Is glass the new black?

It's Glass Week this week.
Yup this is where you come for random information such as this. 

No man, Glass Week, not Grass Week! Flipping reprobates.

It's a week when we're all supposed to celebrate the beauty of glass. Not sure we get to take off work for it, don't think it's thank kind of holiday. Yet.

Seriously, so let's raise our glasses to glass.

Whisky comes in it, so it can't be all that bad.

I've been noticing a new trend in gift giving.

Grab a jar, stuff it full of just about anything (marshmellow mice work really well), wrap a ribbon around it and voila, the perfect gift.

It's a glass half full situation if you ask me.

For animals or humans.
These are on my desk right now. Hello spring.

Happy Glass Week.

Does anyone know when Grass Week is? Or Weed Week, when's that?

Is Nicholas Cage the walking undead?

It has recently come to my attention, via @ClayElGuapo and this link, that Nicholas Cage might very well be a vampire from the 19th century, who will live for all eternity. Hopefully not always as an actor. If we're lucky he'll reinvent himself every hundred years or so and try his hand at something else. (Please G-d don't let him go into politics.)

This photograph was taken in the 1860's or 1870's and was recently put up for auction on eBay.

 

They say it's an original photograph and hasn't been photoshopped at all (but then I guess 'They' say a lot of things, so take it from whence it comes). But no, seriously I believe it to be true. The picture is said to be of a man who lived in Bristol, Tennessee sometime around the Civil War.

Uncanny, right? 

The man who was selling the picture had this to say:

'I collect antique memorial photography - images of dead people - from the 1800s. This photo was found in the very back of album that contained an unusual number of Civil War era death portraits (which is why I purchased it). All of the other people in the album, living and dead, were identified by name - this man was not.'

Another interesting tidbid, that came via @grondwerk (another good guy to follow on Twitter) is that in 1988 Nicholas Cage appeared in a movie called Vampire's Kiss in which he plays a man who thinks he's turning into a vampire.

Coincidence? I think not. That's vampire all the way.

It explains a lot actually.
Thank you for finding this @ClayElGuapo and sharing the madness via Twitter. 

  

Meeting the Fockers

Morning everyone, and happy Monday, bah humbug, back to work. But here's yesterday's column, incase you missed it and feel like a quick read. Hope you enjoy it.

A MILLION MILES FROM NORMAL – By Paige Nick

MEETING THE FOCKERS

Have you ever been in a relationship where you were more in love with the person’s family than you were with them? I once carried on dating a guy for three months after I decided to break up with him, because I liked his mom and his sister so much.

I think I spent much of those three months trying to figure out how to break up with him without having to break it off with them too. I told them it wasn’t them, it was him, and asked them if we could still be friends, but sadly it didn’t work out in the end. We’re still friends on Facebook, and we speak occasionally, but they’re not the sister and the mother they could have been had I just stuck it out with the guy. If only he and I hadn’t been so incompatible, then I’d still be together with his mother and his sister to this day, shopping and drinking tea, and doing all the fun stuff we used to do together. Ah the memories.

It can go the other way too, though. With this one guy I saw very briefly, I could tell almost immediately that his mom was more into me than he was. I think she’d just seen so many dodgy chicks get dragged through that door that the fact that I had a job and a car, and no tattoos on my face made her smitten. I think she would have married me, oops I mean us, immediately, if only she had the power vested in her.

But her son was never really that into me. I could feel his indifference from a mile away. Perhaps it was precisely because I didn’t have any tattoos on my face. Also I suspect it’s not so hot when your mom’s more into your girlfriend than you are.

Then there’s that other freaky thing that happens when you’ve been dating a guy for a while and everything’s going swell. That’s when he invites you home to meet his family. So you iron out your good behaviour and put on your Sunday best, with a million grand schemes of how you’re going to win them over. But then when you meet them they’re absolutely nothing like your guy, they’re awful. His father’s a little weird and has strange hair growth patterns, and his mother has the oddest smell about her and tongue kisses the dog at the dinner table.

You know it’s incredibly rude, but you can’t help yourself, so you struggle to find an appropriate way to ask if maybe he’s adopted? But you already know the truth. He’s theirs. So you spend the rest of the day eyeing out his dad, wondering if that’s what your future looks like.

I guess the old maxim is true, if you really want to know a guy, live through a bout of him with Man Flu, and meet his family. The way he treats his mom is a dead giveaway. If he steals fifty bucks from her purse when she turns her back, then you may not have bagged a winner. Or if she cuts the crusts off his sandwiches and strains his soup for him, then you’ve got bigger problems. Guess who’s going to have to take on that role down the line? It begins with a ‘y’ and ends with an ‘ou’. And I’m not talking about someone named Yolandou, that isn’t even a real name, I made it up, I’m talking about you, that’s who.

Meeting the folks can be scary. But whatever you do, don’t drink four double scotches and smoke a joint to help calm your nerves before you go. I tried that once, it didn’t end well.

Free stuff.

Meanwhile, over at the It's a Book Thing blog, they are giving away a copy of each of my books:

So be sure to swing by if you like free stuff.
Or if you like books.
Or if you like books that are free. And stuff.

Have a nice weekend.
x

Open Book Festival - Day One

Okay so I wanted to sum up day one of the inaugural Open Book Festival, but I'm crap with numbers, so I'll try do it with words. (Crap joke, right? Or is it funny? I couldn't decide, so I left it in in the end. Sorry if it's actually lame.)
Thought I'd briefly share some highlights.

First session was a group of local publishers talking about what how and why they're publishing.

There was a lot of talk about ebooks. It's not as cheap and easy as everyone thinks to make an ebook. It requires programming and renegotiating contracts and a lot of hidden costs in setting up the technical capabilities. But the good news is that all the local publishers seem to be on it, and making it happen as fast as they can.

As far as paper books go, the right book, with the right author is still selling. Killing Kebble sold out in four days.

Pan Macmillan Publisher Terri Morris says 2% of their sales right now are ebooks.
We can expect that number to rocket.

Another interesting thing from the session:

Despite the proliferation of self publishing, none of the publishers are seeing a drop in the number of manuscripts they're receiving. Pan Macmillan locally get about 400 of them a year, and very few of those actually get published.

They don't know whether iPads or Kindles are more popular in this country at this stage. We did a poll in the audience and it was about even. But lots of people aren't using their iPads for reading on.

Interesting stuff. That is if it interests you, of course. :)

The second session was the talented Lauren Beukes in discussion with Jane Bussmann, about her book:

It's about the atrocities in Uganda. What she writes about is appalling, but very very funny.

She intersperses politics with dick jokes, it's awesome.

She started out doing this as a serious documentary, but she says the trouble about writing about African kids getting kidnapped is that the broadcasters don't give a shit. Until you make it a comedy, then suddenly people are interested.

She's not scared of riding close to the edge. When she was writing for a TV show in Britain, one of the episodes she worked on was the most complained about show in history. It was about paedophiles.

You've got to love this chick. I'm on page 20 of the book and so far it's hilarious. I'll let you know how it goes.

She said that Los Angeles is run by pedicures and chihuahuas, and if they could vote a chihuahua would be governor. Hilarious.
And last session of the day was Steven Amsterdam in conversation with Damon Galgut about his book:

I made a point of reading the book before the session. And both were fantastic.

He was interviewed by Damon Galgut.

The book is sort of post apocalyptic, sci-fi, ish, but not really, cos I'm not a fan of sci-fi and I loved it.
As Amsterdam said he wanted to work through some what ifs. Like what if there's a pandemic. He says it's Sci-fi where everything that happens in the book is possible, no flying saucers. And maybe that's what I enjoyed about it. It's not sci-fi as I know it at all.

Amsterdam says that in his mind the book is a bit about what would happen if Y2K actually happened instead of just fizzling out.

Alright I won't bore you with this anymore. Needless to say, it's a good book and he's a great author, totally worth checking out.

If you're in the area Cape Town area between now and Sunday, it's worth checking out the Open Book programme over here.

Shoes, glorious shoes

I was wondering if Kobi Levi wants to be my identical twin, or if not, maybe my NBFF (new best friend forever)? No. How about if I adopt him? Or what if he just moves in for a bit? I'll take anything.

What a genius.

He's an Israeli designer, with a penchant for shoes.

And I'm a South African writer with a penchant for him.

Check out these shoes he makes:

Seriously. It's pure, beautiful, walking genius.

This one has to be my favourite.

Fuck I love him.

(Thank you Gem.)

Open that book

Why is this week different from all other weeks, you ask yourself. Well two reasons actually.

1) anyone in advertising is suffering from a monster post-Loerie hangover.
2) it's Open Book Week in Cape Town.

If you haven't heard, Open Book Festival is the first of it's kind here in Cape Town. It's the love child of wonderful Mervyn Sloman, owner of The Book Lounge, and Ben Williams, Editor in Chief and awesome nice great good fab bookie guy from Books Live. (I'm a fan of both, does it show?)

So I've taken the week off work so I can go to the events at my leisure, and I'm going to try blog about as many of them as I can. We'll see how we go. It's going to be a feast of books and reading and writers and stuff, and stuff, and stuff.

There are a couple of events I'm particularly looking forward to. Like:

- The launch of Mike Nichol's new book about the Dewani story on Sunday at 10am.

- Damon Galgut talking to Stephen Amsterdam on Wednesday at 8pm. I just finished his book, Things We Didn't See Coming, and it was fascinating. Quite post-apocalyptic and Road-esque in nature, so I'm looking forward to hearing what he has to say about it.

Ooh also looking forward to hearing James Clelland talk about his book Deeper than Colour on Friday at 12pm.

And really hoping I can finish Pulitzer Prize winning author, Paul Harding's Tinkers, before his talk on Thursday at 6. (I'm only on page 40, so I've got some work to do.)

So much to see, so much to read, so much hangover to get over before then. Can't wait.

If you're interested in checking out The Open Book Festival schedule, or booking tickets (which you should totally do, really, it's going to be awesome, you won't regret it, I swear) visit their site over here.

How many fingers am I holding up?

Happy Monday. Except for everyone who went to the Loeries Awards this weekend. Then it's a not so happy monday with a monster-sized hangover. Shhhhh.... okay, I'll whisper this column:

A MILLION MILES FROM NORMAL – By Paige Nick
HOW MANY FINGERS AM I HOLDING UP?

The other day I came across an article in the newspaper about a thirty seven year old Cuban man who was born with twelve fingers and twelve toes. His name is Yoandri Hernandez Garrido, although his friends call him 24, for short.

 I saw a few pictures; it’s all very neat and tidy. They’re perfectly formed, so you wouldn’t notice anything different at a quick glance, but when you look a little closer, there they are - six fingers on each hand, and six toes on each foot.

 Do you think he does more around the house than the average guy? I’d love to ask his girlfriend. He certainly wouldn’t have any excuse not to take out the rubbish, change a light bulb, or fix the dripping tap, it’s not like he’s got his hands full.

After being grossed out initially, I’m a little intrigued. I mean I already type pretty fast, but with an extra two fingers I’d be unstoppable! My latest novel, This Way up, has 335 pages, but with an extra two fingers I could have easily hit 400 pages. And I’m not much of a piano player now, but with two more fingers, can you imagine?

I wonder if this is all part of our natural evolution? It would probably be arrogant for us to assume that we simply went from amoebas to monkeys to our current human form and then stopped evolving. We’re not that perfect as we are, are we?

 I did read somewhere that we are already developing stronger, bigger, more flexible thumbs and fingers from all the texting and Play Station playing that we do as a species. So maybe this is just another one of the tiny little ways our bodies are changing to help us cope better with our lifestyle.

 I know most days I could certainly do with an extra arm, as well as the brain capacity to do more than one thing at a time. Just think, while typing this column (super fast with my additional fingers) I could have filled in my tax return with my third hand.

Who knows, maybe fifty or a hundred years from now, six fingers on each hand and six toes on each foot will be the norm, and people with only twenty digits will be so last century, and really crap at Guitar Hero.

Or perhaps I’m being incredibly gullible here and those images I saw of Mr 24 are actually Photoshopped. Maybe this is like people with three nipples, or people who win the lottery - everyone knows someone, who knows someone who has three nipples, or has won the lottery, but nobody’s ever actually seen it with their own two (or three) eyes.

I checked out Wikipedia (where else?) and unlike Polydactylism (when you have extra digits) which is currently quite rare, it turns out that having three nipples is pretty common. In fact Dr Wikipedia says they are diagnosed in one in eighteen men. Damn! I know eighteen men, I wonder which one of them has a third nipple?

For the ladies with three nipples (1 in 50) it must take the load off the other two when it comes to breast feeding, and it does provide more choices when it comes to piercing, so it could very well be part of the master plan of evolution.
 

If I could put in any other evolutionary special requests, I’d vote to evolve a slightly thicker skin. And an extra pair of eyes in the back of my head would come in handy too (although I’ve heard those grow naturally when you become a mother). Hey, I’m all for evolution, especially if it makes life a little easier, why not? I give it three thumbs up.

The Loeries 2011 - Night One Roundup

Okay, so that's the first night of the Loeries 2011 done and dusted... wait, quick body count... all parts seem to be present and accounted for. Except voice, which is all husky-like, from shouting to be heard over songs that seemed like a good idea at the time.

Kick ass art-director, Karin Bary McCormack and I picked up two bronzes this year. Both for Allan Gray. One for an outdoor campaign and the second for a royal wedding print ad. Hey I don't want to piss off the awards Gods by being greedy, we takes what we gets and we're grateful for it.

Not sure about the rest of you, but I felt a little disillusioned by some of work out there tonight. Of course there were the good bits, but some of the stuff between the good bits had me raising an eyebrow. Although the radio category was incredibly strong.

Here are some other awards that could have been given out tonight:

Riaan Cruywagen, you get a Grand Prix for Awesomeness. You were easily the best MC at any Loeries I've ever been to. My theory is that you have been cryogenically frozen, and get brought out for special occasions such as this. Otherwise your youth and imortality is inexplicable and a little creepy.

Famous lady I've never heard of before from the SABC, hosting with Meneer Cruywagen, you get a Silver for wardrobe. Nicely done. Although am I wrong in wondering if dress number two and dress number three were not perhaps the same dress, just with the one shoulder removed and a flower stuck in the waist? Either way, super job.

Riaan Cruywagen, you also get a Gold Craft for Writing, for the following joke. (Not verbatim, but as good as I can remember at 3am after a night such as this one.)
RIAAN: People often ask me who will replace me when I die. That's when I say, I'm never going to die.'

Andrew Human gets a Gold in the category 'Running a Tight Ship'. I thought it was so much better without all the entertainment segments. It was in, out, Riaan Cruywagen, I'm on a stage, boom, done, dusted, sorted, now let's go party goodness. Defs the way to go.

My cell phone gets a Silver in the 'Irony' Category for auto-correcting the word 'tonight' to the word 'vomitting' in a number of texts that I sent out. Not sexy!

Damian gets a minus bronze for somehow missing the ceremony.

The immensely talented guy who told me I've hardly aged at all, in all the years we've been in this crazy industry together, gets the Grand Prix in the category 'Stretching the Truth', Thank you, you rock.

And the very drunk guy who put my head in a head-lock till I did shots with them, wins a Gold Craft for being a very charming drunk, and still standing even though he'd been drinking since 9am.

Theo gets a Bronze in the 'Terrible Idea' Category for initiating the long, intricate discussion about dwarf/little people porn. I know at the time I said I was going to write a column about it. But now, in the drunk light of night I realise that was a terrible idea and I could never do it. Sorry.

Our Moe get's a bronze, no really he got a bronze, in the student category, for reals. Nice one Mo-mo, we're so proud.

Kate, saw your name up there in lights too. Nice one lovely lady.

And tomorrow night we do it all again. Once more, with feeling.

Sarcasm is the highest form of wit

It's friday.
Things are so crazy busy right now, it's ridiculous.

So it's the perfect day for Perfectly Sarcastic Signs. They come from this website, and they are pefectly, hysterically, classicaly sarcastic. I love them.

Have a quick scroll through, then fuck off and go back to work so you can have a weekend.

it says: Bill Posters is an innocent man. he he he.

I know. I barely wrote anything. This people, is a classic reblog. I simply copied and pasted it from somewhere else.

It's probably lazy, pathetic and useless of me.

But it's also farking funny, so too bad.

Happy friday lovelies. Now, back to work.