Ernest Bazanye

I think I'm back

2010-06-19T19:35:00.003+03:00

Wordpress has been telling me odd things the past few days. Things like, "We have concerns about some of the content on this blog". Actually, not things like that. Exactly that.

They add, with a pompous huff, "Contact us."

Now, ever the rebel, ever the Tupac, ever the Che, ever to rail against authority unjustly abused, I did exactly that. I sent them a message saying, "What's cutting, dudes?"

But they are not getting back to me.

Fuckers.

So I came back to blogspot to see if it still works. And lo (behold as well) it does.

I think I'm back to blogging on blogspot.

Join the light side

2007-05-09T19:10:00.000+03:00

The Wordprexodus continues apace. We have your Ivan, your Cheri, your Lovely Amphibian and your mataachi too. We know that Joshi is there somewhere, but I can't find him. Once I do, I will let you know. We are working on Minty and Ish for now. Then we will come for the rest of you.

We are the Borg. Resistance is futile

One last link: Grey's Anatomy is not just for women. Apparently even men can watch it, or so says this story on MSNBC.com Are you convinced? That show needs Jack to come on and shoot somebody.

And now before we wrap up, I am http://bazanye.wordpress.com

Nerd's Eye View

The Worm had mixed feelings about Isaac's offer. The first feeling in the concoction was outrage: he was not in senior four anymore and therefore did not see why he should be expected to wear borrowed clothes. He expressed this feeling with sardonic curtness. "Are we going to Namagunga for social?"

The second feeling was hurt pride, because Isaac's fashion sense and the Worm's principles found themselves at odds in some places. "I don't wear no fucking Sean John!"

The third feeling was more to our liking, though less to our understanding. The Worm had to be in the studio to present the weekend radio show for the Sunday DJ who, once again, wasn't feeling well. They had called him with this assignment while I was in town, and he was less perturbed by the call to work on a weekend than he was by the prospect of showing up in pyjamas. Isaac's offer seemed to show a way out. We gave him that special glance people give to radio presenters who worry about how they are going to look on air, and he deftly ignored it. Instead he agreed to go off to Isaac's and get some clothes.

After we were fully clad (or at least some of us. I was still in my shorts) and were heading for the setting of Isaac's programme, he began to unfold its details.

"You two guys are Congolese," he announced.

I had an objection to having my Ugandan citizenship so abruptly abrogated, and requested an explanation as to why.

"And you don't know very much English, so don't use words like abrogate," Isaac replied.

I insisted on the questioning tack. "Why am I Congolese?"

"I need two Congolese guys," Isaac said.

"Then perhaps you should have gone to the Congo to fetch them instead of calling us. That would maybe have been the better plan, possibly," was the Worm's suggestion.

Isaac looked exasperated. "I don't mean like real Congolese guys, like Kabila and Wamba Dia Wamba. I just need two guys to pretend to be from the Congo. So if you guys can just act like you are from the Congo that will really help things along."

"I don't know if I can do that. I haven't spent a lot of time in the Congo," I was wary.

"Do they have deep voices like this: (Worm lowered his voice to a frog-like bass) 'je suis le Congolese.' Or do they have high voices like (and he switched to a high pitch) 'Alors! Vive la revolucione' "

"Exactly the question. I mean, take Kofi Olumide for instance. His voice, though gay, is quite deep. On the other hand, Arulus Mabele has a grotesquely squeaky voice. Which is it supposed to be?" I pushed the question.

Worm jumped on that point with deep concern. "I think it's more like Mabele's. First of all, most Lingala songs are sung in that squeaky register, and secondly, I don't trust Kofi Olumide. Kofi Olumide sounds like a West African name."

"They make Lingala in West Africa?"

"He may be just pretending to be Congolese, too."

Isaac crashed in on our discussion. "Look, you don't have to talk, deep or squeaky. All you have to do is stand there, not speak English, and most importantly, not dispute the fact when I say you are two associates of mine from the Congo."

"Okay," I found it reassuring that the brief wasn't going to be as demanding as I had previously supposed. "So we just stand there and nod. Any particular posture?"

"Where is Kofi Olumide from then, and why is he trying to deceive us that he is from the Congo when he's not?" Worm was quite indignant.

"He is from Mali. Now let us focus," Isaac, getting more and more impatient, said. "Now, Beatrice says I have been avoiding her..."

Ahhh...imagining that irresistible "new car" smell?
Check out new cars at Yahoo! Autos.

Maybe if we called him L-Mac?

2007-04-27T21:21:00.001+03:00

She called me a pansy, because I told her I own a volume of Louis MacNeice. And I laughed.

Because that is ludicrous: How can I be a pansy? I am Ernest Fucking Bazanye, for crizzy! But I do reside round her little finger, so I am not going to belabour the point.

Onward in time: some circumstance led three Whitney Houston MP3s into my home. Is It Just the Lonely Talking Again, You're Still My Man and I Know Him So Well.

I could start listing all the Wu Tang, Fela Kuti, Miles Davis, Royce 5 9, Hendrix, Chemical Brothers, Jigga, and mad guitar I usually listen to during the week, but the thing is, I was there listening to someone power-ballading "Is it just the lonely talking again" and enjoying it.

I could list all the hard music but it would just sound like a case of the pansy doth protest too much.

And now, a break:

Tumtumtum TWISH! http://bazanye.wordpress.com GabbaBANG!

And back.

NERD'S EYE VIEW CONT'D

So I was on Kampala Road in my shorts, looking misguided. It is at times like this that the most irrational fears rear heads. I used to be a secondary school teacher. A few years ago. The kids I taught should be in university now. What if one or more of them are frolicking about town right now and they see me? You know how university students are: they are very fashion-conscious. Their whole life is a catwalk. And you know how former students are: they are very vengeful. If my former students saw me looking stupid on the streets, they would, in all probability, stop the car, run out, point at me and laugh out loud.

I quelled those fears though, with simple logic. Come on. Like any of those dimwits would make it to university.

That's when a voice right behind me said, "Eschoose me, sir."

I responded as anyone would under such circumstances. By saying "Oh shit".

I turned round, fully expecting to see one of the ex-students draped head to toe in something classy like Dolce or Gabana. Maybe even both. I was trying out approaches for dealing with this. Part of my mind was weighing "Listen, I can explain" against "What are you doing gallivanting around town? Don't you have anything constructive to do?"

Fortunately, I did not need to employ either manoeuvre. It was not a former student. It was a tiny boy in oversized sunglasses jerking his thumb in the direction of a Celica parked a few feet away. "Eschoose me sir. Dat man he want to talk to you."

In the car was the fellow I had come to town to meet. Isaac.

He gave the little boy a thousand bob note for delivering the message and me, and the boy scurried off to wherever he came from.

"Street kids are dressing stylishly these days," I said to Isaac, as the boy and his sunglasses disappeared.

He reached over and opened the passenger door, saying, when he saw my shorts, "You should borrow a leaf from them."

I got in the car and he asked where the Worm was.

"The full story is, he is stuck at home because all his clothes, except the pyjamas he spent the night in, are on the wire, having been washed this morning by the cleaning lady."

"Why would she wash all his clothes and leave him nothing to wear?" Isaac asked.

"That is a question we plan to raise with her on our next meeting."

"This is no good." Isaac shook his head in disappointment. "This completely throws plans out of equilibrium. The Worm's presence is vital for this programme to succeed. We must fetch him."

"Will your programme succeed if the Worm is present in his pyjamas?"

"I will lend him some clothes of mine. Let's go get him." And off we drove. Isaac thinking deeply about his plan, me thinking deeper: what plan was this that would have one party in shorts, the other in borrowed clothes and only one of us looking decent?

Ahhh...imagining that irresistible "new car" smell?
Check out new cars at Yahoo! Autos.

Something transcendent

2007-04-25T20:02:00.001+03:00

A phenomenon. This man was larger than his height and weight. This man was history.

P.S. I don't think I am coming back to blogger. From the looks of things. I like Wordpress. It is bright and roomy and comfy. Like the better parts of Bweyogerere.

Come and see..

http://bazanye.wordpress.com

Celebrity Endorsement Time

2007-04-23T13:46:00.001+03:00

Yo, Ram John Holder, better known as Porkpie from the eighties sitcom Desmond, what have you got there in your Celebrity Blog Endorsement Bag?

RJH: I have a lotta links, kid. Check this out:

Samali, Sam, Chocofudge, Aseu, Willieboy, S.A.G.E., QueenB, Feather, Leo's Darling, Dukesy

Baz: Ram John Holder, is that the Second Generation of X-Men, or the elements of a burgeoning bloglosphere?

RJH: Click the links and find out, boy!

Okay. I shall. By the way, would you mind giving us one more Celebrity Endorsement?

What's that?

My more convenient blog location.

Oh, that? http://bazanye.wordpress.com.

Faya. You may go back to Brixton now.

Ahhh...imagining that irresistible "new car" smell?
Check out new cars at Yahoo! Autos.

Nerds Eye View (and I got another crib)

2007-04-17T20:59:00.001+03:00

I am not chucking blogger, it is just that it takes too long to get logged. Even from the Café. And as I always say, "I have things to do and people to see. This money ain't gonna make itself." I am a busy man. I can't be there there.

I also hate that I cannot comment as much as I want to.

And I have a lot to get off my fingers. I need to type and I need to blog. I am arrghing, so to speak.

So I followed my heroes jmataachi and Petes mama to another site.

Ah. http://bazanye.wordpress.com That's more like it.

Now, as I was saying, Nerd's Eye View continues.

He had wanted to fire Crooked Paul for a long time. Mostly because he was a very lousy worker. Paul (we didn't know he was crooked then) told us he was in senior three, though we were convinced he was at the very least twenty years old. He did not discuss his age, but didn't dispute the charge, when leveled against him, that he was a little bit old for O'level class. He explained, in a tiny, plaintive voice, that he had only himself in this world and that is why he went around the neighbourhood on weekends cleaning houses. It was so that he could pay his way through school and get an education.

I was convinced. He needed to make money housekeeping, we had housekeeping that needed doing, I didn't see any problem, only a solution. The Worm was not too keen at first. "Shouldn't a cleaning lady be, I don't know, a lady?"

"It's the new millenium, Worm. Gender equality. Anything a woman can do, so can a man."

Paul was finally contracted. The Worm's consent was secured when he discovered that rather than call Paul a maid, he could call him a valet, and life improved considerably when you could speak of having you own valet.

We soon found out why Paul was such a bargain. He was always late and sometimes didn't show up at all. His mopping and sweeping sometimes left the impression that if you had just blown at the dust then spat on the floor you would have achieved better results. He favoured the dip-once-squeeze-twice-rinse-now-that's-it technique when it came to laundry and often returned our clothes with the stains still intact. And his ironing was pathetic. He could actually make the clothes look more crinkled than before he began. The Worm grumbled bitterly when he would find himself ironing his clothes again after Paul was through and gone. I remember the argument.

"The guy needs the money! You can't just fire him because you're too pompy to iron your own clothes!"

"He is ripping us off!"

"He needs to pay his school fees! Look, do it as a kindness; send out some good karma. Let it be said of The Worm that he was a sarcastic, self-centered and vain bastard but his life wasn't entirely useless, for he once did a good deed. He ironed his own pants so that Paul could have an education."

"Mordecai, have you ever seen Paul's handwriting? He left a note the other day and I tell you it was not inspiring. The man is barely literate. Senior three? I was forced to conclude that whatever education they are giving him, its quality can only be adequately described by a person who has had his head immersed in a sewage pit. I mean to say, of course, that it is shit. So we are paying for shit service, so Paul can pay for shit education!"

Eventually we agreed to put Paul on probation. And he did show improvement, knowing that he was in danger. We shouldn't have. Are you familiar with the phrase "term egenda"?

Knowing that they will be out of the teachers' and prefects' jurisdiction in a few short days, naughty schoolboys go on rampage at the close of the term, vandalising, stealing, bullying etc. Sure that they are going to lose upcoming elections, bad governments loot and pilfer as much as they can before they get booted out of office. And Paul, knowing how his probation would end, also began to do his own term egenda.

There is a hardcover Wole Soyinka book that The Worm likes to bring out and place on the bookshelf to impress select visitors. One day it fell out of Paul's shirt as he was leaving. Suddenly we came to understand why so many books and CDs and magazines had been turning up missing over the past couple of weeks.

Paul said he was only borrowing it, and we said, of course you were, goodbye and have a good life. We didn't pursue the matter beyond firing him. Me, because of my sympathetic soul, Worm, because he was just stymied by the twisted nature of the crime. "The guy who decides to steal a book by the man who won the Nobel Prize for Literature can barely read! Words, fittingly, fail me."

Ahhh...imagining that irresistible "new car" smell?
Check out new cars at Yahoo! Autos.

Nerd's Eye View. By Mordecai. (This was a long long long long time ago)

2007-04-16T16:06:00.001+03:00

On April the seventh I found myself standing in the middle of Kampala Road with no trousers on.

Instead (to stave off any alarm on your part) I was wearing shorts; khakhi, with dozens of pockets on them. Casual menswear of this kind was fashionable at the time: clothing which came with a pocket per inch of cloth.

The situation was created by the new charwoman, Caldonia, an absolutely crazy chick with marbles every place but where they should be. The Worm and I had had her for three weeks now. She would come in on Saturday, dust, sweep, mop and wash what we told her to dust, sweep, mop and wash, then she would flit off into the sunset with her money and a smile. Don't know what got into her this week, however. This week, while The Worm slept and I watched TV, Caldonia hurricaned her way through the residence, cleaning and mopping with lethal vigour. I should have sensed something was wrong when she lifted the carpet and began to scrub underneath it, but Adam Sandler was saying something really cool on M-Net so that didn't happen.

At some point, about the time Winona Ryder was confessing to Sandler that she really didn't mean to hurt him, and that if he gave her another chance she would blah blah yadda yadda-- Come on, I don't watch romantic comedies for the romance. Quit yapping and do something funny!-- at around that point, Caldonia announced that we did not have enough detergent.

"Worm! Nti we need more Omo!" I yelled across the house, passing on the responsibility.

Something that sounded like "Tell her we'll get some tomorrow" issued from a half-asleep mouth that was hidden under a pillow in his bedroom. I translated and Caldonia left. I assumed she was resigned to doing the laundry the next day.

No. She found a way to do the laundry, even with insufficient Omo. The Worm woke up a half hour after Sandler and Ryder had gone off to live happily ever after and I was still stuck on the couch wondering if anything in the world was worth getting up from this supremely comfy posture for.

The Worm was walking in and out of rooms, entering them with anxiety on his face, emerging even more agitated.

Finally, when he could no longer cling to the hope that he had been mistaken, he announced his findings. With his hands in the air and a tone approaching a screech, he said, "She's washed everything! Everything! I swear, she took everything that had anything to do with fabric and washed it! Everything!"

"Um... wow," was my weak response. I had not yet understood how this came to be such a bad thing.

"What am I going to wear!?" Remember that screech that was approaching Worm's voice? It had arrived.

"I've got places to go, people to see, things to do!" The Worm continued to moan. At the walls and the

windows because he rightly assumed I wouldn't care.

"You know how you're always accusing me of being lazy?" I reminded him.

"Yes. The reason for that statement being obvious-- you're one of those people who would rather wait to see if it will go away when they feel an itch because scratching it would be too much of a bother. You haven't moved from that couch all morning, have you?"

I left out the part about the pot that woke up at eleven a.m. calling the kettle black and said, "Actually I did. Caldonia wanted to mop under the sofa, but that lies beside the point. What I wanted to say is, this predicament, does it not convince you that there is something to be said for laziness after all? That there is a positive side to being a bum?"

"You speak of a positive side. I see none. Illustrate," Worm said, hand on chin.

"Well, if Caldonia had been a lazy person, like say, Crooked Paul, you would not be in this situation. You would have lots and lots of unwashed clothes to pick from-- he always left plenty of work undone."

Crooked Paul was the dude we had cleaning before Caldonia. We had to let him go. The Worm loved it. "I tell you Mordecai, we are finally men. Real men. Bona fide employers who not only have the powers to fire the subordinates, but who, at last, can boast of having actually deployed these powers. This calls for a drink."

He had wanted to fire Crooked Paul for a long time. Mostly because he was a very lousy worker

Ahhh...imagining that irresistible "new car" smell?
Check out new cars at Yahoo! Autos.

Tear him for his bad verses, tear him for his bad verses!

2007-04-12T19:16:00.000+03:00

Ugandans don’t care about the environment. Well, you might, but that that mob doesn't. If Ugandans gave a shit, why would we still have a problem with buveeras and why would people still not be using energy saving bulbs, and why would they still be doing their laundry at the lakeside, right next to the sign that asks them not to, and what about that mess called Nakivubo channel? And why are they always encroaching on wetlands? They are encroaching on forests too! And what about all the kasasiro and rubbish heaps everywhere you go? And why is it everyone’s ambition to own a gas-guzzling smoke belching 4-wheel drive?

That riot wasn’t about the environment. I bet if that demo had been peaceful there would have been hawkers making a killing selling mineral water and kabalagala wrapped in buveera at the site.

People don't care about the environment. Poor people just want someone to blame for their lot, and so they blame the rich. Through some twisted reasoning this justifies what we did.

Envy has turned into racism, which has turned into murder.

The beeb

The Monitor.

And Twentyreventh Comrade. You have to read this last one.

Links of fire etc

2007-04-12T14:32:00.000+03:00

Everyone who comes within four feet of this young man falls instantly in love. I know. I have only met him once and he has already started kukularing me. He is named Pete and he is now the star of his own blog.

Invisible Cities by Italo Calvino is a work of startling and exquisite beauty. Mesmerising. It is a series of sort-of parables-- descriptions of cities which are actually descriptions, it turns out, of Kampala city, and transpire in the end to be descriptions of life.

From there, after six days and seven nights, you arrive at Zobeide, the white city, well exposed to the moon, with streets wound about themselves as in a skein. They tell this tale of its foundation: men of various nations had an identical dream. They saw a woman running at night through an unknown city; she was seen from behind, with long hair, and she was naked. They dreamed of pursuing her. As they twisted and turned, each of them lost her. After the dream, they set out in search of that city; they never found it, but they found one another; they decided to build a city like the one in the dream. In laying out the streets, each followed the course of his pursuit; at the spot where they had lost the fugitive's trail, they arranged spaces and walls differently from the dream, so she would be unable to escape again.

This was the city of Zobeide, where they settled, waiting for that scene to be repeated one night. None of them, asleep or awake, ever saw the woman again. The city's streets were streets where they went to work every day, with no link any more to the dreamed chase. Which, for that matter, had long been forgotten.

New men arrived from other lands, having had a dream like theirs, and in the city of Zobeide, they recognized something from the streets of the dream, and they changed the positions of arcades and stairways to resemble more closely the path of the pursued woman and so, at the spot where she had vanished, there would remain no avenue of escape.

The first to arrive could not understand what drew these people to Zobeide, this ugly city, this trap.

Finally, I am in a morose mood. So I made another blog. Stuff that I wrote when I was always in a morose mood.

This is the story of an invisible man. A man who attempted an act that is routine and common and has been performed by many, but which, this time, and with this man, went disastrously wrong. In this man, the everyday act of hiding was performed so well that it transformed, through a gradual decent so slow and innocuous that he could not see its progress soon or distinctly enough to stop it until it was too late, into an act of ceasing to exist. I disappeared.

I post by email, because I cannot log on to blogger.com from the Gulag. Now, the email machine is going to put a long and longwinded legal disclaimer at the end of this post, warning you that dire consequences will follow if you look at this message with the wrong type of eye. Ignore it please.

o~o~o~o~o~o~o~o~o~o~o~o~o~o~o~o~o~o~o~o~o~o~o~o~o~o~o~o~o~o~o~o~o~o~o~o~o
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John Cena Vs Bow Wow

2007-04-09T12:43:00.001+03:00

On Sunday yet another Ugandan university got its ass handed to it by a Kenyan institution of higher learning in that uni quiz show on UTV.

Mbarara University: Putting the "challenged" in Celtel Africa Challenge.

I was out Sunday night because I had consorting to do, and only got back after the hapless Mbra team was through gazing in bewildered awe at the strange and never-before-seen spectacle before them the spectacle they were later to learn was called "Knowledge" and so I didn't actually see them drool onto their red Celtel shirts. But I was informed that the following took place:

After they failed one question in a particularly doofus way, the show host, John Sibi-Okumu, who has exemplified grace and poise throughout the series, was so stunned that he dropped his clipboard and said, "You're shitting me, right?"

The Mbra guys thought that was the next question and conferred amongst themselves then they replied, "Pass."

This was when John Sibi-Okumu collapsed to the ground and, as they say, ROTFLMAO'd.

All composure gone, and with it his distinct BBC accent, Sibi Okumu broke out into his native Luo diction and wailed through convulsions of derisive laughter. "But do I say, Sooerly this educassonal institusson is a decepsson, yaawa. Who is yua dean of studies? Homer Simpson?"

We now go to our reporter in the field. Reporter In The Field, what was the final score?

RITF: Hi Baz. As you can see behind me, all the Ugandan members of the audience are huddled in one corner. They are planning an ambush. They plan to attack the Mbra students behind the studio after the show so they can administer what they call much-deserved mob justice. The ringleader of the lynch mob, Peter Miles Kanyike, was heard saying earlier, and I quote: "How are people going to believe that we are gifted by nature when our university students behave like they are stuck in a marijuana high? People are are going to believe that the slogan refers only to our genitals and does not apply to our brains." Another audience member replied to this by saying in a deep voice, "One time."

Baz: What was the score, kid?

RITF: Um 680 to 70 or something. I think you will have to do like last time and update with the real official score later. Just post what you have now. Ndaba it's just a blog post, it's not like you are practicing journalism here. You can be less than exhaustive.

Don't pick lemons.
See all the new 2007 cars at Yahoo! Autos.

I called Arnold Asaba up and he let me post this

2007-04-03T19:42:00.001+03:00

This week I have a special guest. You may remember him if you were literate in the earlier days of the Ugandan press, which is when he was the original Slim Shady: as career misogynist of the Sunday Magazine, his column The Blue Corner tickled and infuriated tens of thousands of... you know what, lemme just post the thing. I found it when I was spring-cleaning my c-drive. The Blue Corner by Arnold Asaba. Originally published in the Sunday Vision something like a bunch of years ago.

A bunch of the guys were talking (I love the sound of that phrase. So poetic!) and the conversation took a strange turn and ended up on a very uncommon subject: sex and violence. Specifically, whether any of us would get into a fight if anyone offended our significant other.

Consensus around the table was that it would "depend". Except in the case of one guy who said, categorically, that there was no way he was going to ever get into a fight.

Why? We asked. His reply: "I am too pretty."

Strangely enough, the discussion did not immediately veer off into the validity of that statement. We resisted the temptation to tell him to stop dreaming, and instead followedlet's call him John's -- statement, on exactly what fighting would depend on.

Not on whether the guy was bigger than him, but on whether his girl has been behaving in a way that is worth being beaten up over.

"If she has been acting funny," he said, "then she is alone."

What exactly did acting funny entail? "You know the way chicks are," he replied. And we understood exactly. You have been suffering the evil eye because of some innocent crack you made about her pot belly, and now she wants you to get thrashed?

Why do women say that they want men to be gentlemanly, to shun our violent instincts and behave civilised, then turn around and ask us to get pummeled on their behalf?

If the aggressor was in the wrong, there would perhaps be a case to argue, but sometimes, it is pure ego on the part of the lady. The guy accidentally bumps into her and spills her drink. He apologises immediately, but she is not satisfied that he means it. She decides that he deserves a blasting.

In the course of this blasting, something rude comes out about the guy. The guy replies with something even ruder about her. And being a guy, his something is definitely going to be ruder than hers.

She loses her mind and fetches you. "This s.o.b. just insulted me!"

If you are John, you ask, "What did he call you?"

"He called me a bitch." It looks like a draw now, but she wants the match to go on.

So you (John) go up to the guy and ask why he saw fit to call your woman a bitch. He explains that it was in response to her calling him an idiot and saying his mother was a malaya. What do you say next?

"Man, you chill her. She's crazy, she loses her mind and says stupid things like that. Forget about it. You just go on with your business."

In doing this, you are looking out for everyone's best interests. Your girl's because you have to take her home, and it won't be safe to drive with blood gushing into your eyes, obscuring your vision. Your own interests, too, because you like your blood to stay inside, not out. The other guy's interests as well, because, even though he is bigger than you, you could still manage to land some blows and cause some damage before he finishes you off. You are being logical and kind, but does the missus realise this? No way. Now both you and the guy are s.o.b.s.

Well, you and the guy now have plenty in common. Your mothers ostensibly share a species, and both your girlfriends are mad at you because you haven't done the manly thing.

I have something to tell you: Your ten-year-old son is a rapist

2007-03-30T21:28:00.000+03:00

Africa is a beautiful continent. Rich in natural resources and full of beautiful people, colourful cultures, and kick-ass food.

I love it here. It is home and it is the only place I know. I want to visit New York one day but just for two weeks, because I want to see a streetball game in Brooklyn and catch a jazz concert, but then I'll come right back.

Now, some Africans complain about what they call a negative portrayal in the Western media.

"Why only bad news about Africa? The idea you get of Africa from watching the news is that this is a desperate land. Full of disease, poverty, corruption, and war. But as I sit in Café Pap sipping my cappuccino and surfing the net on my wifi-enabled laptop, I think: 'I live in Africa. I don't see poverty, disease or civil war and I haven't given a bribe in weeks. My life is great. My life is gorgeous. Therefore CNN is lying.' "

Okay, sit down. I have something to tell you. You are the one who is wrong. CNN is right.

There are 26 million Ugandans and you can't see them all from Café Pap, so you don't realise how many of them are not living a life of Capuccinos and wifi. It is easy to forget that they exist, but they do. The number of poor people in this country, on this continent, far far outweighs the miniscule fraction of privileged spoilt bourgeoise Ivory Tower brats who sip Cappuccinos.

I have been looking at statistics all week. Ask Rev. And though I am glad to see that things are getting better (Less civil war, coups are less frequent, more stable on the whole, AIDS, water, malaria, malnutrition, communication, education on the up, generally speaking) but the picture of the runny-nosed barefoot kid who needs foreign aid is still a typical one.

Men Lie, Women Lie, Numbers Don't.

The numbers are staggering. I started off with trying to get an idea of how tiny the Cappuccino constituency is. Or at least how misled we are in thinking that everybody is like us. I got this far. There are 26 million Ugandans. In 2004 DSTv had 6000 subscribers. On a great day, the Sunday Vision, Uganda's best selling paper, sells 40,000 copies. The number of people whose lifestyle does not include reading Angela Kintu right after watching Desperate Housewives on Series, and then calling up their buddies on their cellphone and be all like, "What proggie? Mateos? Kawa!"?

25 and a half million.

Then my doddering office computer finally loaded the page and the stats appeared. Internet users per 1000 Ugandans- Four. Number of mobile phones per 100 inhabitants- 2.

25 and a half million with no cellphone number. 25 and a half million without a fucking clue about all this blogger dot com nonsense.

A quarter of the children who die under the age of five die of malaria. I get malaria like three times every year. I just run to AAR and get a jab. Meanwhile 3 million kids have died of this shit in that year. Us Café Pap guys have our choice of a dozen different doctors at AAR, so for one of you there are 12 doctors.

But Uganda as a whole, there is only one doctor for every 12,500 people. You first count 12,500 people and see how many they are.

Meanwhile, there is one doctor for every 170 Cubans. Cuba is more like Café Pap.

Now that those numbers have served their purpose: i.e. getting you alarmed, I will tell you that these stats are five years old. Things have been improving drastically and fast. Mobile phones: we all know that those are like 3 million in Ug now, and those stats were taken before they started their massive anti-malaria drive, but you get the picture. You guys, we are not Ugandans. We are a tiny, miniscule, tiny, infinitesimally minute, colossally tiny (if you'll excuse me), fraction of Uganda. Of Africa.

We are the ones with all the money, yes, we are the economy, so we are not insignificant; we are actually very important, and our greed and avarice are what keep this nation alive, but numerically speaking? How does 0.02 percent speak for the whole? How does 0.02 per cent even speak for the part? 0.02 per cent needs to shut the hell up.

So, when someone outside this land asks you what Africa is like, tell them you also don't know. You just read about it on jackfruity's blog.

Acknowledge Africa people. Recognise where your place in Africa really really is. Feel a bit of shame and a bit of guilt. Café Pap my ass.

Random Mathurrogits

2007-03-27T17:13:00.001+03:00

1. I’m Ernest Bazanye. I duck and I weave and 12 rounds later, there’s not a scratch on me? You may not call me the winner, but I don’t call me a loser.

2. I tell you what I think, but I won’t tell you the truth. This is my blog. If I stop lying I’d just disappoint you.

3. I asked one mycar what he thought of boda bodas. He replied, “Filth, vermin, scum, pieces of shit, bastards, plonkers, goat-turds…” and then I left because I didn’t have all day, and he didn’t look like he was about to wrap up.

This is the thing though. I know you mycars want bodapilots dead. But what is your beef with me? I am just the guy on the back, I am not the one skipping lanes, why do you want me to die too?

I have tried to be reasonable. I have tried to give stern looks to angry drivers who just tried to sideswipe my pilot and consequently, me, into the pavement, and I have tried the finger. But that doesn’t work. So, this is your last warning.

I have a buddy in Ntinda (fuck blogger for killing my links: http://2bnileavenue.blogspot.com/2007/03/sht.html) who runs a clothing store. Selling things like “sheer velour boustier” and “fitted woolen jacket with sheringbone pink piping” and stuff, but it is actually just a front for his gun-running business. I will go to him and get a fully-automatic Mack 11 and a carton of hollow tip bullets and a shoulder holster to wear when I ride the boda. Then we shall see who will mess with me.

Fuck around and turn this into mad max.

4. This beat is hot! Tumtumtumtum… I thought I had finally got to link it properly but blogger.com is a bunch of maggots at the bottom of a Fumbleland pit lat. Cut and paste into your browser please: http://www.sundayvision.co.ug/detail.php?mainNewsCategoryId=7&newsCategoryId=453&newsId=555887

5. Maybe you find the methods and the policies and the structure of the aid industry suspect at the higher levels, but you cannot hate on the footsoldiers.
Every time I see a young American or European aid volunteer I am humbled. I have nothing but deep and honest admiration for these people.
The chick didn’t have to. She could have stayed in Little Rock and spent the year eating pizza and watching movies and dancing to the latest Justin in the nightclub. Instead she chose to be in Rakai making a vital contribution to improving the lives of people who need help.
People who are being neglected by their own countrymen. Like us privileged Kampala people. Who are too busy eating pizza and watching movies and dancing to the latest Justin in the nightclub to go dig a borehole for our compatriots.

Two Nations Come Together To Fight Enemies Of Development

2007-03-21T16:48:00.001+03:00

The Minister of Heritage, Culture and Social Services in Kenya and the Minister of Tourism, Sports and Culture in Uganda have embarked on a joint project to improve the lives of the citizens of both nations.

The project is called FNARN and, as the name implies, the goal at the end is to Find Nameless a Real Name.

"Yaani, it is embarrassing to us," says the Kenyan minister, Kipseget Chege. "Ati one of our most popular musicians dayn't have a real name. Kwani he thinks we don't have enough problems now ati even our singers are called sijui what?"

"Wharrabout!" concurs his Ugandan counterpart, Oulanya Columbus. "And then the guy is ever in Uganda being there-there as if singing in KIU. Without even a name! Wharrabout!"

FNARN has released a shortlist of names earmarked for veting at committee level later this month. They include:

Marauding Mongoose
Dongaboy
Swankla
Frimpmont Squad
Hollaton

More to come...

Bored stiff? Loosen up...
Download and play hundreds of games for free on Yahoo! Games.

UBHH

2007-03-20T12:14:00.000+03:00

Uganda Bloggers Happy Hour. AKA National Geek Conference. Such delightful people. I wish I had met you lot five years ago. Then I wouldn’t need all this Prozac.

We chattered and chattered and quaffed Tuskers into the falling dusk. The King of All Yuppies, His Royal Matanda, held an intense debate with the Last Surviving Communist, while the rest of us went inside to watch a man named Ken Love choke on his Rs. I hate that guy.

There were awards.

Mataachi won best post for KIM 10, but he wasn’t able to receive the award in person. He sent this message via satellite. “Konishiwa bitches.” (I am paraphrasing.)

Ish said, “Yeah. And you do what?” when she won hers. (Or something like that.)

I received more than one vote. I would like to make that point.

Some awards were given out in a small ceremony at my keyboard after the UBHH, like Coolest Blogger Alive: It was a tie between Magoo and Cheri. Sweetest Phrasemaker? Scotchbiscuits with her capacity for sudden flourishes of glitter had that locked, until Twentysaba started gushing about the ladies present, so that is another tie.

Cocklewarmer of the year was, naturally, Mrs Minty Adam.

You would expect the Where The Hell Are You award to go to my heroes Jay and Degstar, but it ended up in the hands of Lissingmink.

Voted Most Likely To Grow Fat And Develop Large Floppy Man-Boobs: The One.

Rookie of the year (averaging 32 ppg in her first season): Heaven! Stop acting surprised.

You guys said Kenyanchick can’t get an award because she is only a Ugandan in an honorary capacity, but I say, Award Her Anyway (AHA).

Bracelet Award: Without a doubt. Life shines, Dee.

I could go on all day, you know. Cos it’s only lunchtime and I haven’t even given Carlo the Fresh Prince Summertime Award…

O~o~o~o~o~o~o~o~o~o~o~o~o~o~o~o~o~o~o~o~o~o~o~o~o~o~o~o~o~o~o~o~o~o~o~o~o
The information contained in this communication is confidential and may be legally privileged.
It is intended solely for use of the individual or entity to whom it is addressed and others
authorized to receive it. If you are not the intended recipient you are hereby notified that any disclosure,
copying, distribution or taking action in reliance of the contents of this information is strictly prohibited
and may be unlawful. New Vision Printing and Publishing Limited is neither liable for the proper, complete
transmission of the information contained in this communication, any delay in its receipt or that the mail is virus-free

Random Thurroggits

2007-03-17T21:13:00.000+03:00

In this internet cafe they advise patrons to avoid porn sites and offer this option instead: "Ask any of the staff members to set you up with an adult movie." Wait till Nsaba hears about this.
Where the hell is Bikozulu? Miss that guy.
One day I will put up a post about UBHH-- the greatest gathering of minds since CHOGM. Maybe soon. First I have to get over 27's incredibly lucid analysis.
Borat was the stupidest movie ever made. Really. I had to kill an animal, decompose it, and then shove my head into it's rotting belly just to get rid of the trauma.
Whatever Douglas Adams is smoking, I want some.
Have you ever tried to buy a rolex in the rain? If you have, don't you feel even more jealous of people like me who just call the cab guy and tell him to drive down to Bon Apetit and fetch chicken?
I don't think I have ever ever been more random than this.

At this point I would have liked to link to Angela Kintu's latest article, but Sunday Vision has not put it online yet. Tomorrow I will. If not, follow the instructions belo...

Higher Learning

2007-03-13T13:50:00.000+03:00

First the apology for the long and unexplained absence. I was ill, so I had to go to my mummy’s house where I could be surrounded not only by the warmth of love, but also with home-cooked meals, Series Channel and NBA games on ESPN.
But I am better now (thanks for praying) and am back in the squalor and dinginess of Chez Baz, where I spend the nights alone, eat chips out of a paper bag and watch PPTV. Which is, as always, a non-stop array of reasons to tug at your hair out by the roots.

This Sunday, the day I got back, I landed on the Celtel University Challenge on UTV. Universities from East Africa go head to head in a quiz contest. This week it was Ndejje versus Moi University .

It was a bloodbath. A massacre. Ndejje 50 points, Moi 600.

Let me say that again.

50.

600.

One more time.

50 points.

Six fucking hundred.

Needless to say Ndejje University students have become very scarce in the region since then. Either they are in hiding, or they are pretending to be O’level dropouts because they don’t want to admit their affiliation with the sort of LOSER who gets thrashed by FIVE HUNDRED AND FIFTY POINTS!!!

(For Ndejje students, 550 points is what you get when you subtract 50 from 600. A little something called Maths.)

Man, have you guys no pride? Didn’t it occur to any of you when you were down 200 points to just cut your losses and go home? Just put up your hand and ask for permission to use the toilet and then, once you are outside and alone, start running and don’t stop until you are in Luweero. When you get there, find a witchdoctor (I hear there are a dozen per square mile in that area) and ask him to sacrifice a hyena or something. Whatever it takes. Cos you neeeeeeeeed help!

Fifty points to six hundred. People are going to think Ugandans are dwanzis. Wharrabout.

UPDATE:

I got the numbers wrong. Apparently they got four questions correct in the fourth quarter and that bumped their score from 50 to 200. So when I said Ndejje had been crushed in a humiliating Humiliating HUMILIATING fashion, that was so SHAMEFUL it probably caused their TESTICLES to SHRIVEL up and die (in the case of the chick on the team, her metaphorical testicles.) so that they would never ever get kids and that these genes would stop here and now... I was still right. This is not an apology.

The Pastor's Hummer

2007-02-27T18:55:00.000+03:00

Okay, Lulu, this is a long one. Buckle up.

From a conscientious reading of the gospels it is evident that they are not to be taken literally. They are not written as a constitution or a rule book. They are works of rhetoric, not reportage, leaning more towards poetry than precision, and so when Jesus tells his followers to sell everything they have and give the money to the poor, we can interpret this less than literally.
After all, it is just not practical for the rich to impoverish themselves this way; it is actually better for them to remain rich and thus retain the capacity for charity.

However, there is a clear principle embedded in that exhortation. Those who have money must do as much as they can to help those who do not. How much? There's the question.

From a moderate interpretation of the verse one answer would be, "As much as you realistically can."

Now, to the Hummer. It takes a lot of money to get one. A lot of money.

That's a lot of money. There is a heart patients need tickets to India. There is a teenage girl who dropped out of school because she ran out of school fees and is being pressured to turn to prostitution to feed herself and her mother. There is an orphanage where the kids have to share beds and blankets. There are clinics that are out of essential medicines. All these people are praying to God for help.

And God has given his follower A Lot Of Money and the instruction to perform as much charity as possible, using the most extreme example of giving everything away to illustrate how important charity is.

A sinner can have a Hummer and be violating only the laws of good taste and moderation (because that is just the most vulgar behaviour I can imagine—bringing a Hummer into the third world)

But a Christian has a duty to not use their millions to buy huge cars that benefit no one. It is a sin to have a Hummer.

What’s wrong with a Prado?

The internet as a research tool

2007-02-20T17:36:00.000+03:00

Despite what you may think, I occasionally do engage in intellectual pursuits.

Such as arguing.

I was embroiled in a fascinating one recently, stemming from the Pastor’s Hummer. I posited that Uganda is massively poor, and that the Ugandan who is not daily crushed under the colossal weight of our poverty is not a typical Ugandan by far. If this point survived contention, I was prepared to place hand on hip, raise my chin and deliver the coup de grace-- something along the lines of “How do you be there saying that simanyi you are a true Ugandan when your life doesn’t resemble the lives of the overwhelming majority of Ugandans in the least, si ku your fully-loaded iPod and your cappuccino at Café Pap, not to even mention your fucking Hummer?”.

(I was going to censor that but then I thought that would be ridiculous, given that the word Hummer is dirtier than the word written before it.)

Anyway… this is where the facts failed me.

The way I remembered it, Uganda was the one of the ten poorest countries in the world, with staggering rates quantifying this.

I had to quote numbers though. I had to ask the Internet. This is what it told me:

Uganda has a per capita GDP of $1,800.

The 20th poorest country in the world has a per capita GDP of $900.

In other words, we are not that broke.

I was so pissed off! I mean, like, Shit! When did this happen? You guys just go and develop and mess up my debate positions! Man!

Hate when that happens.

For the record, my future home, The Seychelles, is the third richest nation in Africa: $7,800 baby! When I go there I will be stuntin!

Caveat. Don’t jump on my case, I know GDP per capita doesn’t prove that everyone is Madhvani. I was trying to win a bar argument, not presenting a paper to the UN. Chill me on that.

Matters of The Heart

2007-02-17T20:58:00.000+03:00

You know what we need? We need toilet waiters. Like as a job, you have a person whose responsibility it is to welcome customers to the toilet and make them comfortable.

“Good afternoon, sir. Welcome to the toilet. I am your host, Makumbi, and if there is anything I can do to make your visit more comfortable, please do not hesitate to ask.”

He will bring you your tissue paper, spray air freshener, hum relaxing tunes and even compliment you when you are through. “May I say, sir, that that is a remarkable specimen!”

It would slash our unemployment problem considerably. I can see mothers bragging in their scripture union meetings. “Makumbi is doing very well in Kampala. After he left Makerere he became a toilet waiter. And not just any toilet waiter, he is a waiter at the five star Serena hotel!”

No consider it. The pay would be good, after all, it is the Serena. You would be doing better than a schoolteacher.

...and now lemme hit you with that link fire:

Firstof all, the blogosphere presents this guy who is so funny he should be Ugandan.

Normally when I link to a Vision article it is to invite you to laugh and cast mockery upon it. But this time, I give you one of the things about the media in Uganda.

Okay. The Vision has not uploaded it to their website. As soon as I can, I will link it. In the meantime, if you pass by while I am at home asleep, go to Sundayvision.co.ug, hit "Kawa" on the menu there, and read read with delight, any article with a headline about the sanctity of the toilet. Okay? Okay. I'm Morpheus in this matrix, exposing fake shit.

There's a darkness on the edge...

2007-02-14T18:47:00.000+03:00

I support gay rights. The state should not withhold a person’s rights just because the state does not like who that person is sleeping with. Gay people should be free to do every single legal thing a straight person can do. Including forming a legally-recognised matrimonial union. If I was pushed into a fight between those who want to legalise homosexuality and those who want homosexuality punished by law, I would take the side of the gays. I would have to be pushed into it, though. Cos I believe in freedom, I believe in justice and I believe in common decency. But I still have a problem with homosexuality.

It’s not what you think. Stay with me.

The following:There is this scene in Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back where Jay and Bob need a disguise to sneak past some policemen with their orangutan. Jay hatches the clever plan of pretending that he and Silent Bob are gay life partners and that the ape is their adopted child. They threaten the police, saying: “We're gay! And this is our adopted love child! We're not from around here! Don't make us go back to our liberal city home with a tales of prejudice and bigotry in the heart of Utah!”Will Ferrel, the cop, answers: “Sir— or ma'am. Please accept my apologies for detaining you and your unorthodox but constitutionally-protected family unit.”
Then he turns to the other cops and says, “I just avoided a political fiasco by letting this butt-fucking Brady Bunch go.”

I found that screamingly funny.

I also wrote The Buggery Song.

I hate Puff Daddy’s music and public persona. So I call him a faggot. The use of the word gay to denote the opposite of cool generally amuses me.

So the first problem is that the most common treatment I give the subject of homosexuality is laughter. It amuses me. I am sure homosexual people are not pleased by the fact that their lifestyle is a source of humour for people like me, but I am not guilty about that. They don’t need my admiration, and besides, there are aspects about my lifestyle that others find funny. I have no fashion sense, I live in Kireka, I wear glasses etc. No one has a right not to be laughed at.
I always thought that, though I would laugh at the episode where Cartman is trying to train his dog to be straight, if I was told that my bank manager was a homosexual I would look at the person telling me this and say, “His orientation is no business of mine. As long as he is literate.”

I always thought this attitude was essentially harmless. But then something else happened.

There is this guy in Kampala town: he is a fashion designer. He wears women’s blouses and paints his nails. He has a flamboyant hairstyle and strong perfume. He is a big dude. Hefty. Broad shoulders.

Most famous flamer in town.

Like I said, he is a fashion designer. He had a fashion-related deal with one of the photographers at the newspaper where I work and came to the office about that. I wasn’t in at the time, so my seat, which is close to the photographer’s, was empty.

The photographer gave him my seat. When I walked into work, I found him on my seat.

I got a less comfy chair and sat on that. This photographer—let’s not give him too much credit— does not know that you are supposed to say “excuse me” and find a way to replace the chair you have stolen. Prick. Anyway…

After the fashion designer had gone, and my chair was free, I honestly should have retrieved it and sat on it but I didn’t. I exchanged it with the chair at the desk of another colleague who wasn’t there. It wasn’t the warm chair thing. I don’t like to sit on chairs other people have made warm, but I know it wasn’t just that. I just did not want to sit on the chair that guy had been on.

If you understand my feeling then what kind of bastards are we? I mean, what sort of person does this to another person? Refuses to sit on a chair just because that other guy was on it? Supporters of apartheid and Jim Crow laws: That sort of person. This is not just you-are-a-human-being-like-me-but-some-things-you-do-are-funny. This is manifest bigotry. And it is in me. Like an instinct. Like reflex. My name is Baz and I am a homophobe. Have I betrayed my ideals?
What the hell kind of person am I?

Links Galore!

2007-02-10T17:22:00.000+03:00

Celebrity endorsement time. Who do we have walking into the studios? It is super soul diva Patti La Belle herself! Hey, Patti! What a pleasure and a privilege.

Actually, I am Cicely Tyson.
Cicely who? Never heard of you.
Okay. I am Dame Judi Dench. I was M in those James Bond movies.
I liked those. But Austin Powers just killed Bond for me. Now I watch a Bond movie I keep wishing Dr Evil was in it. Anyway, Dame Judi, what brings you here to my blog?
I am here to tell the viewers about this fantastic and exciting and absolutely tingling-the-roots-of-your-hair new blogger I recently ran into. She only has one post up so far but it is a doozie and I am sure she will completely and utterly slap the taste out of the mouths of all who neglect to consider her a talent of note.
Wow. Also, Mini Me. There should be a mini-me in Bond movies. Who is this new blogger who you are so excited about that it makes you leap up and down on my couch like this?
Why Heaven! of course. Spelt with an exclamation mark. Have you been to her blog?
Indeed I have. Now, make room on that sofa. I would like to leap on it with you.

What else has been going on that I should be telling you about? I see you twiddle your left nostrils in anticipation of some great revelation. What else, Uncle? What else?
Well, outrage and indignation and bloodthirst, for three things. This pervert sent an email to one of our women. This is why children should not be allowed on computers without parental guidance. Look at what the silly boy did… Please leave a comment.

Anything else, Baz?
Yes, as a matter of fact. If you are interested, I updated Tumbavu.

We are running out of time and are beginning to sound like Bukumunhe. Show us one final tongue of that bombolicious Faya.

Well, I call this one "If Lovin' You is Wrong". It is the subject of a story for another day.

Gulu man sentenced over oral sex

WHAT should have been a bedroom matter has ended up in court with dire consequences. Gulu Chief Magistrate Tom Champtai on Wednesday sentenced a man to one-week community service for subjecting his wife to oral sex, Alex Odongo reports.

Richard Abola, 32, a resident of Toro Kal sub-parish in Amuru District was ordered to work at Amuru Health Centre from January 31 to February 8.

The Prosecutor, Josephine Apio, told court that on the night of January 22, Abola had carnal knowledge of his wife Everline Arach against the order of nature.

Abola pleaded guilty, but asked for a lighter sentence saying he acted under the influence of alcohol and pornographic movies.

Published on: Saturday, 3rd February, 2007

Verbatim Vs Verbatim Extra

2007-02-05T11:21:00.000+03:00

Our hero has just entered an exclusive bank establishment at the invitation of an Internet acquaintance when it occurs to him (he has been known to think fast, but that is usually later in the evenings. Afternoons, he is notoriously scatterbrained. Bordering on outright stupid) that he does not know the person’s real name. Never to meet outside the world wide web.
So he looks around at the staff members, tellers et al, hoping to catch a sign. None. Before he leaves, however, he thinks perhaps he should make a phone call. He is accosted by the guard.

You should try those stunts in the other bank across the street. The guard there is not as well trained as I am.
How well-trained are you? Also, what are you talking about?
I have a black belt in tae-kwon-do, a black belt in Kung Fu, and, as if that does not make me lethal enough, I also have a black heart and would dance on your corpse after draining every ounce of life from it.
You would not need those deadly martial arts skills to kill me, ssebo. I notice you have a rifle. It is an ancient, rusty relic of colonial days and probably served in KAR. It looks like the ssassi limu brand. One shot. But it would dispose of me sufficiently. I must ask again, however, why you would feel the need to kill me and thereafter dance on my remains.
Hah hah hah! You must take me for a fool.
Not a fool, ssebo. Just a security guard.
I may be a security guard, but that does not mean I am completely useless. Unlike most members of my profession, I am actually competent and unstupid. I can recognize a threat to this institution when I see it. You, sir, evidently plan to rob this bank!
Excuse me. I shake and quiver, not with fear, but with shock. What would make you come to this conclusion? I am taken aback.
Your intentions are made obvious by your actions. I saw you walk in and keenly assess the state of staff deployment, counting how many people there were in the bank. Then you pulled out your mobile phone and began to make a phone call, doubtless to your accomplices, to report your findings so that they can come in and execute the actual robbery.
Hah hah! This time I shake with mirth. No one has misread the situation so grossly since that time in ‘04 when Nampima told everyone I was the father. Please relax, eager trigger-happy guardsman. I am not a robber. There is an explanation for all this.
You have a short while in which to expound on that explanation. This gun takes a while to load.
I am not here to rob the bank. I am here to see someone.
Yes. And this someone is who?
That is the funny thing. Hah hah. Konka guard you shall laugh. I don’t know who it is! That is why I was making the phone call. I was calling Ivan.
You don’t know who you walked into the bank to visit.
Exactly.
So you called this Ivan character to ask him who you came to the bank to visit.
That is a firm and direct hit to the head of the nail. Full marks. I told you you would laugh.
I am not laughing.
… Well you should. It is funny.
No, it is dubious. I knew someone called Ivan when I was still a soldier in UNLA. When he left the army he embarked on a life of crime. He is now a famous underground kingpin and is one of the most wanted men on the VCCU’s hit list.
That cannot be the same Ivan. No way. The Ivan I called is completely harmless: utterly and totally unable to inflict even mild irritation upon the weakest of foes. Besides, he was like two years old when the UNLA was disbanded. Still pooping in nappies and then crying because of the smell.
I do not trust you. You must be a bank robber. You lie like one. You and Ivan want to rob my bank. I shall have this gun loaded in a few seconds, after which you should prepare to die a swift death. Muahahaha.

Shirt Tales. With Back End Attached.

2007-01-29T12:34:00.000+03:00

This is a tale about the narcotic influence of beautiful women and how they can lead one to forget cherished principles and political values, how they can cause a confirmed anti-fashionist, recovering communist and slob sympathiser to spend five minutes in a luxury clothing store without collapsing into a fit.

I do pass by this shop occasionally—on the way to the DVD place—but I usually ignore it. It is better that way. The last time I paid any attention to it I found myself instinctively reaching for my belt, where I used to keep my grenades. I was stopped in time, though, by the colleague I was with, who reminded me that we don’t do that sort of thing anymore because we had decided to work to fight the system from within.

This afternoon, though, I was not up to fighting anything. The Company of Pretty Girls (CPG) had lulled my natural malevolent antiestablishmentarian tendencies to a flaccid ineffectiveness and when we wandered into the clothing store, there was no sharp jolt of the system, no sudden break-out of goose pimples, no furious reddening of eyes. On the contrary, I was quite enjoying myself.

So these charming and delightful women flitted around the store looking for items to further augment their already considerable pulchritude and I leaned against a counter, musing over when these shops are going to learn to install televisions to occupy the guys, because we certainly will not be entertained by the display of scarves and shoes.

Diva and Princess, probably noticing that I was vegetating at the counter, decided to rope me into the fun by turning attention to the men’s shirts. By reflex, my eye searched for the plainest garment on the rack. It came up bereft. No plain shirts; no such sauce in this casserole.

They held up a woollen top of some sort. They are called jerseys, I understand.
That jolt of shock which had been subdued all along? Remember it? I saw the price tag.

I hope I kept my composure and did not spaz visibly out, because the melee that was going on inside was tremendous. Manic screams of “What the bloody freaking extremely atrocious f…!” rent my soul. I thought to myself, “This calls for a match and a can of petroleum fuel. It is my moral obligation to light this offensively-priced ‘jersey’ ablaze and then stomp on the flames while chanting ‘Hell Faya! Hell Faya!’”

People wear these things and then they beep me. You know?

It was a moment of pure and absolute haharing.

But it gets worse. I will tell you the rest on Wednesday.

And now, the conclusion. (Sound of one hand clapping)

First some background. Previously on Shirt Tales, Starring Baz as Scruffy Slick:

Scruffy Slick is pathologically fashion-blind. He has absolutely no taste. He likes to pretend that there is a political agenda behind his inability to dress snazzily, and he cites his status as an ex-communist often to back this up, but do not be fooled. The Red days explain why he doesn’t dress expensively, not why he doesn’t dress well.

The thing is, dude is incapable of making a competent fashion decision. Hell will freeze over first. Fortunately enough, he knows this and does not tempt fate. His wardrobe? All black trousers and blue jeans, nothing else. Shirts? Plain unadorned no-maridadi T-shirts or simple button-downers in only slightly varying shades of blue, grey and white.

Here ends the Third Person portion of our story.

But we haven’t actually begun the narration. I just got tired of sounding pompous. (Yes, Maggie, I do get tired of that sometimes.)

It must also be understood, as we continue with the background, that I am a very busy man. I have shit to do. I have places to go, people to see, things to do—this money ain’t gonna make itself.

Now the story continues.

It was late one Wednesday night and I was staggering back from the Corporate Gulag/ Matrix/ Slow Death/ Job. It was almost ten in the night when I landed on the shores of Kireka. My mind was beginning to make the adjustment in frequency from Work (numb) to Home (ready to consume TV). In the transition it usually makes a quick analysis of the prospects the next day holds: Have I cleared my workload or will tomorrow be excruciating? Do I have any airtime left? Is there toothpaste at home? Etc.

It was during this process that I discovered that the last shirt to be ironed in Chez Baz was at that very moment resting on my weary back.

I had no ironed shirts at home.

Bachelor Blues, they call them.

Now, the more mature gentleman would hurry home urgently. He might even prompt the boda to go faster (Is it inappropriate to whip your bodaman and say “Giddyup”?) because he is eager to redeem at least one shirt from the basket and iron it before cara fires. But not Scruffy Slick.

I think my lethargic footdragging became even slower. My only response to the discovery that I had nothing to wear was, “Oh.”

Did I mention that I was at the Kireka stage? There are men around the area who sell clothes. I had never noticed them before because, as I explained, fuck fashion, but this time, I had reason to regard these stalls with more than sweeping disdain.

This could be the solution.

I ambled over (still sluggish and tired, but less wretched) to the vendor. Our conversation was in Luganda but since some of you do not know the language, (and since I am still hoping to get another link-up from Joshua. Munange as you threw me out!) I shall render the discussion in Ebonics, a colourful semi-English dialect I came across on TV the other day.

Self: Yo, dawg. Sup wit these here shirts?
Vendor: You wanna shirt? Ima hook yo ass up wit a dope shirt.
Self: Yo, don’t gimme nothing wack, dawg, you know wha’msayin?
Vendor: Don’t even worry ‘bout it, dawg. I got your back. Check dis shit out.
Self: Hmm. I’m not too sure about this.
Vendor: Dawg, trust me. This shirt is the bomb. The mad phat jonnie blaze Bombay
shit!
Self: Aight. I’ll take three so I won’t have to iron until the weekend.

And then I summoned the boda, and, not caring whether it was appropriate or not, whipped him and said “Giddy up”.

When I got home, however, and was able to look at the shirts in the light, I began to develop some doubts. Some misgivings began to make themselves apparent. There was disquiet in the soul, there was turbulence in the spirit. Not so much because the shirts just purchased were not the usual, i.e. plain, but because even with my challenged sense of fashion I could sense that something was wrong with them.

I suspected perhaps, they may be… possibly, there was a possibility that they were… that they could be… ugly.

I needed to consult experts in the field. I know I like to rant about phone cameras, but they have their uses. I laid the shirts out on the couch, snapped a few pictures and MMSed them to various fashionable people, seeking opinions on their aesthetic status.

Let’s forget this ever happened.
You could always use it to dust the tv… what kind of TV do you have? JVC? No, don’t dust a JVC with that.
Are you auditioning for the role of George Jefferson?
Don’t you ever do that to me again.
Fuuuuugly!
Oh my God WHAT IS THAT!! AARGHH!!
But Ernest you like joking around. Wait, you’re serious?
Oh HELL NO. WHat the HELL IS THAT? Oh... yurgh
I think that would pass for like a curtain, and those that are meant to be in the kitchen and not in the living room
Looks like for conductors...

Mr Jones and Me

2007-01-24T18:38:00.000+03:00

It was one of those nights as Silas called them. One of “those nights”. The words trailing into breathlessness as they escaped his mouth. One of those nights when all the necessary elements were present in their correct configuration: not just the money, not just the weather and not just the place. It was beyond that. It was an energy, a vibe, a resonance in all the minds involved; total, unflinching agreement that they were young, invincible and magnificent and ready to rip the heart beating out of the chest of the night.

It is on nights like this that drunk driving fatalities are borne, it is on nights like this that unwanted children are conceived. It is fine, perhaps, to think that you cannot be burnt, as long as you are not walking into any bonfires.

Dora was sitting alone at the corner of the bar. There is a way a blouse wraps itself around a woman’s body that is just so right, a way that jeans cling to thigh that makes it seem like for them this is the achievement of ultimate purpose.

Dora’s face was set unsmiling. The yellow barlight made her skin glow. She was looking over at the pool table, but she was clearly not watching. She looked bored.

We had all been staring, all five of us.

Space leaned back and spread out his hands as if to invite applause for his next statement. “You guys,” he said, “let me assure you how I know the chick.”

He waited for the chorus of no ways and fuck yous to complete its circuit round the group before he raised himself partly out of his seat and leaned forward. On cue, she turned from the game to face our table. And saw Space. He waved.
She smiled politely and waved back.
Space leaned back into his chair with a happy grin on his face. "Dora Mbabazi. Resident of Nakawa Division, one of my many admirers. If you are good little boys, I may give you an introduction.”

It didn’t matter how good we were, though because by the time we turned round again, she was gone.

Gone? Not entirely. Dora, in her way, stayed with us all night, lingering in the taste of beer, glistening in the light, whispering in the music. A romantic would say we had all fallen in love with her, but that would be absurdly wrong. We were young, invincible, magnificent and far too stupid and self-involved for love. It was more a thick mingling of lust and intimidation that settled upon the table. I felt something a little bit extra, though. I wasn’t just attracted, wasn’t just intimidated. Those feelings stem from a cohesive sense of what you have seen . My feeling came from what I had not seen.

(PLFAN 2001)

Sorry, young man. There's no skating here

2007-01-23T11:48:00.000+03:00

The ultimate scrub move? That is easily and with no equivocation riding on the back of your boy’s motorcycle.
TLC complained about riding shotgun in his car, you can still look tenable stepping out of the passenger side of a Mercedes Benz and flipping on your shades while he steps out of the other side and flips on his shades.

But there is no way we can save you if you are hopping off the back of his motorcycle.
Loser. Go to the back of the class.

So this guy goes and says thus: "I am scared of driving. One of the worst things about this year so far, and one of the reasons I am working so hard right now doing all these kyeyos and never resting is that right now I actually cannot afford a car. Which means that I cannot say that the reason I don't drive is I don't want to. Since I am broke, I couldn't drive even if I wanted to. So I need to restore the bank balance to its former glory so that I can go on riding the taxis and bodas without fear."

What kind of punk chump little wodo is that who is slaving away like this for such a stupid reason? When people ask you for your car just say Fuck You. Whatever happened to confidence?
Loser. Go to the back of the class.

This just in: Wentworth IS gay. Final, irrevocable proof!

That I hear: “I know these rumours are out there … I’m cool with the fact that they exist, I mean this is about fantasy. Certain people are going to have certain fantasies, if someone wants to imagine me with a woman, or a man or one of each that’s cool with me as long as you keep watching the show.”

What, you call that straight? Come on, you think that is a straight man
talking? Come on, now.

Passage Looking For A Novel I

2007-01-22T19:10:00.000+03:00

Cyprian, as a young child, was one of those who people would refer to as “bright”. When he grew older the same people told him and one another that he “had potential”. Unfortunately by the time he became an adult, the energy seemed to have petered out, the brightness seemed to have dimmed. The life he found himself living was unspectacular, un-brilliant and average. He was still quite intelligent, but things just didn’t come as easily as they once had, or the things that had once come easily were no longer heading his way with the same frequency.

He could never shake the feeling, it followed him everywhere as if it resided in his very shadow, that he should have had a better life. He didn’t know who to blame for this, but whoever it was would never be forgiven.

Season 6

2007-01-19T19:31:00.000+03:00

I have just read an article on Season 6. It contained spoilers which sealed the deal. I am not going to watch Season 6. Fuck Jack Bauer. Fuckkim.

Thing is, everything the detractors say about 24 is true. It is formulaic and manipulative, and it is designed to appeal to the gut more than the brain. But in in spite of that it was fun. Suspense and surprise worked together to overcome the silliness of the show.

But for me the trick had already begun to wear thin and by Season 5 the only thing that kept me watching was Gregory Itzin and his amazing amazing proficiency as an actor. The man played the very ass off that role. He beat that role into submission and then he asked it who its daddy was. Say what you will, but he deserves every single award known to man for that performance. Everything—Emmy, Golden Globe, Oscar, Nobel, Olympic Gold Medal… even the best actress awards and the PAMAs.

But for Season 6 is without Itzin, so I was just going to watch it for the hell, to tide me over until Lost Season 3 shows up and we get more of the thundering monster that is Mr Eko, (plus there is always the chance that the magic island will bring Michelle Roderiguez back to life). I was going to watch 24 Season 6 anyways, but knowing what I know now? Fuck Jack Bauer. Fuckkim.

Verbatim Vs Verbatim III

2007-01-15T11:08:00.001+03:00

Our hero is at the offices of The Honoruable Member of Parliament from Ruhama to have a discussion about the impact of her morality campaign on rates of HIV infection among Christian youth. Our hero owns stock in a condom company. The receptionist gives him a withering once-over and sneers.

The nineties just called They want their jeans back.
Well, I am not the centrespread from the latest issue of Vogue magazine so I do not care if I don’t impress you with sartorial savoir faire. I am here to see the honourable member. Please alert her to my presence.
Are you a disgruntled constituent? Are you one of those clueless and, may I add, vastly irritating bumpkins who travel all the way from the boondocks to ask for sh20k from the MP because they want to buy ferterliser? Why can’t you people learn to be self-sufficient? Buying ferterliser! As if you don' t know where you can get it for free. That is the absolute height.
No, I am a political lobbyist, advocate of citizens' rights, a conscientious objector – in fact, why mince words, I am a freedom fighter, and I demand an audience with the peoples’ representative.
Talk about objectors…
What about objectors?
I am an objector myself. I object quite conscientiously to those jeans. Really, I haven’t seen jeans like that since Sonic first foiled Dr Robotnik's evil plans. I would not be surprised if you pulled a sh20 note out of the back pocket.
Are we back to that?
What time is it in those jeans? It looks like half past hammertime.
What do I have to do to get past this abuse and actually achieve some sort of , I don’t know, reception from you as the member’s receptionist?
You could start with a trip to Knight’s Polo.
Should I give you a bribe? Is that what you want?
What will you bribe me with? The aforementioned sh20? Save your money. You will need it when you get to Knights Polo.

And so, what else does one do? Our hero turns heel and finds a boda to take him to Garden City to buy new jeans. This is the price we pay for freedom and democracy.

The meds are on vacation

2007-01-12T21:25:00.000+03:00

Random Thor-- Shit. I am not even thinking now, so these are just random bits of things that have been cluttering up my computer.

1. The coolest men alive:

Bugs Bunny, Darkwing Duck, Homer Simpson, Riley Freeman, The Brain, Stewie Griffin.

2. Remeber this?:

"If you could count, you'd be a fucking astronaut."
"Your mother's an astronaut."

3. Buggery. Wrote a song about it. You wanna hear it? Here it go:

Some will call it thuggery
This business called buggery.
However,
those who admire
The process never tire
Of man-to-man kissery and
huggery

Take, for example one Ang Lee
A Chinaman who made a cowboy
movie
Where the cowboys literally rolled in the hay
Because, you see,
they were gay
And had the hots for one another, you see

Sempa says
buggery is wrong!
That is the message of this song
Oops! I was just
About to say the "main thrust"...

(And I ran out of rhymes there)

4. Remember the Ate My Balls fad?

Condi Rice Ate My Balls

Speaking of pictures telling numerous words: This is for Kenyanchick

Then this one right here, this one's for Mr Magoo

And this one, this is for Cherie...

Now, who hasn't got?

Pictures of naked men

2007-01-09T18:13:00.000+03:00

Last week a man who tried to steal copper wire from a live electricity pole died when a surge of electricity caught him mid- the proceedings. As if sudden death, with no time to make peace with The Maker and Judge of All, was not tragic enough, there was embarassment and shame to come. To compound the tragedy with a touch of comedy, the electricity burnt his pants clean off and he ended up butt-ass nekkid on the front cover of both the New Vision and Bukedde.

The office banter, naturally, revolved around the physics of the occasion. How come his shirt wasn’t burnt off, but his trousers were reduced to ash?

Part of the story was a quote from the electricity company’s PRO.

Asked for a reaction, Umeme acknowledged that vandalising power cables is the
company’s biggest problem. “Not only is it our biggest problem, it is also very
costly,” the public relations officer, Edward Twine, said. “It affects power
distribution and service delivery and impacts negatively on the image of the
company.”

“These people they steal our wires, they steal fuel from our transformers...” mimicked Colleage Name Withheld, before adding, “For once the Umeme PRO is in a good mood,” said Encyclo. “He isn’t on the defensive.”

We also shared the obligatory muchomo comments.

Yes. Here at the leading daily, we are all about compassion.

Sentences that didn't make it into the paper

2007-01-08T13:51:00.000+03:00

A story about those guys who do Luganda commentary on British soccer matches:

When listening to Katamba and Dumba do their commentaries, they will give enormous player profile and accurate information and statistics after a mere fowl committed, goal scored.
Katamba attributes this to being in the soccer field for a while and the pre match preparation. They have a two-hour pre match preparation, of which this time I was part, to study the teams, players and their respective countries and the team couch.
He’s giving the proceedings of the game on a touch-for-touch commentary. The main business is “Lampard gets the ball, gives it to Makelele, Makelele to Drogba. Oh no! Ferdinand intercepts. It’s now Paul Scholes, to Ronaldo, no he suits wide!”

I am worth every penny I am paid.

Staying Tuned To WBS

2007-01-03T18:17:00.000+03:00

(Apologies to the Lil' Homey)

On days such as Monday, when I am possibly, occasionally, maybe perhaps running a bit late for work, and am still within Chez Baz when the clock blips nine, and I know I should be exploding out of the door like a bullet from a gun, eager to get out there into the real world where I am sorely needed, I have found, of late, reason to tarry.

It wasn’t always like this. In fact, when Daniel Arap Moi – not the ex-president, the semi-literate WBS news anchor—was doing the breakfast news, I would actually flee the crib in fear, anxious to get off the premises before his dumb ass appeared on the screen.

However, these days ease of departure is impeded, rather than aided, by the TV. Because WBS has hired HNC.

No, I don’t know her real name. Since Arap Moi, I learnt to keep the volume on strict mute when WBS shows news. So I haven't heard her introduce herself. I assume she just says, "These are the headlines. I'm Hot News Chick."

What do you want me to do? Rush into the cold, cruel, mean, soul-draining, mind-numbing, heartbreaking corporate gulag just like that, without a second glance at this glorious visage, itself the very light of heaven? Of course not. What man, if he be truly a man, would begrudge me a few minutes to stand before the screen basking in the heat her gorgeousness radiates, just a few minutes? That could be the only moment of pure beauty I will encounter all day.

Unless I, like, have plans for the evening or something.

James Nsaba Buturo. Laughingstock. Disgrace. Contemptible piece of shit. (Also featuring a Diarist post titled "How I grew down in 2006")

2007-01-03T10:06:00.001+03:00

This is the story: When Jimmy was Minister of Information in 2004, he received money from a radio station in Gulu. Sh20 million. The station gave him the money for some jibber jabber about formulating a policy framework blah blah... whatever. They gave him money so that he can do some work for them. After receiving the money Jimmy said, “It was after I studied the nature of the request that I concluded that it was not possible to do what the Board had requested.”

That is to say, Jimmy took the money then said, “I can’t do this job.”

This is the point at which he should have sent the dough back, right?

Well, a man of integrity, would have, but this dude didn’t give it back until parliament and public uproar ordered him to.

He still does not think he has done anything wrong. Dude, in a country where corruption is a crippling disease, widespread and ingrained, a land where corruption is so deep it is part of the culture, the man who is charged with fighting it should not fiddle around with finances. Do things by the book. He should understand what the words Zero Tolerance, Setting and Example, and Appearance of Impropriety mean. He should at the very least understand what Integrity means. That is what we pay him for.

Oops. I forgot. Nsaba James Buturo doesn’t think it is important do what he is paid for.

I can't believe you are still reading this...

I know there are real thieves out there, real crooks, who are stealing, not just um… reassigning… funds, public funds, my money, not Mega FM’s, I know that this case is petty small fry peanuts, so why am I riled up about this? Why no blog rant about The Global Fund?

Well. the global fund crooks did not presume that they should usurp my adult right to determine how best to live my own life by assuming that I lack the moral maturity to decide on my own. Global fund thieves did not repudiate my citizen’s rights and call me a callow child who needs to be protected that I hear from seeing Ray C’s hips.

And they did not trumpet this abhorrent bigotry against people who don’t make much money as if it was a fact declared by God that Mukono people lack the sense to not allow themselves to be sodomised in exchange for pigs, insinuating that because they are poor they must also be stupid. Global Fund thieves at least had the decency to respond to their indecent acts by skiving, ducking and making excuses. Nsaba admitted that he did it. He said he was enthusiastic about breaching procedures and disregarding principles.

Also in the news this week:

How I grew down in 2006

Favourite movie at the end of 2005: Adaptation
Favourite movie at the end of 2006: Pirates of The Caribbean: Curse of the Black Pearl

Musician most often quoted to myself in 2005: Bruce Springsteen
Musician most often quoted to myself in 2006: Jay-Z

Book I felt I had to read by end of 2005: Invisible Cities
Right now I cannot wait for Amazon to deliver my copy of Azazel by Asimov.

Issue I ranted most about by end of 2005: Women being complicit in the insuduous corrosion of their own workplace rights
Issue I rant about now: Nsaba Buturo daring to say I should not watch EATV.

Randtom Thourtgs

2006-12-29T19:33:00.000+03:00

The general public will be back from Rukungiri soon. The thought makes me nervous. Gen Pub will click on to see what the internet got up to while they were in the rurals, and will sneer at me when all that appears is bits of poetry. I don't mind what other bloggers think, because they are also geekazoids, but the general public makes me self-concious. So, to distract from the previous post, and keep this seat warm until the next, presenting: Randomi thurogitts

No smoking.
How ya Livin' is yet another nineties' hip hop phrase that has succumbed to the ravages of time.
Things you will never hear in real life: "Hi, I'm Jessica Alba." "I don't care."
I hate Paris Hilton. I don't even know her but I hate her. I don't even know anything about her. I don't watch or read tabloid news, and I asked, politely but firmly, that the family and friends shoot me dead the minute they find me watching the Simple Life, but I still hate the woman. With that deep sulphurous loathing that curls from within and rises with groaning echoes from the dark canyons within the soul, echoes that sound meaningless and muted but soon begin to resolve themselves into the words kill, Kill, KILL!
When I got home from the Blu*3 Unplugged show on Thursday, one of the Kireka gangstas (the ilk exists. For no particular reason) posed this question: "Were they wearing naked?"
He said it in Luganda.
Is this funny or is this sad? Freshly chopped human head. (Credit for the find). It is funny. Funny.
New Years Resolution: Never write a long blog post again.
This just in: Nigga, where my money at? Nsaba, who is too enthusiastic to adhere to his own principles, isn't enthusiastic enough to pay up on time. I know people like that.

Boxing Day

2006-12-26T09:58:00.000+03:00

Now we are back to normal, now the mind is
Back to the even tenor of the usual day
Skidding no longer across the uneasy camber
Of the nightmare way
We are safe, though others have crashed the railings
Over the river ravine; their wheel-tracks carve the bank
But after the event all we can do is argue
And count the widening ripples where they sank

(From Autumn Journal, Louis MacNiece)

Verbatim Vs Verbatim II

2006-12-19T09:16:00.000+03:00

Our hero recruits a dog to help him keep the neighbourhood children from playing on his verandah and making a mess of it.

So what's your name? What should I call you?
Well, usually, the owner decides what name to give the dog, so I guess it’s up to you.
Should I call you Snoop Dogg, or Lil Bow Wow?
I don't mean to sound arrogant or anything, Baz, but I would much rather you came up with something a bit more imaginative. If I say my master just turned on Hot 100 FM and an instant later I was christened the other dogs in the neighbourhood might not treat me with respect, you see.
I get your point.
It’s like if your parents had decided to name you Baby Boy, or Little One.
I said I get your point.
Or Oddly-Shaped Head...
I said I get the point. I will call you David Spade. He is an actor who plays characters with a lot of lugezigezi. Now, let me debrief you on your station.
You mean my job as a dog? You don't need to bother. As with all animals, I have inbred instincts that ensure I know by intuition, and without any tutelage at all, what I am supposed to do.
So you know what is expected of you?
Perfectly. I am to scratch myself, make toilet in the yard, sleep all day and spend the nights awake howling at everything that moves, and some things that don't.
You forgot one thing.
Yes. I am also to accept food from you at regular intervals.
No, the thing you forgot is that you are also supposed to prevent the neighbourhood vermin from getting on my verandah and making it untidy.
So I am supposed to be a guard dog?
That's right.
Cool! So when anyone comes close to the verandah, I leap upon them and viciously maul and mangle them! Grr grrr! I grip their throats in my mighty jaws and crush their neckbones! Grrrr grrr!
Um, I think that will be a bit on the drastic side of things. A simple bark or two to admonish would-be intruders will suffice. I mean, we are speaking here mostly of three year old children. She irritates me greatly, but not so much that I would want to see her mauled and mangled in the way you so gruesomely described.
Oh, a little girl. Okay, then, well, I was just joking about all the mangling stuff, Baz. Hah hah. Of course I wasn't going to kill anybody. Hah hah!
That's a relief to hear.
I'll just bite a leg off, that's it. Just a leg.
No, that will be cruelty to children. It is not acceptable. Not even in the case of an obnoxious brat like Lizzie.
Okay. You drive a hard bargain. Fine. Two toes. That's my final offer.

Too late. Our hero walks off, leaving the dog behind, greatly upset at how much time he has wasted.

Ads that didn't make it I

2006-12-12T16:35:00.000+03:00

The Great Putsch went into stage two this Sunday with my very own newspaper advert. Little thing, very yellow, on page 7 of Kawa. With the hilarious story of the girl who got kidnapped. Heh heh. That was a funny story. Echoes of The Weekend's Mirth swirl around in the caverns of my currently idle and vacant mind when I remember. So seldom do we see comedy of this pedigree. It was so funny. Hah hah! Just thinking about it brings tears unto my eyes.

She, like, got kidnapped. But the kidnappers didn't take her phone. So she smses her buddy Yusuf, expecting him to round up the cavalry from his end and then come riding to her rescue. Instead the dude just smsed her Pastor Kayiwa's number so she could call him and get prayers.

Anyway, Operation Hooker at ATM got its first print advert. This are the ones that were rejected.

Protect the environment, people.

And then, they said...

That I hear kicking my ass. As if!

Verbatim Vs Verbatim

2006-12-07T10:34:00.000+03:00

A Long December
And there’s reason to believe
Maybe this year will be better than the last.
I can’t remember all the times I tried to tell myself
To hold on
To these moments
As they passed.

(For Jessica, wherever you will be).

And Now... Let's get on with the show!

Our hero returns home one evening to find his porch littered with toys, sweet wrappers, bits of string and banana peels, sure-fire evidence that little children have been playing upon it. Eager to sort things out, he goes over to Screaming Lizzie, the three-year-old from next door, and accosts her.

Good evening, little cretin.
Good evening, baz. Wassap!
Not that good. You see I just got home to find my front porch submerged in the debris and detritus of your day’s activities. I can’t make it to the front door because of all the junk in the way. I fear I might trip over your teletubby doll, fall and injure myself.
There's a perfectly good explanation for that, Baz. You see, my parents told me not to play on our porch because I make it messy.
So you decided to play on my porch instead?
It’s called thinking outside the box, Baz.
But, now my porch is a mess.
I agree. That is a problem. However, all I can offer you is my deepest sympathies. It is your porch and therefore your problem.
The porch is mine, granted, but the mess, it can be convincingly argued, is yours.
Well, I disown it henceforth.
This is ridiculous. You cannot really expect me to clean up the mess you made playing on my verandah instead of the one provided to you by God and your parents!
I am having a problem understanding why you are so perplexed, Baz.
Because I am not the one who made the mess! Why should I clean it up?
Look at it this way: when there is a heavy storm, and the wild and angry winds blow leaves and twigs onto your porch and wash mud onto your verandah, who cleans it up?
Well, I do, but...
But you are not the one who brought the leaves and twigs and dirt there.
I'm not but...
But the reason you clean them up is because they are on your verandah, and when a mess lands on your porch it is your responsibility to dispose of it.
But how the hell do you expect me to clean up a mess of this nature and magnitude? What do you take me for, some sort of neat person? I absolutely detest you, and I abhor the ground your shadow falls upon, but if I liked you enough to let you into my house, I would invite you to see the interior of Chez Baz. Therein you would observe that neatness is not my forte, and tidiness is not the gift God blessed me with. At the best of times my home looks like the aftermath of Shock And Awe.
You are a messy person? That's funny. One doesn't get that impression by looking at you. You look like a very well-organised young man.
I don't appreciate a three-year-old kid calling me a young man, firstly. Secondly, in spite of what my well groomed outward appearance may indicate, I am not a tidy person, I hate cleaning up, and I am certainly not going to clean up that trash you left on my verandah.
Well, suit yourself. It makes very little difference to me. That means when I return to your veranda tomorrow I will find it just as I left it and will be able to continue where I left off.
We'll see about that (Cunningly, for in his mind, our hero is hatching a crafty plan. He is going to get a dog!) Goodnight Screaming Lizzie. I hope you wet the bed again and earn seven spankings from your mother in the morning.
Goodnight Baz. And quit mentioning your book in every post.

Wolfing in Sheep's Vallo

2006-12-04T10:25:00.003+03:00

The word from the servant of the Lord: Verily verily, thus spake the shepherd unto the faithful: Blessed shall thee be if thou purchasest Worst Idea from Uchumi Supermarket, Aristoc Booklex or Pizza Inn at Nandos.
For he who readeth it doth wring his arms and sayeth thus: "I have haha'd this chap."

Here endeth the lesson. Adiomus Veritus Cecoromus. Go in peace.

And in other news…
Twice in the past seven days I have found myself riding a boda in town, something I don’t usually do. It is both unsafe and unhygienic. It is on record that the National Boda Boda Association (NBBA) tests members’ underarms and will withhold an operator’s licence if the carbon concentration levels fall below a certain level of toxicity.

So there I am risking life, limb and laptop on this junkie's deathtrap, when he gets a sunny idea. To make your ride more pleasant, we shall provide on-board entertainment in the form of chummy and folksy banter such as, "What fine weather we are having," "Oh, these potholes. They are plentiful, aren't they?" and "How are you doing?"

The trouble with this is not so much that he concentrates less on the road as he speaks, the trouble is that a omusu crawled into his throat last week and died of constriction. It has been rotting in there since and the evidence of this is manifest every time he opens his mouth.

We need less blah blah, more vroom vroom, as they say.

Random Thurogitts

2006-11-28T11:37:00.000+03:00

Whatever Chuck Palahniuk is smoking, I want some. (Honourable mention to Tom Robbins).
Song currently playing in inner jukebox of my heart: Respectable by Mel and Kim. I can think of no explanation, so I can offer no excuse. Mel & Kim, for those of you who were not with us at the time (which let’s face it, is almost half the internet) were an eighties pop duo who wore garish yellow and red stripes around their legs and had enormous hair. If you were to see them today you would think they were Amanda’s Angels. They sounded like two Spice Girls on Helium.
I carry a Parker fountain pen with me. All the time. Because I am a writer and I take writing seriously. I’m not trying to pose, I wish I could use a bic like lesser mortals, but my fingers develop a rash when they come into contact with those things. Euch! And then they start trembling uncontrollably. And then they start falling off one by one. I can’t use anything but a Parker. What you want me to say? I’m sorry.
Commercial Break: Would you like to become more attractive to the opposite sex? If so, buy yourself a copy of Worst Idea! Now available at Aristoc Booklex and Uchumi Supermarket. And then maybe get some new clothes, some cologne, hit the gym, get a haircut... generally, style up.
Are YOU the opposite sex? Guys just became more attractive to you. You owe me one.

Like a hooker standing by an ATM: Location, location, location!

2006-11-21T16:56:00.000+03:00

Kinda cool, sorta sweet and extremely adorable are some of the things that have been said about me by those who have had some degree of acquaintance. I have heard that I am modest, too, which is true.

However, for the next few weeks, I shall be insufferable. Because I have a book to sell. The compilation of Bad Idea, the column I write for a local weekly, was released from the printers today and now, I must release it upon the public.

I want the public to release money upon me in return, so I have to convince them that this book is not crap and is worth buying.

Which means I must blow the brass soul the hell out of my own horn, to the detriment, naturally, of my legendary modesty. I shall be mentioning it at regular intervals and if you want me to shut up, buy the book.

Now, in the words of the great poet Eminem, Let’s get down to business…

First off, Ani Akumanyi?: A Delightful story about Chameleone and his brush with reality.

Highlights of the last Project Fame show included Nakaya not being evicted, Melton (a.k.a. Rocka Milla a.k.a Ibaale) being kicked the hell out (Dammit! Get out! You're embarrassing everybody!) and finally, Francis getting a roasting from judge Ian Boogwah.

Or rather, the highlight is what happened after Francis got a roasting from judge Ian Boogwah. What happened, for those with lives, was that Boogwah maintained the misguided idea that if he behaves like a mix of the worst parts of Simon Cowell and Mo'nique from Phat Girlz we will admire him. So he continued to halitote trigger-finger nastiness while wobbling his head as if he had a large hairweave and bamboo earrings. And chewing gum.

I mean no disrespect to the gay community when I say this—in fact I am sure that even members of that community who saw him on Sunday said it -- "That is some faggot-ass shit.”

The highlight is coming.

So Ian, as if we have forgotten that Copy Cat commercial, as if we take him seriously, said some lame nonsense about Francis.

This is the highlight. The look Francis gave him. Right there.

I swear, I thought dude was going to give the well-pomaded hostess the mic and say, “Hold this for me. I’ll be right back.” I was sure he was going to leap for a guy’s neck. But he didn't whip out a can of justifiable whoopass, he just levelled a look at Boogwah a look that said as clear as the most plain English (or sheng. He’s Kenyan) that “You and me after school. You and me.”
That’s Gangsta.

And now, proof that I am not the only one watching this show after all…

Finally, to flog a dying horse:

George Sabadu Hornsleth is grateful for the pig he got. "I never had a pig, I
was jobless apart from some land," the 46 year-old said. "Africans adopting
European names for gifts -- that's nothing new. We've been doing that since
colonial times. Why do you think I'm called George?"

I should mention, for those in the cheap seats... that James Nsaba Buturo, the guardian of a nation’s morals, is currently fighting his way through the second major financial
controversy of his career.

A motely mix

2006-11-15T18:27:00.001+03:00

Initially: Make good use of office facilities this evening by visiting youtube and asking, when offered a drink, for a big cup o’ Borat

Speaking of Sacha Baron Cohen, Borat on Borat...

Consequently: Every Thursday night, I sit perched at this desk in this cold and lonely office, wretched and bereft, and I dream. I dream of freedom. I dream of rock n roll.
I dream, particularly, of bum rushing the stage at Steak Out during Rock Night with a silver Stratocaster and ripping into eighteen minutes of Hey Joe. I’ll need a band to do that, though. Who’s with me?

My bass guitarist says Hey Joe will not go down too well, cos a lot of yuppies have never heard it. He says we should try something more contemporary, like Linkin Park.

I told him that if he doesn’t want to split up over creative differences before our first performance he should never repeat those words again. We compromised. We shall be performing a big stadium-sized rendition of Blaze of Glory.

Now we need a drummer, another guitarist, a percussionist and roadies. No Project Fame rejects.

Finally: Jack Mataachi is one of the most phenomenal writers in this region today. He is not just brilliant, this guy is … he is incandescent. I may not have any credibility as a critic left after admitting to having enjoyed Tindatiine for a while, but trust me, I know books and I have only read one other Ugandan who even comes close to his level.

Eric is dead and buried

2006-11-07T15:14:00.000+03:00

There was a time, practically prehistoric, called nineteen ninety-nine, when there were only two kinds of mobile phone in Kampala. Both were big, ugly and practically useless in the sense that you couldn’t do anything with them but make phone calls.

There was the Nokia something that looked like a rubber brick and the Ericssonn 68something, for people with taste.

I called mine Eric and bought him a little pleather pocket that had a belt clip attached. I used to carry him about strapped to my hip. The arrangement affected my gait in a particular manner, and because of Eric, I lost my adolescent bounce.

Eric served me well and was loyal, unlike the phones of my peers which were often perfidious enough to get stolen. No one messed with Eric, though and by the time I retired him, he was bruised, battered and beat up but was working perfectly.

I replaced him in with a phone which had a vibrating alert. That was state-of-the-art back then.

I would not say this was the first sniff in what was to become a habit of phone promiscuity, but I did change phones regularly after that, with the things growing smaller and a little bit more sophisticated with every purchase. Nothing too flamboyant. All I was looking for was size and functionality. Vibrating alert was superseded by, successively, an organiser, convenient sms (folders, message rules, storage and the indispensable t9 dictionary), size of screen… then, a year ago, we plateaud.

Because 2005 is when they stopped making phones more useful to started making them more fancy-schmancy.

I’m sorry. I don’t do schmancy. I am Ernest Bazanye Sempebwa III: I don’t do schmancy.

I remember almost collapsing in a shaking fit of rage when the innocent girl at the MTN store, who, really not knowing what she was doing, suggested that I pay another 20k and take the model with the camera.

“…get… that… thing… out… of… MY FUCKING SIGHT NOW!!!” I exploded. The poor girl ran screaming out of the store all the way to Phillip Besimire’s office. I am told she was transferred to the shipping department in South Africa. She refuses to go back to customer relations and sales.

It is not that I am proud of what I did, but, you know, I am the press. I know what a real camera looks like. What is she trying to sell me that toy for?

So I had settled on a Siemens something or the other, and was not likely to be upgrading any time soon.

But then Phillip, Eric and Rita went and put the internet on phones. Banange. Awo simu neefuuka simu.

Since that happened I have had four phones. Each time I try to buy the least ostentation I can possibly be burdened with while staying on the net. The first thing could only surf this arid, featureless, sparsely-inhabited nowhere called “the mobile web”. The second did a bit better, but could not do blogspot. The third got blogspot, but not comments. The current cellphone is on point, but it does not get nahright.com, and is weak on pictures. However, it is satisfactory for now, netwise. It is satisfactory on that front. It is other fronts we need to worry about.

The thing has an mp3 player.

Oh, shit.

You see, I love my music. I really love my music. I developed permanent olfactory damage because of taking my walkman everywhere—including class, and on one occassion, church. I am the type of guy who knows the lyrics to entire albums and can hum along perfectly to every guitar and saxophone solo. I am the sort of guy who will run into the gents with my radio when Angel plays that new song that I like because I do not want to be interrupted until it is over. I am the sort of insufferable geek who can (not that I will, but I can) list all my favourite musicians’ discographies in order. I am the kind of person who cries tears—okay, let's not get carried away... I still own cassettes from like Contex Sounds. I am the kind of guy who knows what Contex Sounds is. There are men and women all over Kampala who are unable to reproduce sexually because they didn’t return my CDs and I had to lay a curse on them. I love my music. Have you ever heard me use the word love before? That is how serious I am.

And now I have a phone with an mp3 player on it. Trouble ahead.

Oh, and about yesterday, and sucka-free week, think but this, and all is mended. That's Tupelo Honey, by Cassandra Wilson.

Sucka Free: Common

2006-11-06T16:53:00.001+03:00

Ignorant ideas, indefensible politics, despicable icons, and rappers look stupid on TV. It is pretty easy to show why people who don’t like hip hop should not.

But how do you show why people who love hip hop feel the way they do? How do you explain the magnificence, the mesmerising sight of an MC in full flight and how that sets your entire brain tingling with awe and excitement? How sixteen bars can make you feel that you have just heard history? How do you explain that?
I can’t even explain just one verse of one song. I mean, hip hop is so intricate, so complex: it alludes to itself and to other types of music and literature, it quotes, it puns, it jokes, it met aphorises to extreme levels... and every new MC tries to be better than the last, so it just gets more and more complex.
To fully appreciate Common’s verse on The Way Home you need to know your Gil Scott Heron, Miles Davis, Billy Holiday and your R Kelly.
Then you need to step away from the usual casual, passive way of consuming pop music song writing and prepare yourself for an author who uses a sudden dizzying burst of alliteration to set up a canny insight.

Hypes fighting for hits to heighten their hell.
Don’t he know that he can
only get as high as he fell?

You don’t get why that is such a brilliant couplet, how can I explain it to you?

Then you have to be prepared for sharp slices of cruel and unstinting aural picture-painting. To see the image of bleak and miserable homesteads scorched inthe aftermath of a crack cataclysm. Men bruised and helpless, but still with eyes glazed over, still dreaming. “Smoking grass in grassless jungles.”

It is not just the comment the rapper is making, it is the cunning phrasing, the wordplay, the sheer literacy of the work. And we haven’t even begun to talk about the performance, the tone and the variations on emphasi s and pitch, that makes you think of an urgent and sincere older brother trying to urge his younger sibling to avoid the mistakes he made.

And then how can you fully appreciate this one verse unless you are familiar with Common, his body of work, and what he stands for? And even then, brilliant as Common is, he isn’t even the best… Joe Budden is. But all most people know about Joe Budden is that song he did with that kid from Immature…

Sucka Free: Counting Crows

2006-11-06T12:44:00.000+03:00

There’s a piece of maria in every song that I sing

Adam Duritz, the lead singer and songwriter of Counting Crows has been agonising over Maria for four albums. Though his lyrics, full of beautiful losers and heartbroken heartbreakers, have given us an aching array of heroes and heroines, the mystique surrounding Maria makes her stand out from the crowd of... you know what, I am just going to list a few:

The legendary Anna (“Every time she sneezes I believe it’s love”); Carrie, who practices ballet in the basement “with the girl in the mirror, who spins as she spins”; Marjorie who is “just trying to be a good girl”; the girl he called Mercury (“a victim of her own responses”) who made him think “it’s a sin to be fading endlessly”; the girl he called Monkey and asked “What’s life without an occasional surprise?”; Amy (“every time it rains she just feels a lot better”) and Elisabeth the Queen of California…

But Maria, she stays with you like a scar left over from some painful time that has grown familiar and friendly, from the first time we meet her (“Maria came from Nashville with a suitcase in her hand, she says she’d like to meet a boy who looks like Elvis) to all those songs and albums later when Adam tells us that through all the lost and longing loners and lovers she has been with us.

This is from August and Everything After: the handwritten lyrics were used to decorate the cover of their first album, but the song was never released. We couldn’t see the full text, and for years the song was like a Holy Grail for Counting Crows fans. Eventually Adam capitulated and played it.

“They’re waking up Maria, cos every body has some place to go
She makes a
little motion with her head, says she’s gonna sleep for a couple minutes more
I’ve said I’m sorry to Maria for all the cruel cold-hearted things that I’ve
done
I’ve said I’m sorry, by now, at least once, to just about every one.”

Nobody Smiling

2006-11-06T10:29:00.000+03:00

We are sucka-free this week.

By Ernest Hornsleth Bazanye

2006-11-01T11:06:00.000+03:00

Kristian Von Hornsleth is a crazy man. Most “modern” artists are. They are crackpots who feed monkeys paint mixed with laxatives and then, after the primates have vomited onto a wide canvas, the artists come to believe that the result is worth admiration, respect and money.
There is this thing called the Turner Prize which every year recognizes the most batshit assault British idlers can effect on the intelligence. I shall ask My Lovely Assistant Dave to tell you about the turner prize.

The point is modern artists are raving loons.

Which should mean Hornsleth is a great artist because this guy is gibberingly, blitheringly, blindingly bonkers. He is gobsmackingly nuts. His screws are not engaged tightly enough in their allotted sockets. I doubt that he has screws at all. The bits of machinery are not connected the way they should be and, instead of staying firm, they float aimlessly through the chaotic void in his skull with an angry cluttering noise. Hornsleth makes mad people look like Madeline Albright.

All this is evident from his paintings.

Although, you have to admit. Some of this stuff is rather clever and thought-provoking. Like Don’t Be Scared, Just Be White… makes you think.

Now, the part where I explain what the hell any of this has to do with you.

Kristian Von Hornsleth had an idea (if you can call a random piece of jagged-edged mental debris spinning randomly and crashing into another random piece of jagged-edged mental debris and setting off sparks an “idea”) for a vast art project. If you clicked the Dave Barry link, you will know that art these days is not just about paintings. It is also about pretty much whatever. I had Katogo for breakfast this morning at the office cafeteria. That is a work of art I call “Eating Katogo.” Genius.

Hornsleth decided to find a Ugandan village and get all the natives to add the name of Hornsleth to their legal names. That is the Hornsleth Village Project. In exchange for their trouble, they get a pig or a goat. Hornsleth will take the pictures and film a documentary as a “an artistic work which deals with identity and the perception of identity. The identity of the artist and his artistic perception of his world is working with the identity of people from Uganda with their own perception of their individuality and with their perception of their world.” (says Wolf-Günter Thiel, a Berlin art historian.

Or something.

I don’t see a problem. A small, painless, ultimately useless legal procedure is a small price to pay for the enhancement of one’s livelihood. I would do it. Not for a pig, of course. Perhaps for a Nokia 6230i. I am not a fancyphoneophile, but I would like to be able to surf blogs from my phone, and my current 6220 cannot get Minty and Kenyanchick. For a free 6230i I would change my name to LaShaniqua. Ernest S. S. F. L. Bazanye. You see, I already have legal names I don’t use.

No problem, right?

Ooops.

This is James Nsaba Buturo. He is the Minister of Ethics and Integrity. Such a mealy-mouthed title obviously brings some confusion as to what exactly his job is supposed to be, but Jimmy made a decision. He decided that the nation is a nursery school and he is the nanny. Nsaba Buturo does not know that we are fucking adults and that we don’t need his nosey ass running our lives.

He has halted the project because he found out that Hornsleth is gay and is not a Christian. 180 broke people are going to grass free pigs because the guy distributing them is not Mother Theresa.

I have no idea where to start getting mad at this guy: If a grown man decides to make a deal with a gay nutcase for a free pig, how does this become any of Nsaba’s business?
It is NONE OF YOUR BUSINESS, NSABA! GO AWAY! GO HOME! GET A REAL JOB!

Secondly, what is he saying? That homosexual people should not help the poor in Uganda? The World Bank, IMF, USAID, UN etc—yeah. Since these organisations do not screen employees for sexual orientation, I am sure there are no homosexuals signing checks that end up paying Uganda government wages.

If you want to do something about name-changing homosexuals whose names are carried by Ugandans, ban all those Sean John shirts.

It was a cold, dark, stormy night

2006-10-31T10:51:00.000+03:00

A sophisticated and very classy young lady, the sort who walks on glass heels even when she is in flat shoes; the sort who insults you and leaves you feeling that perhaps she is right; the sort who inspires admiration and confidence; she had this little run-in with a noble and honourable older man; the sort who is strong of spirit, gallant and earthy; evidently a stern but dependable father; probably a possessive and jealous but loving and worthy husband; a man of character; the sort you would be proud to call your brother, father or son.

She was an office executive. He was a toilet cleaner.

I should tell you before we get too far into the story, that it is not THAT sort of story. I am not Red Pepper.

Anyway, there was a lot in the office that required executing that day and she had to work until after eight. After eight is usually the time the toilets are cleaned.

She took a break to … well, with such gentlepeople as herself, you do not name the process.

The stage was set for the encounter.

She was washing her hands at the sink of the ladies, when the door swung open and in he popped, dragging his mops and buckets and other janitorial paraphernalia.

She looked up and her eyes paused upon the sight: a man in the ladies’ loos.

He noticed her there and was a bit flustered. He did not expect to find anyone in the loo at the time.

Silence. Pause. Then he spoke.

As Ganda gentlemen are wont to, he greeted her with a polite and respectful word. “Mugyebale.”

Only trouble is, probably daunted by her evident schooling and education, and the fact that she does not look like a Muganda, he said it in English.

And this is why I love this story so much and am probably telling it for the fiftieth time. A lot of Baganda translate Mugyebale as

“Well done.”

Thank you. It is good to be back.

No title

2006-10-19T10:10:00.000+03:00

No caption.

A popular musician came to the newspaper office in which I work for her scheduled press interviews.

2006-10-11T19:00:00.000+03:00

Tindatiine herself! She walked right into this office. In person! She perambulated upon the premises aboard her own duopoly of personal feet. Lord love us, I was in her presence.

I would have liked to be my usual cool, calm and unflappable self. You know, the cat who meets all these so-called celebs with a cold smirk and perhaps the words, “So what? I’m talented, too, you know.”

Like the time Bebe Cool was all up in my spacial and I had to assure him.

But then Tindatiine walks in and out walks my dignity. My knees turned to jelly, my jaw dropped. My beard was moistened by drool.

“Oh. My. Good. Fucking. Ness. I cannot believe it’s you. Tindatiine! I Looooove your song. Oh my gorrrrsh! I like totally can’t believe it’s actually you. In person. Wheeeeekkk! Wheeekk!” I said, the last two words being me screaming.

I was shaking and shivering and jumping up and down and flapping my hands like those black boys who were acting as white girls in that movie. I may have been splashing sweat and spit on her because she slapped me.

Hard.

She’s a little woman, but she packs a wallop.

She said, “Get a hold of yourself, man! What is the meaning of this outrageous behaviour?!”

It didn’t work. I was still jumping and shrieking. Now I was on, “Oh My Goodness. Tindatiine TOUCHED ME!”

So she hit me with another one.

“Control yourself. Pull yourself together. Cut this nonsense out. You’re acting like the Wayans Brothers in White Chicks, that movie that sucked!”

“That movie didn’t suck…” I started to say, but she slapped me again.

“It sucked! Shut up. Now sit down and stay still. I’m a star, okay?”

My sense began their journey back. “Whatever you say, madam.”

“Now, who is the guy who is going to interview me? I don’t have all day. I have a show at Club Vision Empire this weekend and I need to rehearse.”

While Intrepid Reporter whisked her off to the cocktails/interview room my senses finished their trip and finally returned. I was able to remember that I don’t even like her song anymore. I was able to remember, then, that I am actually getting kind of sick of it. I mean it is everywhere. You can’t escape it.

What I really want to listen to is Angela Kalule’s other song that is as sweet as a mother’s love mixed with chocolate. It is called Oyo Mwana (this is an approximate spelling) and if she would give the internet an mp3, I would put up a link that you, too, may fall for it.

And when I met Angela Kalule, I didn’t turn into whateverthenameoftheguy/girlinwhitechicks. I was dignified, and greeted her with poise and class, informing her that I enjoyed her work, accepting her gracious response and moving on.
And when I met Iryn, I was all, “What’s up.” And she was “What’s up.” and then we were like, “Aight, Later.” And that was it.

Then this chick Tindatiine slaps me.

Surely.

and now our sponors have a word:

In case you have been wondering where Bikozulu is, we had him in a bunker in the Chinese deserts. We put a gun to his head and said, you have two choices: starting a blog is one…”

This is the result.

Too easy

2006-10-06T19:50:00.000+03:00

It is way too easy to go and sound gay. I am not just talking about when a male person uses the word "fuschia" in a sentence. And reveals that he actually knows what it means.

(For the record, I wasn’t even sure how to spell it, okay?)

Now, I happen to know a few stellar constellations. Constellations as in those star groups with names. I know a lot of useless things and constellations is one of them. I don’t think I can offer a valid excuse or reason why. I was bored and young and stupid. Instead of using my time constructively I went and learnt where Taurus is in the sky.

I mentioned this to a friend of mine once, innocently and in passing, as one does. He mulled over it for a second then, evidently thinking “This shit might impress chicks” he asked me to show him some.

Actually, he is a born again Christian, so his thoughts might have been more like, “This s**t might impress chicks”, but he asked me to teach him a couple of constellations and I did. I showed him Orion, Canis Major, Scorpio and The Pleiades. The exhibition was carried out in a stoically macho way, with no sentiment whatsoever. All I did was grunt and point. “That one is Orion, that one is Scorpio etc”.

The very next day, when this chap and I met in a populated area where there were very many people with ears, out of the blue, and with no provocation at all, he blurted out, “Baz, we should go and look at the stars again tonight.”

He leater explained that he just wanted to make sure the diagrams he had drawn in preparation for his chick-impressing activities were accurate. But I still had to spend the next few weeks fending off mean jokes and cruel cajolings.

Such as those you are thinking of right this minute.

A break from our regularly scheduled programming for this word from our sponsor

2006-10-03T17:43:00.000+03:00

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Come one come all to your one stop shopping thing for all your slogan needs. UBS-approved.

Some work of noble note may yet be done

2006-09-29T21:04:00.000+03:00

It’s Friday.

I am supposed to be explaining the odd events of the past two posts. From Violence and Alcohol? What violence, and what alcohol?
Considering that I don’t drink and am a wuss.

(By the way, don’t test me on the wuss thing. I may just be being modest.)

It is a long and laborious story, about destiny, and courage, and adversity, and flagging courage, and doubts and, finally, our hero saying, “Destiny schmestiny, I want money.”

But I need to make it short, so here is the short version. I have retired my first novel, Violence and Alcohol.

Initially titled Run, but when I found that I could not incorporate the song into the book, I changed it.

Several years ago I developed the idea that I had the capacity to produce a decent work of literary fiction and I set about writing Run. During the half a decade or so that followed everything else took second place to this. Run was a good reason not to return those calls.

The result wasn’t half bad, if I say so myself. Nice things were said about it.

Until we tried to publish it. Then the general opinion of publishers’ editors was, “Nice writing, but we don’t like the story.”

So I have retired the thing. Now I am looking ahead. I just got the newspaper's permission to compile my Sunday Column, Bad Idea, into a book. I guess that’s what I shall be giving my dear Mummy on Christmas instead of a story of loser debauchers who try to pick up girls in bars with stupid lines and then end up, at the end, articulating the crisis of the modern urban African youth and its parallels with the ongoing development of a third world country like Uganda.

But I can’t just shelve it. At least lemme let you guys take a look at bits.

And now, for this weekend, I shall be obsessing over what to do for the cover of the Bad Idea Book.

From: Violence & Alcohol

2006-09-27T16:58:00.000+03:00

Desire wasn’t phenomenally attractive. Idle men, when coaxed by other idle men to grade her on a scale of one to ten, routinely found her to vacillate between a five and a six point five, depending on the time of night, and the depth of their drink. She wasn’t remarkable or outstanding. In braids, sunglasses and metal-sheen nail-polish, she couldn’t help but sink into the grey. Just another Kampala babe. Just another piece of the noisy trinketry adorning a gaudy and pretentious city.

She wanted to be a model. She called herself Desire. Now that name should communicate something. It should imply that she was, well, desirable. At the very least more desirable than someone named Jane or Mary. But to us idle men it just implied, “My gosh, this chick certainly feels hot about herself.” There’s a temperature range in which New Kampalans are expected to stay, and we don’t take kindly to those with ambitions of exceeding it.

But Desire was hard-headed is she was anything. She wasn’t the type to let anything other than her own imagination decide what she could do, where she could fit, and what she was. Reality was a thing that happened to other people. If she felt she was a ravishing diva then the grades of the idle men meant nothing. She was going to be a model.

There. A salient personality trait. It should have made her unique, but it didn’t. Fact is, in this dusty city, wannabes come a dime a dozen.

I spotted her at the bar. She was chatting with a friend. They seemed so engrossed in the conversation, you could actually believe that they had something worth saying to each other. Look at those jeans. Unconsciously swaying to the music. There’s magic in those Calvin Kleins.

Now, since I had been drinking heavily and wasn’t in any position to know better, I cut through to where she was, stood next to her and let it be the beer talking. “I’m here,” I said.

“Who’re you?”

I sighed. She wasn’t getting it, was she? “Look, you are going to go on, in your life, to have a series of empty, unfulfilling, desperate relationships with men you don’t really care that much about. You’ll end up marrying one, living in misery with him until, after a while, your ass begins to sag, your belly begins to grow and your face begins to wrinkle. One day you’ll find that you are not the hot hot hottie you are now, and then your identity crisis will start. You’ll have spent your life defining yourself by your looks. Now those looks will be gone and you will feel like you should be gone too. Only, on this day, you’ll notice that you’re still there. Then you’ll begin to question everything you’d been believing all those years. What was it all about? Is this what life was for? You will ask, is there really a man for me? A soulmate, a special someone? What if I met him once and I let him slip away? What if I lost my one true chance at happiness? I’m going to answer that question right now, before you get to the age when you ask it. I am that destiny. I am your one true love. In fact, I shouldn’t be offering to buy you a drink, you should be buying me one.”

“What are you talking about?” she asked in a way that showed she really wasn’t seeking an elaboration.

“I want a Guinness.”

Before the fullstop she and her friend had walked away. I watched them go.

Damn, she had a fine ass.

-C&R99ii

I'll explain on Friday

From: Violence & Alcohol

2006-09-25T11:56:00.000+03:00

I live in a city where the girls are so pretty it makes you want to curl up in a ball and bite your knuckles till they bleed. They fill the streets— every four feet there’s someone else to fall in love with. Wavy braids, lip gloss, tight tight jeans. The uptown girls with rich fathers, who go everywhere by cab and think in English and speak with the accent they got from schools abroad and honed on years of satellite TV. They wear the jeans like a second skin, and claim beauty as if it is theirs by right, as they flit around being colourful and alluring, trailing the admiration and wonder of strangers in their wake. Never a backward glance—it’s all taken in stride.
Then there are the downtown girls, who used to be poor and just discovered that money, once acquired, could turn them into little goddesses. They wear their jeans like a meticulous disguise, and learn the wiggling of the head and the fluttering of the eyelids and the drooping of the hand, and they act as if they are always enchanting. But they speak in Luganda so it isn’t hard to accept the possibility that, a few hours ago, when morning struck, they were in the cheap suburbs where there are no tarmac roads, and were waking up with unruly, chaotic manes of hair, in frayed and tattered old nightdresses. But that was then. They are not in frays and tatters anymore. Now they have their jeans, and now they are butterflies floating around the garden that is Kampala. Trailing admiration and wonder in their wake. Claiming beauty as if it is a treasure dug up on a desert island finders-keepers.

-C&R99

Music Break.

2006-09-21T16:16:00.000+03:00

And now the moment you’ve not been waiting for. The uploading of the downloadable version of a song that has been referred to in such glowing terms as “Kinda catchy”, “not all that", “I’m feeling it, but I don’t know why” and “I am sick of it already.”

Without further ado, Tindatiine!

And as a special dedication from all of us here at Hot 100FM, to all of you. Brothers In Arms!

And that’s all we had time for. Tune in again next time for another great show.

I am off to get my Kanzu now. Got to meet the seyas and aboluganda at Rock Night.

Thoughts on DVDs and a paragraph including the term "Hep Cat"

2006-09-18T18:04:00.000+03:00

When I put in West Wing, the dvd player glows with what I cannot fail to identify as ecstasy. I can almost hear it say, “That’s right. Right there. Right there. Oooh, yes! Ooooh Ernest!”

Jack needs a comic sidekick. A wisecracking black dude, perhaps, to follow him around saying stuff like, “Dayum, Jack! You shot dat nigga in da leg! You’s a cold muthafucka, shootin’ niggas in da leg like dat!” No, not Curtis. Curtis has dignity.

Someone I know who liked Prison Break would frequently gush about how cute the stars were. This led me to think that this show was just a bunch of pretty boys in a homoerotic jail drama. You will be surprised to find, though, that it isn't exactly that. It has other elements.

Speaking of homoerotic, what would you do if a dude with superhuman powers had the gay hots for you the way Clark has them for Lex? I guess it’s a good thing Lex is also gay. So when Clark is all, "You looking mighty fine in 'em jeans"

Desperate Housewives doesn’t suck, but I think they should cut out this nonsense about “ensemble” acting and focus on the true stars of the show: Eva Left and Eva Right.

Finally,
All the hep cats go to "Al Zwizzle" don’t they? Well, I saw them on Saturday: About half a million people trying to hang out in a little garage-looking place. The bulk of the clientele was outside in the parking lot, slurring and groping among itself. I think you can drive up and park somewhere in the lot, crack open that pot of enguli you brought from Kireka and still say you were hanging at Al Zwizzle. In fact I think I shall do exactly that. I shall get my boys wearing kanzus and we commune over a pot of Malwa as the hep cats mill around with their Smirnoff Ices. Haharing for World Cup as they say.

Very very random thorgits

2006-09-12T18:03:00.000+03:00

Tune in next week when you’ll hear Miss Piggy say: “I was pleasantly surprised to learn that it can also serve as a marital aid device.”
“If you can’t do nothing other than flow, life’s a bitch like the mother from blow.” – Jason Phillips, aka The Kiss Of Death.
The singing is unremarkable unless you want to remark of the high nasal content, the trackwork is pedestrian and banal, there is a keyboardist in there who has ambitions beyond the capacity of his talent, and from what I can understand the lyrics are not exactly genius. (“I will let you take me. Take me wherever you go. I will not be afraid. Baby, you’re just too much and this is a beat that they can’t touch.”) Technically speaking, it should be a terrible song.
But I can’t help myself. When Tindatiine, which I shall link up to this blog when The Genius sorts me out with convert-to-MP3 software, comes on, I am imbued with irrepressible joy-joy happy-dancy finger-snappery feelings and I get so excited I just can’t hide it. I lose control and find myself unable to hide it.
Tune in next week when you’ll hear Miss Piggy say: “I asked for a Gucci handbag. Handbag. How can you possibly get the words 'hand' and 'colostomy' mixed up?”
Remy Ma, Jean Grae, Bahamadia, Eve, Digga. Top Five.
I had a deadly deal going down with some mega-corporation that keeps a satellite office on the campus of Makerere University. When I got there, they gave me an envelope. That was brown.
The consequence of this is me walking through campus with a necktie on, carrying a brown envelope. Kwegamba looking like a fresher geek.
A fresher geek is a freshman who wears a tie when he goes for registration.
Really, if you are a freshman, wear a t-shirt and shorts. You are not fooling anyone: we know you are not a real human being, you are just a freshman. Put the ties away until you get a job. All you are doing is causing confusion and embarrassment.
Tune in next week when you’ll hear Miss Piggy say: “Baby, this sort of fabulous doesn’t just happen. You work, you practice and you pay.”
Another top five: Ani Akumanyi? Dave Koz, Air Force Ones, A freakin’ Hummer-for-crying-out-loud-what- is-wrong-with-people??!!! That is a top five list of the most offensive poser things in the universe. The hummer counts as three things.
What, you think I don't have dreams? You think I have no ambition, you think I don't have dreams? I got dreams! I'm not just a wasted little loser drip. I got dreams. See?

One day I'm going to finally write this.

January 12, 2004

2006-09-08T20:38:00.000+03:00

Have you ever been referred to as sweet? You have? Mixed reactions followed the reference didn’t they? I mean, whether to be proud, or to be mortified depends largely on the context, the time of the utterance, indeed on the utterer.

If you were between the ages of one and five then it was fine. At that age, sweet is harmless. It is just an unimaginative compliment, a way of saying you are not as absolutely repulsive as other children.

If you are a teenager, male, and have just been informed of your sweetness by this chick you fancy, it is cause for worry. For where you find the words you are so sweet, the words I only like you as a friend are never far off. “You’re really sweet, but I think of you more like a younger brother,” she says, causing you to get very angry with yourself for not being a bit more... whatever the opposite of what you were was. Ironically, because of this juxtaposition being sweet makes you bitter.

Then you grow older and wiser. Like myself. You find that in this society of ours the general vocabulary doesn’t provide for the simple basic act of being a good man. Unable to grasp the concept that the absence of malice, spite and selfishness can be a concerted effort based on principle, preferring to believe that one is only nice because one daren’t be nasty, they call you sweet. The same adjective they use for four-year-old toddlers.

I have been "sweet" for ages, but before that there was what we could call the dark ages, a period of deep misanthropy, when I listened to a lot of gangsta rap, cussed a lot and walked with a slant, courtesy of the chip on my shoulder. Cynicism is fun. It gives you the opportunity to mock and scorn everybody and everything, and to use sarcasm, which a lot of people think is funny. So if you lack a sense of humour, you can get by with sarcasm. Unfortunately, you cannot go through life acting like you are too cool for everything. Because, the fact is you aren’t. You suck just as much as everything you purport to disdain. Anyone can go about being unimpressed by what they don’t understand. It doesn’t take much brains. It’s not even clever. Actually its quite stupid.

(I never finished it.)

Hello, Mr Nice Guy

2006-09-04T15:00:00.000+03:00

I have two kittens at home: Little Rainbow and Baby Sunshine. I dyed their fur pink and braided little pigtails into it so that I can dress them up with pretty ribbons. Every night I feed them supper of chocolate éclairs and strawberry-flavoured milk and then I sing them a lullaby—usually a karaoke version of something by Celine Dion or Barbara Streisand. Then I bundle them up in their lace pyjamas and give each one a little kissy-wissy on her nosey-wosey and I tell her “Daddy loves you.”

Then I shoot 300milligrams of valium up their jugulars. 'Cos I don’t want the little shits making noise for me at night when I am training Cerberus.

Kony lets me use cusswords

2006-08-30T20:14:00.000+03:00

I don’t cuss as much as I used to. I have this debilitatingly old-fashioned sense of manners—not in front of a lady. And now I have a desk job and there are ladies everywhere.
I don’t cuss as much as I used to when I was still a field reporter hanging out with those bayaye in the industry, but I still do speak French. Not as much as back then, but still quite prolifically.

I mean, I know it is immoral to cuss, but I will flaunt. Because, you see, the prohibition against cussing is one of those arbitrary ones that cannot be justified rationally—ultimately, cussing is wrong because whoever decides these things had a whim. It’s not immoral in the way murder, or theft are immoral; it is not immoral like say, advocating injustice or urging that the man responsible for hundreds of deaths not be punished, even though he isn’t remorseful and is only offering to stop because he wants us to stop trying to stop him.

Yes: supporting the LRA peace talks is immoral.

The moral thing to do will be to demand justice at whatever cost. No matter how painful it is, the moral man does not countenance injustice, let alone encourage it.

When our moral leaders lend their support to the peace talks process, they are behaving like their rivals, the pragmatists. By saying it is okay to let killers go unpunished if that is what it takes to secure the lives of their would-be future victims we are saying it is okay to compromise on morals to enjoy practical benefit.

Don’t get me wrong. I believe that it is. We have failed to bring Kony to justice, so let injustice reign, as long as the killing stops.

Morals should be subject to practical considerations.

Dirty language is immoral language, but it is rich language. Four letter words provide tone, pace, colour and most importantly, meaning, in a way other words can’t.

So I shall violate the moral tenets that forbid four letter words and enjoy the benefits. I know it’s wrong but fuck that.

It’s a miracle!

2006-08-29T11:17:00.000+03:00

And in the meeting this week: springing off from discussion of the several crates of smuggled booze found in Pastor Robert Kayanja’s mansion that day. We went off on a spiral and found ourselves talking about the Hummer (reg. no. “Psalm 8”) owned by Pastor Imelda Namutebi Kula. An indignant Kintu was railing away about the sight of Pastor Kula driving through Bugolobi occupying one and a half lanes. “That ugly brightly-coloured monstrosity,” she spat.

She then elaborated. “The hummer, not the pastor.”

Update: These people are on a roll. Back to the crates of smuggled Martini, Black Label, and KWAL merchandise found at Pastor Robert’s house. What do you call that: Bobby’s Wine? Har de har!

Sidney: Does Pastor Kayanja really live here?
Ndawula: No, he just uses that house as a fridge.

You wonder how we get any work done around here.

This just in: Vision Photos, baby! But the way I have uploaded these pictures doesn't really show just how MASSIVE that house is:

Bamuwe ekisanja!

2006-08-28T13:03:00.000+03:00

He acted the ass off that role and you need to give him every Emmy you GAT!

Here, leaked dossier, for your eyes only, don’t tell anybody, classified etc: It was originally a list of 100, but cutting shit down is my job

2006-08-25T21:57:00.000+03:00

Five sentences that didn’t make it into the newspaper this week.

“His recent controversial album Bada has put him to the climax of his carrier making him a big contender for the artist of the year”

“The album, which he launched two months back had a big turn up but it’s sells has not sold as expected.”

“The single Nkuweeki is definitely one of the songs of the year, an emotive love ballad Iryn sings so emotionally,”

“It is quite possible to urge that no one in Kampala has not yet heard this lady’s hit”

“I hate to see the disabled people braving the scorching sun heat. Some wallow in water poodles when it rains.”

You little F..., I got money stacks bigger than you

2006-08-22T11:27:00.000+03:00

I was on the empty back seat of a taxi over the weekend, listening to the BBC on the phone radio because all the other stations suck. Outside, a young boy was was being dropped off at the stage by his mommy.
He was around nine years old. Clearly one of those kids who grow up to be the sort of person who attends LC 1 meetings. He was dressed in Sunday best: a cream shirt ironed to within an inch of its life, trousers that stopped above the ankles exposing the school socks beneath, and some battered-ass shoes. The whole ensemble was the sort that makes you admire the kid for making the effort if for nothing else.

He had a cob of roasted maize in his hand.

Mommy dropped him off, and he climbed into the taxi, ending up next to me.

He didn’t sit at the other window, he sat right next to me, which was perplexing. I still remember the time I was caught in a taxi from Entebbe with these women who were swankling groundnuts. That means chewing with their mouths open. And talking. It was disgusting. They had peanut-breath. I didn’t want to go through that again.

I cast a glance at the kid, hoping to see him put his maize cob in, I don’t know, his pocket or something. No, he was preparing to dig in.
When he saw me look at him, he— you will now think I am lying, but I swear, even though I tell many lies on this blog, this time it is the truth— the bastard offered me some of his maize.

What the shit! Did this runnynosed rugrat runt think I was "eyeing" his mangy decrepit maize cob? Did he imagine that I was aching inside for a bite of it? That my heart was burning within my chest, that my soul was screaming, that any similar internal disquiet was taking place, and that he needed to assuage this discomfort by offering me a …. What the shit?!

Did this impudent little skidmark really think I could not buy my own personal maize if I felt that there was need?

I wanted to grab a fifty thou from my pocket and slap him in the face with it while snapping, “Look, Lil Bow Wow, I can throw you out of this taxi with just one hand, and then give you return cab fare with the other. You better recognize and act like you know and other phrases that were popular before you were even born! And moreover (extremely offensive and snobbish comment removed by author on second thought)”
I mean, this kid didn’t know my pedigree?

He probably didn’t mean it as an insult, but still, fuck him.

Heh heh. Geddit? Geddit?

2006-08-16T17:25:00.000+03:00

During the office meeting we were going over the newspaper’s stories. Particularly, at that moment, the dude who nearly got his nuts ripped out by his wife. We were talking about the discrepancy between the interview that ran last Sunday, where he said his wife had squeezed on his scrotum until it bled, and the news story the previous week, which said that she had bitten his member off. Someone asked about the doctor’s comment, and why that didn’t clear up the issue.
A reporter answered that the doctor had given a statement, but was noncommittal on the nature of the injury. The doctor, said our reporter, “left it hanging.”

And that is why you must always take notes.

Not to be confused with

2006-08-09T18:58:00.000+03:00

If you want to take it the wrong way then, yes, I have been living with a rag doll called Julianna. But if you want to hear my side of the story…

I was returning from the ancestral seat in Ggabba on Sunday when I met this little woman. She looked sad and tired. She had a large bag over her shoulders. It was clearly full. And she had a doll in her arms.
Now, here in the media industry, we get to hear a certain type of story frequently: girl drops out of school, is kicked out by her loser father and learns to fend for self and child by some innovative business trick like making rag dolls and hawking them on the streets. It’s not going to make her Sudhir, but with enough customers and goodwill, she will survive.
We can’t publish all these stories, of course, but we still get to hear them and know that this sort of thing is relatively widespread.

Naturally, I bought one.

At this point I wasn’t thinking too deeply about what I was going to do with it. The purchase was the point, not what proceeds after. I just noticed that it had hair like Juliana Nabikowa used to wear.

I had a vague notion that I could give it to that friend of mine who just had a baby, but that plan was scuttled when the doll got her first airing and was instantly declared ugly.
Sidney was to later warn that the doll could scar the infant, and was to advise that I destroy it.

A more benign opinion: she must be a Congolese person. Because her face is lighter than the rest of her body.

So I couldn’t give her to the babies, and I couldn’t very well keep her at home. I mean, I cannot have it said that I keep a rag doll called Juliana in my house.

People will think I am a sexual pervert.

I cannot even imagine what a sexual pervert would do with a rag doll named Juliana. But I do know that something untoward is possible. In order to avoid the appearance of impropriety, I would have to find a new home for the doll.

So I brought her to the office. Many people in this office have daughters; probably a few of these daughters are old enough to not be frucked out by a bright pink rag doll with the hairstyle of a local pop singer.

She has gone off to live with the daughter of a prominent journalist. All that is left is to put up the pictures so that if you meet her you do not confuse her with Juliana Kanyomozi, even though the resemblance is quite strong.

This is Juliana Kanyomozi.

This is Juliana the rag doll.

Juliana Kanyomozi.

Juliana the Rag doll.

Juliana the Rag Doll.

Juliana Kanyomozi.

I hope that is clear.

High-pitched shrieks, bodies lie dead in the streets

2006-07-31T18:21:00.000+03:00

In today’s New Vision we read that Ugandan First Lady Janet “Silver Girl” Museveni, aka the Honourable Member from Ruhama, aka “Gloves Off” took Kenyans by surprise when she country aboard a Scandinavian Ex press bus.

That’s right. A bus.

She was leading a delegation of farmers from her constituency on an agricultural tour. By bus.

Well, whooptie-doo.

According to the story on the front page of the Vision, which I am bastardizing by lifting sentences from it, correcting their punctuation, then adding a few words of my own, SG’s arrival in Eldoret “amazed and impressed the Kenyans.”

Eldoret resident 1: “What’s all the ruckus about?”
Eldoret Resident 2: “A busload of Ugandans just rolled up.”
Eldoret resitent 3: “Another one? Gasp! That is impressive! I am amazed! How do they keep doing that? Every single day!”
Eldoret Resident 4: “I know! Anaa one! Hey, pass the miraa.”

Also in the news, Kony’s stupid ass is still making ludicrous demands. Where is Jack Bauer when you need him? Oh yeah, there he is: inhabiting a fictitious world. And Superman is still in the closet. (No really, that movie was like the gayest portrayal of Superman that I have ever seen. I am sure Dean Cain and Tom Welling would have teamed up with the estate of Christopher Reeve to beat the crap out of Brandon Routh if it wasn’t for the facts that Welling is glad someone made a gayer Superman than his, and Cain really is gay, like in real life.)

Bush was on Andrew Mwenda Live on Friday and he said a true word in jest. He hazarded a guess: that Kony, for years bereft of political agenda and suddenly in urgent need of one, has taken to skimming the op-ed and letters pages of The Monitor looking for grievances to appropriate for the talks. That’s why he demands federo and such.

The PAMAs party was at Kati Kati over the weekend. Lots of singers performed. In the Ugandan press we call them artists, by the way. No one ever uses the word singer or musician. Gatimo and Paragon performed Ani Akumanyi, which rocks.
Someone asked me what the world “hell” meant. I was able to answer without hesitation that hell is what happens when the singing voice of Sara Zawedde somehow manages to convert itself into a physically inhabitable form.
I know I am prone to exaggerations, but believe me, you do not want to test me on this.

Stay till the end...

2006-07-28T20:04:00.000+03:00

"When it was over, all I could think about was how this entire notion of oneself, what we are, is just this logical structure, a place to momentarily house all the abstractions. It was a time to become conscious, to give form and coherence to the mystery, and I had been a part of that. It was a gift. Life was raging all around me, and every moment was magical. I loved all the people, dealing with all the contradictory impulses. That’s what I loved the most — connecting with the people. Looking back, that’s all that really mattered."

-Richard Linklater

A public service announcement

2006-07-27T21:20:00.000+03:00

While the normally-prolific Jay (real name James Gandolfini) and Degstar (real name Joe Pantoliano) have taken a blogging hiatus, some have found themselves falling into the misconception that things have quieted down round here in the Ugandan blogosphere. To these misguided folk I say, what insanity-juice are you sipping through a paper straw?

All sorts of exciting stuff is happening here!

Regina King is blogging under the name of Minty. Classy and funny and very many sorts of thought-provoking.
Lauren Graham has also done what we knew was inevitable. It was useless fighting it, Kenyanchick. It was in your blood. Now she has joined the Dark Side of the force. The result is the sensational!
Wendy Raquel Robinson has been blown for, but I had to mention her again. Whoops of delight!
Finally, because I have to get out of here -- Jimmy is getting impatient—Christina Ricci is here, too, making us laugh over our monitors when people think we are doing research. David and I have been arguing over who can claim to have “discovered” these blog gems. I think by mentioning them here I just won that argument.

In your face, David.

Now that I think about it

2006-07-24T12:15:00.000+03:00

I was a bit hasty last week, and I apologise for it. I should have thought it through before I posted what was clearly a grossly misguided opinion.
Boomkat’s song is nice but no way is it the greatest song in the world. It isn’t even fit enough to justify that sort of hyperbole in jest. Really, what was I thinking?
Okay, I was tired, I was stressed, I was hungry, and the methadone was wearing off, but that does not excuse my behaviour. I mean, did I really say it was better than Nkuweeki?

THERE IS NO SONG BETTER THAN NKUWEEKI!!!

I am really sorry.

Even more reason to love Iryn’s biggest hit came to light this weekend when my newspaper, the Sunday Vision published a story by my favourite reporter, David Tumusiime, the moral of which was “Watch your pervy self”.
Some fool got on stage during an Iryn show and started misbehaving, trying to cop a feel. Did she cower and simper and whine in fear like R. Kelly?
Oooh No.

She followed the bastard off the stage, found him and kicked him forcefully up in the nutsack until he got the message. “Cop a feel of this, you son of a bitch! Nkuweeki means ‘what should I give you?’ Well, I shall give you a severe pounding of the scrotum! Take that and that and that! Wessyde! Ride or die!” unconfirmed reports imagine she might have said as she laid the smacketh down on the hapless pervert.

Now, that is gangsta!

As the remains of her victim were being carted away, she added “You’re lucky my husband wasn’t here.”
To Frank, if you happen to read this, please tell wifey that she is officially the Woman of The Year 2006.

*Caveat: When I say she kicked him in the nuts, I am only reporting what I hope happened. I wasn’t really there.

Sing, Snowflake, sing!

2006-07-20T16:42:00.000+03:00

Nkuweeki is no longer the greatest song ever sung in the history of the world since it began to include the musical arts in its contexts. Great tremors in the cosmogony have caused a seismic shift. Last night, as I was looking for that Rakim song off the 8 Mile soundtrack, I stumbled upon this thing.

Oh my gasp! Clutch at my very heart and stem the flow of tears that emanates from the orbs of my ocular sockets!

That is beautiful.

Sigh.

There it is. It is from that chick who was Terence Howard’s snowflake whore in Hustle and Flow. She is also a singer, apparently, in a duo called Boomkat.

Consequently, Nkuweeki is second greatest singing event ever in existence of life on this world.

Shorter than leprechauns

2006-07-17T19:27:00.000+03:00

I have been on leave and therefore have not been reading the papers. I didn’t want to see single inverted commas on my week off. I hate those things.

But I am back now, to take a look at what has been occurring in this republic of ours while my back was turned.

Fifty-nine men bought the cow the weekend. Uganda’s fornication rate dropped sharply. According to this New Vision, fifty nine couples altered the status of their getting laid arrangement from shameless whoring to sanctified matrimony on Sunday. At a ceremony named Omega Big One II, the sinners pledged to be keep it to the missionary position from now on.

Omega Healing Centre, a local church, holds these mass weddings now and then so that the flock have no excuse to keep drinking the milk for free. But it is not a key party. Make sure you remember that.

Also in the news, we made Face of Africa. The Viz also says that Muniirah Namakula, an unemployed chick... sorry, free-lance model “who reluctantly entered the 2006 Nokia Face of Africa model search, has qualified for the finals slated for August 13 in the South African city of Cape Town.”
One of the most annoying things about life in this world is that someone is spending money on model searches. I am broke and Nokia is flushing money down a toilet. Plus, I heard that skinny bitches are evil.

Previously: While I was wandering lost and bewildered through a narcotic haze last week I stumbled upon a rag of headline intimating that the Ugandan government, the good folks at Sudan Inc and the LRA were setting up for a ménage a trios in Cuba. Or something. I may have got some of the details wrong. Crack is one hell of a drug.

And most important of all, Karitas, one of Uganda’s leading pulchritude purveyors, is leaving East Africa Television’s Ugandan lifestyle magazine show K’la Wired, which she has hosted since we managed to get rid of Urkel Marthias Ruhweza back then.
If her replacement, whoever it is, tries to pull a forged accent on us, we shall have to engage the A Team and take them out of commission. You think that is an idle threat? What do you think happened to Sheiza? Why do you think Dominic Nyalifa doesn’t speak English any more? We are some bad muthafuckers. You don’t want to weng around us.

Random Thoughts

2006-06-27T17:57:00.001+03:00

Whatever Nick Horby is smoking, I want some.
England’s play was a little bit one-dimensional, don’t you think? I mean, the decision to emphasise on Wayne Rooney was perhaps a bit over-optimistic on Erickson’s part. Rooney is good, but he is not THAT good. (You see? I told you it is easy as shit to fake like you know you are talking about when it comes to World Cup.)
You don’t know how rich I am. I am that loaded. If I slapped you lightly with my ATM card, I could fracture your skull. I’m financially secure. I’m comfortably well-off. I stink filthily.
Winnie Byanyima? Sexy? You must be kidd—actually, come to think of it…
I used to be unkempt and scruffy. Now I make “the effort” as my formerly-dismayed matrons used to call it. I kind of like it. I am no longer a surly, grumpy cynical misanthrope. Now I am smug, materialistic, shallow, superficial yuppie scum!
Drugs are not all that bad.
Brazil's play was a little bit one-dimensional, don’t you think? I mean, the decision to emphasise on Ronaldinho was perhaps a bit over-optimistic on Scolari's part. Ronaldinho is good, but he is not THAT good.
The past no longer exists. The future does not exist yet. There is only the present. There is only ever the present.

Legislation of Love

2006-06-20T12:13:00.000+03:00

The International Man Council, the governing body of all testosteral human beings on the planet, just released a special dispatch unto all. It comes straight from the desk of the presiding Grand Machismo, Butch Norris Shaka Bauer himself. So pay attention.
Grand Machismo Bauer is concerned with the increasing latitude with which men are beginning to approach the subject of feelings. A number of men have been reported for telling other men they love them. And not in a homosexual sense (which would not concern the IMC. Homosexuals do not fall under its jurisdiction).

Listen, men are NOT permitted to tell other men they love them. Ever.

Well, not never. There are situations which some laxity can be allowed. The IMC has compiled this list of situations when it is acceptable to tell another man that you love him:

Death Bed Scenario:
The dying man can receive your confession of affection. If your friend is dying, you may tell him you love him as he shuffles the mortal coil. However, he is not allowed to respond in kind. Dying men must not tell survivors that they love them until they enter into a spectral state, which, as we all know, is androgynous. Then they may haunt their friends by floating around like a white sheet scaring the crap out of them by moaning “I love you man,” in the middle of the night.

Marijuana High
It is acceptable only because it happens so much that there is no point in the IMC trying to stop it. When dudes are stoned they say they love everything. I once watched UTV when I was high.

Apologising for sleeping with his wife:
“It was an accident. Everything just moved to fast. I would never do anything intentionally to jeopardise our friendship. I mean, I love you man!”
If the other guy has a very heavy weapon in his hand, this speech might stymie him for a moment and give you precious seconds to draft a quick escape plan.

Pivotal Sports Victory
Or football goals. Just check to see that the other guy is also Italian before attempting kisses.

Commercial Break

2006-06-20T11:58:00.000+03:00

And now it is celebrity endorsement time. Ring the celebrity endorsement bell and bring on our celebrity!

Dong! Dong!

Twish!

It’s former world heavyweight champion Lennox Lewis! What’s up Champ? You’re here to tell us about a couple of exciting new blogs you found recently.

LL: Privileged to be here, Baz. I had an absolutely delightful time reading http://scotchbiscuits.blogspot.com/and http://kentarocharlyn.blogspot.com/. Positively delightful. They are charming, witty, and totally engrossing.

Baz: I know Scotchbiscuits.

LL: That’s because you are the press and the press knows everything.

Baz: And Kentaro Charlyn? That name sounds familiar.

LL: Yeah. She’s Sandra’s sister.

Baz: Oh yeah. So, Lennox, will you be going back to the ring any time? Any plans of a comeback?

LL: No, sorry to disappoint you. I have enough money now, so there is no need.

Baz: And we’re running out of time. Give us your last word.

LL: This is Former World Heavyweight Champion Lennox Lewis. That’s right, the man who made Mike Tyson cry for his mommy. This is Lennox Lewis saying visit http://scotchbiscuits.blogspot.com/and http://kentarocharlyn.blogspot.com/. For an enriching blogsurfing experience.

We now return to our regularly scheduled programming.

You take this ball, and put it in that net

2006-06-14T11:10:00.000+03:00

I can’t be there watching twenty-two grown men chase a little bit of inflated rubber round a field. Yes, I know that is the third stalest joke in the world, but it’s world cup season. You are going to be hearing it all over the place for the next bunch of weeks. You should start getting used to it.

(Actually, I’m reminded that that should be twenty grown men. The goalies don’t chase the ball around) .

Time to get acquainted with the rest of the things we shall be hearing about. Like footballers, for example, Ronaldinho.

The estranged son of a Buenos Aires dental practitioner, Ronaldinho fell out with his father over his decision to keep his teeth bucked as hell. With his father’s words, “No esta dos mi cuando tumbavu cilabe Puffy!” (No son of mine shall walk around looking like Puff Fucking Daddy!) ringing in his head, Ronaldinho left Buenos Aires, and his family, and set off searching for a new home where he would be accepted as he is.

It was while trying to eke out a living as a flatfish vendor in Caracas that he first met Ronaldo. Vendor and customer forged a friendship based on the similarity of their names and their teeth.

Ronaldo inducted Ronaldinho into the secret Venezuelan chapter of Opus Dei, which sought to conceal the truth about the secret hidden behind the Mona Lisa’s smile. However, one tactless mistake from Binyo cost them both their membership. (He blurted out, “She’s trying to hide it, but I can see that she is as bucktoothed as me and my boy Ronaldo here!”) The pair were not only expelled from the club, they were disgraced and had to flee the nation in shame. Most of us thought they were dead, and we spat Good Riddance on their assumed graves (It’s an Opus Dei thing. You wouldn’t understand).

Imagine our surprise when, look who shows up in the Brazilian world cup squad…chasing a bit of inflated rubber round a field…

The Interview

2006-06-07T18:16:00.000+03:00

“The true measure of civilisation is not told in how we treat our friends; it is in how we treat those that are not our friends. The standards of freedom are not defined by how we treat those who agree with us, but how we treat those who do
not.”
-Eminem-

We have a very special guest with us tonight. Ladies and gentlemen, put your hands together for Mahmood Ahmedinejad!

MA: Yo! Word em up! What’s crackin’ y’all.

Baz: I should explain that the Iranian president is speaking through an interpreter who we located in the Bedford-Stuyvesant neighbourhood of Brooklyn, New York. Mr President, controversy has arisen over your desire to attend the FIFA soccer World Cup finals in Germany. There is quite a lobby of people who think you should not go.

MA: That’s some playa hatin’ right there. Why people be trippin like this? All I’m tryina do is get my game on, and people be trippin’!

Baz: The problem is what you stand for. You are widely viewed as an evil anti-Semite who wants to get nuclear weapons and blow up the world.

MA: Dawg! I just wanna rep my hood, Iran.

Baz: Let me put it to you directly—are you an evil anti-Semite who wants to blow up the world?

MA: Let me put this to you, dawg—ye aint ridin. Ye ain’t bumping like I’m bumpin. Ye ain’t fresh azimiz!

Baz: Can we get another interpreter please?

(Bit of kavuyo as interpreter is replaced).

Finally, Baz: Mr President, I repeat the question-- are you an evil anti-Semite who wants to blow up the world with nuclear devices?

MA: My opinion of the Jewish state is that it is a very nice place and I’m sure the people there are very sweet, and I actually like aspects of their culture and lifestyle. For example, what is the name of that rapper guy? The one who’s name is as hard to pronounce as my own? Matsushita? Whatever. I am not against everything Israeli. Just a bit here and there but I think we can work it out with a bit of talk, open-minded discussion, a bit of dialogue… Maybe over a bit of some nice Iranian chai, you know?

Baz: Interpreter, is that really what he said?

Interpreter: Okay, not really. I kind of polished it up a bit.

Baz: What did he really say?

Interpreter: Fuck Israel.

Baz: Sigh.

Intertpreter: And fuck Matisyahu

Exclusive! Season Five. Faster than you thought possible

2006-05-30T19:12:00.000+03:00

The following takes place between the hours of 07:00 and 8:00am

Morning in Los Angeles. Morning bustle. Everybody is wearing sunglasses. The camera pans onto two men. The younger one wears a black suit and looks like Alfonso Arau. The other one is wearing a white T-shirt, a Lakers cap and jeans. He would look typical except that he has a long beard. They talk in low conspiratorial whispers. Then they get up and kiss each other on the cheek.
Around 7:55 there is an explosion. People scream. A black extra yells out something like “other duck hits”.
Tick Tick tock…

The following takes place between 8:00 and 9:00

At CTU, Chloe is eating a sandwich. Edgar is ordering fajitas online. Erin Driscoll is brooding about who she can fuck up. Suddenly a phone call comes in. The unnamed CTU staffer who picks it up shouts: “There’s been an explosion!”
When Jack Bauer hears this he says, “Oh, I know what that means.” And he races for the toilet.

The following takes place between 10:00 and like 5 or something

Jack Bauer kills 43 people and commits multiple felonies by directly disobeying orders 563 times before he finally discovers that he has been following a wrong lead: the two men kissing before the explosion, they were not terrorists at all. They were members of the Gay Anglican Church of Syria. They came to LA to get married. And catch a taping of Will And Grace.

The two Syrian gays announce their intention to sue for discrimination. President Palmer (Not Dennis Haysbert. Sherry, the evil wife. She got elected. Surprise!) is in a public relations bind. So President Sherry and Driscoll, who are sick to death of Jack and his insubordination, invoke Executive Privilege 404 of the Patriot Act which allows the Secret Service in conjunction with CTU to assassinate people.

The MIBs show up looking for Jack. They are shooting at him, but we know they won’t get him. It is only 5:55pm

The following takes place between the hours of 6:00 and like midnight

Jack manages to escape the secret service by dodging the bullets and then shooting back and killing them all. This is because, of all those who went through US government marksmanship training, Jack is the only one who actually learnt to shoot straight. Okay, him and Sidney Bristow.

He runs off. Yeah, Jack is a fugitive again. This time he goes where no one in their right mind would dare follow him: “Da Hood”. He goes to South Central. The exact same neighbourhood where Boyz N Tha Hood was filmed.

A bunch of gangstas show up planning to “jack” him. “Jacking” is a hip hop term meaning to rob. It is not just a bad pun. Will they actually succeed in their nefarious plan? It is 12:59.

The following takes place between one and five seconds past one:

Those gangstas think they are who? Jack Bauer pees on their prone corpses and laughs, “This is for ma homies!”

The following takes place between the rest of the episode.

The plot of Bullworth, but with more gunplay. Meanwhile, at CTU, Edgar and Chloe are playing footsie beneath the conference room table.

At around 5:30 someone remembers that they still don’t know who blew up the Café.

So they go into the hood to get Jack. Finally, he agrees to return to CTU. But he has been smoking marijuana with the Crips and has an STD so he can no longer function as the superagent. Marwan, the villain from season four, calls in and claims responsibility for the explosion. He taunts Jack, saying, “You should’ve killed me last year!”

The following takes place between 6:00 and I can’t believe you are still reading this.

Tom Cruise eats the placenta of his newborn baby. Sandra Bullock arrives at the Corner Café with her husband, the funnily-named Jesse James, because they want a Lattefrappochino. All they find is a bombed-out crater. Marwan is standing there, wondering when Jack is going to arrive for their showdown. It’s the season finale, for crying out loud. He doesn’t know that Jack has returned to the ghetto to smoke some more chronic.
Sandy points and says, “Hey, I know you! You’re that guy!”
Marwan, fearing that he has been recognised, pulls out a gun.
Sandy says, “The Mummy, right?”
Marwan shoots himself.

There is a man in Kampala who owns a Hummer H2. Nothing personal against him, but fuck that shit!

2006-05-26T19:02:00.000+03:00

There is something just so eye-rollingly, spine-twistingly, brain-curdlingly, and in the case of some people, most of whom once did or still do reside in Lumumba, underwear-soilingly wrong about spending that sort of money in the middle of the third world. It isn’t just tacky and in very poor taste, it is downright immoral.
I mean, luxury is one thing, and it’s okay to enjoy your life if you can afford it, but for crying out loud it is a fucking HUMMER in UGANDA. Do you have any idea what sort of poverty exists in this country? And you you just want to buy a hummer? They don’t make Benzes big enough to compensate for what you’ve got? This is proof that ostentation is going too far. Hummer H2s and Ray-Bans. Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world, the blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere the ceremony of innocence is drowned...

But that’s not the point.

The point is, as an avid anti-materialist who recently converted to yuppiedom, I have issues. The transition has not been smooth. Leather shoes with pointy ends are not as comfortable as well-beaten Reebocks, khaki pants are not as cosy as jeans, ties get into your gravy when you are eating, and visiting a barber every week is more of a hassle than it sounds. Because sometimes the barber wants to reach a particularly hard-to-access corner of the cranium, and you end up with your nose in his armpit.

The reason I sold out was, what else? I needed the money. And a wise man told me that, while the corporate world is slow to respond to manifest intelligence, a necktie will bring it to its knees. It sounds absurd but it is true. This guy had been tossing me around for a while over some freelance ass-kicking I had done for his company but when I walked into his office the other day and he saw my tie, it was like I had put a gun to his head. That is why I am so wealthy right now. A tie.

And Gillette sports roll-on (Cool Wave).

However, there is only so far a man can go. I am still, at heart, the loveable rogue, the rough-and-tumble ragamuffin, the cheeky rascal, the naughty rapscallion with the glint in his eye, the blackhearted fiend and the personification of evil that you know your boy to be. Even though I do look like Agent Smith from the Matrix.

Yes, with the shades. Not just the tie and coat and dress shoes, but the shades. I am a boy of contact lenses now, so I have to wear shades, Doctor’s orders. You know, in case I need to interact with the public. The public is very dirty and is always covered in dust.

I almost didn’t get the sunglasses. When the woman in the shop told me how much a pair of designer shades cost I was seized with righteous indignation. A flame of pious anger sprung up in my very soul, my very soul, people, and the only things that stopped me from immediately razing the entire shop to the ground in a whirl of my wrath and fury as a punishment for having the audacity to even mention those numbers to me were that I didn’t want to embarrass the person I was with, it wasn’t really the shop attendant’s fault, and I didn’t have my machete with me at the time. I had left it at the office.

You guys can go and wear all the outrageously priced clothing accessories you want. As long as they look good and the sight works for my edification, entertainment and pleasure. But a) Don’t tell me how much you paid and b) If you are a shop attendant, and I am asking around, make up a lie. Say something like, “Sorry, sir, these are just for display.” Or, “They make you look fat.” Or even, “White folks only.” Do not tell me to pay that much for a fucking pair of sunglasses.

Look at them.

Actually, they look kind of cool. Maybe I should just go back to the shop…

Sing for the lonely, Music for the masses

2006-05-17T13:33:00.000+03:00

I don’t believe in awards. Not since CNN reported that Puffy Combs, who is the musical equivalent of a flying toilet, had won a Grammy. But then there is reason to reconsider this stance.

If you are ever walking down the street with your walkman on, and it is tuned to CBSfm, and it is raining cats and dogs, you will notice something very strange occur if Beera Nange comes through the speakers. You will notice that you suddenly cease to be cold and wet and miserable. In fact, you will suddenly feel warm and happy. Your initial assumption will be that what you feel is the result of inner joy swelling forth in your breast. That is the first and most rational explanation. What you don’t realise is that what is happening is actually THE RAIN FALLING AWAY FROM YOU!
I am not lying. This song is so good that when you are listening to it the rain just swerves in the air and finds a way of falling somewhere else.

Secondly, according to a Reuters report, scientists in Geneva are trying to find a way of converting Irene Namubiru’s new song Nkuweeki into a form that can be contained in a nuclear bomb device. They believe that once they achieve this, they will be able to move on to Operation Final Decision, which will involve taking the nuclear bomb and dropping it in Kashmir, the Middle East, and all the war-torn regions in the world. Once the bomb detonates it will release megatons of Namubiru’s voice onto the combatants, and they will instantly lose the will to fight. They will be seized with the absolute beauty of that song and instantly forswear their battles, and thus shall we achieve world peace. In lab tests psychotic rats, after being exposed to doses of this song, have been found to develop the urge to plant flowers and paint watercolour rainbows and stuff like that. Peace is no longer just a dream.

I would like to urge you all to vote for these two songs in all PAM award categories. Every single one.
If you are not in Uganda or maybe have not heard the songs, don’t worry. Just vote somehow. In our country voting doesn’t have to stick to the rules.

Andrew Mwenda Versus Ernest Bazanye

2006-05-12T20:08:00.000+03:00

I have been jealous of that guy for pretty much all my career. Because it is not fair: why can’t I be taken seriously, too?
Well, if there is one way to beat him, it is in this, what we in the press call a “scoop”. A scoop is when one gets the big story before the competition.
(If you are through laughing at the notion of Mwenda considering me “competition”, may we continue?)
Here we go now: cutting edge, exclusive, so hot and fresh, I bring you the news even before it happens: a transcript of Yoweri Museveni’s inauguration. You know you can’t get this sort of dope from Monitor!

One damp morning at Kololo Airstrip.
Chubby bald man rolls up a little podium and bongas another man, who is wearing a wig and bathrobe.

Kags: Dude. It’s me. Back again.
Chief Justice: Welcome, sir. What’ll it be, the usual?
Kags. Yeah. Swear me in. Does Nandos deliver to Kololo airstrip?
CJ: Nasasira will sort that out. Okay, stand over there, put your hand on the Constitution. You know the drill.
Kags: It’s like riding a bike. Several times. Hey, you guys got a new Constitution!
CJ: It's the same one. We just changed it a bit. Now, repeat after me. I, Kagu…
Kags: Repeat after you? I already know the thing by heart. I Kagu hereby swear to run the country until next time when I come back to swear again.
CJ: I know declare you Still President of Uganda.
Kags: I could use a chicken pizza right about now. Where’s Nasasira?

Own up. I know it's you

2006-05-07T20:48:00.000+03:00

I had just got back into town from the Boondocks, and thought I should check my mail. So I turned into one of those Internet cafes which stick bible verses on the computers (to discourage porn-surfers I am told).

The verse on this one has been vandalised. It begins: "Blessed is the man who doesn't walk in the cousel of the wicked..." The rest has been replaced with "but only buys drugs from them."

Who would do such a thing?

The Summer of Love Part III

2006-05-01T10:28:00.000+03:00

And now the moment you have all been waiting for. At least I hope you have been waiting for it. It is very very possible that you guys threw me out after the last instalment, which was, I admit, a bit flaccid, and now you don’t care what happened between me and whatsername.

I shall rope you back in. I shall rekindle your interest with all the tricks I learnt in media school. I’m going to use a journalism technique called Hype.

It’s what we used to create Blu 3’s career. *

Here is The THRILLING conclusion to the GRIPPING romance EPIC SAGA of CLASSIC phenomenon!!!! Multiple exclamation marks!!!

So Daisy went back to school and left me behind, smitten and stricken on the lonely shores of love or something. She left me a man with a mission, though. I resolved to make good use of the term time, during which she was going to achieve the magic cut-off age—seventeen—to make sure that when she returned for her next holiday session, she would find me fully styled up. No longer would I be the scruffy rapscallion you know and love, oh no. I would transform myself into a dapper dan, a smooth dude, a slicked up, oiled down GQ-Armani bastard who means business!

So I got a haircut.

Don’t underestimate the weight of that act. It was momentous. This was actually the first fashion haircut I had ever had in my life. Prior to this cut my hair looked like this. May my assistant please wheel in Huey Freeman…

That there is Huey Freeman, who got his hairstyle from me.

My barber trimmed the top and shaved the sides and taught me that the style thus achieved, known as a French Cut, was a favourite and was very popular with the ladies.

“So, will it guarantee me the heart of my beloved?” I asked him.

“Homie, I am no Edith Mukisa, so I don’t really give relationship advice, but I think between this cut and you getting rid of that tired Adidas shirt you wear almost everywhere, I think you might have a chance. Good Grief Ernest, you virtually live in that shirt.”

I studied hard. The Fresh Prince and Boomerang and all that stuff on TV and from Marwan Videos was not entertainment anymore. It was course materials for my Bachelor of Dudeness!

Man, that was corny. Mbu “Bachelor of Dudeness”. Banange.

Then one day, when I was looking at my ears in the mirror wondering who I have to kill around here to get a set of sideburns, I heard…

Twinkle twinkle chwinnng! Guess who’s back?

There she was, in their compound, carrying her bags from the car to the house. She saw me and waved. Physically speaking I smiled and waved back. But in my mind I fainted. This was not because I was a wuss, though I was, but chiefly because, in case I haven’t mentioned it before, she was THAT hot.

We lunk up in the evening and we were walking and we came to a place where there were no trees and the sidewalk was white with moonlight. We stopped there and turned to each other. My heart beat faster as Daisy’s white face came up to my own. I knew that when I kissed this girl, and forever wed my unutterable visions to her perishable breath, my mind would never romp again like the minds of angels. So I waited, listening for a moment longer to the tuning-fork that had been struck upon a star. Then I kissed her. At my lips’ touch she blossomed like a flower for me and the incarnation was complete.

Told you it was better than Harry Met Sally. Inktus, that was better than Harry Met Sally!

And now, the truth.

When Daisy returned I was miles away in a South Coast suburb. We had moved house. I just heard that she was back from the kids at church and I had only one weekend to see her and make my move because I was about to leave the city for good. A’Levels.
So I have one week. And in that one week I also had malaria.
So that was the Prufrock moment. I didn’t even get to talk to her.

The end.

* Just kidding Lillian of Blu 3. Hey, have you ever thought of going solo? When are you going to get tired of carrying those two barbies? **

** Just Kidding other two constituent parts of Blu 3 .

My lawyers say I must not forget to mention the passage that I ripped out of The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald was ripped out of The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald

Truth V 2.0

2006-04-19T15:51:00.000+03:00

2.0I would like to tell you that I am a really smooth Casanova-type of character. That if you take Hitch, mix him in with Eddie Murphy in Boomerang, then mingle that with LL Cool J songs sung in Julio Iglesias’ voice and wrap it all up in a tuxedo with a rose in its teeth, the result will look up at me and say, “Damn, that dude’s about as smooth as I am!”
I would like to tell you that, but my powers of exaggeration are not that strong. Don’t get me wrong, I am not entirely a dweeb, and I certainly don’t be saying “so, um... this your first time here?" (Lord have mercy, what kind of LOOOOOSER does that? Me when I was fourteen, actually, but that is another story.) however, it took me a while to learn that just being myself works fine. I don’t even try to mess with smooth. It’s like putting a bowtie on a donkey: the absurdity of the sight completely eclipses any merits the ass may have had in the first place.

Anyway, Daisy and I were both members of the same church: a church that had a well-publicised policy about teenagers growing up too quickly. There was a cut-off age. I was past it, and thus allowed to crush on whoever I wanted, but Daisy was not, and because of that it would be a sin to try and coax her into requiting stuff. At least it would be a sin if I didn’t wait a few months for her birthday, when she would become eligible.

Before you start crying out, she was sixteen, okay? Just two years younger than me.

I suspected that it was also sin to be infatuated with a person below the gazetted age of eligibility, but I am sure God understood. I prayed, “Lord, I mean, look at her! I mean she’s not just hot, she’s a conflagration! She is an inferno! You know what I mean?”

I waited for Him to say, “Okay, sonny, just this once, I’ll make an exception. Just this once, but only for you.” He didn’t answer immediately, but I was certain He would in a couple of days, and while I waited, I began to find ways of placing myself within blast radius… I don’t want to overdo the flaming supernova of hotness metaphor, but you have to understand, chick was that hot.

I found myself organising my activities in such a way that I would often bump into her accidentally. "Well, hello! Fancy that! I didn’t expect to see you round these parts! Who would have thought? So um, is this your first time here?"

And that is how I got to learn a very important lesson. Pay attention, boys, this could change your life. I learnt something very important: That Beautiful Girls Don’t Bite.

When we were boys sitting around the statue of Mary in the dorm quadrangle (We used to call her SMACK Babe. There is no Madonna statue as pawed and fondled and molested and having nipples drawn on it with chalk as those in boys’ schools. I digress...) When we were boys in school, we used to speak of beautiful girls as a challenge to be surmounted, a trophy to be won against great odds, an obstacle to be overcome. This is misguided and it is called objectification. No wonder those perverts be groping at the statue of SMACK Babe.

But while I waited for God to deliver my exemption, I actually got to know Daisy, to talk to her and listen to her and learn that she was a really great person. She was warm, funny, smart, deep and extremely nice.

I mean, we like totally had so much in common.

As in we liked the same music and we both liked to draw pictures. She was very good at it.
In spite of my infatuation, I actually found that I liked her. This totally discombobulated my paradigms.
Those lazy days and easy evenings became even more delectable and that month (she was on school hols) was one of the reasons I remember vac as one of the most pleasant periods of my life. Another reason is that I was just starting to write and a third is that I wasn’t as malfuncted as I was to later become.
NOw, because I got some sort of evil kick out bikozulu and scotchbuscuits' comments, I shall stop here and say: TUNE IN NEXT TIME for the conclusion which is very similar to the one in When Harry Met Sally and has the bit about me finding Daisy twelve years later.

The truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth. (Except a few barefaced lies)

2006-04-15T20:36:00.000+03:00

I’m going to tell you a true story now. I will be embellishing and exaggerating along the way because it is very important that I maintain the blurriness of the line that distinguishes truth from fiction. Especially since, unlike other bloggers, I was stupid enough to put my real name up there.

This is a story of a boy, (me) and a girl, (whose name was yeah right, like I’m going to go and tell you. What if you also know her and you report me? I’m not putting my business all up on the Internet so that I can get into trouble. Let’s call her Daisy and move on).

Like Daisy Fay in The Great Gatsby. You will see the parallels as the tale progresses.

Daisy was the girl next door, the girl on whom, as these things go, I had a massive crush.
I was just out of S4, chilling through vac, luxuriating through lazy days and easy evenings, watching The Fresh Prince on VHS, recovering from a hectic year during which I narrowly survived becoming a juvenile delinquent by fortunately being broke…(I had started to hang out with the wrong crowd, you see. They were called the Borbon family. They were SMACK Gangstas).
I was vacing at those of our’s when (cue music) she walked into my life.

Twinkle-twinkle-chwiiing!

(That was the music)

She was stunning. She was mesmerizing. The fluttering my dear little heart assumed when she first glid into sight has not been replicated since. Yes, glid. She did not walk like mortal girls walk, with her feet touching mundane dirt. She would glide. Hence glid.

My brain leapt up, on seeing her and said, Dude, why are you still gawking, go, go, go!

But Mr. Flutterby in my thorax had objections. “Go with what? Those corny moves you learnt for social?” And he had a point. You see, ladies, and I could get into trouble for spilling this secret, if a guy comes at you with confidence, poise, grace, saying the right words and all that crap you like, there’s a chance that he isn’t into you as much as you think. He has thought it would be nice to kick it with you, but he knows that if you tell him to get lost it won’t be the end of the world and he can just go off and maybe catch the game on Supersport.

But if the little boy is stuttering and stammering and dropping his braces and generally acting like a wet fish, that is true love. That is because he knows he is facing total devastation in your arms. You would lose a smidgen of your composure too if someone was holding a gun to your head and you didn’t know whether they were going to shoot or not.
So my heart told me…

Ooops. Out of time. I’ll tell you the rest next time I can get to a webcafe.

Random Thoggits

2006-04-09T19:33:00.000+03:00

1. Whatever zadie smith is smoking, I want some.

2. After the morose melancholython that is Bruce Springsteen’s album Nebraska, it is a pleasant shock to rock to Sherry Darling. You’ve got to love lyrics like this:

Your Mamma's yappin' in the back seat
Tell her to push over and move them
big feet
Every Monday morning I gotta drive her down to the unemployment
agency
Well this morning I ain't fighting tell her I give up
Tell her
she wins if she'll just shut up
But it's the last time that she's gonna be
ridin' with me

You can tell her there's a hot sun beatin' on the black
top
She keeps talkin' she'll be walkin' that last block
She can take a
subway back to the ghetto tonight

3. It is imperative that I stop sucking and start kicking ass. Delay is unforgivable. April is almost over.

4. Someone stole my DVD player on Friday. The house was in such a mess that I didn’t notice for a full hour.

5. I heard the most outrageous story over the weekend. It involved a woman, a very very short skirt and a line of suitors, none of whom would be turned away. The narrators were not as shocked as I was. They see this sort of thing quite often, I guess.
There are a whole world out there I know nothing about.

It's not goodbye, it's I've met someone else

2006-04-05T16:26:00.000+03:00

The Print and Pub Corp., who pay me good money to obey them, have deemed this blog pornographic. I cannot access it on their computers, therefore, and that is why I have been updating as regularly as some people I will not name.

And before you start sniggering, all your blogs are pornographic, too. All of blogger.com is, according to the Corp.'s internet filtering machines. It's hell because it means I have to go to a cafe with a flash disk to get the latest.

And then I can't comment and say, for example, that whatever Jay has been smoking, I want some, oh, that's what he's been smoking; or to muse on Degstar's cars; or to I forgot what I was supposed to say about Michael Buble to Carlo; or to be all like, "Welcome to our millennium" to Inktus; or to monkey-yelp at LA's discourse on television etc.
And I certainly haven't been able to flame Iwaya.

Because you are all pornographic.

But if you still want to play with me, in a morally-okayed environment, the family-rated Corp. has set me up at
http://newvision.co.ug/blogs/ernestbazanye

They allow me to use their pictures, so I can finally show you that photo of Sharon Obsessions that I love so much.

Do stop over once in a while.

Nothing Personal

2006-04-05T16:04:00.000+03:00

I did not sleep last night. And I had run out of the drugs. I did not sleep last night. So, today, I am in a very sour mood. Very. I WANT TO KICK SOMEONE!

And I hate everyone. Every one.

That is, except you guys.

Everyone includes:
1. Mike Mukula- Where does he get the gall to flash his fancy, flamboyant house at me like that all week? I didn’t buy African Woman to have my face rubbed in it, I bought it to beautify my own house. It had a picture of Natasha Whatever-her-other-name-is from Obsessions.
My house, you must understand is very very ugly. Factors contributing to this include the following:

a. Lazy occupant
b. Lack of housegirl since Diana got pregnant
c. It wasn’t mine I swear
d. Appetite for steak subs from Me Takeaway which come in huge boxes that lead dustbin to overflow in a matter of days
e. Strict LC guys who ensure that occupant cannot just get up and empty dustbin for fear of being fined. (Fine for dumping doesn’t mean permission is granted, it means they will fine you. Took me a while to get that) So occupant has to wait until late in the night to sneak into neighbour’s large externally-situated dumpster and deposit his own trash therein
f. Occupant is too lazy to do that more than twice a month. Neighbour’s deserve it anyway—they always be blasting their WBS at night with the result that it sounds like there are two televisions competing in occupant’s house. So occupant has to crank his own television up really loud to drown out Kyekyo That’s It or whatever mind-poisoning gwash neighbour has been watching. Then neighbour thinks this is a challenge, like in The Fast and The Furious and he/she/not sure which and antisocial so won’t find out raises the volume higher. So occupant has to raise his volume again. It’s a vicious cycle, and in the end it is the children who suffer.
g. Neighbour’s children. Occupant has no children. Neighbour’s children suffer because they end up hearing Kyekyo That’s It with volume at full blast. Anyway…

The personal abode is a mess, so I bought this month’s African Woman magazine, intending to post the cover picture of Natasha on one of the walls in the hope that it will mitigate my living room’s ugliness.

Didn’t work. Natasha’s fine, but, apparently, not THAT fine.

As if the purchase of a cover that failed to repel the room’s hideousness was not enough of a waste, there, in the mag, is eight pages of salt leaping out and rubbing itself in my wounds of poverty.

And a photo of Mikey grinning at me, as if to say, “Hey, you, with the ugly house, you call that a living room? Even my cockroaches wouldn’t live there. You want to know what a living room is? Check this out. This is a living room, you Loser. You big-ass LOSER! Take that!”

And then, not finished yet, he goes on to call his wife, “Baby, tell this dirty muthafucker about our house.”

Then the interview, which you read, in which Mrs Mikey said, and I quote: “Oh there are so many expensive things in the house…I think the (most expensive) would have to be the sauna, steam and Jacuzzi and all of that. We didn’t spend too much on the boy’s bedrooms besides the expensive showers.”

I hate that guy.

Nothing personal, of course.

2006-03-28T14:57:00.000+03:00

I am sure I am wrong in my interpretation of the concept, but I am almost positive of the meaning that arises from my misinterpretation. I was precocious once, a long time ago, in my youth, but I am no genius. The details of particle physics, I cannot be sure that I have grasped them accurately.
With that caveat out of the way, Shroedinger was a scientist who put a cat in a box with a radioactive substance which, he was sure, had an exactly fifty-fifty chance of decaying. If it did decay, it would make the box toxic and the cat would die. If it did not decay, the cat would be safe, as if it had been alone in the box all this time.
Before you open the box, at that moment when your hand rests on the latch, just about to lift: is the cat dead or alive?
According to my misinterpretation, it is both. Shroedinger's cat was an experiment in probbilitty. Meant to demonstrate that if something has a chance of happening, it will.
So if the cat has a chance of living, it will, and at the same time, if there is a chance that the substance will twist in on itself, begin to burn and excude poison rays of radioactivity that will pierce the cat’s skin, causing it to shrivel and shrink and suddenly, soundlessly, quickly, expire, that too, will occur.
The universe splits at the moment you open the box. In one universe, you open the box to lift out a bewildered but unharmed cat, and in another universe you open the box to the smoking carcass. Every choice we make generates another universe in this fashion, and so life is a series of ramifications, universes splitting constantly, every time a life reaches a crossroads, multiplying like the branches of a baobab tree. Every time we face options, each option get its own parallel universe where it succeeds, every choice is realized somewhere.
What this means is that, somewhere, in a universe somewhere, we are all happy.
Those choices we made wrong, which doomed us to becoming what we now are, are undone, unmade, and we survived.
And not just one universe, because even after we made that defining mistake, it is the nature of the journey of life that we meet moments of redemption, times when a small trifle can change our fortunes and make everything right. Of course there is no point in looking for these moments-- they are never what you expect, they are as accidental as the great mistake that fucked you up in the first place. And they are smaller—“if I never walked into that shop that day, I would never have met your mother.” “If I hadn’t lost my keys, I wouldn’t have taken that bus,” “If I had chosen otherwise, I would never have come upon the serendipitous accident that changed my life.”
They are undetectable, unpredictable, but they exist. And somewhere, in some other life, you didn’t miss it, and you got your second chance.

Does that comfort you? Knowing that right now, right now, you are not stuck in the dungeons of your waste and decay, that you are somewhere else living your dreams?

Don't you HATE when that happens?

2006-03-23T19:56:00.000+03:00

I didn't sleep exactly. I did fall into a sweet reverie, and a patchwork of memories returned. And once again I walked through the narrow streets of Old Mombasa following the smell of baked coffee, and I stood before the ocean waiting and finding that moment of resonance when the mind ebbs and flows in unison with the water, and I wandered among the bandas of those beach hotels, sat down with others as lazy and aimless as I was, and we played cards and drank Pilsener.

And then I fucking woke up.

@#$%!!

2006-03-20T16:15:00.000+03:00

Who would have thunk it? Writing is hard and makes one tired.
After two weeks of assembly-line churning of article after article for Kevin et al at uptowner (and I still don't know if I can have my byline) I find that I am exhausted.
Really. I can't even think.

I have been dreaming of HTML codes attacking me. The tags are like spears digging into my flesh, hooking out the words and then the HTML ghouls run off with them. Leaving me, with writer's block.

I haven't had writer's block in years.

Maybe it has something to do with the trepidation that comes with a project like The uptowner. Initially, I was just supposed to do the layout and design. (I am a copy editor at The Vision, before you ask, so I know how to design magazines). Then as time went by my brief expanded. Instead of being my clients, now Kev and Walter think they are my partners. And soon they are going to start acting like they are my bosses.

Bastards. Both of you. Arrogant, cheating, exploitative BASTARDS!

As I become more invested (not with money, of course. The project hasnt got a penny yet. The thing is even hosted on freeservers.com, for crying out loud.) I get more anxious and stressed and I come to blog and I end up droning on and on.

Speaking of html tags ....

Let's see if that works.

I may have forgotten to mention (PLUG!!)

2006-02-28T18:38:00.000+03:00

This Cheap-ass freeserver website here won't be a total waste of time. Go on. I don't plug lame stuff. Go on. I know, I know but trust me. Click this: www.uptown.freeservers.com

From the Frontline

2006-02-28T18:23:00.000+03:00

The true challenge of a blogging journalist: can he give up to date news on a national election? Not if his blog is blocked by the IT department at his office on the grounds that it has porno pictures of Hillary Clinton. I wrote the headlines down anyway...

Friday Afternoon Dispatches

Early results say Besigye feeding Museveni dust in Kampala, but Kagu severing Warren’s privates off in upcountry polling stations

Bwanika getting votes. Weather forecast in hell: Freezing over expected.

Jeff Koinange reports on elections for CNN. He still sounds like his mouth is full of toilet paper.
RadioKatwe posts one-word headline: “Psyche!”

New Vision and Monitor websites inaccessible. Too much traffic. Banned Radio Katwe website easily accessed through backdoor channels. Irony of ironies.

Lugambo says Kagu is actually losing and Warren has been spotted doing the cabbage patch in FDC offices.

President Museveni's legal assistant Fox Odoi appears on front of Page One of the Monitor holding an automatic firearm over bunch of guys lying shirtless and bound and writhing on the ground like those chickens you buy in bulk for Christmas. Even if Odoi swears that they were serial killers who wanted to bomb the ballot stations, we don’t care. He is not Jack Bauer and that is fucking barbarian behaivior. Idiot.

Where is Nsaba Buturo?

Saturday Dispatches

It is official: Kagu has won. Statement from NRM camp: In your FACE! Statement from FDC Camp: Thirty seven point what? Thirty-seven point my ass!

Statement from public after Warren rejects results: Do I look surprised?

Some fool lobs petrol bomb at innocent people because he thinks this is what the country needs. Blogger hopes they put him in the same cell as Fox Odoi and two big mandingo apes.

Blogger, furthermore, would like to reassure any security agents reading this that he was kidding about the whole post-election violence thing in the previous post. Just kidding.

Monday dispatches

Everybody in love with dark horse independent Abed Bwanika: He signs up to do adverts for Crane Bank, Woolworths, MTN etc. Radio stations jostling to get him on their morning shows. Gaetano suddenly history.

Still no violence. Apparently Besigye supporters too pussy.

Car backfires outside. Everybody ducks under desks. Previous snarky remark about Besigye supporters hastily rescinded.

More as the story develops

The Smell of Democracy in The Morning

2006-02-22T20:22:00.000+03:00

Okay Ugandans, the general elections take place tomorrow. We don’t have much time left so, here are your voting guidelines. Pay attention.

Wake up early on Voting Day to take full advantage of this rare and hard-won opportunity called Democracy—wake up at five-thirty in the morning so that you can have enough time to prepare a big enough saucepan of katogo. There are going to be queues of hungry voters at the polling station all morning long. That is money, and it could be yours. Remember, it is your right.

Those who were present at the planning meeting will have received their share or pre-marked ballot papers. Make sure all the wads are safely concealed in your jacket sleeves, pockets and down your trousers (for the men. For the women, make sure you wear trousers, and stuff the premarked ballot papers down them). When you get to the ballot box, discreetly stuff as many as you can through the slot as the agents demonstrated during the training sessions.

Many of you may be too hasty to conclude that after voting, you have finished electing and may therefore commence the stone-throwing immediately. Please, restrain yourselves. Post-election violence should not begin until AFTER the results are announced.

Got it? Fine. Let’s get this show on the road.

2006-02-11T20:23:00.000+03:00

Police Arrest Hot Girls
Story in the New Vision. With Scandalous Pictures!

THE Police yesterday arrested 11 skimpily-dressed girls who were
advertising a new radio station, Hot 1009 FM, at the Wandegeya junction. Clad in
body-hugging red-hot pants and navel-exposing tank tops, the girls were armed
with brochures and posters, some of which they seductively tucked in their
pants. The girls’ arrest followed enormous complaints from members of the public
about their attire that was perceived as indecent, Wandegeya CID chief Rashid
Obbo, who ordered their arrest, said yesterday.

CONCERNED CITIZEN: Hello? Police? Emergency! Emergency! Come quick, they are right outside!
112 EMERGENCY OPERATOR: Calm down ma’am. What is going on? Is anyone trying to hurt you?
CONCERNED CITIZEN: There’s a gang of criminals in Wandegeya! Come quick!112
EMERGENCY OPERATOR: What are they doing? Are they badass bank robbers like Latifah in Set It Off?
CONCERNED CITIZEN: No, not exactly…
112 EMERGENCY OPERATOR: Are they wielding guns like Andie Macdowell in Bad Girls?
CONCERNED CITIZEN: I didn’t watch that movie, but they don’t have guns.
112 EMERGENCY OPERATOR: Don’t worry. I am the only one who watched that movie, it seems. What are they doing?
CONCERNED CITIZEN: They are committing sexiness! Help us! We are being attracted!
112 EMERGENCY OPERATOR: Don’t worry ma’am. We’ll be right there. (OPERATOR SPEAKS INTO INTERCOM) Attention all units. We have a code red 124 in progress at Wandegeya roundabout. Civilians at risk.

COP IN THE FIELD: Dispatch, this is Detective Rosco. I’m in Kalerwe right now. I can be in Wandegeya in two minutes.
112 EMERGENCY OPERATOR: What are you waiting for detective? Drop that donut and move it! Hurry, before innocent people get hurt!

SIRENS: Wooowooowooowoo!ThefuckoutofthewaymanWoooowooowooowoo!

COP FROM THE FIELD TO OTHER COP ON THE SCENE: (FLASHING BADGE) Detective Roscoe, sexiness squad. What do we have here?
OTHER COP ON THE SCENE: Good thing you’re here, Detective. I was just about to call for backup. You got here just in time. It’s a gang of women committing a 124—premeditated public sexiness.
ROSCO: How bad is it?
OTHER COP ON THE SCENE. HE IS A SERGEANT: See for yourself. They are wearing hot pants and… and tank tops!
ROSCO: Oh no. It’s a code red with lethal apparel. Cover me. I’m going in.
SERGEANT: Detective, no. It’s too dangerous.
ROSCO: Sergeant, somebody’s got to protect the citizens from those tank tops. Cover me. That’s an order.

ROSCO (ON MEGAPHONE): Attention criminals! This is the police. We have you surrounded. Drop your weapons and surrender… No! Don’t drop your hot pants! Keep your weapons in place and surrender.
LUMUMBISTS WHO HAD GATHERED: Boo! Let them drop the weapons!
ROSCO: Step aside creeps, or I will have you taken in for aiding and abetting.

ONE OF THE CHICKS: You’ll never take us alive copper!
ANOTHER ONE OF THE CHICKS: Yeah! We have curves and we are not afraid to use ‘em!
ROSCO: Sergeant, it looks like we are dealing with a gang of hardened sexiness criminals. Call in the SWAT Team.

(SWAT team rolls in. There is a scuffle. One SWAT team member is seen asking one of the chicks for her phone number.)
SWAT LEADER: Man down! Man down!

Scuffle continues. The girls are subdued.
ROSCO: We got ‘em. Cover them all with busutis. That’s the end of the deadly dozen! We have all twelve of them in custody.SERGEANT: Um, detective, did you say, dozen?
ROSCO: Yeah. The dirty dozen, the red pants gang, the provocative posse, the skimpy squad, the titillating team….
SERGEANT: We only have eleven girls here, detective.
ROSCO: Oh no! The ringleader has escaped! To form another gang and strike again when we least expect it??

Stay tuned for the next episode

As you have been lost?

2006-02-09T16:06:00.000+03:00

The most popular blog event, the one entry that appears on more blogs than any other, is this:

“I know I have not been updating for a while…”

This is usually followed by a lame excuse and the reader sneering, “Yeah right. I give and I give and I give and you don’t even seem to care. I am beginning to feel unappreciated, like I am the only one trying to make this relationship work.”

Well, I am a blogger, so it is time I did what all bloggers do: I know I haven’t been updating for a while…

But wait. I have a good excuse. In fact, I have a GREAT excuse.

Porno.

Apparenty, I have been naughty.

If you can't read it it says "http: //ernest-bazanye.blogspot.com is in the blacklisted porn category."

Well, the true story is that I usually do the blog at work while I wait for the stress to go down and the feeling to return to my legs. Now the office I.T. people seem to have decided that blogs depict or describe, in a patently offensive way, sexual conduct; appeal to prurient interest, and, taken as a whole, lack serious literary, artistic, political, or scientific value.

That is one definition of pornography that is close, I guess, if I remember my Media Law classes correctly, to the one in the Uganda Penal Code.

The Hip Hop President Part II

2006-02-07T16:18:00.001+03:00

Trevor Smith Jr is a rapper who performs under the name Busta Rhymes
James Todd Smith is a rapper who performs under the name LL Cool J
Will Smith is a rapper who performs under the name Will SmithClifford Smith is a rapper who performs under the name Method ManThe reason I give the stage names and the birth names of these gentlemen is to bring it to your attention that rappers tend to be called Smith. Now, as if we needed any more reason to dub Warren Kizza Besigye the hip hop president again, behold:

“In a letter to the EC secretary Sam Rwakoojo, the Bugabula County MP, Moses Kizige, wants an investigation into why Besigye changed the name he used in 1967, Smith W. Besigye, to Kizza Besigye W. S.”

Chicki-chicki-check dis out

The Most Beautiful Women in The World. Revised List

2006-01-30T13:27:00.000+03:00

The International Man Council just revised the top ten list of the world’s most beautiful women to relegate Toni Braxton from the top slot following her developing oldness, and to accommodate a promotion for Beyonce Knowles.

The changes are shown below.

Number 1&2: This position was formerly held by Halle Berry and Toni Braxton, with Halle being number one, and Toni number two or the other way round depending on where they are at the time. (For example, in X-Men, Halle is number two, and in the video for You’re Making Me High, Braxton was number one)
That has been changed. Beyonce now takes the number one spot permanently (by permanently, we mean until the next revision in a few months). The number two slot will be retained by Halle Berry.

Number 3 & 4: This position was previously defined as Britney Spears, Jessica Alba, Aaliyah, Angelina Jolie, Eva Longoria’s fine ass and all those other celebrity chicks who People magazine keeps shoving into our faces. That has been revised to kick Britney out. According to Grand Machismo Board Spokesperson, “She hasn’t had an album in years, so why is this woman still in my face?”

Number 5: This remains unchanged. It is all the celebrity chicks in the region you live in who do not have access to high-priced make-up artists, personal trainers, hi-tech photoshoot studios and all the stuff that makes Number 3-4 women shine. In the case of Ugandans, for example, this includes Karitas, Crystal, Mariam Ndagire and other singers, actors etc. The “others” are open to debate, because the IMC allows individual men the right to say “she’s not all that” in reference to any one of them. However, you may NOT dispute the fineness of Karitas or Crystal.

Number 6: Unchanged. Your babe. Or the chick you want to make your babe. You may tell her she is the most beautiful woman in the world, but we all know she is not as fine as Numbers 1-4

Number 7: Sometimes your eye wanders from the love of your life. That other chick who tempts you.

Number 8: Unchanged. The attractive women you are not romantically pursuing. This includes your cute colleague, the kyana at the MTN kiosk round the corner etc.

Number 9: Unchanged. The attractive women you are not romantically pursuing who are above 40. This includes your hot boss, the woman who owns the supermarket at the end of the street who drives around in the Pajero and is officially the neighbourhood MILF.

Number 10: Unchanged. The women who look good but it isn’t right to lump then in with the eye-candy. That is, women who make a meaningful contribution to society. Like those fly MPs and so forth. Men are allowed the “she’s not all that” prerogative, however, the IMC insists that Oprah will NOT be permitted on the grounds that she is an evil witch who corrupts the youth.

This list is certified by the IMC, 2005-06 Chapter, Brussels