Tag Archive: no_bob


the theme was a day in the life of me, and to a large extent this is what a regular day looks like: hanging out with my beautiful wife, looking deep and contemplative in many different ways and poses, messing around with technomology, being different in some way, playing some kind of sport, game or improv to the full [sometimes resulting in africa shaped injuries], appreciating bobblehead [or 3D] Hulk, taking time to worship God in nature or other ways, and more posing and deepful contemplation… only thing missing from this day is some food appreciation…

[For the previous Photo Challenge with the theme of ‘Future Tense’ click here]

this week’s challenge is a little more vague than normal which is great cos it allows for a wider scope of creativity and so i came up with these two pics which for me contain the idea of ‘Future Tense’

first up, the world’s most famous stuffed dolphin whose name is No_bob [i was going to call him ‘Bob’ but he doesn’t bob hence the name and the lack of a huge number of entrants in the ‘stuffed dolphins of the world’ category means i can be pretty convinced that he is it] sticking out of my jacket pocket [which was taken at a Christian worship camping weekend called Namrock, held in Namibia].

he’s in a pocket so clearly he’s going somewhere – this is a temporary picture, promising something more – a journey perhaps, a destination not yet discovered, the moment of reveal… whatever it is, it gives the whiff of something to come which creates intrigue, mystery and suspense. and besides i just really love the pic:

namrockno_bob

and the second one is taken on the deck of a restaurant on the outskirts of Austen, Texas, when my wife the beautiful Val [tbV] and i were visiting my older sister and her family… the day slowly drawing to a close, some form of conversation or ‘just being’ happening and in the background the sun begins to set, letting us know that this day is being brought to a close, but another day will surely follow… again the expectation of what we see in the photo leads us on in our minds to continue the story and imagine for ourselves what possibilities may life ahead…

sunsettexas

 

[For the previous Photo Challenge with the theme of ‘Lunchtime’ click here]

pearls before winners

yes, yes, you know it – favourite cartoon strip blah blah blah Pearls before Swine… this one being incredible both for the humour but more importantly for the invention of the word “winnery”

pearlswinnery

[join my PBS campaign – for years now i have been subtly trying to encourage Stephan Pastis, creator of Pearls Before Swine to add a new character – that of a yellow and white stuffed dolphin called No_bob [because he doesn’t bob] who is not real [he’s just a toy so pretty much just lies there] to no avail… why not drop him a mail or a tweet @stephanpastis and suggest the very same thing yourself… he’s got to crack soon…]

Latest challenge on WordPress: Many of us think of our lives as boringly normal, while others live the high life. Take a step back, and take a look at your life as an outsider might. Now, tell us at least six unique, exciting, or just plain odd things about yourself.

# i like to drink Top Deck chocolate from the bag – second best option is breaking chunks into smaller pieces and microwaving, but a far higher and i honestly believe tastier method is to leave the slab on the dashboard of your car in the sun or on a window sill til it melts and then make a hole in one end and drink to your heart’s content – INCREDIBLE!

# i like to bend the english language to my will as i posted about here. i spell some words differently on purpose like ‘thankx’ and ‘thort’ and use a minimum of capitalisation and promote some nouns into adjectives which i promote to verbs which i promote to nouns and so on. i think i came up with the saying ‘vibing a vibe.’

# as a hobby i occasionally put together short video clips for a made up you tube show titled ‘Dangerous Things You Can Least Expect’ – while the majority of people who watch them seem to think they’re pretty funny, they have not come close to going viral yet and sit more hesitantly at a spot i would assume they call ‘virus’ rather. my favourite one at the moment is probably the latest one i did on sax and violins but i guess other people didn’t think so as much cos at the time of going to press it has only had around 218 views.

# i have a yellow and white stuffed dolphin called ‘No_bob’ [i was going to call him ‘Bob’ but he doesn’t] – in many places around South Africa he is more famous than me – i used to feature quite prominently on the local Christian speaking circuit for youth groups and on two occasions i was introduced and about ten people clapped and as i started speaking i introduced No_bob and when i took him out of my pocket a good third of the room [few hundred people] started cheering. people try to convince me that No_bob used to be blue but he wasn’t. people will probably swear he was but i have pictures from the time when i won him on the pier a Brighton. a Cape Town Christian punk band called Serving Suggestion performed ‘the No_bob song’ and it became one of their most popular songs…

# i hate raisins with a passion – no i mean REALLY, not just like you pretend not to like them but you will eat them only by themselves, or only in things. i mean i started the ‘i hate raisins’ group on facebook, i once went with a friend to a park at night and burnt a bag of them just to do the world a favour. i have recorded two songs so far titled ‘the Squishy Fruit Conspiracy’ and ‘Sultanas’ which was a parody of the old Snow ‘Informer’ song…

# the word is traffic circle. if you enter at one point and leave before doing a full 360 degrees then what you have taken part in is called a traffic semi-circle or a half-moon or something. if you are going to insist on calling it a ‘traffic circle’ then like me you must go THE WHOLE WAY ROUND and usually not just once cos you have to make sure… three or four times is fun with first timers while the record with a full combi and trailer at the big Free State circle is i think 13 times with petrol attendants standing cheering at the side of the road and overall it is the 53 we did in Stellenbosch after cell group one nite. like a record playing, right round round round.

honourable mentions must go to biting people [which i used to do the first time i met people as a sign of affection, but the older it gets the creepier it gets so i’ve largely stopped] and cycling the 109km Argus cycle tour in either pink tights or fish net stockings [best way to keep yourself cycling when going up Suikerbossie – no ways i’m getting off in front of those crowds wearing pink tights!]

just a regular normal guy, really.

Famous stuffed dolphin No_bob encounters famous Petronas towers

a few years ago i attended a youth conference in Malaysia and so naturally i took the world’s most famous stuffed dolphin, No_bob [I was going to call him ‘Bob’ but he doesn’t bob] with me… this picture in front of the Petronas towers signifies the tourist experience for me – feeling very very small in front of something that is very very big – new language and culture and people, experiences and food all loom big against the smallness of who i have become while visiting and the fame of my most famous thing [No_bob] is as nothing to the enormity of my situation…

this was all reinforced by the absurdity [to me] of this ‘Forbidden Fruit’ sign we saw in the entrance of the hotel we were staying at – the one apparently banned due to its incredibly overwhelming stench and the other because of the stain the juice of it leaves behind which is near impossible to remove…

and lastly, this sign we saw on a train amused me no end… clearly everyone had heard of the recent kissing epidemic in Kuala Lumpur where people would just randomly lock lips with strangers for hours on end and this train’s manager had a strict “Not on my watch!” policy, although we never could quite understand the penalty for breaking this particular taboo… [the writing accompanying the signs being all in Bahasa Malay was a bit of a tongue twister for me]

[For the previous Photo Challenge on the theme of ‘Silhouette’ click here]

 

So back in the day i recorded a song with my friend Simon van Wyk [now a world famous Brother Streep] titled ‘Squishy Fruit Conspiracy’ which was about my personal hatred towards raisins and other related squishy fruits…

You can listen to that song here as well as the follow-up i did called ‘Sultanas’ which was a parody of Snow’s ‘Informer’ from a whole bunch of other years ago…

And the even famouser No_bob [the world’s most famous stuffed dolphin who i was going to call ‘Bob’ but he doesn’t!] song performed by my friends in the band Serving Suggestion [also very much back in the day] is also there as a bonus…

Feels like it’s almost time to come up with a new one… the world must know…

so it seems like people continue to have an interest in the john ellis… um i’m not sure it’s a saga, i think you need three movies for that, but new direction-taking-focus-ment?

anyways i said to john, “hey john, people have questions” and john said to me “ask me those questions” so i said “Okay, but i just don’t have them yet” and so this is where you come in…

if you have a question for john of ellis about life and God and tree63 and world domination and Americaland and Jesus and why he refuses to write a real song about No_bob the world’s most famous stuffed dolphin but keeps pretending he has but when i look there’s nothing there and it was probably just a ploy to get me to buy his new album which i haven’t yet but only because i haven’t seen it yet and keep forgetting to look when i’m out sorry John, and church and blackadder and how they get the chocolate inside the smarties, then post it here or email me at brettfish@hotmail.com and i will get it to john

i can’t promise he will answer all the questions – i personally doubt he knows the answer to that smartie one – and i can’t even promise he will answer any of them (he’s in a different province from me – my powers of physical persuasion don’t stretch that far) and he will more than likely dodge the No_bob one (and probly continue to refer to him as a fish, the punk) [john’s a punk not No_bob] but i can highly guarantee that he will look at them and consider answering them and if any of them are interesting enuff then who knows, he might give it a go

so if you could ask john ellis, formerly of the band tree63, any question in the world, what would it be?

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