Depression and Suicide: Why don't we "just talk to someone"?

Why is it so difficult to talk to people about our problems?

Whenever suicide takes a life, there's a massed chorus on the internet to the tune of 'If only they had spoken to somebody!'. Sometimes, a celebrity suicide causes people to reach out to their loved ones, to check in on them. People tell their depressed friends: 'Call me anytime, day or night!' Maybe sometimes the depressed friend actually even reaches out to talk when it gets bad enough.

Mostly, they don't.

But why not?

I have been volunteering in mental health work for over a decade now. I fight for the acceptance and normalisation of a range of mental health issues -- including my own struggles with autism, depression, anxiety, and ADHD. I tell people all the time to get help, that it's okay to be vulnerable, to call a friend and just get it all out sometimes. I check in on people when I'm worried about them.

Even I don't talk.

The only thing keeping me from being actively suicidal right now is a sheer monumental existential rage at an existence and a brain conspiring against me to cause me to want to kill myself. I refuse to give this universe the satisfaction of getting me to snuff myself out before my time. Some days it's a close thing, though. This is not my story, but my credentials should be sufficiently established for now.

This is my life.

Despite all that, despite knowing all I know, I still struggle to talk about it.

Why do we battle with it so much? What is so gods-damned hard about talking to somebody who has already declared themselves emotionally available to you? Obviously, I can't know all the myriad reasons people have, or rationalise, for why they can't talk to someone. I do feel that I have identified a possibly fundamental underlying motivation, though.

I feel that there is a fundamental mismatch between what a mentally healthy and/or neurotypical person means when they say "Call me anytime you need to talk!", and what a mentally ill person hears. (I shall disregard the 99% of cases where this is not a genuine offer, and focus on the rest.)

To the healthy person, this feels like a genuine offer of support. They hope that the depressed person will reach out to them in their hour of need. From the privileged, blissfully ignorant position of mental wellness, they genuinely think that they're up to the task of providing a mentally ill person with emotional support.

They don't realise that mental illness rears its head at the most inconvenient of times, in every conceivable situation you can imagine. They aren't prepared for the emotional turmoil over a stupid meltdown in the shops because brain fog caused you to forget your bank card. For teary 3 a.m. calls where you're so drained from crying that you can hardly string two words together, but you don't want them to put the phone down because you need to know that one human being in the world still cares enough to listen to you breathe and cry. They are made uncomfortable by the visits to your unholy mess of a house where you're so depressed that you mostly just sit there like a stump not knowing what to say to them but not wanting to be alone either. The only emotion you can still feel is anxiety, and that's got you paranoid that they're only tolerating you out of guilt or obligation or common decency.

Their relatively charmed, mentally-healthy lives have not begun to prepare them for the sheer amount of emotional labour it takes to actually support a depressed person emotionally. They're unable to sustain the energy required to be emotionally supportive; because they haven't had to provide themselves or their loved ones with support on a daily or hourly basis, they have not developed the right mental "musculature" to deal with it. So after a while, you stop hearing from them. They stop responding to messages and don't take your calls.

Now, imagine for a moment that this might have happened to depression sufferers before. More than once. Imagine the effect on a vulnerable depressed person when somebody offers to support you and then, not long after, disappearing from your life. Imagine opening up your most vulnerable parts to people, again and again, only to have them drop you over and over like a bad habit.

Depression already has people believing that they're worthless, that nobody cares about them. Your well-intentioned offer of support could end up reinforcing the feelings of worthlessness and self-loathing in the very person you intended to help!

What does the depressed person hear? What have they learned from years of struggling with mental illness in a world that simply doesn't understand? They hear that you want to help them, sure, and that's admittedly nice to know someone cares in principle. So now we're stuck with a conundrum: Don't accept the offer, and give them the impression that you don't want to open up to them; or take them up on it, and accept that this will most likely cost you yet another friendship.

That's what it comes down to, in the end.

Why do we carry our burdens alone? Why do we carry on and keep going, shoring up our facade with humour and acting normal even as the cancer of depression hollows us out inside? Why do we keep out the people around us who want to help us?

Because we want to keep them around. Because historically, sharing our burdens means even greater loneliness as we alienate friend after friend with our fucked-up emotions. Because we would rather have people around at all than to let them in, only to lose them. Because this has happened to us over and over and over again.

This is not our first rodeo, people. We've been down that road. We know exactly where it ends, and we know that that's not where we want to be.

Why are we afraid to talk about our problems? Because we are afraid of losing our friends. Afraid of being back at Disconnection Town (pop. 1), only with an even bigger pile of depression, anger, self-loathing, abandonment issues, anxiety, and sadness to process than we started out with. I'm sure you can see how that would be an unsustainable long-term strategy for dealing with depression.

I don't know where to go from here, but I have an idea where to start. We need to change how we talk about depression and to depression sufferers. To paraphrase the Matrix, perhaps we've been asking the wrong questions all along.

Think about it. You say to someone "Talk to me anytime!" because to your mind, the question of "What does a depressed person need?" returned the answer "To talk to someone, of course!". Which often helps, and is better than not talking about it, but that's not the point. You're still asking the wrong person for advice on how to support a depressed person. You should be asking them. Next time you're speaking to someone struggling with depression, or someone confesses to you that they're thinking of committing suicide, don't simply give them the standard knee-jerk offer to let them talk to you. Let go of your assumptions, except to assume that they know more about their disorder than you do.

Instead, lead with a question. "What do you need?" or "How can I help?" or "What can I do?" should be a good start. When they answer you, listen. Internalise it. We spend most of our lives being talked over and told what to do to feel better. We have tried all the well-intentioned advice in the world. We're still depressed.

I think a lot of the burnout that leads to healthy people withdrawing from a depressed person's life has to do with a perception that if they do it right, we won't be depressed anymore. When their efforts fail to produce a mentally healthy friend, they give up... because if they expect their help to make us better, and that doesn't happen, they either feel like a failure or believe that the depressed person isn't even trying.

You don't need to fix us. It's pointless and it will drain you dry. We're not broken. We're disconnected. Help us feel like a part of humanity again.

Each day that we're still alive, every single fucking day that we choose to wait just one more day before ending it, is a victory. Every day that we choose to take care of ourselves instead of treating ourselves with abuse and neglect, is a victory. Every time that we feel we can reach out to you is a victory. Help us fight the small battles, win the small victories.

Connect with us. Help us reconnect with humanity.

It might be the last chance you get.




(NOTES: I admit to employing some broad generalisations in this piece in order to make a larger point. I am also not othering anyone with the they/us distinctions in the text; this is simply an attempt to illustrate certain differences and disconnects as clearly and simply as possible. Please bear in mind that I am autistic and struggle to express my feelings at the best of times; especially so when it's an emotional topic for me.)

Depression and social contract

My struggle with depression looks like this right now... I want to write a post about it, but a big part of me is telling me how cliché and stupid that is. How everybody struggles and they get through it, why can't I?

Fuck that. I'm struggling. You don't have to read this, if you don't want to.

Depression is being unable to get up despite already being awake for hours because you couldn't sleep because you wake up stressed in the night and can't drift off again because your mind wouldn't switch off thinking. Especially about the stuff that's making you feel overwhelmed.

Depression is being unable to give a shit about anything, no feelings at all... And then crying your eyes out at an episode of Doctor Who because it reminded you of some sad thing. And then to go straight back to experiencing no emotional affect at all in myself.

I can't sleep at night. I usually fall asleep okay, but then wake up very early and can't sleep again. I'm very dependent on getting my eight plus hours, and right now I bloody well am not. I have taken two days off work, today being the second, simply to rest and sleep. The phrase "too little, too late" comes to mind. What I need isn't a couple days off, what I need is to change my life.

I can't stay awake in the day. My job has no purpose or meaning. I fell asleep at my desk recently, and got caught at it by my boss. I can't bring myself to care enough about that... I know it's important, but I have too little emotional energy left to care.

I can't go shopping for myself. The sheer amount of decisions needed to navigate a shopping trip is overwhelming to the point where I am extremely glad that I can ask my housemates to pick up stuff from the shop for me. I used to love doing my own shopping, but now what with having to cycle to and navigate the store, and interact with people, I rather just avoid it. Even though my cupboard and fridge are looking pretty fucking barren right now. That's anxiety for you.

And here I'm hiding in my comfy bed from all of that and the rest of the world, because I'm so anxious and depressed and overwhelmed that I struggle to even take basic care of myself. I barely keep myself fed right now. Even brushing my teeth is a major chore. I'm just barely managing to keep up with taking my antidepressant meds.

It's really hard when you're all alone. I mean, I have housemates around and all, but it feels like my life could collapse and nobody would notice. Maybe it's already done so, and nobody did.

I need help.

I feel like I've reached a point where I want to say to (or even advertise for) someone...  be my partner and carer. For, say, six months or a year. Live with me rent free. Help me out with stuff like admin and chores. Be around for the big bad loneliness. Be the real close friend I need right now. Let's see how that goes.

Is that weird? I don't care. It's what I need right now. I'm just trying to be vulnerable and real here.

In short... I feel like I'm sinking and there's no solid ground in sight. I'm alone and scared. There's too much life to live and too little of me.

Somebody drop me a line here.

About Comments

Good morning, gentle readers all!

Thank you for the responses to my blog posts, both online and off. They really mean a lot to me. It helps to know that I'm not alone -- that I'm not just talking to myself in a vacuum.

I just have one request though: please, if you leave a comment, could you sign in or do something else to identify yourselves? I would dearly love to know who I'm having a conversation with... Who actually reads this, you know?

That's it for now. I hope today is a brilliant day for you all!

When I get low...

I need to talk to someone. Not about anything specific. I am in such a messed up space that I don't know who to talk to, though...

So I figured out what's possibly the number one reason I struggle to write on my blog. It's the same problem I have with relating to people. I am scared to death of opening up myself to anybody.

That said, I'm trying to be different. To be better than my prior self. And so, without any further ado...

I don't know what's wrong with me. I feel pathetic and lonely and I want -- need -- to talk to somebody, but I am too depressed and anxious and shy to initiate conversation. That little voice telling me I'm a stupid burden is VERY loud tonight. I know I need to say something to someone, but right now I honestly can't process emotion well enough to even figure out who would care enough to chat with me.

Yes, I am experiencing self pity, low self esteem, and sadness. No, it's not voluntary. If I could choose to feel otherwise, I would. I am trying to see past this mountain of fucked up emotions to where I need to be cooking dinner, having a bath, and getting ready for work tomorrow... Instead, I burned my food because I couldn't manage to get up and save it in time, I broke my favourite wooden spoon, and I honestly can't scrape together any enthusiasm for the tepid half-bath which is all our geyser is capable of.

All I want to do right now is lie in bed until I pass out from low blood sugar. Unconsciousness is kind of like sleep, right?

Depression is so fucked up.

If you have the spoons, I sure would appreciate a few kind words.

On creativity and narcissism

It makes me anxious to put something out there in the world. I lose control of it. It takes on a life and reality of its own. It is as if I both birth and lose a child. Not to mention the anxiety of having to face people who might find this mindspawn and come knocking on your metaphorical or literal door.

It also worried me that most of my ideas feel like they're not creative at all, just mix ups of stereotypes and ideals. Then a part of me went "Well, isn't that about 98% of creativity anyway?".  And I do think I have some thoughts worth writing down, so I'm just going to have to lean into the discomfort and get over the fact that writing is an incredibly narcissistic act. I have spent all of my rational life cultivating a rich inner world, so I might as well share some of it with you.

(Thank you to that friend who told me in your drunken sweary way that I must do this! You know who you are.)

So I might be ranting a lot more here. For now, I'm out. Gotta go paint my nails and go shopping. It's lunchtime and it's still pretty fucking chilly out, so 'twere best done sooner than later. I'll be back...

Stupid avoidant personality bullshit

I am so fucked. I'm freaking out and I don't know what to do. Because our house power (literally!) burned out last night, I was running late for going to the clinic and then my boss called when I was on the bus to the clinic and I panicked and lied to her and she saw me and she knows I lied and I'm probably going to lose my job now and I'm so fucked.

I shouldn't even be posting this here because it's my own stupid fault and my problem and nobody else can deal with this. I just want to run away or end it all so that I can't fuck up any more. I don't know what's going to happen when I get to work later but it's probably going to be horrible and I'm already preparing myself for unemployment. I'm scared.

I don't know where else to turn

I need to talk to somebody about my depression. Right now I can't talk to my wife because a fuck up caused partly by my muddled thinking (due to depression) has caused a big bad fight between us. I can also not talk to my girlfriend because she's already ill and also I can't exactly tell her that I feel suicidal since it's a trigger for her due to her stepfather having committed suicide not even a year ago. I vaguely recall this topic coming up between us before, but right now the act of recalling memories feels much like swimming across the Atlantic if that great ocean was filled with syrup or glue or something. So I don't know how she will react if I bring this up.

Anyway, what is the point of telling anybody else? "I'm depressed and want to kill myself so that I stop hurting the ones I love." What do you say to something like that, anyway? "Oh. Yeah, don't kill yourself. There there, it'll be okay." Whoop de fucking do. I feel better already. <sarcasm mark>

So now I'm sitting on the bathroom floor hiding from everyone so that I don't dehydrate from all the crying.

I don't know who among my friends I can reach out to, either. I'm usually the one supporting then through their troubles, so I have no handle on who could even begin to handle the load of my depression without them cracking up too.

I don't even have any pets I could cuddle to help me feel better. So yeah, now I'm pretty much stuck between a toilet bowl and a black void I want to jump into to escape being me.

On slavery and the Bible

This post grew out of a recent comment thread on a certain social network. Without any ado, hereunder the full text of my final response:

"Yes, let's not cherry pick at slavery alone. There are many better arguments against God and the Bible. Compared to all the other sins we can chalk up on the scoreboard, slavery is a minor point. Let's see now...

Claiming equality because everyone is equally unworthy of grace and forgiveness misses the point. We are all equally worthy of existence because we share an existence on a tiny speck of wet dust in a universe so vast that we cannot comprehend the size of it but for the abstraction of advanced mathematics. That's what makes us brothers, not that none of us are "worthy" in the eyes of a being whose existence is asserted by certain Church-sanctioned ancients. Not to mention that the splinter of crimes against humanity in even the worst type of human's eye is microscopic compared to the astronomical beam, nay, forest in the eye of the being who (by all accounts) ironically arrogates to itself the right to judge everyone else. Israelites are fond of acting like they are have been made to suffer because they are the only ones whose god exists, but fail to address the fact that their "promised land" was obtained on the orders of a supposedly-loving god who ordered them to butcher each and every man, woman and child in a land grab exponentially bigger than anything in their history.

The Bible posits the existence of and supposedly reflects the character of the Judaeo-Christian god. That is still fine, many holy books do likewise with their own notions of a divine being. Unfortunately, the character of the god of the Bible is portrayed as being a deity who is capricious, fickle, cruel, xenophobic, patriarchal, homophobic, misogynistic, genocidal, hypocritical, racist and generally bigoted being guilty of the worst sort of war crimes known to man. If you can genuinely love a god who would condemn you to everlasting damnation and suffering because you fail to believe and jump through certain ritual and spiritual hoops, that speaks much better of you than of said god. If we have any absolute moral responsibility in life, it is not to become like God but to become morally superior to God."

FIN.

Lost: Packed lunch, and bits of my soul

This morning, I finally had something of a personal breakthrough as pertains taking my writing seriously. I would use all my odd hurry-up-and-wait moments, those instances where one has moments of downtime while scripts or maintenance jobs ran, to input my scribblings and scraps of poetry, prose, insights and ramblings, scattered about my notebooks of the last half-dozen or so years. So I packed every single one of my notebooks, except not into my (full) backpack. Instead, I decided to use  a special lunch bag given me some months before. Some promotional thing, whose chief attraction for purposes of notebook storage was that it was exactly the right size.

You can probably spot where this goes wrong.

I arrived at work and noted its absence, but believed myself to have forgotten it at home. I remember wondering if my lunch would go off for being left outside the fridge.

I looked for it when I got home. My room was still locked. The lunch bag was not there. Neither was it in the rest of the apartment, not even after 27 consecutive searches.

I am seldom given to fanciful language, but I feel as if a chunk of my soul had been ripped out.

Keats or somebody, asked what a poem of his meant, said: "When I wrote that poem, God and I knew what it meant. Now only God knows."

My poems are snapshots of moments and mind states gone by. They were written by a different person in a different time and place. Irreproducible and priceless to me, trash to anyone else. Who steals my purse steals trash, but who steals my words robs me of bits of my past. I had all but forgotten how it feels like to be numb yet raw. Hello again....

The bag is a teal-ish promotional item from some garage chain. The notebooks are A5 96-page ruled notebooks in spiral bound and stitched flavours. There's one A6 item with a Winnie the Pooh sticker on the back. If you're reading this and if you use public (road) transport in Cape Town's southern suburbs, and believes you might have found something... please get in touch. A reward is not out of the question. If you can't mail me, please leave a comment below.

Dinner tonight: chocolate covered in chocolatey chocolate sauce. With vodka and grapefruit juice. And a banana. Judge not.

Apology for a birthday wishlist

Those of you that know me, know that I struggle to ask for what I need. The reasons behind that deserve a whole 'nother blag post by their lonesome, so I won't go into that. What is important is that this here piece represents my trying another way. I am going to put my wishes out there, even if I am the only one who ever reads it. Some of it, I can only grant / realise myself. (The rest of you can also peek.) 

If the universe is listening, though, and if it truly matters which words we surround ourselves with:

I do not ask but speak my truth
if I dream true and selflessly
my dreams will soon reality be.

Without overthinking it, here's the list in no particular order:

• A bicycle, and resultant exercise. Because I need to both get to work and get/stay in shape, because I can't perform impact exercise, and rollerblades aren't practical in Winter.
• A roof over our heads, come September. We've got to move out and house hunting has been a farce of lazy half-assed work from rental agents, misnamed advertisements (a garden flat on the owner's property is NOT a "Semi-detached house!), and simple bad upkeep. (Protip: Musty smell = asthmatic HELL.)
• Regular massages. For somebody that's always urging others to make work of this, I've treated myself rather poorly thus far. Touch isn't just fun, it's essential.
• Less insecurity, more self appreciation. More self discipline hopefully an outcome here. Someone wonderful recently confirmed this for me -- If I believe that I am worthy of love and belonging, and deserve good things, I will work hard to give myself what I want and need.
• A meditation space. Because right now, my life and environment pretty much completely lacks a tranquil space. I don't need to explain the problem there, do I?
• A swimming pool to use on a regular basis. Partly for exercise as per above, partly because I am a water baby and going too long without regular full bodily immersion makes me feel sad and disassociated (from myself and reality).
• A distraction-free writing space. Possibly overlapping with meditation space. My head is overfull of ideas and words that need out. I am unable to not write, and not realising this need in my life is causing major emotional overload.
• New seeing-eye spectacles. My current pair is over 2 years old now. The constant eye strain and headaches just aren't funny any more. I am seriously considering switching to the blind interface on my work computer, and have already done so on my Droidlet.
• A publisher. For the steamy romance novel that I'm working on, and its successors. Somebody wrote "What you do when procrastinating is what you should be doing for the rest of your life". Well... suffice it to say that I have nimble fingers and an eloquent tongue.

And that's me for now. Speak soon!

We, the creators

There is a new humanity coming. We no longer need governments and media corporations to mediate the connection of the individual to humanity as a whole. We, the people, can now all observe the erstwhile mediators and see them for the obstructionist censors they are.

If the film industry collapsed tomorrow, would we lack entertainment? If the recording industry closed up shop today, would we be without music? Don't be absurd. What I believe we will see is an explosion of creativity the likes of which the world has never seen before.

If you want change, do it yourself.

Hello boys and girls (and greetings to the few grownups among you). I have a few things on my chest. If you can't handle it, tough. It's about time I did a "friend" cull anyway. If you disagree with me, unfriend me and save me the trouble.

Save species X. For fuck's sakes. Yes, we are haemorrhaging species like there's no tomorrow. This is indescribably horrible; biodiversity is irreplaceable. Do you know what, though? The poachers are not online. Neither are the corrupt immigration and parks officials who turn a blind eye in return for a greased palm. No amount of petitions will change the fact that bad people make lots of money selling our natural resources to foreign buyers. (Wait, that sounds like our government.)

Do you know how you stop poachers? You and some friends all buy guns (only automatic rifles and up need apply). You go into the bush and go shoot these bad people. All power is based on a threat of force. If the bad people will not listen to threats and you don't apply the force, then the threats are meaningless.

Save our resources. Of course I want to save the resources. It's too bad, however, that our government seems to be doing exactly what the poachers are doing: Selling off our natural resources to the highest international bidder. Our country is being fleeced by the very public servants we elected into power to stop this from happening. It's the banking system all over again... instead of robbing banks, the syndicates got smart and bought the banks. Do you know what happens when you put the fox in charge of the henhouse? Subprime mortgage crisis. Stock market crash. Recession. Fracking. Poaching. Telkom, Eskom, killing off the Scorpions... the list goes on. The fact of the matter is that there is something very wrong with this country and nobody worth listening to has the balls to call politicians on their shit. If you want to save our resources, go camp on top of them with a whole bunch of others and take force multipliers -- think "lots of potential violence". If you're unwilling to do violence upon someone's person to stop this from happening, you're not committed enough. Same goes for species conservationism.

What is the purpose of a government, when it comes right down to it? A government is a corporation which should maintain the local monopoly on violence. When someone threatens you with violence, it is the job of the government and its representatives to stop them before it happens. In the real world, however, we hire private individuals to protect us because the government seems to actively encourage violence against its own citizens, against the very people who got them into power. If you have a contract with ADT or a similar company, why not take that amount off your taxes? It makes sense -- if the the government's anti-violence services had not failed you, you would not need to hire somebody else.

Do you know what we need? We need geeks in Parliament. Not in the peanut gallery, either -- right in the middle of the floor. Geeks have excellent bullshit filters. Whenever a politician makes a statement which is evasive, dissembling or otherwise obfuscatory, the Parliament geek's job would be to say something along the lines of "Yes, but what does that actually mean?"

The easiest thing in the world is to complicate; the hardest is to simplify. If a politician is unable to boil down a complex issue so ANY of their constituents can understand it, they are a failure. Pure and simple. The entire point of representative democracy, after all, is to make the democratic process accessible to each and every voter in the country. Holding a rally and making a speech does not qualify as making democracy accessible. Ask most of the attendees at a party rally about the issues raised; I will bet my bottom ZA dollar that not one in ten can provide you with a succinct summary of the politico's speech. They can probably tell you about the dancers and the pap & vleis (porridge and meat) they got for free. Do you know what this is called? Bread and circuses. The Romans knew about this too -- you could go work out your frustration vicariously by watching the gladiators for a tenth of an unskilled worker's daily wage, and you got free bread. You go home fed and calmer.

Do you know what has changed since then? That's right -- the unskilled workers live in worse conditions than they did two thousand years ago. Rome had running water for everyone; we cannot even claim that.

Change happens in individuals before it happens in society. If you let other people take action on your behalf, nothing will ever change. If the internet has taught us anything, it is that we are many. Take ten minutes every day to do something revolutionary. That, I believe, will change the world.

How do you know you have a truly Mickey Mouse vacuum cleaner?

Yeah, that's right... The power is measured in "Walt"s.

How I defended a woman and lost my good name doing it

Okay, here's more or less what happened.

About a week ago, we moved out of our previous place due to it being sold and so on. Long story in and of itself, and not entirely relevant.

On Sunday past (31 July), my wife and I moved into a room in a flat around the corner -- literally -- on the invitation of the residents there, a couple we knew from before. Let's call them Mr S and Ms K. We'd helped them here and there, as and when we could. He's an unemployed blacksmith, she a full-time mother of their 2-year-old girl. She apparently suffers greatly from a hugely swollen ganglion on her hand. The appliances we brought with us -- a dishwasher and an automatic washing machine -- were a boon and blessing to the "poor woman" who struggled to handwash, what with the hand and all.

Things went okay for the first few days... they were both very friendly, though we didn't quite "get" them. We were soon to find out why.

On Thursday 4 August, I was folding some clothes in our room when I heard the sound of an argument rapidly escalating into a fight. Not only were there raised voices from the next room, there were sounds of repeated impacts and shouts of pain. I decided to investigate. At my knock on their bedroom door, mister S opened. He was wild-eyed and obviously upset. I asked him what was going on. He replied -- relatively incoherently -- that she (Ms. K) wouldn't go away or do what she was told. Throughout all of this, their daughter was crying madly.

Before I could even answer, he walked over to Ms K and started gesturing wildly. When one of his gestures turned into a raised fist, I asked him whether he'd raise his hand to a woman that way. He immediately started screaming at me to fuck off and to get out (of the room or flat, not sure which -- either way I wasn't exactly about to leave). The few minutes were a bit of a blur -- there followed a whole bunch of screaming from both the adults (ha! adult my ass) and a lot of crying from their poor daughter. When he picked up a chair and aimed at K with it, she threatened to call the police. At that, he ripped the phone from the wall and threw it across the room -- damaging the phone jack in the process, as we later found out.

I picked up the little girl from where she was sitting screaming with crying and carried her to "our" room. Having calmed her a little bit, I came back out -- S and K had in the meantime done a lot more screaming at each other, and some shoving around on his part before I re-emerged. My having called the police by now, S took off. I tried to keep things calm. The police arrived soon after. They took K's statement and asked her whether she'd like to open a case. She apparently decided to do just that; said he'd been doing this to her for years and that she couldn't take it anymore what with having a daughter and all. I wasn't called for, so I left them to it. The police were there for some time, then left. In the meantime, my wife arrived. We were all fairly nervous, not knowing what would happen. Later that evening, S came back in; K hadn't locked the front door (at the time I thought this was accidental, though I doubt that now). She yelled at me to call the police as soon as he entered, which I did. He left after grabbing some socks.

We were just starting to settle down when the police called me -- they were looking for the address. (New shift.) While still on the phone with the police officer, I stepped out into the street to wave the police down at the right place, I saw S just about 20 meters up the street. I informed the police about this and seconds later saw the car racing after him. For safety's sake, I retreated to the flat again.

Minutes later, to our great surprise, S and the police entered the flats' grounds. "Odd," I thought,
"surely he'd be on his way to the cells by now." When the police entered the flat, however, they didn't ask or tell K anything. Instead, they asked whether they could search our room and stuff. Being off balance, and not having anything to hide, I assented. The officer mysteriously went directly for my laptop backpack. To everyone's great surprise -- or at least mine -- they found a stash of dagga, exactly where (I learned later) S told them it would be. Convenient, eh? Of course, they'd heard the "I've never seen that before in my life!" defense a bajillion times before. They weren't buying the truth I was selling.

With little further ado, I was escorted to the Mowbray police station "to make a statement". (Protip: Cops lie.)

First, I was put in the basic lockup cell. No amenities, just a bright light. I lost track of how long I was in there for. (There's no clock to be seen from within the cell -- I'm sure this technique can be found recommended in every handbook, from KGB to CIA to SS.) My fingerprints were taken a couple of times. This was a blessing in disguise, as this would also be when I could visit the toilet and drink water. This would only become clear to me in retrospect. Waiting in the holding cell, time passed -- I'm unsure how much, but judging by bladder pressure it was two hours easily. My repeated requests to be allowed to use the bathroom met with much hilarity and obvious lazing about of the front desk officers. Eventually I was told that they couldn't let me use the toilet -- despite my being in serious bladder and kidney pain by now -- because "the person who is responsible for taking me to the toilet isn't here right now." It took me quoting from the paper they make you sign (the one with the rights of a detainee) -- a few times -- before they did anything about me. (One thing about that holding cell: it has excellent acoustics; my baritone was amplified wonderfully.)

About then, they decided they'd put me in a proper cell where I could go to the toilet "as much as I wanted". They confiscated my shoelaces, I was led to the back of the yard, made to grab some bedding, and put in a cell. I was almost pathetically grateful when they let me choose whether I wanted to share a cell or be alone. Choosing the latter, immediately hobbled over to the toilet and barely heard the slamming of the cell door over the sound of the tinkling metal toilet.

The bedding was surprisingly comfortable and warm... much more so than I expected. There being no pillow given, I worked out about a half-dozen ways my shoes could form a pillow. The lights stayed on all night; I was ever so glad I'd worn a hoodie for some portable darkness. The less said about that night the better, save that I slept better than I thought I would. Had I had any cell mates, though, I'm sure things could have been much different.

In the morning around 7AM, we were roused and marched into the main building. The other prisoner was put in the (now packed) holding cell, but lucky for me the detective working my case recognised me while outside on a smoke break. He took me up to his office to fill in some paperwork. Apparently I could either pay an admission-of-guilt fine and walk free, or I could choose to contest the case in court. My evidence of my own innocence being somewhere between thin and nonexistent, I chose the former. A (borrowed) R200 fine later, I had a criminal record and I was standing on the sidewalk with my shoelaces in my hand.

During the night, my wife returned to the flat -- only to find herself locked out. Wife-beater had returned and things seemed to be hunky dory between them. K called my wife "crazy" for wanting to take our stuff away. Thankfully she had brought a friend of ours along. Long story short, between them they got most of our stuff out save the bed, a few boxes, and the appliances. (These we fetched in the morning; that's a less exciting story. They were still using both these when I arrived to fetch them, though -- the audacity! -- and I took a certain amount of pleasure in removing the wet blankets and greasy plates from my machines before taking them away.)

Now we're staying with a good friend for a couple of days -- but we have to leave soon. Couchhopping isn't much fun if it's involuntary. We have a place to stay as of 14 August. Until then, I have to rely on friends' kindness.

Of petitions, amnesia and humanity

Petitions have changed the world. Petitions mattered in a world where writing against the government was a capital crime... where adding your signature to a certain document was a revolutionary act. That was all fine and well in an age where not only ink and paper but literacy itself were scarce currencies.

With the advent of the internet and much increased literacy figures worldwide, however, the worth if not the meaning of the petition itself has become diluted. Yes, you get warm fuzzies about signing a petition to "force the government into talks" about getting rid of corrective rape. The petition's aims are laudable and morally unimpeachable. I want to sign it because it's the right thing to do. I just started wondering exactly how much of a difference not just my but all our signatures could possibly make.

How does adding a "me-too" on some random website help anyone on the ground -- where the rubber *ahem hopefully* meets the road, as it were? Yes, a round million is a good figure with which to attemt to pressure the government into more action than lip service -- but does that million even matter to the Powers That Be?

Our current government's real power base is the poor. The disconnected. The scattered. The ones who live in shacks and work their butts off to clean floors, patrol buildings, fix roads and haul trash. They're lured to official holiday celebrations *coughpolitical meetingscough* with free food and speeches and a grand day out for all. They arrive hungry for explanations -- why are we still living in shacks? Why do our children still die, smoke tik, join gangs, and die young? Their "chosen" leaders feed them, soothe their ears and send them away feeling satisfied for about as long as the free food takes to digest. They're no less tired and frustrated the next day.

What happens to the frustration? Who can an individual poor shack dweller turn to to vent their pent-up feelings? Increasingly, communities are banding together and talking about it. In many cases, they feel it's a good idea to protest or even riot. Government sends in the police; a message is sent, an invisible line is drawn: It's us against you. We, your government, care more about property damage than about people. Rubber bullets and water cannons are deployed. Barring the odd accident, nobody is killed and the crowd disperses. That's fine in the short term, but then some sort of collective amnesia sets in on both sides. Government seems to forget that the crowd was composed of hundreds if not thousands of individuals who each and every one felt strongly enough about an issue that they would commit violence to achieve their aims.

The mob, for its part, has had a nice cathartic protest action. Government seems to make some motions, everyone is hopeful that change is in the air, and the status quo is maintained -- for now. The emotions, the deep-down thoughts, though... those don't go away and don't stop being felt.

All power is based on a threat of force. Non-lethal force is still force. What message does the officially sanctioned presence of a uniformed combat-trained troop send to the people, anyway? "We could choose to hurt you, but we don't. By the way -- don't make us hurt you." The culture of fear is reinforced. People are so afraid of upsetting the apple cart that it takes intensely strong feelings to spur them into action. Usually this is when a group's attempts at effecting change via the official channels have been stymied to the point of crisis. Why does it have to come to that, anyway? What is this nameless thing which causes this inability of politicians to learn from history? I suspect it's mostly due to most of them thinking in terms of, well, terms -- of office. Net so ver soos hulle neuse lank is.

This double-sided amnesia is a double-edged sword. I understand and to a degree empathise with why people do what they do to numb their unhappiness, pain and discomfort. Terry Pratchett once wrote: "What people want, what they really really want, is for tomorrow to be pretty much the same as today."  Of course you want your kids to be as safe tomorrow as they are today, if not more so. This is fine for more well-off folk living in safe areas, but what about the Cape Flats? Pick a ghetto, township, bad neighbourhood or informal settlement from a hat -- your children aren't safe and you know it, but even if a child still has both parents, they both need to work in order to put food on the table.

What if that becomes untenable? What happens when SA is finally done getting sucked dry by overseas corporations and the mass layoffs start? Make no mistake, one of the reasons the huge conglomerates still operate here is because of the low cost of relatively skilled local labour. What happens when our looming skills shortage becomes a reality? (Eskom alone is soon to lose fully a third of their engineers to retirement -- and they can't be replaced because we don't have enough trained engineers. That's what happens when the education department plays with their feel-good-make-the-circle-bigger circle jerk called Outcomes-Based Education instead of focusing their energies on finding and training the best and brightest, I guess... but I digress.)

The poorest of the poor often don't have electricity or running water, let alone internet access. Whether or not you believe that the creation and perpetuation of the conditions suffered by the poor is a result of deliberate conspiracy by entities inspired, empowered and motivated to long-term socio-economic dominance -- anyone with eyes and a brain can see that the living conditions of a rather large chunk of our government's power base is extremely advantageous to its hold on power. Internet access itself is beyond the reach of too many, and will remain so while the lowest-priced internet-capable mobile phone costs somewhere between five and fifteen times what an unskilled manual labourer earns per day. (This doesn't even take into account that just getting to and from work can skim a third off the top of that... let alone that due to their work schedules many of these same people have to do their major food shopping at late-night convenience stores at damn-near criminal prices.)

Which channels does the average man in the street then have to get information? A few radio stations, all licensed by the government. A few television stations, likewise. The ones who can afford mobile phones are registered and thus controlled. (DSTV is of course out of reach of Joe Soapless.) The "free press" is feeling the pressure -- both the ruling and opposition parties pay lip service to press freedom while calling for journalists to be licensed and controlled. (Self-censorship is a major daily dilemma in journalistic ethics -- how much can I get away with? How much of the truth will They let me tell vs how much do I have to say?) So whether by accident, political pressure or economic manipulation, the government more or less controls the informational channels between the outside world and the man in the street.

What does all of this have to do with online petitions? Simple: The reason why government can afford to simply ignore a million signatures on an online petition is because the online populace isn't their power base -- we're too well-informed not to see through their bullshytt. It is in government's best interest that as many people as possible remain offline. If literally everyone over 18 in SA had an internet-capable cellphone and actively responded to even semi-official online petitions, government would have to sit up and notice if a whole big chunk of the nation signed one. As it is, 1 million people is less than a drop in the bucket of biomass propping up the ruling class. We need everyone to be connected and aware for the internet to matter at all.

(Of course I sign the petitions if it's a cause I support -- not doing so would be sort of like taking a stand against said cause -- but I harbour no great hopes of anyone in power listening.)

It has always been the case that technology challenges authority. In this case, the technology is networking. Q: What does the network want? A: To be connected. Q: How does the network perceive disconnection? A: As damage. Q: What was the originally intended purpose for the internet? A: To maintain communications by routing around damage in the event of nuclear war.

The faster we get everyone online and aware, the quicker things might just change for the better. I fail to see how it could make things worse around here.

Mark my words, someday the words "network" and "humanity" will be synonyms, and that day shall humanity be free. Denis Diderot said "Man will never be free until the last king is strangled with the entrails of the last priest." To this I add my corollary: "Man will never be free until the last politician is strangled with the entrails of the last lawyer." (I'd have it the other way around, but for the political gutlessness of late.)

Conservatives, Oil, and Dictatorships

This cartoon and its associated opinion piece got me thinking. (Along with this piece on what conservatives really want -- an eye opener!).

 

http://www.filibustercartoons.com/index.php/2011/02/23/going-going-gone/

What happens when the oil runs out? By that I don't mean "when conservative news mouthpieces start freaking out about gas prices due to an oil shortage". I mean gone. Nada, niks, fokkol.

By and large, Arab dictators seem to be propped up by oil money. Nobody wanted to disturb the status quo for fear of the oil companies' wrath -- jacking up our fuel prices even more. In 2008, for instance, Libya produced around 1,5 million barrels of the 80-odd million barrels of the worldwide crude black gold output. What will the production look like this year, I wonder? Let's just say I wouldn't buy shares in any oil company heavily involved in Libya.

The oil dictators have always seemed to get along well with American oil companies, probably because these seem to be headed up by old-money rich conservatives with few moral qualms about raping the environment, the economy, and entire societies for personal gain. (Sound familiar? Old money sticks together.) A large majority of the news services in the US are conservative-owned mouthpieces. From the article quoted above:

Republican conservatives have constructed a vast and effective communication system, with think tanks, framing experts, training institutes, a system of trained speakers, vast holdings of media, and booking agents. Eighty percent of the talking heads on TV are conservatives. Talk matters because language heard over and over changes brains. 

So what happens when the oil runs out? Yes, firstly the dictators topple due to a lack of rich white erstwhile-slaveowner money. Some see this as an end in and of itself. I completely agree; dictatorship is always bad. I see the dictators as merely the dominoes at the end of a very long row. Corporations in the US and elsewhere have achieved domination through legal means. Suddenly their cash flow runs out, and so do the lawyers. The United States of America is the world's top consumer of oil, using even more than the combined European Union. (An estimated 18,690,000 barrels per day in 2009.) 

What happens when the oil gets low with no prospect of getting more? Prices go up. The rich get richer. This will become a vicious cycle of personal gains and a societal downward spiral. The ones at the top won't be affected by these shortages, of course. Their luxury vehicles will eventually be the only ones still driving on America's massive road system. They will drive past all the cars standing abandoned next to empty roads for lack of fuel. Before long they, too, will have no fuel left. The poor will become more and more disenfranchised as they are progressively excluded from economic participation -- until one day, someone will snap and become the spark in the powder keg of disillusionment and unfocused anger which is the people of America. SUVs and limousines will burn with their sneering oil peddlers inside. News stations denouncing the mob will themselves be torched.

The US' love of cable TV and internet over wireless tech will be the undoing of many networks; it's easier to find a cable than an antenna. The sysadmin in me cries -- network damage is anathema -- but the greater Internet will survive. The thought censorship imposed by American ISPs will go with the networks themselves. One can but hope that sysadmins of the people get there first to preserve these, like the Egyptian students protecting priceless museum pieces by simple expedient human chain.

The bigger picture here is that almost the entire world labours under an economic dictatorship. Wherever you can point to a large enough disparity between the rich and the poor, you can be absolutely certain that somebody cynically planned the systematic exploitation of the working classes. Of course this was so successful that others copied the system in good faith, thus giving rise to the multitude of personal responsiblity avoidance exploitation-enabling systems we now know as corporations.

Let me bring that home for you a little. Most of Cape Town is dirt poor. The rich neighbourhoods cluster on the slopes of Table Mountain and Bellville's hills like a crust on a really big pie -- deep and wide, the Flats dominate by square kilometerage, population... everything but per capita income. Conservatives everywhere will point to the disparity as proof that they possess more discipline and personal responsibility than the poor, who are obviously less deserving "because they'd be rich if they worked hard enough and applied themselves instead of smoking tik all day" (I quote a bigot I overheard at a braai recently, sans the racial epithets. He was subsequently uninvited from my home evermore.)

Many of these people work for large corporations run by capitalists. They are the company's first line of profit. They work long hours in suboptimal conditions for meager wages, while the 1 or 2 percent at the top skim off 95% of the cream for themselves. Now add the lack of oil to the mix, and what happens?

Corporations can't move stock. Contracts are defaulted on. The money isn't rolling in anymore, so the workers can't get paid. The factory workers, truck drivers and supermarket shelf stockers can't feed their children anymore. People get savage when they're hungry and they're fighting for them and theirs. They will eventually come after the wealth like a swarm of small sharks attacking a very big surfer with a bleeding toe.

I'm not saying this is a good, right or just thing. I'm not proposing to join the fray of looting and democracy-in-action. If we're lucky, there will be no bloodshed... if we're unlucky, the government will come down hard on protesters. Civil war won't be far behind if the governmental response is sufficiently harsh.

If we're very lucky, though, we can avoid all this. We can realise that social responsibility doesn't end with paying your taxes and giving the local bergie (vagrant) a cup of tea now and then. Our responsibility to our fellow man doesn't end with voting for whomever promises the most free clinics and jobs. (To be realistic, voting doesn't even enter into social responsibility anymore -- it only encourages fat cat politicians into believing they're still relevant.) It's not enough to donate books to the charity shop. All of that is great, don't get me wrong -- but all of that is giving a man a fish. A fish wrapped in ancient newspaper and boxed in the small picture, the Kool-Aid which says that rocking the boat is immoral and irresponsible. The message charity and government handouts give to the man on the street is that everything will be fine if they just carry on with their lives and ignore the injustice we all witness every day. If you don't stand out, if you go along with the mob, everyone's lives will be better.

The idea of party politics draws on this -- a mob protests, a mob gets its will. The ones who profit, however, aren't the ones who bus themselves in at oh-god-thirty in the morning to toyi-toyi all day; the head honcho pitches to prance at the head of the mob for a few minutes for the TV cameras. The rest trudge back to their shacks and dream of one day when their leader manages to make something happen for them. The glorious leader, meanwhile, returns to a comfy home in an airconditioned luxury car and dreams of the personal and filial profits to which his rule over the mob entitles him. Should he attain power, his followers see no more of the profit from their campaigning than do the factory workers on the assembly line see the profits others have attained by their sweat and blood and silent stoic tears.

Is this what the struggle was about? Even that glorious memory has been subverted into profit by individuals and parties far and wide. It seems that no sooner does someone gather a large enough group of people before he turns into a profit pimp, whoring out his followers for personal and political gain.

I have no answers, only more questions. Russia tried redistributing the wealth; their workers' collectives fell prey to the personality cults of Lenin and Stalin, and we all know how that went. Communism and socialism no more the answer the burning questions of today than do democracy and capitalism. All known forms of government and economy eventually fall prey to human nature -- dictatorship just does so sooner than most, hence the revolts we're seeing right now.

When the oil runs out, there will be a great reckoning and renegotiation. Government will no longer be the lowest bidder in the price wars for services. Taxes levied will have to drop, for the simple reason that the services we pay for will no longer even be rendered to the already almost nonexistent extent they are now. South Africa is lucky in that it has few enemies right now. When the oil runs out, though, who knows? We have some of the best (locally-developed!) oil-from-coal technology and some of the richest coal deposits in the world. Will America get greedy and park another aircraft carrier in Cape Town harbour, this time as a show of strength as their embassy in Pretoria does some underhanded "quiet diplomacy" of their own? (Quite literally a dictator-ship...) It's not unlikely. I saw a t-shirt the other day which read "If only Mugabe had WMDs" -- in the wake of the revelations that the whole "Saddam-has-WMDs" story was fabricated, that could well read "If only Zimbabwe had oil". That just gets more chilling the longer I think about it...

Thoughts welcomed. Comments lacking same aren't.

So You Want A Job In IT, Part 2

It had to happen sooner or later: I'm on the other end of the job seeker's equation. My company is in a retrenchment cycle -- aren't they all, these days? -- and they deigned declined to renew my contract. Highest tree, wind, et cetera... though in this case I'm really only the highest tree by dint of being the easiest toppled, what with being on a contract and all. It's not all bad; I had a great second interview with an awesome local telecoms-ish company and am awaiting word. More on that later.

I got a letter from a recruiter this morning. She saw my profile on Pnet and wanted to enter me into their database. So far, so nominal. The letter then reads:

Your details are not on our database – please complete the attached documents so that we can add your details and be able to contact you for positions.

Now, as you other job seekers out there probably know all too well, every job site out there has its own way of entering one's skills matrix. All of them are laborious, some attain RPITA-hood. (For the uninitiated, RPITA stands for Royal Pain In The Ass.) This means that my skills are available, online, ALL THE TIME. Why should I need to complete an in-house skills matrix (a simple but finicky and time-wasting copy / paste job from my CV) when recruiters actually get paid to navigate the red tape around getting me employed?

By all means, ask my written permission to copy & paste from my CV... just don't find my fully populated profile on a job site, then try to push me through your meat grinder of a process.

That's another thing about recruiters. This time I shall name and shame Express Employment Professionals -- not for being lazy, but for being a mindless meatgrinder of a recruitment company.

Imagine this: I pitch to apply for a position called "Linux system administrator", one I only later found was for an oil company. ("NO THANKS".) Anyway... before anyone from Express would actually see me, I had to complete a basic computer literacy test.No problem, or so I thought.

You see, this particular test was designed in Visual Basic. It pulls in Microsoft Word and Excel windows into a 640x480 frame on an ASP web page. The testing application apparently detects what you do and decides whether or not you've succeeded in the set task. Click anywhere but the exact path of clicks the test app expects, and it decides you've fucked up that question. You have the option of retrying, but seriously... When will I, a Linux sysadmin, EVER use Microsoft Office applications? I'll tell you: When Microsoft open sources Office and supports Real Standards instead of Microsoft Broken Standards Meant To Promote Vendor Lock-In, that's when. (Don't hold your breath.)

I'm tired of ranting. Life is filled with negativity. Here's a happy wallpaper for you ^_^

Blue-sky bird (pic)

While attempting to photograph a random empty piece of azure sky, I happened to catch this bird in flight. This makes for a wonderful desktop background -- I like to use my desktop's Invert function, and this fits right in: when inverted, the blue bitflips to a weird-but-soothing-on-tired-eyes yellowish colour. Click the thumbnail to see full size. (1600x1200, taken with a Nokia 5230 phone.)

This photo is free for personal use and open source projects :)

Pregnancy: The wait is over.

In the immortal words of Tank Girl: Listen up, 'cause I'm only gonna say this once.

For those of you who don't know, my wife Christél fell pregnant about 8 weeks ago. Excitement ensued. We weren't ready to have a child, but then is anybody ever truly ready? We would be ready when the time (and baby) came. We felt scared, brave, and closer to each other than ever before. We could do this.

The first scan, around 5 weeks, didn't reveal a foetal heartbeat. This was fine; acquaintances assured me that they only got heartbeat at eight weeks. The doctor at Groote Schuur Gynae Emergency assured us that it's too early to tell much for sure; he told us to come back in two weeks for another scan.

Two weeks went by. We spent most of our non-work time together; we read books to each other, did fun stuff, bided our time. Two weeks on, the scan revealed not much more than before. The doctor has a marvellous poker face, but I could see the news wasn't good. There wasn't much foetal development since the previous time; the doctor sounded less than hopeful, but Christél wasn't in pain or bleeding or anything so he told us to wait another two weeks.

The wait was over on Sunday past. External and internal sonar showed pretty much the same results... yolk sac, very little growth, no foetal pole. The difficult decision had been made for us; the pregnancy would have to be ended. What remained was the easy choice: how would we like to do it? The options: naturally, surgically or chemically. Sounds like a fucking checkout counter... "Paper or plastic?" We went with the medicinal option. The nurse gave Christél three octagonal white tablets and sent her home.

On Monday she and I stayed home together. She had started to bleed and cramp rather heavily, both effects of the medication. This morning (Tuesday) about 05:30, Christél passed the not-foetus. It was over.

Yes, I know that this happens in about 60% of pregnancies. Yes, many couples go through this every day. Maybe they find it easier than I do, maybe they don't. I don't know. All I know is that I am utterly unprepared for the pain, the anger, and the utterly devastating disappointment. I had no idea whether I could look after a child, but goddammit I was going to do my best.

I am raw inside... It feels like a part of me was torn out of the universe, and there's nothing I can do about it.

If you've been through something like this, please tell me how you handled it.

So you want a job in IT?

Background: My company is looking for a software support engineer. I had cause to deal with some curriculums vitae before passing them along to my employers. Obviously I perused these little slices of life before actually forwarding them along.

What I saw therein made me die a little inside... I can understand that people write like this in everyday; they don't give a crap about their writing in everyday life because their teachers cared about it at school and they're being rebellious or something. In a CV though? Your employment, your very livelihood may depend on the person reading your CV. Do you really care so little about yourself that it doesn't matter how you're perceived?

On the one hand, I don't want to offend possibly prospective colleagues by criticising their CVs. On the other, a CV which fails to impress me will almost certainly fail to impress my bosses. I sent back lists of corrections and a suggestion to re-read their CVs very carefully. The corrected CVs still contained errors. Lots of errors.

Is it wrong of me to expect proper spelling, grammar, punctuation and formatting? I won't go into specifics here. Herewith, however, a few suggestions if you are updating your curriculum vitae with the purpose of actually landing a job:

1a. There is NO excuse for incorrect spelling. EVER.
1b. A word may be spelled correctly yet be the wrong word. Read your CV out loud.
1c. Get your spelling-and-grammar-Nazi friend to correct your CV. With a red pen.
2. The apostrophe indicates possession, not plurality.
3. A unified look: Your CV is not a collage, nor is it a ransom note. Jumping around between different fonts and font sizes makes your CV look like a tabloid "news" story.
4. Nobody cares what your first holiday job was unless you're applying for another holiday job.
5. Don't claim to have good attention to detail and yet miss more than half a dozen errors in your CV after being told to look for mistakes.
6. Smiley faces. Are you serious about getting a job? Then don't use a Unicode smiley face in the place of a period. A smiley face on a CV is what the interviewer draws if they like you very much.
7. Names and certain abbreviations are capitalised when appearing in the middle of a sentence; a regular  verb is not.
8a. No contractions under any circumstances. (don't, I'm, etc.)
8b. Never EVER use "etc." on a CV. If you do, however, then don't spell it "ect."
9. Call me picky, but a bullet list of statements about you tell me far less than a concise paragraph wherein you describe yourself.
10. We use the South African English dictionary in South Africa. US English is for when you're actually physically present on the North American continent. When in doubt, spell it like the British do. (Hint: We use far fewer Zs in our words and words like "colour" contain more letters.)
11. Underlining random lines in your CV is pointless and confusing. If it's that important, devote a page to it or turn it into a section heading or something.
12. Non-unified formatting bothers and confuses most people subconsciously. If you use a period at the end of list items in one section, use periods at the end of your list items in every section.
13. SENTENCES END IN PERIODS.
14. EDIT: Sentences start with capital letters.

If you want to suggest any more items, please do so in the comments below.