My name is Noelle Adams and I'm a 24 year old writer / hack for hire. I am currently based in Durban, South Africa. In 2005 I completed my English Honours. In 2004, I spent a full year in the workplace, as a copywriter / editor / quality controller at a website development company. I am currently working as a copywriter and strategist for an advertising agency, as well as writing monthly columns for GEAR Magazine. 

View my CV.

Why the Alice motif and imagery? 1) The character: I bear a resemblance to Alice – not the blonde Disney waif, but rather Alice Pleasance Liddell, the little girl Lewis Carroll wrote the 2 Alice books about, and for. I like to think I look even more like the adolescent Alice in American McGee’s Alice, the EA PC game released in 2000 (Concept art by Norm Felchle).

This said, I cannot stand Lewis Carroll’s books. I hated the illogical dream-like nature of events and character interactions. I found it to be frustrating nonsense.

American McGee’s Alice is a different matter. The game took the dream like qualities of Lewis Carroll's stories and wrenched Wonderland into nightmare, throwing some lobotomized dancing toddlers in for good measure.

I’m attracted to the dark side. I always have been.

Ultimately, what I like about the character of Alice (in the books and game), is her odd combination of naïveté and confidence. Totally out of her depth, up against the greatest odds, Alice stands up for herself, her knowledge and principles. She never loses faith in herself and her abilities. I find that very admirable.

2) Wonderland as reality:

In Alice In Wonderland, and Alice Through The Looking Glass, the title character finds herself in a topsy turvy world where little makes sense. She is surrounded by strange characters - simpering mock turtles, hash-addicted caterpillars, flustered bunnies and vicious queens with a fondness for decapitation and flamingos. Emerging into a world of weirdness is really what this site is about. Forget mid-life crises. You have your first crisis in your twenties, as you leave the safety of college or university, and enter the real world. That is, of course, if you’re like me - a member of the comfortable middle class, descended from white-collar desk jockeys.

The real world is a terrifying place. The decisions you make are suddenly life-altering on so many levels- Should I take the job? Could I marry him? Will something better come along?

The decisions are yours and yours alone. You're a legal adult. You can get advice from your family and friends, but that's all it is. Advice. No more shields. No more safety nets.

Then there’s the minefield of commitments; each bomb with a sinister title like car payments, mortgage and UIF. Each can also blow off a limb if you’re not careful.

Who is really prepared for all this? I can't even wire a plug.

It's a frightening and overwhelming world... Nothing makes sense. Justice, the concept of a natural balance where goodness is rewarded and evil punished- something that we have been taught to value our whole life- no longer seems to apply.

In the corporate Wonderland especially, we newcomers are at the bottom of a system; unimportant and open for exploitation by management types- the worst types being bullies. Having risen to their positions through cut-throat, often unethical behaviour, they now hold sway over us and, if we let them, the path of our careers. They stroke their egos by threatening us; making us cringe.

Like Alice, or Dorothy from the Wizard of Oz, we are stranded in the middle of a strange world. There are characters that will help us and become our friends. There will be self-serving types to avoid...

All we can do is fend for ourselves while yearning desperately for the safety of home. And not eat too many mushrooms along the road.

And why the online nick of Pfangirl?

I am a fan of actress Michelle Pfeiffer. Well, actually a "pfan." At some early stage in the online congregation of Michelle Pfeiffer fans, someone started calling us "pfans". The name stuck. And as I am female, "pfangirl" made sense as a nick.

Contact me. 

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