Random Thurogitts

1. Whatever Chuck Palahniuk is smoking, I want some. (Honourable mention to Tom Robbins).
2. 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.
3. 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.
4. 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.
5. 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!

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

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

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

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

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

We are sucka-free this week.

By Ernest Hornsleth Bazanye

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.