Insomnia? Boredom? Here's how to not solve either.

At home last night I felt the impending threat of insomnia. Your body tells you it needs to shut down and rest but your brain wants to know nothing of it. This clash between body and mind is a constant annoyance I’m sure many people can relate to. With me it’s a semi-permanent state of being. “Sleeping Without Pills” is how I’ve come to think of it.

This threat of sleeplessness was worsened by the fact that I was bored at 1:30 AM. How would one overcome both boredom and insomnia? One was easy; just do something, the other… well that would have to take care of itself.

I grabbed the car keys and made the 15 minute trek into town to a local nightclub named Midnights, definitely not one of my favourite places, but I figured that wearing my sobriety-goggles would offer a new perspective. What I found was a microcosm of what I believe to be today’s youth. Here’s what happened.

The entrance is built into the side of the building accessible by going along a small alleyway. Heading in, there was a guy passed out against the wall with his friend next him, elbows on knees. Two girls were sitting to the left back in a corner, one obviously upset and the other apparently frustrated at something on her cell phone, a bailed ride home most probably.

At the entrance: a skinny guy whom you pay for the luxury of entering and a burly bouncer standing close by studying the faces of those coming in and checking their wrist marks to make sure no chancers were trying to slip through. I paid my monies and as I held up my right wrist to be stamped for entrance the bouncer yelled at me through the excruciatingly loud music “Are you here to pick someone up?!?!” I looked at him shook my head and crossed the partition into the club.

The music’s volume intensified, becoming a grey buzz with the heavy bass that seemed like an infant not quite born yet; the speakers did not like the volume the either and was straining to produce a sound recognizable as music. I smiled to myself at that point as I remember thinking to myself that after consuming half the month’s food budget in alcohol any music would sound like… music at least.

Opposite from me was the bar, to my left the pool tables and to my right the dance floor. I made my way down the middle isle consciously lifting my feet as each step was opposed by the sticky layer of alcohol and broken glass on the tiled floors. The strobe lights, disco ball lights and random flashing lights weren’t in sync with the music or each other, or anything at all. They seemed to be having an orgy of their own, oblivious to the tribal dancing that they were lighting. I wonder how responsible adults could ever have considered Pokemon a valid epilepsy threat with these kinds of luminescent erotica in nightclubs.

The large wood bar that spanned the entire back wall of the place was just as sticky as the floor, this was the fault of one of the barlady who recklessly poured as many drinks in as short a period of time as she possibly could. A shooter glass over a row of drinking glasses, she upended the whiskey bottle pouring the whiskey into the shooter glass, into the drinking glass and so she went until it was time for the coke to be added. I stood back a bit, slightly revolted at all the stickiness that was being spread around.

I was slightly annoyed at the butch barlady, whose top seemed to want to crush her breasts through the cleavage hole, as she entertained a loud drunkard who repeatedly showed two fingers then one, two then one; congratulations guy, you’re 21 and a man now, get the fuck away so I can get a beer. He bought 2 shooters from a bottle I identified as Stroh Rum, 80% alcohol, she had to drink one and he drank one.

Eventually “Two And One” took his excitement somewhere else and I got my beer. I scanned the place through the mass of bodies on the dance floor and decided to situate myself in the back behind the dance floor. From there I could survey the entire club and drink my beer in peace.

The real fun started when I’d seated myself and lit my cigarette. Coming next; a nightclub as a microcosm for faulty youth.

And Welcome

Apart from my mediocre title and vague name, welcome to my blog.

Now, to negate the vagueness, I suppose it would be a good thing to give a brief overview of what I'm hoping to achieve here.
I am a man of many opinions and very few convictions and I filter most of these opinions through the people that I know and in most cases call friends. To Start this blog off I'm going to give you, the reader, some background into who I am and how I experience the world; this will hopefully provide a lucid and transparent platform from which you can share my experiences and opinions.

I am a 23 year old white South-African who grew up in a former homeland named Boputhatswana. Bop, as a country, was integrated into South Africa after the fall of apartheid after 1994. The Bop capital city named Mmabatho became the capital of the North West province (1 of 9 provinces).

My father moved us (I wasn't born yet) to Boputhatswana to get away from the "broederbond" mentality. That means he wanted to get away from the overly conservative socialist environment that the apartheid regime had nurtured.

The idea that I have is that many of the white families in Bop had gone there for similar reasons as that of my father. The white population in Bop was a professional one, engineers, architects, intellectuals etc. Of course the whites were the vast minority in Bop but the atmosphere there was one of co-operation; and Mangope, the president, understood that these white "immigrants" were there for the same reasons that the local black population avoided the rest of South Africa.

Bop boasted the best recording studios in the southern hemisphere (Elton John's soundtrack for the Lion King), a world class sports stadium, an international standard university, a proper airport, and all these facilities are today still within a 20 minutes' drive of each other. Bop was a small but prosperous homeland and I believe it was the archetype of what the South African government wanted to create for the black population.

Do not misunderstand me, I like my father, still have strong feelings about the abuses and stupidity that was Apartheid. What I'm saying simply is that Boputhatswana was a wonderful place for black, white, indian, colored, chinese or whoever to live in. It was wonderful because Mangope was a great leader who used the finances he recieved from the Apartheid government to build a prosperous and apartheid free homeland. Mangope achieved the multi-cutlural dream that the ANC today still uses as a propoganda vision.

The ANC tried to smother the whole region that used to be Bop after 1994. The Airport has only recently started working again, the stadium is in ruins, BopTV has long since closed down, the recording studios are in disrepair, its safer for your car's health to drive on a Tswana Chief's dirt road than on municipal controlled tar roads. According to the ANC, Boputhatswana was run by a traitor who led a failed experiment. If you speak to any Tswana person (the local tribe) they'll tell you in bitter tones that the ANC is run by Xhosas and Zulus who cannot control their tempers.

What's happened in Mmabatho since it became the capital of North West Province South Africa, is alot worse than what happened in Mmabatho as the capital of Bophutatswana.

I'll just briefly attend to my personal experiences. I was in dual medium schools where whites were the minority. I played with the neighbors' children; guess their ethnicities. I was never even aware of what apartheid was until I was much much older than 8 years old (in 1994). I was only exposed to the white apartheid mindset when at 17 I went to a white school in a conservative white town.

One thing I'd like to add concerning South Africa is that it seems to me today that the number of BMW driving government officials is increasing steadily, poverty is increasing steadily, emmigration is increasing steadily... Wait wait wait wait, there's a more efficient way of saying this.

As time goes by there is/are:
MORE: BMWs, poor people, crime, emmigration of professionals.
LESS: Money, jobs, development.

Newspapers have great fun documenting these things.
So there is a brief summation of my background. I hope it isnt too boring or still too vague, these things are the impressions that I carry around with me today. This blog is NOT intended as a political platform with which to express my opinions on South Africa. This first post is simply meant to give the reader a general idea of where I come from.