January 2007 Archives

Which is almost like interview with a vampire, because the subject being interviewed is equally as pale and scared of the daylight (but especially mornings!) as your average vampire is.

It only differs because the subject is, unfortunately, not as adept at scribbling literary acceptable tomes as Anne Rice, who is totally embraced by the snobbish literatti, even though she esentially writes goth horror fiction.

Anyway, in case you have no idea what I'm blabbing on about (as usual), someone has actually been silly enough to employ me.

And not to do just anything either.

He has actuallly employed me... to write.

ME!

WRITE!!

For a LIVING!!!!

(By the way, the above three lines are exactly how I reply to people at parties and other social gatherings when they make small talk and they dare to ask me what I do for a living. It makes me sound like Tarzan's eloquent sister. Needless to say, they are almost as shocked and astounded by the revelation as I still am. (But it could be because I shout it at them.) Even though I've been doing it since last year June.)

And of course, I'm telling you here again not (merely) to boast, but because I need to explain why, despite my new laptop and my recent threats to return to blogging regularly on here, I am still quiet.

Also, lest we forget: the best things in life are scarce. Like writing talent, which -but PLEASE DON'T TELL HIM THAT - I don't posess.

Luckily I don't have to suck things to write about out of my thumb. I actually have to write about real people (even though they are mostly celebrities or 'reality' television stars and therefore not really 'real' at all) and the stuff they get up to. Oh, and they get up to a LOT. Just that Paris Hilton alone could keep me in business for ever.

But don't think it isn't hard work! All day long (and sometimes all night, depending on how much I've loafed the day before or plan to loaf the day ahead) I have to trawl different web sites in search of celebrity news and gossip.

Oh, and believe me, it may sound awfully glamorous to work in one's pajamas and stay in bed all day (which, come to think of it, isn't all that different from how I used to spend my days in the States, right? Thank goodness that it wasn't just pointless laziness like we all thought, and that all those days and nights on the couch, surfing the net and watching Entertainment Tonight (I even miss that Mary Hart with her strange robotic stare and maniacal enthusiasm), Extra, Good Day Live and Access Hollywood, actually served as excellent training for me to be able to fulfill the duties of my true calling!), and... oh, who am I kidding? It's BRILLIANT to get to work in bed. Almost like a hooker, but not quite as streneous or embarrassing. Oh, and without the nude bits dangling about. I do sometimes make funny sounds, though.

So after spending hours reading other sites (and laughing at their writers' astounding cleverness and then weeping because I could never be that good and funny and clever) and culling all the topics I want from them, I then get to the business at hand.

Procrastinatination. And really, not to brag (again), but I have it down to SUCH an art, I even procrastinate procrastination itself!

I juggle the procrastination with drinking litres of coffee while the deadlines fly by me at a dizzying speed. I'm such a multi-tasker, aren't I?

Then I spend an hour typing a sentence, and then another hour anguishing over it and then another hour deleting the entire sentence.

Then I celebrate by having more coffee.

And then, just as he threatens to fire me, I get cracking and crank out some lousy excuses for stories.

If you want to read them (and really, if you've read this up until THIS point? You may as well subject yourself to that torture as well, then), please go to http://www.jetstreaker.com

Go on, I DARE you!

Remember how my laptop was stolen when I returned to South Africa on Christmas Day 2005?

And remember how this past Christmas Day its successor died?

Well, I’ve finally figured out why Christmases and laptops and I don’t mix.

There’s a perfectly simple explanation, really. The Universe has obviously conspired with Santa to try and prevent me from attempting to write anything else ever again.

Unfortunately for them and for you poor folks who get to suffer through some of my scribblings, reversed psychology has always worked really well on me.

So when I hear things like: “Don’t stay in the United States for longer than one year!” or “Don’t write, you foolish girl!,” I end up staying in the United States for nine years and when I lose two laptops within a year to prevent me from writing, I withdraw all my savings and go and buy myself a new laptop. And I stubbornly continue to try this writing thing. And I’m going to continue, until I can eventually (hopefully!) get it right.

Ladies and gentlemen, meet Redsaid’s new Writing Machine. It is so new, it gleams. Even though it isn’t my first laptop, it’s the first brand new, out-of-the-box one I’ve ever owned and I couldn’t be more pleased. No other people's cooties are on it. It has none of the usual quirks (like flickering screens, temperamental batteries, strange sounds whenever one presses Enter) one tends to inherit when one owns a second- or thirdhand laptop. In fact, I'm still getting delightfully high on the new laptop smell!

Don't you just adore the picture on my desktop? Now it's my Lab-top, har har.

Anyway, brace yerselves darlings, because I’m back for good!

Or at least until Christmas 2007, then.

When the clock struck midnight on New Year’s Eve, I was surrounded by a group of naked men.

And I was the only woman present.

Okay, so they weren’t naked.

And when I say ‘a group of men’, I actually mean… three.

And they were all gay.

So although I was technically speaking the only woman present, I was certainly far from the only queen.

You see, those were the only men I could find in my new hometown of By George above a certain age who, like me, are unmarried, childless and therefore available to party the night away.

I was in bed by 1 a.m.

But actually, our low-key start to the New Year wasn’t the queens’ faults. I was simply knackered from old age a long year.

I was really not sad to see 2006 go. This is weird for me, because I’m usually such a sentimental creature, I can hardly leave a room.

I suppose when you’ve had as many New Year’s as I’ve had, the novelty is bound to wear off eventually. Besides, the entire holiday season brings out the annual performance angst in me. The pressure always seems to be on one to have to come up with something frightfully exotic (which by default happens to be frightfully expensive) to do in order to celebrate.

And if you’ve been a big enough sucker and you have been reading this blog for a while, then you should know that I’m not good under pressure. To put it mildly.

In South Africa, Christmas and New Year’s are summer celebrations. So unlike the wealthy Northern Hemisphere residents who tend to seek out the warmer climates to spend their holidays, the wealthy South Africans, I’ve learned, tend to head north in search of those magical White Christmases you northerners have been taunting our snow-deprived southerners with for years with your Christmas cards, movies and carols depicting and describing magical winter wonderlands while we stand by the barbecue under the scorching sun and sweat.

Hence I’ve had many recent conversations that went more or less like this:

Me: What are you doing for the holidays?

Other person: Oh, nothing special. We’re going skiing.

Me: Oh, fun! At Hartbeespoort Dam? (A lake near Pretoria.)

Other person (with disdain): Not WATER-skiing. SNOW-skiing. At the Swiss Alps.

And when they see the naked envy on my face, they ask smugly: And what are YOUR plans?

Knowing full well that I obviously don’t have any.

I hate the holidays just as much as a married man who is firmly in the closet must hate being with his wife: It’s just too much pressure to perform, to measure up to, to outdo…

So how did YOU all outdo me?