Posts Tagged ‘people’

Merry Christmas

Thursday, December 23rd, 2010

The season of family, friends, and insane shopping is reaching its peak for 2010. It’s the time of year where some families make their only trip to church, and churches everywhere sing carols and preach about Jesus’ birth. It’s a time where trolleys are filled with things people can’t afford and cues spiral along the shopping centre floors. It’s a time of year which is aptly referred to as the silly season.

Silly as people may get, it’s a special time of year. One where we can spend time with the people we love, and be thankful for all that we have.

I would like to wish everybody a happy and blessed Christmas, may your heart be warmed, and your love replenished.

Happy New Year 2010

Monday, December 28th, 2009

It’s that time of year. The more distinguished will pull out their note pads and write down their goals for the year ahead, everybody else will drink themselves silly and slur their plans to an unsuspecting stranger. It’s a worldwide tradition, and why not? Planning is important right?

In 2010 millions will plan to loose weight, some may loudly pronounce that this is the year they catch their long awaited gravy train, and some may just be excited for the Soccer World Cup. This may be the perfect time for me to stand up and shout, “as for me and my house, we’re gonna serve the Lord,” but I’ll refrain from being preachy or breaking out into Oh Happy Day.

Looking back and reflecting is always an interesting past time. To see how far you’ve come could fill you with pride or to see how low you’ve sunk could inspire you to do more. If you’re more of a pessimist you may cringe at lost time and angrily blame your great grandmother’s love for sleeping as your Achilles heel. To each his own.

For those of us that are currently floating along, disconnected from the matrix and oblivious to the world, this will be a new season of observing the strange normal people that surround us.

I guess what I’m trying to say, in a New York to London via Australia kind of way, is HAPPY NEW YEAR.

I look forward to a year of great opportunities, learning, and fun. I hope we continue to laugh together, whether the moment is happy or sad, and continue to live each day with a healthy zest for life.

To 2010, and beyond!

Experimentation

Saturday, March 14th, 2009

ExperimentationExperimentation. Over the last month I have began to loath that word from the very core of my being. A Google definition search pulled up the following:

experiment: the testing of an idea; “it was an experiment in living”; “not all experimentation is done in laboratories”

An experiment in living? That needs some clarification. What does that mean? When we grow up we are taught the difference between right and wrong, most people essentially think they’re good people and boy do they not have a clue.

“Come on bro, you never drink? We have to get you drunk sometime.”

Please excuse the verbal attacks that will follow. Are you mentally handy capped, retarded, stupid, dropped as a baby, or just blind?

“Ah, you’ll never know what it’s like until you try.”

Buddy, you’ll never know how great it feels to have a truck roll over your head until you try either, that doesn’t mean I’m going to do it. Forget all the normal logical and spiritual reasons for just staying away from alcohol to be safe, why would I ever want to put myself in such a venerable state? I can’t even trust you to look after your own life, let alone mine.

You see, what people just don’t seem to be picking up is that every decision you make today, and every stupid thing you do will affect your entire life in some way. It will shape you as a person, put you into almost unbreakable habits and lead you down paths that would cause your seven year old self to run away screaming if they saw you.

It’s not the kids of today, or the people of today. It’s been happening for centuries. We make the same stupid mistakes our parents made, and one day you’ll sit and tell your kids not to do what you did. When they do it, you’ll probably sit back and say – ah let them experiment.

Hello! That’s not how this deal works bud. It’s not just an experiment; it’s a decision to engage in whatever activity against your better judgement just for… That’s just it, I don’t know why? Why do people take drugs? Why do people smoke? Why do people drink excessively? Why, why, why? I just don’t understand the logic, reasoning, stupidity, whatever you want to call it that’s involved.

Don’t blame it on divorce, television, poverty or anything like that – those aren’t the reasons. I guess it’s just a lack of God in their life. No light means dark.

Today I got told that one of my younger former friends was now experimenting in smoking stuff. The way he’s been going I’m not surprised but it still made me so sad. I can’t even imagine what God must feel. He’s wasting his life on something he knows isn’t right.

I’m a person who really enjoys spending time with young people, but as they get older most change in ways that just make you so sad. They forget God, they ‘experiment,’ they loose who they are in a world that encourages compromise and rejects truth. Maybe that’s why I love young people; they are uncorrupted, open, honest and free. But unless they choose to stay that way, and most don’t, they become the so called good people of today. People that are so caught up in the nothingness of their lives that they don’t even know right from wrong anymore.

I’m not trying to judge other people, because I’m just as susceptible to doing wrong in different ways. In fact if I don’t check myself I easily fall in to the trap of thinking I’m a good person when that’s not what it’s about. God first, life second. That’s how it should always be. If you don’t believe me, try it, you just might find this is the last experiment you’ll ever need.

God means life, love, eternity, happiness, completeness. He makes you want to be a better person all the time. I am a very judgemental person by nature; I look at people and often accurately sum them up at face value. What I’ve learnt to do is see what I don’t like and instead of judging them look at myself and say, do I do that? Am I like that? If I am then it needs to be sorted out, if not then thank God for that and move on.

People often say they just can’t stop sinning in a particular way. My first question is do you really want to stop? The difficulty is not in stopping the action; it’s in the reasoning behind the action. How badly do you not want to do it? That’s what you should be correcting, that’s the root of the problem. If you don’t want to change for the better than nobody can force you, but it’s a shame that your life would have been wasted when there is so much more to find.

Wake up media

Monday, February 23rd, 2009

Media MonkeysIs it just me or is the news getting boring. Because of the articles we create on Srizzil I try to keep up to date with what is going on around the world and in our home country, South Africa. But with all the amazing technology and millions of sites updated every couple of seconds the news seems to be getting really stale.

There is always someone famous going rouge, adopting orphans, or splurging their millions on something completely ridiculous. There are always corrupt and lying politicians, weird people having too many babies or strange weather patterns accruing all over the world. There’s always a war to be stopped and one getting started, another big company picking on the little guy and some new gadget that nobody needs but everybody wants. It’s old, it’s boring and it’s sad.

I don’t know about you but I’m tired of hearing about these things. They aren’t interesting anymore, they aren’t innovative or award worthy. Today news outlets make up stories to sell papers to the extent of ruining people’s lives for something they never did. It’s about hype and telling everyone that the guy they thought was great isn’t actually great at all. It’s about trying to prove genuine people have something to hide at all costs, driving the person to the point of insanity. Why? For money, fame or do these people get a kick out of seeing other people down?

It’s time the media started reporting on things that are newsworthy, things that are different. How about telling us what’s happening with cancer research. Not just that they may be one step closer to a cure but what do we know and what don’t we know. What can we as citizens do to help? What about discussing the real issue behind gay rights? It’s not whether or not they deserve rights as gays, it’s about weather society actually agrees that being gay is as normal as the media makes out. We won’t get into it all here but the fact is society is not ready to accept gay behaviour because they haven’t lost their sense of right and wrong completely yet.

Let’s be controversial but for the right reasons. Let’s do it to stir up discussion, to make change, to be a positive influence on other people and not be a group of whiners. Let’s get over the fact that people are racist and look at why they are racist. How do we change people’s perceptions of each other to the extent that colour is no longer an issue? Fighting over who is racist and who isn’t or who’s better off than who won’t solve a thing.

Wake up media. It’s time for a refresh.

Toothbrush Salesman

Thursday, December 11th, 2008

Tooth BrushA man is looking in the classified ads for a job. He notices an advertisement for a toothbrush salesman and figured that couldn’t be such a bad job. So, he calls in, he goes in and they hire him. The next day, he heads out to a neighbourhood to make some sales. Five hours later he comes home and says, “Man, I only sold one toothbrush. That’s not enough”

So the next day he goes to a richer neighbourhood, thinking maybe those people would buy more toothbrushes. He ends up selling two toothbrushes. So he goes to his boss for advice and his boss says, “Look, you’re a great guy and all, but you gotta come up with a gimmick or something.”

So, the salesman thinks about it and, later that night, he finally comes up with one.

So the next day, he sets up a booth near the subway with a sign that says, “Free chips and dip” A guy walks over and puts the chip in the dip and says, “This tastes like rubbish.”

And the salesman replied, “Yeah, it is. Wanna buy a toothbrush?