kagablog

valeria drangosch, seymour likely, amsterdam 1999

jaap hoogstra in the dead man 2: return of the dead man (1994)

buy uselessly now (in south africa) (in united kingdom)

hi aryan

i’m really glad you wrote because i’ve been meaning to write a gushy fan letter about how i totally got off on uselessly which, yes is very very funny but also broke my heart.

seriously big respect!
stacy hardy

October 23 2006 at 07:57AM

South African singer Lebo Mathosa died in an accident east of Johannesburg in the early hours on Monday, her manager Linzy Cowley said.

“Unfortunately, Lebo was killed in a car accident in the early hours of this morning,” she told Sapa.

“We send our condolences to her family and friends.”

Mathosa’s driver apparently lost control of the Toyota Prado they were travelling in on the N3 highway on the East Rand.

The vehicle overturned between the Heidelberg Road off-ramp Grey Avenue in Germiston, Ekurhuleni metro police Kobeli Mokheseng said.

The cause of the accident was unknown. A case of culpable homicide was being investigated.

The rhythm and blues and Kwaito singer died at the scene. The driver suffered minor injuries, and was treated for shock.

an in-depth interview with lebo mathosa and aryan kaganof can be found here

there is always 1 person. @ every show. there is always 1 person, he or she, who thinks he or she is more important than the other fans who stand in line 2 have their cds autographed. there is always 1 person after every show who tries 2 draw u into an endless conversation, who pretends 2 know all your old friends, who imagines he or she looks cool talking 2 u, monopolizing your attention, imagining that out of all the people who listen 2 your music, read your books, etc, he or she is the 1 person u have been waiting all your life 2 meet, the 1 person u as a star is really interested in.

there is always 1 of these ass-holes @ every concert. sometimes 2. of course u cant imagine what theyre thinking when they do that. dont they realize they r making your job that much harder? how fuckin egocentric can 1 get?

that is y u hate your guitar. or, 2 b more accurate, u hate the box it lives in, that fuckin black coffin of dead notes. u hate the music. or perhaps not so much the music itself @ all the paraphernalia of the music. all the fucking black boxes and black wires and steel implements & the sound desks & amplifiers & kombis full of stuff. & the driving @ night, & the hotel rooms.

no, actually the hotel rooms r fine, the hotel rooms r the best bit, provided youre alone, completely alone after the show, with no-one hanging around requesting 1 more song just 1 more song pleezzz. the hotel rooms r gates 2 eternity, meditation chambers, little holy holes of privacy, body shells, cubic bibles, salvation, the hotel rooms r where u go when hell has spent itself & the sound crew has packed up & gone home & the drunken fans have left 4 another club or afterparty 2 get drunk some more. the hotel rooms are where u pen down notes like these 2 retype later on your computer @ home with proper punctuation. the hotel rooms rooms r where u can do what u like, think what u like, breathe what u like, & where the only thing u have 2 avoid is the bathroom mirror. who wants 2 b confronted with an ageing rock star in the mirror after an exhausting evening of acting like an ageing rock star 4 fucks sake? not u!

the box your guitar lives in has a lot of airport stickers on it that says fragile. they r pink. some r more faded than others. your guitar box loves flying but your guitar hates it, that’s y it hides inside the box with eyes shut tight every time the box boards a plane decorated with yet another pink fragile sticker. your guitar never intended 2 get famous. in the beginning, all your guitar wanted 2 do was 2 get strummed & stroked, softly, like a cat, alone in a room full of books & flower vases & stuff. your guitar never envisaged so many sweaty bodies chanting the names of the songs it had written all by itself. your guitar is shy. your guitar is made of soft wood & shaped like a young girl. your guitar does not enjoy being gang-raped every night by drunk madmen. your guitar wants 2 exist 4 her own sake, art 4 arts sake, music pleasing itself like goldfish breathing & existing in a bowl. your guitar yearns 4 self-respect & a quiet life. your guitar has secret ambitions 2 become a science fiction paperback novelist. your guitar wants 2 settle down & get married or old or both. your guitar yearns 4 the state of blissful inexperience she used 2 know when she was still a tree in the forest. that state of being is gone 4ever now, only dreamt of & half-remembered. your guitar knows 2 much. your guitar is a recovering alcoholic. but not really recovering in the strict sense of the word, because people still insist on buying her drinks. your guitar wants 2 get a life but she is prevented from doing so by the constant and unasked4 interference of 1000s of strangers she has never met be4.

By PATRICK MOHATLANE

Published in The growth of Free state Black Writing (2005)

Book: African Night Fire Stories Author: Kgang Abel Motheane

It is my privilege and honour to pen these few notes about the debut book of Ntate Motheane. Relatively, few books by local authors are written and published every year hence we can always celebrate when new books are out!

I was delighted to read a preliminary review of this book in Daily Sun. I shall like to supplement my own review with that of respected literary critic, Mr. Peter Moroe.

Moroe wrote and I quote him: “Motheane has written stories that African children used to be told around the firelight at night. They are full of proverbs and animals from ancestral history. They are stories which were told but never written down up to now.”

The name of the book we are launching today is AFRICAN NIGHT FIRE STORIES. The book has ten chapters or stories. Chronologically, the chapters are:

* The Rainmaker
* The Snake and the man
* The moon visits the star
* The crocodile visits the big fish
* The birds and the animals’ meeting in the Black Forest
* The old man and the three boys
* The duck that laid the golden eggs
* The flowers in the garden and peach tree
* The horse and the zebra
* The king who requested a long story

I must point out the importance of books like these, before those of us living in the new Millennium forget about our rich tapestry of our African heritage. This book is the latest in the line of African books made famous by disparate authors like Amos Tutuola and Gcina Mhlope.

I wish to point out three or four salient aspects of Mr. Motheane’s book. Firstly there is the ancestral, old age ambience of the book. The stories are drawn from a long period back.

Secondly, I was impressed with the way animals have been incorporated into the book. It seems our forefathers had a symbiotic relationship with animals

Thirdly, one cannot but touch on the didactic nature of these stories. For example in the story of the old man and the three boys, we learnt that greed and avarice can be disastrous.

I also want to point out that we have AUTHORIAL INTERJECTIONS, we are advised intermittently by the writer which is a good thing.

This is a book to be commended and recommended. I am sure others will comment favourably on it

For the past two years now that I have been gallivanting about Chicago, fucking about every crazy, stupid turd that bothers to turn his fat, gay head my way and drool at least five unintelligible sentences in a row. But I’m trying to change this. I really am.

It began like a fun game. I have never been able to be monogamous, but I had only had two boyfriends in my life up until I was 23. That’s when I began to think, Holy shit . . . I’m 23 and I’ve been in this stupid drug-addled relationship for 4 years now, and, like, I’ve only had sex with my boyfriends . . . I’ll probably get married soon and have hardly had sex with anyone.

This thinking brought about my frantic cheating on my boyfriend a bunch of times and then our eventual breakup.

Then, practically before I even had a chance to end that relationship, another asshole pisshead swept me up. And then he immediately dropped me and flushed me down the toilet like diseased feces.

I was upset for a little while. But I was relieved, too, because I no longer felt doomed to a life of marriage. Plus I would have missed out on tasting the greatness of dragging different decaying degenerates home from bars and having them stick their bloated, red dicks all around my pisshole and giving me VDs.

Seriously, I was happy. I no longer had to hold back when I saw someone–anyone–who interested me. I was ready to conquer the world. Thus brought on the next two years.

Through my previous mental monkey of a boyfriend, I was introduced to all sorts of hip people and bars and artists and bands and etc. etc. This gave me a good “in” as far as knowing where to go to slop around and get fucked by some wretched waste-case of a stranger once or twice a week.

I was an eager beaver and curious as a cat to get out there and spread my legs for endless amounts of wretched scumbags. It was not love I was looking for at all. Love was the furthest thing from my mind. Granted I was still young, but I never had really gone on a date with anyone.

(As a side note, I’d like to point out that I have never really lived like a “normal” person. Even though I had boyfriends, we did not live in clean, one-bedroom apartments together like regular people do. Even when I was committed to some guy, we cohabitated as a couple in various hellacious rat-dumps alongside any number of losers.)

It did not take me long to plunge into the world of sleazy bars, inane conversation, drunken sex, and not knowing where I am or who is next to me upon waking up. My already drug-fueled, alcoholic lifestyle helped me a lot with this transition. It was also great for my not being apprehensive to jump into a 50-year-old creep’s car for a “ride home” when I was about 10 feet from my own house.

I got the moves down fast. I could see some trashbag of a guy at a bar, spot him and pick him out, decide that that was the stranger that I wanted. I’d sidle up and sit by him, and after very little practice it would take me about two minutes to allow him a sad degree of attention and vice versa and see if he would give himself over to his erection and come home with me, or bring me home with him.

If these gargoyles were coming to my place, I had to make sure that either they were really drunk or really wanted it, because I knew I lived in a complete shithole with three men, all of whom I had fucked and two of whom were very jealous and would do things like steal from them or fuck up their stuff.

At first, I loved this. It was exciting. I loved fucking strangers. It seemed to be the missing puzzle piece to my life. I never wanted a relationship. Then, as with everything else in my life, I had to go overboard and make it a complete obsession. For a while, I would aim for some decent-looking, not completely disgusting pig to screw. In time, any bloated, shit-chewing fungus was welcome in my bed.

It just had to be a stranger. Breathing wasn’t even required. Sure, there were some winners in there (heh-heh) but they never called back. Of course the only ones that wanted more were the moldy cocksuckers with constant erections with whom I had to make myself completely numb to get near.

After two years of this, I got tired. I had long ago realized that what had started out as something fun had turned into another addiction of mine. I now wanted back in. I wanted a relationship. I was sick of everything. I craved everything I hated. I wanted stability. I just wanted someone to call back when they said they would. And I wanted to see them more than once.

And then it happened. And I was glad about it, even though the guy was a total douche. He looked like a wastrel out of the movie Gummo and I really was attracted to that, and he inflated my ego to no end and I thought that was nice, but it quickly ended for reasons I still don’t exactly understand. But I now knew I could go back and actually get into a relationship if I wanted to. I wasn’t ruined permanently (besides the VDs) and I could exit this if I wanted to. And I did.

At least to the point that I don’t search out one-night stands or strangers to fuck anymore. Sometimes they find me, and rarely do I give into temptation.

What scared me now was that I wanted this relationship thing back so bad and I had a lot of things going against me. First of all I lived in a sewer. And I had three roommates there. One of them was my ex-boyfriend of four years who continues to this day to steal from everyone including me. Another claimed to be “in love” and got crushed every time I brought someone home. The third was just there, but he’s another intimidating freakshow in his own right.

I am a pretty laid-back girl, but a lot shit comes along with me. In terms of sexual partners, I’ve racked up about 80 disgusting monstrosities. Plus the fact that I have never been monogamous (and by that I mean that I have cheated on every boyfriend I ever had). And I make naked movies, I have VDs, I’m on methadone, and I write this column. I made a list once and it’s far too depressing to go through, but it’s me.

All at once, I hate and love myself for this shit, but the question is: Can I find someone that will either appreciate it, or maybe would be able to just let it pass? That is a hard one for sure.

I seem to have maybe found someone recently. I know that I can get someone a lot like myself, but that would likely make them wife-beaters or complete trash, and I’m sick of rodents. Not this new guy.

I haven’t gone into every detail of the aforementioned list with this fellow, but most of it is out in the open, and he does tell me to take a shower more than anyone I know. And he’s nice and Jewish.

I don’t know how long it will last. It has lasted longer than I ever thought it could, and that’s been a month. That means a full month of me sleeping with only one person. I think this can work. Perhaps.

Of course there will be updates, but things are looking bright. I feel like I’m standing on this balance beam with people throwing tomatoes at me and it’s so easy to just fall off but I’ve got to keep staying on it. I don’t know what I think of that analogy, but I can’t think of a better one.

There are so many questions. Who knows if I’ll be able to remain monogamous? Who knows if this will even pan out? What if he’s with a different girl first? I know that something is happening with me because I had a rather peculiar telephone conversation with this Hebraic fellow last night and actually thought about it more than I should have. To preface it, I have been sick with bronchitis for about two weeks, thus making him sick.

Rabbi: I will be hanging out with Bonnie tonight, and I don’t want to get her sick.
Me: I have a cold and no one I know is sick but you. I didn’t give it to my roommates or friends or anything.
Rabbi: Yeah, but then again your roommates have not had their mouths all over you.

Should I conclude then that he will have his mouth all over this girl? I laugh because I can’t remember the last time I even cared about any of this stuff. And I know that in the future sometime I’ll damn this all to hell and want to go back to slumming around bars and looking for degenerates with erections, but right now I think this is good. And nothing will tell but time.