(written 14 January 2010)
Personal Growth
I’m all about personal growth, and Christmas and New Year is prime time for personal growth.
We took the Roadtrip of Domination over All the Lands between Here and Cape Town. We dominated the switchbacks and soaring cliffs of the Outeniqua Mountains. We dominated the flat and desolate ostrich lands of Camdeboo. We dominated countless confused little hamlets and petrol stations. We dominated friends and unsuspecting family. We didn’t dominate East London because it was way too fucking scary the day after New Years – we locked the doors and kept driving, but in our minds… Anyhow so the road-trip and accompanying holiday-making times spent with friends was awesome for personal growth moments for me. Plus I got Christmas presents which is like personal growth city. So here are some of the personal growth highlights for me from the last few weeks:
1: How to pick oysters
Buddy: Let’s get ONE thing straight: You don’t “pick” oysters – they’re not like teeth OK? You float around for a really long time around the rocks on the beach and stare really hard at the underwater moss growing on the rocks while your sinuses get taken to the cleaners, and eventually before your very eyes appears a thin wrinkle in the rock that looks like pretty much like a pube. Once you’ve found this tell-tale sign it’s easy: You stick you screwdriver in behind the wrinkle and lever the oyster off and ta-da! You have 1 oyster, or you have a piece of rock. Then you look around for some more. After an hour you stand up and your back is burnt like an Ox at the Port Shepstone Ox-Braai festival. Anyhow, so I “picked” I think 6 oysters and Sam ate all of my ones to show support and admiration at my new providing skills.
2: Earning money in Grand Theft Auto (this one maybe doesn’t impress Sam in the same way)
I got Grand Theft Auto IV: Liberty City Stories for Christmas. So in GTA you are meant to mug people in order to get more money – so you can get cool clothes and get laid. You can get a job, but I think that only comes like way later on, and I’ve already got a job in real life so it would just be sick and twisted to get a job in GTA. The only problem with mugging people is that you’ve got to beat the crap out of them, which on my computer is in slow-mo because of slow processor speed, and plus the cops come and bust you, and maybe the dude doesn’t have any money on him anyway. So I’ve figured out a far more efficient way of getting money: Highjack a car. Then drive over some people (larger groups give better odds), zoom out your camera angle to have a quick look around to see if any of the people you have killed had any money on them (just for a splash of realism, the money appears as glowing wads of cash next to the body). If yes, hop out of the car, pick it up, hop back in the car and hightail it out of there. If no, zoom the camera back into the car and drive over some more people. Repeat as required.
3: Chairs
So Rob & Tanya bought themselves a brand new set of chairs and a table for their verandah for their Christmas present to themselves – cause they’re in luuuuuuuurve – which is really cool. And it’s a really nice set so like 14 of us to sit down and eat boerewors together and try out new sentences with the word “fuck” in them. And so, pretty much when you’re stoned and things go wrong in a self-conscious sort of way, you feel like a complete tool and so this is what happened when I was telling some awesomely funny joke and the chair went CRACK under me. Now I’m pretty big and my butt is definitely bigger than my head – and I’ve got a big head – so me breaking a chair is going to make me feel pretty self-conscious. And this is the table and chairs that they bought each other for Christmas like 2 days ago! Jeeez! Anyhow, so then I broke another of their chairs, but then thank god someone else broke one of them as well so at least the workmanship on the chairs was called into question a bit instead of just me being too big. So anyway I think maybe couches and armchairs from now on.
4: New Year’s Resolutions
OK – so I have 2 New Year’s resolutions, which is way ambitious (considering I don’t believe in Baby G so I don’t HAVE TO have New Year’s resolutions). Here they are:
Grow rocking sideburns. This resolution is about me growing sideburns. I used to have sideburns, I think when I was 23 maybe? Anyhow, so: Sideburns. And the other resolution is to get new blocks of foam for the couch cushions because the current ones are just completely vlam and the whole TV watching thing could definitely be a whole lot more comfy.
5: Winning 30 seconds against other people who aren’t stoned
This is incredibly difficult. You just really can’t focus and achieve stuff competitively when you’re goofed, so the fact that Gareth & I came from last place rounding the first corner, to WINNING THE WHOLE FREAKING GAME was just amazingly cool of us. All of the people who were asleep in the house were also very happy for me.
A poem about sharing knowledge, friendship and lack of selfnessless – all major themes in my recent work. I call it “FINGERS!!”:
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Things aren’t normally about me
Mostly they’re about somebody else
But if I’ve got you and you and you and you and you (not you - sorry)
By my side, it’ll all be all right.
I can’t wait to go ice-skating
with 12 kids and only Gareth
to help me,
to stop them,
from falling.
To tell them “tuck your hands in
so somebody doesn’t come
and slice them,
all off with,
their skates.”
Things aren’t normally about me
Mostly they’re about somebody else
But if I’ve got you and you and you (especially you)
By my side, it’ll all be all right.
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Can I practice my acceptance speech? OK: “I’d like to thank my wife and my kids for a wonderful holiday. I couldn’t have done it without you guys. I love you.”,
Tom
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