Drawing Into the Well

Mood: hung-drawn-quartered-like
[Toot!] Index: 1.1
Communism Bit: Off
Location: Job, of course

You know, when I was a kid, I used to draw lots. Wrestlers on TV, especially. That was before I had gone to boarding school. The wrestlers were as my young eyes saw them on TV. There was some guy, name of Michael Hayes, if memory serves, and he was a star in my drawing book. They looked a lot like this.
I know, because I drew them over and over and over. My Ma quipped about how my men are always ready for a fight. I was under seven years old.
Today, if I drew a wrestler, he wouldn't be a muscle-bound, hormone-engorged minotaur. Not at all. This is what I drew, a few minutes ago, to be my wrestler.

Notice the shift from whatever that bag of testosterone was, to a lean, mean fighting machine. But it is really a reaction of my mind that I've noticed since late puberty. I draw almost exclusively nude humans (even the pants of my boyhood, they done flown off). Usually, I draw women. When I do men, they face away from me. Coward, yes. (I hate the shameless competition they tend to ... express? I'm my drawings' god, for crying out loud!) Usually, they are thin men, sometimes very, very thin. Nearly as thin as I am. When they are women, they are round and heavy. ;o)

After the wrestlers, when I was about eight years old, I fell in love with my teacher. She was my English teacher, and a wondrous miracle of feminine beauty. Of course, at eight, I didn't know I had fallen in love, you see. I just thought I wanted to be with her all the time, and to make her happy. Full stop. Anyway, I walked up to her, one day, after classes, and told her I wanted to draw her. You know, that was the year the coronation of the Kabaka of Buganda had happened. There used to be lots of pictures of the Kabaka in regalia, in the papers. So I took one and drew it. A teacher discovered it and paid me two hundred—count 'em, two hundred—Uganda shillings for it. It was the first work I sold, and the first money I earned. (It was also the last work I sold.)
So, I learnt that I could draw to good benefit. And I wanted to make my English teacher happy, so I told her I wanted to draw her like I had done the Kabaka.

(That drawing of the Kabaka stayed in the staff room of Budo Junior School for years and years and a day.)

I drew the teacher, and she liked it. I coloured her dress, fussing over the depth of pink here and the amount of blue there.
But wait. Where is this leading? Yes, to why I don't draw anymore. Let's jump, shall we? You people told me my posts are too long for you.

When I draw (or even write) in a book, I start at the back and work to the front. I don't know why. (Even my written cipher code is written from right to left, naturally.[1]) So, once I had these many books covered in pictures of nudes and stuff. Sometimes I draw rocks, sometimes landscapes, all of them in that shoddy me-no-give-no-fuck way. This pile of books was discovered by some guy and he said I was sub-consciously gay because of all the male nudes that shared the space. "The simmering homo-erotic undertones, the taut tension on the page, as though they are about to break loose and [...] the unabashed self-expression of the you bottled up within you", blah, blah, blah, you know. I told him he was wrong, and that collection went to the fire. I don't care if he was wrong or not, anyway. I just stopped drawing on paper that time. I guess I'll start again. But in came digital art. You see, I stopped drawing almost completely, and moved my feeble artistic impulses to code. It doesn't suffice, at the moment, so (on occasion) I will draw on the computer.

Already, this blog has seen some stuff I've drawn. My current Blogger avatar is one, and some other blogger's old WordPress avatar. And a few posts have had some drawings in them. Network Dependency, RT 1.6, and others.





They are almost always with black as the dominant colour. I first drew on the computer with Paintbrush. I was on a black-and-white Epson laptop that ran Windows 3.1, and I was in genuine shock when my Dad told me there was a coloured computer at his workplace. This laptop is where I first drew on the computer. The mouse is harder to command than a pen or pencil, so drawings on the computer, for me, don't obsess over straightness of lines. I don't use line facilities to draw the lines. I basically just draw with the mouse. I've done a self-portrait in the same way. :o) (It came out ridiculously ugly, and the first thing my sister said, on seeing it, was "Wow, you drew a self-portrait on the computer!" We quarreled.)
This picture (not a self-portrait) is from RT 1.4. I don't remember my reason for drawing it.

I drew some more very recently. See this one, which is a drawn copy of the aluminium tumbler I have to my left. I call it Coupe. :o)

But this series started off with Menton, which means "chin". You see, I can't draw thin lips. Either it is subconscious narcissism, or it is just that I can't express thin lips in monochrome. Or I've never tried.

Next in the drawings series, we have Main-en-Main, which is "Hand-in-Hand". I'll spare you the explanation for it. :o)

Next is Handseses, which must be the correct pluralisation for the hand that appears here.

And then Feetseses. Like the hand above, the foot is loosely based on mine. I said loosely. Sheesh.

You know, I've always found the space directly under a table to be mystical, in a weird way. As though, you know, nothing stays there. When I was a kid, growing up in a sufficiently over-crowded house, that looked like a lot of useful real estate going to waste. That, I believe, is where my fixation with the space under tables came from. And that was even before I discovered tables that were fully draped. You know, with the table cloth flowing off on the side, enclosing the space under the table. And then I learnt about footsie, and that space took on a new, fresh, tantalising erotic aura. In Sous La Table, the cleaner checks under the table. What she finds is up to the beholder. :o)

These days, I use the GIMP mostly. (Not always.)
These days, I don't draw many human shapes, at least not without zooming in, because the lack of precision deems that largely a slow, wasteful endeavour. I draw general sketches, and they are more about what is around the character, rather than the character. The character is not very precise in appearance, but his or her state can be picked out.
Here are two from the series, which are rather grim. They fit the profile of thin male nude with frontal nudity obscured.

Piqué, which means "pricked" or "impaled", is one of those grim ones. It's this guy who has a very long spear stuck in his chest. I like the fact that he is on the ground, with both hands on the spear. As in, he must die. The length of the spear and how far it has run into him is in itself a good indicator of how certain his death is. And then the powerless drooping of the head, as life ebbs out of him. The fluid escaping from under him means he is either bleeding to death, or the trauma made him incontinent. They are all sure signs of a near death.
Now, why do I like the picture so grim, especially after spitting at Bukedde for not censoring its gore? Because I witnessed it.

In a previous life, about seven hundred years ago, I was where modern Rwanda is, and I joined a cult (whose members grew their hair into dreadlocks). We were mainly against the colonial droves of the cattle herders who were descending from the north and imposing on us a caste system, where we were the dalits. In one of the wars against them, my friends were killed, one by one. Speared to death. That life, for me, ended in the same battle, but not before I had seen my friend die like that, as depicted in the picture.

And the last one in the series, Strange Fruit. You probably know the Billie Holiday song, but all I got from it is the title. The theme is a little different. Unlike Piqué, this one is drawn from this life. I still find it hard to forget the scream of the neighbour, and how she later showed up at our door—I was like ten years old—pushing her three kids before her like captives. She told my Ma to keep them there, and give them breakfast. It was years later that I learnt about how their father had taken his own life. And with such fashion, such class, such style. Actually, it was far from funny. He had slipped out, feigning to go and ease his bladder, so the rumour says, and the wife, wondering why he had stuck in the toilet for so fucking long, went out to check on him. She found him outside, nude, suspended from a tree, with a short cord, and dead as yesterday. Grim.

Now, to restore your faith in me before you run away. I drew this maybe like two or three years ago. It was supposed to be a self-portrait, but it came out non-right. I drew it in Microsoft Paint. I even obsessed over the colours. Ah, the days when I had time! :o)
When I am retired and rich, I'll be drawing a lot and burning my drawings at an altar above which will hover some Gottfried Helnwein works, among others, worth trillions of scrillions of shillings, that my dealers and salaried thieves will have pulled out of museums and auctions.
[1] It's Salman Rushdie who said "right to left, naturally" in, I believe, Shame.

I've Had a Week

Mood: Reporting
[Toot!] Index: 0.0
Communism Bit: On
Location: Job, of course

I've had a week. Written more in this week, on this blog, than I have in some whole months. I'm close to one hundred posts in my archive! :o)
And not just my blog. I've been spewing lots of verbose comments in places. It's a habit I'm trying to fight (not that it is always bad, but you know ... Summer Glau may find me). Anyway, maybe I'll just comment less. Especially on topics that get me worked up. So if I vanish from your blogs, I'm trying to keep from blogging on them.

Iwaya is an écrivain nonpareil. Some people pronounce the name as eew-eye-ah, but me, I go like eye-why-ah. So, Iwaya writes well. I've collected and lost many links of his things, but there is this one, To My Unborn Daughters that I didn't lose. Go and read already. It's got some things typical of Iwaya's current style. Starts out like a friend seated across you in the pub. Then it gets ghostly about the stomach, grows darker. Red capillaries show up in its eyes later on, and a tear drop is set free about the knees, and by the time you reach the calf of the story, the pub buddy has vanished and has been replaced by the blind veteran telling a deep, dark story. The story gets to the foot, and the pub friend is back. And you wonder how it happened, and he is not revealing the trick. Iwaya. :o)
Will you please go and read that story?

Leads me to ...
I'm discovering the work of a story-teller. Maybe, some day, when I'm retired, I'll become a story-teller. You know, gather people around, maybe kids, and spin 'em a yarn. Maybe on a stage, although I have the most stage fright of any human.
There is this pretty girl I write stories for, these days. She says she likes them. The way we do it, I have no way to edit a line I've sent. It is done in chat, so the story must hold well as you go. No chances to use backspace. Every line I write is sent, and that's that. It's a nice experience.
I wanted to start off with a few lines (hence the telling format), and it grew into a series.
Previously in the story: the boy has killed the Soldier, and the girl is with the doctor. And the Police is looking for the boy. People had been hanged for smaller crimes. Where will the story go? I don't know, either, because most of the stuff comes as I type it.

Also, my cat had four kittens, and I'm so proud of them. Two are black (one more-so than the other), one is like beige with orange-like stripes, and the other pure white (I think it's an albino; I'll see). They are a cute bunch. I have taken pictures, but I don't have the cable with me. I'll upload them, sometime.
The white one gets me worried when it hyperventilates and then sneezes (or something). But we'll all be fine. :o)

Plus, I'm probably quitting my job, now. Soon. Things done happened. I'm excited about it, as well as worried. I just got four kittens, and it's just simply no time to be broke.
Also, I want to hire an adungu and record myself singing to my Ma and send her the record.
I'm supposed to be starting my own company, but I'm really too broke for it. I'll go into it, all the same, because I'll never be ready. I've learnt to burn my bridges behind me to create a reason to march forward.
So, if you find me begging by the roadside, sometime, help a brother out.
But seriously, I'm going to be broke. :o( Broke and busy.

For the disobedient, now that I've finished, here you are: go and read.

Buzibye

Mood: "Parabolically-angry"
[Toot!] Index: 9.2
Communism Bit: On
Location: Job, of course

I won't smudge my blog's otherwise impeccable record with a link to Bukedde.
But still, I'll just note that I'm just sick, sick, sick and totally, totally, totally tired of that paper.

I'm sick of the macabre, grisly pictures. That's what happens when demoniac editors manage to drag their itchy, syphilitic gonads away from their necrophilic orgies.
Those idiots—the entire satan-worshipping coven at Bukedde, from janitorial to `editorial'—may even infect the comparatively-good New Vision people. Soon, even they will be drooling at headless, bloodied nudes with aroused glee.

I usually take matters into my hands and shoot one or two people, when I'm angry enough. But I can't this time, because it is, apparently, press freedom to put stabbed necks on the front pages. Kids don't read the front page, do they? They are asleep when they are walking to school, aren't they?
I'm sickened. Some things, if they even deserve public mention, should be euphemised and hidden. Christ the Holy Nazarene of the Virgin Birth, I'm sick and fucking tired of that paper. I'm worried what I may do next.

2066

Mood: Bored
[Toot!] Index: 0.0
Communism Bit: Off
Location: Job, of course

So, I'm Museveni's biggest fan among all you blogren. If you ask me, I'll say there is nothing stopping him from running for President—and undoubtedly winning fairly and squarely—until he just gets tired of his own popularity.
Okay, I sounded like Ofwono Opondo, there, but still. I think Museveni is very, very under-appreciated. You have all these frothing idealists calling him names, but being a President of a country like Uganda is thankless.

Anyway, my archives have all the pro-Museveni side of me, and the occassional anti-Museveni side. However. I've noticed that his sign, or that of his fans, was three fingers, when he was running for the third term. Pinky, ring, middle. Now, I see pictures, already, of people flashing four fingers, urging Mzee on to his fourth term. Pinky, ring, middle, and index finger. Besigye took the two-finger V salute, index and middle, but he's a queue-jumper. He didn't start with one digit!
I couldn't help noticing that Museveni fans are running out of fingers. On his fifth term, they'll have overflown into the UPC territory. Things got hard to visualise, so I just jumped on to the year 2066.

Bright Rights Writes

Mood: bright
[Toot!] Index: 0.0
Communism Bit: Off
Location: Job, of course

So, I did some trotting among the blogren. And I'm going to round up about a week of that trotting over here. The main theme (even when I've got to shoe-horn unrelated posts into agreeing with me) was and is human rights.

John Powers was the first to mention the human rights blogging, with that writing style of his that exhudes calm determination. Never seen the guy, but I have a picture in my head of what he may look like. It's generic, anyway, and I haven't yet put a nose. He likes gardening, it appears, so the picture is of a kind-of-tall man squinting at a misty morning, with a rake placed on his worn boots. And he is in military wear. Blame my head. :o)
He didn't give us the 15^th May post, or at least not yet.

Jasmine picked up from John Powers, and promised to blog for human rights. She did, writing what became my first info on the passing of Ox. I once played basketball, and Ox was an inspiration. And now he's gone.

Jackfruity linked to both the above, and promised a post. I waited, and I'm still waiting for the post. She said, on her Twitter stream, one day past the Day, that she would still be bringing it forth. Behold, we await yet. She had promised something on gay and lesbian human rights. I think this would have been where GUG jumps in, as well. Except he's in Kenya, at the moment. And, as it appears, far Eastern Uganda doesn't have much internet ...

Tumwijuke linked to the three above, and promised a post. She delivered with stunning mastery, writing up a story that would be worth memorising, down to the last word, had it not been such a heart-rending tear-jerking account. It's right here, Anita's Story.

Henry Owera gave us a post, whose title is hard to pronounce—names of freedom fighters sans spaces, which may be a poetic, artistic touch (some names, though concatenated and truncated, are all complete)—CheMarleyMahatMandelAungSanSuuKyi Rights.
I think, though, that his later post (latest, at this point) is more-pertinent. It opens with the revelation that his mother, in 1998, lost a leg to a landmine. His rage against landmines is untethered in that post.

Carlo gave us one, too. A post with a simple all-digit title. And the powerful point in that post is that the rising food prices may make some of us broker, but they'll make others come closer to death. If we are to ensure the right that encompasses access to food, she says, we are failing on this point. And I agree. I would extend it to say we are failing to ensure the right to life, for many people (which was probably her point, implicitly).

Then, in rolled Baz. He set up a cunning trap, as he referred to it, and got us reading to the end. (He didn't need a trap—who ever quits a Baz tale before the end? You start, you've taken the oath.)
Will you read already? It's an interesting post that looks at the religion and government, and how (somehow) it affects rights.

Did I miss any bright rights writes? Put them in the comments. I didn't bookmark them, I'm afraid. Dumb of me, I know.
The one I refrained from commenting on, because of its sheer clarity on the rights issues it discussed, with the mantra that calls us not to give up our rights, is this one. Go and roll in the enlightenment.

Apologies, Grammar, Gadgets

Mood: apologetic, grammatical, gadgetted
[Toot!] Index: 0.0
Communism Bit: Off
Location: Job, of course

First, the apologies. :o)
Sorry, world. Sorry, everybody. Sorry, DeTamble. Sorry, Carlo. Sorry, Antipop. Sorry, me. :o)
I've been pretty dark on my posts. Negative and all. The mean streak leaking onto my keyboard, and so on. I'm putting ranting aside, if only for a while. I figured I should have another blog for my "opinions" and leave this to have more sanity, but that is impractical at the moment. I'll just put the "opinions" on hold.

Next, the grammar.
You see those sentences up there? "Sorry, DeTamble. Sorry, Carlo. [...]"? If I was slow with my comma, it would turn from "forgive me, DeTamble" to "pitiable DeTamble". That's what "Sorry DeTamble" would mean. Grammar matters, y'all. Oh, wait. No opinions allowed. :o)
Actually, so I'm a grammar freak. Whatchu gon' do? Whaatchoo gooon' doo‽
That brings in the interrobang. A character, informal, that combines the interrogation, okay?, and the exclamation bang, I swear!, and giveth I the combination. Interrobang!? Interrobang‽

Gadgets.
I bought me the Samsung C160. There are a number of shortcomings and successes on this here phone. No Bluetooth or Infrared. Is that sane, for a phone done in 2007? Maybe they figured it was useless, since it can't play MP3. Also, when you type with the T9 dictionary, where the space key and the "guess next word" function are on the Nokia are swapped on this phone. I'm not saying they should ape Nokia, but Nokia got it right, because if the space, which I hit a lot (since I write SMS in good, uncompromised grammar) is closer to my thumb's base, and I use the thumb to type, it becomes impossible to twist the finger to hit the space. Plus it cost me Shs. 120,000/=, and I was told I could have got it cheaper elsewhere. But I've seen it on a billboard in the old taxi park, so at least I got a product Samsung actively cares about. Consolé.
Oh, and it doesn't wake me up. The alarm only works when it's left on, and I switch my phone off to sleep.

But what went right with it outweighs the bad, for a relatively-cheap phone as her. (It's a girl, my phone, and these are the features that gave it away.)
The phone is gorgeous. It'll be on a feminist glam mag cover. Here:
Also, it has FM, though I don't use that. It surfs the web, though (again) I don't use that (no way to turn images off, though, which hogs my money when I surf). It has nice, chimey sounds all over. It's so simple, and lacking many features, which is good because the little you have will become second nature. It doesn't try to do everything, and succeeds at getting that right. It's not anaemic, not bloated—just right.
And the keypad, O God. It's very nearly an erotic experience typing on its keys. And the key tones have a "xylophone" mode that even I, hater of phone sounds, left in. Big, big characters on the screen, too. Nice phone.

Also, my Ma sent me this disturbingly-gorgeous MP3 walkman from Sony. It's such a cute wee thing. The backlight is clear, the text clean. It's sturdy, light, and has a cute velcro holster. I just got it today, and I already adore it.
It has a calorimetre, so helps you when you use it during fitness excercises and the like. It is no iPod, but it need not be. I mean, it came with some really fine music. It has already won. (Norah Jones, some psychedelic guitar-work reminiscent of Jimi Hendrix, Chinese instrumentals, some Iranian drums and flutes, some screeching rock, and too much sensual jazz.) It is coolness in and of itself, even without the über-fast USB charging. It's like having a Danish cookie fall from the sky into your lap. Wait 'til it is engorged with M'bilia Bel and Jean-Paul Samputu. :o)
I nearly added some crude joke about how I may subconsciously be drawn to it as a phallic symbol, but I don't think the time is right for Freudian jokes.

Universal Declaration of Human Lefts

Mood: Responsive-and-humane
[Toot!] Index: 2.5
Communism Bit: On
Location: Job, of course

We were called upon to write about Human Rights on the 15^th of May. Here's my piece. Rambling and laced with poison. I wrote it yesterday. Go with a good bladder. No guns allowed. Thank you.

So, it is the day when bloggers talk about human rights. I don't believe any one of them will say we should abolish the concept of human rights. And that is the problem. The uniformity of opinion, I mean. I've learnt to distrust uniform opinion. Uniformity, in nature, is the exception, not the norm. Chaos rules. Variety, difference, stand-out-ness. Until it comes to things like human rights. Somehow, we've been convinced that this Universal Declaration of Human Rights is, um, universal. Many people think that is rubbish, and I'm one of them.

At this point, I've lost all the world, and I'm left with enough readers—all two of us—to continue without censoring how I feel.
First of all, that Declaration has the wrong name. Which Declaration am I talking about? That's the problem: there is this other declaration that the Americans wrote in 1776, what they called the "Declaration of Independence". And the fact that this Human Rights Declaration borrows a name (and naming format) from the independence one is a major sign of the levels of Americentricism that infected it. I don't care if you think Americentricism is good or bad: that the Declaration was affected by any single culture so obviously is a sign that it is not meant for everyone. If you don't think this is wrong, you're infringing on my human rights not to have to live under forcible foreign influence. (This doesn't change, even if you shift the nominal blame to la Déclaration.)

Are we together? You're gone? :o( Okay, let me write to myself. Dear 27^th Comrade ...

First, let me point out a couple of things I find funny or unrealistic in the Declaration.

I'm a fan of recursion. I like things that refer to themselves. But sometimes it's not funny, because you may never get to the end of the movie (for example) if, in its second minute, it starts showing (as part of the movie) what was happening at the beginning of the movie (probably as a character's memory). When you get to the second minute, the character will remember where she began remembering, and then you go back to the beginning, and keep spinning in that circle until you die.
Here is Article 2 of the Declaration: "Everyone is entitled to all the rights and freedoms set forth in this Declaration [...]".
And so, Mullah Nasrudin closed the Declaration and started reading again from the beginning, to see what rights Article 2 was talking about. Needless to say he kept doing this whenever he reached Article 2.

The most-interesting one is Article 13. It says I can be within any borders, and it's my human right. "Everyone has the right to freedom of movement and residence within the borders of each state." Okay, so let me map out my itinerary and go see the World! :o) It's my human right! No denying me visas on such stupid reasons as "You're carrying bombs, and you've expressed hate for this country many times, so we won't let you in ..." Human rights, oyee!

People celebrate that we have the Declaration. I mourn that we need it at all. Failing to just love one another, we rely on thirty dry clauses—just thirty to sum up something as fundamental as human rights for six billion diverse human souls. The problem with these thirty is that they summarise and generalise. In other words, they leak. There are holes.
Article 16 mentions "Men and women of full age [...] have the right to marry and to found a family." Well, way to make such grandiose statements, not even respecting culture. Incest, for example, is a human right. (I'm not against it; I'm just pointing out that neither is the Declaration—it is for it.) Oh, and it is against gay marriage, too. "Men and women," it says. ("Oh," you may say, "it doesn't say how the pairs are made, only which people can make the pairs, namely grown humans." But if we debate about what the damn paper is trying to say, try debating with the guy who disagrees with the clause on torture, when the Americans next get you.)

That's not to mention that this Declaration is nearly the most-invasive cultural imperialism. Ever. Like, it took Western attitudes and ideas and ideals and (naturally) they sound good to Western ears (or ears that have been influenced by the West), and painted them over the other parts of the World in a forcible "holy rape", the kind of "cleansing rape" it doesn't put any sentences out against (for cowardice/brevity), even though there are people who suffer it a lot. People, I'm facing the fact that the "Universal Declaration of Human Rights" says nothing about what has been called the grossest form of dishonour: rape. Not even remotely. It's not like rape is a recent invention, people. (Can someone identify a clause that takes care of this? I'm hoping I'm wrong.)
But take the fact that Article 16(2) is against arranged marriages. I hate them, too, but if you agree that it is good to impress upon other peoples what we deem good (because we were raised that way, not because we would think differently had we been in their place), you also, then, agree that the Declaration is biased. In short, you agree that the Declaration infringes on peoples' rights. Maybe it is a case of upholding the rights of the human above those of the humans (among whom the human is living), which is self-defeating.

A major failing is that the Declaration does not define who a human is. It just states the rights of this human. Now, I know I'll lead the colonial party that will subdue the Martians and bring Mars under servitude of the Crown, and run the Flag up on the red sands of that untamed savage planet. (Rule, Africa! Africa rule the stars!) And I'll enslave all Martians and basically just trample on their Martian rights. They are not humans, are they? No.
Now, did you know that Americans, by being Americans, forsake being humans, and that these rights do not cover them? Well, now you know why I'll throw them all down the lake of sulphuric acid. I hope this had the shocking effect it was meant to have. I hope you realise that human rights couldn't save you, if you fell in the hands of good rights-respecting people who are convinced that humans can't look/act like you.

Article 19: "Everyone has the right to freedom of opinion and expression [...]," so far so good, "and to seek, receive and impart information and ideas through any media and regardless of frontiers," where it breaks down. You see, it is too general not to contradict itself. Before, these people thought everyone would be preaching their gospel. But now, Azzam.com was struck off this information-wants-to-be-free internet, and nobody can invoke Article 19. Because the Declaration picks a side, in the face of slogans like "Jihad and the rifle alone: no negotiations, no conferences and no dialogues."
If you want to blame the implementors, rather than the specification, tell me if Azzam.com should be allowed back. Sign your name, that we may know you. [1] And then read why it is self-contradictory, in Article 30.

"Nothing in this Declaration may be interpreted as implying for any State, group or person any right to engage in [things] aimed at the destruction of any of the rights and freedoms set forth herein." As in, you shouldn't interpret any Article, like the one that guarantees freedom to push out information of our liking, to mean that you can infringe upon another Article, say like Article 3 ("right to life"), by stopping the global censoring Azzam.com.
Also, I hate the supremacy that Article 30 assumes. It kind of sets itself up like a sort of final god, and seals everything. Sadly, the seal is contradictory, but you are not allowed to call it that, because you'll be violating it and therefore being anti-rights. It's a blasphemous kind of YHWH, really, for its recursive delusions of grandeur. A blasphemous I am the Alpha and Omega, for its finality.

I've never been told that human rights have a dark side, and I bet you have never, either. And that is largely why we defend (even love) the idea of human rights. We are told that everything we like is guaranteed to us by the human rights, and that everything bad is against them. What we believe in is not the Declaration, but rather a certain (I dare say instinctive) idea. It's not some Western ideal, and what we fight for, when we fight for our rights, is not what the Declaration talks about. We fight for that, um, Thing, that can't be summarised in thirty articles, in less than one hundred sentences.

The Declaration was preceded by other documents like it that spoke of rights, and it was not ground-breaking in any way. Indeed, I prefer earlier (less famous) documents, and some that come after, because they don't have these problems above. They are merely expressions of that Thing within all of us that craves its rights. They don't make broad, cultural-imperialist assumptions.
Declaration of Rights of the Negro Peoples of the World, is like my favourite. 1920. Oozing with spirituality. It's beautiful. The thing even packs a whole hymn for those interested and gifted with a voice. While Westerners have lively blog orgies over Burma and Tibet, citing the Declaration, for example, a 1920 document still holds out an empty bowl at their countries. Nearly one hundred years of pointing out the speck in the other's eye, and not noticing the tree caught in your own?

Then the more-recent Draft United Nations declaration on the rights of indigenous peoples. It's still a draft, but it addresses a more-crucial point than human rights. You see, human rights are not in the danger everybody pretends they are in. It is the way of humanity to steer communities towards more respect for human rights. (Our generations are allowed to think they invented the idea, of course. This may be instinctive, and necessary to keep the passion for rights among humans burning brightly millennium after millennium.) However, indigenous people's rights are, almost by default, threatened. When your land is conquered, part of the conquest is an erosion of your dignity. You know what these British did to us. What the Conquistadors did, too. What the Americans are still doing. Even down here in South Africa. The case of indigenous peoples is definitely more-urgent than any sort of human right. We are talking about existence right, in their case.

I also like the Cairo Declaration on Human Rights in Islam, which is basically the answer to the cultural assumptions in the Declaration.
I mean, consider Article 18, which has "[...] this right includes freedom to change his religion [...]". That is flat against the Sharia Law, you see. One who changes from Submission shall be an Apostate, and shall be treated as an Infidel.
So, how to reconcile the freedom to practice Islam (which bids the previous sentence) and the respect of Article 18? Well, create a Sharia-respecting Declaration! And so they did. Besides that, the robust spirit of sensible dissent that is embodied in the Cairo Declaration, I don't much align myself with it. I'm not a mussulman.

(By the way, the British were still slaughtering the Kenyans in warm sputtering fountains of thick, sticky, bubbling blood, when their people were waving this Declaration around. The blood is still invading a child's lungs, rushing out of opened jugulars into severed wind pipes, blocking off the dying call to a dying mother, the scene playing out in the telescopes of the American shooter in the killing fields of the Middle East, while the Americans are calling us to blog about humans rights.
One reason to hate the Declaration is for how much it affects those who ultimately have no effect, and is effectively ignored easily by the people who command the attacks.)

I like some parts of it. Many parts of it. My favourite, though, is Article 25(2). "Motherhood and childhood are entitled to special care and assistance. All children, whether born in or out of wedlock, shall enjoy the same social protection."
Apt.

So, this is my entry into the whole blog thingy. I like memes and fads, especially around now. I'm having a dizzying change to my life, and a long, long, half-thought-out post could help with it.
The alternative to a post like this, though, would be a single sentence summarising what I think about blogging about human rights: "It's stupid from the core, and only done by people because they perceive it to be a cool way to identify with something that has near-universal acceptance (and therefore carries no risk of banishment from the cool club) while maintaining the semblance of rebellion and dissent, which are (apparently) cool."
That, frankly, is how I feel about all this human rights stuff, and especially the arm-chair revolutionaries that we are (me included, though I double as a Kalashnikov revolutionary, as well). This idealist outrage is cool, yes, and that's why we do it. It is uncool, to, for example, blog that Jihad websites should be allowed free rein and be linked to in news items, and that America should stop terrorising terrorists and let them go mano-a-mano with their adversary as is the case in a fair fight, and to call for America to stop bullying perceived dictators because (and only because) they don't speak English with a Western accent, and to say the inconvenient truth that the World's environment and continued existence of humans is in more danger from the West than from six thousand bin Ladens, so nobody sets aside a blog day for that.
But try something like press freedom. Everybody gon' jump and express some plastic rage (that they even believe to be authentic).

So, while this fad lingers, I'll check the blogs to see how many people are convinced that African countries have the worst (or even just bad) human rights records. And I'll see how many Americans are looking outside of their country to see the speck. And I'll see how precious few there will be who note that the West is the shocking, unsurpassed worst perpetrator of human rights under the Sun. And I'll see how many have survived the calculated propaganda that is being pumped out of the West about who is, in fact, responsible for all those Bad Things.
Africa is a paragon of human rights, by the way. We uphold them, and not after some crappy piece of paper, but after our own principals that are as African as their names. Ubuntu, for example. Mato put, for another example. Ah, but this kind of thing is not cool, so it would be laughed out of any journal or blog.
You try that, you get a whole load of bulverism thrown your way. Try saying the Burmese are evil, and you get cookies. Say that Africa has the worst human rights record, and you get fifteen minutes on the BBC. Try saying that China should ape the West's models, and you get laid.

And because our human rights codes are not written on some dead tree, they are easier to revise. This Declaration is sixty years old. Not a single revision, and no hope for one. Let's not pretend it was perfect, and on the first attempt. It can get better. But it won't. Bad, bad Declaration. Sit down, Declaration. ("Declaration" is a good name for a dog.)
And I can't get the right not to want to recognise these human rights. I know this paper is not binding, but still. Isn't it my right to flick a digit at this Declaration? Oh, wait, my basic right in the face of this Dictatorship of the Perceived Correct is not guaranteed by the Dictatorship. How can it? It's the nature of dictatorships to quash people like me.
Article 26: "Education shall be free, at least in the elementary and fundamental stages." Provide the bloody money, before you open that trap. And why not beyond the primary? Because the "models" weren't doing it in their countries. Them guys were so out of touch with reality, and this is what happens when you want succumb to the temptation to trust ivory tower idealists to shape the way for a whole fucking planet! Sheesh.
Okay, enough said. I'm feeling better by now.

[1] And when you're done holding up human rights banners for Azzam.com, go get started on campaigning for Maktabah.net (shut down), Waaqiah.com (shut down), Qoqaz.net (changed to route back to your local box IP address), and others. It's unfair for the Mujahideen to be muzzled into total silence, while their enemies get 24/7 access to minds all over the world. Nobody has ever heard their side. If you feel that this conflicts with Article 19, start a blog campaign to end the censoring. What's worse is that these Mujahideen have real grievances that should be addressed before we use the communications upper hand to silence and demonise them, trample on their Article 19 human right, and keep waving the fucking banners for human rights.
You can see the death throes of Azzam.com in its struggle to stay online, at the WayBack Machine.

Rantdom Thurogitts 2.4

Mood: srand(rand());
[Toot!] Index: 1.2
Communism Bit: On
Location: Job, of course

I think I figured out what I want to waste money on, pretending it is a business adventure. I'm being a bit hypocritical ("with the criticism of a hippo"?) in this business, by the way. Even having a business alone means I'm ready to fuck someone up for my own personal (even selfish) benefit. I dunno, being a Communist in a Capitalist society has its problems. I'll move to DPRK and go away from all this temptation, this land of shameless economic khufr.
And here is a post from good ol' Degstar from back then, kind of pertinent to my current state.

Someone once spat a number of aphorisms at me, and he didn't know I'd remember them. He was old, I was younger. He was about to die, and his speeches those days, as though he was aware of the impending end, were one aphorism after another.
I want to write them down as one quote, but remember that they were never this jointed. They were shot off one-by-one, in real life. And then I'll tell you why I note them now.

Don't do anything for society. Society doesn't care for you—people will be laughing heartily before your body is cold—yet you sacrifice a lot for society. The problem with following society norms is that you end up living by rules you didn't make; they are impersonal to you and your loyalty to them.
I know of a woman on that side of the road who won't leave her violent, unfaithful husband, because society expects her to stay in that gaol. I know of a man on that same side of the road who can't marry, because this same society would rise up in fury about his choice. So these two are making mortal sacrifices for you—you are enough to represent this society—and yet you don't even know about them.
You know, if you counted the number of people who make these empty sacrifices everyday, and nail their happiness against the tree of society, you will be sad. But not nearly as sad as they will be, when they realise this for themselves. Realising this is what marks the change from young and stupid to old and wise.

It was my grandpa, the self-same dude who would tell me to drag a smoke off his pipe, when nobody was watching. I remember him now, because I referred to him three posts back. The image of him saying Ecclesiastes 8, 9 right out of memory, smoke rising out of his beard (and he'd verbally underline chapter nine, verse ten), is rather strong. I don't know where it came back from. He said Solomon was his favourite philosopher.
I notice I still make many sacrifices for society (and no other reason). I wonder when the fuck I'll stop ...

Lastly:
I should show you the environment I rig up to be able to write this rubbish in serene peace.

I set up my system so that I have an editor in the middle of the screen, and nothing on the sides. I got this trick from seeing the Writeroom editor. It is good if you are into writing, and you don't want distractions while at it. If you use a Mac, get it and try it. Anyway, so I don't use a Mac at work. I use Debian. There is DarkRoom for Windows, and JDarkRoom for the rest of us. I got JDarkRoom, and I couldn't get it to run. So I rigged up what I have in the screenshot, and it comes close to the effect. It blocks out the rest of the world, and it's only me and my text. Plain text.
There is a ghostly-feint picture, in the background, of Bob Marley pulling a prophetic pose, and nothing else. (Click through for bigger image.)
It saves me from addictive distractions like The Cutest Thing, when I want to rant.

Rantdom Thurogitts 2.3

Mood: Random
[Toot!] Index: 0.1
Communism Bit: On
Location: Job, of course


Random things. I'd not manage to write them otherwise.

First, Baz wrote this here: Here and Then. If you didn't read it, go now. Read already. It's a beautiful piece. I keep going back to it.

Next, I've never really read any of Florence King's stuff, but she's the kind of intellectual I like. Basically, she's a rebel. American but monarchist. A misanthrope comme moi, and calls herself "conservative lesbian feminist". But I found this quote of hers that is why she shows up here:

As the only class distinction available in a democracy, the college degree has created a caste society as rigid as ancient India's. Condemning elitism and simultaneously quaking in fear that our children won't become members of the elite, we send them to college, not to learn, but to 'be' college graduates, rationalizing our snobbery with the cliché that high technology has eliminated the need for the manual labor that we secretly hold in contempt.

To add another French-originated word to that, touché. More later.

I hate Wikipedia. It takes more away than it gives. The only excuse I have for using it is how cheap it is to use it. I don't know if I don't hurt myself by using a cheap collection of mistakes and shit. I'll not go into details about why Wikipedia is total bullshit. The editors are the worst kind. The Americentricism is like a cancer there. Anyway, a time will come when we figure out something (nearly) as cheap, but with better quality. Wikipedia is a beginning, and not nearly an achievement at all. It may even be a failure.
But I'll keep using it. :o)

Also, since Dennis mentioned it, I'll take the time to say I think the Japanese cultural element of seppuku (or hara-kiri) is a good example of why I'll abolish the concept of honour after the Revolution. Honour is like slavery, chauvinism, and other concepts that may have been okay back then but have been exposed as evils recently. Honour almost invariably involves death, if you've noticed. Honour murders, honour rapes, honour suicides, honour raids ... Honour is closely related to revenge (against oneself or another). And revenge, when executed by humans, is invariably a failure at whatever it wants to be (bar wanting to be a failure).

Now, John Taylor Gatto. Notorious anti-school person. A teacher for decades. Teacher of the Year Award winner (quit the same year). Here are two things, one being Against School, and the other being The Psychopathic School (must-read). I quote the last one, here:

Using school as a sorting mechanism, we appear to be on the way to creating a caste system, complete with untouchables who wander through subway trains begging and who sleep upon the streets.
[...]
It is absurd and anti-life to be part of a system that compels you to sit in confinement with people of exactly the same age and social class.
[...]
It is absurd and anti-life to move from cell to cell at the sound of a gong for every day of your natural youth in an institution that allows you no privacy and even follows you into the sanctuary of your home demanding that you do its "homework."

I fear to quote more, lest I lengthen this beyond what even I consider a long post. Just understand that you have to read that piece. It's about America's schooling system, but we are committing the same error here, in Uganda. Then again, if we dared diverge, the aid would be cut. The result is that we'll have many people who are certainly schooled (with papers to prove it) but not educated. (America has many; their President once called Africa a country, for example.) TV features a lot in that essay, as a bad thing. Solitude features as a good thing. .oO Hmm.[1]
We shouldn't let that happen. I think that, if you really want the best for a child, right now, you'd have to face the fact that education is better attained by watching a fist-fight on the street than in class. If you want to teach your children to pick their minds, to think independently, challenge norms, be creative, school is the last place you want them to go. School is the very opposite of what anyone will call a good education. I've been a good school person, then also a self-taught drop-out, and my experience echoes what many smart people have told me, and it's what I assert here. Enough said.
A short Wikipedia article on one of John Taylor Gatto's books.

Happy mid-week.

UPDATE:
Reminds me of a comic I saw yesterday ...

[1] I know a number of people who do little-to-no TV and lots of solitude, some of them my blogren. And, yes, they are of admirable education (even though their schooling is not always exemplary; some are even anti-school). Most of my admired figures are actually not schooled.

Newton's Third Law of Motion

Mood: Bored
[Toot!] Index: 0.1
Communism Bit: On
Location: Job, of course

I've been writing this first line for more than ten minutes. Writing and deleting it. I've changed the wording et cetera, and it has failed to come out the way I want. The alternative—this that I'm doing—is to start by describing that failure. I rarely fail at failure. It's an easy way to start.

I wanted to ask, without seeming like my usual self, whether anybody finds the complete absence of the pro-Mugabe voice on the Net worrying. Don't you people worry about judging based on one side? I know, he's a bad person, the spawn of the very Lucifer himself, and I'd only be marginally worse if I were the President of Zimbabwe. But still, doesn't anybody worry about such uniformity of opinion? I know I do. Every link I click about this thing of Mugabe losing his election takes me to weblogs that nearly look like calculated propaganda (complete with slogans). And here's a link to Time magazine (published before the results were announced). Tell me what's missing there. If you know of any maybe ZANU-PF blogger, please link I.

You know, Jude always starts what he calls The Countdown to Dissatisfaction, whenever people do something like vote in a new leader.
Anyway, if you have a link, put it in the comments. Maybe Mugabe blogs. :o) I'd like to see what the pro-Mugabe 0.001% sound like. That's all.

Lex III: Actioni contrariam semper et æqualem esse reactionem: sive corporum duorum actiones in se mutuo semper esse æquales et in partes contrarias dirigi.
— Isaac Newton

Selah.