Few things suck more than someone taking the drama out of your dramatic exit. Picture this scene-that-you-will-never-see-in-a-mexican-soap:

Gorgeous girl, dressed to kill, pouting at the doorstep with suitcases in hand: I’m leaving!

Gorgeous boy with his head in the newspaper, not even looking up: Bye

Yeah, I feel a little like that today. I mean at least act like you’re going to miss me. It’s been four years, how now? All you can do is ask if you should forward my mail?

Le sigh.

Anyway, in other news.

♫♫♫♫

A pal mentioned in passing that a lot of people *cough*cough*.ke crowd*cough* misuse twitter. It was initially meant to be an information resource. Like the FB status but without all the annoying quizzes and sponges. It was meant to answer ‘what are you doing’ in a quick and timely way.

At some point it morphed into ‘what can you do’ and people started to use it to market and spread news, with funky tips, adverts and RT links. I get all my news from twitter, including the passing of MJ, Patrick Swayze and  bunch of people who I should know but don’t, kina Charlie’s Angels Celebrity Lady, the one with the pretty name.

Plus it’s a great place to find out about safaricom and zain’s latest offers. It’s thanks to twitter that I joined Super Ongea and that 3 bob calling tarriff thingie. Plus the whole Mercs vs Passats, unlimited bandwidth [yay!] and my first freelance writing job – all found on twitter. So for me, twitter is a pretty nifty newsfeed, without all the classified fluff.

But mostly – for me at least – twitter is about friends. Not necessarily the kind of lasting bonds that people lose arms over, but the kind of ‘let’s hang out on saturday’ thing, where people make dates and use 140 character updates to tell each other where they’re sitting. Twind dates so to speak.

At some level this sounds odd, but since online hookups are becoming far less … unusual, it makes sense to use twitter that way. When I first heard about this couple that met on Second life, dated, fell in love and married, I chuckled. Especially since the groom moved halfway across the world to live with his bride.

But wait, it gets worse.

After she twice caught him canoodling [I like this word] with some girl on Second life, she divorced him. Yep. Note that he did not meet the girl online, call her, get her into his wifey’s house and do the dirty. Nooooo. What happened is wifey came home from work, found hubby drooling at a computer monitor where the online version of himself was doing the nearly-nasty with the online version of some girl.

Now get this clearly. Second life is a virtual reality game where people hang out. You go on there, create an avatar, and then do stuff. You can hang out in the virtual mall, watch virtual movies, go on virtual dates, the works. You can even use real-world money to buy virtual land and clothes. You can use your actual credit card to buy a virtual pair of jeans in a virtual Woolworths [though why anyone would want to do that mystifies me] Your avatar can take some other person’s avatar on a date to a virtual McDonalds and stuff like that.

This may sound silly to the average person. But if you met your husband on Second life, then went offline and married him, then finding the same husband in a virtual jacuzzi with a virtual girl, you can reasonably deduce signs of a co-wife, yes?

My two cents? Before you wear the actual ring, do a virtual marriage for a bit. Go the the Second life vegas and do a virtual nuptial. Of course the downside is there isn’t [as] much fun in virtual sex.

But I digress. My point was, we use twitter more as a mixing-work-and-play tool. We are at work and we get to hang out with our buddies at the same time. Or we are lounging at our respective digs while at the same time having a mass party on Chuki FM or in Milo’s kitchen or wherever the latest bash is at, which is pretty cool. We get to be in lots of different places at the same time, and whenever we like, we can take the party offline for a shot of twitbowl or twitpool or MAMAs or even Just a Band.

I don’t think that’s what the original twitter-people had in mind, but it’s a pretty nifty mutation, no?

♫♫♫♫

On an actual note, the LOA involves a lot of self deception. It’s all about the power of the mind. If you’re tired and you tell yourself ‘I feel great’, you will notice that your spirits rise considerably. Especially if you put some spirit into the words. It’s hard at first, but it gets easier with time.

Thing is, sometimes I’m just fcuking tired, and I just want to declare that I am fcuking tired. But then, after I say it, then what? I don’t feel any better declaring that truth than if I had lied about it and said ‘I am a human gummibear, I never tire, oxygen is my juice’. Now that makes me feel better. Even if it is a lie.

So I suppose the real trick in LOA is to monitor my thoughts. When the thought ‘I am so xyz’ comes to mind, before I decide whether I will say it or lie about it, I should change it.

Suppose the thought ‘I’m bored’ comes to mind. Before I speak it, I might think of stuff that excites me, like soap bubbles. Or I could picture myself popping bubble foam [Fun!] Then instead of saying I am bored, I could say ‘Ooh ooh bubbles’. I wouldn’t be lying, and I wouldn’t be bored anymore.

Hm, I like this idea. Hope I can remember it.

Feel free to ignore everything after ‘On an actual note’, since it assumes you belong to my cult: the crazy reincarnating creatures of zombieville. Our motto —> nobody dies, we just change form. *cheeky grin* For more information, consult Neale Donald Walsch on Google.

Off to find me some bubble wrap in my happy place.

♫ Get you in ♫ Better than Ezra ♫

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First things first

In my baby’s eyes, I can do no wrong. She thinks I am superwoman, I have all the answers. When she breaks her dolly’s head, she thinks I can fix it. When her playmates have a fever, she thinks I can heal it. When people are sad, she wants me to make them smile again.

Yesterday I went home sad, and my little one asked me why. I told her my friend was mad at me. She asked me why, and I told her a half-truth. I told her it was because it was his birthday and I had not called him, and so we had ishana-d friends.

My baby, in true mummy-worship, decided that the only reason I could possibly have for not calling someone on their birthday … is that I was broke. She suggested I send him an email explaining that I had no credit in my phone, and that I would call when I got credit. Then she said we should pray for my friend to forgive me, so we did.

Dear God,

Please help my mummy

Please help her friend to forgive her

Please tell him she doesn’t have credit in her phone…

At that point I had to stop her. I had plenty of credit in my phone. Telling my baby a little white lie is one thing. Telling God a massive whopper is something else entirely.

I am not looking forward to the day when my baby realises that I am not perfect. I can’t stand the idea of looking into her pretty little eyes and seeing disappointment, shame, angst … or worse.

Secondly

In the first episode of Scrubs, JD walks into the hospital all idealist-intern-like. He meets the boss doctor – I forget his name, and Boss Doctor is all sweet and polite to him. Then he meets the cranky-Doc-with-the-hot-ex-wife who constantly belittles him. Cranky Doc then informs JD that Sweet Doc is the antichrist.

JD of course doesn’t believe him until he does something stupid and Sweet Doc shows his horns. JD then stands in a corner, utterly bumbwazzed and asks himself  a question. In every situation, there is yin and yang, he and she, good guy and bad guy, angel and devil spawn. So if Doctor Sweetness is really the antichrist, then who is the good guy?

Then he turns and sees Doctor-how-could-a-man-s0-cranky-get-a-wife-so-hot and gets this light bulb moment, except it’s not a light bulb, it’s a red neon sign screaming WTF?

[Well no, that doesn’t actually happen. It might have, in Ally Mcbeal]

So that’s my week in a nutshell. I’m staring at my Doctor Sweetness, who has turned out to be Doctor Evilhorns, and wondering who the fuck is the good guy in all this? Would you stand up and wave already? I have Samantha Mumba on speed dial. What. I do. On a call-back ringtone thingie.

Number 3

Every once in a QLC you find out stuff about yourself that you don’t really like. I recently found out that the general consensus among my K15 is that I am a flirt and a tease.

And this week I found out that I am considered a gossip as well. In the sense that it is believed that I enjoy talking about other people’s private lives. I don’t believe that is true, not for a second. But I do know that I am curious and dramatic, and that I link things in my mind. So I will start out telling you a story about why I can’t get a glass of milk.

See, we had a blackout, and the power came back, but the thermostat is broken. My fridge has this weird thing it does where it grumbles and gets hot and cold, like Katie Perry. The lady who sold it to me, she has green eyes and four kids, gorgeous babies, except the last one, he has a limp. What happened is he got into a fight at school and his leg broke, and his mother asked me to recommend a good doctor, so I told her about Dr Shivji. He’s the one who treated Princess when she grazed her leg running after that boy who hit her in the bus.

In telling you about my milk, I have just compromised the fridge saleslady, her four kids, my daughter, her paeditrician, and some random boy who can’t express a crush. Oh, and Katie Perry. I haven’t even gotten to the milky part yet! That, ladies and gentlemen, is called gossip.

I hate gossips.

But wait.

As of today, i AM a gossip.

Sigh.

The people’s court, like the Press, rules. And the people’s court is adjourned.

It makes me think of this person that I know. He’s very close to me, and is sort of the family historian. He knows everything about everyone in the family,  sort like an organic facebook. If I want to know who’s moved, who earns what, who has a new girlfriend, who’s cheating on their spouse, he’s my first port of call.

But after a while I realised that whatever I tell him goes into my OFB profile, and is then available on demand for everyone else. So I stopped telling him stuff. I still used him to catch up on my relaz new phone numbers and stuff, I just stopped updating his CB folder.

This person is a lot like me. I confide in my friends a lot, but they rarely confide in me. I always assumed it was because I don’t ask. After all, I don’t like to pry. I figure if someone wants me to know something, they will tell me.

Except they never do.

Maybe they realised they have a page in the CB file, and that since I am an open book, they are not safe with me. Hmm. Scary thought that.

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Disclaimer: … can’t think of an appropriate one *grin* But it’s only 10.00 a.m. on Monday morning, so no, I am not high. Maybe it’s the full moon, it is Halloween after all.

Time travel.

Let’s assume it can be done.

Now, let’s assume that you got a message from your soulmate telling you they miss you, and they love you, and they never meant to fall for you. You started out as friends, but one day you crossed out of the friend zone, and now you can never go back. It wasn’t planned, it just happened. You receive the message now, when you are still in the friend zone, when you have not yet confessed your true feelings.

What to do? Why did he send you the message? Is he sorry you became more than friends. Is he warning you not to cross the line? Is he saying he wants to go back in time? No wait, he has. Can he really change the future? Has he changed it simply by sending you the message? What happened in the future after he sent it? Did he wish he hadn’t sent it? Was he drunk-messaging?

[And would this make a good love story?]

Will I be with him knowing how badly we will hurt each other, and how much it will tear us apart? Will I stop it before it even starts? Is that what he wanted? Is that why he sent me the message?

What matters more to me – keeping my heart safe, or sharing a lifetime with him? Because in the brief time we will be together, we will be so happy that we will change the world. And then the love will destroy us. Is it worth the intensity of pain that will come?

And now that I know it is coming, can I stop it?

Am I overthinking things? [Don’t answer that.] Where do dark thoughts come from? Are they premonitions, possibilities, or the results of staying awake till 5.00 a.m watching the X-Men?

Some days, it’s really scary being me.

In other news, it is probably not a good idea to eat strawberry popcorn and watch all Six Star Wars in one sitting. First, because strawberry popcorn sucks. And second, because you will end up thinking  Darth Vader is not so bad after all. He only turned evil to save his wife from dying – the end justifies the means, yes? Still, it’s pretty disturbing when the evilest pop villain ever turns human. It’s like discovering Sirus the Virus likes lollipops.

No, not those lollipops. Real lollipops, with sugar and whistles and gum in the middle.

Ok, this isn’t helping.

Come to think of it, more people dress up as Darth Vader than as Luke Skywalker. Think maybe it’s coz Luke had such terrible hair? Or is it just cool being shiny black, deliciously evil,  and sounding like James Earl Jones?

Why can’t I stop thinking like this?

It sure is scary being me. Must be Halloween.

PS: Megan Fox for Modesty Blaise – somebody start a facebook group already. I’m just saying.

Edit:

I think best when I think out loud, and so I am grateful for people [and blogs] that let me. I must conclude, or I will go mad, and it’s only Monday.

Like attracts like, negative thoughts attract negative thoughts. Thoughts of loss attract more thoughts of loss, sometimes in self, sometimes in others.

Every time I like someone, I think about what it would be like to marry them … and lose them. It’s almost masochistic. I sit and get lost in my daydreams, imagining all the ways they could hurt me, playing out vivid scenarios of them cheating on me, or catching me cheating and killing me, or going mad and attacking me, or catching Ebola, rabies or High-Five. Mind you, this is before we even get together, usually before they even know I like them. Interesting.

So perhaps the message from the future was not a message from the future at all, perhaps it was simply my consistent thoughts of loss drawing on his own thoughts of loss.

For some reason, that makes me feel better. By letting out the fear, we become aware, and we are better able to deal it when it comes. If it comes.

Suddenly I feel better. Yay!

Off to find something else to worry about *cheeky grin*

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