Point-by-Point by Tom Cat – Volume 3 (A two-week catch-up!)

Yes, Yes, I know it has been a gazillion years since my last blog post.

 Indeed, as Angel opined, I had gone kyknoord. Which, I think means I went AWOL.

The truth is that I have just had so much work to get done. It has been an incredibly busy two/three weeks, with difficult assignments due, many gazillions of meetings, academic talks, and of course, lots of bunny hopping to do.

 To give you an itemised list of what I have been doing…

• Academic Talks by…
  • Armartya Sen - a Nobel Prize-winning developmental economist (1)
  • Nadine Gordimer - a Nobel prize-winning author (1)
  • Trevor Manuel - our minister of finance (1)
  • Edwin Cameron - a Supreme Court of Appeal judge (2)
  • Faarooq Manghere – director of the Gay and Lesbian Equality Project (1) and,
  • Fikile Vilakazi – director of the Centre for African Lesbians (1).

    The first four took the form of a conversation, where Armatya Sen talked a lot about economics that I’m afraid I didn’t really know much about. His accent also wasn’t the most coherent, and so I struggled to hear him, and instead ended up checking out who was in the audience, which resembled of Who’s-Who of Joburg’s academic arty-farty elite. The last three took the form of a student forum, which my society (Wits Model UN), as well as Golden Key and the Law Students Council all co-organised, and it involved a public forum discussion surrounding the issues of gay rights etc etc etc. It was quite stimulating (I thought) and students appeared to enjoy it, which you can find here if you really wish… http://www.youtube.com/joburgtom  

• Oh yah. One other academic talk we (Kev and I) went to was one given by Ruthann Robson, who can be considered the ‘Mother’ of Lesbian legal theory, is a visiting professor from an American university. Anyone, she talked about sexual constructs which we create in society, which was very interesting and indeed mind-opening. She ended off with this question: “If a man wishes to legalise his sexual relationship with his dog, and he claims that the both he and the dog do this consentually, should we allow him to do it? No, of course not! But just consider the fact that the argument we are using to say No, is the exact same argument other people used to justify the criminalisation of homosexuality – ie that it’s unnatural and that it just can’t possibly be consentual.”Ok.. so yah.. even liberal-ass me finds it a bit of a whacky concept to get one’s head around, but it’s nevertheless an interesting argument, and I think it could be applied to say, for instance, two consentual adult brothers wishing to legalise their sexual relationship.
• Afterwards, Kev and I (and Kev’s new boyfriend, our friend Angelo) went to Ants in Melville. I think I have blogged about this restaurant before (maybe on my blog), but i simply have to blog about it again, because I LOVE IT!!! The restaurant is rather rustic in it’s nature, but it serves the best pasta, and chasing the pasta done with a good glass of red wine just fills with such joy. It’s the type of joy that just is.

  Afterwards, we went to the Oh bar, which although isn’t normally anything to blog about, will be blogged about today because I got a cool shot of the ceiling… I think it looks incredibly 70’s disco.

  

• Besides all the academic talks, we also were given a lecture by Edwin Cameron. He gave us a lecture in our HIV/AIDS and the law course, specifically on how the criminal law can and does interact with HIV/AIDS. I have sort of forgotten the gist of what he had to say (I know, I know, bad student are I), but I remember it being fascinating, and that’s all that matter really.
• Somewhere in the past two weeks, a whole bunch of us also went to go see the musical Hair at Montecasino. The cast was really quite excellent, and they sang with such passion. I also thought they were very brave when suddenly they all appeared out of nowhere NAKED. *gasp* And they just pranced about willy-nilly (hehe – my use of puns are cleva, neh?) without any inhibitions. I was also suprised when I saw a guy that I once went on a date with. It was, incidentally, one of the worst dates I had ever been on, because I ended up having more of a bond with his straight male friends than him, but I still felt imporant and stuff cos I knew someone from the cast. heee heee.

  Anyway, afterwards we went to the new lifestyle extension at Montecasino, which as far as fake Italian goes, is not bad. And coming from me – that’s something. They have a musical fountain too, and I took a video. I hope it comes out. If it doesn’t, then go here… http://www.youtube.com/joburgboy, and have a look for it somewhere on that page!

• Other than that, I have been lank busy with assignments, bru. I have had Competition Law and Moot to get through, and they both been incredibly looooong and incredibly difficult. Moot was perhaps the most interesting one, as we got a topic and you have to argue for both the applicants and the respondents. In this case, the applicants was this NGO who represented people who had been raped, murdered etc, and they wanted to hold the government responsible under the constitution for failing to secure their rights to freedom and security of the person, life and dignity. One works in teams, and so Keval did the applicants, and I did the respondents. And I found it really difficult because we found in many of the issues raised that the government simply didn’t have much of a defence. Procedures weren’t followed and certain core constitutional obligations were totally disregarded. So I ended making up THE most whacked up and convoluted arguments for the government. It wasn’t really that fun.
• But it’s over now, and I am preparing to enjoy my weekend. Today is Freedom Day in South Africa – 13 years ago, South Africa went to the polls to vote in the first truly democratic elections. The country is now a teenager, and isshowing all the volatility and promise that a country of this age would typically show. It makes me proud to be a citizen of a nation that is so young and has such room for improvement.

  HAPPY BDAY SOUTH AFRICA!

  

• Before I leave, I must note that I haven’t checked this post for spelling errors and the like. And so I apologise in advance.

Jabu and Esmerelda: Feedblitz is as cool as Shirley’s

Ok. So I’m a bad comic artist. But Jabu and Esmerelda is my attempt at trying to get ya’ll to notice my ‘Subscribe to me’ link on the side. It’ll make your life infinitely easier.

I am rather fond of Jabu and Esmerelda. Hope you become good friends with them too.

Elephant Seals

Kindly excuse me whilst I go ga-ga over Elephant Seals… They are gawwwgeous.

Whacky Stuff #4

This is dedicated to Buckles for two reasons:

1) She doesn’t like my blog at the moment. She prefers the strawberry one at Xanga. And I must agree with her, but alas there is nothing much I can do at the moment because I know diddly-squat about CSS, and so I do not know how to import strawberries into this blog.

2) When she sees this, she will squeel in delight. And that squeel makes me happy inside.

I found this on the omgblog.

Posseiden be a drama queen (Volume 2)

So yesterday I had my own little run-in with Posseiden. Seemingly I had upset one of the Goddesses he has the hots for (Athena? Afrodite?), and so he had me swishing and froing in a cacophony of terror and panic…

This is how it goes…

My dearest brother, sister and I were having a lovely time frolicking in the waves. We were boogie-boarding too (ie riding the waves on cartoon-coloured boards), and so were going up and down the surf and being all very gay and happy about it.

After a few times of going up and down, we started to drift to the side. My brother and sister then took a wave, and off they went. Except that the wave took them even further to the side. So Tom Cat says “Come over guys, we need to stay between the flag poles.”

So brother and sister begin to move back inbetween the poles. Sister is a bit closer to the shore, so she gets out easily. Brother is having difficulties, though, and can’t seem to make any progress.

So I, getting a little worried (since my brother is mentally handicapped and although he is the best swimmer of the lot of us, needs to be carefully watched in the sea), swim out to get him.

I grab hold of his board, and we attempt to go back inbetween the poles. But to no avail. The side current pushes against us that, whilst it feels like you aren’t getting anywhere, you’re actually being pushed back.

Nevertheless, as we keep on trudging back in the most fruitless of ways (walking, swimming, boogie-ing – nothingworked!), the waves start coming in. BIG waves. And they start to dunk us underneath the water.

So much so that Brother’s board goes flying off his wrist and hits my sister on the head. So whilst we’re still trying to swim back, Sister goes off to find more clever people. Ones that know how to swim against side currents.

I’m still holding Brother’s hands. Water is still swishing us around. Our legs are getting exhausted. We’re still getting dunked. I’m trying to get him to push as hard as he can out of the side wash. He’s swimming, cos that’s what he does best. I’m walking/swimming, cos I just don’t really know what to do.

Then another wave. I lose his hand. He goes further into the side current. Sheet.

So I call him in desperation. I don’t really want to go more in because that’ll put both of us in trouble. So we’re both trying to swim/walk back again this now HECTIC side wash. I can feel the exhaustion taking me over. I’m like, skandaaal. I’m also thinking, this is sooooo bloggable. Gotta survive to blog this. Blog. Blog. Blog.

Next thing two semi-hot guys see us in trouble. They decide to come help us. One guy comes up behind me and pushes me on the backside twice into the waves, that manage to swim me back to the shore. On the way, I almost lose momentum and feel completely exhausted. But I somehow find it again and manage to get to safety. yay.

My poor brother is still out there, as are the two arb dudes. My parentals have now been alerted, and are screaming in hysterics from the shore. The lifeguards start running in with their red shorts and yellow floaty things. A crowd on the beach forms.

There is now a crowd of about 7 men around my brother - willing him to frantically swimming on. He is swimming on, but they’re seemingly not getting nowhere.

This goes on for a while, whilst I collapse in exhaustion underneath our beach umbrella, and think Oh Fudge. Oh Fudge. Oh Fuck you, Posseiden.

Eventually I see them making progress, and my brother emerges out of the water, hardly able to work out of sheer exhaustion and looking very droopy-eyed and sad.

But the drama out at sea continues. The people who came to save us are still out at sea, desperately trying to get back, including the lifeguards. This is how strong the side wash is. It was a beaaatch.

I trudge back to our apartment, all mopey-eyed and slightly pissed off about stuff. I then see a speed boat heading towards the spot. I also see a helicopter coming in low. I think oh sheet.

I heard that the chopper whinched the one dude up from the sea, and the speedboat picked up the other dude.

Must have made a spectacular spectacular for the spectators spectating this spectacutation (My word – haha).

Then last night, as I was drifting off to sleep thinking about what happened that day, images came into my mind: Me swimming after my puppy as she yelps and franctically tries to paddle back to shore; Me being swept out to sea and being shredded into pieces by the gigantic rotor motors of a cargo ship; Me and… er… a lover (hehe) sneaking down to the beach for a midnight swim, and then being swept out to sea and never, ever returning, and no one really knows where on earth we could have gone.

Yah, yah, dramatic I are. But dramatic is the sea. 

Quite clearly, as a certain major motion-film will have you know, as well the photos posted in another post below, Posseiden is a drama queen of epic proportions.