This is one of my favorite pictures at the moment.
May 31, 2010
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Posted by capetownbrown
Random Thought #71
May 31, 2010Ok, seriously?!?! Are you really trying to tell me it’s 2010 and we do not have robots that can make coffee and bring it to us in bed? I grew up on the Jetsons, but now I realize it was all a LIE!!!!!!
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Posted by capetownbrown
Random Thought #70
May 31, 2010It was really tempting to be immature on Random Thought #69! But as you see, maturity prevailed.
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Posted by capetownbrown
No More Meaning in Zack…
May 30, 2010The other day I was staring at the name Zack and it got a bit weird. Ok, before anyone named Zack gets freaked out that I am an obsessive stalker or something, I was searching for someone on Facebook and when I wrote Zack into the search thingy the name looked funny, and that is what began my several-minute-long ogle at the word Zack. Try it for yourself…
Zack, Zack, Zack, Zack, Zack, Zack, Zack, Zack, Zack, Zack, Zack, Zack, Zack, Zack, Zack, Zack, Zack, Zack, Zack, Zack, Zack, Zack, Zack, Zack, Zack, Zack, Zack, Zack, Zack, Zack, Zack, Zack, Zack, Zack, Zack, Zack, Zack, Zack, Zack, Zack, Zack, Zack, Zack, Zack, Zack, Zack, Zack, Zack, Zack, Zack, Zack, Zack, Zack, Zack, Zack, Zack, Zack, Zack, Zack, Zack, Zack, Zack, Zack, Zack, Zack, Zack, Zack, Zack, Zack, Zack, Zack, Zack, Zack, Zack, Zack, Zack, Zack, Zack, Zack, Zack, Zack, Zack, Zack, Zack.
Weird huh? Anyways… At first, I just thought I had spelled it wrong or something, because it didn’t look right. I just stared at it for clarity. After about thirty seconds or so, it stopped looking like a word all together. Now this has happened to me before, specifically with the word “Mexico” when I wrote it over a hundred times in the fifth grade for some unknown reason, so I wasn’t really panicked. After realizing Zack is possibly not even a word, it started to shape shift into other things. Some of those that crossed my mind were: a super hero symbol, hieroglyphics, not a word but a drawing of a spider or an insect, and then I finally came to the conclusion that it was most definitely some sort of weird alien language.
This is the point when this little debacle got a little out of hand because I started saying the name Zack in my head, and it no longer even sounded like a word anymore. I was totally convinced it was some sort of alien language. And then I started wondering where these humans got this alien name. Did the parents get abducted by aliens back in the 70s and the alien leader was like, “Peeeeee po gigigi grom beeee Zack!” (English translation, “You will name your firstborn son Zack!”)? And then it just became a name integrated into our culture? Do other people know about this? Do people named Zack have special alien powers? Are all of the Zacks of the world going to unite and take over the planet in 2012?
Yeah… And then I realized I don’t actually believe in aliens and I am pretty sure Zack is a derivative of the Biblical name Zachariah. But that freaked me out even more because my brain was telling me that Zack was the shortened version of the name Blake, definitely not Zachariah! I have no reasoning or logic as to why Zack would be short for Blake. But who can tell me, and I’m talking like a really good reason, why Dick is short for Richard? I don’t see any hands! So yeah, Zack can be short for Blake, and the entire thing was a weird experience! And it all just came from staring at Zack for too long, which got me thinking further.
It got me thinking about how powerful our brains are, whether they are working for or against us. I mean, I have no clue why that happened, but it’s pretty strange that if you stare at a word, something that has obvious meaning and definition, for too long it starts to lose it’s meaning. Then I decided there must be some sort of metaphor to life in all of this; like, if you try to look too deep into a situation that just “is what it is” that situation may lose its meaning altogether. But that didn’t really seem all that true. But I could see where people try too hard to make things “mean” something and by all the bells and whistles and what-nots they are actually making a wonderfully simple, meaningful thing way too complicated and the meaning within the simplicity of the thing is actually lost.
Yeah, but also, that was a bit of a stretch and going a little overboard on this whole thing. But I kept thinking about it, and thinking about it, and thinking about it, to the point that I decided to write about it. And then I realized, I stared at the name Zack for too long and it lost its meaning, and now I was trying to look deep into that situation and find a deeper meaning to life through this fairly unexplainable, meaningless situation. So by thinking too deeply about, and looking for meaning in this strange occurrence, I was actually doing the very thing I was trying to philosophically use as a premise as to why a person should not look too deeply into certain situations.
Sigh. So I just decided to let it be. Zack.
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Posted by capetownbrown
Random Thought #69
May 30, 2010When you speak to someone who lives in a timezone that is eight hours behind yours, and it is morning where you are and evening where they are, and you want to refer to their evening are you supposed to refer to it as “last night” or “tonight”? Because it’s not “last night” to them but also not “tonight” for you; it’s “tonight” for them but your “tonight” is yet to come.
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Posted by capetownbrown
Random Thought #68
May 27, 2010Last night, in some sort of miraculous occurrence of Facebook interconnectedness, three of my friends, all who do not know each other, had some sort of status about life being like a box of chocolates. It’s times like those when I realize how much Forest Gump has impacted our lives.
And then I remembered a time, around Junior High age, when my friend Ryan Good and I spoke only in Forest Gump quotes and accents. Our conversations were limited to say the least.
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Posted by capetownbrown
Random Thought #67
May 27, 2010Someone must have passed an enormous kidney stone to cause the crack in the toilet of this internet cafe!
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Posted by capetownbrown
Random Thought #66
May 27, 2010If you have to ask me if I am talking to you then I am probably not. I am not big on passive aggression. If I am talking to you, I will talk to you, and you will know it.
But if you are trying to figure out if i am talking to you because something I am saying is speaking to you, feel free to ask yourself, “Is he talking to me?” and use what I’m saying in the way that best fits your situation.
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Posted by capetownbrown
Township Tours…
May 26, 2010Ok, I’m just going to say it… Township tours really freak me out! I used to be more torn about it; on the one hand I was seriously disturbed by the patronizing and intrusive edge they have to them, but on the other hand I could see how it’s good to bring money, jobs and positive attention to the townships. And I believe when they are tastefully done, through community participation and inclusion, they can expose tourists, who might have otherwise been shielded from the poverty that affects the majority of South Africans, to the bigger picture of the realities in South Africa. But that is if they are tastefully done.
All too often they remind me of some weird kind of urban safari. One day I was walking in Site C, Khayelitsha, and I rounded a corner to see the tiny township street flooded with white, camera-wielding foreigners, all snapping away, maybe trying to capture that perfect “smiling-with-a-random-black-kid” photo for their Facebook profile pictures. As I approached them they looked at me in shock and annoyance; I don’t think I have ever been glared at so intensely by any other group of people in my entire life! They thought they had paid for the right to be the only white people in the township and I was ruining that magical ideal for them!
As I walked by, I cringed at the incredibly loud ignorant comments made by the tourists (comments that would really insult a resident), them posing with random children they have never seen before and will never see again, them speaking down at the people of Site C as if they were not on the same plane of intelligence, and so on and so forth. The whole scene made me sick to my stomach.
As the FIFA World Cup approaches, and the entire world will be on South Africa’s doorstep, I can’t help but think about things like township tours. I want all the tourists to experience the fullness of South Africa. I want people to be able to experience the amazing culture in the townships, and also not be shielded from poverty, but I do not want it at the expense or exploitation of people. Let’s look at it in another way… Can you imagine the reaction of residence of Bishops Court or Constantia if tour companies began doing tours through their neighborhoods; neighborhoods which were also established and enabled through Apartheid with potentially just as much interest as the ones on the other end of the socio-economic spectrum.
Imagine a tour bus stopping on a street in Bishop’s Court, followed by a bunch of foreigners flooding out of it, filling the street; stopping little white kids riding their bikes past so they can get a picture with them, taking pictures as the fancy cars drive by, climbing up the tall barrier walls to get pictures of the large mansions and yards, and making comments like, “Man, can you believe people still live like this?!” I do not think the Bishops Court residents would be all that happy about it. I don’t think those tours would last that long.
So yeah, I just wanted to get that off my chest. I guess it’s not the township tours per say that bother me. It’s probably, more specifically, the township tours that are done distastefully that bother me to the core of my being.
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Posted by capetownbrown
Crime Does Not Perpetuate Racism. Racism Perpetuates Racism.
May 26, 2010Last night’s Sidewalk Talk show topic was racism. It’s quite a heated topic in South Africa at the moment, with recent events stroking the headlines, but in general, I find many South Africans do not want to speak about racism anymore. They feel it’s a tired and worn out topic. They want to “move on, forget the past”. They don’t feel it is necessary to speak about racism anymore because we are a “rainbow nation” in a “new democracy” and racism is “no longer a problem”. But then (say for instance) a political leader gets up and sings a song about killing a white guy, and then a famous racist white guy actually gets killed… you see those very same people, who said racism is “no big deal” totally freak out; the equivalent of hitting a hornets nest with a baseball bat.
You see clips of people on the news, black people lined up on one side with white people on the other, shouting, screaming, threatening, trying to get at one another, smacking and hitting each other if they get close enough. “It’s just better if we live separate! Let them stay that side, and we will stay on this side!” one white girl said, quite frustrated. These feelings and emotions, to that degree, cannot be caused by one event. No, no! Those feelings and emotions are there, maybe only appearing in subtle ways, or coming out in the safety of same-race-company, but they are there. These type of events don’t cause these feelings and emotions; they merely stir them up.
And that’s why it’s important to keep the dialogue about racism going, whether we feel like talking about it or not. And that’s why I did a show about it last night.
So… last night on the show there was quite a bit of input from the listeners, which I am always happy about. One listener sent a text message saying that he felt crime perpetuates racism. I both partially agree and strongly disagree with his statement. The part of me that partially agrees, sees that people allow crime to perpetuate racism. I have personally spoken to several white people, just after they or someone they know has been a victim of crime (the perpetrator being black or colored), and the racist things that came out of the white people’s mouths after that experience were totally mind blowing to me.
They even make excuses and say things like, “I am not normally racist but…” with a terribly racist statement to follow. But the thing, maybe they don’t realize, is those feelings (about the other race) were already there. Maybe they were hiding, or not even known to the person, but they were there. And that negative experience just stirred them up and brought them to the surface.
But that person was already racist, and that situation merely validated feelings they already had, and put them deeper into their mindset, and more outward with their opinion. Because frankly, when it really comes down to it, who cares what color the person was that robbed you?! A stolen laptop is a stolen laptop, no matter if it was stolen by an albino Nigerian midget, or a white person who stained his skin dark brown using coffee grounds. The laptop is still gone, and you will more than likely not get it back.
Some (white) people come with the rebuttal that most crime is done by coloured and black people. Fair enough, most crime is also done by men, but you rarely hear a lady talking bad about men all of the sudden after being robbed by a man. And we know women don’t need an excuse to speak poorly about men! And yes, if we look at the South African history, and the current social issues that are directly linked to the past, and the lack of true repatriation that has occurred, then yes, let’s talk about the link of race and crime, but I guarantee you the conversation will not go the direction you (white person with that particular rebuttal) would want it to go.
So yeah, when the listener, and other people say that crime perpetuates racism, I hear what they are saying, but I actually strongly disagree, and tend to even think that statement in itself is slightly racist. Crime does not perpetuate racism unless you allow the race of the victim and/or perpetrator come into play, and unless it is a race-based crime, the race of either person is insignificant. Crime does not perpetuate racism. Racism perpetuates racism.
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Posted by capetownbrown
