(?) jokes/cartwheels(?)

Things that happened to me this week:

-I called a stranger who offered me gum in the library 'dude'. Immediately the scales fell from my eyes and I realized I had sinned. I will try not to use the word 'dude' again.
-I was present during a mind-bendingly silly twenty minute conversation on muffins between Quena, Rich and Vid. It was not something that greatly enriched my life. The muffin afterwards was great though. You can't go wrong with a muffin, honestly.
-I heard a very creepy screaming sound from outside my window a few nights ago- like a cat being slowly strangled over and over. Turns out it was a fox. Yes, there is a fox in the neighbourhood. I don't know quite how to take this news.
-Nick Drake's Things behind the sun was in my head for most of the week.
-There was also an unbelievably insane MSN conversation with Raymond about goblins. I saved it somewhere on my computer, but I don't intend to put it up anytime soon.
-I stammered a couple of times during a presentation and I wasn't even nervous. I notice I have been picking up a bit of a stammer over the past few months and it just strikes out of the blue at the most unlikely time. I either got it from my brother- who stutters a bit- or its my brain reacting against my habit for talking too fast. It will now slow me down at any rate.

Some people make me smile, but they don't know it.

Deus Ex machina

Is it possible to be reassured and completely freaked out at the same time? Well that's what happened to me this morning during our jurisprudence revision seminar. Martha-Marie actually did a very good job of calming our nerves, and yet strangely it also made me a bit worried- as if I had only just realized that I will in fact do this exam. Ironically this is the only exam for which we have been given the questions in advance, but only three of the eight we got will appear so you could get seriously screwed preparing for the wrong ones. It's a delicate situation. Still, it's the only module I am really worried about so I guess things could be worse.

Meanwhile I received the following curious email from someone a few days ago:

Dear Minega,
I was so excited by your newspaper article about Horse
racing in the Sunday Times newspaper of 16th April
2006 on page 13.Please kindly send any information
about Horse breeding/rearing,as I believe they can be
reared like cattle and goats.This is commonly done in
Texas,USA.Also do click on my profile in the attached
message,then Solar-powered...,Summary,Plan
details,Needs,Photos to see what Iam doing.
Yours truly,
Ssengooba Ismail,
P.O.BOX 11783,
KAMPALA,
UGANDA.
Now please keep in mind that at no point in the article did I even suggest I was any kind of expert on horses. The whole point of the article was to poke fun at the English obsession with horse-racing, and indeed to show-off my ignorance on horses and horse-racing so you can imagine how high my eyebrow was while reading that email. You write an article specifically making it clear how little you know about something and then you find yourself in the midst of someone's business plans. Life is full of suprises.

Random things overheard at the dining table:
"No, what I said was that I've got a friend who thinks vegetables have feelings..."
"This guy I know actually tried to hibernate. Didn't do too badly- managed to sleep for two straight days. He was hallucinating for a few days after that"

And what is it with people talking on the phone in the library? On Sunday, this girl called up someone and began a very loud conversation right there in the library even though it was so quiet before you could hear spiders running around. Some guy in a reading booth near me hissed "Shut the fuck up!" (a very un-English thing to do) she either didnt hear him, or ignored him and carried on merrily. About two minutes later, he said quite loudly "ARE YOU BRAIN DEAD!?" and again she just carried on- she was talking so loudly she probably couldnt even hear him. Everyone was getting pretty agitated. I was afraid she would be attacked by a mob and get thrown out of the window. Today afternoon, it was two girls about ten minutes apart from each other. How can you just start chatting away sitting at your desk when everyone right down the room can hear you clearly and your voice is the only one cutting through the silence? And why are these people all female? The last one today got warned by a librarian and it was a big relief to everyone who was thinking evil thoughts.

I was watching the demonstrations in Nepal the other night and I was thinking: What kind of country is it where 10,000 people violate a SHOOT-TO-KILL curfew? Nuts.

Yes, Chelsea- you got your ass kicked.

Dammn, that was a tense ninety minutes.
So we finally knocked Chelsea out but not before I aged about three years in twenty minutes. 2-0 up and cruising (and Kewell was incredible) I knew they would hit us hard in the last half hour and I was right. The wingers came on and the siege started- they battered us for the last fifteen minutes and it was what football experts call 'squeaky bum time'. Drogba got a goal and I was thinking 'here we go...extra time...' Not suprisingly Mourinho was a very sore loser at the end, but it was immensely satisfying to see the mighty Chelsea eat some dust and watch Jose completely refuse to eat the humble pie that we had so generously prepared for him.
So now its West ham in the final. We haven't won the FA Cup in 4 years, but this is the best chance we've had in ages and to do it by knocking out those cheats is fantastic. I'm going to get many solid nights of sleep over this.
Still a few things make me wonder at Benitez's tactics:
1.Under NO circumstances should you bring on Djimi Traore. NO circumstances! NONE whatsoever! When I saw him come on, my heart really sank.
2. Luis Garcia- that was a brilliant goal, but let's face it he is rubbish eighty percent of the time. Sell, sell, sell.
3.Teach Djibril Cisse the object of the game. It might make him better.

Good things come to those who accidentally stumble across them

Would you die in a jousting match for your true love?
I thought of this when I was listening to the BBC the other night, not because there was anything related on the radio, but because I suddenly realized that I would contemplate defending the BBC's honour to the death. Not literally obviously, but the BBC's Radio 4 and Radio five live are both absolutely incredible. They are like night-time companions gently lulling you to sleep and telling you that although everything is going to hell pretty fast outside, they are going to soften the blow. God bless em both. Give me a pike and I will ride out to challenge anyone who dares to smear their name.
Hang on- this was about the BBC, what did the true love thing have to do with it? oh right- I was thinking of this recently because of all the trailers for the film 'Tristan and Isolde' on TV. It is a kind of Romeo and Juliet story for those who havent seen it a million times in a million different versions. It looks interesting, but I'll wait for it on DVD. It looks like one of those films in which a woman's honour is eventually challenged-usually with some silly remark along the lines of 'she aint all that'- and her indignant boyfriend grabs a sword and challenges the other guy to a duel or maybe a jousting match- you know, with the long pikes like in A knight's tale. Of course this presents a lot of problems if the girl was trouble all along anyway- imagine getting a pike in the chest over a girl who was screwing you over all along. Boy, will you look foolish afterwards.
There's virtually nothing on TV these days which makes it much easier for me to read, but I was shocked-shocked!- when ITV brought Melvyn Bragg's twelve books that changed the world because that was not something I expected from ITV. He started off with Isaac Newton's Principa mathematica a revolutionary piece of work that earned him kudos but didnt exactly cause a stampede of female admirers. ("Mr Newton, your calculations on the earth's orbit were absolutely amazing! Want to get it on?") I can see him sitting at his desk working feverishly on the book and a friend stops by:
Friend: Hey Isaac what are you doing?
Newton: Nothing much, just working on a book.
Friend: You aren't writing some book that will totally change the world and explain the motion of the planets and introduce universal laws of motion which will then make you a legend for the rest of eternity?
Newton: Me? Nooooo...
Also they had Marie Stopes Married Love which had another revolutionary idea: that married women should have sex for pleasure and not just for procreation. If you thought people would have trouble understanding Newton, Mrs Stopes really let the cat out among the pigeons. The official reaction from most of the world- and I quote it here- was "women should do what???" but people eventually got with the program and for that we should thank Mrs Stopes, one of the original feminists.
The more curious choice was the first football rulebook in the late nineteenth century which created football as we know it. before that, it was a mix of football and rugby. In the first official game, you weren't even allowed to kick towards your opponent's goal so the game not suprisingly ended 0-0. There's another three next Sunday. ITV, you just might actually become respectable.

Mind like parachute-only functions when open

My sitemeter informs me that twenty people visited this site since I last posted yesterday. I can only assume this is an error. If not, it makes me very curious indeed. The obvious question is 'who.....'
Anyway it turns out that there are people on my corridor and these are people who think the best way to deal with dishes is to just dump them on the side of the sink. It's getting really annoying now. Someone left about five plates-carrots and broccoli still on- and just took off. I'm sorely tempted to just wash them all up just to stop the kitchen stinking to high heaven. It doesn't really take much to be considerate to others.
Meanwhile term time comes ever closer- a history of English law presentation that I havent got around to doing just yet and forms to fill in asking me if I really want to graduate from university this summer. Hmm, that's a tough one-let me just think about that for a second. Also I'd quite got used to all the piece and quiet and I was going to grow a huge beard and start writing poetry about nature to symbolise my new status as a hermit rejeecting society and embracing...erm...something else.
Meanwhile the Premier League is winding down-dammn you Chelsea!I tried something that often proves impossible-I watched match of the day without knowing the scores when usually I would be dying with curiousity and just check them out before the highlights come on. I had to dodge the news all day though and you would be suprised how hard it is to dodge news. Sometimes it feels like they are trying to beam it directly into your skull.
I am also trying to ignore the fact that there is a recently released album of cover versions of Radiohead songs. Consider me not amused. I certainly never thought I would see the day there would be an r n b version of High and Dry- I heard it on radio and to be fair it was okay -and a pop version of Knives out which I heard in a record store. That one made me laugh to think that a song that dark can be taken on by a cheerful pop star singing it as if she was at a merry sing-along on karaoke night.
This sort of brings me to a person who continually fascinates me- Hugo Chavez the president of Venezuela. The man has a weekly TV show that lasts hours during which he does comedy, sings(fairly well)and generally just blabbers on like a wacky uncle at a family reunion and also-every single time- slags off Bush in very colourful language. It's quite a sight to behold. I wish I had a boxset of all those shows- Hero of the week.

Reminder: the world around you is changing fast

"Brain cells" my friend says "Are like buffalo"
"A herd of buffalo can only move as fast as the slowest one" he explains "and I figure that's how brain cells are- you cant really work because the slow ones are holding the other ones back. That's why I'm on a mission to kill all the slow brain cells. It's going to take time and effort, but I'm getting there"
He's drinking a beer. I can tell from my vantage point that his slow brain cells are already marked for death through beer consumption.
I think I still have quite a few slow ones left. The other day in the library I found myself cheering on a cloud. This isnt as strange as it might sound at first because the cloud was trying to cover up the sun which had been making it impossible for me to read. The sun would vanish for a few minutes and I would get some reading done but sooner or later it would break free from the cloud and get all up in my shizzle.I wasn't cheering out loud obviously -That would just be silly. Another time I found myself playing what I now call 'finger squash' although I dont use this expression with a straight face. On the off chance that someone out there is reading this blog, I am not even going to describe it except to say that you get a piece of paper, squeeze it into a tiny ball and then use each finger to hit it against 'the wall' very quickly as you would do in squash. Left finger vs right finger-I don't remember who won though. I was sitting in one of those reading booths so this was easy but I should also stress that it happened only once. I usually have a very good attention span, but when my mind eventually wanders, you had better believe it wanders. I'm talking prophet-in-the-desert kind of wandering not lost-in-the-shopping-mall wandering.
Anyway onto other matters, I've been intrigued by this whole Iran nuclear weapons saga thingy. From what I gather that mad bastard in charge is saying 'we are not making nuclear weapons, but we can if we want and we will when we want even though we want it only for peaceful purposes although if you continue to threaten us we will use them' I'm not quoting him directly, but someone like that shouldnt be anywhere near plutonium let alone enriching the bloody thing. They even had a National uranium enrichment day in Iran- and you thought YOU had flashy public holidays eh? That's just another step towards armageddon so in the meantime I'm going to eat as much chocolate as I can.

Favourite selected headlines off the New Times website from the past few months:
"Women are hard to understand? Here is the magic stick"
"Impotence is great torture"
"City cleaner complains aloud"

And my current favourite and one I already consider an all-time classic: "Who is impregnating Kigali's mad women?"
That headline will join the hall of fame of headlines that The New Times has had down the years, none more legendary than 'UPDF dithering in Congo'. Having managed to put the word 'dithering' into a front page headline, the editor went one step further by using the word 'prevaricating' in the by-line. After that everyone in the newsroom turned it into a running joke and the words 'dithering' and 'prevaricating' came to mean about one hundred different things and indeed still do. They have long since lost their original meanings for me and anyone else who was there.
And there was the time when Rwanda qualified for the cup of nations by beating Ghana in Kigali. The editor dashed out an editorial for the special section we were doing on the story. It was to run with mine and Emma's and the heading was 'A Godfather, mother luck or juju?' (i.e what was responsible for getting Rwanda to the cup of nations) we tried to get that changed but it got in in the end and it became another running joke. If anything good happened to you, someone inevitably asked 'is it a Godfather, mother luck or juju?'

No blogging

Genocide memorial week April 7-14.

Turn yourself away (a promise of ashes)

Week 3- still on track.
We, the almost-but-not-quite-doomed finalists are all in that twilight zone of knowing that there is so much at stake that if you stop and really consider it, you could have some kind of blackout. And what happens when we eventually take on the mighty third year exams and win? We have no idea! There is such a massive jump between graduating and finding yourself some steady employment and an independent life.

On a slightly unrelated note, I recently found myself googling the lyrics to a Nelly song. I was curious because what I could make out from listening to it on the radio suggested that any links with the English language were highly doubtful. The song is called 'Grillz' and Google eventually proved me right-this must be the stupidest song thats ever been written and I'm counting the recent Black Eyed Peas songs and all the dodgy stuff we used to see on Rwanda's much-loved TV station. Honestly its so bad that it is actually culturally significant-it should be stored in a museum somewhere. I still don't quite know what to say- that this is an actual song and not some kind of joke is really quite hard to believe. To quote Radiohead in a song thats been in my head all week 'What are we coming to? I just don't know...'

Meanwhile I think I finally understood Quizmania although I had resolutely refused to do so because it made it funnier to watch with the volume off and the random words and numbers that didnt seem to mean anything. Turns out they give you one word and another blank and then people (to be more specific- people without a life)call in and try to guess what the other word is. This is around 1am in the morning and even though they are offering money, why would you spend your nights calling in at rip-off prices trying to guess a random word? Shouldnt you be doing something better? (and this coming from me who is watching the show...)
Again on a slightly unrelated note, I read something sometime ago thats stayed in my head. This guy who is smashing all his possesions one by one with-if I remember correctly- a sledgehammer. Everything he owns is going to be manually destroyed including his car. I'm not entirely sure why he is doing this, probably some kind of Fight Club inspired rebellion ('the things we own end up owning us') but I have a sneaking admiration for him. It is a kind of therapy I would guess, but I'm really curious to know how he gets on afterwards. Try doing that in Africa- I'd have a relative come down and give me a smack around the ear within the first five minutes. I can still see him in my mind's eye smashing patiently away on and on.

And there's actually a title race on! Seven points! The last time I cheered on Manchester United this hard was in 1999.

A promise of ashes.