The sin of coffee

Got ya! Another day in paradise. Paradise is becoming my own ghost town.

If you wanted to hear how bad coffee is for you, visit coffeisbad4u.com.

I love coffee. I love coffee with a bit of whiskey even more.

Sometimes (most days) my dear kids make me a coffee.

It is better so, cause tonight I ventured to the kitchen to make coffee. The googly-kitchen-monster attacked me. Well, I will brave the B every day for more coffee.

I don't give a shit.

Ghost town just lowered its standards

Yes, it is official. The ghost town lowered its standards. A despicable place is now even more despicable. I just returned from a visit to the ghost town. What I found was surprisingly what I expected - just a little bit more.

We can not blame the entire despicable-ness on the people. The weather is horrible. The place is horrible. The people is horrible and the music is horrible. Waking up in the morning is not a pleasure there. Being at coastal level helps a bit with a noticeable higher air pressure. Add to that the high humidity and you are guaranteed a headache. Even as you wake up. No wonder the people on this place are so freaky grumpy.

Before I go on, let me say that 80% of the people in the ghost town are really great. the majority were really happy to see me again and came over from wherever they were just to say hello.

Then there are the ghost people. Officially I do declare them to be the world's most despicable human beings. Yes, they can be found right there in the ghost town. Just being in the ghost town, surrounded by these cockroaches is guaranteed to make life a continuous hell. I am observing perfectly normal people getting more despicable every day they spend in that place. Anybody is sure to become despicable after only two years spending time amongst such despicable bunch of misfits.

The naturals here display tendencies to self destruction by smell. Horrible human beings that would not only trip old ladies on the sidewalk, but also brag about it when the old lady trips and falls into uncoming traffic. The main purpose of life is not self improvement. It is to maintain and expand the wasteful and despicable culture. To live here is emotionally expensive, as all despicable people continuously drains you from your emotional energy. Very ghostly.

Then to make you feel even worse, there is this East ghost radio. The music they play is simply awasme to add to the whole atmosphere. Last morning I switched on the radio and listened to a song called Take me to my secret place.

Now really. Let me try to take this in.

Translated to Drown me in my own vagina.

That is creepy.

This was followed by an even worse Look underneath your beautiful.

Aaaawee! Crappy!

What do you expect to find there? Little dung-bells?

These ghost DJs with deceivingly nice voices, were going on about if they had to take only one song to Mars, this would be it. Yeah, right. Mars is about halfway to the sun. Temperature would be on average same as the ghost town. I can imagine why you would want to go there. But then. Getting out of this crap town is the most important. No matter where, it would be better than there.

Do not knock this place. Our president comes from the province surrounding this ghost town. Ok. That explains a lot about why this country is going down the drain so fast.

This experience in the ghost town gave birth to another new song. Look out for it. It will be all about cockroaches struggling to escape from a tin of hot wax.

 

Respect other and you shalt be respected

Something that irritates me endlessly is when people want to tell others what to do and try to force their views down the throat of millions.

Religion is the most guilty. Who gives some pervert priest the right to complain against the viewing of any television program? Religious people succeeded to ban porn TV, while there are at least 10 TV channels preaching their poison.

Not that I care about porn TV (there is an internet;) but what the hell do they think gives them the right to even complain.

What sparked this post was an even worse act of stupidity from some people who complained about an advert on TV where a dog licks the ice cream of a little boy. Whoa. Now this is horrible. Dogs licking ice cream may lead to the murder of, erm..... Nobody?

The friendly acts of religion is well documented. The crusaders murdered nations and some civilizations today are lost in the name of some false god. We see people being accused of witchcraft and murdered even today. In Marikana there were people selling muti (magical herbs) to people leading them to believe that their ancestors will make them invincible, leading to the death of more than 30 people. Who remembers 911?

These are just a few examples of religious cruelty. Next time you you post a religious message on facebook, please keep in mind what you are propagating. Do not expect me to respect you.

Respect me by keeping your shit to yourself and I will respect you.

Shut up and stick to killing your neighbor.

 

Cape Town, here I come

I will be in Cape Town for the next 2 days. Nation Dealer Awards.

When looking for a pretty picture of Cape Town to add to this post I realized such a thing does not exist.

My ability to notice beauty must be clouded. My idea of beauty is surely different from the rest. What I noticed about photos of Cape Town, is that almost all the photos on google is about, wait for it, yes, the Cape Town stadium at Green point. I had to search for a photo that does not have that ugly blob in the middle, and this one is of the harbor. Not exactly beautiful.

I realized my idea of beauty is clouded by my experience. Beauty for me is natural. A desert scene is beautiful. Somehow a sea s not beautiful. Reminds my of the Ghost Town.

More important to me is a beautiful experience and not a beautiful scene. Sitting for 2 hours talking to Anne about writing songs is my idea of a beautiful experience. Listening to a group of people singing a song I wrote is my idea of beauty. A big office with pictures against the wall is not beautiful.

 

Find a topic for your blog (Wtf?)

Currently reading: Problogger by Darren Rowese and Chris Garrett

 

I am only starting out on this book. Great book so far, so please take my post here not as a criticism on the book as a whole, but rather a Wtf on society in general. Go buy the book. Go green and buy the e version, even though amazon rip us all off by charging more for the e version than the paper copy (another pet peeve of mine, but we'll save that for later).

 

Getting to chapter 2. This chapter is all about finding a topic for your blog. Our learned authors go through a fair bit of detail on how to decide to blog first and then how to decide what to blog about.

 

Am I the only one who sees the problem here? Why are you blogging if you do not know what you want to blog about in the first place? If you do not have a topic to blog about, you should not even be thinking about blogging. Geez.

 

The book starts off by telling you how to make money blogging. the good news is they say that blogging takes a lot of time to make money. No get rich quick like Justin Bieber schemes here. Then they go into a lot of detail about finding a topic that you are interested in. Really? Are there people out there actually blogging about topics they have no interest in?

 

Well, these guys are serious bloggers and are obvious authorities on the subject of blogging, and I'd guess life in general. When they say it is how things happen, I am inclined to believe them. So, yeah, there are actually a lot of people out there blogging about things they have absolutely zero interest in, just with the hope of becommng rich and famous. Blogging for the sake of blogging. Flying the flag for all of us. Soldiers in the ditches.

 

OK. Maybe it is just me, but this is exactly why there are so many pointless blogs about absolutely nothing important (yeah, like this one) on the internet blogging about things they, or anybody else, have zero interest in.

 

Truth to be said. I started this blog as an alternative to my real important blog about something useful on advice from these guys. This way I can post any useless stuff here and not cloud my really useful blog. So, I started blogging about something I was really interested in, then read a book, and then decided I need a blog about absolutely nothing.

 

 

You will always have noting to do if you do not have anybody to do something for

You will always have noting to do if you do not have anybody to do something for

 

Now watching - Streets of fire

Streets of fire

Great music. Especially Jim Steinman's Fire inc. songs.

 

Stop bitching, start a revolution

Generally people hate being made a fool of and being stood up.

So, before you bitch for half an hour for nobody helping you, bother to tell them the right place and right time where you are.

Time is precious. Just because you have nothing better to do with your life, does not mean everybody else is just as hopeless. Respect other people and they will treat you with respect.

 

Saturday lessons again

 

Students doing fingerpicking lessons from Justin.

 

Saturday guitar lessons

Edward and Hugo doing pretty well with fingerpicking in their weekly guitar lesson.

 

Who the hell was Jane Austin?

"One does not love a place the less for having suffered in it, unless it has been all suffering, nothing but suffering." -Jane Austen, novelist (1775-1817) - as per the wordsmith site

We know she wrote a certain book that was made into a movie, but that does not make her into less of an idiot. The greatest idiot is however not Jane for having said some idiotic things, but rather those who quote her as if it was words of wisdom. We do not know the context in which she said quoted words. I am definitely not planning on trying to read all her books just to find out in what context those words were said, so if anybody want to point me in some direction, please feel welcome to do so.

Quoting somebody out of context is just either lazy, or displaying a lack of understanding of those words. I am willing to give quoted site the benefit of the doubt here. The person who made the quote probably don't have any idea what those words mean, or he or she just had a job to do and possible just randomly chose a quote. It is possible that that person might have actually found inspiration in those words and wanted to share these pealrs of wisdom.

Truth is, I hate a certain place, which previously had conjured positive images to my mind. I Iike to refer to that place as the Ghost Town. Millions of people think that place place is a wonderful place. I have suffered psychologically at that place and therefore I love the place less. If I am abnormal in this kind of reaction, then I will gladly accept my defeat, but as at today, nobody has at yet even even attempted to convince me of my own ways of error.

I keep similar negative image in the back of my mind concerning other places as well. As I write these paragraphs, more negative images apear in my mind that can be linked to places I hold no affinity towards.

I have no interest in ever again visiting the grounds at which I did my military training. I have never gone back to that place to reminisce about the good old times. I have no plan to ever return, and if I by some circumstance drive past that place again, I will do my utmost to excrement upon entry.

I hold very similar feeling towards the place where I held my first job a 10 year old child. I had certain traumatic experience there in the scrap yard, which I have no interest in being reminded of. Similar feelings are in my mind regarding the location of my job as auditor.

Come to think of it. Seems like I had a traumatic childhood, without actually realizing it!

Come to think of it, if the words of esteemed Jane held any truth whatsoever, man would have been extinct by now. Man's very ability to recognize places of danger and thereby avoid such places is not very uncommon.

 

The ghost house near Alma

 

 

 

Alma part 3

The school

 

The students

 

Alma part 2

The Alma shopping centre

School playground

 

 

 

Pictures from yet another ghost town

 

This place is real. It is a little town in the northern side of South Africa, and is still inhabited. It is a little town called Alma.

 

 

 

These pictures here are of the school playgrounds. No, there was no Chernobyl disaster. This is normal life.

 

The joys of writing songs

Drew Lane today posted on his blog something that touch me. Every songwriter feels something special when hearing a crowd of people spontaneously singing a song we wrote. It is something that gives writing thoses songs and the long hours behind the computer real meaning and value.

 

Are we getting dumber, or are movie directors running out of ideas?

Watched 2 movies yesterday. Chernobyl diaries and The apparition.

 

Neither of these movies should have been released prior to the zombie apocalypse. They were not meant to be watched by people with any thinking abilities. On the other hand, both movies would have been great for watching for pure passing of time.

 

I hate wanna-be horror movies that does not feature any horror at all. Chernobyl diaries has many startling loud noises and blurry images flashing past on the screen. The directors were however too cheap to spend any money on make-up or monster costumes, so you never have any idea what was supposed to be so scary. That is a fine trick for once or twice through a movie, but it gets tiresome if that is the only trick the director knows.

 

Chernobyl diaries could not decide if it wanted to be a found-footage movie or a proper edited and scripted film. At times, the camera shots are well thought out and very professional. Other times the camera just swirl around and blurs out any vision, adding to the impression of just being cheap - see previous paragraph.

 

The apparition is, well, just dumb. Ashley Greene stars in the leading role and does a real great job. If it was not for her, this movie would have been banned from the shelves even after the said apocalypse. It is such a pity that her great acting was wasted on a poor script and poor directing. Once again, this movie has plenty blurry images and no real monsters. Not as cheap as the movie mentioned earlier, but still annoying. In the very last scene some attempt at cgi was made, but it was simply too late to save the movie. I have seen many movies where the plot line was given away in the first scene, but then usually, the rest of the movie would attempt to build further on the plot. In this one however, you end up thinking at the end, "what the hell. We knew all this after the first 10 minutes."

 

If you have seen any of these movies, please let us know what you think by adding a comment below.

 

What's for supper tonight?

This is a weighted question. We face this problem every Saturday late afternoon. During the week, this question is not up for discussion. You see, the wife cooks during the week. She cooks, you eat, end of discussion. No democracy. On Saturday we have take aways. I am the one to do the taking.

 

 

So we vote. Never is there any form of consensus. Some kids only want pizza. Other kids hate pizza. Mom wants chicken. Is that McD, Kfc, or Nandos? Whatever choice, somebody will hate the choice. I end up doing the rounds to 3 or 4 places.

 

Problem is not with kids who can not get consensus. Problem is with my failure to take charge and leadership and just tell them that there is no choice. I will decide. Discussion over. Hate me for the rest of the week. You'll get over it.

 

Reality? I will try to be a cool dad and please everybody. I hate people hating me. I do not want a fight, but alway end up starting the fight because I want to please too many.

 

Very much the same problem in my professional life. I try to avoid conflict and please everybody. I feel bad saying no. I end up pleasing nobody and get taken advantage of.

 

OK. Off to start the fight and get food.

 

Untill next fight.

 

Another Ghost Town

Welcome to another ghost town.

 

Here I will post my views on life, love death, water and, well anything I can think of.

 

Or not think of.

 

I will post anything I feel the urge to post about.

 

If you are OK with that, then follow me, like me, hate my or just ignore me.

 

If you do not care, then tell my all about it.

 

If you do care, good for us both and tell me about it anyway.

 

And the Ghost town?

 

 

Mr Minister, how many tickets will I sell?

When you produce a show, whether at your local school hall or on Broadway, you would want to know how many tickets you are likely going to sell. This would make it easier for you to plan how much you can spend on costumes, set design, designers, directors, and all the other creative aspects.

Your financiers will ask you how many tickets you will sell before they give you a bag of money to spend. What do you expect them to say if you reply that it is not your problem? You just sell the tickets.

If this is so important, you would want to know; how can you forecast how many tickets you will be able to sell for your show. Every producer - and every business man - should ask this basic question when planning a show - or running a business. Question is, who's responsibility is it to make that guess?

 

Your first port of call could be your minister of finance, or secretary of the treasury, but can you as a local business man or producer expect the minister of finance, or secretary of the treasury, to give you the answer to that question? The minister has an economy to run. He or she does not have the time, not the ability to forecast ticket sales at every school hall or theater in the country. You can expect the minister of finance to give you a reasonable accurate forecast of what the growth in the economy in general will be. If you however expect to phone the minister and get an intelligent answer to your question about ticket sales, you are missing something big in the picture.

 

Well, if you can not ask the minister, who else can you ask and expect to give you an answer? Why not phoning the local intellectual rights licencing agency? At least, they are the ones selling you the rights to produce your show. Should they therefore not also be able to tell you how many tickets you will sell?

 

If we think about this one for a moment, it may sound like a reasonable answer to our question. They have the industry knowledge and they have a vested interest in this. However, do you really think that they have the time and resources to do a detailed forecast for every school hall around the country, each and every local theater, and for every show? Do you expect them to have this secret super computer where you punch in your location and your show name and then it will tell you exactly how many tickets you will sell? (42?). If you later-on sell less tickets than their computer predicted, do you then have a right to accuse them of incompetency in planning or sue them for the losses you made? Do you think it is reasonable to accuse them of incompetency if the union went on strike and you had to close the show for 2 weeks?

 

I can tell you that the licensing agency should be able to give you general guidelines about how many tickets shows are selling in the country in general, or maybe even in your area. They might be able to give you some indication of capacity achievement on Broadway vs. the Market theater district, etc. They can even tell you that you should be able to sell a certain number of tickets if you do everything right. Some organizations will go as far as telling you that they expect you to sell a certain number of tickets and that you can earn certain bonuses by achieving those targets. They can even incentivize you by way of annual awards programs like the Tony or Naledi awards. Whatever you can get from them, do you think you can now accuse them of incompetency if you discounted your tickets beyond norms and more people attend your shows, but you are still making losses because your revenue is not enough to cover your winter Holliday?

 

I hope, in general, you are getting the idea by now. You, yes you, you and you, have some responsibility here as well. The number of tickets you sell will depend on many things, most of which are under your own control as producer. The quality of your show, the quality of direction, the competency of your actors and musicians, your advertising effort, etc. have a much greater influence on the number of tickets you will sell than the growth in the country's gross domestic product. If you put up a poor quality show and do not bother to advertise for it, you are neglecting your basic duty as producer and business man. Please do not blame the licensing agency, or the minister of finance, for your failures.

 

Now, for the final take away.

 

You, as a producer, have a responsibility to plan your show. You have to plan your show like a business. As a businessman you have to make a prediction or forecast on the number of tickets you will sell and plan the rest of your show around that number. You will have to do market research locally, in the industry and nationally and then come up with a number. There are many ways to make this forecast, and with experience you will get better at it.

 

Do not accuse your licensing agency of incompetence if you are to lazy to do some work yourself. This is your show. It is your business. Now go out and run your business like a professional. Any public outcries of how incompetent your minister of finance is because he could not forecast your ticket sales accurately is not really needed and only impress those who are just as lazy as you are.