Chasing LOL – part I

So by now, if you know me, you know that i don’t really believe LOL is a thing.

Apart from someone in my close family who actually thought it meant ‘Lots Of Love’ and actually [true story] sent it to a friend via text who had just lost a family member, as in: i heard your dad died. LOL

But my basic theory is this: If you’re writing LOL [which, family member, stands for Laugh Out Loud] then you’re clearly not LOLing! Because who can type accurately if they are in fact laughing in an out loud kind of manner? [Most people i know shake, do you shake?]

Anyways, one person i know in life who regularly gets me to actually blatantly honestly LOL is my buddy, Dreadlock Mike, and i’m not sure why it is, but when we get together we both become little seven year old gigglers [do seven year olds giggle? whichever age that is, we’re them] which is why i love hanging out with Mike and recently it was Mike and i reading out Jack Handey’s that was bringing out the LOLs.

If you don’t know Jack Handey’s work, then it is my absolute pleasure to share it with you. Different people respond to different thoughts of his and so if you don’t like all of them, that is fine. i am going to post five today and if one of them brings you closer to LOLing than the others, let me know which one it was below…

The tiger can’t just change his spots. No, wait, he did. Good for him. [Jack Handey]

Whenever y read a good book, it’s like the author is right there, in the room, talking to you, which is why I don’t like to read good books. [Jack Handey]

Instead of a trap door, what about a trap window? The guy looks out of it, and if he leans too far, he falls out. Wait. I guess that’s like a regular window. [Jack Handey]

One thing vampire children have to be taught early on is, don’t run with a wooden stake. [Jack Handey]

It’s funny that pirates were always going around searching for treasure, and they never realised that the real treasure was the fond memories they were creating. [Jack Handey]

Which of those came closest for you? Or do you have a favourite Jack Handey? Share with us in the comments section and we’ll see if it makes it into the next episode of Chasing LOL… 

[For more Jack Handey love, check out Chasing LOL part II over here]

R2U2… or ‘d’ or something…

so friday nite there was a U2 concert or something, apparently.. you wouldn’t know by being on facebook at all – hardly a person mentioned whether they were going or not going or hating everyone that was going and kept reminding them about it or throwing their Steve Hofmeyer (very pricey tickets) into the Jukskei river (my favourite one) in protest…

and it’s weird cos ever since i knew U2 were coming to South Africa i was super amped to go – they are one of my top four bands (3 now that Tree63 are no more altho have Snow Patrol knocking on that door cos really enjoying them right now) but then when the tickets were released tbV and myself had just bought plane tickets to KZN so we would drive up to Botswana with our good friends Dreadlock Mike and Nancy the Twin and we couldn’t really afford both (not knowing what 2011 held for us incomewise etc)…

so i should have been more bummed or jealous or over the endless stream of statuses counting down etc etc but to be honest i wasn’t – i had actually agreed to speak at a camp for Rondebosch/Rustenburg high school CU groups this past weekend and it was only after meeting with the leaders of the camp and the other speaker (who said he couldn’t do the evenings so i was down for fri and sat nite speaks) that i discovered that the Fri nite was the U2 concert… hm…

and the whole way leading up to the concert i was somewhat convinced in my head that someone would offer us free U2 tickets (happened all around me) for the nite so my head went to ‘”flip, how do i explain to the camp people that i can’t speak on friday nite?” when the tickets come… and then i realised that there was actually no way out of it… and then quite soon after that i realised that actually i didn’t want the tickets to come…

now this is not anything against anyone who went to the U2 concert cos i am flippin stoked for everyone that went and it sounds like it was an incredible show and i am sure i would have loved it – there are some people, like my buddy Craig who is the biggest U2 fan i know, who i am toyoda’ly overjoyed that he was there and still need to hear from him how it was, and my brother and sister in law who got tickets a day before the concert as well, just flippin happy for them… but it was just the realisation for me (as not the biggest live concert guy ever) that for me, i was very amped that my friday was going to be spent with those school peoples at rocklands campsite in simonstown.

i didn’t get offered tickets so i never had to turn them down or anything like that but i had not doubt afterwards that i was in the right place. i don’t think God or those young people particularly needed me there (God could definitely have used a bunch of other people) but i definitely believe He did use me being there and we saw four girls make a commitment to follow Jesus for the first time ever and that really sealed it for me.

i was really encouraged by my good friend bruce collins’ (who was at the U2 concert in Joburg) story of how he was able to have some profound worship moments (during ‘Magnificent’ for example, one of U2’s most blatant lyric’d songs) during the concert and also the story he shared of the girl who got pulled up on stage and so for me it really doesn’t come down to going to the concert was less spiritual than not going to the concert or anything like that – for those who went and had an amazing time whether just a rad time with a favourite band or a great time with a non favourite band (Joel) or a spiritual experience, that is toyoda’ly cool… and for me it was the same not being there.

good weekend all round it seems. hopefully it was for you… as well…

botswanan reflections: a couple to follow

so blah blah blah botswana trip…

we went up with our friends dreadlock mike (dreads) and nancy the twin (twin) and two of their friend couples and i could possibly blog a lot about living with all three for the week…

but the one i want to briefly write about is a couple who were mike and nancy’s groomsman and bridesmaid respectively… a physio for the sharks and a high level manager type product control person for a cement company (and quite possibly not the way around you would expect them to be but both are doing brilliantly at their jobs)

brent and zeldy. married for three years. but together for eleven as they dated for 8 before that. but what a couple. i commented to val the one night that brent is just such a model of a servant in a marriage as i constantly would see him getting drinks or food or a chair or whatever it was for his wife, and not that it was a one sided thing at all (i think i just happened to more notice when he did it cos sadly it doesn’t seem to be like such a normal thing with guys, at least to the extent that i noticed it that week) cos zeldy definitely appears to be an amazing servanthood wife as well, but it was just such an incredible thing to witness

in galatians paul writes that ‘the only thing that counts is faith expressing itself through love’ and i think that describes what we saw of their relationship – both what we saw and what we heard about how they invest in other peoples relationships and make an effort spoke strongly of an active faith and reflection of God’s love to each other…

i really want to just honour them as a couple – we asked them if they fight and they said not really – they have disagreements and moments when one or both gets a little hard headed about stuff but “we worked out that stuff long ago”

in an age when strong marriages appear on the wane, it is exciting and worth honouring and uplifting and drawing attention to when we see those that are strong and worth learning from and so brent and zeldy, thank you for showing us what can and is being lived out.

botswanan reflections: dreadlocked humour

so we just came back from a trip to botswana with our good friends dreadlock mike (i call him that because his name is mike and he has, well, you know…) and nancy the twin (name is nancy and…) and friends and both of these incidents happened on either side of the botswanan trip, but they are related and quite funny so i thort i’d share…

the beautiful val and i fly up to the kwazulu of natal to connect with d mike and nancy tt and the plan is to drive to joburg, sleep over and then drive up to botswana together, meeting their friends on the way…

so as we are leaving kzn we stop at a pharmacy so tbv can buy some adrenalin to protect her from the deathly effects of being stung by bees and her and d mike are in the pharmacy while nancy and i head off to the atms to draw money (why do they call it drawing money cos clearly no drawing takes place?) and when we join up again, tbv has a story

the one old bat (no, really) behind the counter is looking at d mike and turns to val, who is waiting to pay, and says something about ‘wo, look at that hair of mankiness’ and so val responds, ‘that’s my friend’ and so the lady (in possibly a top ten of the all-time finest back-pedals) reresponds with, “oh i’m sure he must be a nice guy, but imagine making love to that hair” – this is like a 60yr plus lady – VERY funny…

then botswana happens and on the last nite as we feast on the most amazing (and cheap, from a place called all days on the way up to the bots) fillet, dreadlock mike manages to snap off and swallow one of his teeth (one of the two false teeth he has either side of his two main top row teeth) and so with dreadlocks and now missing tooth, when he does the mike redneck shoulder-raising laugh it is truly a sight to behold

we arrive back in durban on the fri nite and sat morning we head to the spca for a good breakfast (yes, yes, that sentence could be a blog in itself but this particular spca in kloof is like spca city so there is a restaurant and craft market and kareoke lady and a bunch of other stuff happening and they have a cheap slow tea garden vibe so we stopped for breakfast before the flight out)

d mike goes to the counter to order and the lady behind the counter looks at him and says, “how many girlfriends do you have?” [much funnier story when d mike tells it in accent] and he responds by showing her his wedding ring and says, “no, no, i’m married so there is just the one lady in my life” and she looks at him again and says, “no, i am pretty sure i saw you on Cheaters” and so d mike returns to our table with a very emphatic, “i need to get that tooth fixed!”

on a sad note, my hair was not quite long enuff for the dreadlocking of it by mike, so waiting will have to occur…

botswanan reflection: the animals

so the beautiful val and i just got back from a rad and timely botswana trip with good friends dreadlock mike and nancy the twin and also some friends of theirs (brent, zeldy, norm and kate) and have some incredible memories of a stunning, stunning place

we were really spoilt with the animal sightings – elephant (including the smallest baby elephants i have ever seen), giraffe, wildebeest (including the lesser known pussybeest and the lonely Nigel-no-friends who was always wondering around by himself while the rest of the herd was sneaking away over the hill somewhere), warthog, eland, kudu, impala, steenbok, ostrich, hyena, jackal (and very cute baby jackal who resemble paris hilton’s handbag dog), spring hare (which is a very boring name for the nocturnal cross between a rabbit and a kangaroo and one of the highlights of our frequent nite drives), zebra and tortoise, not to mention lion and cubs (which we got to see from uber uber close as they rested under a thick bush after a recent kill)

one of the highlights for me was seeing a jackal run past our vehicle with the complete head and neck of an impala hanging out of its mouth – nature in full 3D action…

armed with Gerrie the ranger (who can identify an animal at night purely by seeing the colour of the eyes shining back from the spotlight sweep across the bushes) we got to do early morning, mid-afternoon, sundowner and late nite drives and every day would see a new animal or new animal experience which we had not seen before (vultures – and friends – circling a dead hyena, elephants taking a mud bath, a jackal family with some very young pups, an empty tortoise shell) and just really soak up the beauty – and very green – that is botswana, or the part of it in the south-east that we were in anyways…

blessed are the retards…

for they will be seen as human!

i’m not sure why i was thinking about this today but i was driving back from dropping off our recycling (oh wait, it just hit me, never mind) and this thort came in to my head – i wish that i knew how to relate to handicapped people better

when i was a little kid my folks used to take me to this place called the Avril Elizabeth home once a week where they would sing some songs and maybe do a talk for a whole bunch of kids with various handicaps (or whatever the politically correct word for handicaps is these days but, you know) from physical to mental and i would love to say that those visits paved the way for me to grow up as an adjusted young man, able to connect with, understand and love those people, but it didn’t

it freaked me out. a lot. and thinking back i think it was purely because the whole thing was not explained to me. i think my parents were incredible for going week after week and really just trying to share God’s love with a bunch of people that for the most part the world has rejected, ignored or forgotten (or at the very least, snuck quietly into the corner) but i think it would have made a complete difference if they had sat me down at home and explained the whole thing – i think the assumption was that exposure would be enuff (and i think for a lot of people it is) but for some reason it just didn’t click with me and so i saw them as freaks, as weird, as… let’s be honest here… retards…

and i REALLY wish it had been different… but now i stand (well sit) behind my keyboard (yup, definitely sitting, otherwise my neck would be messed from all that downward stretching) and i am sorry it didn’t work out differently – because i still struggle to feel comfortable around those who are physically/mentally different to me in such an extreme way and i want to be able to shed all those child-enforced-and-learnt responses and just be amazing with them

the one thing i do remember is the nurses, who were amazing with the kids – and the majority of them i recall – if not all of them – were black nurses and this was mid 1980’s – and just remember seeing such love and acceptance and complete utter treatment of them as humans… and not lesser humans, and certainly not retards – maybe apartheid could have been ‘pulled’ a whole lot earlier if a bunch of stupid white leadery people had had the chance to sit and observe those nurses for an hour a week…

my friend nancy the twin (and her sister mary the twin) who recently got married to dreadlock mike (Zanzibar, it is!) has a brother called Simon who is different in some way and he was in top form at the wedding and an absolute pleasure to watch – he was sitted right next to the podium where the speeches happened and any time someone got going on a speech he would start clapping and it made me think of the Oscars, when someone is talking too long and the music starts to play – come on Simon, it’s your cue, send them awaaaayyyy…

and i think i’m getting better, cos i didn’t run and hide every time Simon was near, which was a lot cos i think he digs me and was following me and staring me down a lot, and i really enjoy him, altho still feel awkward and weird and like i don’t get it a lot of the time…

but he is not a retard! he is the brother of two good friends of mine. and that makes him my friend.

if he’ll have me…

dreadlock matt (well, not yet)

so this past weekend and a bit myself and tbV were hanging at the house of dreadlock mike who got married to nancy the twin on saturday in an incredible ceremony and all and we had the most amazing time chilling at his folks house with richard and anita and little matt who is not so little

in fact, matt is one of the biggest little guys i have ever met – kind of like a non-famous boy version of dakota fanning – just been raised so incredibly well and such an amazing young dude – and it was an absolute blast hanging with him and having fun – i think he is 8 years old and he plays a mean piano – i taught him a duet while we stayed there (teaching him the second part just last nite) and on the way to his dad driving us to the airport we get a phone call and matt and his mom (who he taught since us leaving the house that morning) played us the duet over the phone which was on speaker – a priceless moment indeed

in fact sat nite when the wedding reception was winding down i grabbed matt outside who had refused to come and be cool and dance with me earlier and carried him inside and did one man two man tango with him across the dance floor and then swung him round in the air and we got much applause and crowd appreciation from those still around – lesser mortals would have been well embarrassed i think but matt just vibed

so cheers little guy, thankx for letting us move to your room (not sure how much choice was involved but you didn’t come and shave our heads while we were sleeping) when our room was causing killer hayfever vibes and for hanging and pianoing and car-racing and just being a complete vibe – you are going to grow up to be a huge (in heart, spirit and achievement) guy just like your big dreadlocked brother who i really dig…