Ricky Martin, father of two, coming out gay has not been a surprise to
many. Come on you'd have to have had your gaydar disabled not to have
known it, if Shake Your Bon Bon still hadn't given the game away...
Tuesday, March 30, 2010
Sunday, March 28, 2010
Do Kenyan robots deserve any human rights?
Not to tar everyone with the same brush but Kenyan society is fast reaping the abundant fruits of a mainstream education system that spits out legion after legion incapable of blending ideals and rhetoric into reality. It’s fair to say that we have a significant walking-mass wounded by rote learning. These puppets by the time they are in early adulthood are ripened for a life of manipulation, to be controlled and guaranteed to operate with clockwork predictability even as they quench their thirst for 'knowledge'. I’ve come across so many of them festooned with MBAs and PHDs in my working and social life, so sad because they knew their stuff well and were very good at what they did but when you really looked in their eyes the passion and fire in them was gone and had been replaced by glassy currency signs. I watched in amazement as they looked the other way while government continued to ignore its gay citizens.
We went calling on those among us who could wield their influence because we had heard them say how much they understood and embraced the spirit of Universal Human rights and fairness, especially those who preached thy neighbour’s love. But we found them already in bed with the oppressor making furious creaky merriment in the same unoriginal fashion. Hanging on the door-knob was a do-not-disturb sign in the familiar fonts of the previously trusted message bearers inked in the warm blood and tears of the hunted. That’s when it dawned on me that you can’t entrust an honest debate on important issues to these robots. They never truly believed in anything worth defending but only went through the motions sleepwalking in complex angles while foraging for shiny tokens to pin onto their rusting armour. Their self-interests had made them blind to ethical dimensions.
I think I’d have more respect for them if they just stopped pretending to defend any human rights.
We went calling on those among us who could wield their influence because we had heard them say how much they understood and embraced the spirit of Universal Human rights and fairness, especially those who preached thy neighbour’s love. But we found them already in bed with the oppressor making furious creaky merriment in the same unoriginal fashion. Hanging on the door-knob was a do-not-disturb sign in the familiar fonts of the previously trusted message bearers inked in the warm blood and tears of the hunted. That’s when it dawned on me that you can’t entrust an honest debate on important issues to these robots. They never truly believed in anything worth defending but only went through the motions sleepwalking in complex angles while foraging for shiny tokens to pin onto their rusting armour. Their self-interests had made them blind to ethical dimensions.
I think I’d have more respect for them if they just stopped pretending to defend any human rights.
Tuesday, March 23, 2010
Senses
my tea black with one sugar, though I've been asking Imelda to make it
for me white without milk. She's a clever one and always gets it right
but I don't think she's really listening how I say it...
So this pic - it's of beautiful bougainvillea flowers growing along
the fence. If you look closely you'll also see the butterfly that I
was very surprised to notice after I'd taken the picture...
Friday, March 19, 2010
Paper Scissors Rock
Hey, we haven't had a vid in a while. I was watching this one today and sensing some homoeroticism, what do you guys think?
My untamed youth
I took this shot of downtown Nairobi on my way from a friend’s office on Commerce House 5th floor, Moi Avenue. That’s the building that housed Florida 2000 nightclub, that wonderful den of iniquity. Actually last time I was in F2, Flonje as a true aficionado calls it, was at least 18 years ago. But as you can see this time I was in the vicinity during the day, mid-afternoon to be exact.
Years and years ago when I was a still a chicken (14-16 years old) I was a regular fixture at the nightclub even during school nights ogling at the dancers (male and female, all amazing) and their super-toned bodies. Those were the days frittering away my parents’ cash (money that I could do with right now, by the way) cavorting with hookers, drinking beer and eating pilau with kachumbari downstairs outside the ART shop with pimps, drug dealers and taxi drivers. All this while the parents, my siblings and most normal people slept away…
Yes, there was a time when Nairobi was a safe place to walk at all hours, except on occasion when I encountered policemen with dogs on patrol around that dodgy zone behind KCB Kencom House as I club-hopped from F2 to Tamango (before it was called Visions) on Kimathi Street at 3 am. Always the same script wanting to arrest me on trumped-up drunk and disorderly or loitering charges unless I greased their palms with some chai or tea. I wish I'd go back to those days because I'd be carrying a flask of hot tea for such encounters . Luckily an accident of birth meant I bore my famous grandfather’s name whose mere mention I’d learned early in life could open the right doors wide and the cops normally ended up escorting me to the other club and even gave a little salute as I trotted up the steps for part 2. I guess I was a corrupt little Kenyan, just like most of the others back then, lol! I was also a bit of a brat...
Back to F2 and its mock zebra-skin carpet which I understand nowadays even has a strip club next door. Some nights I’d forget myself only to crawl out of the nightclub in the morning to dazzling daylight and bustling streets. My parents usually left the house for work before we got up, so I’d just go home on the bus and sleep the booze and other substances off before getting up to go back to town to pick up my Enduro trail bike where I’d left it unchained outside F2 because I didn’t want to get myself killed riding under the influence. In fact how I passed my exams I’ll never know because my teachers often wrote in my report card, ‘shows great potential and should go far but is easily distracted’. At least I never missed a scouts overnight camping trip and I never ever went to school pissed….hahahahaa
I also learned the valuable art of keeping people sweet (always smile whatever the situation and never say a bad word behind someone’s back) so the servants and siblings even covered for me. Of course I forged dad’s signature on absence letters to school and one-finger typed these out on mummy’s old manual Olivetti for authenticity. That soon unraveled through a painful ordeal which is a story for another day. Oh, the folly of youth but I was having too much fun reducing my life expectancy by at least 10 years while experimenting with more stuff than many people fit into a lifetime. I count myself very lucky to have escaped unscathed because I quickly got bored and grew up super fast and just managed to get my act together. By the time my friends from school were discovering nightclubs I had that part well and truly behind me. One of these days I might even tell you about my graduation to the massage parlour ‘phase’ with the ‘extras’, if you’re as nice as you usually are.
Sorry about the pic by the way, not being top notch, it’s taken using my iphone’s measly 2 mp camera. I damaged my other camera recently when I dropped it on the bathroom floor (don’t ask) and I can’t seem to get anyone to fix it. I’m not shy, if anyone has a spare slr feel free to swing it my way and I’ll take some interesting shots just for you. Yes you big, big boy there in the tight jeans and nice butt. Eeww, that sounds so creepy.. lol!
Years and years ago when I was a still a chicken (14-16 years old) I was a regular fixture at the nightclub even during school nights ogling at the dancers (male and female, all amazing) and their super-toned bodies. Those were the days frittering away my parents’ cash (money that I could do with right now, by the way) cavorting with hookers, drinking beer and eating pilau with kachumbari downstairs outside the ART shop with pimps, drug dealers and taxi drivers. All this while the parents, my siblings and most normal people slept away…
Yes, there was a time when Nairobi was a safe place to walk at all hours, except on occasion when I encountered policemen with dogs on patrol around that dodgy zone behind KCB Kencom House as I club-hopped from F2 to Tamango (before it was called Visions) on Kimathi Street at 3 am. Always the same script wanting to arrest me on trumped-up drunk and disorderly or loitering charges unless I greased their palms with some chai or tea. I wish I'd go back to those days because I'd be carrying a flask of hot tea for such encounters . Luckily an accident of birth meant I bore my famous grandfather’s name whose mere mention I’d learned early in life could open the right doors wide and the cops normally ended up escorting me to the other club and even gave a little salute as I trotted up the steps for part 2. I guess I was a corrupt little Kenyan, just like most of the others back then, lol! I was also a bit of a brat...
Back to F2 and its mock zebra-skin carpet which I understand nowadays even has a strip club next door. Some nights I’d forget myself only to crawl out of the nightclub in the morning to dazzling daylight and bustling streets. My parents usually left the house for work before we got up, so I’d just go home on the bus and sleep the booze and other substances off before getting up to go back to town to pick up my Enduro trail bike where I’d left it unchained outside F2 because I didn’t want to get myself killed riding under the influence. In fact how I passed my exams I’ll never know because my teachers often wrote in my report card, ‘shows great potential and should go far but is easily distracted’. At least I never missed a scouts overnight camping trip and I never ever went to school pissed….hahahahaa
I also learned the valuable art of keeping people sweet (always smile whatever the situation and never say a bad word behind someone’s back) so the servants and siblings even covered for me. Of course I forged dad’s signature on absence letters to school and one-finger typed these out on mummy’s old manual Olivetti for authenticity. That soon unraveled through a painful ordeal which is a story for another day. Oh, the folly of youth but I was having too much fun reducing my life expectancy by at least 10 years while experimenting with more stuff than many people fit into a lifetime. I count myself very lucky to have escaped unscathed because I quickly got bored and grew up super fast and just managed to get my act together. By the time my friends from school were discovering nightclubs I had that part well and truly behind me. One of these days I might even tell you about my graduation to the massage parlour ‘phase’ with the ‘extras’, if you’re as nice as you usually are.
Sorry about the pic by the way, not being top notch, it’s taken using my iphone’s measly 2 mp camera. I damaged my other camera recently when I dropped it on the bathroom floor (don’t ask) and I can’t seem to get anyone to fix it. I’m not shy, if anyone has a spare slr feel free to swing it my way and I’ll take some interesting shots just for you. Yes you big, big boy there in the tight jeans and nice butt. Eeww, that sounds so creepy.. lol!
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