Updated to say: I think you should please go and vote here instead of in my comments. Don't even scroll down on the other site. Just look at the stars and mouse over them to rate my story. When you give me a rating, it automatically registers the click as a vote! Not as labour intensive as it sounds. Honestly.

Warning: The following is an attempt at creative writing. And if you have been one of my imaginary readers for long enough, you should know by now that I have enough trouble with the assembly of a coherent sentence without even attempting to get all creative about it!

So what has possessed me to try now? Well, a contest of course! This particular contest was initiated by Accelerate Cape Town. It is called The Perfect City Challenge and contestants have been asked to come up with their own idea of Utopia. It is hosted by this amazing site and there are some cool prizes up for grabs, including free blog hosting, of which my broke self is in desperate need! (Could that qualify me for a sympathy vote?)

Yes, you see, dear imaginary readers, I need you for this one. The prize will be awarded to the entry with the most votes. In typical Redsaid style, I have waited until THE VERY LAST SECOND to enter, as per usual. So apart from my lack of skill, which puts me at an obvious disadvantage, I am also late in the race. (Yeah, I never was very good at politics. Or punctuality, for that matter!) So you have only today (NO PRESSURE!), Friday, 24 August 2007, to cast your vote for me. Of course, as soon as you follow the links to the other entrants, you could come to your senses and vote for one of them instead. Whichever way you choose to tip the scale (Towards me! Me! Meeeeee!), I’d like to pretend to be gracious and say, win or lose, thank you in advance!

Enough procrastination, here goes with the entry. (Try not to gag until you’re at least done. Of course, you could always just skip it and go right to the voting bit, which I believe is conducted by just leaving a comment here saying, I vote for you, or something to that effect. Not that I’m trying to put words in your mouth (mouse? Fingers?) or anything…)

My Perfect City.

The city of my dreams has the seductive romance and chic of springtime Paris; the dizzying dazzle of Rio de Janeiro during Carnivale; the year-round pulsating vibrancy of New York City; the distinguished and stately air (that can’t even be drowned out by the constant drizzle) of foggy old Londontown; the distinct and oddly delightful neon kitsch of the Sunset Strip in Vegas.

It hums to the rhythm of the beat poets of San Fransisco; to the jazz splashing out of the Bourbon Street bars in the French Quarter of New Orleans; to the intimacy of a late-night band moaning out a sensual tango in a tiny club in Buenos Aires; to a haunting Puccini aria soaring up from a stage Vienna; to the Islamic muezzin melodiously beckoning the faithful to prayer in Mecca; to the contagious laughter of happy people, young and old, anywhere in the world.

My perfect city has the tapped potential of an Oscar winner in Hollywood; the intellect of a Harvard graduate; the creativity of Leonardo da Vinci. My Utopia is beautiful, yet its beauty isn’t without flaws, for flaws, after all, are what lends character to people and places. It is as safe and comforting as a mother’s embrace, as welcoming as an old friend, as comfortable to be in as a favourite pair of jeans.

Every morning, it flings open its windows and doors to a new, sun-drenched, wind-swept, or rain-slicked day. Commuters and tourists hop on and off the efficient, punctual and fast public transit system – rides are free within city limits. Telecommuters who wish to get out of the house for a change of scenery set up shop at the charming sidewalk cafés, benefiting from the city’s free wireless and uncapped (uncapped!) fast (100 gbps) broadband Internet connection.

The architecture is diverse and interesting and steeped in history – or, if the buildings are modern and new – the stories behind their design. No more mind-numbingly boring carbon copied houses and buildings like those found in suburbia.

However, without the people living, working and loving in its buildings and moving through its streets and parks, the city would be a mere ghost. Therefore there are no abandoned buildings. No deserted alleys. The people are everywhere, all the time. Cyclists zoom past on the city’s winding bicycle paths. Others simply walk, and not just for the sole purpose of getting exercise. No, they walk (or jog, or rollerblade), simply because it is futile to resist the urge to be swept up in the energetic vibe of this city.

Children play safely in the parks – fragrant, lush havens throughout the city. At every park, street artists vie to show off their skills, leaving onlookers gawking in amazement. Grinning dogs strain at their leashes while walking their owners through the parks, on the sidewalks and on the beaches.

Entrepreneurs and artisans sell their wares at bustling, colourful markets. Housewives shop for fresh produce and use the time to linger, chatting with neighbours and vendors.

There is a library in almost every neighbourhood. They are free to join and open seven days a week. But for those of us who simply can't resist owning yet another tome, there are plenty of interesting little bookshops to feed the addiction. (And hopefully, an insatiable hunger for knowledge and books will be the only thing associated with the word addiction!) In my city, books are cheap, untaxed and in abundance.

Schooling is free in the city, and the standards are high, because in my dream city, teachers (and policemen, paramedics and nurses) are paid more than rock stars.

In my ideal city, residents promptly receive all their mail. It is delivered to their doorsteps, six days a week.

Every night, as the sun drowns somewhere beyond the far reaches of the ocean, my dream city dons a glittering gown of winking lights. Electricity is plentiful and cheap and generated by solar power and unobtrusively placed wind turbines. Buildings are sufficiently and inexpensively heated and cooled when necessary.

The streets are swept clean before everyone goes home. (Not that anyone in my dream city litters!) And in my dream city, everyone has a home to go to. There are no more homeless people. No more shabby street urchins. No more prostitutes. No more souls decaying in their own despair. There are no more chokingly, smoky, dangerous slums or depressing shanty towns. Proper homes – albeit modest and small – have been erected to house the poor and the formerly homeless.

The sweet, heavy scent of freshly-made coffee and newly-baked bread wafts through the streets of my dream city. It mingles with the spicy, mouth-watering aromas of the cosmopolitan cuisine being cooked up in homes and restaurants. No one in this city ever goes hungry. No citizen is without hope.

Some might scoff at this description of the Utopia of my imagination. They might tell me that developing such a place would be impossible, impractical, illogical.

However, if those naysayers would only take a closer look at our very own Cape Town, they would see that the possibilities to make that city even greater are endless. It already has so many of the qualities that I have described. In many respects, I believe it is South Africa's version of Paris, San Fransisco, Rio, Buenos Aires, London...

Yet Cape Town is no cheap imitation. It is utterly, divinely, unique. With the buildings and people nestled safely below her ample, mountainous bosom - often modestly covered with a cloudy shawl - she lives up to her nurturing title as South Africa's Mother City.

... If you'd please vote for me!

Amazingly enough, the entertainment and gossip blog I've been writing for since last year has been nominated for a 2007 South African Blog Award!!! (Yes, I know... there's absolutely no accounting for taste. Luckily for me!)

The competition is as stiff as this woman's husband (and you thought I was macabre?!? At least my first love was only comatose, not dead! Do you think she refers to him as her 'deadbeat' husband? And does this make her a newly wed-ow? Well, at least he won't snore, right? He might hog the remote when rigor mortis sets in though, so I'd advise her to pry it from his hands as soon as possible!), so we really need your votes. I believe today and tomorrow are the final days of voting - of COURSE I had to procrastinate asking you guys for help - so please hop on over to this site, scroll down to the Best Entertainment Blog Category and go give Jetstreaker a vote? Only one vote per e-mail and pc, so vote from as many different pcs... I'm KIDDING!

Anyway, if you DON'T vote for me, I'll be fired.

Okay, not really, but while you are voting, you might as well vote for my boss too. Accomplished creature that he is, he has been nominated in several different categories!

Thank you in advance, and if we win, I promise to reward you by not writing on here for a while.

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!

Today on Jetstreaker, in a post entitled, Fascinating Flashes, the Out and Proud edition:

"According to Timbaland, the hip-hop producer who performed a duet with Justin Timberlake on the singer’s popular single SexyBack, the song will make men gay. Timbaland told Blender magazine: “Some people listen to a song like ‘SexyBack’ and think, am I queer? Am I funny? If you are that way, you’re just that way. But if you’re a masculine man, embrace it.”

We had to try it, so we picked the place where the most homophobic men were assembled, and we subliminally inserted SexyBack in a Steve Hofmeyr track played during the rugby Currie Cup finals on Saturday. For the rest of the weekend, Bloemfontein resembled San Fransisco during the height of the Gay Pride festivities. Tough farmer types, who think romance with a woman is wham, bam, and not even thank you, ma’am, suddenly got all touchy feely and were openly embracing other men. So it is true. Justin Timberlake is the new Cher."

I'm having the best time at this gig! Should work really be this much fun?

My dear Redsaid the blog,

Oh, my little darling, I'm so sorry that I've been neglecting you so! I know that even at the height of my laziest blogger days, I used to pay much more attention to you! I promise I have not ventured out to redder pastures, even though the other blog that has been taking up my time lately DOES have a distinct red hue.

Anyway, thing is, unlike with you, I'm not a single parent anymore. I'm raising this other blog, your half-sister, with a guy. And, typical of so many men, he expects ME to change that baby blog several times on a daily basis. (But then, in all fairness to him, he DOES put the coffee and the food on the table! So I really don't mind doing the rest.) And since I've been faithfully doing that, more than once a day, I'm actually beginning to suspect that maybe being a two-partner team in raising and nurturing a blog isn't such a bad idea!

I want you to know though that I'm NOT done with you. You will always be my first baby and if you and our three imaginary readers will bear with us, you might just be as frequently updated as your sister one day. Or, all right... at least once a weekday then.

By the way, I haven't told you much about your sister yet: Her name is Jetstreaker.com and she is all about gossip and the upperclass (and those on their way to serve them champagne!).

She's not a snob though. Rather just a bit cheeky and opiniated. She already has many male followers, because she frequently provides pictures of sexy bikini-clad models and other celebrities. But she has plenty for the girls too! And even though she gossips about international celebrities, she also really likes to chat about what fellow South Africans who are notorious or famous for something, get up to.

When I introduced her here for the first time, some of our less-imaginary readers responded to our call and actually went over and left comments on her! So we'd just like to say a heartfelt thanks to them.

Anyway, Jetstreaker and her dad have, through their unfathomable faith in me, actually made me believe in myself a bit and I'm slowly starting to think that just maybe, I can be a professional writer again after all.

As you know, you and I have been through a lot. In fact, our lives pretty much began unravelling a year ago and I (and subsequently you as well) were plunged into the indigo depths of depression and the mute sadness that goes along with it.

Every day, with their help (and the drugs!), I'm getting a bit better though, and that depressed girl, the unkempt one who wears black a lot and skulks in the corner, is showing up less and less...

On the ominously dated 06/06/2006, in the murky shadows below Table Mountain, two South African bloggers had a clandestine face-to-coffee-cup meeting. (He had the handsome, open face; hers remained hidden behind a large coffee mug, because THAT is how seriously she took the fact that it was a secret meeting!)

That get-together was long anticipated. From the time, way back in 2004, when his site had been the first to pop up when she sat in front of a computer far away in the United States and searched for ‘South African Blogs.’

He returned her first, awkward comments on his blog with gracious comments on her own infant site and continued, for some reason still completely beyond her, to remain a loyal reader, egging her on with his words of encouragement.

Forward to her homecoming to South Africa and that meeting.

And now the result of that above-mentioned meeting held on that demonic date can at last be revealed and introduced to the world: This new website.

Please read it, link to it, graffiti its URL on to walls and overpasses. And if you comment enough, I could even get some money for the gig!

So, when you leave lots of comments, please don’t forget to ever-so-casually mention that you just adore the writing! The design too, of course, but ESPECIALLY gush about the writing!

On the ominously dated 06/06/2006, in the murky shadows below Table Mountain, two South African bloggers had a clandestine face-to-coffee-cup meeting. (He had the handsome, open face; hers remained hidden behind a large coffee mug, because THAT is how seriously she took the fact that it was a secret meeting!)

That get-together was long anticipated. From the time, way back in 2004, when his site had been the first to pop up when she sat in front of a computer far away in the United States and searched for ‘South African Blogs.’

He returned her first, awkward comments on his blog with gracious comments on her own infant site and continued, for some reason still completely beyond her, to remain a loyal reader, egging her on with his words of encouragement.

Forward to her homecoming to South Africa and the above-mentioned meeting.

And now the result of that above-mentioned meeting held on that demonic date can at last be revealed and introduced to the world: This new website.

Please read it, link to it, graffiti its URL on to walls and overpasses.

And, when you leave lots of comments, don’t forget to mention that you just adore the writing! The design too, of course, but ESPECIALLY gush about the writing!

No, no... don't worry. In my ongoing quest for a career I've NOT decided to venture into politics, so you needn't start making plans to leave the country a.s.a.p.

I do need your vote, though.

It turns out that I must know someone influential somewhere in South Africa, because I've been nominated in three categories (but one is for the design of this blog, which I had nothing to do with, so that nomination is rightfully hers) for the first ever South African Blog Awards.

If you're so inclined, you can please vote for me, once a day until this Friday, March 4, over here.

Please, please PLEASE don't make me beg!

UPDATE: Final day! I've changed the link after some confusion and it should now take you straight to the voting page instead of the page where all the nominees were just listed and linked. You can cast your vote until 5 p.m. EST today!

Regular posting continues below.

I don't know if it's the accents (yes, plural, because as he has pointed out before, thanks to 11 official languages in South Africa, there are many ways to skin a cat and even more ways to pronounce it), but we "Sefrikans" make the most marvellous meanies.

You see, the newest villain to mastermind attrocities against the United States on this season's "24" is played by a South African-born actor named Arnold Vosloo.

And I couldn't be any prouder!

It must've happened due to the outcome of the election.

But whatever brought it on, the condition is very real and quite grave. Take it as a warning and don't let the same thing befall you.

And you might just get a super cool gift: