What good is sittin’ alone in a room…

There is an ancient African wise saying that goes, “You can’t save everyone, but never let it be said that you never saved anyone.”

You are going to party on Saturday the 8th anyway. You are going to drink and dance and be fabulous as you usually do, so why not do it with the Piff? They are very cool people, human beings of the finest caliber. I swear on it and no one will ever contradict me.

The Piff is an organization I am involved with which, among other things, supports a small orphanage out of town, (Details here ). The kids need quite a bit of money. Because they are kids in an orphanage (you really must click  this for details better rendered) so what’s going to happen is  you are going to buy a ticket for a fundraising party to be held next Sato.

Holler at me for a ticket and we go.  Because there is an Ancient African saying that goes,  “These kids need you to hit this proggie. So let’s buy these tickets.”

How To Enjoy, yes ENJOY, an Office Meeting

Early morning meetings are  one of the most lethal workplace hazards human office drones have to contend with in the ongoing process of slow death they call their “lives”.

We, the Condemmend of the New Vision had one this morning.

There was a very important issue to discuss. Very important. Very very important. Even more important than why the fuck we keep printing semicolons all over the freaking place with such shizophrenic disregard for all the laws of holy physics, and it was not about how to put the dismal company website finally out of the internet’s misery.

No. More important than that. It was about (redacted because I don’t think you have the clearance to read about the company’s issues).

As we stewed in that room, in which dozens of us were crammed and, may I add, crammed during a time when the building’s AC is not working and the issue of how to open the windows of this ultramodern office complex is not yet important enough to warrant a meeting of its own, we listened to an array of managers explain how the rest of us are really screwing the company over with our laziness and how if we don’t style up, God help the bosses they will (redacted) all our asses.

Of course they didn’t say it in those words. That would have been much briefer. And you know what “brief  meeting” is? It’s an oxymoron, okay? Write that down.

One of the most impressive presentations was given by a manager we will call Sam. Sam had a lot to say about how our slack-jawed incompetence was costing the company a lot of money. Of course he didn’t use any of those words.

One of the words he DID use, as he explained the way the newspaper was made in the factory — or the way the newspaper WOULD be made if we weren’t such a bunch of useless monkeyfarts who never met a minute we couldn’t waste — one of the words he did use was “inserting.”

“Inserting”.

I found myself giggling like a P7 kid.

Cue that harp and violins and chimes music that movies use to indicate that an epiphany has been achieved.

They say every day is a learning experience, and that day I learnt a very important lesson. That lesson is that meetings can be fun if you decide to take every innocent thing the manager says and try to turn it into a filthy sexual innuendo. For example, Sam said the following:

• “From the inner downward parts”
• “So now we are entering where Lwanga comes in”

And

• ” We use the same machines”

I have not had so much fun in a meeting ever in my life.

Random Thurrogits Again.

Whatever Lynn Truss is smoking, I want some.

Degstar, your uncle and my nephew, posted about Rehema Kutesa, who is in need of help. And then posted an update on how  this help can be delivered. BHH is coming  up. You guys, we represent.

Somewhere in Wina Classic’s new store in Garden City you will find a pair of shoes—sneakers—going for 350,000 shillings. Listen. If you must insult me, just call me a disgusting streak of residue staining the latrine wall of society to my freaking face. Don’t go around in circles of simanyi trying to sell me sneakers at 350,000shillings as if they have a 3.2megapixel camera and GPRS-Edge connectivity and dual sim-card capacity in them. Nttsssss.

They say every guy wishes he was Barney. A lot of guys think they are Barney. A few guys actually are.

I have writer’s block. Can you tell? I am convinced now that the reason I will never be one of those writers is that I can never just tell you what I think or how I feel about things. So there will never be that connection with me that you develop with those writers who express some emotion or some idea that you yourself have experienced right there in your own heart and mind. That sense of kinship, we will never share it. Because the most I can do is tell you a fragile lie, or a coy joke, or a completely meaningless gust of fairydust.

Great vengeance and furious anger

They say everyone has that one teacher in their lives, that one schoolteacher who made a difference, who inspired them, and motivated them and made them who they are today, that one teacher without whom they would never have achieved whatever success they have achieved at the point in their life of which they are speaking.

Well, I don’t.

Every single teacher I ever had since P.7 in Kampala Parents (before that, as you know, I was in outside countries such as Kisumu) was an evil bastard. They were all mean, rutheless bullies who did nothing but bully little children because they enjoyed it. I hate them all and will never forgive any of them. They are scum. They are vile, repugnant scum.

You know what? I don’t have a whole lot of proggie this weekend. I have um… this on Sato, and that on Sunday, but I can find time to actually, finally, close this chapter. I think I should use the money I have left in the bank now that I am gainfully employed and well-rewarded for my labours to hire a few goons and hunt those bastards down.

Heh heh and sinister slurp sounds. “Hey teacher, it’s me Bazanye. Remember me. I told  you I’d be back…”

NEWS FOR YUPPIES

One of the top stories in Ugandan politics last week was the results of the FDC flag-bearers race. The competition to see who will represent the party if they field a candidate for the next presidential election was between Gen Mugisha Muntu and Col Kiiza Besigye. Besigye won and the implications of this contest are still being discussed in more intellectual circles but we don’t want the common yuppie on the streets to be left out. So, to keep you in the loop, we have translated pretty much every interview Mugisha Muntu will give on the subject into simple, easy-to-grasp, yuppie slang, as follows.

Q: Boss, what up.

A: I’m easy.

Q: Guy, I hear that elections, what, Besigye, what, flag bearer, simanyi what?

A: Man, it was a hard paper.

Q: Those things?

A: You know.

Q: Otherwise?

A: I’m easy otherwise.

You’re up to date.

Hair Today

A little girl gazes with eyes full of admiration at her mother’s long flowing tresses and asks, “Mummy, how do you get such lovely hair?”

“From India,” the woman replies, because you must never lie to children.

If you have a seque lying around nearby, please insert it here to lead from that to the next paragraph.

International Consumer Rights Protection agencies have obtained satellite photos of stockpiles of black dye and shaving cream hidden in granaries and sheds in several rural Indian villages. A link is suspected between these stockpiles and the increasing number of bald dogs that have been spotted roaming around said villages.

The agencies are looking with concern at the correlation between the short bristles of a dog’s fur and the long strands usually packaged as human hairpieces from India and are trying to find a means of transforming one to the other. Once they do, they will release a full report.

This dog is named Lucille Bald. I'm not lying

Don’t be duffed.

I don’t like to think of myself as a petty little bitch, but I probably am exactly that. I just defriended a colleague of mine from facebook because I don’t like his English.

He’s a pleasant enough fellow. Every time he sees me in the corridors he shouts, “Eh, that’s a bad idea! Lol!” so I wince, though I don’t say anything, because he means well, but besides that, we don’t have much conversation.

We were until lately friends on facebook as well and he was almost as prolific as I am in his updates.

The problem is not that his updates are written in a lopsidey pidgin that he thinks is English. That’s not the issue. A lot of people write and speak broken English. If you are not an English teacher or in any other way professionally obliged to communicate in proper English, then, though it may be a bit irritating sometimes, it really isn’t reason enough to completely defenestrate you.

Problem is that he is a journalist.

And he does it all the time.

And they are realy really really bad.

Half the time I can’t make out what he’s trying to say. The other half I’m convinced he isn’t trying at all. He’s just sitting on the keyboard. The resultant status message is his ass typing.

I don’t expect too much from Ugandan journalists, do I? I mean, we are a bunch of idiots and everyone knows that, so why should I expect our facebook updates to be better written than our newspapers?

I am a petty bitch. I shouldn’t have defriended the guy.

But how do you misspell the word “daft”?