The thing with blogging, it’s all about habit. You get used to rambling incoherently, all day any day, often with no greater purpose than to get that ka-kick of satisfaction when you see your words on a page, and maybe a ka -like or nice comment below it. It’s part addiction, part compulsive behaviour. And then you stop. For no particular reason. And the mojo disappears almost as quickly as it appeared. Before you know it, you haven’t written so much as a ‘will revert’ email (how is that even a reply?) in months. For shame!
I’m trying to figure out how to apologise to you without actually apologising, because I shouldn’t have to apologise, because you buggers (whom I love deeply) don’t pay me to do this shit, but if I don’t apologise you’ll sit there and sulk in silence, because that’s what we do around here, sulk in silence. Yes, I’ve been sulking, and no, I don’t expect you to care, but yes, I’mma tell you all about it anyway. So why, pray tell, have I been sulking? She sighs dramatically, too dramatically (all sighs are unnecessarily dramatic, no?), I have no fucking clue. She chuckles, and has a swig of cheap ‘made for swift and debilitating intoxication’ wine.
This wine though... It’s a hand me down from posh relatives who are above these things, seeing as how they drink wine with snooty French names these days. Mind you, this cheap swill, and it really is cheap swill, has a French name, but the bottle looks like it was manufactured pale Light Industries ya Kariobangi. Which is not to demean all Kariobangi products, only the dodgy glass bottles they use for the other generation booze they produce in lethal quantities. All I’m saying is the crooked neck and dodgy cork of this bottle has me convinced that this wine is neither French nor fancy, which is how it ended up in my possession, and how I came to be typing this when I’m approximately two sheets to the wind, which is to say I’m a bit drunk. Lakini I have missed writing sentences longer than 140 bloody characters. All hail Blogger (soon to be Wordpress)! If you’ve seen me on Twitter you know I don’t tweet much, but not because I have nothing to say, it’s because I completely lack the knack of brevity. And I’m convinced the format doesn’t allow for nuance. Now you know I’m all about nuance, no? No? She takes a swig of the aforementioned cheap swill...
So, otherwise? How y’all doin’? Is your Christmas merry? Did you have a good year? Has your government been behaving itself? Have you been having great sex? Have you finally found the man/woman of your dreams? Was your bread fluffy this morning? I’m particularly interested in the answer to the bread question...
My year has been...odd. Not bad or good, just odd. Feels like it was one long out of body experience. In between serikali acting like fools and the idiot langas pretending to be press, Donald Trump and Van Gaal, a peculiar afro (on my head) and peculiar clients from hell (including the one who has me working over what should be a lovely Christmas break), a tuktuk of a car so temperamental I swear it was conceived in a Stephen King book (that bitch is trying to kill me), a depreciating shilling that’s playing havoc on Chilean wine prices at the off-licence, Avengers 2: the age of maybe they shoulda skipped right on to the third, Sauti Sol’s album cover, Sauti Sol’s album... Odd. Very odd. On the upside, however, I have now confirmed that it’s not me that’s delusional (read, possibly insane), it’s the whole damn planet that’s fucked up, all the way to Timbuktu. Timbuktu is particularly fucked up, but that’s a story for another day. The reason our collective fucked-up-ness is a good thing? I figure it’s a pretty valid reason for running a blog that continually asks, ‘What the actual fuck?’ because it occurs to me not enough people bother to ask that one most important question.
My lovelies, what the actual fuck?
When did it become acceptable for people to run around stealing, cheating and just generally screwing each other over just so they can have more money/power/sex? Worse still, when did it become acceptable to be wilfully, gleefully, arrogantly ignorant, especially in this age of damn near unlimited information a click away?
If it’s not el presidente making his umpteenth speech on his oh so grand fight against corruption even as his extremely corrupt deputy stands next to him undisturbed, it’s a recklesss government borrowing money like loans don’t need to be repaid and interest is optional. If it’s not self appointed, do gooder, saviour of the downtrodden for a fee, activist types pushing some idiotic, ill-informed campaign, it’s some self appointed knowers of all things enlightened trying to convince us that their enlightenment is the only enlightenment that’s valid, and all so they can both make a career selling, not giving, water to the thirsty. If it’s not the dodgy tenderpreneur trying to convince you he made his astronomical, obscene billions through hard work and perseverance, it’s the greasy, grabbing preacher man, or woman, or couple, trying to convince you that your money will help him, them, lead you to heaven. If it’s not the girl in the Saturday paper telling you to buy a girl shisha so you can rape her passed-out ass in your car, it’s the wanna-be (possibly not particularly well-read) sex advice twits declaring ‘Mollis’ type sex (which, for the record, sounded unnnervingly like non-consensual sex, which is rape last I checked) the ultimate in sexual misadventures. If it’s not idiots with little to no knowledge proclaiming Sepp Blatter the saviour of African football, it’s idiots with little to no knowledge proclaiming Sam Nyamweya the saviour of Kenyan football. I could go on and on and on, but for what? We know what’s going on around us, hell, some of us are actively involved in the fuckery, and by some of us I mean some of them (points over yonder), not us, us we’re perfect. Ahem. Have a swig...
Greed. Hubris. Ignorance. This explains everything from (no longer?) Sweetie of NYS fame to ‘Reverend’ Kyuna et al, through to Trump and the cock on that most idiotic album cover. (Slight detour. That I get to use the word cock in a non-sewer post is the highlight of my year. For real. Detour over.) Almost every instance of foolishness I can point to this past year has it’s roots in some variation of mendacity, borne of what appears to be a frightening aversion to knowledge. That’s what scares me most. An aversion to knowledge.
I don’t know how this happened, but these days people are strutting around not knowing shit, and proud of the fact that they don’t know shit. Rather than do a quick google to find out, an idiot would rather call you an idiot for knowing something they don’t, either that or they’ll discount your knowledge as not true knowledge, because they cannot or will not understand. In some peculiar plot twist in this reality show we call life, stupid has become cool. It’s almost as if we’re all extras in a mash-up of ‘Keeping Up With The Kardashians’ and ‘News at 9’, taking selfies and clapping along to foolish antics like trained seals, all for a fish or two to keep us going. That Billy the Wailer can stand in front of us and lecture us on corruption, and he gets a 15 minute slot on the prime time news. That a girl whose claim to fame is her ass can be branded a celebrity on the front page of a seemingly serious newspaper, her and a conman preacherman. That a minister responsible for billions of shillings claims not to be responsible for how said billions were spent, including the dodgy purchase of, and this has to be a first even for our special country, a piano. And people out here are not just tolerating the idiocy, they’re revelling in it, clap clap clapping along...
This is some bullshit, man. Surreal, epic bullshit.
Does that sound depressing? It’s not meant to be, I'm far too happy (read, drunk-ish) right now to be depressed. I think accepting this pathetic state of affairs in the first step in our recovery. I think we need to embrace the stupidity, smother it in knowledge until it chokes on it’s own saliva and dies a slow gruesome death. (Sorry, I’ve been watching serial killer TV, as is my December custom.) No more idiots who think patriotism is agreeing with everything dear leader says. No more giving the media that doesn’t seem to give a shit about accountability our hard to spare attention. No more reading silly little fuckers, and I use this term most loosely, 'writing' idiotic opinion pieces in the papers designed to offend us. No more modern day quacks/shamans claiming to cure us from all manner of ailments, spiritual or emotional, or sexual for that matter. No more saviours looking to make money off our misery. No more enlightenment that comes bundled with scorn for the unenlightened. No more twats who think sex is a hasty transaction, or a drunk one, or a hasty drunk one. In fact, no more twats who don’t think about their sex, and by association yours. No more stupid, my lovelies.
With that in mind (of course there’s a reason for this rant, oh ye of little faith...), I propose to end the year as it began (even as I prepare to move to a new house), with 7 posts in 7 days. Or 5 posts in 7 days. Or maybe 3 posts in 7 days. We’ll see how it goes.
Happy holidays.
