The Soldier's Woman

Mood: Inspired, Listening to John Legend
Frig Index: 0
Communism Bit: On
Location: Job, of course

I just got me a John Legend CD. It's playing. Save Room, et al. Sounding good. Feeling inspired to tell you this true story. Short enough to be fictious, true enough for the Woman therein to be over there (if I look through the window, I could see her).

1984, twenty-fifth December, she was home, food cooked, everything set for Christmas. I got this story, because it could very easily become mine. Her husband was a revolutionary. One of the Museveni guerillas, you know. He had said he'd be home for Christmas, but now the sun was setting. She had dressed up for him. The surprise party. Aphrodisiacs in the food. No kids to censor stuff for. Not as yet. They had been lovers for like many years, but had avoided kids, despite the heated nights. Now, she insisted she wanted one made while he was home `because even the best fighters may not survive the war.'

When she told me this story, she was completely devoid of shyness. She told it straight. I hope I remember to tell you what prompted the telling. It was told over food. But this was one of those meals that keep you on the table long after the food has been digested and spent. And you are just talking, talking, talking. A couple of sodas, every now and then. And talk. More talk. She was talking, now.

That she gave up waiting. `Maybe he had found it dangerous to make the trip.' Entebbe was a bit hard to access back then, especially when you are a dangerous guerilla. But he was a genius with evading authorities. I don't want to name him (lest it become slightly political), but he even helped Museveni during his underground trips.
Ten o'clock, at night. Someone tried the door ... (Heaven Only Knows is playing.)
It was the revolutionary. He didn't need any inspiration from the aphrodisiacs, as things turned out. Wild night. Then the food (with Boosters (tm)). Then more wildness. `We were like ... even rabbits don't get that terrible!' Okay, now a shy chuckle escapes her. Because of who else was listening. I'll tell you who. They slept at almost eight o'clock, the morning of the twenty-sixth.

And at about noon, they were awoken by someone trying the door. I will rush through this. She goes to check, and is struck in the face with the butt of an AK-47. He is dragged out. Men speaking kiSwahili. `They had been tracking him, all along. He had shaken them off, but they smelt him.' Sombre mood, on the table. And you could see that the food we were eating - this was on the twenty-fifth of December, last year - was bringing back the memories.
She never saw her War Hero again. But God knows his own. He certainly does. She conceived, that night. These two were probably the world's tightest lovers. He had his heavy ideological leanings, but she was his main ideology. Maybe such deep love should be short-lived, so it can die before it loses its sharp edge. Maybe not. This love, it lives on. She still loves him.

I was seated next to her daughter, on that table. `Your father, he was that kind of man. He loved as much as he hated. And he hated what he fought against to death. And loved me to death. I won't live until I die. Until I give him aphrodisiacs, and we make love until the next sunrise.' The girl gave me that look of `you don't love me like that.'
Definitely not, I was thinking. I don't love you at all, chic. But, still, if I ever got me a chic, she would be a soldier's woman.

Coming Home is playing.

Phone Bloggin': A HOWTO

I know this thing is cool, of being able to blog from your phone, with Blogger, but for all its ease and utility, well nigh nobody uses it. This should get you up to speed, like real fast. It should be available for all your Blogger versions.

Go to your Settings, on the Blogger Dashboard. (See screenshot.)

There is the `Email' link there. Fill in the e-mail address to which you will be sending e-mails via your phone. If you don't see how this helps you blog via phone, relax. I'm getting there. Fill in the details (in my case, only the last one). This address should only be known to those who should be blogging on your blog. Then, click `Publish', to enable your posts to be published right away, rather than kept as drafts, when they come in. That address there is where you send your posts.

Next, get an e-mail address you can access from your phone. Yahoo! Mail is accessible via the phone (just point your phone's browser at yahoo.com, and it will serve up a version for your phone). So is Rediff. And Rediff is fast, intuitive, and user-friendly. I use Acasa (on your phone, it should be wap.acasa.ro), but I am starting to discourage it, because they probably have bad security. The first two will require you to have signed up from the PC. The last one lets you sign up from your phone.
If you use Gmail (called `Google Mail' in Europe), you can use their phone page, m.gmail.com, but it plays horribly for me. There is always the SayNi! alternative, of course.

Now, you send e-mails to your blog, and the rest is easy. The subject becomes the title, and the body becomes the post text. If you put any HTML, it should be respected. But Gmail will try to create HTML (links) where it find stuff that looks like it should be a link. Beware.

On MTN, surfing is cheap. Like 4 shillings for a whole post. 2.5 shillings for 1000 letters sent or received. That's a whole fat lot cheaper than SMS.

That shot of my browser window ... I use PimpZilla! Not too Communist, but ... and that other tab open ... I was checking something about monads in Haskell, when I branched off to write this. Evil crap. And that's not Windows. Linux, with an old GNOME version.

Evil Yuppies and Their Loud Women: BHH 2.0

Mood: Sombre, thinking: Tonight won't be like last night
Frig Index: 4
Communism Bit: On
Location: Job, of course

I nearly forgot about the Blogger's Happy Hour. Until someone called me up. I ran. I ran. Kikumi.
And I found, at Mateo's, a testament to the smallness of the world. Dante kept saying it: it's a small world. People from all over the world. The Dansk (she knows the meaning) had a snazzy tattoo on her right arm. Kelly, who, from reading her blog, I thought was something like a preacher (in retrospect, what had blinded me?), was doing a chain smoke. Degstar dropped in, definitely a fave of mine, and did another chain smoke. I was right between. I got addicted, I swear.
Ivan (frig) the One was his really funny, really cheeky self. Man, if I were that guy's brain, my ribs would be powder, by now. If he can say that, do that, what does he think?
Lots of other folk I just can't, for the life of me, remember. (Please, please gimme the links - I lost mine! Someone! Help! Help!)

Dennis Matanda is a capitalist. I knew that, already. But that he is that capitalist? Watch dis:
He called a guy, on phone, who was standing like 5 metres away, and said `See ... I am waving at you!' Maama, nze! Capitalist! And it was his chauffeur!
His clothes are all monogrammed. He slid his cuffs, and I saw his names there.
For a while, the propaganda nearly got me. But the unquenchable vim of the Revolution held me up. I confessed my weakness to my Mao Zedong poster, and read from the Book. I feel absolved, renewed. Like a baby. Tears rolling down my face ... [sniff] ... revolutionaries don't cry.

The first chic to spot me was Cheri. I saw the smile, the eyes, the chin, the vertical reach, the legs. For a moment then, as she blinked at me, my mind whispered: Me is in love.
Jackfruity had the cleavage again. For a moment then, as it waved shyly at me, I thought: Me is in love.
Dee had this weird thing going. She would like squirm about, pushing her top this way and that, dexterously, so you'd have to be discerning to see it. Seeing it for the third time, I knew right away: Me is in love.
Carlo is a goddess (no, that's the sister) ... goddess (they are sisters, after all). You know what makes babies beautiful? Because their features are asleep on their faces. Relaxed, calm, in place. But that's Carlo's stunt, originally. Babies only copy it. Looking at the cheeky smile, methinks: Me is in love.

Now, those of us who stayed there 'til well past the 10th watch ... we escorted Dante to Worker's House. I saw the scorn on the watchers' faces: Evil, hormone-filled yuppies and their loud women. Nga we no give no shit. There was Rock Nite in the plan, but that died out, as the strolls got lazier.
Oh, and I strolled with CENSORED under the stars, her arm in mine, loving gaze ... then I got the joke. I'm the punching bag, so to speak. The real bout is farther from the Afro-ed guy with Communist boots on. :'o( Kale, kale, kale.

Baz wasn't there. Burn in Hell, Baz. Frig ya. I don't want any excu ... I said, frig ya!
Joshua can be forgiven. He's gone for a while. But where were the Martinis? I swear I looked! Even under the table! My phone jammed to blog, hence why I'm doing it this late. I tried, though.

The Mao Zedong poster was sourced from here: you may wanna read.

The Philias and Worries That Eat Me (RT 1.5)

Mood: Worried, Cold, Deserted, Abandoned
Frig Index: 0
Communism Bit: Off
Location: Job, of course

This is in the Rantdom Thurogitts series (currently 1.5).
I have two philias. Congophilia (no relation to weird disease) is the love of Congo and of things Congolese. Nilophilia is the love of Nilotic peoples and their things. (I just hacked up the words.) I have watched me closely, from a safe, surreptitious distance, and I can't deny I love Congo stuff and Nilotic stuff. Where stuff includes (nearly exclusively) the women. When I approached me for a reason for these inclinations, behold the reply I got from me:

• The Congo chics ... ah, I have heard mbu they are caring. And isn't that what I want? Not necessarily what I want from a chic, but what I want, full stop^*. And mbu they are fat. That means they have rich bossoms and posteriors. That means they are cute.
  
• The Nilotics? Gwe, you've been reading my diary? Okay [shy chuckles, scratching the Afro, gathering courage], those ... have you ever looked at something and thought: that is the original? It's the feeling I get before Nilotics. They just seem like the original humans. Sad I can't fake being one of them. They seem original. Their statures and stuff, you know. [Chuckle] And I like my chics original. I may not get it right with the shoes, but the chics ... I can't compromise.

There.

Now, I am worried. If you've listened to the Kadongo-kamu jams, and you understand 'em, and you get the nuances, you know how amazingly poetic them guys are. Abdu Mu[r|l]asi brought the same formula with a pounding beat, and he broke through to club crowds. But we will not have any of their written poetry in just 100 years. Unlike them Arabic poems you read, with the same themes and vims as Paulo Kafeero's Walumbe, for example, but from 20BC. You know why we are going to lose the history written in our vernaculars? Because we are using a writing system that didn't anticipate the African speaking styles. We say a lot in the chest. It's hard to, for example, write the expression `Anhaa!', common in Luganda (usually on a discovery). Because a lot of the sound happens in the throat. Then try the `m-mmm' they use to say `no' without opening the mouth (usually shaking the head). Impossible. Yet it is different in meaning from the alphabet-friendly `nedda'. And these things are there in these songs, for example.
Somebody think up a new writing system, and we will translate our stuff, while we can still understand it. If nobody does, I will. Think ideography. Or something like that.

Very sorry for the long post. On, Gallant Revolutionaries, on to Victory! Ciao.

* Well, not `period', as I'd rather speak British, if I am to speak the Enemy's Language. :-)

Randtom Thurogitts 1.4

Mood: Buoyant, Knocking Bob Marleys on the Repeat
Frig Index: 3.2
Communism Bit: On
Location: Job, of course

Here is a monochrome from my recent past. This is a Communist revolutionary, a guerilla.
I used Microsoft Paint. I drew him today. I already gave him a whole life story, this guy. But I'll keep it to myself. Now that my little hobby already went public, I may as well harass y'all with my `art'. (I heard that: `Mbu art! This ka-guy!') Just dragged the brush about, alright. The dreadlock is to remind me that it is the 6th of February. I have irations going one-drop on BS player (just found it on this system, and it looks good). I am listening to some very war-like irations from my wee collection of jams by Bob. 53 jams, or thereabouts. My song of the day is, without a doubt, Babylon System. I have been humming the jam ever since I knew it, but today it got a halo on the head dread!

I am kind of disturbed by this monochrome's close similarity to Kony ... no good. No good, at all.

Now, I want to know from all I and I blogren: how many of you use RSS (or Atom) to syndicate stuff from blogs?
I know one who does, and another who probably does. I do, but I have been away from my RSS feeds of late, so I have been missing most of your posts. I am addicted, maybe. But I'll be back in da mix as soon as I can.
For them who deserve an intro, RSS helps you see stuff from your favourite blogs, without going to the blog itself. You just read the headings, for example, of the latest posts, and know if there's anything new, or if the newest stuff is worth a full read.

'Til the day we wake up into victory, ciao.

English is a Ugandan Vernacular

Mood: Philosophical
Frig Index: 0.2
Communism Bit: Off
Location: Chelsea Internet Café.

If you are like me, you are a fiery Maoist who hates everything but the Chairman, and is ready to kill and be killed for what you believe in. But you are not like me, you.

You speak English so friggin' fluently. So you are a sell-out. Because we have our own language, you know. You've been conquered.
It feels good to me when someone makes a severe grammatical blunder in English. My only reminder that some of us remain unconquered, untamed Native Savages. Oh, the Red glow of the Survival of the Children of the Rastaman.

But then, I stagger into your blogs, and I'm reminded that the non-conformist among us are just the few dreadlocked warriors I starve with on the frontline. The English you write, people! So friggin' perfect!

But don't be shy. Don't let your conscience tug at your peace. You are forgiven. You see, English is a Native tongue of this Beautiful, Beautiful Country. The first people who were born in Uganda, and had English as their mother tongue, were born more than 100 years ago. Isn't that enough to make English a native language? Isn't it how all these other languages were born? Some lost Nilotics and Bantu stagger drunkenly across the unseen border, and because the year is 12BC, they are natives by 2007AD. How long should a language exist before it is a vernacular? Well, in my books, English has been a native tongue too long not to be a vernacular.

P.S.: I'm back. My boss discovered my blog. So I am blogging on Saturday night. And I must be smart, now. See (as in, watch dis):
My boss is better than your boss. No, seriously. Has your boss been called `cool'? Especially by you? Is your boss your role model? Is your boss your mentor? I guess I didn't have much choice, anyway. He's a flawless programmer, and I just quite literally worship the guy. He giveth me books (the Andrew S. Tanenbaum books, and the Compiler Design book), he giveth me everything mine soul needeth ... he leadeth me to still waters.
Even worse, I'm extremely serious, boss. But you knew all this before now, didn't you?