Love is a Calabash, City Boy Blues and Other Cool Stories…

 

Love is a calabash. Seriously. A bloody calabash and a particularly difficult calabash to climb out of. A worrisome number of my friends and acquaintances have broken up with their significant others over the last three months (12 of them at last count) and I have had the unfortunate opportunity to witness some of the fallout. While most of them are mature young adults who have been able to take it understandably well, it has not been pretty in some cases. It is all very traumatizing to be honest. I don’t know why they choose to put ME through this. Just when I’m beginning to feel happy for them and starting to think up cool nicknames and corny ‘couple’ jokes to tell when we go out together or talk about their partners –BAM! The calabash is broken. Anyway, I’ve already told quite a number of them what I am about to write here but it is important to have this written in black and white and in clear legal terms so that there can be no misunderstanding.

If YOU (regardless of gender or specie), already being in or currently entering into a social friendship contract with Me (herein after referred to as myself or I) begin to fall in love with someone whereupon you proceed to engage in the social partnership commonly recognized as a ‘relationship’ in which one of you is designated the ‘penis owner and primary male personage’ hereafter referred to as the ‘boyfriend’ and the other being designated the ‘vagina custodian and primary female personage’ hereafter referred to the ‘girlfriend’, you must agree to the following:

1. That the relationship contract shall in due course culminate in the marriage of the boyfriend and the girlfriend at a ceremony where I shall be the best man (or chief brides-male, as the case may be) and shall be entitled to a minimum of 36.735% by weight of  all the small chops present at this ceremony.
2. That, upon experiencing any distress significant enough to cause a breakage of this contract, the boyfriend and girlfriend shall consult Me within 48 hours and no breakage of this relationship contract shall proceed without my knowledge and prior consent.
3. That, upon the decision of the boyfriend and girlfriend to engage in a threesome and/or group sex and/or any associated sexual debaucheries, I shall be consulted with the details of this intention and have first right of refusal to participate in the aforementioned activity without prejudice.
4. Should the relationship contract lead to the issue of offspring, such issue shall have as a minimum, one of my names and I shall be the godfather to this issue. This will enable me use Photoshop to edit a poster of the ‘The godfather’ movie and replace Al Pacino’s face with mine as soon as possible. This is an essential part of the contract.

This contract is binding in all its elements and any breach shall be punished by the deployment of an armored Sigidi to the breaching party’s home. Such an armored Sigidi shall as a minimum be equipped with Chicken pox warheads and a fever and headache gun turret. Dysentery and Diarrhea missiles are optional but also permitted by this agreement.

This agreement is fully legally binding and retroactive and enforceable in the Jurisdiction of the entire Universe and all alternate realities except the Federal republic of Northern Eglionitrianus Major and the Klingon outerlands.  

_______________                             _______________                                   ____________

Boyfriends signature                                  Girlfriends signature                                            My signature

It’s all legal now. So dear friends, print, sign in triplicate, return and proceed to enter the calabash at your own risk.

Anyway, I’ve recently relocated from London (the so-called centre of the world) to Abingdon (a small town North-West of London and near Oxford City which is most assuredly not the centre of the world). I am a city child at heart and the move has been….uncomfortable. I’m used to bright lights and boisterous nights. I like the semi-anonymity of being able to walk through a city and not recognize anyone.  I like being lost in a 21^st century metropolis as long as I have a small quiet corner to return to when I’m done with my urban adventures.  There is an overwhelming sense of potential one gets from the charged environment of places like Lagos, New York, Tokyo, London, Bangkok, Paris and every other big city in the world. Don’t get me wrong, small towns have their charms and I appreciate them for what they are but I don’t know if I can be completely happy in a small town. At least London is just about an hour and £40 away, I can go if need be but so far, I’ve been suffering a case of the city boy blues.

In the inconsequential-cool-story scetion: I deleted my twitter account about a month ago because … well…because… I was tired of it. But as with all things that have the potential to bring fun or joy, I was eventually drawn back – quite by accident. I opened twitter on my old computer and it logged into my account as it is set to do automatically. Login before 30 days= Account restoration. Bloody technology. Anyhow, I took the opportunity to DM a few friends and then the emails and DMs kept coming until finally, I realized how much I had missed some people and that it’s just more convenient to communicate with people on twitter especially with those that I met through twitter in the first place. It’s just an efficient communication tool and will be used as such. So there. No more account deletion unless something bizarre happens.

The new T.I. mixtape – ‘Fuck the city up’ is pretty awesome. I’ve had the song ‘Oh Yeah’ on repeat for most of the last three weeks.

The new Nightwish album ‘Imaginaerum’ is also awesome. Seriously, you have to listen to it all from start to finish to fully appreciate its scope and epic-ness.

 In other random-rubbish-floating around-in-my-head-news, I’ve come to realize just how much science has contributed to the acceptance of previously marginalized groups in society especially when it comes to the matter of racism. I remember my father telling me a story relayed to him by a friend of his who studied in South Africa in the late 70’s at the height of apartheid. There were a lot of Indians coming into the country at that time as well as Chinese and many other Asians. There were also a number of “sub-Saharan Africans”. They are all important parts of the story but not the main meat of it. This story concerns a Senior Engineer’s attitude towards toilets.

‘Whites’ and ‘Coloreds’ had separate toilets which, I assume, was to ensure that the white excrement was not contaminated by colored excrement which was at the time, I further presume, considered inferior excrement because the White man’s excrement was smarter and more advanced and had a better economy and had blue eyes and blonde hair. Whatever the reason, separate toilets were the way. Now with the influx of Indian and Chinese engineers who proved over time that they were every bit as capable as the Caucasian engineers, there was a problem. Which toilets would they use? They were apparently too intelligent to share toilets with the Negros but of course not yet civilized enough to enter the Caucasian’s glorious toilet. Protests and dissent ensued. Conundrum. The most senior engineer on the site where my father’s friend worked – a German – was called upon to solve the problem. In the end, he came up with what was a mildly ridiculous but completely reasonable solution to the problem. He decided that everyone would use toilets according to their performance on the job. So every month, the employees were graded according to performance and divided into two groups. The performers and the sub-par. Lists were put up beside the toilet door accordingly. As my father’s friend told the story, in 2 months, both toilets had about equal proportions of White and Black users. The only noticeable trend was that the Asians always used the ‘performers’ toilets. He always used that as an example to explain why Asians are slowly taking over the world technologically and consequently, economically. I should point out that what the German did was illegal at the time but no one reported it.

Anyway, my point is, it’s usually in such endeavors where mental capacity matters more than any other consideration that you find that prejudices are quickly done away with. Many examples abound. As far back as 400BC, Scholars were exchanged between kingdoms to share knowledge and were generally treated specially regardless of thr politics of the day. The International space station is another example of large scale human cooperation even between countries that generally antagonize each other. Many others abound. In such matters, no one cares where you are from as long as you can contribute to knowledge and work for the glory of science. Of course scientific fields are not the only area where you find this phenomenon but it is one of the most consistent and obvious about it.

Being an Adult is hard. Much harder than it seems from outside. To a child, being an adult means having all the money and being able to buy as much ice cream as you want, getting to drive a car and generally being able to beat or shout at people smaller than you. I’ve had to be an adult for a long time now and it’s just one issue after another. Having to worry about Houses, Work, Money, Family,  Business, Interpersonal relationships and all the other things one generally has to deal with in ones capacity as an adult is not in the least bit fun. I suppose I’m learning and getting used to it but it’s never easy. Taking major life decisions without parental guidance and having only a brother as a sounding board for everything is difficult. I’m sure it is especially so for my brother and just as much for anyone else in a similar situation. I wonder if it would be any easier if I had a significant other to talk to or worse because of the issues that generally come with introducing another human being into your life. I don’t know. If you know, tell me so I can order one of those Russian mail-order-brides people generally get off the internet.  What’s that you say? I should just toast a babe and get a proper girlfriend? Do I look like a toaster? Do you see two slits in my body cavity where you can insert babes till they are brown and hot and ready to eat? No? Me neither. (“Brown and hot and ready to eat” is severely sexual now that I think about it). Besides, didn’t you read the first part of this thing? Love is a calabash.

Rabbits taste delicious.

Perhaps it’s time for another travel story. It’s almost been a year since Bangkok and I am on a trip right now (which refuses to end even though it’s supposed to by now, but one must make the most of every situation so I shall do what I can and have fun). Once it is concluded, we shall see. Right now its wavering between epic and annoying so I dont know. It’s always fun recording and sharing memories though.

I should probably stop now before we hit arctic conditions.

Boundary conditions

I’ve been wondering for a while about the mental process that accompanies the ‘selection’ of sexual orientation. This ‘thinking’ was the result of several short conversations I had with a homosexual acquaintance which formed the basis of all this wondering.

In the modern, liberal atmosphere of our day, declaring oneself to be a homosexual does not automatically trigger society’s ‘tar, feather and destroy’ emergency defense system as it used to in the no-so-distant past. I will not concern myself with whether this is a good or bad thing, I will restrict my opinion to a simple statement of the fact that I think it is part of the societal evolution of humanity – to be more accepting of what were once ‘marginalized’ groups.

But if one accepts this as fact then invariably the question arises: “Where do we draw the limits of acceptance?” At what point do we say ‘Nay! Stop! Tis too far’? Let us assume for instance that we have an acquaintance named …errr… ‘Robert Pattinson’ who is of the homosexual persuation. He tells us that he cannot control his attraction towards other penis posessors. That he was ‘born this way’. Perhaps he says all this while wearing glitter and in a high-pitched falsetto while paraphrasing Lady gaga from time to time. We manage to look past all this and distil the rationale behind his declaration to the simple statement ‘I was born this way’/ ‘I did not choose to be gay’/ ‘God does not make mmistakes and he made me this way’. We are rational people so we say yes of course, no one should be victimized, marginalized or ostracized for things over which they have no control. And we embrace Robert in all his homosexual glory while being careful not to let any of our important bits get too close to any of his own important bits.

Excellent.

Now let us also say we have another friend ‘Harry Porter ‘ who claims to be sexually attracted to livestock – cows in particular. After recoiling in disgust – we may be rational men but we are just men after all – we allow him explain himself. He proceeds to ramble on and on about how he has had an irresistable urge to ‘love’ cows since he was a child. He doesn’t understand it but it is the way he is. He was ‘born this way’/ ‘did not choose to be a cow-lover’/ ‘God does not make mmistakes and made him this way’… It is natural to him. See the conundrum that we, reasonable men, now face? Leave aside the issue of whether these impulses were acted upon, desires consumated or whether mutual consent can possibly be given by livestock – those are legal considerations. Both men claim to be victims of nature/God/fate/whatever you believe. Based on pure logic, they both have a right to be accepted for what they are and not be judged. Yet we all know what will happen to anyone that claims to be attracted to animals and goes further to insert his important bits into the animals’ important bits. Extend that rationale to those amongst us that are attracted to children and you will have pushed our discussion to its logical limits.

Not so excellent, eh?

Why is revulsion the result of any ‘abnormal’ desire observed in others? What is ‘natural’ and what is not? I’m not going to pick a side on all this because quite frankly I don’t know. All I’m saying is: follow the logic. If discriminating against people because of something they have no control over is wrong, then should it extend to every facet of life – starting from the obviously uncontrollable traits like skin color through to the marginally-obviously uncontrollable traits like height, weight, and all the way to not-so-obviously-uncontrollable traits like homosexuality, bizarre-fetishes, the ‘natural’ urges for beastialty, paedophilia and and other assorted perversions? And if not, where and how do we draw the line? What are the boundary conditions?

Some would say it is not my business what others do with themselves. Perhaps they are right because I’m not sure why I’m writing this or whay I even care about it. Perhaps I’m writing this because I want someone to give me a logical explanation – free of sentiment – of where the boundaries lie – if there are any. Because until then we all draw our own arbitrary lines based on feelings and I am not sure I feel comfortable doing that anymore. We are of course rational men after all, are we not?

Honor

Yesterday marked the 2nd year since the day of my fathers death. I tried to summon the words to say –  to describe the way I felt. The way I feel whenever I remember him and all he was. Father, Husband, Engineer, Philosopher, Inventor, Employer, Judoka, Doctor, DJ, Rebel, Artist, Friend.

But my friends, my words, they failed me. And so I tried to find a song. Something that could capture the essence of my feelings. But music, my muse – she failed me still. So I went to bed with a mind heavy with words left unsaid, thoughts left unexpresed and only a series of brief converstions with my brother and a few friends about the day that had changed my life.

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It was a few minutes to midnight when he told me to leave the hospital. When he said that he would be fine and struggled to his feet to close the door behind me. I was worried but I could not object. Daddy was always right. And so I left.

The call came the next morning. From the tone I could tell it was not good. I pleaded with God to not let it be so. To let the edge in my uncle’s voice have been nothing but nerves. But it wasnt. My brothers and I arrived to the news that Daddy had passed away in the night. We identified his body. And in that instant I was reduced to nothing.

Have you ever seen a powerful explosion? One that is strong enough to push the air away from its epicentre to create a vacuum? When the explosion is done, the air all comes rushing back – an implosion of sorts. Everytime I remember the events that occured 731 days ago, it pushes eveything away from my mind – emotions, thoughts, dreams and memories and leaves nothing but the memory of itself. And when it is over, everything comes back. First the memories of times shared. Then the dreams of the future planned and then the raw unbridled emotion, the intense sensation of love and respect that my father always invoked in me. It all comes rushing back and for a moment I cannnot breathe. I am reduced to nothing. And then it is gone. Just as suddenly as it came.

I have done a great many things since that day – some of which I am proud of and some of which I am not. But I live everyday with the spirit of my father behind me and I think he would be proud of what his children have acheived in the last two years. Some of these acheivements have come at great cost but they have been necessary. I’m sure the spirit of my mother stands proudly beside his because they were never apart. Not even death could separate them for long. So they are with us and they guide us.

I like to think that in my being, living, loving, thriving and succeeding I honor them. And I intend to do so for a long time to come.

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I finally found a song that I think is fitting. Its a piano instrumental by a little-known producer named Dansonn but it is beautiful, sad and strangely inspirational at the same time. it is called Honor the fallen

Honor the fallen