Soul Mates

I believe in soul mates, a few people in this world that you'll have this weird/amazing/terrifying connection to.
I've also been thinking about what it means to break up with a soul mate.

Is it possible to get over them?

Do you ever stop thinking about them?

I'm tired of bringing up a list of reasons to remind myself why it wasn't working.

"Hey, I Just Met You!" Jokes

You're going to hate me because this song is going to get stuck in your head. However, I've been suffering for two hours now and you might as well burn with me. These are my favourite "Hey, I Just Met You!" jokes based on Carly Rae Jepsen's Call Me Maybe hit song. If you have been living under a rock then please watch this video. It has a funny ending.

The jokes:

- Hey, I just met you, and this is crazy. I took some bath salts, your face looks tasty.


- Hey, I just met you, your tan is crazy. What race are you? Carrot, maybe?


- [Darth Vader] Hey I just met you, and this is crazy! But I'm your father, so join me maybe!


- Hey, I just met you, and this is crazy. But I'm on my period so I might eat all your bread & kill you if you 
look at me wrong. Call me, maybe?

- Hey, I just met you, and this is crazy. Are you winking at me, or is your eye just lazy?


- Stalker: Hey, I just met you. 
Me: ... 
Stalker: And this is crazy. 
Me: -.- 
Stalker: I have your number... 
Me: O_O 
Stalker: I'll call you daily!


- Hey, I just met you, and this is crazy. But here's my name, number, social security number, Facebook, Twitter, Myspace, room number, so stalk me baby.


- Hey, I just met you, and this is crazy. But I'm your Fuhrer, so Heil me maybe?


The biggest joke:

Hey, I just met you, and this is crazy! But here's my number, so call me maybe. 

Free Advice - Forgetting People's Names

There was a time in human existance when Hi5, Myspace and Bebo ruled the world. In that time I had an amazing sense of name and birthday recall. I could meet you once, remember your name, and tons of random facts about you. That was a time before Facebook. Two years into having a Facebook profile I found that I had lost my ability to recall people's birthdays.

Imagine this scenario: I arrived at school early and met a friend at the gate. We talked for 30 minutes then walked to class. The first set of people that saw us immediately said, "Happy Birthday [Insert Name]!". I was so horrified that I had forgotten it because I had looked at it that morning on Facebook that I stalked off  instead of going through that, "Oh my gosh [Insert Name]! I'm so sorry I forgot your birthday! Happy birthday!". My shame was so great that I didn't even wish him a happy birthday when I got home.

That was just birthdays. Now I make a point of checking to see if anyone around me is having a birthday and I write it on my hand so I don't forget. Five years into having my Facebook profile and I have discovered that I have a problem with name recollection. It's gone from a simple, "I think his name is Ben... No... Umm...Adam? Maybe, no Chester? No! I got it! It's Tom!" to "What? His name is Tarzan? I never thought that, oh, he's told me twice? Oh..."

This is what happens when I meet someone.
- Hello's are exchanged

- I give my name
- My mind temporarily switches off
- I miss the person's name
- Brain switches on
- Carry on conversation not knowing who I'm talking to


It's bad, it's really bad, so I've come up with a few methods to work around forgetting people's names (in certain situations) and a few tips to help improve name recollection.

4) You ask for a nickname
This doesn't always work but you could say, "Oh dude, don't have you a nickname that would be easier to remember?" I stopped using this tactic when a girl replied, "My name is Mary." Well, with a name of "Mary" she could have used a nickname of, "Virgin"?

3) Ask them to put their number on your phone
This requires you to hand them your phone so that they can put in the details. This works only if they want to give you a number. Otherwise you're screwed because they could give you a wrong name.

2) You have to make sure you have friends with you for the rest of your life
You meet someone when you're with a friend and you've forgotten that person's name. At first you will momentarily panic because you might have to do one-sided introductions or perhaps not introduce them at all. Now you can approach this in three different ways: 
- Use "Ah! Everyone is friends here! You guys introduce yourselves!"
- Duck and run away
- Warn your friend that you have forgotten that person's name and ask them to introduce themselves

This only works if you have kind, understanding friends. You get friends that would want you to burn because you have forgotten names.

1) You could actually try remembering their names
This is done in a few steps:
- Try your best to pay attention to their name. In other words, actually listen, instead of just hearing it
- Repeat their name a few times while carrying on the conversation
- Add them on Facebook or BBM

The last step is important because I'd like to believe the first two work but they don't in my case. The third step is just the final safety method. I do still wake up in the mornings and say, "Who the f is this?" before I remember.

Free Advice - So You're a Facebook Stalker

Mark Zuckerberg and friends, that they always fail to mention, gave us many things when they launched Facebook in 2004. They gave us one of the world's most recognised websites, the ability to remember people's birthdays, be tagged in horrendous photos and facestalking capabilities.
You facestalk.
It is the the mindless activity that has you going through Facebook profiles while looking at photos, status updates, wall posts, links and random comments.You can Facestalk all sorts of people: friends, people you don't know, your mom and yourself.

Become a better facestalker. A better facestalker in the sense that you will be skilled at covering your tracks. There is nothing more disconcerting than someone accidentally hinting that they were facestalking you. The feeling could be compared to being stabbed in the butt by the serial butt stabber in northern Virginia. Pay attention, this information could save you from being a total freak and having no friends to facestalk - yes, it can reach that point, statistics indicate that 1 in 2 people* will end up this way.  

*99% of statistics are made up on the spot.

4. Don't like anything!

Mistake: You were on a friend's profile and you liked a profile picture from months/years ago. There is no way you could use the, "It was on my news feed" excuse, and you've evidently shown yourself as a facestalker. 

Repercussions: Your victim just felt like they've been pinched by the butt stabber, you.

Plan of action: Don't unlike the photo! It makes things worse because then your victim is certain they have been stalked and you're trying to cover it up. There is no way to move forward in this except to ignore it and never keep your mouse cursor by the like button.

3. Don't refer to anything you haven't spoken about!

Mistake: This one requires an example dialogue.

You: "Do you still support Chelsea?"

[Victim's eyes enlarge and facial expression settles into a mask of controlled panic]

Victim: "No...  I stopped supporting them after Mourinho buggered off in 2007. I support Man United now. Wait, how did you know that?"

Repercussions: Your victim's pants have a hole and there is a mild scratch because of your prowess with wielding the butt stabbing knife.

Plan of action: Pretend a friend told you. Oh! The victim doesn't have any friends you know? Then run, and never make this mistake again. 

2. Don't drink around facestalked victims

Mistake: You facestalked a friend's friend's friend and now you're drunk (and feeling confident, cause you're the shit) and you think you know them. So you decide to go greet them with a hug and "Hi [insert name], how are you?"

Repercussions: Your victim is going to press charges for assault, intimidation and harassment. 

Plan of action: This shouldn't have happened in the first place. Why did you friends let you go and say hi? Oh wait, you don't have any friends anymore. You could try not drinking at all?

1. Don't Facestalk

You didn't consider this?

If not possible repeat instructions 2-4. 

Salted Butter Caramel Macarons

I was bored and inspired this afternoon. I was bored because I simply love to procrastinate and at that point I was procrastinating my procrastination time. I felt inspired because one of my friends baked the most delicious looking brownies this week and I discovered Salted Butter Caramel Macarons at Isabellas for R10 each and that made me angry because they were so expensive. I guess I had the right state of mind to make something cool, so I decided to try making Salted Butter Caramel Macarons. I did a lot of research before the time to find an easy recipe. I also checked many websites on common mistakes made because this was going to be my first time attempting them. The recipes I settled on for the basic Macaron shell and filling came from a blog called "You can do it... at home".

I'm not going to copy out the recipe because she has written it out so well and it has informative pictures. I will be using this recipe for Macarons in the future because I mostly got them right the first time. I didn't follow the Salted Butter Caramel Macaron recipe but only used the filling instructions from there.

Basic French Macaron shell recipe (read this as it's best for beginners): http://youcandoitathome.blogspot.com/2010/11/basic-macaron-recipe-french-meringue.html
Salted Butter Caramel Macarons: http://youcandoitathome.blogspot.com/2011/03/salted-caramel-macarons-me-against.html

I Hate Happy Feet

F*** that penguin!

I hate Happy Feet.
You do know that movie right?
The one with that dancing penguin?
Yes, I hate that movie.

There is no amount of sugar-coated coaxing or reasonable logic that will make me even remotely okay with it and that penguin. I thought the movie was a waste of my life. I'll try and explain why Happy Feet angered me so much.

The plot is about a penguin that is born to the best penguin singers and it can't sing but it can dance. It gets all the other penguins to dance and humans realise that global warming is a problem. The end. It's like Rudolf the Red Nosed Reindeer all over again except that the world doesn't get presents and there's fish!

Things I hated about Happy Feet:

• Why couldn't the penguin sing like everyone else? One of the main themes of the movie is that it's good to be different but in this case it made me angry because I had to endure stupid dancing.
• Why did they have to tap dance? 
• Why didn't the scary animals trying to eat that penguin succeed? 
• Why was that movie so long? 
• Why did I stay and waste my life for it? 

I compiled a list of things I should have done instead of watching it:

• I could have done a running-hug, slipped and broken my ankle
• Gone to the gynecologist
• Given myself paper cuts between my fingers and toes (Jackass Style)
• Watched Verimark adverts
• Rolled myself down a grassy hill and itched later
• Gone to Antarctica and massacred all the penguins

Happy Feet cost me dearly. Not only did it cost me bits of my life, as we have discussed, but it made me extremely wary of animations. This was something only the movie Up could restore in some manner. It took this scene from Up to make it okay to occasionally watch animations without penguins.

"I was hiding under your porch because I love you" - Dug

I couldn't believe it when Happy Feet 2 came out. All I could think was, "F*** that penguin!"

Your Dystopian Future - 3 Reasons Why You Need a Bunker

Your world will inevitably end, just like mine will one day. Being aware of this fact, having an overactive imagination and a propensity to procrastinate I have developed an idea of a rather dystopian future that our generation might have to live through when we're just about ready to enjoy our retirement funds.
In simple English, I think about how the world is going to go to shits. I enjoy small luxuries like listening to Dubstep, enjoying clean drinkable water, not being possessed by an insatiable need to eat other peoples' brains and limiting my exposure to ionizing radiation.
All this makes me think about how I need to start saving up for a bunker.
Yes, you read right, a bunker. You should consider building towards one as well because I might not let you stay in mine. I'm going to give you a glimpse into the mind of a pioneering genius, yes that's me, and the reasons why I think we might inevitably require one.


3. Zombie Apocalypse

There are different types of zombie apocalypse causes. A few include getting nasty neurotoxins injected into your brain, infection from a brain virus or a slight problem with fungi that controls your brain.

It would be common sense to stay as far away from the zombies as possible because you might get whatever they have. I don't think that being sprayed by chunks of rotten flesh, as you fight them off, would do you any good. Zombies would eventually die out once their food source disappeared. Staying in a bunker means you likely won't have to shoot your zombified best friend's face in or use a flame-thrower on your mom while she's wearing her flannel pj's because they will be in a bunker with you. When I suggest a bunker to hide in while all the zombies die in you shouldn't say, "Oh please! I'm going to fight them like a man! Grrrrr!", you should say, "Hell yeah! Do you think we'll get DSTV down there? When can we go pretend that we're Will Smith in I Am Legend?"

2. Mother Nature

Mother Nature hates us. Here are a few reasons why I say this:

• Moose in the USA attempt to hijack cars by conducting windshield smashes
• Baboons in South Africa succeed in hijacking cars by opening car doors
• Spiders
• 1% of the world's water can be used for human uses
• Lions and Cheetahs are allowed to roam the streets in South Africa and terrorize a specific specie of blue Bulls
• The ice on Mount Kilimanjaro is melting at a rate fast enough that I'll never be able to summit the mountain in time to see the ice. The ice will be gone by 2020, yes I'm kind of lazy.   

So we've established that Mother Nature hates us. Add on the fact that we pump toxins into rivers, dump sewerage into the oceans, let our trash collect in whirlpools and pump carbon dioxide and methane into the atmosphere and we're looking at a case of young Gohan vs Frieza, we all know that Goku had to step in finally defeat Frieza. It was never Gohan.

This is Mother Nature.

We're young Gohan and we're going to get the shit kicked out of our snotty little nose. You see the Earth has been around a lot longer than you and I and it will remain after we're buried somewhere in it or burnt to make more carbon dioxide. So when the Earth goes anal and normal weather is hurricanes and drought then you know you're going be a refugee on your own planet. As usual when resources like food and water run out then people become kind of grumpy. There will be anarchy, fire and people throwing bricks (because they always throw bricks) and you wonder what will I be doing?

Yes, I'll have one in my bunker.

The water thing is important because we like polluting it and for some stupid reason we can't really drink salty water so that eliminates 99% of our water sources. There's a guy in Texas who is buying water. He's a smart ass. I dig it, I will follow suit. I can picture humanity fighting over water. I mean it happens in The Wheel of Time with the Aiel people and that book is based on real-life events.
I'm talking total crap about The Wheel of Time but when 99.99999999999% of the world's population die out a fictional book could become a future historian's reference book.

1. Artificial Intelligence and Information
Perhaps I watched Terminator far too many times and Hal 9000 scared me senseless but I worry about things like artificial intelligence and building robots for robotic warfare.

ASIMO would be the first to crack.

Effectively all it takes is for one system to spaz out and become self-aware because we thought artificial intelligence would be a marvellous thing to program. I don't think you'd be smiling much if your top-of-the-range electrical vehicle tried to run you over while you were enjoying your morning shower. Then we have things like Google, and Google pretty much owns the Internet. They buy up dark fibre (kilometres of cable left unused after the initial Internet bubble), map the stars, enable cars to drive by themselves, own this blog, know where I live, what I look like... Wait! Help! They've found me hffrrrrrrsdfjaaaaeffffespfffffff.

So picture all that intelligence and a self-aware system and we're screwed. I don't know if military systems will be able to contain the threat and the very weapons we built to destroy each other will destroy us all. Life expectancy could drop from 80 to 10 and you're 25. Boom! Dead. Well I'll be chilling in my bunker.
I'll discuss optimal bunker placement with you in person. I have a feeling I'm being watched.

That's it! 

Do you feel enlightened? 

Are you going to save up for your bunker like you're living during the Cold War?

Yes?

My work here is done.

Kindle Joy!

The Amazon Kindle is a series of e-books. E-books, as the name suggests are electronic books. Essentially a Kindle can store a small library of books on its memory and it comes with an e-ink electronic display so that it doesn't hurt your eyes when you're reading it. In fact, you have to use a book light for the Kindle because it doesn't have a back-light, well you can either do that or wait for generation 5 of the Kindle as it will come with a built-in book light. You can read your e-books and download them off the internet by purchasing them off the Amazon book store. It's so convenient and it fuels a reading addiction.

I have massive amounts of love for my Kindle Touch. I think it's the best thing I have ever bought because it has all my books in it. It reminded me that I love to read. I suggest you translate what I wrote on the picture I made. It's an old advert for Kinder Joy, it's appropriate because I named my Kindle, Kindle Joy!


For more information on the Kindle, click here

Who Needs a Doctor When You Have Music?

Video of the week (well besides "Intergalactic" by the Beastie Boys, click here):

Favourite quote from the video was said by the man below. He said:
"It [Music] gives me the feeling of love, romance! I figure right now the world needs to come into music, singing. You've got beautiful music. Beautiful... Lovely... I feel [a] band of love, of dreams."