Last night my laptop’s power supply stopped working.

Fortunately the bottom component of the thing’s plug is mostly transparent, allowing me to assess the cause of the problem. It seems the little screw keeping the green and yellow wire attached to its connection point had somehow unscrewed itself resulting in a broken connection.

Being who I am, and knowing that I needed the laptop for an early meeting the following morning, I decided to make a comprehensive plan as to how I would fix this evil scenario once I got to the office. Here it is:

1. Arrive at work
2. Inspect broken plug
3. Notice strange Snap On Mechanism joining two main plug components
4. Insert house key into Plug Disengagement Slot
5. Hurt finger
6. Grumble
7. Attempt to open plug with office desk key
8. Bend shit out of office desk key
9. Look around sheepishly
10. Notice instruction to ‘Insert Screwdriver and turn’
11. Search for screwdriver in pants pockets
12. Walk to Shoprite
13. Spend R9.89 on Mr Electricity Plug
14. Spend R11.98 on Precision Screwdriver Set
15. Return to office
16. Marvel audibly about cost of Precision Screwdriver Sets
17. Attempt to open Snap On mechanism with Precision Screwdriver
18. Fail
19. Curse Snap On Plug
20. Call Meeting Organisers and propose new time
21. Take Snap On Plug to building stairwell
22. Smash Snap On Plug twice against wall
23. Wonder if Snap On Plug felt the pain it deserved for being such a dick about the whole thing
24. Return to desk with bare Power Supply Wire
25. Attempt to unscrew Mr Electricity Plug with First Precision Screwdriver
26. Break First Precision Screwdriver
27. Feel cold sweat on legs
28. Attempt to unscrew Mr Electricity Plug with Second Precision Screwdriver
29. Repeatedly lose grip on Second Precision Screwdriver
30. Walk to kitchen and wrap cloth around Second Precision Screwdriver handle
31. Attempt to unscrew Mr Electricity Plug with Second Precision Screwdriver
32. Repeatedly lose grip on Second Precision Screwdriver
33. Sit down on floor for a little while
34. Attempt to unscrew Mr Electricity Plug with Kitchen Knife
35. Succeed
36. Regain faith in the universe and its plan for self
37. Open Mr Electricity Plug
38. Wonder if Mr Electricity has ever seen the inside of a plug
39. Insert Power Supply Wires into respective Mr Electricity plug holes
40. Attempt to screw Power Supply Wires into respective Mr Electricity Plug holes
41. Inadvertently detach each of Mr Electricity Plug’s 12 components from one another
42. Renounce God
43. Storm out of office
44. Kick child into street
45. Trip on sidewalk curb
46. Roar at Scandinavians from the ground
47. Crawl into Shoprite
48. Seek out non Mr Electricity Plug
49. Fail
50. Strangle Shoprite clerk with nearby loaf of bread
51. Exit Shoprite
52. Walk down Main Road towards city
53. Twitch
54. Find hardware store
55. Suppress debilitating rage
56. Buy new plug
57. Return to office
58. Fix plug without further problem
59. Apologise to colleagues
60. Call meeting organisers and request for meeting to be moved to another day

I’m happy to say that, so far, everything is going according to plan.

The uncooperative fool that started it all

On 19 April 2002 I did something few people can claim to have done. In two ostensibly unrelated events, I hit a frog with a moth and then, several hours later I hit a moth with a moth.

On neither occasion did I attempt to hit anything. I was simply throwing a moth. The fact that a creature intercepted their flights (towards the lawn and the wall, respectively) is a coincidence that I find as remarkable as if I was aiming for them.

The first moth was gigantic and beautiful, lying on my parents’ veranda as the crisp morning breeze played with the delicate, powdery scales on its wings.

It was also a corpse.

After confirming this with my shoe, I picked it up and admired the handsome, almost regal, markings on its impressive set of wings. I was transfixed by the oddness of its flawlessly evolved extremities and the graceful taper of its abdomen.

Above all, I was struck by how aerodynamic death had rendered it . I pondered the irony for a bittersweet moment and then I threw it off the balcony.

It appears the diplomatic process has, yet again, failed us.

I considered its flight only for the second or two while it was airborne; the significance of its landing rightfully overshadowing it. The moth struck a frog, who was comfortably nestled amidst the grass, squarely on the back. The frog hopped away enthusiastically, possibly to inform his amphibious brethren that their treaty with the moths appears to have come to an end.

Later that morning I trekked into the hills for an overnight adventure with some friends. We ate meat, drank from jars, had a typically average jam session and was treated to an (allegedly impromptu) flame-poi demonstration before turning in.

Having been on several camping trips over the years, I had no trouble falling asleep despite the usual disturbances. Raucous nasal activities, covert masturbation, the eerie scraping of a tree against the bungalow window; none of these could prevent me from drifting off.

I did, however, find it impossible to remain asleep for much longer than a minute at a time thanks to the relentless flapping of moth wings against my face. As it turned out, the bunk I had been assigned was placed in the centre of some mystical zone of moth fucking magnetism. Every single goddamn member of the order Lepidoptera descended upon my ears, nose and mouth with the inconsiderate, gratuitous enthusiasm of a retard on amphetamines.

In life - annoying. In death - aerodynamic.

In a short space of time my frustration turned into anger and I soon realised that nothing I could ever do would convince these flappy bastards from flinging themselves against my head. At this point my rage entered the hallowed, alarmingly satisfying, space where ‘regard for consequence’ is trumped by ‘desire to damage’.

I leapt down from the top bunk and, in a surprising exhibition of emotional and physical restraint, managed to light a candle with my quivering fingers. The inside of the bungalow was absolutely overrun with moths. Walls, floor, ceiling, sleeping bags… they covered everything. My fury acquired an element of fear and I lashed out, grasping gracelessly at the first thing that fluttered past my eyes. I caught a medium sized moth and immediately flung it at the wall with the power of a titan. There it encountered another moth.

They both fell to the floor, dead before they reached it.

I have since forgotten how long a space of time elapsed before I realised that I had hit two different creatures with two different moths in the space of 12 hours. Suffice it to say that once I did, the topic was given no small amount of consideration and discussion.

Which brings me to my point.

I like telling the story to Afrikaans people because I can describe it quite comfortably: “Een dag het ek ‘n padda met ‘n mot gegooi en toe, bietjie later, het ek ‘n mot met ‘n mot gegooi.” Concise and comprehensible.

But when I want to tell the story to an English person, like I’m doing here, I’m disturbed by the ambiguity of the opening sentence. Go read it again. Saying it like that, It’s possible that I could have taken the moths in my hand and smacked the frog and other moth with them.

The vagueness of the term ‘I hit something with something else’ has long been the cause of mild anxiety for me. If I wanted the meaning to be absolutely clear, I would have to compose a sentence that’s the linguistic equivalent of pouring the contents of a litter box onto a soufflé: “Once I threw a moth at a frog, hitting it, and then, a little later, I threw a moth at another moth also hitting it.”

Of course, most people would simply omit the words: “hitting it”. This certainly makes the sentence neater but it does not address my primary concern; ambiguity. Anyone can throw two moths AT a frog and another moth. All you need is a functioning hand. It’s in the fact that I HIT the frog and other moth that my story gains respectability and makes me look like I possess some kind of mysterious talent that could one day be appropriated for the benefit of mankind.

To resolve this issue, I propose we adopt the the Afrikaans grammar, which uses the (much ridiculed) preposition ‘with’ in this context.

To date, nothing has betrayed an Afrikaans person’s heritage as effectively as saying something like “I threw Stefaans with a tyre iron.” Seriously, you may as well be wearing a blue, white and orange milk tart as a shirt. The default response, of course, being something along the lines of: “Wow, you must be really strong that you can pick him up. I didn’t know Stefaans had lost so much weight, you dumbass boer. Why don’t you just slither back up your mother’s uterus and stay there while we continue governing the planet?”

But the reason us Afrikaners use this term is because the norm’s lack of clarity disturbs us. We want to be understood. And, frankly, it’s a source of great confusion to us that the term “threw this with that” means that you picked up two objects and threw them simultaneously. What on earth was going on in England that this became the obvious meaning for the term? Were you really throwing things “at the same time” more often than you were throwing things “at other things”? Afrikaans people find this hard to believe.

So I hereby take a stand for clarity and pledge that, from this moment forth, I will use the ‘incorrect’, Afrikaans-inspired term when describing how one thing was successfully thrown at another. Let the ridicule begin, I can take it. After all, I am the dude who famously threw two different creatures with two other creatures in the space of a day.

It’s a quarter to vomit and your throat feels like it’s being made love to by an enraged pumice stone.

The air hangs like a miserable, malevolent curtain, swirling visibly as the establishment’s patrons ghoul about to the rhythm of some anonymous drone.

The guys you hit the town with have either gone home with what may have been a group of oriental seafarers or had their necks punctured with a broken pool cue.

You’d leave, but finding the door is rendered impossible by the seemingly endless trickle of a cloudy moisture flowing like putrid lava from your inflamed retinas. Is this a result of the crystalline powder you snorted off the rim of a toilet bowl earlier? It seems likely.

You order another drink and offer to pay for it with a perilously wide range of personal services. The bartender is hip to your implication and fetches you a tequila and a slippery smirk.

It’s been a jagged night at the tail end of an evil week.

And then, minutes before you reach a state you’d previously heard enlightened people describe as ‘rock bottom’… something special happens.

Just like one would accidentally recognise a forgotten expression on the face of a long lost friend, you notice, there, on the far side of the room, through the haze of airborne cancer and the slobber of optical discharge, something that, against all odds, reminds you of your humanity.

A troubling thing.

Something in need of your academic intervention.

A grammatically incorrect handwritten sign.

You disaster your way to the far side of the room, making little effort to avoid contact with furniture encountered along the way. Drawn by the sign, and its assurance of redemption, like a Millennium Falcon caught in a tractor beam.

You may be mere hours away from a narcotics-induced aneurysm, but you refuse to see why this should inhibit your impulse… nay… your damn RESPONSIBILITY to introduce order to the linguistic bedlam that some brigand has inflicted upon the establishment’s wall.

You claw around in your pockets, searching for the partially dissolved red crayon you’d wrestled away from a bewildered street dweller at a time when you’d possessed equilibrium to do so.

You find it and, with a triumphant bark, scribble the correction into the offending message.

After admiring your accomplishment, and making a somewhat formless attempt at drawing attention to it, you crash your way back to the bar counter. You sit down again, never taking your eyes off the renovated message; smug in the knowledge that you have, despite significant handicaps, done your bit for the preservation of English.

You spend the rest of the night fantasising about the fame that is sure to follow. And bleeding internally.