Verbal Diarrhoea

I, Sid Kane, the girl whose OWN mother doesn’t trust her to make the salad, volunteered to bake a cake. It is well known that my culinary skills leave much to be desired.

Take for instance the following interaction:

Me: Is that garlic sitting on MFH desk?

Boys in the lab: Erm … that’s ginger ….

And yes, sure I recently made Fettuccine for my friends. And yeah, sure they complimented my pasta, but my friends are the type of people who would tell a white lie in order to spare your feelings. *Bastards*

Anyway, the baking endeavour will take place on Saturday. Reviews and pictures to follow on Monday. (Or at least I hope to have some hilarious pics to share with you guys.)

The daily journey to work should have taken me no longer than ten minutes. But I’d left the house late and now I found myself sitting in traffic.

Sitting there, hands clenching the steering wheel, lips chapped and attempting to sing along to The Postal Service, I noticed her running by. And instantly I hated her. I hated her and everything she represented. I hated her freedom. I hated the fact that it was nearly 8 in the morning and she wasn’t rushing off to an office with fluorescent lighting. Her fingers would not be gliding effortlessly across a keyboard, in an effort to update the latest database. I hated the fact that she had the luxury of spending her mornings exercising, her legs pounding away rhythmically. I imagined experiencing the exertion of my lungs, the cold air on my face and I hated her. I hated her pert ass and blonde ponytail swinging to and fro.

And as sat there thinking up a list of imaginary wrongs incurred by the young woman, I had what others would refer to as an “epiphany”. I realized that a few months ago my opinion of the woman would have been different. I would have looked at her in complete and utter awe. I would have admired her willpower. The discipline that it took to wake up at the crack of dawn and run anything further than a block, was beyond my comprehension. And this feeling of awe would soon be followed by one of dejection. I’d never be capable of any of this.

And now … Now all those things I’ve admired in other runners; all those things that I always I assumed I was incapable of doing, are easy. I’ve finally reached a place where I can run 8km comfortably. I’ve finally reached a place where running is actually enjoyable. I’ve finally reached the point where I can bite down and tell myself, “You’re not done yet. Dig deep. Find your inner strength.”

And as this realization hit me, I couldn’t help but smile.

Me: My subconscious is fucking with me. I had a dream that the MFH emailed me to ask me out on a date. And all I thought was, “THAT only took me four years.”

Dizzy*: I think your subconscious wants you to make a move already.

Me: He has a girlfriend. Do you think my subconscious wants me to get rid of her?

Dizzy*: I think your subconscious wants you to find out if he’s REALLY happy …. I’m kidding! Don’t do anything to hasten the poor girl’s demise.

Me: Soooo … you won’t be my alibi then?

I woke up this morning to find that I DID indeed have an email from the MFH. Unfortunately it was all innocent and work related and no matter how hard I tried, there was absolutely no way that I could delude myself into believing that the words “I can programme a script that will validate all the links within a website” actually translates into “I want to do things to you that would make Jenna Jameson blush”.*

*I don’t actually want him to say that. It just sounded funnier than “I can’t stop thinking about your brown skin and pert ass. I should totally dump my girlfriend and do whatever it takes to make you mine”.

*

Oh, did you know that when using predictive text and you start typing the word “dream”, your phone will automatically assume that you wanted to type the word “erection”. Unless of course that’s just my phone …

And of course there is the seriously silted dialogue between vampire and love interest, the rather anemic-looking Bella. Gone are the days when vampire and love interest exchanged snappy lines such as:
BUFFY: Nope. Why? Are you jealous?

For those of you who don’t care about 3rd world debt OR taxi drivers’ penises, here’s a little something to make you smile.

At 2 in the morning
Sid’s Bladder: Dude, get up. You need to walk me over to the toilet.
Sid’s Brain: Knyp.
Sid’s Bladder: Kegel exercises? Seriously? Woman, this is a call of nature. You can’t ignore me.
Sid’s Brain: But it’s so nice and warm in bed.
Sid’s Bladder: Keep it up and it WILL get really warm in bed.
Sid’s Brain: Fine. I’m up. Stupid cunt!

Grey. Grey’s the word I’d use to describe Naples. The buildings lack the old world charm of Venice and were constructed to shelter man. The area is completely bereft of anything resembling beauty. One thing I immediately notice about the area is that there is a serious lack of greenery – these Italians, it would appear aren’t too fond of nature. The traffic is also slightly bewildering and chaotic.

Streets of Venice

Naples however is definitely worth a visit simply for its proximity to Pompeii.

Pompeii …

*sigh*

Pompeii.

Anyway, as can only be expected my little undiagnosed ADD self is completely and utterly bored by this tale. So we’ll skip right to the coffee expedition.

After delicately extracting the writing utensil from my paws and scribbling down his name (which I immediately recognize as Arabic in origin) he motions with two fingers that we should go for a walk and I’m instantly reminded of the Yellow Pages ad – “let your fingers do the talking”. I shake my head “No”, I just want to be left alone to my writing but I soon learn that “No” isn’t a word he’s familiar with and I eventually acquiesce.

One of the stops we make on our short, little tour of the neighbourhood is the McDs housed within the train station. It seems that I’m to be treated to coffee. The very idea irks me. This is not what I want. This is NOT a date. I’d like nothing more than to dig my heels into the ground and throw a fit but he’s not fluent in English (or psycho bitch) so I meekly follow him into the interior.

Its late afternoon and the premises are fairly empty. We head on straight over to the counter – the first to be served. He orders a coffee while simultaneously removing his rather anorexic wallet from his back pocket. I can’t help but notice how completely empty it is. There are no bank cards, no library cards, no blood donor cards and no car license. There is nothing to indicate that he’s a veritable part of the ever evolving economy. Nothing at all like my chubby Guess purse.

He removes a single coin. Upon hearing the price of a coffee, he clearly blanches. The amount staggers him. I swear it literally knocks him off his feet. He slips that very same coin back into his wallet, trying to be as discreet as possible, hoping that I didn’t just notice what has taken place. To my credit I don’t don’t burst out laughing. The incident is hilarious, but I could never allow myself to make this stranger, who has been nothing but nice to me, feel less than a person for not having money. Of course I’d be lying if I said there wasn’t a slight glimmer of a smile on my lips.

Anyway, that’s the story for now. Maybe someday I’ll get around to filling in the rest of the details of the story.

I’m not sure how many of you have had the luxury of feasting your eyes and wrapping your tongue around the lovely Megan Gate’s prose. And no, prose is not code for nipples, you dirty little pervert.

Seriously though this woman has me completely floored. So much so that I’ve spent the better part of last week (when I should be diligently plugging away at my thesis) scouring the net for other pieces of her work. Add to this Mo Stoneskin’s captivating tales and Peter’s kaalvoet gedigte sonder fensie leestekens of woorde wat rym, and then we have a heady combination which leaves me feeling completely overwhelmed. Overwhelmed to such an extent that I now hesitate to even pick up a pen.

To say that I’ve been working on this tale for a while now would be an awful distortion of the truth. Saying that would lead YOU to believe that I’ve actively been rewriting various intricate phrases when what I’ve really been doing is waiting. I’ve been waiting for the words to find me. Waiting for the words to reveal themselves to me; as conspicuous as an unclothed Venus stepping out of a shell. I’ve been gnawing over words that would most accurately depict the large cement outcrop that I found myself sitting on. Unfortunately the only words that have the audacity to spring forth are: round, grey, hard and smooth. Words which to my mind are as deplorably bland and unappetizing as Weetbix. So instead of placating you with a rather pathetic attempt to bring forth the colourful scene that unfolded before my eyes as I sat in front of my hotel in Naples, I will skip right ahead to when I first spotted the Arab.

I was sitting a large cement outcrop with a dozen or so Italians; deeply engrossed in my thoughts, the past and my writing. I was only slightly aware of warm rays of sunshine on my skin when he walked by. He was approximately 3 meters to the left of me and even though he was strolling away from me, his peepers were clearly trained on me – head turned a complete 180 in order to get a better view. To the trained eye I might have appeared completely oblivious to his existence. The truth is … I guess I’ve just become accustomed to people staring.

Five minutes later there he was again. This time however he wasn’t alone. It seems that I managed to attract a rather small crowd. Before me stood an 80 year old, white woman, a middle-aged, black woman whom I took to be her minder and the Arab. Now since my Italian is rather basic (read: Sid can only say, “Fuck off you bastard delinquent), I can only assume from the way the way they were caressing their faces that they were saying, “Dear God, child you have the skin of an Amazonian goddess. So smooth, so flawless!!! And that hue. If I were forced to name it I’d go with caramel? No, no, no, butter pecan brown suits you better. Where ever do you come from? And why haven’t you graced the covers of Elle???”