join a club?
All manner of people are impressed, and want me to throw together Baby Shower Invitations and Wedding Thank You Cards. I’m more interested in creating things involving human ears, toilet bowls, and chunks of meat — but I guess I’ll have to postpone the surreal for later.
I should start charging for the cutesy stuff.
If you think you deserved an invitation, and didn’t receive one (and you are actually in the right part of the world to join me on the day) let me know. You too could be celebrating my 30th birthday in juvenile-jumping-castle style!
October is Breast Cancer Awareness Month. You need to get yourself a nifty pink ribbon to show your support, but who sells these mysterious ribbons?
The Waffle Group 