I'm between home and show and booked in for the night, but adrenalin has bled out, and the minutes feel skinned alive. Moments hang together, nerves exposed. I've chickened out and beat the last joke to the car.Drunk executives and their punch bags h...
I sense the coming day's density around midnight, and try to pull out. A late text that my work is overwhelming -- I must stay in cyberspace tomorrow, wrestling invisible work giants. I am drawn to and repelled by the meeting, menisci kissing before ...
Sticky, bilious, yellow-green shame gushes from a hole in the ocean a mile down. Oh, Lord, don't put it on the television. Better that we cannot see it. Our eyes decide what our outrage is based on, not the truth. We've made our systems more efficien...
The receptionist looks me up and down. I see her nose tilt up slightly. She's taking an inventory: tattoos, asymmetrical haircut, body jewellery ... she sits back, confident that her sums round off. I see the smug recession of her chins into a genero...
Why doesn't God pay tax? I'm not suggesting that God actually does the transfer. He has elected representatives among us, apparently -- and authorised them, allegedly, to collect funds on his behalf. Some of them have outfits and everything. The ruli...
I read another self-published novel the other day ... the author told me it's really hard getting published. I read his book. There are reasons they don't publish everyone's book. Writing is hard. Writing well is almost impossible. After putting his ...
It's early and the sky is downcast, reflecting the early morning kinks that leak from the displaced and sleep-deficient. Irritable at the early instant coffee, just enough to block a nap as we taxi, not enough to keep the words of the book before me ...
We had been to visit the small township that clings to the crag above the monied guts of Hout Bay. Afrika is a tour guide who walks conscious tourists through this matrix of elemental and exposed souls. Reconfigured billboards are cold comfort compar...
Just in case Steve Hofmyer reads this, let me preface so that we are clear: it is never good when anyone dies. Especially when it is an unnatural death, as this implies a violent violation of their rights, obviously.
Now, when someone dies, and yo...
The first time I see Henry, he's tired. He's carrying a camera case and looks punished. He's just spent a day in the townships outside Cape Town. His bag is heavy, and he doesn't want help. This is a theme I'll get familiar with over the next week.
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John Vlismas is a former hell-raising, fall-down drunk and alternative stand-up comedian. Apart from collecting body art and practising parenting, he scuba dives and apparently "goes like the clappers" on a good day. Vlismas is an award-winning anti-socialite and has been described as "blunt and quite sharp". His name is very often mispronounced, and the thing he most admires in women is himself.
