edible baby alert

y’ulle know how it works right? women go through various stages of ‘being broody’. basically if you can make it past the age of 25 without falling pregnant (is quite a feat in this country, you may have heard), you’ll probably have another 3 solid years of being grateful not to have a baby. during the 3 years before you move onto the next stage of broody (more about that later), how you relate to babies is not so much in a maternal, want-to-nurture way, but is rather in an i-want-to-eat-it way. in short, the more I want to eat my friend’s babies, the more I like them. and the idea of snacking on their fat little arms and bellies. babies that do not make me hungry just annoy me. For someone in-between phases of broodiness, babies have to earn their relevance in my world by disgusing themselves as a food type. one such edible baby is this sproglett spawn of friends Lauren Beukes & Matt Brown. young Keitu stomped and crawled around my flat on Saturday. luckily her parents were around or it might have been Baby Salad.

Chew. It's. Face.

Don’t you love the 70s top? (I bought it for her. Just needs rollerskates now).

a little flashback to a magical time

Captured by Reigun and his Diana F+, from the birthday. It is still July. I have until the end of the month to talk about the birthday / accept birthday gifts / refer to the birthday / post pictures  from the birthday.

Portrait of the blogger and her boyfriend's chin

Portrait of the blogger with her 'real writer' friend Lauren.

Portrait of the Diana camera by the Diana camera (I don't know how he did it either).

found: A Wild Book

found a book that had been ‘released into the wild’ yesterday. no jokes. see for yourself:

I found it at Vida in Wembley Square while going for our morning dose. Mark and I had a scuffle over it and (obviously) I won.

I went to bookcrossing.com and filled in its details and it seems the book has travelled from Coffee Bean in Rondebosch, to Sinnful Ice Cream Parlour in Camps Bay, and now to Vida Wembley. Riveting in a small-town kind of way.

I guess now I’m supposed to read it and then ‘unleash’ it once more. Hmm. Maybe if it was the new Lauren Beukes I’d think about it, but am starting to feel like life’s too short to read books that might be good?

oh the irony

so same friend Lauren (whom I mentioned for Moxyland a few days ago) has also been involved in a political satire show called ZNews, which the SABC commissioned, then canned, and then when Special Assignment did an investigative show on the canning it was then banned (just like Apartheid, eh?). the reason? the show takes the piss out of our politicians, and sadly, gov can’t take it like they dish it.

Heaven Forbid!

ironically, the show has now been selected for screening at INPUT 2009 – the world’s biggest public broadcaster conference. why? this was their reason:

“Even though is not an innovative format – it is a news parody with puppets – the question of “what are the limits of freedom of speech“ can be heard in this programme. Could this be a relevant question both in Africa and beyond.”

LOLcakes all round. watch the full pilot here.

new Moxyland cover

the real die-hard readers of this site will remember a time, quite long ago, when I was helping a friend with her book launch. well that friend has since had her novel snapped up by Angry Robot publishers, who have bought the first novel and are paying her to write a sequel, and have also insisted on a new cover to go with an international launch (Moxyland will be launching in the UK and Australia – read about all the details here). i’m very sentimental about the old cover because it took up a very real part of my life, but i like the new cover too. here are both:

The South African launch cover, designed by Joey Hifi. Click the image to see more of his awesome work.

The UK / Australia Angry Robot version.

The new cover definitely takes the book into teen territory, which may or may not  make Lauren a billionaire (achoo-Twilight). Anyway I look most forward to watching Lauren take over the world, one Moxyland at a time. And now for a picture of the author in repose with her beautiful daughter:

Too cute. That's a baby creative genius right there.

more BADvertising: that weird slutty Huggies baby

If you live or work in town you must have driven past this billboard at least once.

Just. Plain. Wrong.

What do y’all think? My friend Lauren wrote this article over on her blog which sums up exactly how I feel about it. Ew. Gives me shivers every time I look at it.

UPDATE: Looks like Lauren and I aren’t the only ones with shivers. Chris Roper also doesn’t dig it.

moxyland book launch: the photo story

i know i’m like a million years late with this but it’s been one of the funnest things i’ve worked on to date so i want to write about it. it was for the launch of my genius friend Lauren Beukes’s first novel – Moxyland – no doubt you’ve seen the name on my site before. anyway the launch was totally atypical to a normal book launch, as we tried to bring the sci fi world of Moxyland to life in the Book Lounge cnr Roeland and Buitenkant streets in Gardens. This is how you experienced the launch if you were attending:

1. You arrive at the venue to have pamphlets shoved in your face. Looking at the pamphlets, you see it’s a protest against genetic engineering on animals, specifically the genetic enhancement of police dogs, which are called Aitos. Aitos have articificial and ruthless intelligence, and are used as crowd control in Moxyland.

Anelisa Phewa protests the plight of "Sick Puppies" - bio-engineered police dogs at the Moxyland book launch in Cape Town. (For full text of the flyer go to http://www.moxyland.com)

2. You are then greeted by a Door Bitch who asks for your name and checks it against a list. If you weren’t on the list she says to you: “I’m sorry, this entrance is for corporates only, please use the civilians entrance round the side.” She directs you round the corner of the building.

Door Bitch - only nice to corporates.

3. If you are classified as “Civilian” and you have to use the entrance round the corner, you are met by an uncouth and seriously annoying guy who looks like he might slit your throat when you blink your eyes. This is because in Moxyland, the good life, a fair life, is property only of people who work for corporates. Civilians have it rough. Sorry hippies!

Stefan ruthlessly and relentlessly harasses those bolshy Non-Corporates who think they can just waltz into the event at the Moxyland book launch. He also manages to offend Andre Brink. Hi Five.

4. If you make it through the corporates entrance, you are greeted by 2 funkified Moxy appropriate ladies who give you a test tube and advise you to get tested downstairs, because “you might be infected”. This alludes to the highly contagious virus within the book that is activated as a means of crowd control, and a way to reign in the feisty citizens who protest to the way things are.

Lauwrisa Blaauw on Ghost stamp duty and Kristi Launders (with skull necklace) greet those Corporate guests effusively.

5. You then descend to the clinic, which is downstairs in the basement, where your specimen in the test tube gets tested. We had tubes that reacted chemically and turned green and smoked a bit, and then we had non-reactive tubes. If your tube reacted you were given an immunisation shot, which was a big friendly syringe filled with green Apple Sours.

Doctors Peter and Sam prepare to test specimens for signs of infection. Remember the Health Dept cares about you.

6. As an opening promo, we had pieces of “evidence” lying around for guests to collect. The first to collect all 3 received a Moxy toy and book, and a drink for their efforts. Though the first person to get all the evidence was a kid, so there was no drink.

Animator Tim Wang has found evidence that something sinister is afoot in Moxyland. He's also holding his test tube.

The Moxy mutant toys are made by the Montagu Sew & Sews, a group of women living below the breadline in Montagu in the Klein Karoo. The toys, based on Michelle Son’s pattern for the original cover monster, are currently only available from The Book Lounge in Cape Town. R100 of the R150 retail price goes directly to the women involved. Contact +27 21-462-2425 or booklounge (at) gmail (dot) com to order.

7. Rob van Vuuren (Crazy Monkey, The Most Amazing Show) got into character as the CEO of the company featured in the book, and let loose an amazing speech. Most of the audience didn’t know what was going on, since the book had just launched that day, but it set the scene really well. Also Rob’s damn funny.

"Maybe you thought leading biotech firm Inatec Biologica's capabilities were limited to cosmetics, the subdermal stuff that boosts collagen and cleans up free radicals? Or maybe you knew about their really quite revolutionary work with Aitos – the police dogs, using nanotech and chemical signals to micro-train them and track suspects. But this is the first time we’re breaking out the technology for human application."

8. And a good time was had by all! The venue was packed, and it must be made known, The Book Lounge are pioneers in their field and are far more supportive of local authors than ALL of the local publishers that I’ve dealt with.

The Book Lounge - pioneers. Cnr Roeland and Buitenkant street, Gardens, Cape Town.

PS. YES i was the Door Bitch. Don’t say it! Also check out the RAD poster that was done for the launch of the Moxyland Soundtrack, also by Dale Halvorsen, who designed the cover:

Poster for launch of Moxyland Soundtrack

**********for all the ins and outs of the Moxyland brand click HERE**********

Moxyland Soundtrack Album – out now

i got this as a birthday gift from the author, amongst many fabulous gifts, but i am very excited about it. i’ve never heard of a book being released with a sound track, let alone a south african work of fiction. apparently you can buy them with the book in store. i’ve included a back pic so you can see which tracks are on it. am happy to see super evil’s there – it is iconic as far as original music goes in cape town. i particularly love the THIS IS NOT DEMOCRACY hidden in the clip in the jewel case. cover design by SA designer Dale Halvorsen.

south african novel of the year: Moxyland

25th of April is the launch date for Lauren Beukes’s first novel – Moxyland. I have been privvy to the manuscript pre-publishing, and i sincerely hope it goes cult classic. set in a future Cape Town, your life is controlled by your cellphone, you are hostage to a government that oppresses its citizens through censorship and genetically modified Alsations called Aitos watch your every move. the character cast is made up of an artist who sells her body to an energy drink in exchange for being able to create her art, a super genius hacker who helps her digital graffiti friends break through information control to disseminate the truth and a rich kid blogger who has a sociopathic lack of conscience. i sincerely hope it gets picked up by a large rich studio looking for something different to produce and gets made into a movie. anyhow watch this space, i will be well documenting the launch.

it’s been a big one

the end of a mad year. this last week has been so hectic at the office, wrapping up last minute work for clients and organising (and recovering from) a mid-week rodeo-themed christmas party. for once i decided NOT to take any photos, since i tend to concentrate too much on getting cool shots more than just having fun. so i have nothing to show you, although i will find everyone else’s pics, maybe early next year.

i will say that i can barely walk as my inner thighs are stiff from being a little over-zealous on a mechanical bull, and i have a graze on my knee, and it took me 2 hours to get the rhinestones off the top i wore, which i spent a good 3 hours rhinestoning in the first place. it was also kind of a farewell party for Daniel Beatty, our MD, who will be moving to Tokyo to run our Japan office (very sad for us) so it was a bit crazy. crazy good.

i just have one more thing left to do before i can chill, namely the grass newsletter, just to let everyone know what’s been happening. our office and business has changed so much in one year, it’s hard to keep everyone up to speed with what’s happening. we’ll be opening some new premises in jozi early next year, and we’ll also be opening in dubai and brazil next year. we’ll also be appointing a new MD as Dan has made himself a Super Valuable Human. but i may leave that til next year since i would rather have everyone’s input.

but it’s been quite crazy – i for one, have moved cross country twice in one year, and residential addresses 7 times throughout the same year. we’ve had massive growth in business through both new and existing clients, and instant seed as a business has really taken off and done some pioneering stuff in this country when it comes to word of mouth marketing. and the russian business has grown and is now a bit bigger. and we’ve had an insane amount of fun throughout it all.

i plan to turn my computer off for at least a week. my camera’s had a bit of an episode – the first since i’ve had it which is remarkable considering what it’s been through (it’s a Canon Ixus i, old school one, and a best friend) so i’ve taken that as a sign to do a bit of information detoxing. instead i’ll be filling my head with number9dream by david mitchell, the wind up bird chronicle by haruki murakami, and proof reading my friend lauren beukes’s novel Branded due for publishing early next year. that will be peppered with Heroes season 2 – which i have not had time to watch yet, shocking – and chilling with friends who have flown home from their perches around the globe / country. but what i’m most looking forward to is lying in the sun by the pool. not so much the beachdue to the trauma surrounding getting to and from it, but just being outside in the sunshine. hooray for summer.

hope everyone has a great christmas. i’ve got a bit obsessed with wrapping paper and am fully kitted out this year. i love christmas. happy holidays and rest well, see you next year.

oh and thanks to sarah johnson for showing me this, which got me laughing much, and got the peoples’ choice award for Best User Generated video (take note those interested in New Media):

deadbeats F.R.I.E.N.D.S rip-off

from south african animation pioneers, the guys who do Urbo. check it out, can’t wait til we get to watch a full episode (ahem guys, come along now). and congrats to my dear friend and lead writer lauren who recently got confirmation that her first novel will be published – not that we ever had doubts it would happen.