RelNomadMonitor

My favourite jumper

2007-03-07T13:07:00.000-08:00

As soon as I woke up, I knew that the previous night had been overly indulgent, even by my standards. My throat was so dry that I couldn’t swallow without grating off bits of it; my eyes rejected the aggressive daylight streaming through the skylight with such a vengeance that you’d have thought a transplant had gone wrong; the thud in my head was like that of an onboard motor.

Thankfully, I was alone in my bed.
Read more..

Image map hiding text

2007-03-05T12:48:00.000-08:00

Unusually for me, I decided to tag myself with something that minge has been touting:

Please take a photograph of whatever you see before you, this Sunday (4th February 2007) at 5pm/17:00 (local time) and email it to me. Feel free to add any information you like, what the picture shows, what you were doing at the time, where you are, whether it's typical or atypical of where you are or what you do at 17:00 on a Sunday afternoon. Anything. It's up to you.

I hibernated this weekend, spending most of the time indoors, only venturing out twice to get a few groceries and an English Sunday newspaper so my contribution reflects that. And being an indecisive sort, rather than send him just one picture, I've sent a collage. That's cheating, I know, but I cheated more than just that - none of the pictures were taken at 5pm today and some were even taken yesterday. Ok, so I'm a cheat, but here you have a window on my world.

If you click on an individual picture, you'll get a bigger version of it. And if you want a bigger version of the collage, click here.

image map

2007-02-14T22:55:00.001-08:00

Unusually for me, I decided to tag myself with something that minge has been touting:

Please take a photograph of whatever you see before you, this Sunday (4th February 2007) at 5pm/17:00 (local time) and email it to me. Feel free to add any information you like, what the picture shows, what you were doing at the time, where you are, whether it's typical or atypical of where you are or what you do at 17:00 on a Sunday afternoon. Anything. It's up to you. helpful.

I hibernated this weekend, spending most of the time indoors, only venturing out twice to get a few groceries and an English Sunday newspaper so my contribution reflects that. And being an indecisive sort, rather than send him just one picture, I've sent a collage. That's cheating, I know, but I cheated more than just that - none of the pictures were taken at 5pm today and some were even taken yesterday. Ok, so I'm a cheat, but here you have a window on my world.

If you click on an individual picture, you'll get a bigger version of it. And if you want a bigger version of the collage, click here.

2007-02-13T02:07:00.000-08:00

Font test

2007-02-13T02:02:00.000-08:00

Lets type in Arial for a this bit is bold change

And now in Times New Roman with a bit in bold

Razaq

2007-02-13T00:43:00.001-08:00

Like most of the rest of you, I get my fair share of offers to buy viagra at hugely discounted prices and offers to increase my penis to huge proportions. Along with offers of loans, university degrees and requests to check my bank details (phishing) for banks that I’ve never banked with. Unlike many of you, including Rob, I’ve been spared the various scams (419 fraud) that promise untold riches if you’re stupid enough to provide them with your bank details.

Until a few days ago, that is.

From: aj.meutgeert@home.nl
Subject: Email from Samiu
Date: Wed, 17 Jan 2007 19:42:54 +0100

Dear Sir/Madam,

This letter may come to you as a surprise due to the fact that we have not yet met. I have to say that I have no intentions of causing you any pains so i decided to contact you through this medium.

As you read this, I don't want you to feel sorry for me, because, I believe everyone will die someday. My name is Razaq Samiu, a merchant in Dubai, in the U.A.E. I have been diagnosed with prostate and esophageal Cancer that was discovered very late due to my laxity in caring for my health. It has defiled all form of medicine and right now, I have only about a few months to live according to medical experts.

I have not particularly lived my life so well, as I never really cared for anyone not even myself but my business. Though I am very rich, I was never generous, I was always hostile to people and only focus on my business as that was the only thing I cared for. But now I regret all this as I now know that there is more to life than just wanting to have or make all the money in the world. I believe when God gives me a second chance to come to this world I would live my life a different way from how I have lived it. Now that I know my time is near, I have willed and given most of my properties and assets to my immediate and extended family members and as well as a few close friends and Schools in the UAE. I have decided to give alms to charity organizations, as I want this to be one of the last good deeds I do on earth. So far, I have distributed money to some charity organizations in the U.A.E, England and Ireland. Now that my health has deteriorated so badly, I cannot do this myself any more. I once asked members of my family to close one of my accounts and donate the money, which I have there to charity organization in Bulgaria, they refused and kept the money to themselves. Hence, I do not trust them anymore, as they seem not to be contended with what I have left for them. The last of my money which is the huge cash that I deposit in a bank in England Uk.

I want you to help me collect this deposit and dispatched it to charity organizations and let them know that it is I Razaq Samiu that is making this generous donation.

I am writing this from my laptop computer in my hospital bed in England where I wait for my time to come. If you are interested to help me i will give you more information about this like the amount that i deposited in the bank and Contact of the bank so you can contact them. I will also send you a picture of myself when i am on my laptop in the hospital.

Note that you will take 20% out of the funds and give 80% to the charity organizations. I pray that God uses you to support and assist me with good heart God be with you.

If you can help respond back to me on my private email:
razaqsamiu2@yahoo.es

Razaq Samiu

Between receiving Razaq's heart-rending email and now, I've received a couple of 'romance-scams' on a gay chat site. Obviously, my time of innocence when it comes to being the target of scammers has come to an end.

Do you think I should reply and see what happens next? It would be interesting to see his picture, don’t you think? But, while it would be interesting, it’s definitely not original. Some people have elevated the activity of ‘scam baiting’into a fine art.

Whole websites are devoted to it.

I remembered reading about a particular scam-baiting website that specialises in hoodwinking the ‘scamsters’ into doing the most ridiculous things: posing for pics with hilarious signs, making elaborate carvings, actually get tattoed, etc. You can see some of the results below.

Another one is called 'Bait a Mugu'. According to them, a mugu is a 'term used by the scammers among themselves to describe their intended victims. Roughly translated this term mean "big fool"'. Now hang on, that word sounds suspiciously like the Afrikaans word, 'moegoe'. According to Wiktionary, 'moegoe' is a South African pejorative word meaning an idiot or a mampara. It suggests that the word may be derived from 'moeg ou', the Afrikaans term for 'tired person'. If that's the case, the word has travelled all the way up to West Africa. Alternatively, like many other Afrikaans words, it's a truly African word that has been adopted by Afrikaans.

Here's a selection of 'trophies' from '419 eater'.

You know, while finding those pics really amusing, I started to feel sorry for these people. Poor, ignorant people, trying to make money by any which way. There even seemed something racist about the whole thing.

Hang on, Nomad, don't be such a wet, bleeding-heart liberal! These guys are responsible for pilfering nearly $200 million from Americans annually and costing the UK economy £150m a year. Ok, so people are stupid to fall for this sort of thing but these scammers aren't people one should be feeling sorry for.

Phew, bleeding-heart moment over. Here are some more pics:

Ok, while I won’t go into a whole scam-baiting exercise, I’d still like to see Razaq’s pic. Watch this space for further developments.

machel

2007-02-13T00:38:00.001-08:00

Unlike the assassination of Verwoerd, the death of Samora Machel wasn’t a JFK moment for me. I remember the shock of it but not where I was and what I was doing at the time. The first post-colonial leader of the country of my birth had died and it was suspected that South Africa, my adopted country, was responsible for the aeroplane crash that killed him along with 24 other passengers.

It was twenty years ago today.

1986 was the year when my wife and I decided to leave South Africa. We’d been feeling very uncomfortable about the political situation for many years but P W Botha’s infamous 'Crossing the Rubicon speech' on 15 August 1985 was the tipping point. The country was beset with violence and was in a constant state of emergency. In Pik Botha’s words at the TRC hearings:

‘1985 stands out as a dark year in our history. The South West Africa (Namibia) issue was far from being resolved. South African troops were fighting in Angola. The high hopes raised by the 1984 Nkomati Accord between Mozambique and South Africa had dissipated.‘

We entered 1986 knowing that we’d be leaving the country (we left in February 1987), unlike previous years where we’d just talked about it. Apart from the effect that had on our minds, there is so much else that I remember from that year including two ‘JFK moments’ of mine, the disintegration of Challenger and the disaster at Chernobyl. It was also the year that Imelda Marcos became synonymous with an obsession with shoes. And it was the year of two political deaths rumoured to have been at the hands of the South Africans, Olof Palme and Samora Machel.

At that stage, Machel had been in power in Mozambique since independence from Portugal in June 1975. In his first few years of power, his revolutionary, Marxist zeal contributed towards massive strides in education and primary health care. These improvements were, however, accompanied by the abolition of all private property, suppression of free speech and huge relocations of the population, often to ‘re-education camps’ (quite a number of my friends from Maxixe were sent to re-education camps far in the north of the country because they smoked dope). Not that any of this affected his populist appeal which seemed to increase in proportion to the ever-increasing loathing from the white-minority regimes next door. Once the country descended into civil war with Renamo, an enemy first backed by Rhodesia, then by South Africa, the progress of earlier years was rapidly reversed.

Even in 1976, my last year at school, and still an enthusiastic communist, I felt very uncomfortable with some of the things that were being done in Mozambique in the name of ‘freedom and progress’. They were the things that South African racists loved to have as ammunition in arguments against democracy in South Africa. A joke with serious intent about the motives of the Soviets and its allies was doing the rounds at the time: Samora’s name stood for (SA)frica, (MO)zambique, (R)hodesia, (A)ngola.

By the time of his death, the civil war in Mozambique had rendered most of the country ungovernable so the changes that came afterwards may have happened when they did had he remained alive although his successor, Joaquim Chissano, was a much more urbane, sophisticated man with much less of the stubborn, battle-hardened, freedom-fighter that characterised Machel. But, one thing that would probably not have happened if he were still alive today, is the romance between his widow, Graça Machel, and Nelson Mandela. Graça Machel is the only woman to have been the ‘first lady’ of two different countries.

A solemn ceremony will be held today on an isolated hillside outside Mbuzini, a South African hamlet, near South Africa's borders with Mozambique and Swaziland, the site of the plane crash that killed Samora Machel. South African President Thabo Mbeki and Mozambiquan President Armando Guebuza will be there. Graça Machel and Machel's children are expected to attend.

Whatever your opinions of Samora Machel, opinions that are bound to be clouded by your political beliefs, Mozambiquans still refer to him as 'o Pai da Nação', the father of the nation.

Update: BBC report on fresh probe into the cause of Machel's death.

gingers

2007-02-13T00:36:00.001-08:00

Danae by Gustav Klimt. Many painters have exhibited a fascination with red hair. The colour "titian" takes its name from Titian, who often painted women with red hair. Other painters notable for their redheads include the Pre-Raphaelites, Edmund Leighton, Modigliani , Gustav Klimt and Sandro Botticelli, whose famous painting, The Birth of Venus, depicts the mythological goddess, Venus, as a redhead.

Prince Idon of Mu fled his homeland, arriving in Atlantis at sunset. 'Moved to tears, he wished that its beautiful red tones could be saved for posterity. In an instant his hair was changed to red and every succeeding generation of redheads was reminded of that first spell-binding sunset.'

So what is it about the British and their antipathy towards redheads? Or, to use their pejorative term, what is it that’s wrong about gingers (pronounced ging-ers, both hard g’s)? Not only do they use it pejoratively, they combine it with another British pejorative term (one I particularly dislike), ‘minger’ (also a hard g), so that you have ‘ginger-minger’.

Doug isn’t the first person to suggest that I may have a thing about redheads. In fact I’ve joked about it myself in the past. Not only do I happen to have a wife and two children who are all redheads but, my ex, a boyfriend of seven years, is one too. And there I was, two nights ago, swooning about the redheaded double bassist of the Puppini Sisters.

So do I have a thing about them?

Well, having a wife who’s a redhead made the likelihood of my having redheaded children rather high:

According to ‘The Redhead Encyclopedia’, a book devoted to the study and celebration of the flame-haired, there's a 50% chance the gene will be passed to the children if one parent has red hair. If one or two parents aren't redheaded but carry the gene, there is a 25% chance of having a ginger child. And if both parents are redheaded? It can be any colour as long as it's red.

Although there’s a tinge of red in my beard (rapidly being superseded by swathes of grey!) and the hair on my arms can look slightly red when seen at a certain angle in bright sunlight, I’m not a redhead. Well, not enough of one, I don’t think, to ensure that my offspring are redheaded. So, my choice of mate explains them.

But why would I choose a redheaded mate?

Research on the matter offers completely different reasons:

Rees (2004) suggests that the vividness and rarity of red hair may lead to it becoming desirable in a partner and therefore it could become more common through sexual selection. But, Harding et al (2000) proposed that red hair was not the result of positive selection but rather occurs due to a lack of negative selection. In Africa, for example, red hair is selected against because high levels of sun would be harmful towards fair skin. However, in Northern Europe this does not happen and so redheads can occur through genetic drift.

Contrary to what Harding proposes, selecting against red hair doesn’t apply to me as I selected my mate in Africa. So, perhaps it was sexual selection in my case? Of course it was sexual selection! Choice in other words. How else does one human select another? I can’t say that I’m that comfortable with the idea of my selection criteria being governed by forces of nature over which I have no control. Um, having said that, I’m gay (despite the anomalous selection of a female redhead), something over which I have no control. Oh, bollocks to natural selection being the reason for my choice, there must be some other reason.

Ah, but ‘ginger’ is Cockney slang for queer (it rhymes with ginger beer) so maybe that’s where my liking for redheads comes from? That still doesn’t make sense of why I’d go after a redheaded WOMAN. But, as I said, that’s somewhat of an anomaly, so best not concentrate on that. Rather let me move on to the choice of a redheaded man.

Here you have Seth Green, one of many famous redheads. Rick Astley, Julianne Moore and Tilda Swinton are three others.

If I’m to do this ‘scientifically’, I suppose I should consider each of his traits/talents/attractions in turn, then determine how his redheadedness features in comparison with them. Let’s see, beautiful blue eyes, great legs,strong hands, lovely wrists, fun to be around, big cock, fantastic in bed….yadda yadda. Don’t worry, I’m beginning to bore myself, so I’m probably boring you too. You know what, I’m beginning to think that this is going nowhere. He is, however, closer to my son’s age than he is to mine. Could that mean anything? Ok, let’s NOT go there! I can assure you….

The thing is, as I write this I’m beginning to think that I do have a thing, not an obsession mind you, about redheads. Not all of them, let me hasten to say. I’ve got nothing against freckles but some of them do have a washed out look that would suit a blinking troglodyte freshly exposed to the light. Even my wife had a few concerns about our son getting his ear pierced. ‘I don’t want him to look like trailer-park trash. It could look so common with his hair colour.’ I could see her point but she really shouldn’t have worried as he’s a very good looking boy and couldn’t look common no matter how hard he tried.

So, I sort of acknowledge that there are certain redheads who look insipid and unsightly but there are so many of them who are really gorgeous. I still can’t understand the British ‘ginger-minger’ thing. The way they use the term sometimes reminds me of the way some South Africans use the K-word. Why else would Catherine Tate manage to get so much mileage out of her sketch where she’s forced to seek refuge in a haven for redheads? If redheads were a recognisable ethnic minority, the slurs you hear against them would be covered by hate crime legislation.

Since there are such relatively high proportions of redheads in the Irish and Scottish populations, perhaps this is a strange manifestation of English condescension rather than a British thing? Maybe it stems from suspicion towards anthing that isn’t conventional? Or is it an ancient throwback to the Roman loathing of the barbarians(*)? Well, whatever it is, it’s strong enough for redheads to feel ‘persecuted’ enough to set up websites like redandproud and redprince.

The redheaded pre-Raphaelite beauty Lizzie Siddal, the model for John Everett Millais' Ophelia. She almost caught her death posing in a bath of cold water wearing a vintage dress bought for her by the artist for a princely four pounds. She eventually died of a laudanum overdose and was buried with her love letters from her husband, Dante Gabriel Rossetti. Deciding to retrieve his poetry and publish it, Rossetti had her exhumed. Legend has it that despite the fact she'd been dead seven years, Siddal looked exactly as she had in life. Apart, that is, from her red hair, which had continued to grow until it filled the coffin.

For those redheads that feel persecuted, I think they should take solace from this statement from Jonathan L Rees, Professor of Dermatology at the University of Edinburgh:.

Red hair is such a distinctive characteristic that one can imagine, in some future world, two red heads meeting up on some distant planet and the conversation quickly turning to their place of birth! Whether or not they were both of Celtic blood, they could be sure that at least one of their genes was remarkably similar.

And, they also need to know that there are people like me who find a lot of them very attractive. In fact, some people seem rather obsessed with them. The Redhead Cluster Phenomenon was set up by a guy who has this to say:

‘Since boyhood I’ve always believed, at the deepest level, that redheads are standard-bearers of the grandest and most wondrous human beauty. Redheaded males, I mean. I barely notice girls, and I certainly barely notice red-haired girls, despite coming of age in the Farrah Fawcett-Majors era.’

It’s been a long while since I bedded a redhead. Mmmm…something to think about now that the weekend is upon me….

(*) The etymology for the word barbarian:
Derived from the Latin word: barbarosa (meaning redhead). The Roman Empire had many battles against some of the Nordic tribes, who happened to have red hair, and so those Nordic tribes were labelled as barbarosae by the Romans. Because the Romans thought they were barbaric, they hated redheads, so to them barbarosa was a negative adjective. Ever since, many non-redheaded people (not just those of Roman descent), think of them in the same way. Incidentally, Judas Iscariot was also meant to have been a redhead. More ammuniton for those who call redheads 'ginger-mingers'?

And, sticking to etymology, where does the word ‘ginger’ (meaning redhead), come from?

post 2

2007-02-13T00:33:00.001-08:00

A proud little nomad posing with his pellet gun and squinting into the sun. Taken at my childhood home in Matola, Mozambique.

My teenage mother and uncle with my grandmother on a riverbank outside Johannesburg. My uncle is supporting his gun - they must have been shooting at birds or hoping to do so.

I shot my first bird at eight soon after having been given a pellet gun by my uncle. Both he and my mother had grown up shooting flying things with alacrity. It was thought that a pellet gun would be a great source of fun for me.

They were right.

I loved shooting bottles and tin cans off walls. A masala (*), especially if overripe and hit in the right place, exploded impressively. Loquats and marulas didn’t explode but hitting them took much more skill. Shooting at birds began as soon as I got the gun. It was what you did with a gun. Boys that didn’t have guns, killed birds with catapults. And none of them had a mother who waxed lyrical about her youthful shooting sprees and immediately christened my gun by shooting several mousebirds. Their limp, soft, warm bodies fascinated me.

I wanted to shoot one too.

Shooting a bird wasn’t as easy as shooting fruit or tin cans. Aiming while pointing a gun upwards wasn’t that simple - I always missed or they’d fly away before I had time to shoot. I decided to ‘cheat’. There was a very large marula tree in the paddock that was always full of birds engorging themselves on the fruit and the fat mopani worms that infested the tree at certain times of the year. The paddock gate was just the right height for an eight-year old to rest a gun on it while taking aim. I took aim and shot. A small green bird plumetted to the ground. With a loud shout of glee, I ran towards it.

My first bird!

It’s broken body lay amongst the rotting fruit; blood trickled out of its beak and through a hole in its chest. Instead of picking it up immediately, I stood looking at it. Watching its blood stain the ground. I didn’t want to touch it, I wanted to run away. I wanted to hide.

I picked it up and wept.

This was colonial Africa. Animals and birds were being killed around me all the time. Killed for sport and slaughtered for food. On festive occasions, our neighbours would sometimes slaughter a pig by slitting its throat and letting it bleed to death. The chickens we ate were often slaughtered by the cook in the backyard. My mother continued using my gun to shoot birds. The better shots amongst my friends killed with their catapults. None of this bothered me but I never killed again.

Not until many years later, that is.

(*) also known as groenklapper, elephant orange, monkey ball, monkey orange, Natal orange, spiny monkey ball, kaffir orange, mpapa, mtonga, angora

test monitor size

2007-02-13T00:18:00.000-08:00

Today's wanderings took me to the Albert Cuyp street market in De Pijp. I'd been told about it by lots of people but was still unprepared for the glorious assault of colour, smell and variety of the place.

Judge for yourself.

Just as I was taking the picture of the tram, I was accosted by the oddest creature. He was very short, quite aged and dressed in the weirdest outfit. I'd have said his sex was indeterminate but despite his face being caked in heavy makeup, I could tell that a man of sorts lurked beneath as his five 'o clock shadow was quite visible. An aged, small dog (a chihuahua?) was firmly clasped to his chest.

His expression was angry, as was the tone of his voice. He barked at me in Dutch so it took me a while to work out what he was saying.

'Did you take a picture of me?'

He was reassured when I told him that I hadn't and strode (can a very short person stride?) away. Poor guy, he must have people taking pictures of him all the time.

I really wish that I'd been able to take his picture!

Anyway, I know where I'll be buying my fruit and vegetables when I have the chance to get there. Which, alas, will only be Saturdays.