You coulda been anywhere in the world, but you’re here with me

And now for something completely different. We have with us a special guest. A very special guest. The most special of guests in the history of visiting. The Queen of Blogistan herself. Ladies and Gentlemen, your favourite blogger and mine… Take it away Sherry Darling!

DJ, gimme beats

My house is flooded. So I will be lodging here for today. Don’t worry, I have permission from the landlord and landlady.

Thank you BS and Carsozy who tagged me. And oh, Carsozy, your blog won’t take my comments. Your spam bank must be full of my comments. Check. Was mainly saying, No. 6 (on your list) Rocks.

First off I wanna thank the organizers for awarding the Honest Scrap gong to me. All the nominees are great enough and everyone is a winner (But I went home with the gong). I’m so pleased with myself. I wanna thank my God with whom all has been possible. My parents, family and friends, thank you very much for being there for me and finally but not least importantly, I wanna thank blogistan. Without u, I would not have made it to the shortlist of the Honest Scrap awards.

(Carsozy, I hope I have bragged enough. I can go all day on demand.)

So, for the honesty, here we go.

• I’m having trouble contending with my age. In June I strike another year off my numbered days but I feel very inadequate. So much I haven’t done that I had planned for this milestone. Tsk. I would gladly rewind age.

• I used to think that beer, lager, ale, cider (apparently, they are different) tasted like fish urine until I punched a beer with lemonade. The best punch EYVAH!!!! Try it, u will thank me. ¼ lemonade to ¾ beer etc. But please don’t punch Guinness with coke. Ruins the whole thing.

• I just realized how possessive I was over my parents. Imagine. On my pa’s birthday I called him up at 2.30pm my time (5.30pm) his time to wish him an happy one, but, there was some noise in the background. I asked where he was and he said NANDOS!!! Instantly, I went into panic mode. “What is my father, a man in the middle of his 5th decade doing at Nandos? That place is for holiday makers. Is my father looking for teens?”

Then he handed the phone to my mum. Phew. What they do together don’t worry me. Even if they were both hunting, as long as they are doing it together…

• I have been called a lesbinimps before and to date some people still think I was one in my past life. Now I have nothing against lesbinimps but I have never been one. Just because I shared a bed with my kukuyu in boarding school and are/were very close don’t mean we were swapping saliva (Damn u Red Pepper). No. We only kissed lightly on the lips and had a few pecks on the cheeks, eyes and foreheads. Nothing more. That is how we greet in our circles. A hug and a light kiss. None of that tongue action or throat games. We are just too close for comfort. Mr Mukiibi should deal with it. So, to answer u, Apr9, Emi, Normzo and sleek…no. Nothing went down. And lol to Sleek about that keys thing. I heard twas forks that did the trick.

• I own only 2 skirts in my life. See, I am blessed with a pair of toothpicks that can’t pull off the whole skirt look. And besides the stick thin size, they are as if crooked. Like kibaliga. So heRRi no!

If u ignore the airport hangar I call a forehead u will be able to focus on the stilts. I wonder how I stand on those “legs”.

Brenda (BS) my legs and Mrs Patel’s butt have put on weight.

The last time I wore a skirt was some time last summer when I was dared to wear one by my friend Jimmy. I got his wager. This time I woke up in the morning to find nothing for me to wear and I hate ironing when I’m in a rush. So I got the next best thing. A skirt I bought impulsively on ebay. It’d been hanging neat for like a year. I had nothing to do so I threw it on.

My colleagues made fun of me the whole day. Mbu I looked like man in drag. I honestly found it hard to trek around the office with my skirt. But I liked the feel of wind beating on my “legs” so I mos def will be buying skirts.

• I am a coward. If that is an appropriate term. Those that know me know that I am a gangster and Mafia rolled into one. But that is just a front I have. Deep down I am a wimp. I can’t look at any distressing pictures of read a sad or sorrowful story without breaking down. Sometime back I read a story about a teenage boy who hanged himself in his mother’s house because he was fed up of being bullied for having a disability and ginger coloured (Darker blonde) hair. I broke down on the train and a complete stranger offered me a whole pack of tissues. I was embarrassed even. So from that day, I just turn the page.

And with that, ladies and gen’lemen, I leave u in peace. Now I will be a good guest and not spoil this chance that I have over at Mr Bazanye’s. I have not finished the “soft drinks” offered.

But before I leave, this one is for Erique, wherever he is. Even chicks may find this “useful.”

I’m sorry, but that is all I can come up with now. This blogcks is clearly not kidding.

I tag those who haven’t been tagged yet: Landlord Baz, Three, King, B2B, Mudamuli, Esq and Cute face (Di).

Around of a plause ladies and gentlemen. I will categorise this as “How to beat the blogcks.”

A commercial break…

And just one day after my very pathetic lament, I find myself with three posts – not one, but three. One of which is the long-awaited Cheri guest spot.

I’m going to keep you waiting a little bit before I hit you with that particular one. Before then, I need to take a moment to exploit you guys again.

Remember when I placed a request on this blog and then leaned back while you guys virtually WROTE my article for me?

(https://bazanye.wordpress.com/2009/02/24/its-not-cheating-if/)

That was awesome.

I was wondering if we can do it again.

First of all I should reassert this point. I am not a lazy bastard who doesn’t want to work; I am not a thief who would rather have others do his labour for him.

But you will understand after I make my request that this is the hardest work I can possibly do given the nature of the assignment.

I have been asked to compile some bad love letters. Sms and email may also apply.

Now, I have never received a bad love letter, so I have to go out and find people who might have and ask them. Which is what I am doing right now. You’re cute, but not intimidating enough to keep at bay all the loser lames who try to chat you up. You must have received some interesting letters, or emails or sms in your life.

Why don’t you share them with us, Uganda’s Leading Daily With The Dumb Headlines? Anonymity will be sustained and I promise not to make the same mistake I did with the article where I grossly misquoted Solomon King. (Solo, I cannot tell you how sorry I still am, and can’t figure out how that change got through. I had written “a local webdesign outfit” because you explicitly told me it wasn’t your company.

Anyway.

If you would be so kind, please send your loser lovepangs to me at ebazanye@newvision.co.ug, or bazanye@gmail.com. Preferebly both, because New Vision’s email is run by New Vision’s IT department and, therefore, we can assume that it is not here to make my life easier.

Thanks in advance.

It’s Baz, baby!

To whom it may disconcert

I never thought I would do this. But then again, I also never thought I would be so bereft of blog ideas. It’s a scorching desert out there, where every seed of a thought that dares harbour the ambition to grow is struck down as a sapling… one intro and then it flounders, falls in a final, flat, floppy death. I have blogcks.

I am going to blog some shit someone else wrote, therefore. 

I know what you are thinking: What happens if the article I post is a good one?

Believe, me I was scared shitless about that. What happens if  you are so impressed that it undoes all the work I have been painstakingly trying to achieve all these years, when I typed my fingers to the bone three times a week trying to get you to like me? What if you read it and forget all about me?

Just to prevent that eventuality, I am going to ask you to make a promise before you proceed. Promise that  you will always love me.

No, say it. You have to say the words.

Okay. I’m satisfied. I now present, A Hilarious Thing From The Internets (That Is Not A Lolcat.)

 

Dear Mr Addison, 

 

I am writing to you to express our thanks for your more than prompt reply to our latest communication, and also to answer some of the points you raise. 

 

I will address them, as ever, in order. 

 

Firstly, I must take issue with your description of our last as a “begging letter”. It might perhaps more properly be referred to as a “tax demand”. This is how we, at the Inland Revenue have always, for reasons of accuracy; traditionally referred to such documents. 

 

Secondly, your frustration at our adding to the “endless stream of crapulent whining and panhandling vomited daily through the letterbox on to the doormat” has been noted. However, whilst I have naturally not seen the other letters to which you refer I would cautiously suggest that their being from “pauper councils, Lombardy pirate banking houses and pissant gas-mongerers” might indicate that your decision to “file them next to the toilet in case of emergencies is at best a little ill-advised. 

 

In common with my own organisation, it is unlikely that the senders of these letters do see you as a “lackwit bumpkin or, come to that, a “sodding charity”. More likely they see you as a citizen of Great Britain, with a responsibility to contribute to the upkeep of the nation as a whole. 

 

Which brings me to my next point. Whilst there may be some spirit of truth in your assertion that the taxes you pay “go to shore up the canker-blighted, toppling folly that is the Public Services”, a moment’s rudimentary calculation ought to disabuse you of the notion that the government in any way expects you to “stump up for the whole damned party” yourself. The estimates you provide for the Chancellor’s disbursement of the funds levied by taxation, whilst colourful, are, in fairness, a little off the mark. Less than you seem to imagine is spent on “junkets for Bunterish lickspittles” and “dancing whores” whilst far more than you have accounted for is allocated to, for example, “that box-ticking facade of a university system.” 

 

A couple of technical points arising from direct queries: 

1. The reason we don’t simply write “Muggins” on the envelope has to do with the vagaries of the postal system;

2. You can rest assured that “sucking the very marrows of those with nothing else to give” has never been considered as a practice because even if the Personal Allowance didn’t render it irrelevant, the sheer medical logistics involved would make it financially unviable. 

 

I trust this has helped. In the meantime, whilst I would not in any way wish to influence your decision one way or the other, I ought to point out that even if you did choose to “give the whole foul jamboree up and go and live in India” you would still owe us the money. Please forward it by Friday. 

 

Yours Sincerely, 

H J Lee Customer Relations

 

I would link it, but hey, it’s all over the internet. Just google the first sentence. I know I desperately need your love, but please. I’m not your houseboy.

Who shot the Sherriff?

Has anyone else noticed the jarring disconnect between New Vision stories and New Vision story headlines? Is it just me or does it sometimes seem as if the two are in different realms, the story in one parallel universe where one thing is meant and said, and the headline in another, where another completely different meaning is uttered?

Take for example the recent story headlined “Barack Obama Survives Assasination”. Now, I may be a fastidious pissant with tighty-whiteys that hunch up into knots of disconcertment whenever I see the word “everyday” used instead of “every day”, and I understand that in this situation one needs not to attack the grammatical windmill full tilt, but rather, and rather obviously, one needs to loosen up. Loosening up is the wiser option when one’s underwear is in knots.

But when I read “Obama Survives Assasination”, I am sorry, but I begin to think Obama was assassinated and then survived. 

I will assume, though, that what they meant was that the fellow survived an assassination attempt, not an actual assassination—because people don’t survive those, not even Obama, though the whole world thinks he is Superman.

From the story, however, (here http://newvision.co.ug/D/8/12/677333 ) it sounds more like there was no actual attempt, either. At most there was a plan to lay a plot to lead to an attempt that may, if successful, have resulted in an assassination. An assassination which would only be successful if the victim did not survive.

Well, any frowns that were inspired by the death and resurrection of Obama were reversed by another later front page story: “Catholic Church to Probe Gay Priests” it said.

No, that one is not on the internet. You have to take my word for it. 

Ahem: I’ll Get A Title Later

 

What I am about to tell you may shake your confidence to the very core. It may leave your faith in shatters. It may destroy your belief in everything you thought you knew. But the truth must be told.

This media, this press that you trust so much? It isn’t as well-informed as you imagine. For example, most of the people in my office have never watched the Matrix.

 

The Matrix, as everyone in the enlightened world knows, is the trilogy of movies that started in 1999 and, by blending elements of eastern philosophy with religious allegory and flying men who know Kung Fu, became one of the most-quoted films ever since.

 

Now, we all know that there is scant social capital to be gained from quoting Shakespeare these days. All of us who have tried know the look of utter bewilderment bordering on suspicion and mixed in with a dash of pity that meets you when you try anything more ambitious than “What’s in a name, a rose by any other  name would smell as sweet.”

 The last time I tried to introduce a line from Macbeth they looked at me as if I was insulting them.

 

So, should one try to be more contemporary? You think that will work? If so, here’s an exercise. Try to utter the phrase (as my friend recently did) “That is what Hanna Arendt refers to as ‘the banality of evil.’ ” And see if it doesn’t stop the conversation more effectively than a traffic accident.

 The fact is that in this day and age, movies are all we have left. Books are old hat, and if you can get away with refering to Hanna Arendt, so are you, and all your friends. These days the cool kids quote movies. Or at the very least episodes of Family Guy, House, and How I Met Your Mother.

And the Bible. The Bible is timeless.

 

You need to be able to quote great works of art in everyday conversation. By alluding to a greater exploration of a large idea—which is what any work of art is—you are able to, in one phrase, condense a world of meaning into a capsule of sense that you can use to strengthen an argument, illustrate a point, colour a statement, or even just, and this is the best part, impress others.

I mean, where would we be if every time we had to refer to the damage wrought upon African cultures by the rampaging colonialists we would need to actually refer to the damage wrought upon African cultures by the rampaging colonialists? Aren’t we better of smiling wanly and sighing, “We are No Longer at Ease,” and then shaking our heads?

 

But it only works if the person you are talking to also consumed said work of art. Otherwise you might as well be like Cicero.

 At this point  you will be asking me, “But Mr Bazanye…”

 What for it…

 “What is the Matrix?”

 You see my point? My workmates won’t get that that is a punchline.

 

 

 

Of course I am going to tell you where the awesome pictures are from.   www.deviantart.com. Go and join. It’s excellent!