The Erratic Hungarian

Beware of whom you spend your time with my pretties.

I recently became very good friends with a person that has more life experience and opinions than your average Joe Soap on the street. Although this makes him out to be a very interesting individual i.e. world traveler, worked in different contexts from the malaria ridden DRC to a pencil pusher in London, there are still paradoxal issues and perspectives that I can’t come to grips with. Things that will make you think: “Well fuck it, what’s the point then?”

 Having lived a pretty sheltered life in post apartheid South Africa, there are certain elements of life and the way  some people live it that I don’t agree with, but I’m sure you noticed that from my previous posts. I don’t want the 9-5, big house, big car, 2 kids in private school tutelage. I crave adventure, going against the grind, travelling, really giving back to society, not just the same routine day in and day out.

Marching to Mediocrity?

And here I thought I found a kindred spirit. However after a couple of beers and emotional barricades crumbling, the illusion was shattered.  After all of this, after all the adventure and living in the moment, a confession was made: ”It’s all bullshit. You are living in disillusion. I still crave the big house, the big car, the security.”

This made me wonder. Are we all just walking on the same path, even though it goes against everything you stand for? Are we all just marching into mediocrity? Trying something different but all ending in the inevitable? No choice in the matter, just predetermined destiny?

I struggled with this “realization” I thought that maybe all this time I was just being naïve? Living in ignorance. I was still stupidly holding onto this ideal, that wasn’t true.

Then I consciously made a decision. Maybe it’s true, maybe it’s not. Every person is entitled to their own opinion, even the Hungarian. In the end: It’s your life, your decisions and your choice to believe in anything. If you believe the sun is a flying spaghetti monster filled with bees, then from your perspective this is true. So I can have my opinion on life and how I want to see and experience it.

Maybe it is a bit naïve?  No Fuck it. Remember my dears;  You are the author of your life; you live in what you create.

Before I die I want to buy a tiger.

Ok not really, what would I do with it? Sure it’ll give me some street cred especially if the tiger’s wearing a diamond encrusted collar and I’m walking all nonchalantly in the streets of the city.

This was an inscription on an Urban Art project entitled “Before I die I want to________”. It originated in New Orleans, where Candy Chang converted a wall of an abandoned house into an urban art piece.

It’s a very simple idea. It gives bypassers time to reflect on their lives and share their personal aspirations in public space. The side of the house was converted into a giant chalkboard, stenciled in the sentence: “Before I die I want to ________” .The wall turned a neglected space into a constructive one where we can restore perspective and understand our fellow man in new and enlightening ways.

The project blew up in ways never expected and people’s hopes and dreams have ranged from the funny to the poignant: Before I die I want to… sing for millions, see my daughter graduate, eat a salad with an alien, straddle the International Date Line, see the leaves change many times, be someone’s cavalry, hike the Appalachian Trail, cook a souffle, black out in a foreign country, help numerous children, hold her one more time, love and be loved, abandon all insecurities, be completely myself.”

This project has expanded to all corners of the earth from the Netherlands, Mexico, Australia, Portugal, Kazakhstan, even to our own South Africa(http://beforeidie.cc/walls/johannesburg-south-africa.html). The project is growing every day and together we can make public spaces that better reflect what matters to a community and individuals.

Have a look on the website( http://beforeidie.cc/).  Maybe start your own wall?




Before

 


Writing is on the wall

Blank canvass

Add some Chalk




Individual (s) street artists into the mix

Opinions



 

Dreams





Hopes

Ideas



End Result




Before I die in JHB :P









LOLs

Laughter.

Isn't it a beautiful sound? And it means so many different things to different people. I love a good laugh, and if I had to classify my sense of humour, I suppose it would be combination  of dry and dark.

However people disagree on what's funny.

For the life of me I will never understand why people enjoy watching Jackass?! It's a bunch of nitwits just hurting each other and themselves. I'm sure this "Jackass" idea was conceived, one summer afternoon. The guys were probably very high or drunk (or both). Reality checked in, they realised that they don't have anything really going for them.No real skills, talents or education, but they have a penis and a Blowtorch, so let's set it on fire, make a video and send it to MTV. This probably falls into slapstick comedy.

I have nipples & clothing pins!

So I did some research into the different sense of humours you get. So here goes.

1.) Slapstick:

Physical humor. Lots of pratfalls, falling, being hit on the head, etc. The term actually comes from the prop that actors used to hit each other with. It made a loud noise, but was hardly felt. Charlie Chaplin, started it, the idiots at Jackass made it what it is today.


2.) Dry humor

Its that deadpan, straightfaced style of humor. It's the not-very-funny joke your uncle the accountant tells. It's funny without trying to be funny. It's shows like Arrested Development, Flight of the Conchords, Black Books.


3.) Farce

Exaggerated comedy. Characters in a farce get themselves in an unlikely or improbable situation that takes a lot of footwork and fast talking to get out of. Basically any Steve Carrell or Michael Cera movie and shows like 30 Rock.

4.) Dark

Humor about the gross, violent, and otherwise depressing things in life; also called Black Comedy. People who work in emergency response: police, fire fighters, have great dark humor. Most of the time the victim is the source of the comedy. Beetlejuice, Bad Santa etc.

5.) Screwball

Humor based on a misunderstanding, such as mistaken identities, taking an overhead piece of conversation out of context, etc. Screwball comedies usually involve sex or marriage as well. It's movies like 'Meet the Parents', and all those  millions of nameless college movies. It's also my least favorite type of comedy

6.) Parody

People often confuse this with satire, but the two are completely different. Parody mocks or makes fun of an original work. Saturday Night Live often parodies movies and TV shows. Those funny movie titles you come up with based on original movie titles ("Shaving Ryan's Privates") are parodies. They also stop being funny after about the fifth or sixth one.

7.) Satire

Satire is basically making fun of or ridiculing human follies and shortcomings, hopefully in the hopes of causing improvement. Satire is often meant to be funny, but that's not the purpose of it. It's shows like The Office, Parks and Recreation that falls into this category.

8.) Toilet Humour

No explanation needed. Bowels movements, fart jokes. Having a bowel movement whilst thinking it was a fart. There is your joke.

And one of my greatest forms of entertainment.The website 9 gag (http://9gag.com/) I bid you adieu with one of my favourite memes "Bad Luck Brian"

"Quarter-Life Crisis"

I'm so sorry my pretties (well the 3 of you reading my blog), it's been a super busy couple of months, with a promotion, a move and a 25th Birthday that has passed. So I haven't had the time to tend to you :(

One thing I realised is: Getting older sucks. Yes, I'm still in my twenties but can start smelling the pugnent stench of 30. This also being accompanied by random people asking my age and then responding in a cool hipster black dude voice :" Damn bitch you old!! Why are you still going out? Don't you have a husband and shit?" The answer my dear random is: "No I'm really not that old, I'm two years older than you are. Becasue I am a social person that enjoys smoking  and spending time with friends.No, I don't have a husband, seeing as I think people getting married at this age get excited over Tupperware parties, I'm not there yet."

But alas the curse of the 25th year, the Quarter-Life crisis prevails, below some things I noticed about this time of your life:

It is when you stop going along with the crowd and start realizing that there are a lot of things about yourself that you didn't know and may or may not like.

You start feeling insecure and wonder where you will be in a year or two, but then get scared because you barely know where you are now.

You start realizing that people are selfish and that, maybe, those friends that you thought you were so close to aren't exactly the greatest people you have ever met and the people you have lost touch with are some of the most important ones.

What you do not realize is that they are realizing that too and are not really cold or catty or mean or insincere, but that they are as confused as you.

You miss the comforts of university, of groups, of socializing with the same people on a constant basis. But then you realize that maybe they weren't so great after all.

You are insecure and then secure. You laugh and cry with the greatest force of your life. You feel alone and scared and confused. Suddenly the only thing constant in your life is change and you try and cling on to the past with dear life but soon realize that the past is drifting further and further away and there is nothing to do but stay where you are or move forward.

You get your heart broken and wonder how someone could do such damage to you or you lay in bed and wonder why you can't meet anyone decent enough to get to know better; All this while you had been convincing yourself that you didn't want to be tied down to any person; Now suddenly you have moments of self-doubt when you wonder if you waited too long and let someone special get away. Random hook ups start to look cheap and getting wasted and acting like an idiot starts to look pathetic.

You want to be independent but suddenly, the idea of having the stability of a special someone to trust and lean on doesn't seem all that bad. You want to be your own person and yet be taken care of at the same time.

You go through the same emotions and questions over and over and talk with your friends about the same topics because you cannot seem to make a decision.

You worry that if you don't make dramatic changes and go on adventures now, in your youth, you might get tied down and one day become a bitter empty shell person totally absorbed in their work, but if you mess around for too long, all your friends will be settled and working and you will be the disorganised hippie with no place to stay.

You worry about loans and money and the future and making a life for yourself and while winning the race would be great, right now you'd just like to be a contender.

We are in our best of times and our worst of times, trying as hard as we can to figure this whole thing out.