Slow news day

Hey all, happy Moanday.
Here's yesterday's column. Hope you enjoy.

A MILLION MILES FROM NORMAL – BY PAIGE NICK
SLOW NEWS DAY

You know it's a slow news day when this is the big story: ‘Scientists discover century’s most boring day.’ I tore this article out of the newspaper a while ago and I've been meaning to write about it ever since.

Basically, to summarise, a bunch of scientists got together and decided to feed 300 million facts into a computer so that they could come up with the one day in the last century when the least happened.

Now I don’t know for certain, but it’s my guess that back when some poor schmuck spent his entire youth holed up in his parent’s basement, building a computer, I don’t think this was quite the use for it that he had in mind. Surfing porn maybe, inventing Wiki-leaks perhaps, Google stalking your ex, definitely, but playing spider solitaire for three hours straight, or calculating the most boring day in the century. Definitely not!

In fact, I think that had he known that this is what we would be doing with his work all these years later, he probably would have been out there getting laid and smoking pot, like everyone else, instead.

So back to the scientists. It turns out that The World’s Most Boring Day was a Sunday. The 11 April, 1954. Remember it? No, I didn’t think so, there’s not that much to remember.

On this uneventful day 57 years ago, there was apparently:

- A general election in Belgium. (Yawn.)

- The death of Jack Shufflebotham, a footballer who played a few games for Oldham. (I don't mean to speak ill of the dead, but it doesn't matter how fancy you spell it, it’s still pronounced 'shuffle bottom'.)

- A planned coup in Yanoan, a French Colony in India, which never quite got off the ground. (Hence you never having spent any holidays taking photos and buying souvenirs in the bustling metropolis of Yanoan.)

- And the only birth of any importance on that day was that of a microwave electronics expert, named Abdullah Atalar. (Hold me back, all this excitement might kill me.)

You have to wonder, doesn’t that team of Cambridge scientists - some of the greatest minds of our time. Men and women who have collectively spent years, decades even, studying to become world-class scientists, researchers and doctors - don’t they have anything better to do? Because if they're sitting around bored, surfing the net, trying to decide what to work on next, there's always AIDS or Cancer they could look into, I'm just saying.

You could also argue that the day they decided to figure out what the most boring day was, could have also been a pretty good contender for the most boring day itself. There couldn’t have been anything good on Television. And guaranteed it wasn’t in the month that the latest Sports Illustrated Swimsuit edition was launched, or during The Super whatever, footie season or Wimbledon.

The article ended with this gem, '...The irony is that this day is interesting for being entirely boring.' Are you still with me, or did you nod off there for a second?

Here's the whole article, unless you're already bored to tears with it.

Go away, I'm reading.

My good friend, The Design Goddess, sent me this a while ago:



I seriously love it.

It reminds me of these paintings I saw in Amsterdam last year:



I apologise for the bad quality of the pics, but the art was on the inside of the gallery and I was on the outside.



I would have bought one or two or three of them, but I only saw them the night before I left the city and the gallery was already closed.  

So they will forever live on in my memory, instead of in my lounge, where they belong.

I was going to review a book in this post, but work has piled up and to tell you the truth I haven't quite finished reading it yet. So anyone else want to review a book? What are you reading right now?

I'm busy with this: 

review to follow at some point in the hopefully not to distant future

Have you read it yet?

And then when I'm done these are some of the books I've got lined up, just begging to be read:

This last one I borrowed from my friend and colleage 'Big Mike Dallas' because I've been wanting to read it for ages, so when he told me he had it I begged him to loan it to me.

But now I'm kind of regretting it, because it's the first time I've loaned a book from him, so I want to establish myself as a 'good book borrower', but suddenly I'm innundated with a pile of work and other books I HAVE to read first. Sods-fricken-law, right.

Now he's going to think I'm one of those 'bad book borrowers' who takes forever to return books, and cracks the spine. Damn!

You have books to read, you say? Right, one cold and rainy weekend coming up.

Cats that sit like humans

I've long suspected cats.

Of what? You ask.

Oh so many things.

A hunger for world domination for one.

Most of the time they're just too aloof to be trusted.

Eddie Izzard does a great piece about cats and how they're not purring behind the couch, they're actually drilling for oil. Okay it's funnier when he says it.

Anypurr...

I'm a big fan of Graham Norton, and he recently had this website on his show.

It's a blog full of cats that sit like humans.

Here are some:

All he's missing is a beer in one paw, and the remote control in another.

That one above is after a couple too many Johnnie Walkers.

See, if he isn't after world domination, then what? Look at those eyes!

Waiting for his dinner.

Sitting on his hands. It stops him fidgeting.

He looks like he's been busted watching cat porn! Or as they call it, pussy!

Meow!

Where have all the bad asses gone?

Hello internetweb-world. Hope you had a good weekend. Here's yesterday's column, should you find yourself placed in front of your computer with a cup of tea and two and a half minutes to spare (I timed it). Hope you enjoy.

A MILLION MILES FROM NORMAL - By Paige Nick

WHERE HAVE ALL THE BAD INFLUENCES GONE?

I was at my sister’s house on the weekend and kids, aged six and four, were watching TV. By that I mean they were lying with their heads as close to the TV as they could get. Their eyeballs literally inches away from the screen. That’s what kids do.

They were watching something called The American Kids Choice Awards 2011. I’ve never heard of it before, but apparently it's like the kid-movie Oscars. The audience is full of screaming kids with ADD, ADHD, DKNY and Justin Bieber haircuts.

I only watched half of one category (any more and I would have had to kill myself). I caught the first half of the Favourite Actor in a Kid’s Movie category, which was presented by Steven Tyler and some other lady kid-movie celeb type person. I think the award went to Johnny Depp (yay, hot) for his role in Alice in Wonderland.

Wait, Steven Tyler presenting an award at a kiddies show? Is it just me, or does anyone else think he’s sold out? It just doesn't seem right! This is the man who headed up Aerosmith – isn’t he supposed to be hard core? He is a rock star after all. He's been touring for centuries. Shouldn't he be off snorting coke with hookers, shagging groupies, and smoking a pack a day? He was the guy you wouldn’t leave in alone in a room with your daughter, even just while you popped to the loo for a minute. And now here he is presenting at the Kids Choice Awards!

The pre-award-announcement banter that I saw was incredibly awkward. In fact, at one point I think he actually read his line, and then went on to read his co-host’s line too, by mistake. He probably couldn’t see the teleprompter properly without his specs on.

I was surprised enough when Steven Tyler became a judge on American Idol, it kind of felt a little mainstream for him at the time, but now this? My theory is that he’s either suddenly changed publicists, or he's run out of cash. One or the other. Hip replacements and orthopaedic shoes don’t come cheap, you know.

What's next? Is Anthony Kiedis, front man for The Red Hot Chilli Peppers going to do a voice over in Disney’s remake of Winnie the Pooh? Is Keith Richards going to endorse a range of sneakers with roller skates in them? Is Pete Doherty bringing out a children's book?

What's happened to our rock stars? Have they gone soft on us? Where did all the bad role models go? The-bat-on-stage-eaters, the TV-out-of-hotel-window-throwers, the get-naked-then-arrested-on-stagers? All we’re left with is the crazies like Lindsay Lohan, Charlie Sheen and Lady Gag. It seems to me that these days the kids are more badly behaved than their role models.

When I was a kid you watched Alice Cooper and Ozzy and you thought sheesh, I don't want to end up like them, and you dug their music, and you partied hard, but you never took it further, that was their job. These days the role models are so squeaky clean, the worst thing they’ll get you to do is get a bad haircut, or make a sex tape.

Where are the new bad asses? The Sid Viciouses, Iggy Pops and Marilyn Mansons? Even Madonna was rather bad in her day. And what about Courtney Love? She was a mess.

What motley crew is going to shave their heads, vomit on stage, and do drugs now? Since all our bad-ass role models have either gotten clean, or, well, old?

The Royal Tannenbaums

When my first book, A Million Miles from Normal, launched about a year ago, my good friends, the fabulous Tannenbaums sent me this:

Brings new meaning to the term 'His and Hers'. They're a very clever couple, the Tannenbaums.

You've got to love it.

Now with the launch of the new book, they sent me this:

There have clearly been budget cuts, that and it's winter, any excuse to cuddle!

Love you loads Tannenbaums. Hope you enjoy the book.

Share nicely now.

What do you call your vagina - the names pour in.

Two weeks ago I wrote this article for The Sunday Times, it's about how I struggled to find appropriate names for my character's penises and vaginas when I wrote my latest novel, This Way Up.

There are plenty of names out there for our organs, don't get me wrong, but none of them really roll nicely off the tongue - words like 'guava' or 'pork sword' just aren't particularly literary, so I struggled a bit when it came to writing the sex scenes - 'he touched her on her quim' just doesn't sound particularly romantic.

Anyway so I've recieved some great emails from people with their own takes on what we should call our thingies.

Here's one from Kabza who is hilarious:

Reading the above article in your life style edition(May 8) got me laughing and I would like to share some of our kasie names for our members.


Penis - fourfive/njompi/vuvuzela
Vagina - kukunas/khekhe/khekridge or even biscuit


If you go to the loo for a number 1 its called six-nine."O shapa six-nine" meaning u r urinating.
Ta
Kabza

See, as my good friend Wallace always used to say - every day is a school day.

My personal favourites are 'Vuvuzela' for the penis and 'Biscuit' for the vagina.

Brings whole new meaning to 'blowing your vuvuzela', and 'having tea and a biscuit'.

But I have a question, Kabza, why 'fourfive'? Is that the length in feet and inches?

The Google mail goggle

Morning all, here's yesterday's column, hope you enjoy.

PS: I spent the weekend at the Franschhoek Literary Festival, it was flipping fantastic.

If anyone out there reading this happens to enjoy weekends filled with books and bookie stuff, conversations about everything under the sun (did you know that the loose skin at your elbow is also known as your 'wenis'*) {true story - Edyth Bulbring told me, and she knows everything}, too much good booze, too much good food, and a fat laugh - if those kinds of things are high on your Maslow's Hierarchy of needs, then I highly recommend next year's festival.

* [hence the term 'wenis rape' is when you bash/poke someone with your elbow repeatedly.]

okay enough of that, here's yesterday's article:

A MILLION MILES FROM NORMAL – By Paige Nick
THE GOOGLE MAIL GOGGLE

Do you know what a ‘Beer Goggle’ is? I’m sure you do. But just in case you aren’t a reprobate who hangs around with a bad crowd, and are instead a fine, upstanding citizen who pays your TV licence, flosses regularly, recycles and looks both ways before you cross the road, I’ll fill you in.

The beer goggle is a phenomenon whereby when a person drinks a certain amount of alcohol, it almost immediately distorts their perception to such an extent, that it makes people of the opposite sex, who they would never normally be interested in, look way more attractive than they actually are in real life. So for example, once you’ve put on your beer goggles, a person who would ordinarily only rate a four on the International Scale of Hotness, will suddenly come in at a solid nine. It’s quite a well-known phenomenon in reprobate circles, and it’s actually how 60% of the world’s ugly people manage to get laid as often as they do.

Alcohol, you’ve got to love it. Our judgement really isn’t what it should be after a couple of drinks. Dodgy pavement boerewors rolls that you wouldn’t eat if you were a contestant on Fear Factor, suddenly look and smell gourmet after half a bottle of scotch.

And nothing like a couple ten drinks to make you do something you’ll most certainly regret in the morning. Like drunk dialling for example. For some reason when you’re drunk, it suddenly seems like a really good idea to email, call or sms someone you shouldn’t and tell them exactly how you feel about them. Of course your sober-self will fight as hard as it can to stop you, but unfortunately drunk-self beats sober self every time, leaving sober self to pick up the pieces in a haze of loser’s regret the following morning.

The only thing drunken dialling/emailing has ever been known to result in is lost jobs, the walk of shame, or the morning after pill. There are very few ‘happily ever afters’ as a result of drunk dialling, texting or emailing, that I know of.

But don’t worry, all is not lost. Now, as a further service to mankind (as if predictive Googling wasn’t enough) some rock star at Google invented ‘Mail Goggles’. It’s a free service you can activate on your Gmail account that kicks in late at night and on weekends, which will put an end to dangerous drunken emailing once and for all.

This is how it works. Once you’ve activated Mail Goggles, your computer won’t let you send out any emails until you’ve solved a series of five mathematical equations in a specified amount of time. (You choose the difficulty level of the equations when you activate the service.)

So last weekend I activated it and then I went out drinking to test it on your behalf. (I decided to set it to ‘beginner’ because I’m not very good at maths, drunk or sober). Here is the kind of exchange you can expect from your computer when you try to email your ex at three am on a Saturday morning, after six double whiskies:

COMPUTER: ‘Are you sure you want to send this mail? Answer these simple math problems to verify:

69–14 =

ME: Ummm, fifty something?

COMPUTER: 69-29=

ME: Wait, I know this one, I know this one. Thirty… *burp* Oh no, I should never have eaten that boerewors roll!

COMPUTER: 48-17=

ME: That’s a trick question; everybody knows 48 doesn’t go into 17!

COMPUTER: 47+13=

ME: Orange?

COMPUTER: 39–11=

ME: …. (cricket, cricket) …

COMPUTER: Oops, looks like your reflexes are a little slow. Try again later.’

ME: What do you mean my time is up? Hey, how do you order another drink on this thing?

I can report back that no matter what swear words you use, or how hard you bang on your keyboard, you’ll still have to wait till the sober light of day before your computer will let you try send your email again.

We may not know what’s best for ourselves after a couple of drinks, but thank goodness Google does.

You've got to love some of these letters

I get THE BEST letters every week following my Sunday Times Column. Most Monday mornings, after having a good moan, and feeling miserable for a bit (it is after all a Moanday) I open my Gmail account with a feeling of pure expectant glee.

And this week was no exception. This one is a beauty. Here's a link to the article we're discussing, in case you missed it.

RE: Trying to be helpful
Dear Paige

I read your article “ A thingy by any other name “, in the Sunday Times Lifestyle magazine with interest and fully understand your dilemma. May I respectfully point you to a book I have now almost forgotten completely but can still remember only the title “Memoirs of an Oxford Scholar”. In this book the author referred to a woman’s vagina as “Venus mound”. This only came to me reading your article. If I remember correctly he/she had other such words for the male etc.


I hope this helps and good luck in the future with your endeavours.


Regards
Nick
Honourary Member
University of Life
 
Ah Nick, your letter was a rare pleasure. (I particularly loved your sign off) I shall Google 'Memoirs of an Oxford Scholar' with a view to buying at least two copies (in case I accidentally drop one in the bath - don't you hate it when that happens!) 'Venus Mound' is a classic.
 
A blog reader named Sensuelle swung by and delivered this next bit to the comments section of the blog post, and it's so good I have to share it with you. Sensuelle and her friend brainstormed some new names for the vagina and the penis, with a view to finding something a little more romantic/literary/pleasant-sounding. 
here's what they came up with:


• apricot of love
• bred 'n' butter
• warm embrace
• puffin' muffin
• sin cushion
• velvet vessel
• butter churn
• strumpet crumpet


This one is awful…
• puckered purse of passion


and the absolute worst:
• love strawberry (a seedy name!)


For penis, we thought of blowing the
• kugel bugle

Our favorite,
For women:
• her nectarine


For men:
• his creamsicle


Sorry, Paige. After stirring the, er, pot, I may never be allowed to write another word. Oh dear, a spanking may be in order.

Sensuelle.

I must say for me, my favourites have to be between 'sin cushion' (genius!) and 'apricot of love' (so funny)
But sadly, as much as I love all of them, we may have to keep on looking. I'm just not entirely sure that , '...He ran his fingers over her nectarine...' will work so well, unless the next book I write is a cook book!

Here's a tip...

Tipping these days is complicated.

I'm a big tipper myself. Partly because I spent much of my youth as a waitress and partly because I'm so bad at maths that i generally just do a big round up in the waiter's favour.
Here's an awesome new tumblr site, that's quite funny.

It's called 15%.

and here's their vibe:



Click to enlarge

 

You can go there and upload examples of bad tips you've been lucky enough to recieve. Like this one:

What kind of knobhead only tips 79c?

Shame, I guess this douchebag could only afford a 2 buck tip on a 74 buck bill, cos he needs all his money to go buy a new pen. (And maybe some generosity?)

Tipping, it's such a strange thing. You tip a car guard, but not a paid security guard. You tip a waiter in a sushi restaurant, but not the sushi maker?

And then of course there's the whole tip based on performance thing, which adds a whole new level of confusion.

And the hairdresser? Don't even get me started. Who do you tip? There's the hair washer, the hair dryer, the tea maker, the ghd-er? And what about the actual hair dresser? Who gets the tip? Just one of them? Or all of them? And if that's the case do you divide your original tip into four, or do you have to up your tippage? It's all very complicated.

In my mind, the only good tip is that you should look both ways before you cross the street, floss regularly, drink whisky, and figure the rest out as you go along.

What do you call your vagina?

Morning team, how's everyone today? Here's yesterday's column. Hope you enjoy. Oh and Happy Mother's Day for yesterday for all you Mums. You rock!

(Oh and public shout out to mine, love you mum, you're amazing. xxx)  

A MILLION MILES FROM NORMAL – By Paige Nick
DOES YOUR VAGINA HAVE A NAME?

Vagina. It’s not really the most romantic word in the English dictionary, is it? Not that ‘penis’ is that much better.

I recently finished writing my second novel and for the most part, writing the sex scenes was excruciating. Partly because I kept imagining people I know, like my mom or my work colleagues or clients reading it and immediately assuming that’s how I have sex. But it was mainly excruciating because I kept running out of things to call my character’s private parts.

The problem certainly isn’t that we’re lacking in synonyms. There are plenty of those. In the penis department there are literally dozens of names for your ‘thing’, ranging from words like ‘dick’ or ‘dong’, to the more scientific, like ‘lingam’ or ‘phallus’, and even sillier names like ‘John Thomas’, ‘todger’, ‘stiffie’ or completely ridiculous terms, like ‘pork sword’, ‘love monster’, ‘joy stick’, ‘love truncheon’ or ‘trouser snake’. There’s also the ever popular ‘Manhood’, but I just couldn’t bring myself to use that.

And of course there are a ton of names for the vagina too. Among others there’s ‘guava’, ‘poon tang’ or ‘yoni’ to choose from. And the ever hideous and unacceptable ‘C’ word, which is too loaded to even type out in full.

But let’s be honest here, there’s nothing very sexy or romantic about any of the words in either the male or female camp, and none will do anything to make my writing more lyrical. In fact, they’re all pretty awful and I shudder to type most of them, particularly the female ones. For some reason they just feel completely silly, totally derogatory, or really disgusting. And the last place you want to gross somebody out is in a sex scene.

So when I was writing I would get as far as ‘he ran his fingers over her….’ and then I would freeze, type in a word. Blush, backspace delete it. Try another word, then hang my head in shame, and delete that too. I felt like as soon as I thrust any of these terms into the scene developing on the page in front of me, the sex I was writing about instantly became less romantic and actually quite hard around the edges (no pun intended).

Some guys out there like to name their Willies. Like if a guy’s name is John, he’ll call it John Jnr. Or if your name is Richard, you might call it Little Richard. I once dated a guy who called his thingy ‘The Beast’, I kid you not!

So for a while I considered doing that in my novel, letting each of my characters name their sexual parts. But that got a little creepy when it came to narrative, for example, ‘… She felt his ‘Mr Happy’ pressing up against her.’ just doesn’t work at all. And another problem with that plan was that women don’t really name their vaginas, well none that I know of anyway, that seems to be purely a guy thing.

Then for a while I was tempted to just leave blank spaces in the book, where the words should be, and leave it up to the reader’s imagination, but my editor wasn’t having any of that. So in the end I took a deep breath and used a handful of choice synonyms a couple of times. But more often than not, to keep things tidy, I avoided naming my characters sexual parts altogether. Like when you bump into someone whose name you think you remember but you’re not sure, so you do the safest thing possible, which is to not mention any name at all.

Granted, it’s the coward’s way out, but really, what other options did I have? Quim certainly wasn’t going to cut it. It’s just not that kind of book.

*Paige Nick’s new novel – This Way Up – is now available from all good bookstores and http://www.kalahari.net/, pulpbooks.co.za etc.

And it looks like this:

Beyonce fail

This is Beyonce in her gown at The Metropolitan Museum of Art's Costume Institute Gala Benefit (try say that ten times fast) earlier this week. She went with hubby Jay Z.

 

It's an Emilio Pucci creation.

Here's the back:

Here's the front:

Gorgeous dress, right?

Except....

There were stairs at the function. And the dress was so tight she couldn't walk up the stairs and had to be physically lifted up the stairs by Mr Z and an assistant in unglamorous clothes. The paparazzi proceeded to have a good boo at them because they wouldn't turn around and pose nicely for the cameras. They were too busy trying to leverage her up the stairs.

Hmmmm.... wardrobe malfunctions... only fun for the people watching.

Bottoms up at the launch of This Way Up

So my new book, This Way Up, was launched at the wonderful Book Lounge in Roeland Street on Tuesday night.

If you haven't been, and you like books, I highly recommend it. (My bank manager would tend to disagree, but don't listen to him, he's a complete shoe and book bigot!)

So there I was sitting up on the stage next to the ever-gorgeous and fabulous Sarah Lotz (here's photographic proof:)

That's Sarah on the left, me on the right.

And she was grilling me furiously on writing This Way Up, my life and influences - you can always count on a crimi writer to get to the bottom of things. Speaking of the bottom of things, we were about four minutes into my grilling when Verushka, the superhero from The Book Lounge (who organised the whole event) crept up to the stage and handed me a little handwritten note, scribbled on a small scrap of paper.

I stopped mid question and ran my eye over the note.

I panicked and looked up.

The audience were looking back at me curiously.

I had no other choice than to readjust how I was sitting, and then read the note aloud.

Here’s the note:

Fan-fricking tastic. It doesn't get more glamorous than that! 
(*note to self: learn how to sit up on stage in a dress, without said dress riding up too high!*)

Liesl Jobson is a master photographer and is the amazing woman from bookie webiste BookSA, who had kindly come to take some pics of the launch. She took the amazing pics from last year's launch too. But last night she clearly got more than she bargained for. That's why some photographers ask for danger pay!
Kudos to her for a) taking amazing pics, and b) not showing anyone my panty!

I think it was a really cool launch, with a lot of laughs. I'm told the snacks were fantastic (thank you Verushka), the whisky was smooth (thank you Johnnie Walker), and I threw in a bit of panty, just for good measure!

This Way Up, is a romantic comedy about Stella, who manages to get herself in an awful lot of trouble in a very short amount of time. She's a sex agony aunty for a trashy magazine, when all she wants is to be taken seriously. She's also a newlywed, and one of pair of twins, from a bit of a big, crazy family. And to be honest, she really doesn't know which way is up!
It should be available at all good book stores from this week. (R200)

At the same time, double celebration, because we also launched the reprint of my first novel, A Million Miles from Normal at a smaller size and with a new cover (R130), which should also be available from all good book stores. It's a fun, light read about Rachel Marcus, a Joburg girl who finds herself living in New York City, trying to make sense of a life that is literally a million miles from normal.
Here are both covers, one more time, just for good measure, and so that you can read the back cover blurbs should you feel the desire. Just click to enlarge.

Thanks to everyone who came, supported and had a couple drinks, and have bought or will buy my books, and thanks to Penguin SA, especially my fearless editor, James, and Mervyn and Verushka and the team at The Book Lounge, and to Sarah Lotz and to brave Liesl Jobson and Ben at BookSA and to my family and all my friends - real, virtual and imaginary - your support and encouragement helps make the words come.

 
And now we wait for people to read it and hope like hell they like it!

Big bookie news

It's time.

Deep breath.

My new book is launching today. Tonight actually, at The Book Lounge in Cape Town. (5:30 for 6, if you're in the hood)

Eeeek! It's farking exciting, but manages to be excessively nerve wracking (nerve fracking if you live in the Karoo) at the same time.

Right so here are some details.

The new book is called This Way Up, and here's the cover:

 

What do you think? Like? No like? I like (but then I may be biassed).

It's not a sequel to A Million Miles from Normal. It's a whole new story about a couple of women who really don't know which way is up.

It's a fun romantic comedy that I really hope you'll enjoy. *She says desperately crossing every crossable appendage*.  

Here's the back cover, so you can read the blurb, if you want to know what it's about in a little more detail:

Click to enlarge

And here's the whole cover back to front (only appropriate considering the title) so you can get the full effect, sorry I know I'm a bit like a parent with a newborn, just altogether far too keen to show pictures of the same thing from every angle:

If you manage to pick it up (it's not all that heavy, so you shouldn't have a problem) be sure to let me know what you think. The only people who have read it so far, as far as I know, are my publishers, amazing editor, James, and Sarah Lotz, who I'll be chatting to at the launch, so I'm nervously keen for any and all feedback.

Also, in other exciting news, A Million Miles from Normal has gone to reprint at a smaller size (smaller price too), with this spanky new cover:

What do you think?

It is also available at all good book stores, just in case you haven't read it yet, and the urge strikes you.

Today is a big, but very happy day. xxx

r u marry me?

Sunday's column (illustrated). Hope you enjoy.

A MILLION MILES FROM NORMAL - By Paige Nick

R U MARRY ME?

We all have our distractions. One of the things I do when I'm supposed to be writing, is play backgammon live on Facebook. I warn you, it's more addictive than crack. And I'm not just saying that, I've tried both and crack is way easier to give up.

You play in real time against people from all over the planet, racking up tokens that aren't worth anything in real life, but have somehow suddenly become more important to me than air.

I think you'll find, as I have, that it's a great tool for missing deadlines and falling behind on, well just about everything else that you should probably be doing that has any real social, physical or financial value. I should know, I’ve got a new novel due out in a couple of weeks, so I’ve been spending an inordinate amount of time at my computer for the last forever, and in that time I’ve managed to rack up well over five thousand tokens. That’s just under zero Rands!

You can even play against real friends if you’ve got any, and if you can get it together enough to both be online and in the same virtual game room at the same time. But it’s a bit of a logistical nightmare, so most of the time it's just you and a bunch of complete strangers from Kazakhstan or Burundi, or Mongolia or Albania or wherever.

There's also a handy chat function so you can chat to your opponent while you play. I've found that much like real life, there are two kinds of people online - the chatters and the non-chatters. It's kind of like when you’re on an airplane or getting a massage. Some enjoy a bit of a chat to help the time pass, others not so much.

Me, I'm not much of a chatter in those situations. Particularly if it's early in the morning. Or mid-morning. Or just after lunch. Or early evening. Or late at night. I once spent the first few hours of an international flight pretending I didn't speak a word of English (I made up some kind of unintelligible sounding Russian), so that I didn't have to chat to the lady sitting next to me. It was the perfect plan until the stewardess came around with the dinner trolley and asked whether I wanted chicken or beef and I answered her in perfect English before remembering I was supposed to be Russian. In the end I got the quiet flight I was hoping for, although it was slightly icier than I would have liked.

A while back, faced with an extremely urgent deadline, I found myself playing backgammon online against someone called ‘Tuna’. (That’s nothing, I once played against Michael Bubble and another time, against Ervis Persley, you see, you never know who you might run into.) All I could tell from Tuna’s profile was that he was a 30 year old man from Romania. I wonder if 'Tuna’ is a common name in Romania, like their equivalent of Johan or Sipho?

Mid-game it became clear that ‘Tuna’ was a chatter. This is how the conversation went from start to finish, verbatim:

‘TUNA: r u marry me?’

No hello, no how are you! No where are you from? No are you a boy or a girl? No capital letters or fully spelt out words. When I ignored him he added:

‘TUNA: i’m engineer – shareholder a company – sax player – sky diving…’

Well that’s a bit better, I thought, at least now he’s telling me a bit about himself. I mean if I’m going to marry this guy, these are definitely a few of the small details I’m going to need to know.

People are getting stranger by the second, particularly online. What is this guy’s thought process? That somehow from this tiny bit of contact with a complete stranger, we’ll live happily ever after together? And if he really is an engineer, company shareholder, and sky diving sax player, you’d think there’d be women lining up over there in Romania, like the queue outside the girls loo at a concert, begging to marry him, and he wouldn’t have to proposition perfect strangers on the other end of his internet connection, who apropos of nothing, just happen to be whipping his ass at backgammon at the time.

I wonder if Tuna is his first name or surname? Hmmm Paige Tuna, it’s got a certain ring to it, don’t you think? At least I know we’ve got a hobby in common, and that’s a lot more than I can say for some of the guys I’ve dated.

Angry Malema take two

Some months ago I blogged about Angry Malema - a website type meme thing, that made me laugh so hard, I thought I heard a rib crack.

And now this:

Created by @petergreenwall (and retweeted by @terrylevin) oh my goodness, it just gets funnier and funnier the more I look at it.

That poor little girl.

And shame the bridesmaid doesn't look very happy either.

Oh man, you've got to love a meme

comes from here: http://bit.ly/kFAy7s (also via @petergreenwall  on twitter)