Feel That?

It can often be very tempting to feel. We are human, and feelings let us know what is happening behind the descriptions we use to imbue our image with meaning. But the problem with these pesky things is that they are very selfish. They give no quarter to the feelings of others. They pressure you to do things without considering how it might affect some one else. They exist for their own sakes. If feelings were people, we would not invite them to our parties unless they were bringing booze.

Every now and again two people have complementing emotions, and then they mutually masturbate each other’s feelings. These moments of symbiosis make us forget the preceding atrocities and assume that it’s all a noble pursuit. Now all we need is for people to start believing that the crusade on Constantinople was not politically motivated, and the new 7 series BMW justifies the holocaust.

It’s fine to feel when you’re alone, or if your forced to be in the proximity of another human being, have feelings that don’t involve any interactions with other people. Trust me, the bar stool really does not care what you do with its legs, but the owner might.

I too can be temped to feel. The problem is that I am yet to have a feeling for a person, which through perusing it did not cause harm. If you are going to indulge in your feelings, switch off your cell phone then lock yourself in your room (with hand cream), climb a mountain, or read a book. Do something alone. Spend as much time as you want to think about what’s going on inside you. Once you have a sufficient grasp of you feelings, and there is no risk of having it poison your behavior, you can re-enter society. It might sound a bit harsh, even callus, but think about it, have you ever heard of a sad psychopath.

Mix Tapes Matter

I feel that the art of making mix tapes has been lost on this budding generation. Don’t even parade playlists as a contemporary equivalent. It’s like saying listening to Britney Spears and being placed in an iron maiden are the same thing. Even though they share striking similarities in both experience and presentation, they are not the same thing. A playlist is just a malleable grouping of shortcuts, listed underneath an equally malleable title. But a mix tape/CD (lets be fare) has finality, mobility, and you can draw pretty pictures on it too.

The Mix Tape/CD, unlike the Comodore 64, it is not an archaic relic that should be left to die, without dignity, by the side of the road. Creating a Mix Tape/CD has a very valuable purpose, one that if not nurtured, might have detrimental effects on the music listening community. With storage space growing exponentially, our capacity to horde music is also increasing, and horde we do. Instead of hunting down rare vinyl’s, or ordering limited edition CD’s, we download discographies and copy them onto any drive that will house them. We have so much music that at any given time we are inundated by the choices at hand. That being said, in and amongst that electronic pile of songs are the few tracks, that for a time being, you’d rather be listening to over all the others. But all we do is list them, over listen to the songs or wait till our moods/ identity/ circumstances change and then we delete the playlist and start anew. The compilation that helped define you is now gone, but the music remains, kept out of a mixture of status and nostalgia.

It seems so clean, efficient and productive. For all those that think it’s a natural progression towards a better way of doing things, let me remind you that the “Foucault’s Fist” attachment for my strap-on is arriving soon. The whole point of the mix tape is that there is a limited amount of space and often the songs are meant to be listened through in a certain and planned order. The result is that the compilation has undergone thought, planning, and feeling. The Tape/CD made in an emotion/ idea/ dream/ identity, and exists to convey that which resonates with said emotion/ idea/ dream/ identity.

Therefore, having a record of these compilations, one can create a personal timeline for oneself. At any time you can slide the Tape/CD into your car, go back and rediscover parts of yourself you had either discarded or forgotten. Music, like any art, is not there to be skipped though, with the random button glowing. I guess my message is; make Mix CD’s and print your photos. Make cool covers for them, put time and effort into enjoying the music that had so much time and effort put into it, lest we loose the record of ourselves.

New Yuppie word

There is a terrible plague infesting the vocabulary of thirty something, working-class, pseudo yuppies in South Africa. Its sounds like the one eyed, toothless inbred son of the terms Buddy and Bro, Something like, Burry, or Boddy. Why can’t they realize that their lifestyles exclude any valuable human emotion to the point that the only meaningful physical relationship they can have with a woman requires re-playing E-TV porn in the back of their head.

Their generation’s apathy has resulted in a post-ironic backlash that has to a large extent crippled our empathy and stunted our emotional growth. If per chance someone uses that word before they turn to leave your company, don’t let them. I know that sounds crazy but you have work to do, “yours is the sword of Michael”. What you need to do is make like Dr. Walter Freeman and whip out the hammer and ice-pick. I feel its time for an old school, back-of-the-bus lobotomy. Seeing as it’s a community service I’m sure it's tax deductible.

Bon Nuit

I find it strangely unsettling that no matter how long the sun has set, the sky still burns purple with our presence. There is never any peace, and very little rest. Due to the nature of night impeding upon our capacities, we have had to crowd around miniature man-made suns, in order to elongate our hours of productivity. Because of the human empire's increasing size, and the the work needed to maintain it, the day encroached upon the night.

Bit by bit we are loosing the mystical experiences found in a limited and altered appearance of the world, as noted by Carlos Castaneda. As i drive into the city at night, it looks as though an infant celestial body is crawling out of the womb that is human aspiration. The lack of a pitch black sky implies that the sun has not left us for long, or is soon returning.

No longer are the "pinholes in the curtain of night" imbued with vibrant imaginings, the power of gods, or used to understand all that exceeds us. Now we stream the universe, and tag the constellations. i do not know if i am meant to mourn or rejoice

Self Tuning

I was wondering, because, you see, I am in the market for a new idea and I have yet to decide which one to purchase. I know that I will have to undergo a bartering process, even apply for tender, but what should I relinquish. What part of my being deserves to be sold? What must I sacrifice in the name of equivalent trade? Should I loose sight of a dream or cease a pointless belief. Maybe it is time to outgrow a trait or a mannerism. I cannot always be this. No matter how familiar I have become with this present mould. Something must go. Something must change. Despite the comfort of familiarity, I must admit, this it is not working. The time has come to dead-head the withered and embrace the fresh. So excuse me while I oil the tools and prepare the workbench, for it is time to dismantle and inspect. Do not disrupt me, it is delicate work, I do not want my hand to slip or my mind to falter.

Technicolour Dave Part 1

This one has Structure
12:20 AM



Ten screws came loose and the whole thing fell on my head. Well that's what I told the land lord. I did not even bother explaining the monkey jacking off in the corner of the kitchen. Thankfully he thought it best not to inquire. If he had I might have been tempted to tell him he was helping me make potato salad. Special sauce my ass, or was that the spices. Cooking was never my strong point. Hold on, now that I come to think of it I can't really pin down an aspect of myself I would consider to be a strong point. Perhaps the only a plausible thing I have ever been able to put on the Cub Scout sash of life, would be the fact that with very little for thought or effort I mange to not starve or completely fuck every thing up.



Back the wanking monkey in my kitchen. When a friend wakes you up at three in the morning with the line, "dude, I need your help, you won't believe this", two things are certain, one) you won't believe it nor will you particularly want to, and two) no matter how stupid the thing is that you "will not believe" will eventually end up being your problem and will cause more shit for you than for him. Now that I think about it, that's why we call our friends at three in the morning with the line "dude, I need your help, you won't believe this". Because if we don't, we might actually be accountable for our own stupidity, which would make life impossible because we would still have to deal with the stupidity of our friends.


While the land lord tries his hardest not to stare at the masturbating monkey, he politely informs me that my deposit is pretty much shot to shit from this point onwards. I considered trying to explain my situation, maybe differ the blame, but I had bigger problems that needed urgent attention, like the gherkin jerkin' monkey in my kitchen, which could not be done in the presence of the land lord.

Allow me to meander off the topic for a moment. I really don't think I should refer to my land lord as a "land lord" because this crappy, nothing fucking works, cockroach infested, brocken pluming, off smelling, poorly designed, shit hole of an apartment can be considered a "land". As for the term "lord", he has more the appearance of a gofer than a lord. The word lord has an implication of dignity, power and a presence that announces itself an hour before arriving and lingers three days after leaving, all things he could not scrape will a diamond tipped Jack-Hammer.


Once my shit-hole-gofer left, I turned my attention to the self-pleasuring sapient about to climax in my kitchen. As I walked towards it in the hope of negotiating the destination of its ejaculation, it morphed into a three headed dragon fly and po-go-sticked out the window. I promptly took out my cell phone and called my friend.
"What's up dude?"
"Hey man."
"So."
"Dude, you know that acid you gave me the morning?"
"Yeah?"
"Well. FUCK YOU BUDDY, did you hear me, FUCK YOU!"

Dirty Plugging

I remember when we were young, finding our feet in the discursive minefields of passing institutions. Once we had clawed our way through them with a scarred sense of self and more text books in our mind than we could possibly recall; we have to wonder, what now. The lush fields of adulthood are now the high walls of more institutions, but these are far more guarded. But in us are dreams and the desire to see them manifest. Our thoughts, our ideas, our opinions are forced to step back while we labour to keep ourselves from starving. We were the disenfranchised, who raged till we were raw. But we are older now, and hopefully wiser, and we understand the realities that seem impenetrable. Still there is a burning desire to dismantle the castle brick by brick, though we have no tools.

Hence we have decided to create a platform. With Simon Subrosa, http://www.neographis.com/, as the publisher, we are creating a contributor driven online magazine, called Dirtymag. Its agenda is simply to give the creative the space they deserve to do what they must, and that is to be creative. Here there are no censors or corporate soul digesters with totalitarian cultural agendas. Between these pages lie an intellectual and artistic nudist beach, were we can all stand exposed, communally exploring each other’s beauty.

The first Issue goes out on 10.01.10.
You’ll find it at http://www.dirtymag.co.za/