Obama in Japanese & Other Random Questions

What is this craze in the Japanese form of names?
What is this other craze with joonas.net?
Who’d have thought Chrysler would go bankrupt?
Should the UK have entered Iraq at all?

Multi-Tasking in the Toilet

My office mates and I were bartering wisdom on how to bank our first millions of dollars, when Office Female #2 traipsed in. Faulting our after-hours chatter as thick-too-staid to spark and sizzle in the bored brain, she introduced the simple question: Can you pee and poo at the same time?

The quaint question set us thinking, but no sure answer came. Recall to the early morning did not unravel the mundane mystery: whether Necessity Number 1 could take place simultaneously with Necessity Number 2. Mock muscular movement would not settle the matter either, so we made an all-round resolution to pay particular attention the next morning.

Swine Flu & Other Random Fears

And now, it's Swine Flu
Looking for me and you
And the undefeated Taliban
Looking to take Pakistan!

Sick Love

She only asks a question;
He slaps her for an answer;
She holds where it hurts;
She apologises! They hug each other!
She apologised? Huh?

How Miss Jackson Listens to the Radio

Miss Jackson lies hushed, facing the ceiling with her eyes tightly closed. Slowly stretching out her hand, she feels and fumbles for the little dial. The sonic stations sail by, as she furrows her eyebrows to focus. She flits past a sound-spurt, and inches back till it’s finely tuned in stereo. She folds her hands across her tranquil torso, slackens the tautness back to her soft face, allows herself a victory smile, and, then, she slides into repose mode again. Miss Jolly Jackson doesn’t care a jack plug what station she listens to. If she likes what she hears, the dial stays put.

Random Questions

Should Caroline Caz Pal even be famous?
How long before Zuma exposes himself?
Does Myrtle Beach boast of anything besides fires?
Hasn't Obama ever abused credit cards?

The Music Videos in the City of Accra

The music videos in the City of Accra are faithful to life; no flimflam that there are no plump and lusty women in our city, or in the world. These ample damsels romp, roister, dance, model, flirt, swing and do whatever else it is they do just like the slim sistas.

In other worlds, it is all right for male artistes to be pretty portly, but even they permit only slender video vixens. Whoever knows any real women knows that the quality of womanhood does not come with size.

Jumbo size; bouncing here; flouncing there; rolling along; taking heavy, sure steps; each dance move delivered deliberately, displaying a dash of delicious damsel delight. There’s no damage done to the video. So, why leave them out?

Bacon Bra, Earth Day & Other Random Questions

Is the Bacon Bra not taking things too far?
Wouldn't you rather talk about Earth Day?
Is South Africa's best hope Jacob Zuma?
Did you know about Hashima Island yesterday?

No-Funeral Saturday in the City of Accra

I heard an edict, on the radio, from the traditional establishment in the City of Accra. It is banning burials and funerals on this Saturday. They want to revere dead Ga (the people of old Accra) chieftains on that day. They have no legal power to do what they seek to. They can only enforce it by unleashing the riotous rabble on you and your grieving family.

I know that it means there will be no closed streets on that day, for the people block off the streets to use as funeral grounds. But that is cold, cold comfort.

You cannot have the benefits of the national (cosmopolitan) capital, and still cling to rudder-less, prehistoric practices – it’s our taxes!

Random Questions

So what, if Rawlings reviewed A Quarter Guard?
Haven't Wenger & Arsenal played a master card?
How do we really feel about Pirate Bay?
Would another python dare attack a man today?

Girl in White on Friday Morning

This morning, I saw a pretty, petite princess in a short, white fairy frock, gracefully gliding up the GIJ street. Her delirium-dress swayed sensuously this way and that, with every metered step. She ferried a fine pair of white sandals with several flirty straps on her delicately-drawn legs and feet. And, she graced the delightful skin on her neck and chest with a set of frosted-glass beads. Just when I’d looked for and found the sparkly white band in her hair, a taxi cab came up behind me, and rudely tooted to move me on.

Teshie-Nungua Township in the City of Accra

T-N is moored along, and hermetically hugs, the built-up coastal highway from La two-thirds of the way to Tema, in southern Accra – a community which sorely suffers from runaway population. The dual carriageway arrives from La, and aborts just before Teshie. Many times, I’m told, the T-N people have robustly resisted attempts by successive governments to broaden their stretch of the highway. The people are completely content with their all-purpose, sleep-and-work-in kiosks, which are almost anchored on the street, and only separated in places by iron railings. The street surfaces are, past Labadi Beach Hotel, old, dusty or potholed. There is a mercenary conspiracy between transport vehicles and chronic, chaotic, street criss-crossers to make a thick jam of the traffic. Still, T-N boasts of the Otu Military Barracks, Harbin, a bowling house, a decent police station, numerous nice hotels and cool, sandy beaches. It also has at least one nice residential area. Driving through after 9 pm, last night, I saw so many people peddling bread, soap powder and the usual in the traffic.

Peanut Butter, Jam & Other Random Questions

Is Pres Mills feeling the 100-degree heat at 100 days?
Does it matter the difference between peanut butter and jam?
Are pirate-fishermen still messing with the US Navy?
Is the Sri Lankan Army flirting with genocide?

First rule of relationships: Open Communication

Open Communication
I've thought about relationship rules, and I've come to realise clearly that talking openly about everything, right from the start, is the best way to nurture and keep a good relationship. Of course it doesn't work alone, but it ranks close to the golden rule.

Easter Day in the City of Accra

You’ll find no people in the neighbourhoods; they have all thronged the chubby churches. Even the irreverently rackety dogs seem to respect the moment of the occasion. By midday, when I’m rolling on a holiday ride, the streets are blanched with women, children, men, and more women who have quickly colonised the great outdoors with their over-obvious piety. I turn down the devilish dancehall playing on the car stereo, for I fear I will not relish the poison darts the onlookers will strafe this way.

Random Questions

Will Obama dare tighten immigration rules?
Is our president afraid of the ex ex?
How often does police surveillance go wrong?
Will Liverpool and Bayern now switch to cricket?

Sex, Size and Payment in the City of Accra

Venue: Soldier Bar, somewhere at Kwame Nkrumah Circle, Accra.
Time: 11 pm.
Day: Any day.

Man Pervert (MP): How much?

Underage Girl (UG): You have to drop your pants first.

MP: Why would I want to do that?

UG: I need to see whatchu got. Price is per hour, according to size!

HMMM!

M. K. Ghandi is someone I admire

M. K. Ghandi
Because he was the most human of us all

Steve Biko
Because he would have been the legitimate forerunner of the anti-apartheid movement

Yitzhak Rabin
Because he would have managed to bring peace to the Middle East

Barack Obama
Because you just came back from sequestration on Mars if you do not know why

Kaka
Because he combines supreme talent with the fear of God and modesty - a rare thing in the 2000s

Corazon Aquino
For such grace, dignity and bravery

Aung San Suu Kyi
Because she has more balls than the military in Burma

Tony Blair
Because he has the gift of gab

William Jefferson Clinton
One politician I could trust that he really believed in what he was saying (bar Lewinsky), plus he has no prejudice or bigotry in him

Nelson Mandela
For how he kept a volatile country together in the 90s

Living in the Osu Cemetery

Squatting serenely in the sparkling sunlight, somewhat betwixt the sprawling sports stadium and the skeletal State House, in Osu, is the Osu Cemetery. As darkness descends on the city of Accra, it becomes a horror-home to homeless hordes and residential rejects. They perch, repose, cha cha cha and steeplechase on the gravestone, as if they’re devil-daring the sleeping bones below to rise up and fight their effrontery. It’s scary to drive near this necropolis at night because, every now and then, a humanesque figure would clamber over the wall, streak through your headlight beam, and disintegrate into the nothingness – they never use the gates. If a manic necrophiliac is playing Rumpelstiltskin on the tombstones, and they’re still alive, it’s because they haven’t yet pissed on my blessed Grandpa’s grave.

The Ocean

When you put a calm mind to it
There are not many things
Before the timeless ocean
The blueness of intensity
The green eyes of jealousy
The white surf of purity
Rolling waves and lolling lave
Salty taste and lulling hum
Grades of sand as true as gold
The intimate bathe in tenderness
The gulls, the weeds, the sun and the shells
All seen and loved by generations gone
And it’s bigger that everything else
It owns the shoreline
And the sky
And the topsy-turvy brine
Even the far-off horizon line
The power to give unending pleasure
Choose the size of shore next year
Now pent-up rage bursts out at the moon
Holds the world in a low vile growl
And plays mirages of spirit lights
A slow recline in the afterglow
The ocean sleeps in silent sate.

Silence

It is the music of the trees
In the drone of the balmy breeze
It is the stretching of the hills
And the tears the sky sadly spills

Thunderclap in breaking hearts
The unseen tail of poison darts
It is the picture of the sea
The still before the storm we see

It is the depth of the deep black hole
The massive ice caps in each Pole
It is the cosmic dance of stars
And the sounds of life on Mars

The great allure of muted minds
The need to see behind the blinds
The presence of stark loneliness
The blank before each ‘I confess’.

Poetry Ends It All

It has been a goodish blogging month for me. This is good because other parts of my life sucked. I'll end that streak (and hopefully begin another) with poetry about "Silence" and "The Sea". Thanks for reading along. Enjoy!