Ok, so half the title is inane; but it is apt. I haven’t written anything other than proposals the past blog-silent months and because of this I am rabidly hungry* for success. Not the kind of success where you go to your school reunion bursting to tell, modestly/humbly, of your career choice and sporting pert breasts and a post pregnancy inverted belly (3 year old math/violin prodigy & delicious Himself in tow) and downplaying it, nooo. I want the kind of success that has you not attending school reunions because you are too busy being consulted by Steve Jobs. Or @Mashable or @TechCrunch or a few hundred Forbes level CEO’s…

Let’s leave the beaver-cheek-causing frustration that is work, aside. Just thinking about how badly I want to make it makes me sympathise with reality show contestants and that, dear readers, makes me want to lash myself 15th century style.

So, consider me hobbled until one of the 3 options I currently have pays out. And I mean pays, as in cash money, preferrably in monthly installments so that I can get an iPad*** and be featured on it, eventually.

1. Word of the day: esurient – The Sage: 1. devouring or craving food in great quantities

2. Insight of the day: Suppressing frustration and want makes Feylian a rabid little ferret.

3. State of the pool: furiously churning and rebelliously sloshing against the shrinking walls of the pool

4. Joys of the day: Rives (I skipped the TED intro, you should know it by now), 2 meetings which went goddam brilliantly**, dinner with El the Legend and our Taye Diggs look alike neighbour****.

5. Awesomest lines: Kite by Rives

And so I made for you a kite, enormous,
out of coat hangers, brown paper bags
and the masking tape from that drawer in your kitchen,
and I hung it in the hallway
where you couldn’t hardly miss it,
and I tagged that kite with my words,
I wrote:

Just so you know–

My weird mind wanders and my brave heart breaks.
I’ve nailed some milestones, but I’ve made mistakes,
Cuz I got more faults than a map of California earthquakes.

I am taking a nap beneath your covers.
Wake me if you like me.
Wake me if you want me
Wake me if you need another poem.

Your once and future lover
has made himself at home.

*Hungry is perhaps not the right word. Look at the word of the day. That’s me, baby.

**If it did otherwise I would’ve dragged its sorry asses to the corner of the room and hissed it into submission. Mama ain’t playin’ nice no more.

*** A legitimate wish and don’t you eyeroll at me or call me a fangirl. I am not. It is just bloody cool and I want one.

****I would like to point out that he is funny, articulate and smoking hot.If she doesn’t flirt I’ll be forced to stab her with the salad fork. Which we don’t have. The plastic handled cheap fork then. With hot sauce on it.

I can’t write. I wish I could but the words elude me.

So here is someone who can.

Yes, it’s been ages, I feel bad etc, etc. I will post more often *puts hand on heart*.

Life is about to get interesting. I shall update soon.

1. Word of the day: dawn – TheSage: 2. first light of day (noun), 2.  become clear or enter one’s conciousness or emotions (verb)

2. Insight of the day: Posting at dawn is something that will likely not happen again soon and is only done to avoid the very emo-ness of the previous ancient post.

3. State of the pool: Fizzy water of life

4. Joys of the day: Coffee, definitely coffee.

5. Awesomest lines: I’ve gottten almost all my Terry Pratchett books back so here’s a Mort quote:

” I USHERED SOULS INTO THE NEXT WORLD. I WAS THE GRAVE OF ALL HOPE. I
WAS THE ULTIMATE REALITY. I WAS THE ASSASSIN AGAINST WHOM NO LOCK
WOULD HOLD.
“Yes, point taken, but do you have any particular skills?”

– Death consults a job broker

I will post soon, promise /grin

I wish that my laptop booted up to something other than XP and that 3G wasn’t such a spectacular pain in the ass…There you go for the random thought of the day. I know that I have been sadly lacking in the posting department but my kingdom has been…well, as muddled as horse dung in a fine consommé.

I am a bit lost. Not so lost as not to just at least look at the bloody soul-Garmin, but my rugged individualism* forbids such a thing. I am not sure where my life is going, and that is a daunting, yellow bellied thing.

I’ve been reading. Krugaza-san, without you I would be lost. You give me words that speak directly to the self in me I very rarely give attention**. You were right. Perhaps not something you often hear but still something you should hear. You have given me a book that has its strangely beautifully skeletal fingers insinuated into my spine. Marrow to marrow.

Tim Winton has stolen my breath and used it to shape words that I’ve felt, and known, but have never had the talent, nor the drive, to speak.

Page 4 of Dirt Music: “…Still, you had to admit that it was nice to be without a body for a while; there was an addictive thrill in being of no age,with no gender, with no past. It was an infinite sequence of opening portals, of menus and corridors that let you into brief, painless encounters, where what passed for life was a listless kind of browsing. World without consequence, amen. And in it she felt light as an angel.”

My connection is fubarring me. But whatever, here’s to writing for the first time in weeks, without the hope of reaching another mind. Into the void we go, with the soundtrack of Donnie Darko, echoing in the background***.

Before Dirt Music I was reading an Ursula Le Guin, Voices. In it she speaks so eloquently of books and their import. In one day I’ve managed to read words that enliven me. It’s been awhile. As you know, I love mind candy but I’ve been shaken out of this sodden horse blanket funk I’ve been in.

If you’ve ever flirted with despair you would understand the severe suckiness of not being able to trust your mind. For some stupid reason people seem to understand hormones as something a menopausal woman experiences instead of the thing it truly is. Hormones are the carriers of every reaction in your body. Good, ugly, or bad.

So, when those sons of bitches decide to mope, you are, to put it sweetly, marooned in an endless sea of despair. Yeah, I said it. Despair. In all of its joy draining bleh-ness. It saps hope, joy de vivre and dammit-I’m-alive-so-screw-you. It happily quaffs your endorphins and dribbles love down it’s pocked chin while trying to clumsily feel up the hapless wench who serves it.

*It’s a family saying, only barely disguising a genetic mess up of socially stunting proportions.

**I am after all, like most humans, a strange sheep-tortoise hybrid. Why deal with life, and it’s terrifying twists and turns when in stead, you hide. Hide and follow. Meeeehhhh, bitch, meeeeh.

***Something to which I am hurrying.

It is Sunday afternoon and I am sitting on Rambo’s new couches, the breeze is cool and soothing and it feels like my soul is wearing a sundress.

And…here’s the clincher…I am watching The Bachelor. This is on par with eating a huge tub of chocolate mousse all in one go, delight, happiness-of-the-mouth and sticky chocolate fluffiness which results in girly guilt and green gilled biliousness. Also, not something you tell your intellectual friends or, well, any human with a heartbeat*.

As I have previously said, TV turns your mind into a small, floppy carrot. So as far as this show goes, after the marathon I’m watching, I believe that I will be communicating in speech bubbles which will contain cartoon like letters like “gnnnnhhhh”, “troz” and the always popular “ppffrrzzll”.

So before my kingdom turns into orange smush, let’s take a stab at opinionated methinks:

The creators of this show should be given an award for the insight they have into the schadenfreude the human race gets from watching such utter humiliation and adulteration, where after they are locked up forever and have Sylvia Plath shock therapy given to them. Or lobotomies. Such power should not be let rampant.

What the hell are these people/contestants thinking? This guy gets to make 15 women fall in love with him, knowing full well that he will obliterate 14-15 hearts…and these physically attractive ladies  do everything in their power to be evil to each other and ever so purrrfect to this man that they know could potentially snap their selves. Yikes!**

That said, wooohoooo**! He has an identical twin which he wields in order to find out if the girls can distinguish which him he is. People, the producers of this show must have creamed themselves when they heard this. Can you think of better tv than this? And, oh yeah, the brother is married and gets to flirt with these prettinesses. So yay for extending said adulteration. How would you think his wife felt when watching this? Did she bask in the extended fame or did she beat him about the head a la Elin Nordegren ?

Oh my soul folks this is fascinating. The twin thing is working! It is brilliant tv. Some actually get it. The women who don’t get it must feel like utter fools. They are either self involved or just idiots.

There are some moments of heartbreaking honesty though. Some of these women are genuinely crushing hard on this guy. Maybe that is why this show is so addictive. The moments of real life is poignant and the bitchiness is freaking legendary.

Episode 3 is starting and I cannot help myself but watch for Deanna aka The Bachelorette***. Which makes me wonder if we adore personalities because we are forcefed by the media. No wonder you make it only if you have a well connected manager. But perhaps I will find out why she is so troz ggghhnnnn….

Ok that’s me. I can no longer think. Have an awesome Sunday.

* Y’all are fellow kingdoms not just mere mortals.

**2 shows into it…the prrffzzll is starting.

***Bless South Africa’s backwardness as all we seem to have is endless reruns.

I’ve been so busy reading that I thought I should share the awesome. I am a believer in e-polyandry as I would like to marry these following sites.

As a matter of fact, I love it so much that I want to get an iPhone or some such thing just so that I will never ever ever be without my preciouses* and I loathe cellphones.

1. Twitter

I’ve briefly told you about my love for Twitter. My love is now of the obsessive sort where I would follow it everywhere, go albino a la The Bodyguard and send it 160 character love letters with glued newspaper letters.

Now that you know it is mine, all MINE…ahem…if you actually want to know what it is: Twitter is a micro blogging site where you can follow clever/entertaining/informative folk in your lines of interest. They (and you) update sms length strings of text about what you are currently reading/doing/find interesting.

I use it primarily to find out more about my work. It is an incredibly useful filtering tool. People who like what I like, and who know more than I do, give me links to information which just about rock my world and keep me from blogging.

Do try it. And add me if you want to know more about the sheer awesome that is SEO, social media strategy and other generally prod buttock internetty things.

2. Google Wave

This relationship is in the idiot 14 year old first kissathon stage**. Gwave is all awkward limbs, and tripping anxiety but anyone with half a brain can see the superstar adult it will be. I figure if I marry it early it won’t know better and leave me when it hits the Big Time.

What it is: other than the above and previously mentioned post, it is a collaboration tool which mashes instant messaging, email, file sharing and brainstorming all in one. You can have private waves or public ones…take a moment to really think what that means for spreading ideas…

/gooseflesh…let me know on Twitter what your Gwave address is and we’ll play together.

3. Feedly

This is a brand, spanking new love. Our eyes met across the Firefox Add On page and that the immediate attraction had us gravitate towards each other, never losing eye contact, and start a conversation about all the things I love. It was a bit scary how Feedly knew so much about me*** but it felt like coming home****.

What it is:

Firefox Addons say: “A magazine-like startpage. A fast and stylish way to read and share the content of your favorite sites and services. Provides seamless integration with Google Reader, Twitter, Delicious, YouTube and Amazon.”

I love almost all things Google but the reader was clumsy and daunting to say the least – I follow a lot of sites – but this…this is just gorgeous. This is from one of the sites I would shell out cash money to read:

Mashable: “Feedly takes the concept of the homepage and takes it to the next level by providing a real-time summary of the most relevant content available on the web based on your interests, your reading patterns, and recommendations from your friends. You can take your different profiles, bookmarks, and accounts from sites like Twitter (), Yahoo Mail, GMail () and Friendfeed (), and apply them to your Feedly.”

I’ll give y’all a proper YGM soonish.

*LOTR reference fully intended.

**I’ve mostly no idea what I am doing but even so the fumbling is wonderful.

***Not kidding…if it wasn’t so awesome it would be very scary. A cookie miner/history trawler program of some kind? Hmmmm.

**** Where home=drool inducingly pretty and convenience maximized lay out.

It is a beautiful cloudy cold day and I can’t really speak because my jaw is clenched rather firmly shut and my molars are getting really intimate with one another*. So intimate in fact that you can see their motion through the jumping muscles in my cheeks.

I think I did a prat fall out of bed this morning.  Ok so it didn’t help that between me dreaming of how Google Wave will change the world*** and my lovely 2.5 year old demanding ice cream at 3 in the morning, I did not get much sleep.

Have you ever wanted to eviscerate someone? Well I would like to rip the intestines out of an all round bastard. I wish with all the biohazard grade bile currently backed up in my body that I could tell you who he is. This evil mother…bitch decides to pay MM (to whom I outsourced the job) only a part of an invoice 5 MONTHS after she worked her ass off. His reason? He feels that the printing handling fee to which they verbally agreed is “ridiculous/exaggerated” and he doesn’t feel like approving it. I could go into how much work this…man…caused by only getting back to us at his leisure. Oh and they have posted us the checque for the ‘approved’ amount… a few days ago. $#%*&!!!!! This means he not only foresaw that we could do nothing but it is doubly insulting that he gets to say “the cheque is in the mail”….ooooh breathe Feylian breathe.

I need to stop thinking about this because I will do something career killingly stupid. What I resent most is that we, as said bastard hammered home, have no power to really do anything about it. A war over a R5k invoice is stupid and he has a lot more resources than we do. He is a crooked nuclear waste carrying tank and we are 2 guerilla fighters armed with ancient Mauser’s and a handful of bullets. Oh for a little justice. This is the kind of thing that makes me really hate men of a certain age and type****

Gahhhh…anyway back to the Google Wave thing. If you have not yet played with this please do so now. It will change the way we communicate so radically it is breathtaking to think about. It is still, as Boaz says, a bit chaotic and buggy but the potential is staggering.  I woke up at 4 this morning knowing that it will almost completely replace forums. And that’s without the collaborative bells and whistles. What I want is for my company to…ahem…ride the wave and write a plugin. We have the skills but guess what? Yes, that’s it. We don’t have enough programmers. SAP and Salesforce can afford to throw a few grand at innovation whereas we could maybe do so a bit later…so unbelievably frustrating. By the time we can afford to play with this new tech it will be too late.

The more time I spend submersed in research on new tech and SEO/Social marketing the more I know that it is my path and passion. I just wish I could know MORE. There is so much to learn and it is so bloody awesome. Quite literally bloody as my no longer elastic memory and reasoning attempts to assimilate vast amounts of information and this leads to blood dripping out of my ears. It also causes my team inclination to sink to previously unplumbed depths. Or perhaps I just need that holiday more than I thought. I think it might be a good idea for me to work from home tomorrow. I’ve already growled at El and I love her…

1. Word of the day: disembowel (The Sage: 1. remove the entrails of) I like that. The old Roman in me wants to then use a stick for a spot of divination.

2. Insight of the day: Being angry is really bad for you and wonderful for your dentist.

3. State of the pool: hissing, spitting hot but contained acid.

4. Joys of the day: 1. going home, 2. wine, 3. speaking to no one, 4. Reading Anathem (it is a really big book ok) in a womb like bath.

5. Awesomest lines: From an Ars Technica article on Google Wave.

“If I had to describe, the best I could do is this: Wave is a mash-up of email, IM, IRC, online forums, and wikis, all rolled into an experience that sort of resembles (to me, at least) a MOO.”

6. Scripture lines: Ezekiel 25:17 (King James Version)

¹⁷And I will execute great vengeance upon them with furious rebukes; and they shall know that I am the LORD, when I shall lay my vengeance upon them.

*The kind of intimate that a 90′s R&B singer would just have to compose a song that would contain words like “hot”, “grind” and “my baby”. And the video would feature LL Cool J licking a lollipop and the required tight cut off jeans and I’m-a-lumberjack**shirt. Wait, there should be some whipping too. And a fine sprinkling of calcium dust on everything.

***Think a tsunami of 2012 proportions.

****50ish, married on paper but definitely not in spirit, too many business dinners portly and just short enough to qualify for Napoleon syndrome but not so short that he would fail at business. The kind of guy who thinks it his right to paw his secretary. I’ve known, and been pawed by, enough of these to qualify this grand generalisation.

Due to a typical Feylian f…mess up I left my lovely Dell’s cable at a client. So now I am back in front of a PC at the office where I poured out much of my soul last year this time. Amazing how the same playlist*, same view, hell…the same emoticons on MSN, drag out growling memories best left unpoked with a pointed stick**.

But since we are here, let’s river dance on the gravel of broken-hearted-way-back-when.*** Roughly last year this time I started forming what can only be described as a spectacularly bad idea. I was falling, nay hurling, in love with someone who filed me under the same level of attractiveness as say, a small white mushroom. After declaring my fungial lurve to him he kindly said no thank you. And then the blog started. Lookit here (bottom up folks) if you want a quick catch up.

More importantly though, I found the awesome love of God. My commitment to the faith has since waned considerably**** but I’m slowly reclaiming that space in my head.

The point of  this post however, is how our memories, or lack of memories, shape who we are. Rambo, Himself and I had a brief discussion on Saturday about moments in our lives which either changed us or changed the direction of our lives so radically that the concept of who we think we are changed. Is there some unchangeable core of Feylian-ness which defies change? Or am I really the sum of my experiences, or more importantly the experiences I can examine?

Keep in mind that that memories are heavily edited things. We shape our world narratively (thanks PTerry’s – narrative causality) and as we tend to be the ones telling our own life stories we will almost without fail slowly (or not so slowly depending on the level of narrativium or denial in your cellular make up) change the story until we are portrayed as we hope to be.  So are we ultimately who we decide we should be? Or do we eventually become that person?

Maybe our memories do not shape us so much as our thoughts do…but how much of our thoughts consists of stories we made up to understand the world?

1. Word of the day: advent (The Sage:  1. arrival that’s been awaited – especially something momentous). In Anathem Neal Stephenson gives this word (and quite a few more) a whole new meaning.

2. Insight of the day: If you are not as moved as you used to be by a certain thing, it might be because it has become a part of you.

3. State of the pool: Contemplatively sloshing out of the reach of a retarding sun

4. Joys of the day: 1. thinking again, 2. finding joy in long avoided gospel music, 3. knowing to my marrow that I am loved, 4. my leave starts Friday…a week of reading and bliss await.

5. Awesomest lines: Still Anathem from Neal Stephenson. READ IT. It will make you a better human being.

6. Scripture lines: God is God – Stephen Curtis Chapman

And the pain falls like a curtain
On the things I once called certain
And I have to say the words I fear the most
I just don’t know

And the questions without answers
Come and paralyze the dancer
So I stand here on the stage afraid to move
Afraid to fall, oh, but fall I must
On this truth that my life has been formed from the dust

God is God and I am not
I can only see a part of the picture He’s painting
God is God and I am man
So I’ll never understand it all
For only God is God

And the sky begins to thunder
And I’m filled with awe and wonder
‘Til the only burning question that remains
Is who am I

Can I form a single mountain
Take the stars in hand and count them
Can I even take a breath without God giving it to me
He is first and last before all that has been
Beyond all that will pass

Oh, how great are the riches of His wisdom and knowledge
How unsearchable for to Him and through
Him and from Him are all things

So let us worship before the throne
Of the One who is worthy of worship alone

* Including the earphones which squish my ears until they are a warm cherise of exquisite yelping owie. What’s that? Take it off? Pah. Don’t be silly. Soundslut reporting for duty ma’am.

**

*** Disclaimer: I love Him. I don’t want a life where He is not part of every day of my existence in no way am I considering ever going down that road again. This post is about memory shaping personality.

****I never stopped believing in the truth though. God remains all I want and all I’ve ever needed.

Brace yourself. Shallow post this:

Either I have become more aware of the members of my gender or I am suddenly surrounded by a few drool inducingly hot females. All shining hair, lip gloss wielding, lily white yielding flesh and razor wit. I completely understand why you wand carriers* can barely think around women. Let it be known that I occasionally have these 2 hour bouts of infatuation on extraordinary human beings, male or female**. Himself said that he thinks everyone has these bouts but that they just don’t talk about it. Is this true?

Now, I am no hag and have in my time caused a few moments of lusty discomfort but I’ve always wondered what it is like to be truly beautiful. Do beautiful women have so different a life from the Jane’s of the world? And while we are at it, beautiful men too. CC is freaking gorgeous***. Poet Programmer piningly concurs. So let me rephrase: do beautiful people have so different a life from the rest of us?

I wonder what it is like to look in a mirror and 9.9/10 times think “not too shabby, eh Nige” as opposed to the mental editing that happens with normal folk. Oh don’t pretend you don’t know what I am talking about. The Jane’s of the world all have that brain powered editing suite without which it would be just that little bit harder to walk out the door and face the world which has had beauty ads crammed down its collective throat everyday for years. Lookit this if you are doubtful:

1. Word of the day: rapturous (The Sage: 1. a feeling of great rapture or delight)

2. Insight of the day: My ‘golden oldies’ are almost exclusively 90′s music. This sucks beyond belief as it was just the other day >.< *mutter mutter*

3. State of the pool: Sluggish but quite burbly.

4. Joys of the day: 1. Listening to ‘golden oldies’, 2. drinks with El the Legend, Himself and FdP at the upside down cow later today 3. Listening to D cutely mangle say “plesier” when I thanked him.

5. Awesomest lines: Neal Stephenson’s Anathem. I can’t begin to describe how magnificent this book is. If I ever stumble across the fountain of youth I would offer the first cup to this man on the promise that he will never stop writing.

* I put on my robe and wizard hat from good ol bash.org.

**I believe that you should be a little in love with the people with whom you spend time because otherwise you are wasting your life. Why spend time with people for whom you couldn’t care less?

***Aesthetically speaking folks. I adore Himself who btw is smoking hot…/grin…*sigh pine*, anyway…CC is the kind of godlike pretty which makes him so far out of the Jane league that you wouldn’t even consider a liaison with him. Like, ever. Unless you look like Hot Bridesmaid…pity she has a significant other and CC is in that godforsaken ocean place.

I love what I do. Yes, I know it is sickening to hear but I really do. I think I might die if the internet did. Which btw you really need to be aware could be an option if the evil bastards/US Congress those people get away with what they are planning. Lookit please?

I would not mind becoming a gargoyle* minus the Sumerian memes connection. I would love having my eyeballs wired permanently into the web. Sleep shcmeep.

I’ve been doing a lot of research both for my company and for clients and when you are so deeply immersed in words like that of Mark Suster (I am not worthy, I am not worthy) and about 400 other blogs you tend to come up for air/actual face to face contact only occasionally.

Twitter is amazing. I think I love it like a 16 year old chubby library prefect loves the rockstar beautiful head boy. /Sigh pine ftw.

I wish that I could explain to you how wonderful it is to be a virtual Michelangelo touch away from the minds who not only create my (and your) world but who constantly re-invent and better it. How can anyone not want to live this? AND get paid to do so**.

I realised yesterday that the more time I spend online the less I want to spend in social butterfly mode. Here, I am a few clicks away from soaking in pure thought. Granted some of it is drivel and there are some scary bits but mostly it is the best of this world. Why wrangle with non verbal cues when you have @replies and RT’s?

1. Word of the day: taciturn – just for you Gabor :) – (The Sage: 1. habitually reserved and uncommunicative)

2. Insight of the day: I would not mind working for Flight Centre. YAY for them showing the rest of SA where companies should be heading.

3. State of the pool: Sparkly blue conducting fluid

4. Joys of the day: 1. Reading, 2. biting the ends of a Chomp and then drinking coffee through it. 3. Planning Sunday lunch with MM.

5. Awesomest lines: Don’t Go Far Off, Not Even For A Day by Pablo Neruda

Don’t go far off, not even for a day, because –
because — I don’t know how to say it: a day is long
and I will be waiting for you, as in an empty station
when the trains are parked off somewhere else, asleep.

because in that moment you’ll have gone so far
I’ll wander mazily over all the earth, asking,
Will you come back? Will you leave me here, dying

6. Scripture line: John 15:16

“You have not chosen me, but I have chosen you, and ordained you, that ye should go and bring forth fruit, and that your fruit should remain: that whatsoever ye shall ask of the Father in my name, he may give it you.”

*Excellent review of Snow Crash by Neal Stephenson here. Ugly page but very well written.

** I am all joyously exposed nerves and beating heart that I am being paid rather a lot of money to do what I love.