I will not suck another fag

So I am trying this again.  I have decided that I must stop smoking.  You know, because I don’t want to die.  After twenty years of smoking my lungs need a break.  I probably could pave a tar road with all the shit I have inhaled from cigarettes and I prefer not to become another one of those lung cancer statistics.  But to quit smoking is hard and thus far I have had a zero success rate with it.  Also, I now know how crack addicts must feel and it isn’t pretty people.

I remember when I first started smoking.  It wasn’t peer pressure that got me started.  It was my sister.  You see we went on holiday and my sister and I had to share a hotel room.  I was a scrawny sixteen year old at the time and it was still easy for my sister to bully me.  She is a couple of years older than I am and as strong as an ox when she wants to be.  She was secretly smoking and didn’t want my parents to find out.  Seeing as we shared a hotel room and she being a nicotine addict this obviously posed a particular set of problems for her.

Firstly, at that time I would do anything to get my sister busted and get her into trouble.  Secondly, I was really bad at keeping secrets especially when it was something juicy and about my sister.  So naturally if I caught her smoking I would take our sibling rivalry to an epic new level.  Unfortunately, my sister would have made an excellent Survivor contestant, if she liked the outdoors and being dirty and hungry that is.  She continuously outwitted, outlasted and outplayed me right through our childhood and this time would be no different.

My sister convinced me through her clever psychological trickery that only really cool people smoked.  She also did not want me to be on the outskirts of society and she wanted me to join her sistren of really hip smokers.  See how I just revived a word that was last used in the 16th century.  Sometimes I amaze myself.  Also, I want everyone to start using the word "sistren" again because it is a really cool word.  But I digress... 

Being trapped in a hotel room with my sister was a bit like being a fly in a spider web.  It was in my best psychological and physical interest to not go against her generous sisterly advice on this particular social issue.  So I conceded out of fear and started fake smoking meaning that I would only puff and not inhale the smoke.

By the end of that holiday I was addicted to nicotine and, for obvious reasons, could no longer tell on my sister for smoking.  She had successfully tricked me in keeping her secret and I had now joined her in keeping things from our parents.  Twenty years and several attempts to quit smoking later, I am still a smoker.  In the past I have tried many things to stop.  I have done the patches, the gum, medication and even once thought that I could quit cold turkey.  That did not end well.

Trying to quit anything cold turkey is like playing Russian Roulette with a fully loaded gun.  And the gun is not pointed at your head but pointed at the heads of others.  The time I tried to quit cold turkey I became a ranging emotional bitch from hell.  I had a short fuse and was generally unpleasant to be around.  I also started to behave like that slow cousin in your family that nobody talks about.  I did not like or recognize myself, at the time, and it felt like I lost my best friend and my mind.  I managed to survive a month of not smoking and then succumbed to the demon that is nicotine again.

When I tried to quit smoking on Champix things went a bit better apart from the fact that I almost died.  I had the worst nightmares while on that medication, it fucked up my liver and there were times that it made me ill enough not to be able to go to work.

I managed four months of not smoking on Champix but then we went on holiday to Madagascar and I fell off the wagon again, so to speak.  This is also when I contracted pneumonia and as we headed back home I went to hospital directly from the airport.  At hospital I would take off my oxygen mask to go for a smoke and when I was done I would put back the oxygen.  At least I had the good sense not to blow myself up but pneumonia and smoking – not the best combination.  Sometimes addicts do some weird shit like this.

So here I am again.  Attempt number God knows what.  This time I am staying clear of medications and I have opted to use the electronic cigarette and acupuncture to stop.  Thus far I must say it is going well.  I have cut down from forty cigarettes a day to around three a day.  Actually, the truth is I have cut down to about eight.  No, actually the real truth is I have cut down to ten.  Addicts lie.

I am very lucky to have an understanding husband who has placed no pressure on me at all to stop.  I am doing this for myself.  He doesn’t judge me when I have a cigarette from my not so secret stash and he has been very supportive.  I hope to exclusively smoke the electric cigarette (or like I fondly call it - my electric crack pie) in about a week or two.  Then I will deal with the nicotine addiction and swop the nicotine liquid for the non-nicotine one.

It has been a week since I started weaning myself off cigarettes and lo and behold, nobody has been murdered and I have not died.  Hopefully this time I will succeed in kicking this nasty ass habit and can spend the next sixty years smoke free.  And yes people, to the horror of some I plan to live well into my nineties.

I think the hardest part about quitting is not so much the nicotine addiction but the actual habit.  It is something to do with your hands and is an excuse to get out of the office for ten to fifteen minutes at a time.  However, now days smokers are banned to dodgy smoking areas and treated like lepers due to anti-smoking laws.  So it is best to just quit.  To my lungs, you’re welcome.  To the tobacco industry, I loathe all of you and you can all go fuck yourselves!  

Till next time.

Shit gay guys say

Here is a compilation of the funniest YouTube videos about "Shit Gay Guys Say".  I promise you will have a giggle.

Sometimes you just need to relax and say fuck it.

Being slightly OCD it is only natural that I value punctuality.  After all, this is what separates us from animals.  Well, punctuality and the ability to fly through the air at 30 000 feet at a speed of 600 mph that is.  And the fact that we can blow shit up.  So imagine my surprise when I actually managed to miss my flight yesterday even though I was at the airport four hours ahead of time.  Now you may ask yourself “How the hell did he manage to do that?”  And the answer would be rather complicated so let me explain.

Yesterday I had to fly from Cape Town back to Johannesburg.  I was in Cape Town for work and by yesterday morning I had finished what I needed to do there and decided to go to the airport early.  I had some work to do on my laptop and decided that I might as well do it at one of the airport lounges and the fact that they had free Wi-Fi would also help.

So I arrived at the airport four hours before my flight and checked in.  The lady at the check in counter looked at me funny and we had a slight altercation about my luggage.  This is totally normal as there is always some kind of issue:  If I don’t set off the metal detector then I forget that I have a knife in my hand luggage; if that doesn’t happen then my luggage is classified obese or looks suspicious for drugs.  I am used to being harassed at airports.  I have now come to expect it.

As I was busy working minding my own business about an hour before my flight, I heard an announcement.  Apparently my flight was delayed and was now to board at Gate C12.  I was a bit annoyed as I was looking forward to arriving in Johannesburg at 4pm and now I was going to be thirty minutes late.  About half an hour before my flight was due to depart I packed up my stuff and proceeded to Gate C12.

There was nobody there so I assumed the flight was delayed even further.  As my flight’s departure time neared and eventually passed I got suspicious.  I thought “What the fuck is going on?  Has it been delayed again?  But if they were boarding surely they would have been calling my name?”  Nobody called my name.  Not even once.  As I proceeded to go to the viewing deck I was also surprised that my plane was no longer on its spot on the tarmac.  It was gone.  Could it be that they left without me?

I promptly went to information and was told that my flight had indeed left.  Without me!  Now I had to go and get my ticket transferred to the next available flight.  I could feel a panic attack looming but decided to just stay calm, compose myself and that it was not the end of the world.  I have never missed a flight in my life and was mortified that my once clean record had now been stained, especially since I had been at the airport for four hours now.

As I proceeded to the flight controller counter I immediately thought about my luggage.  Where was it?  Was it on the plane?  Has it been molested?  Will I ever see it again?  If it is broken into will that person judge me?

As I got to the front of the counter I told the lady about my predicament.  She got on the phone, bashed away on her keyboard and then looked at me with concern.  “It seems that there is a problem.  According to my computer you boarded the flight, so why are you standing here?” she said while giving herself unsightly frown lines.  “Well, I don’t know.  I am not on that flight” I replied sarcastically.

Apparently there was another passenger booked on the same flight who had the same name and surname as mine and they checked off the wrong person.  As if this was not bad enough there was a problem with our luggage as well.

I was told that they kept my luggage onboard the plane and had bumped his luggage off.  So my luggage would arrive in Johannesburg two hours before me and his two hours after him.  “Well isn’t this just great.  You know this is how planes blow up, don’t you?!  Aren’t you supposed to match passengers to their luggage?!  Just wait until the terrorists discover this loophole.  It will be 9/11 all over again” I screamed.  Softly.  As I didn’t want to get arrested and I really wanted to make my next flight.

Eventually I made it onto the next flight, dripping with sweat and smelling like a funky monkey.  Seeing as I was a last minute addition to the flight I was banished to the very back of the plane where all the degenerates who have punctuality issues are seated.  And to make matters worse I had the middle seat.

As I sat down the person to my left was some kind of far right Afrikaner bearded man in kaki clothes and to my right was a nice Indian lady.  I apologized to the lady about my odor and told her I just had a very rough day.  I did not apologize to the kaki bearded man.  All three of us were reading.  I was reading Chelsea Handler’s Uganda Be Kidding Me, the lady was reading 50 Shades of Gray and the kaki bearded man was reading some book on Siener van Rensburg (a right wing profit).  This made me rather paranoid.

The flight was rather uneventful as we did not crash or go missing.  Our pilot was a rugged, tall and a ridiculously good looking man.  The only problem was that he was finger fucking his iPhone before and after the flight.  Possibly also during the flight as it is apparently not necessary to tell people to fasten their seatbelts when there is severe turbulence, which we had!  But I forgave him because he was gorgeous.

After arriving in Johannesburg I immediately went to the baggage claims counter.  Also there was a young woman who lost her glasses.  They are still missing.  There was also a woman who just flew in from Washington DC on a Delta Air flight who lost her blood pressure medication on the plane.  Her description of what she kept them in was rather vague and she may have suffered a stroke since.  We should all really pray for her as she seemed really distressed.

Eventually, I was reunited with my luggage and it is a miracle that nothing was missing from it.  Well, actually the only things they could steal from it were dirty laundry, my toiletries and prescription medication that would not even make them high.

I arrived home last night just after 7pm; meaning that I was technically in transit for six hours instead of three.  This was the first flight I have ever missed and it was not even my own fault.  How was I supposed to know that there were two Gate C12’s and that some other person on the same flight shared my name?

I am however impressed with myself for not having had a panic attack, breaking down falling on the ground crying like an emotionally disturbed child and for keeping my shit together.  Sometimes you just need to relax and say fuck it.  This is what I did and it really helped.  I however still hate airports.

Till next time.

Why Oscar Pistorius is screwed.

Like so many people I am following the Oscar Pistorius murder trial.  I mean it has its own 24 hour channel on television and has its own Facebook, Twitter and Instagram accounts.  There are also live video and audio streams.  And no matter where you go or what you do Oscar is there.  If he sobs or vomits in court it trends on Twitter.  When he covers his ears it immediately gets hundreds of likes on Instagram.  Phrases like “I put it to you” and “my lady” have also even made it into our pop culture.  The Oscar Pistorius trial has infiltrated our daily lives on so many levels and has piqued our macabre interests.  But one thing we tend to forget is that no matter what happens with this trial Oscar Pistorius is screwed either way.

Look, I will be the first to admit that the events that transpired on the morning of 14 February 2013 are tragic.  Reeve Steenkamp died and the only two people who really know exactly what happened that morning are Reeva and Oscar.  And Reeva is dead and the veracity of Oscar’s version of events is questionable at best.

Oscar’s defense is making him out to be a pussy.  When Barry Roux put it to one of the witnesses that Oscar screams like a woman when he is scared, it caused even some on his own defense team to struggle not to laugh.  This also led to the meme that went viral that read “What if I put it to you that when my cat gets scared he barks like a dog”.

Before this happened I must be honest and admit that I didn’t even know who Reeva Steenkamp was.  It is sad to think that she had to die horribly before she became world famous.  I’m sure this was not part of her ten year plan nor was killing her in Oscar’s either.

There are many people speculating about Oscar’s guilt or innocence and I for one will not tender my personal opinion on this in a public forum.  It would be irresponsible as it is too soon in the trial to make any predictions.  However, one thing is certain – Oscar is guilty of murder.  Whether he is found guilty of premeditated murder or culpable homicide the fact stands that he shot and killed Reeva.  Nothing in this world will change that.  Whether he killed her in a fit of rage or accidentally, she is dead and this will follow him around for the rest of his life.  He will always be known as the Olympian who shot and killed his girlfriend.

Oscar’s career is over, sponsors will not touch him and even if he walks away from this it would take a miracle for him to revive his career that he destroyed with four gunshots on Valentine’s Day in 2013.  As the world watches the graphic crime scene photos and imagines how terrified Reeva must have been in that toilet cubical that morning; the terrible pain she must have been in and the undignified manner in which she died; it is hard to believe that he will find any forgiveness anytime soon.

Emotional tears, vomiting in court and retching may have worked to win over a jury elsewhere but this will have no effect on the judge and assessors in his trial here is South Africa.  Some members of the public may feel some sympathy for him as he breaks down in court, but skeptics like me still speculate if this is due to him suffering from Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, extreme guilt or if it is remorse.  Only Oscar will be able to answer this.

There have also been numerous jokes about this murder on the internet.  Some jokes are quite funny and others are more distasteful and disrespectful.  Also having a dark sense of humor and having a tendency to laugh at my own private jokes my husband caught me last week laughing while I was in the shower.  He asked me what was so funny but I was rather hesitant to tell him.

You see, while I was in the shower I imagined what the scene must have looked like that morning:  Oscar on his stumps running into the bathroom, all angry or scared and then firing off the shots.  I found that mental image extremely funny but then immediately felt guilty for laughing.  Naturally hubby did not find this funny as he doesn’t always approve of my sense of humor.  Sometimes I don’t either.

My husband and my father-in-law refuse to follow the trial and I think they are missing out.  I mean honestly, how can you be angry or happy with the verdict if you didn’t follow the trial?  How do you have small talk with people in awkward social situations if you cannot comment on the goings on of that week’s trial?  This is our OJ Simpson and if you don’t follow it you will miss out on catchy phrases like “If the gloves don’t fit you must acquit” from the OJ trial.  I will be very pissed off if the only catch phrase we are going to get from Oscar’s trial is “I put it to you”.

At this stage of the trial I have many questions about what happened.  I want to know why Reeva was still in the clothes she arrived in when she was shot that morning even though she brought an overnight bag with her; what was found on the iPhones and iPads; why their phones were in the bathroom; why he carried Reeva downstairs; why Oscar didn’t phone an ambulance; did they have a fight before he shot her; if he truly thought there was an intruder why did he not wake Reeva up, is that not normally the first thing a reasonable person would do; and if the bathroom light was on when he shot Reeva why did he choose to conceal that fact.

To be honest, I think by the time we get close to the end of this trial everyone who has followed it will be suffering from Oscar fatigue.  Many people would have learned a great deal about how the South African court system works and how it is not glamorous and that real life forensic police work is nothing like the CSI you see on television.

But that being said, it remains tragic.  A woman who very few people knew of is now dead and famous for all the wrong reasons.  The once proud son of South Africa is now a fallen hero with very little chance of redemption.  Even though many of Oscar’s fans will still love and support him no matter what, he is screwed either way.  Oscar is now a murderer.  Oscar is that guy who killed his girlfriend.  This is how he will be remembered and there is very little that he can now do to change that.

Till next time.

Gay men will marry your girlfriend

If you don't support gay marriage, well then you're in for a rude awakening.

Do I look like a Heroin Addict to you?

As some of you who read my blog regularly know, I was diagnosed with early onset male menopause a couple of months ago.  And yes, that is a legitimate thing.  And no, I have not started growing boobs and getting my period.  People this might come as a shock to you but I don’t have a uterus or a vagina.  My body just started producing less testosterone than it should and consequently I have to get hormone replacement injections.

It’s like getting a vitamin B shot.  Only it’s not vitamin B.  It is hormones.  I have to get a shot once a week and I use to have a nurse at my pharmacy who gave it to me.  Then she resigned and I was left with a conundrum:  Do I find another nurse or do I give the injections to myself.  As things turned out, in my cornucopia of options, there was a third option – my husband.

Look, I probably am one of the few people who are not afraid of needles or injections.  I guess the fact that I have had so many injections in my life probably desensitized me to it.  I have even given myself a few injections in my day.  Both times were out of sheer desperation and both times involved my back going into spasm while I was working away from home.  Both times also involved dodgy medical facilities with questionable hygiene which was the reason I opted to rather inject myself.

When I learned that my regular nurse resigned at the pharmacy I normally go to, I did not think of it as a huge train smash.  I was in no mood to test drive the new student nurse who was there in the interim.  So I asked my pharmacist if I can’t just administer the injections myself.  To which she rather nervously answered “Well, I suppose you can but I don’t recommend it”.  In my mind this meant she was saying “Sure, knock yourself out.  Just don’t hit a vein, ok.”

So I bought some syringes, needles and alcohol swabs.  When I got home I tested to see if I could inject myself in my bum but soon learned that it would not be possible.  I did not want to inject myself in my leg muscle, because you know – the vein issue that the pharmacist warned me about.  Then I realized that hubby could do it.  He loves me after all and won’t intentionally hurt me.  Besides, it’s only an injection and it’s not like I would be asking him to perform major surgery on me or give me stitches.

When hubby arrived home that evening I told him about the nurse that resigned and that I did not feel comfortable allowing the student nurse to inject me.  I told him that he had to do it.  To which he responded “Let me get this straight.  You’d rather have me give you an injection who has never done it before rather than have a professional do it?”  To which I responded “Yes, if you love me you will give it to me in my ass”.  Sometimes my husband does not get my sense of humor.

After some negotiation hubby eventually agreed.  So we went into the bedroom.  I drew the correct amount of hormone out of the vial, replaced the needle with a new one and handed it over to hubby.  I then downed a glass of chardonnay and presented my ass to my husband like a mandrill monkey during mating season.  I told him to stick it in me already.  At first he was hesitant but eventually he did and he injected me flawlessly.  There was no bruising and very little bleeding.

It was then that I realized we are getting old.  I mean if the most exciting thing you do on a Friday night is downing a glass of chardonnay and getting a hormone injection from your husband then it is probably a good time to start shopping for a retirement home.  But you are only as old as you feel and since my hormone levels started stabilizing I have been feeling younger, have more energy and certain other areas in our marriage has also greatly benefited.  And yes, I am talking about the sex.

Hubby gives me my shot every Friday and we do this religiously.  The doctor said that I would have to do this for a year and then we will re-evaluate if further treatment is needed.  The downside of all of this is having to buy the syringes and needles.  For some reason people always give me “that look” when they see what I am buying.  It’s the look that says “I am judging you.  Are you a drug addict?  Or are you dying of something.”

For some odd reason I always feel like I have to explain myself in such situations; that I have to reassure those judgmental assholes that I am not a heroin addict.  But I never do.  Out load that is.  But in my mind I am storming up to them and getting into their personal space, up so close that they can smell my onion breath from the salad I had for lunch that day and I scream “These fucking needles and syringes are for my hormone injections.  I have fucking menopause.  Mother! Fucker!”  In my mind this is highly effective but in reality I’d probably get punched in the face or kicked in the balls.

Last Friday night as we went through our new ritual I accidentally stabbed myself in the finger when I did the needle swop.  So not only did hubby have to deal with injecting me he also had to deal with the blood fountain squirting out of my index finger.  Those needles are damn near lethally sharp.  Had hubby not seen that the needle I stabbed myself with was in fact bent the injection would have been very painful.  We look out for each other that way.

So what if people think I am a heroin addict once a month when I go and buy my four syringes, four needles and alcohol swabs.  So what if the cashier looks at me with those eyes that has more questions than answers.  It is none of their damn business what it is for.  It is however a tad strange that part of our Friday evenings now includes syringes and needles, but you know what they say – a couple that inject hormones for menopause together, stays together.

Till next time.