Letting Go

Never a wrong word spoken;
Never a misplaced step.
Not a single rule was broken;
My inhibitions were kept.

Locked up, strapped down, blown away
Into my heart’s abyss.
Secrets, I tried to keep at bay,
Were bottled up and dismissed.

Now the time has come for me
To expand and let go.
Fly the sky, swim the seven seas,
And let loose my self control.

Alcohol, drugs, and much more
Dance for my appetite.
My mind is no longer secure,
Danger, I seem to invite.

The transition, from teenage
To adulthood, is great.
Letting go is part of life’s stage;
To get back is up to fate.

First attempt: fail

Throughout my 19 years, 11 months and 5 days of existence, I have always taken certain privileges for granted.  Not having to cook is one of them.  Today, in an earnest attempt to break away from my dependence on others, I decided to try making some popcorn – I have seen it done a couple of times.  How hard could it possibly be?

I turned on the stove and watched 2 spoonfuls of butter melt into a yellow pool of grease.  Next, I opened a packet of Pick n Pay No-name Popcorn.  But in my haste, nearly half a packet of mealies went in the pot before I could regain control, while another couple of handfuls fell to the floor.  I did not expect such slipperiness from a bunch of corn-crusted seedlings.  How dare they create such a cumbersome mess for me to clean up?!?!!

Never mind.  There was no use crying over spilt milk, or so the saying goes.  My spirits rose a little when I heard the first ‘pop’, but it soon took a dive when a burning smell ensued.  The fluffy white miniature puffs suddenly went FUBAR (f—–d up beyond all recognition).

burnt

After some thorough investigation, I came up with a couple of causes pertaining to the popcorn disaster.

1. The stove was on maximum temperature.  (In my defence, I have never even used that thing.  Ignorance gets the blame here.)
2. Too little butter and too much corn.  (I need to work on the golden ratio a bit more, but guesstimating 0.618 isn’t easy I tell ya!)

Needless to say, my attempt at domestication failed, but hopefully everything will run smoother next time.

The joys and woes of home sweet home.

The joys:

• Good food
• Big bed
• A spacious house where I can rollerblade inside if I want to
• TV (albeit with only 4 channels)
• Bubble bath!!
• Parents
• I now have the time to blog and write poetry, and take things slowly
• R10.50 for a movie at Ster Kinekor

The woes:

• Crappy internet (/wrist)
• Frostbites
• Withdraw from civilization
• Missing my friends

And in other news:

• I’ve taken up jogging again. Hopefully it will last more than 10 days this time.
• Finished making another gift for Gift It Forward.
• My mouse broke.
• Received confirmation for my internship application. I will be working for PWC during the vac \o/

Do cows, sheep, pigs, and chickens have a moral right not to be killed for food?

http://tinfoilhat.net/~fearless/eating_meat.doc

Again, please do not duplicate :)

Note: The views expressed in the essay are not necessarily my views. I simply wrote what was expected in order to get a decent mark, which I got :)

Homosexuality – moral or immoral?

As some of you already know, I registered for an applied ethics course this semester. I have to submit two essays, the first one being:

What arguments might be advanced to defend the view that homosexual actions are immoral? Do any of these arguments succeed?

My essay can be accessed here:
http://tinfoilhat.net/~fearless/homo.doc

It is +/- 2 000 words. If you hate long reads, you should probably give this a skip.

Edit: Please do not duplicate

UCT float parade 09 (pics)

http://rdlabs.org/~fearless/float09/

Gift it forward!

The first five (5) people to respond to this post will get something made by me.
This offer does have some restrictions and limitations so please read carefully:

Your response to this post indicates your acceptance of the terms listed below. Please append your initials to your response to indicate that you have read and consented to said terms. Boilerplate is followed by instance-specific terms & conditions.

–

- I make no guarantees that you will like what I make.

- What I create will be just for you.

- It’ll be done this year (2009).

- You have no clue what it’s going to be. It will be something made in the real world and not something cyber. It may be a mixed CD. It may be a poem. I may draw or paint something. I might bake you something and mail it to you. Who knows? Not you, that’s for sure!

- I reserve the right to do something extremely strange.

***

I saw the above idea on someone’s FB, and thought it would be rather cool to participate in a random gift-it-forward. The first five people to email me fearless714[at]hotmail[dot]com with their physical address will (in due time) receive something special.

:)

P.S. I will do transatlantic mailings if need be.

And in other news…

* added  more cool sites in cool sites page —>

* Spent whole of yesterday doing accounting tut…still not finished o_O might be getting brain haemorrhage.

* started swimming.. :D

* new facebutt layout == teh gay; not that that will deter anyone from using it..damn addicts!

* /me is running low on dough. cash flow needs new tributaries. donations welcome :)

Sax Appeal – Gone too far?

Every year, the UCT RAG committee publishes a comical satire that ridicules political figures, religious groups, sensitive animal lovers and many more. Copies of Sax Appeal are distributed across Cape Town by UCT students around mid-Feb, and all proceeds go towards SHAWCO, a student-run charity organisation. The 2009 publication, however, contained an article that sparked fury and outrage amongst Christians, and ignited a heated debate over the prudency and morality of the publication.

Article in question:

pg 1

pg2

The last frame on page 1 caused a significant amount of controversy. Even non-Christians thought it to be excessively harsh. Protestors termed it as a personal attack on Christians. They demanded a formal apology from UCT RAG, and the Vice-Chancellor, as well as disciplinary actions for the editorial team.

To quote my EBM lecturer from last year:

Originally Posted by Jacque Rousseau

The most recent edition of Sax Appeal was certainly an embarrassment, in that it was both poorly written and edited, and also not very funny. What has caused most concern, however, is the alleged blasphemy the magazine contained.

As an atheist member of the UCT community, the material that has offended believers offends me too – simply because it was purely abusive rather than critical, and in being abusive has served only to further entrench dogmatism and intolerance on the part of religious folk, and hence to impede the progress of those who seek to promote a naturalistic worldview, free of superstition, at UCT and beyond.

A further consequence of this episode is that it has led senior members of the University’s administration to feel the need to offer grovelling apologies, where none should be necessary. Sax Appeal does not speak for the University, and the University’s administration should not be considered responsible for the actions or speech-acts of those who produced Sax Appeal.

Being offended is something we have to at some stage learn to simply live with, except (arguably) in the case of hate-speech, which this did not amount to. Instead of running to the Human Rights Commission, may I suggest that the offended parties first try to learn some lessons in tolerance from those of us who constantly have to drown out the metaphysical noise generated by the faithful?

My reason for quoting Mr R was because he summarised my sentiments more eloquently than I ever could. This also ties in nicely with my previous post on the ethics of humour. Sax Appeal is meant to be satirical and controvertial. The intent is not ill-conceived. If the editorial team was to remove all sensitive/offensive material, the entire magazine would be nothing but a skeleton.

Best. Party. Ever.

Last weekend was the 3rd annual Masquerade trance party hosted by Alien Safari on a wine estate 15km outside of Stellenbosch. My friends and I rocked up at around 2pm and lazed around for a couple of hours. The boys made use of the free dam service (i.e. swimming), drank a few cans of beer and proceeded to scout out the craft market which consisted of a couple of tents filled with random hippy artefacts. Meanwhile, I was busy getting myself accustomed to the delicate usage of portable toilets which were somewhat fascinating as they had flush “pedals” instead of “handles”. They were also filled with a dark blue liquid that very much resembled the Handy Andy cleaning agent – only, they didn’t smell as fresh.

While waiting for the stage to be set up, my friend (Chris) diligently rolled a couple of super potent joints and initiated stage 1 of the tripping act. The rest of us (read: the less hard core of us) stuck to the good ol’ vodka and red bull/coke, and managed to get quite wasted before the first beat of music sounded.

18h00: The party started. (I knew this from the sudden appearance of hundreds of hippies dressed in their multi-coloured rags. The dreads and lack of shoes were also dead giveaways.) I was surprised at how much I enjoyed dancing to trance music. Maybe it was just the alcohol coursing through my veins, but whatever the case, I went absolutely crazy.

21h00: Chris decided it was time to try out the R450 magic mushrooms. He and Sascha both had 2 grams while Ross and I had a gram each. I was the only one unaffected by the shrooms, probably because my inebriation cancelled out the effects. At any rate, it was funny seeing my friends trip. Ross, in particular, spent close to 30 min trying to convince me to drink hot chocolate because the hallucinations started immediately after he drank a cup of hot chocolate, and was somehow convinced that the hot chocolate was the reason why he was seeing “things”. The convo went like this:

Ross: “Amy, let me buy you a cup of hot chocolate.”
Me: “No, I don’t like that stuff.”
Ross: “PLEASE! Just drink some! I promise you’ll start seeing things.”
Me: “…No.”
(repeat cycle)
Ross: “You’re being very unsupportive…”
Me: “WTF?!?!”

0h00: Two girls and two guys started fire spinning (they wore nothing but their underwear). It was by far the coolest (live) act I have ever seen. The hotness (both literally and figuratively) was insane. Justin, who had been to 6 other trance parties and seen various pyro-shows, admitted that that routine was by far the best.

03h00: Went back to the dance floor.

05h00: Finally passed out on the grass.

The only regret I have is not taking my camera.
SO…I’ll just upload some pics from the lumo party I went to earlier in the year (because I can).

socks

lol

trish alice amy