Songs My Mama Taught Me

Mood: Should-be-working, Adoring
[Toot!] Index: 1.2
Communism Bit: On
Location: Job, of course

You know, my Ma and I are pretty tight. That love is good. Most of the time. Sometimes, it gets to you. Like, I didn't tell her when I was sick, because I knew she could jump on a flight, hijack it, redirect it to Kololo airstrip—yes, the whole bloody Boeing 747—and shoot her way to me. I really wish I was kidding.
Anyway, so, in my sexually-formative years (think pre-teen), my Ma was really close, and she influences how I see women.
I think, for example, that men are inferior to women—but that is for another day. But we all know men are more animal-like than women, no?
What makes me like/adore a chic is quite clearly influenced by Ma, by the things I like and don't like about her. These features can be surprisingly-rare. Especially when you like them combined. Here's a list:

1. Bubbly spirit. I think I don't club because Ma did all the clubbing for me. I may not be a fizzy guy, but I really like the picture of a fun-loving chic. A lot.


2. Pretty. You'll notice I don't hold back a comment about a pretty chic. Because it is my obligation to tell a chic the truth. Like `you are ruining my day—when I look away from this picture before me ... everything gets gloomy, yet you're not going to stay here for fuckin' ever!' And my Ma is `troublingly-pretty' - not my words. Random remarks from people who always put her age ten years below her.


3. Fuck-not-with-I-and-I attitude. I don't know how better to describe this. It is just ... maybe best expressed when a chic talks or writes. If she rants wildly, expects a bit of obedience from her surrounding ... in general, the things that superior beings do, I like that. I love chics who are convinced of their superiority, even when they are modest about it. I shall call it the Empress-Goddess Syndrome. Not oppressive, but aware of their power.


4. Brainy. But then, I'll tell you the truth—I have never understood this thing of looking at women as dumber than guys. Hitler was a guy, people! Chics, in general, keep punching that stereotype in the face, day after day. They are different from guys—and that's what may have curtained them all along. They don't like shit that is abstract. It's hard to be pretty when you do, anyway. It is organising bricks (male) versus organising home furniture (female). Not inferior or dumber, just different. Maybe even superior.


5. Busty. Woo! I will confess a weakness, now. If the Capitalists want to get me, here is the trick. Get a busty chic with a radiant smile. I'm finished. I don't resist them, ever. I say I like my chics fat, and that the fatter the better, but that is because the fatter, the boobier. The bust, the bust, the bust. Even God in heaven will not save me from these knockers that are dragging me to Capitalist conquest! :o(

Billions more things, of course, but I have run out of space. Still, if you want a reference, and you are a chic, you could walk over to a mirror and describe yourself. Chances are that you'll be spot on. Not that I have such a general standard. It's just that ... :o)

The Capitalists Nearly Got Me

Mood: Pissed, Recovering
[Toot!] Index: 0.01
Communism Bit: On
Location: Job, of course

I've not been around since about Monday, and I will be on a hiatus until Monday. Or, at least, I should. I have some pain in the chest, coming from the heart. It's no joke. I got to hospital on Monday, and they kept me there until Tuesday morning. After wiring up my chest and all, testing my heart. Pricking me with fat syringes, letting weird juices into my bloodstream, sucking blood out ...
It wasn't funny. I still have the chest pain, but now I can take a sensible breath in. Unlike on Monday night, when every gasp hurt. Horrible, devilish pain.
I'll tell you more when I come back. I guess I need a rest.

Some people at work think it's love, others think my body has forgotten it is thin, others say I should re-visit my age calculations. Whatever they say, I believe it is the Evil Capitalists trying to poison me. I survived them, so the revolution goes on. So far, anyway.

P.S.: For those for whom it wasn't clear, you need no invitation to the Uganda Bloggers' Happy Hour. Just waltz in, honey, and get seated. Invitation for what? Aren't we blogren? Come on!

I Saw Her, Yet Behold I Live!

Mood: Adoring, Mourning, Dropping Out :o(
[Toot!] Index: 0.2
Communism Bit: On
Location: Job, of course

First: Imagine what the American Embassy and the Americans would have done, if, instead of an Indian, an American had been killed that time, in the riots.
`We will take all precautions to ensure the safety of all American citizens, and see them home with as much comfort as possible. Please stay calm and call the following numbers to have the Marine Corps pick you up. We are ready to use force to redeem our citizens ... warunterer war on terror. Next question?'
And the Indians are here kicking a buck, as though that day was a mist. Just saying.

It's called the Happy Hour for a reason. I was just after parrying a deadline from the boss (you know how cold even the best boss in the world sounds via SMS). I wasn't feeling high. No spliff in sight. So I trudge off to Mateo's for a chill.
I found Jackfruity there, with her rather reserved Ma and aunt. And they had a very JF-ish thing about them - watching the world carefully, silently, as though they are going to blog about it, ounce for ounce, in six hours. :oD
The jukebox spat jams that calmed the soul. And then, when I was calm enough to actually be enjoying it ... my heart was tossed about by the arrival of a hallucination. Inktus was in the area. You know, it's not my kind of thing to go on and on about the chics, but some, one must admit, are of dangerous beauty.
The smile has to fight the fans off before it vanishes into the calm of her ... well, I don't know if I blaspheme here, but I'll call it a face. Most of the time it stays on. She forbade worship, by the way, so don't think I am skipping the part where I fall to the ground ...
And the eyes made me happy. Very. Happy. The eyes!

We had Scarlett Lion, and Dave (soft-spoken, look of a chess champion).
Dee, Carlo and Dante (yes, yes, yes to all questions), Ivan, Dennis (for a very angeringly-short time), Country Boi, SAGE, ... the people who usually put the B against the H and the H every month. Y'all better join the train - I am dying to see some blogren, but my pride gets in the way of direct begging.

Early exit, headed Steak Out-ward. For Rock Nite. Inky was like dying to shed India off and get some native dust and sweat on her. Apparently.
And at times like those, the Revolution starts to call, and the slums start to seem like a desperate place in need of the utter urgent help of a revolutionary hot and fresh off On Protracted War. So I ran. :oD

Other news:
I was hoping someone would translate Paul Kafeero's music, so that those who can read only European languages can see what a shockingly-talented poet this guy is was. He's dead. I hate his genre, but his words, when I pick them out, make for hard-hitting poetry. I found distraught fans watching his Death Song (``Walumbe'', literally `god of death', for the rest of you) on TV that night, as I walked through the slums.
``If death be a real man, why won't he come out for a fair fight? ... He's envious, because he has no kids of his own.'' (Paul Kafeero, Walumbe)

Yesterday, I read that the two guys who started the Apple Computer company were both high school drop-outs. I turned to my workmate and went like:
`Ah! I'm not buying the Mac after all! I can't trust drop-outs to design my stuff, leave alone computer stuff!'
He was like: `Then you won't use anything. Windows/Microsoft—Bill Gates. Even Michael Dell of that computer you're using. And you wouldn't use your own stuff, either.'
Ouch. Anyway, my faith in formal schooling was lost long ago, but I hate to feel nearly normal. Because I bank on the fact that I am a drop-out to explain away any short-comings. If I wind up broke on the street, I will say it is because I dropped out. But these idiots are making my excuse much weaker.
And then there is this mad doctor/psychiatrist who is pretty much an ardent fan of drop-outs—(s)he recommends them to the British education system! He has a list there that makes my excuse evaporate: Albert Einstein, the first billionaire, the current wealthiest guy, a number of other billionaires, Henry Ford (the car/manufacturing genius), Mark Twain ... the list is very humbling. Thomas Alva Edison! Bob Marley is not listed. Idiot! Bob, too! Bob!
But I am of the strong view that school has already moved. To the web, to the lib, to the street, to the lyrics. There is so much info, and by being in school, you are missing most of it! A day with a South American rebel group—or just on Wikipedia—can be as educational as a whole college course. Just my (naÏve) opinion.^*

Now, to write in my diary. I've spent nearly two weeks. That's sad. I've been forgetting! My life is slipping by! Been recording well-nigh every day since long ago, so I can actually trace my worries, losses, and victories since I was sixteen. :o) About three months missing, though. :o( Most SMS messages are recorded, though.

* Pro-Am, so to speak.

The Note, The Death, I'm Pregnant and Other Short Stories

Mood: Angry, Scared, Shocked, Pregnant
[Toot!] Index: 9.9
Communism Bit: On
Location: Job, of course

I'm pregnant, but that is for later in the post.

Around the beginning of the year, I walked to the ATM and got some load of cash. There was a 50,000/= in there. Crisp, new, so fresh, it burnt the eyes. I stuck with it for days, because I couldn't go and shove it at a taxi guy and say I want to stop right ahead - for 200/= - and expect to get the change. I had to go back once to the ATM and get 10,000/=, when I still had 50,000/=.
After suffering with that 50,000/= for a while, I sat down, black pen in hand, and wrote across its face: `Silly piece of paper. Only worth 15 guns in DR Congo.' I examined my work, liked it, grinned a bit, and pocketed the bloody thing.

Sometime later, I paid it off to some high-end eatery. (I was spying, not that I had abadoned the Revolution.) I completely forgot about the note.
Yesterday night, I had a 50,000/= in my pocket. Too big for a taxi ride worth 200/=. It was raining a bit. So, I ran to the ATM, and found the bloody things out of service. Hmm. The askari seated outside saw my sadness and asked what was wrong. In a short time, we were laughing about the emptiness of trusting in paper and so on, and I'm waiting out the rain so I can sprint across the road ...

And he says `You know, that 50K is only worth 15 guns. And I have one here. :oD'
I go like, `You have a gun or a 50K?' I could see the gun.
`I have both.' He pulled out a 50K. My 50K. He read out the `proverb' on the note: `Only worth 15 guns in Congo.'

You know the rest. I was shocked to shreds. And not because of that alone. The note had a story to tell. It had, along with my `proverb', three other observations.
`Only worth 1 woman in Zaire.' went one. Zaire, sic. Not DR Congo.
The next one was in some language (Nilotic, I think) that I couldn't read.
The third was `Only worth 50000 in Uganda.' Hahahaha. Some people think hard.
The askari didn't know why I was shocked. He added his own: `Only worth nothing in Wandegeya.' Hahaha. I was in Wandegs.
God knows who had held that piece of paper, where, why and to pay for what. Only God.

In other news:
I saw a fresh, fatal road accident at YMCA on Friday morning. It was the most-horrendous thing I ever had to look at. The guy had been literally squashed, head destroyed, by a car. The few seconds I looked, my chest heaved. There was blood and stuff about his head. The cop standing by couldn't get himself to focus. It was over. After having started life on the lap of a loving mother, cooing and smiling and learning to talk, expressing all emotions in a simple mono-syllabic language, on to school, mother is happy, the boy has grown up, then she catches him laying a girl, she expresses anger, yet celebrates his further development, then the rebellion, then she cries, my boy is becoming wild, then the days he didn't come back home, but he called and told her he was at a job, then the morning the loud friend walks to her door and refuses to laugh back at her taunts. John is dead. No, you won't be allowed to see him - we have promised to do you this one favour and never let you see your boy again. Peter, pick the woman up. Take her inside. Give her enough air. She'll be fine.

O, to Jah that I should never feel the Mother's Hurt. I love you, Ma.

Is this already too long? Can't know. I am not in the browser. Blogger has been messing me up, too. I'll see how patient I can keep being. Let's see ... what else? The dream I had.

I woke up on ... Tuesday, I think, with a bit of indigestion. The night before, I had dreamt I was pregnant. And maybe to make an explanation, the dream also packed an erotic line. Something to do with a busty chic and stuff ... I can't remember much, only the horror of not being sure who the mother was and how the bloody little thing will come out, seeing as I have only a ... RRRIIINNNGGG!!! Alarm. Wake the frig up, soldier! It's 0600h!

Lastly (relax, seriously, I'm closing). Australia asks you for your HIV status before you can go visit. If you are positive, chances are that you won't be let through. Now, I don't usually hear things to make me froth in anger so much. We are all segregative, but the fuckin' Australians should funckin' know better than to segregate against HIV+ people! Institutionalised stigma. And they are going to tell us, tomorrow, that they won't fund our budgets because we are not democratic enough, or because homosexuality is illegal here. Are they trying to say that HIV+ Ugandans go to Australia to fuck everyone in sight? Don't Australians know about condoms? Do they fuckin' know what it would feel like if we judged them basing on whether they have a certain disease? Do they know that there are many people who have HIV because they were born with it, not because they had unprotected sex? Segregation against people because of something they didn't choose? Why is it okay to be gay, but wrong to be HIV+? Do you know I'd have Australian citizenship if I went and said I'm looking for refuge because I am gay?

Maybe you people don't feel strongly about this, but I have had to hug a friend through the last minutes, and thinking `He is such a wasted skeleton. Death will be sweet for him. It will all end.' And I don't mean the physical pain, but the pain of having nobody around. He was stigmatised for being HIV+, and had only a distant friend to help him to the exit. Shit, people, this can't go on in 2007.
I'm going to throw a live (or at least rotten pieces of) chicken at the Australian Prime Minister when he comes for the CHOGM.

The Song, Like Making Love ...

Mood: Dizzy, waiting for a tiringly-long meeting, just from the first coffee.
[Toot!] Index: 0.1
Communism Bit: On
Location: Job, of course

From the sudden beginning, filled with drums, building up, there is a song that pushes a listener into a trance. A worshipful mode that one only ever reaches under the influence of a herb or two.
Zion Train. That's the song. The most-powerful call for repatriation by any ex-slave in human history. At least on LP. And in MP3.

Around the middle of the ecstatic One Drop pumping, Bob Marley calls us over `to the bridge', and then a swinging climb, like lovers rocking, then the lengthened refrain ... the excitement, the build-up, then ... One Drop. The drums descend on my ears, thudding with life. The drums. The drums. The drums.

They reach a point and you know they have to come down, now. This is the peak. Can't climb any higher. But they keep climbing. Then the beat breaks open, and, in a spasmic, orgasmic convulsion, the fade starts to win the battle.

And my ears are left buzzing with the memory. Like a spent lover panting. The echoes of the call - `Oh, People! Get on board!' - bounces around in my head, looking for a nice warm corner to perch and from there affect what I blog about for the rest of my life. It finds the back of the head, where some Michael Jackson music sat when I was 10, and the corner hasn't been swept in a decade. It sits there, and infects the rest of my brain with '70s Trenchtown, slowly, like a fungus. A fungus I love.

But that was later. In the future. I'm writing in retro. And as of now, I am seated on my bed^*, my ear buds behind my neck, the cords still reaching around my neck, like a lover slumbering off against my chest. I look down at the iPod. The green diode like a distant smile on her content face. I wonder what she's dreaming. Silent. No player, no ears, under the sun, could stand two such songs back-to-back.
I click it off.

Damn. My crib is quiet. I love solitude, but not loneliness. Can't get me a puppy, because the slums will teach it how to keep flees. Can't have a chic, because ... because I don't have one. I don't want one. She doesn't want me, either, so it's all good. I don't care. Really, I don't. It's okay. She doesn't want me. I mean, it's her choice, in the end, right? I only wish to God above that I knew how to forget the hurt of ... Enough crap, soldier! The Revolution won't stand sissies in its ranks! [The echo laughs in my shack: sissies in its ranks ... in its ranks ... its ranks ... s ranks ... ranks ... ks ... s]
Need a kitten. Yes. A kitten. [Glancing scaredly over my shoulder, at the Mao Zedong poster that just rebuked me.] Cats, I have heard, can locate a good leaf if you take them along on the hunt. And a nice place to hide explosives when they do toilet.
Ah. Mao is beaming at me. The Chairman is Watching. Red, Bright and Shining.

* My bed is actually just one big bag of air. I pump it back up when it runs low on pressure. Electronic. And no beddings. Just a sleeping bag. :oD
They say you never really leave the revolution behind.

Am I Evil Enough? (Part 0)

Mood: Evil
[Toot!] Index: 0.1
Communism Bit: Off
Location: Job, of course

This is one of those very rare posts that I start with a title. Usually, the title comes to me after I have written everything, often inspired by the closing lines. Disclaimer: Much as there is lots of Christian material in here, I won't stand anyone calling me a Christian. And that is the whole point of the post.

Of late, lots of blogren have gone soul-searching. Carlo asked `Am I Christian Enough?' Yes, if you want my opinion. Because being Christian does not depend on what you do or don't do. It depends on what Jesus did or didn't do. It takes a lot (of faith?) to believe that Christians have absolutely no part to play in whether or not God percieves them as holy. `It is finished.', not `It is finished, if ...'. I mean Jesus' parting shot. `Believe on Jesus Christ, and you shall be saved.', not `Be good and you shall be saved.' The gospel of works is rife, because it is what people want to hear. Nobody ever reads Romans 8:1 in church, because they would have an empty church. We like to feel responsible for our acceptance by God, hence why nobody even likes to be reminded of Galatians 2:21. Yet that is why the gospel should be `Good News' - that the price has been paid. If we still have to work for God's acceptance, how is that different from Hinduism or whatever, where you ... um ... have to work for God's acceptance? I mean, what would be the difference between Christianity and non-Christianity, if there is no Grace in it?
Perl, some weird, ugly, sweet programming language, has the following conditions: if, while, until, unless, for each. (Dante can hug you, if you are offended.)
Conditions are how a program chooses what to do next or what value to return. (If password = 'pass' and username = 'realone' then 'Access Granted' otherwise 'Access Denied'. It's quite easy and fun. Back to the topic.)
God's love has the following conditions:.
None, that is. No conditions. `Unconditional' is the word.

Who am I kidding? Isn't it the same God who put the 10 commandments? Well, yes, and since nobody was living up to them, he steps in and provides a way out - the only way out. To finish this rant, here you go with a line: `For none gets to the Father except through the son.' Paraphrased. If you ever feel your being good contributes to your getting to the Father, you are heading to the wrong Father, and not the one Jesus talked of. Enough Christian rabble-gabble.

Dennis later wrote: `I Am Not Christian Enough.' Wow. Here is mine: am I evil enough?
Because, you see, I really want to be evil. Anything, anything at all, other than Christian. Especially not `Christian Enough'. Why?
Because Christians are the modern-day Pharisees. They segregate against adulterors and corrupt officials (like the Pharisees), yet Jesus saved the adulteress and ate with Zachaeus. Jesus was not the picture of your average `holy guy' - it is why it was so easy for Holy Men to crucify him. He looked evil. He walked among the perceived evil.

This has already gotten long, so there will be part 2. And let me warn you before hand - I am going to say stuff that's outright weird. Like, even though I have a bit of homophobia, I believe it is unforgivably wrong to segregate against homosexuals. And who does it the most? No, not Christians. Pharisees do. More later.
You may also want to read this, which I can't read well, since Samantha's theme burns my eyes.