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March 2010 |
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You can tell how someone feels about the World Cup by the way they pronounce those two words. The optimist says it like a drop-kick: the world CUP. Then there are the sceptics, who shove the words out of their mouths like they're pushing an enemy down the stairs, or spit them out like olive pips.
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February 2010 |
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The buddhists tell us not to expect anything. Experience tells us to expect the unexpected. I was told by a man named Travis Hickey from Wyoming to expect delivery of my new laptop 'within the week'. That was nine months ago. So what do we do?
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November / December 2009 |
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Everyone loves a happy ending. Any romantic comedy that dared to end without a last-minute dash to the airport would feel like a waste of money. Often the presence of Jennifer Aniston has already made it a waste of money...
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October 2009 |
Blood, Sweat & Tears Edition by MailGloo |
I am not what you would describe as a physical machine. My dad was, which makes it worse. Its like Apple following the iPhone with the release of two tin cups attached by a long piece of string. He was built like Hercules. I am built like Billy Elliott.
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September 2009 |
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Winter is over and everywhere we are crawling out of hibernation, pale and shivering like naked Greenlanders, blinking into the pale sun. It’s not been that bad, has it? It is never that bad. In fact, our winters are a bit soft...
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August 2009 |
Battle of the Sexes (Part 1) by MailGloo |
Everybody remembers their first kiss. Except me. I think I’ve blocked it out, because the vague and fleeting flashbacks I’ve had over the years – which always play out like hazy soap opera dream sequences
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July 2009 |
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There has been a lot of negative press about the vuvuzela. Journalists watching the Confederations Cup have been queuing up with their derisory descriptions, which range from the funny and annoying to the unfunny and annoying.
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June 2009 |
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Opinions are divided on Heat Magazine. There are those who think of it as a waste of trees and there are others who are wrong. Of course, like many of you, I am the worst kind of hypocrite.
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May 2009 |
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There are those who believe graffiti is an art form and there are those who see it as vandalism. A local city council recently outlawed graffiti and hopes to wipe it all off its province’s walls.
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April 2009 |
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Trust nobody today – it’s all one big April Fools prank. The news you read this morning didn’t happen. That’s right; Crocodile Dundee is not running for president. Sorry.
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March 2009 |
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What makes us South African? Braais, pap, Mrs. Balls Chutney? Madiba, Table Mountain, Boerewors? Is it Shoprite? Does Shoprite make us South African? There are too many answers.
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February 2009 |
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There are a few things that divide the world right down the middle. Here’s one: There are people who refill ice trays and there are people who don’t. It’s that simple. Another one is Valentines Day.
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January 2009 |
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It’s January. Time to go home. Gautengers are hobbling to their SUVs, ruing their decision to buy their sons the boogie boards that came crashing into their shins all holiday.
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December 2008 |
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My hair is falling out. I look in the mirror more than I used to, and these days I see nothing but the peninsula of hair; the bays of newly exposed scalp. I found a photo of my mother’s father, whose follicular lot we are dealt. He’s 40 in the photo and didn’t even have a peninsula...
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November 2008 |
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You may have come across the news that the world’s economy is in the gutter, and it’s not looking at the stars.The bubble has burst, and as the US and European economies in particular have discovered, that bubble was full of class-A bile.
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October 2008 |
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Things were looking decidedly bleak for a while last month. The Large Hadron Collider was going to recreate the Big Bang and suck us all into a black hole, Zimbabwe looked further from peace than ever and oil was getting more expensive by the second.
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September 2008 |
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It doesn’t really bear thinking about, but I know without question that my parents had sex in Spring 1979, because roughly nine months later my brother arrived squealing into the world.
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August 2008 |
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My first date was at the cinema. We’d agreed to meet after slow dancing to Whigfield’s ‘The Summer is Magic’ a week earlier and I felt good. It’s hard to remember where I got the confidence from...
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July 2008 |
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This just in: Matt Damon will play Francois Pienaar in a film about the 1995 World Cup. It’s an interesting bit of casting, don’t you think? Not only is Damon half the size of Pienaar, but, crucially, he doesn’t look like a duck.
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June 2008 |
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When I was very young I wanted to grow up to be a fire engine. A few years later, noting with displeasure that my shoulders were not hardening and turning red and my limbs not mutating into wheels...
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May 2008 |
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Mariah Carey has titled her latest album E=MC2. Unfortunately, this is a fact and not a punch line. Apart from being hilarious - I would pay good money to ask Mariah to expound on the theory of relativity...
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April 2008 |
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My brother is an artist and we share a studio. In it, there is a cupboard we refer to as the ‘Technology Drawer'. Everything complicated goes in there. Our policy is that if we can't fix it with glue, it's technological...
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March 2008 |
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Green is your new favourite colour, whether you like it or not. It has to be. Green is swinging elections, winning Nobel Peace Prizes.Green is the new black, it’s the new kid on the block, it’s the new everything...
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February 2008 |
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I have nothing against jocks. Jocks don’t make things complicated (on the rare occasions that they don’t already find a thing complicated in the first place). Jocks are fine. Good jocks, that is. There are also bad jocks...
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January 2008 |
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It’s a week or so after New Year, which means that almost all of us will already have buckled on our resolutions. Some of us will still be insisting that we can still get fit in time for the Comrades...
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December 2007 |
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I recently received a text message that read: Do you want to see 'Beowulf at the Imax this evening?'. It's almost fine, but there's something odd about it isn't there? Something out of place...
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November 2007 |
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My cousin recently discovered Facebook. He adores it, in my respectful opinion far too much. He loves the new applications most. He send messages, he “pokes” me incessantly and posts things on my wall.
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October 2007 |
Another Perfect Day In Africa byTemplar Wales |
It occurred to me recently that celebrities just don’t get enough exposure in the press. I feel sorry for them. And because I feel sorry for them ...
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September 2007 |
Here comes the sun by Johan van Wyk |
It’s Rugby World Cup time, and across the land men and women are squeezing themselves into long forgotten rugby jerseys and practicing ‘Shosholoza’ in the shower.
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August 2007 |
Summer Rock Concerts by Mitch Said |
"Where are your wellies, mate?"
I look up to see a man in a raincoat and gleaming Wellington boots, smiling smugly from under his umbrella. His friends, all of whom are just as ...
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July 2007 |
Highveld Winter by Clinton Corden |
A Spanish person asked me the other day what South Afrcan men are generally like. I started an answer but stopped after a stuttering minute of indecisive rambling. 'It's complicated', I said, 'there are so many different types'. Are there really?
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June 2007 |
Urban Wildlife by Templar Wales |
Snow in Plettenburg Bay, the Bulls win the Super 14 in an all-South African final and a jail-bound Paris Hilton is photographed carrying a copy of the bible. Things got a bit wierd towards the end of May, didn't they? |
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May 2007 |
Extra Virgin by Melody Chowles |
"Here comes another bloody newsletter from my credit card company with a new and improved list of suggestions as to how I should spend more money."
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