One Shot, One Man

Mood: Snipin' mood
[Toot!] Index: 0.1
Communism Bit: Off
Location: Entebbe

The boy was shot. The girl was terrified. And the soldier was angry that this shot hadn't been perfect. That's what happened on that Sunday night.
A lover crouches among the shrubs that make the hedge. This is back in the September of 1998, by the way, on that road that leads to the Fire Quarters in Entebbe. That road where the army families live. And the lover should have been smart enough to know that you shouldn't pay visits to a soldier's daughter. —At night!
So, the lover squats at the fence, waiting for the torch to come on and draw arcs on the curtains. (This was the signal the girl used to alert him that he could come to the window.) Everybody else is asleep, the signal would say. But this time, when the signal flashed, it was wrong. Because, you see, a man was holding a gun in another room, waiting to bore a hole in the lover's head. One shot, one man was the soldier's way of doing business.

But first, some 1986. You remember the day the Okello men stopped a phalanx of Museveni men at Kigungu, in the January of that year? The stalemate was broken, as you've certainly already heard, by the sniper who hid in the rocks up there. One shot, one man is how that battle ended. A left-handed sniper of the Museveni side sat up among the crags and started switching off one soldier for each shot he fired. He descended the chain of command, one-shot-one-man. (In the beginning, the shooting instructor had told him he was holding the gun the wrong way, because the left hand “just looked wrong”. By the end of his very first day with the gun, he had destroyed the improvised practice target—because, you know, unlike other soldiers, he actually hit the thing.)
It's a bit sad that the best sharp-shooter the NRA ever had ended up in an obscure neighbourhood in Entebbe. The legend in the Bush War was that if he so much as saw you, you were pretty much fucked. “If he sees it, he can shoot it. With one shot.” The story was true of his having darkened an ambushed base by shooting at an electricity wire.
And now, he held a Russian gun, and, with a closed right eye, pointed the muzzle at the hedge where the lover squatted.

At the wedding last Saturday (where this story was resurrected), the soldier explained why he had been too protective of his daughter. The logic was sound: When you have one child, whose mother is dead, you certainly will be extreme in keeping her from wrong choices. All I ever did, I did in the hope that it was the best thing for my only child, my daughter seated among us today, the apple of my eye. When she holds her own child—I hope for a boy in nine months, starting today—she will know what it feels like.
That thing about a countdown-to-the-baby-boy made the crowd roar. The bride smiled a coy smile and raised a slow sidelong kick to the groom.

Anyway, so the torch flashes. A China-made torch spits rays at the curtains. A lover is grateful to end the uncomfortable crouch. He gets up and ignores the shouts in his legs, tries to pull a majestic walk. A window should fly open in a short while, and a story is to be read out in the smoothest voice he can fake.
About the same time, a soldier stirs. A finger leaves its comrades with a quick jerk, like an Afghan mujahid rushing to his position. The index finger kisses a cold trigger. An advancing head slides into the target. The soldier curses his fading clarity of sight, but feels it won't hamper his aim.
And a gentle tug sends a bullet running towards its target, the only bullet in the gun, the only bullet necessary. The bullet cuts a pore in the glass and flies. The soldier clucks his tongue the way them people from Western Uganda do. A lover falls onto the dew. One shot, one man. The lights come on. Still with no shoes on, with the Kalashnikov still in his left hand, a half-naked soldier opens the door to examine his work on the grass outside.

After the Bush War, the soldier's contribution had been recognised. It was hard to ignore, as it were. He became a target instructor, and then, very soon, his sight started a quick descent. By that time, in 1998, he had stopped training soldiers. He could still see and shoot and all, but it was no longer as clear as it had been. You know the thing about perfectionists like him is that if they can't do it perfectly, they'd rather stop. And yet he was still pretty much a perfect shooter. He no longer went to practice, but he was still enviable. And when the army brought proper sniper guns (he had been using an AK-47 all that time), he was the one to break them in, as an honour. Then the lecture he gave the soldiers who were to use them was about how easy things are these days. Telescopic sight? My God, who can't split an enemy's hair these days? In our days, you had to snipe with an AK-47 that didn't have this shoulder nankani! With a Tommy gun, you boys!
Anyway, he had receded to the Fire Quarters by 1998, after his wife died, so that he could raise his only child without encumbrances.
It was then that the lover paid the visits. He had noticed the lover on the third visit, and prepared to take him out on the fourth.

And now he stands over a bleeding lover. The young man has just noticed that his leg isn't going to respond because it is bleeding because it has been shot because the soldier standing over him has fired at him because he wants those grubby wee fingers off his daughter. The soldier squats over the wound in the thigh, and complains, It's two entire metres—my God!—from the head! He blames the deflection that the glass has caused on the bullet, before he returns, like a real perfectionist, to blaming himself. (Two metres really is a large distance to miss by, especially if the range was close enough. I think he under-estimated how bad his eyesight had become. That's what I think.)
Now a shocked daughter creeps out of the house with an open mouth. Now she is kneeling next to her bleeding lover, and the Tiger Head torch is still in her hand (left hand, like her father). Now her nighties are kissed by the dew. Now she whispers to her lover. Now she tells her father: Let's get him to hospital! His thigh is bleeding! The bullet made an exit hole! YOU WANTED TO KILL MY BOYFRIEND!. The boy groans at the first time the girl acknowledges him as “boyfriend”, then the pain wipes his smiles in short order. Now the soldier, not used to upsetting his daughter, asks why he was sneaking in. Now the girl says, He was coming to read me a story! You kill story-tellers? Now she pulls the story out of his shirt pocket, and hands it to her father.
The soldier goes indoors, picks up the shell of the bullet with his toes, and grabs a shirt and picks the car keys. He drove to the hospital with no shoes on.

On the wedding, the soldier had risen from his seat and told his side of the story. His sight is almost totally gone. An unenviable ending for a sharp-shooter, you'll have to agree. He walked to the microphone wagging that cane of the visually-impaired, until he whacked the microphone's stem about three strokes. Then he reached out with splayed hands and grabbed. He spoke into the mic, I'll tell you a story. And he recounted this. Now he said that stuff about why he was such a jerk to the guys who so much as looked at his daughter. That's when he mentioned the countdown-to-the-baby-boy. And then he reached into his coat and said he had something to show the guests. He pulled out a middle-book leaf of an exercise book. He pulled from the pocket another item, the shell of a bullet. The groom rose to pick the two things, a slight limp in his leg. After all, it's your story and your bullet shell. The crowd roared, hahaha.
We are allowed to assume the lover did, after all, read the story to the girl. Exactly ten years to the day after he first tried to (and got shot in his attempt). Ten bloody years, people! To the very day, my God!

Semitic Words, Erotica, Turning Forty, and Geekery

Mood: Meandering mood
[Toot!] Index: 5.2
Communism Bit: Off
Location: Entebbe

1. Insha'llah.
   Loaded word. Brits arrest you for uttering it at their democratic, free airports, these terminals to freedom from fatwas and from edicts that call for your apostate head for uttering blasphemous things.
   Insha'llah. Guttural Arabic for God willing. But it's more than just blasphemy against the Protestant god.
   Insha'llah also exposes you for the divine-boot-licking theo-fatalist with pee-soaked undies that we all are. In one word, you declare yourself a submissive partner in the chain of command that climbs Heav'nward and dangles Earthward. Little wonder, then, that the word comes from The Submission. Ah, the Arabs. Their fierce religiousness is quite a gift to mankind, I tell you. In more ways than one.
   


2. And while we are talking about talking Semites, let's all of us turn a little to the left, if you will. From here, we get Shalom. Another one.
   A slushy blessing, a wish of peace upon thy head. It's a first-line-of-defence in greeting for those who use it. It means Peace, and that's where the problem is. What peace?
   Isn't this the Middle East? What peace? And, funny, the guy on the other side of the fence is also saying Peace in his greeting (this is all some moments before the firing starts). And he says Asalaam alaikum. Divinely-sanctioned Muslim greeting. Yarmulke and kaffiyeh nod at each other with teary eyes. Shalom!, wails one. Asalaam alaikum!, sings the other. The kernel of both Middle Eastern greetings is Peace. And that's where the paradox lies. Because, you see, the firing starts around now.
   


3. My career as an eroticist is taking off like the rising spirit of a dead holy rat. And I'm having fun at every turn. Look, first, I wrote stories for a girl. And then, one day, I slipped some erotica in there. She liked it. I started writing erotica. And then, one day, I was stressed, and I drew her something to relax. It was the beginning of my graphical erotica. O My Lord! Illustrated erotica! But I've, thus far, only drawn independent pics. I drew one that is tame enough to put on this blog. Here you go:
   
   
   It's called Amour-Wrestle, a play on "arm-wrestle", of course. Trust me, away from the blog, things get much, much steamier. Acrobatic, even. But this one is representative of my style: little-to-no frontal nudity, mild cubism, crayon look, mouse-only drawing, no deliberate straight lines, a sense of incompleteness, contrasting skin tones of lovers, et cetera.
   And I don't know how this hurts or enhances my prospects of becoming a writer in other forms. (I'll be trying to start writing for a publication here, any, to pad my pockets a bit.)
   


4. Despite the luxurious meandering style I've used today, this is still not long enough. —Yet. Not yet long enough to deflect the fleeting flashes of uncommitted attention.
   What I do in a case like this is to invoke a rant. Today, it shall be against glam mags.
   It's not against the vanity in them. (I'm not feeling terribly-Maoist today, sadly. I've just spent more than Shs. 1,000 this hour.) I'm against the shifting goal posts. As in, one day they say they are celebrating the rich diversity among women, then the next they are declaring a rigid standard to which all women must measure up. It's angering. Example?
   At forty years old, something happens to women. I'm not sure what; I just know it must be a bad thing. So women vary, not sharing even the thumbprint, a rich, pulsating population of dancing, smiling diversity ... until said age limit. *wags middle finger*
   
   And yet I know how this shit a-go begin. It sells (you won't believe just how much) when you make people feel urgently-sad about themselves. Do you know who most-adores the New York-descended statistics about Africa, the ones that pretend the positive stuff doesn't contribute to stats, and that "perfect" is short for "like the West" (and also cleverly omitting fields about serial killers and racists and school shootings and so on)? Of course, of course! It's the Africans who a-go count off, finger on upraised fingers, how badly they are told they are doing. *wags middle finger*
   
   So the glam mags tell women that they are well-programmed computers (a rare thing, I tell you, even literally) that will do something bad—crash? burn? reboot? what?—when they reach some stroke of midnight.
   The sad thing, of course, being that anybody bought this shit. More than one person. :o(
   


5. Let's close, let's close. Sit down, please. You've made it thus far. Let's close. One more thing. Geek shit coming up! *ducks and raps away*
   I can't upload my code to any spot on the web right now (laziness, 3^rd World Internet™, and other reasons). So I'll put it in this post. :o) It's under fifty—50—lines of Ruby code. It's a diary program I call journal. It's nice with its quick-'n-dirty style. It can work on any Unix system that has openssl(1) and Ruby. That's roughly any Unix. I'm using Mac OS X. To run it (it is minimalist), in Mac, open the Terminal (Applications→Utilites→Terminal), and then execute the Ruby script. You really should tinker with the code to use it in, say, another editor other than Vim (which I use). Not much work.
   
   It inserts the date line (with time, to the second) when you start a new entry.
   It backs up your diary, after every entry, if the backup folder is present. I use the flash disk, so when I have it plugged in, the backups go there.
   It's very secure. It uses the Blowfish cipher from OpenSSL. That's top-notch security, there. It'll ask for a password whenever it starts and closes. I didn't use Ruby's OpenSSL lib, because I wanted it short and direct. And quick and dirty. And secure (the password reading, you see). Sweetness. Here you go; enjoy and don't laugh at my variable names.
   

   
   #!  /usr/bin/env ruby
   
   require 'pathname'
   
   HOMEOPATHY = Pathname.new(ENV['HOME'])
   JOURNAL    = 'journal'
   DIARY_FILE = HOMEOPATHY + JOURNAL
   BF_FILE    = Pathname.new "#{DIARY_FILE}.bf"
   VIMINFO    = HOMEOPATHY + '.viminfo'
   BACKUP_DIR = Pathname.new('/Volumes/EMOTION/VOICE')
   
   def bf_prompt quoi, done
    STDOUT.puts quoi
    flag, inf, outf =
        (done ? ['-e', DIARY_FILE, BF_FILE] : ['-d', BF_FILE, DIARY_FILE])
    system(%{openssl enc -bf #{flag} -in #{inf} -out #{outf}}) and
        begin
            DIARY_FILE.delete if done
            true
        end
   end
   
   def bf_prompt_insist quoi, done
    correct = false
    correct = bf_prompt quoi, done until correct
    true
   end
   
   def back_up!
    return unless BACKUP_DIR.directory?
    bfbn = BF_FILE.basename
    dest = BACKUP_DIR + "#{bfbn}.tgz"
    Dir.chdir(BF_FILE.dirname.to_s) do
        system "tar cfz #{dest} #{bfbn}"
    end
    STDOUT.puts "Backed up to #{dest}"
   end
   
   def jmain args
    toplain   = bf_prompt_insist 'Decrypting journal ...', false
    start_cmd = %{THEDATE=`date` && echo "\n$THEDATE\n" >> #{DIARY_FILE} && vi + #{DIARY_FILE}}
    edit = toplain and system(start_cmd)
    edit and bf_prompt_insist 'Encrypting journal ...', true
    back_up!
    ($? ? $?.exitstatus : 0)
   end
   
   exit(jmain(ARGV))
   

   
   Okay. Bye, then. :o)
   

Keane Music, Puppy Love Expressions, And So On

Mood: Uncertain-about-my-mood mood
[Toot!] Index: 1.2
Communism Bit: Off
Location: Entebbe

1. Is it my imagination, or do some Keane songs bear more than a passing resemblance to some Coldplay songs? Nothing in My Way sounds like Yellow. At least in the beginning. And because Nothing in My Way starts like Somewhere Only We Know, same thing. We Might As Well Be Strangers is a lot like The Scientist. Everybody's Changing starts a lot like Speed of Sound.
   This, of course, takes nothing away from either band. Both bands are fitting heirs to VTO. But I'm thinking, the similarities make me think ... maybe it's my infant dislike for variation making a comeback?
   


2. I envy Windows users only for the sheer variety of software they have. Now, can somebody suggest drawing software for the Mac (that won't take more than 10MB on the disk)? I need it. Can't draw on the Mac, so a cheap way to relax has been taken away. I tried the Paintbrush for Mac, and it's not yet goon enough for me.
   Also, I have the MacSword Bible installed, but I don't really like it. I want one that can take annotations. I don't have the time to write this software myself. Point me there already.
   


3. I just found out that some weeks ago that some people feel insulted when you use the word "retard". I won't be using it again. (Taking it out of my speech may have to be very gradual, even though it's a recent acquisition.)
   As it were, I don't really believe that intelligence varies among humans. (It's a constant, but wisdom does vary, as does foolishness.) But that's another post. And when I say "smart", I mean "wise", not "intelligent". And "dumb" stands in for "foolish".


4. Lastly, I think it is a real tragedy when you grow up and realise that the usual methods of expressing affection that were used during one's puppy love stage are no longer welcome. The thing about kids who fall in love is that they've not been told by glam mags and movies what the "right" way to express what they feel is. They just do what their heart tells them to do. Grown-ups do what society does, clichéd, pretentious, insufficient, and dishonest as it may be.
   It's sad that we so easily throw out these "childish" expressions. It's so sad that adults don't really communicate how they feel, because, maybe, it is an uncool way to express their feelings (or the feelings are uncool to express).
   And if you're rebelling against this, and you still give your loved ones food, spur-of-the-moment gifts, don't hide what you feel, write letters, cite songs (just don't call them "deds", though; "jams" is allowed), et cetera, you have a place in the Club. And I'm the Dear Leader of the Club of Communication From the Heart. This loss of honest communication may be the biggest loss when people become "grown up", which I (luckily) will never become.


5. "Iconoclasts of the World, Unite!"?

ABC: Abortion, Barack, Chomsky

Mood: Uncertain-about-my-mood mood
[Toot!] Index: 1.2
Communism Bit: Off
Location: Entebbe

1. I realise that the pro-abortion camp uses the same reason to support abortion—the exact same reason, albeit worded differently—as I do to want to abolish abortion. (To abort it, as it were.) This is what I mean.
   They want to be able to abort in case:
   • they weren't ready for the baby (teenage mother, condom breaker, &c)
   • the baby is detected to have a grave congenital condition (Tay-Sachs, sickle cells, &c)
   • the baby is "illegitimate" (I don't believe any such thing exists, but hey) or a wife cheated and got pregnant or the result of an unknown father (drunk orgy, rape, &c)
   • and many other reasons.
   All these are merely inconvenient situations, not insurmountable problems. In other words, the baby is inconvenient.
   Now, only Nazis^* kill people who are inconvenient to have around. The reason I'm against abortion is this: we shall never ever have to pay for convenience with life.
   None of you would exist. I think you're cool, so I oppose all attempts to kill you. Yes, my reasons are largely selfish. For my convenience—having you around—I oppose your would-be-killers' convenience.
   
   I have another sneaky reason. I was born a bit premature. So pro-abortion people are saying that for some part of my life I was a candidate for this Final Solution to the Unwanted Baby Question for convenience's sake. Pro-abortion people should be aborted, I think. I'll do it, after the Revolution. They are illegitimate inconveniences. It's a horrible constitution that takes the hands that give life and gives to them the choice to take away life! You expect, say, Americans to save the environment and be inconvenienced (not driving their cars), when they won't even save their own children because the children inconvenience them?
   
   But of course it is easy to say this stuff when I don't have a pregnant girlfriend. :o) When someone ever says "I'm pregnant", I'm sure the thought will cross my mind, and maybe even stay there.
   


2. I mentioned America. Obama's second country. You know, I've seen some really stupid people saying Obama is a bad choice because he doesn't have experience. Now, don't get me wrong: I hate them both, because they are all ... Americans. But, you see, if he had experience, how would he do this Change thing? Experience means you're of the old guard. Plus, does the President run the country single-handedly in that country? Wow. He's not experienced in flying, but he is airborne right now! Sheesh.
   For the record, I hope McCain wins^**. I don't want America to recover. I want them to get another Bush, and respond to the Russians and the Ishmaelites, and get doused in nuclear powder. Obama may prevent this. :o( Vote for McCain, all you patriotic Americans, not for this African Muslim nigger. (And because I've grown fond of him, I don't want him to be the one around when their economy gets worse, as it certainly will.) That said, there'll be only three reasons anybody doesn't vote for Obama there: blind party loyalty, racism, and following my command in this post. Only the last is justifiable before God.
   


3. Guided by the first point, I realise that "Colourless green ideas sleep furiously" could be replaced with "Good news, I'm pregnant", and Chomsky's thesis would stand.

^* And Americans.
^** He'll win. Someone exported our vote-rigging technology, and the Americans started using it. Some people here don't put Country First! :o( I wonder how much Bush paid him.

My Thinking Shoes! :-o

Mood: Uncertain-about-my-mood mood
[Toot!] Index: 0.2
Communism Bit: Off
Location: Entebbe

I forgot to pick my thinking shoes from Nakulabye, when I last was there, so I can't write stuff. Don't celebrate yet! You think it means I can't write things here. No! Au contraire, it means I'll write things that even sillier than the usual serving. Actually, I'm not writing; you're forgiven.


This I drew while looking at my uplifted left hand, as the right swung the mouse to and fro. By the way, I'm supposed to be drawing some stuff for some of my women. I was to give this to my mother, but I realised it sucked, so I renamed it Beg, Beggar, Beggest, and put it here for you. :o) What's the magic word? X^( Say "Thank you, Uncle 27^th Comrade", or I'll take it down! X^( Good. :o) You're welcome. Okay.

Along with my thinking shoes, I left my Dvorak layout keyboard in Nakulabye, so I'm having Hell typing here. :o(
I drew this, also, and then realised it didn't have enough warmth. So, again, I donate it to you. Okay. I called it Serenade Guitar in Uganda's National Colours.


The refusal to use computer aid to make straight lines is deliberate, to try and reproduce my scratchy, uncertain, unfocussed drawing style. :o) But wherever I go, I’ll always miss my Staedler crayons.

Heroines

Mood: Uncertain-about-my-mood mood
[Toot!] Index: 0.2
Communism Bit: Off
Location: Entebbe

My mother walks into the Maternity Ward, skipping over plates and bounding over pregnancies, and looks around. She has been told that the unlucky baby is next to this bed, but she doesn't see any baby. Maybe the baby is lost? So she asks the woman suckling the twins over there, I was told a baby was left here. The twin-mother looks at her and says, Yes this one to the left is the one. Not fed for more than eight hours, madam. She was crying very, very much.
Just as they said, the baby to the left has a big, soft Afro on her small head. It was the easiest way to identify the baby; that's what the nurse had said. Nobody has hair that beautiful in this city, the nurse had said.

Entebbe Hospital, where my mother is the Hospital Administrator, gets jam-packed with people. At all times, it's busy. But the trophy goes to the Maternity Ward, which is so packed that there is only space for pregnant women to coil in foetal position wherever they may find space, and wait for the pangs to deliver them, as it were, from this mal-lit, uncomfortable womb that is the Entebbe Hospital Maternity Ward.
Mama tricks charities into donating pampers, towels, baby clothes, et cetera, for the Ward. But space can't be donated. It's slow in coming. She has strong interest in that Maternity Ward, and it is directly across from her office. She sees everything. One morning ...

I was, for a long time, the Hospital's computer geek-on-call. At random, during the holidays, I'd be trotting the two kilometres to the hospital to go and solve a problem (only to find that the mouse was unplugged, that's all). After healing the machines, I'd stay there to play around and poke about. In my Ma's office, you could see the Maternity Ward. I saw, for example, the heavily-pregnant woman who walked in with a small plastic basket. She told the nurses that her people were on the way. Maybe that was a lie. She had the features of tough beauty that Nilotic women posess; also tall and imposing. And I remember seeing her crack a joke that resulted in the nurses outside exploding in high-pitched laughter for really, really, really long. (I actually felt like going to find out what the joke was, but I also knew that the jokes in Maternity Ward were never the kind your mother should hear you retell.)

So, my mother is in the ward, holding the baby in her arms. She says, We didn't even find out the mother's name, you know. We were going to register her after the birth, which is what happens in these crowded days.
Ma picks up a small plastic basket. It is confirmed as the one that was left there by the tall, dark woman. Ma digs into it. Some small banknotes (it was in the days when we still had notes for denominations under 1,000/=), and a hanky, and a leesu. Not much to indicate that the tall woman had intended to stay for long. When the other baby slept, the mother took back the baby of the Afro, and put her against her bosom. She suckled loudly. That morning ...

From the Administrator's office, I had seen the stretcher with a woman on it being dragged super-fast into the Theatre. The nurses had sweaty foreheads already. The nurses and midwives in the Maternity Ward also don't get much rest. Not any, actually. (Even their lunch is had on their feet, literally. They stand in a quiet group under that tree behind the kitchen and throw their food in fast.) When a birth gets complex, and needs surgery, they do it in their ward's theatre. More-complex stuff requires the Main Theatre. This woman was clearly haemorrhaging. I saw blood. Much blood. And when I saw the long shape, I looked at the face. (They don't cover your head unless you done died.) It was the tall woman of the funny joke. And she was bleeding hard. The stomach, though, seemed to have let go of the baby.

Because it's not that rare for people to be dragged bleeding into the Theatre, Ma has got used to it. She sees accident victims get pulled into the Casualty Section (which is next to her office), so she doesn't mind seeing blood. People come with heads bashed in and necks wrung by drunken driving, and factory workers in shock, with their severed feet in their pockets (I swear, it happened), and guards with accidental bullets stuck in their thighs, and construction workers with lower jaws missing ("It fell in the machine; should we go and get it?"), and men with knife blades broken in their chests, grâce à angered wives, and a child, once, whose hands were still smoking when he was brought in from the fire accident. I won't even tell you about the guy who kept one eye closed, when he arrived with cuts in the face (a window had broken at close range), and when he opened it, a shard of glass sat where his eye should be. You want more? This guy whose suicide rope broke above his (obese) weight, and only his limbs (which he landed on) died after broken bones pierced them visibly. She isn't moved by blood the way we all are. She assumes you'll bleed and heal. Normal stuff.
So, she was shocked when, like six hours later, a nurse walks into her office, says sorry, goes back out, knocks, Ma says, Yes, come in, the nurse walks in and says, Did you know the woman's name? She didn't give us her name. We don't know what to put on the death certificate.

She's in the ward, telling talking to the Afro baby, We don't know your name, because we don't know your late mother's name. Your mother seems to have lied about her relations coming over. She may have assumed too much. We wouldn't even know who they were, if they did show up. We don't know anything about her, except that she has had this hospital's most-beautiful baby in six years.

Anyway, long story short, the baby was never claimed. She did rotations from surrogate mother to surrogate mother in the Maternity Ward for some days, until it was certain she would not be picked. (The mothers who breastfed her, I've heard, were exclusively those with baby boys, as the others felt mbu the competition, of who the more-beautiful girl was, would sour things up.) What happens with abandoned babies or in this case (which was a first and, hopefully, a last) is that some nursing home takes them. Sometimes, Hospital employees take them. (And when the nursing homes win the paperwork war, the employees—who have now got attached to what was supposed to be a temporary duty of keeping the baby—usually physically injure the nursing home people in trying to keep the baby. The Police often has to help. By default, these days, a constable escorts the nursing home people.)

Somewhere, there is an orphaned girl with big, dark hair. The notes the Afro baby's mother left behind, along with the leesu and hanky, will be given to her some time. I don't even know where Ma put them. I'd spend that money if I found it, now. I'm broke as fuck. But then, they are all denominations that no longer work.
I saw this story unfold before me own eyes, and now I tell it. This is me sinking back into that "feminine writing", I guess. And the location, you'll notice, has moved to Entebbe.

Boxing, Tips, The Article, Etc

Mood: Uncertain-about-my-mood mood
[Toot!] Index: 1.2
Communism Bit: Off
Location: Nakulabye

1. The Vatican is right, on boxing. After the Revolution, I'll abolish boxing. There is something totally wrong with a "sport" that glories in causing damage to the head. I manage to wince through watching a bout, but I hate myself for it. A "sport" where the most-glorious end to a match is causing unconsciousness in your adversary? How did we sink this low?


2. Sometimes I assume that everybody knows some little nice conveniences, and then I realise that I didn't know them, at some point. So ...
   1. On Windows, you can stroll through all the windows you have open by holding Alt and Tab. Every time you hit tab, you advance to the next window. Try it now! 100% FREE!!!
   2. When you type "define: thingy" in the Google search bar, you get back the meaning of "thingy". It is a rather nice dictionary, when you're online. define:evil
      It can do your sums, too.
   3. In Windows, go to Start->All Programs->Accessories->System Tools->Backup.
      Now, buy a cheap CD for 1,000/=, and back your stuff up already. This is one of those things whose value you never learn until you lose your computer to a power surge. Don't say you weren't warned.
   4. Open a (second) Gmail account, and mail yourself some precious files you may have. That way, you back up your diaries and stuff in a nice way. Terms and conditions apply.


3. Turns out CB wrote another article that enraged the bloggers. And I was in there, quoted. I'm glad that CB remembered to note my ubiquitous finish, while describing why we blog the way we blog: it's not a bad way to blog, just a different way.
   I've found, in fact, that I don't like these blogs that feel too "serious". You think I should spend the day having people repeat sad statistics at me and reminding me that it's my duty to feel bad about my and our collective state? I know my favourite blogs, and they are usually not "serious". (Besides, "serious" is usually a code word for "pretentious", if you look closely.) Mine isn't, either. Or, is it?
   And Baz, I'm not a pretend-Communist. Repent. If the Revolution comes before you've tattooed an apology on your forehead ... :o) Plus, I want to massacre the whole West, not just Americans.
   Also, if it has never happened to you, never let thirty minutes of what you say be quoted in only part of a sentence. My personality is not aphoristic—speaks in paragraph-per-point style, not in sentence-per-point. You see the size of my posts?


4. And then it is funny how strong these reactions are, when they happen. Now I know how to piss you all: you're not serious bloggers!!! Gwahahaha. "Unserious" should become "uns*****s"? Guys, only politicians should lose it when someone calls them unserious. You all owe the world a post that says what you do is not bad, just different. And also ten links each to a "serious" blog, to disprove the article. And twelve "Hail Mary"s.
   (Meanwhile, I think sex and boobs are serious business, don't you think?)


5. In creative fields, you have an amplitude within which you oscillate. It's called a genre. Within it lies the style, another limit. Anything below that is monotony. What Mesach Semakula does, and this other Africa guy, Ronald Mayinja, that's monotony. I hate their music.


6. Ohohohoho. Baz, I've forgiven you alright. He has written this. Good one.