It’s good to occasionally remind ourselves of the path we’re traveling on. Other than a fringe group of misguided individuals, we all long for a non-racial South Africa. A South Africa where race does not matter, where we are judged on our abilities and not the colour of our skin. An irony of the new [...] ... (read more)
There are swirling rumors, Dan Brown, that you did not write …
All the books that bear your name … surely, that’s not right.
Why would someone say these things, surely it’s not true. …
Come out Dan Brown and answer these things being said of you!
If someone is lying and you did write every word …
You deserve to clear your name; your side should be heard.
You should get the benefit of doubt; you have your rights;
You don’t need ghost writers, Dan, surely you can write.
Come out, Dan Brown, come out … if you should not be blamed,
Stand up like the man you are and clear your tarnished name.
Now, if you did not write these books, you should say who did.
It’s not fair to take the fall, while others remain hid.
If you’ve lied, as others have, Dan Brown, if you have lied …
You know that you’ve mocked God’s son … and should apologize.
There’s a sacred code; it’s a matter of dignity and honor:
Tell us, was the plan all along Dan … to hide Presbyter John?
John the scholar, the African … why would you hide him?
Because he’s brown, no, surely not … for that is just his skin.
What determines a man’s worth is his heart and not his skin.
Tell us Dan, we will forgive … for that was Jesus’ teaching.
— rcg
... (read more)Apparently, on May 25, Gospel and secular DJ’s in Kenya are battling it out on Mombasa Rd to find out who is the “King of the Wheels.” As soon as I saw the announcement on some blog, I scanned through quickly praying my cousin Eric (DJ RiQ) had no part in it, but sadly, there [...] ... (read more)
how can Chad be th enemy of Sudan? ... (read more)
It's time for our Ladybrille Weekly Web Snob. Why? Because you shouldn't have to surf the net and waste so much time to stay abreast of all things brilliant in the non-African fashion world! Here are the brilliant posts, for this week, from some of the top online fashion publishers/bloggers. Enjoy and have a brilliant weekend!
Stiletto Jungle contemplates Yummie Tummie, the shapewear that's meant
CHAPTER ONE
I’d wanted a rundown, and I’d gotten it: In the span of about fifteen minutes, going “fast,” she’d said, because she had to “go,” a manilla envelope had been shoved into my hands and this beautiful, lanky young black woman had sat down, like she’d known me all my life, or her life, and started talking, rocking forward and back on my dingy couch as she spoke. Now she was in my bathroom. “Tequila” was the only thing she had said as she popped up and instinctively headed in the right direction. In the envelope were photographs, color, crisp, taken of old signs, black painted on white, chalk handwritten on a chalkboard … and various scenes, buildings which I knew immediately was Jerusalem. The shot of the Mount of Olives at night and what I thought was St. George’s chapel was beautiful. I’d never seen a night photo of this ancient mound of earth, with so many dwellings crammed onto it, it looked like a big pile of debris, boxes with squares cut into them. In another moment, my beautiful visitor and apparent colleague stepped back into the living room of my studio apartment, shaking her head. I’d never seen a person of African descent look pale.
“I can’t drink that shit,” she said. “Not in that quantity.”
“Tequila?” I asked lamely, knowing full well that had to be what she was talking about. But she didn’t answer. She was back on my couch, rocking, but less intensely, and deep in thought.
“Think that’s everything,” she said. “Oh,” she then said, sticking out her hand, “Monique.”
“Yeah. Pretty name.” Great smile. No ring. But she was taller than me, but just by a hair, and I was a white boy. Or man. Why does it always have to be about sex? Still, she looked great, even in a pair of ragged gray cotton sweats, running shoes with no socks, and a tight pink and lime top pulled over her sleek frame.
I think she sensed that I was sizing her up as a partner, potentially, and suddenly looked ill at ease: she didn’t want to return my gaze. I hate awkward moments like this, where a female just automatically assumes that because you’re a male and she is female, and pretty, that romance or sex was all that a man would naturally have on his mind. Which was true, but only partly true. I’d found that women, though they sometimes seemed to resent men for “always” thinking about sex, that it was really them, more than me, when the situation arose, who were the first to think that I was thinking about sex, which of course I was, but not in any intense, forward sort of way.
“So you have the itinerary,” she’d said, biting her lip. “And … you’ve got that,” she said nodding toward the envelope in my hand. “Do you want to look at the list, and see if there’s anything you want to ask?”
Pretty straightforward, printed off on a laser printer, precisely numbered. The things I would need to bring, which caused me to recall the times I’d gone to camp and sat with my mother going over the list to be sure I had everything. It felt like that, which seemed over the top, but this guy, who I had at least found out was a guy, was “a stickler,” as Monique had said. At the bottom of the page were websites I needed to look up, and precise instructions. He’d ask me to have a certain email software, with extra security features, installed on my computer.
“You have a PC,” Monique said, looking around the room, thinking something in my place would remind her of anything else. “He’s a Mac man.”
“That’s okay,” I said. “I can use a Mac.”
“But do you have one?”
I had a laptop somewhere, which was three years old. A Christmas present. It didn’t run games, so I had ditched it. Macs aren’t made for games. And I was a heavy into gaming. Blame my father, so was he. We’d played the first video games that came out, for a Commodore 64, when I was no more than five or so, and gradually moved up, buying each new system as it had come out, even though my mother would howl every Christmas, because my dad would have promised he wasn’t “going to do the game thing this year.” You had to do the game thing. I wanted to learn to be a game developer, because my old man wanted me to, but I didn’t have the aptitude for it. Although I could learn anything, if I put my mind to it. Gaming experience was one of the things which had appeared in the classified ad, which was the strangest I had ever seen, but the job sounded like a hoot. Five-hundred a week, through the summer and into the fall, my travel expenses would be paid, and I had to keep a journal, and sometimes pull “all nighters,” but I had no idea what they meant.
Had to speak French or Italian, both would be “a plus.” Turkish and Hebrew would be “a plus.” I could read Hebrew, phonetically, and I had a Yiddish sense of humor, even though I wasn’t Jewish. Turkish was out. I spoke a little French and Italian. I could read French better. I had excelled in history, new quite a bit about the Mediterranean region, not much about Africa. Some “Egyptology,” that was how my new boss had phrased it. I knew who the patristic writers were, the “early church fathers,” through the third century A.D. And I liked baseball. Loved football. I got the job.
“The guy’s not weird is he?” I blurted out, needing to get that straight. I didn’t want this job to turn out to be some perverted little series of junkets with some older guy who expected me to … get weird.
“Oh, no,” Monique said. “He’s crazy, in a good way. Funny. But happily married. Two grown kids, about to be married. Cute kids. But he’s driven,” she said, biting her lip again, “and he’s determined to do this thing.”
“Expose people?” Was what Monique had said.
“Yeah.”
“Why?”
Monique took a deep breath, and looked in the direction of my bathroom. “He’s seen some things, I dunno. In his childhood. And he’s a vet, slightly disabled. He carries that around like a chip on his shoulder.”
I nodded. “And tell me how you pronounce his name again … Hasheem?”
“Hacim,” she said, “but it isn’t spelled the way it’s pronounced, or, pronounced the way it’s spelled. I don’t know what it means. But he says it ha-seem, though it looks like hackem.”
“Yeah, it does, if you’re spelling it H-a-c-i-m.” And she was. She nodded, and decided to sit back. That was a good sign. I didn’t want her to leave. She dressed the place up, and she smelled wonderful.
“So, first stop Turkey?” I said, knowing that was right, because that was what appeared at the top of the itinerary.” Ephesus, Turkey. Asia Minor. What became Constantinople. I always thought of a poem by William Butler Yeats every time I thought of or saw that word, which was actually fun to pronounce, “Constantinople.”
“What?”
I shrugged and sat back. “Oh, nothing. I was just thinking of a poem.”
“He writes poetry,” she said.
Did everything have to be about him? I thought.
“Some of it is really quite beautiful,” Monique said, scratching her scalp with one of her long fingernails, in a way that made a whisking sound. Women with long nails intimidated me, for some reason. A woman with nails was … all woman. No nonsense, and expected her men to be alpha males, which, if my confidence was up, I could pretend to be. But she wouldn’t be interested in me. But I had to ask. Before I could speak, she spoke.
“Which poem … were you thinking of?”
“Sailing to Byzantium,” I replied, prompting Monique to turn up her nose. “What the hell is that about?”
“Um, well, sailing to Byzantium,” I said. “In a little boat. Yeats? William Butler?”
“Oh,” she said, “is he the fairy guy? The Irishman?”
I nodded. “Yeah … fairy guy? You men gay? I don’t know whether …”
She chuckled, standing up part way to look toward my kitchen, like she’d like for me to offer her something to drink. “No, I didn’t mean gay,” she said. “Do you have any water?”
I did, obviously. I also had beer, but I gathered she was not going to be in a beer drinking mood, not at two in the afternoon, with apparently a night of drinking tequila to shake off.
“Um …”
“No, he believed in fairies and all that,” Monique said. “Like Arthur Conan Doyle. What a freak he was. Killed Houdini. That’s what Hacim thinks. Big Houdini guy, for some reason.”
So was I, as a matter of fact. She was intelligent, and educated. Knew something about literature and poetry, but she was very opinionated, negative for some reason about people with an inclination to believe in fairies, for some reason. “Yeah, I have some water. Ice? … Or how about a beer? … probably not though.”
“Hair of the dog that bit my ass,” she said standing up, impressing me all over again. “Yeah, maybe I’ll do a beer. But let me have the water first. Do you have any lemon?”
She saw me pull a domestic American beer out of my refrigerator, and turned up her nose. “Nah, no beer. I don’t drink that piss … sorry. Neither does he. He doesn’t drink as much as he used to. But he only drinks dark, imported beer. … Guinness. Ales. Jack Daniels.”
Big deal. Monique sounded like she was this guy’s girl Friday, or something, maybe a mistress, even though she’d said he was happily married, but that could mean anything, different things to different people. And he was white, although she’d said he had Cherokee ancestry, which he was proud of. Whatever. She’d said he was “big.” I didn’t know if that meant tall or fat, or muscular, or what. Or all three. I pictured some big tall Indian, a Native American with long black hair and a headband. But that couldn’t be right … what would an American Indian be doing interested in “shutting down the Christian heretics of Europe,” as Monique had said. “Changing their minds, first,” she had said, whatever that had meant. Changing their minds from what to what?
“So changing their minds from what to what?” I said. “Ha-seem.”
“Funny guy,” she said, shaking her head. “But people like him were bound to surface, you know? God bless him. I so did not think he was on the level, when he started talking to me in a bar, where I was working as a waitress, you know, through college.”
Hmm. Yeah, he might be doin’ her. An older man. A Svengali figure. An alpha male, a nut. A vet. Crazy, but in a good way. Women, so shrewd with some men, protecting themselves, were sometimes almost more masculine than some of the guys that came onto them. Let you know right away who was in charge. The supermodel types. The ones who knew they were gorgeous. I hated that, but loved it all at the same time. But in the presence of an alpha male … so women, I had observed, acted like little girls. A big man could take down a big woman. I, unfortunately, had never been in that position, nor would I ever be … even though I was lifting weights.
“People like him?” I said, handing her a glass of ice water, with a knife and a lemon.
“He loves ancient history,” she said, “but he seems to have no stomach for the medieval period, although I don’t know exactly why. It’s almost like he lived back then, you know?” She took a long sip of her water, after crushing half of the lemon in her slender hand with long powerful fingers and letting the last drops of the lemon fall.
No, I didn’t know. How could he have lived back then, unless he was a nutbar? I needed the money, and a job, being right out of college, and my girlfriend determined to “find herself” with two of her other girlfriends backpacking in Europe, which had sounded like sex with Frenchmen or Italians, if the situation arose. God, it made my stomach churn. And she had had the audacity, the corny nerve to say, “If you love something … you will set it free, and if it comes back to you, it will love you forever.” Or something screwed up and sappy like that. What that had sounded like to me, when Karen had said it, with an independent smirk on her face, I thought, was “Now, if I go to Europe and get my eyes drilled out, and come back to you, don’t ask me if I got my eyes drilled out.” Did it always have to be about sex?
“People like him?” I repeated, drinking from the bottle of “piss,” as Monique had so diplomatically called the house beer, in my hand.
“An apologist,” she said, walking back into the living room, picking up the remote to my ratty TV, which I prayed she wouldn’t cut on, because there was only about seven-eighths of a picture, depending on the channel. It was embarrassing. “He believes he knows what makes heretics … tick,” she said. “He wants to save them from themselves. Tell them that they are being deceived and used. Tell them that Jesus is real … and prove it to them by confronting them with the fact that they’re trying to win the debate by lying, using smoke and mirrors … and apparently listening to weirdoes, for whom death and blood and perversion … are all just part of life.”
She turned and looked at me with glistening eyes. “And it’s not, you know?” she said. “Life really is beautiful. And love does conquer all. And Jesus does exist. He did exist. He must … as Ha-seem said. Because the flowers are too pretty for evil to have made them. And beauty is truth. And …”
She was going to cry, for crying out loud. Well, at least this guy wasn’t a Charles Manson guy, in an Indian package. He sounded like a Jesus freak. I’d replied to the ad, because I was a Christian, which was a stipulation, but I wasn’t a Christian, really, in a typical sense. But neither was Hacim, apparently. Not if he was a boozer. But, after all, he was a Vietnam vet, and I imagine if you were to have found yourself in the middle of that shit, you had to have faith, some pretty extreme beliefs, and quite a constitution, a mind and will like a steel trap, and could drink anything … because I couldn’t imagine anyone going through that and not eating nails for breakfast. I couldn’t wait to meet him, but if he was a weird Christian, or a man with a split personality or something, a Jeckyll and Hyde, which is what he sounded like, with scars up and down his torso and his soul … I was probably not the man for him. But what a bad ass. Who doesn’t admire a true bad ass? He had to be doin’ Monique. Had to be. She was in love with him. He was a big bad white boy, pushing sixty, I’d gathered.
“Couronne des epine,” she said, speaking beautiful French. It took me a moment. She was tearing up again.
“Crown of thorns. … So, is he what … like an evangelist, or something?” I asked.
She was too choked up to talk, but she was shaking her head no. She was off again to my bathroom, after setting down her glass on my coffee table. There was Kleenex in the kitchen. Maybe it was the tequila. She was puking, for crying out loud. Damn. No, not an evangelist. Maybe a roaring nutbar … but not an evangelist. A bad ass Vietnam vet, decorated, who liked flowers. This was going to be one crazy summer. I could feel it. And if I went through with if, I just knew … I was either going to get my ass killed … or hurt bad.
Did I need five-hundred a week, travel, all expenses paid … that badly? Hell yes I did. And if this guy was a bad ass vet, he would be carrying a piece … or a bow and arrow, maybe, I thought to myself, being amused. At any rate, he could keep us protected, I surmised. He’d better. Of course there was more I wanted to know about a guy from the South named Hacim, who was not an Arab, but spoke some Arabic, or Ahmaric, I think she said. Ancient Ethiopian languages. For one, I wanted to know what baseball had to do with any of this. I’d played baseball, in high school, second base. When Monique had called me back, she’d said that had been “a plus.” Maybe we were going to be setting up an international baseball team, trained to be undercover agents … or assassins or something. But no, Monique had said he was not into weapons … but carried a knife, or knives.
And steel ball bearings, for crying out loud. And then she’d asked me if I had ever been a sleepwalker, or knew what narcolepsy was, and of course I did. Or anything about neurology or Alzheimers or amnesia. Which I didn’t, not really, except they were all brain … related. She’d nodded, and looked like she’d wanted to say more … but hadn’t.
— to be continued
... (read more)A President and his ruling party all but give up on its signature slogan of zero tolerance for corruption and the electoral promise of creating jobs for the youth. The cost of living continues to rise beyond the ability of most Ghanaians to cope with, rising crude oil prices and falling cocoa production are blamed. Some major indicators of the health of the economy are in bad shape. The Ghana Stock Exchange regarded as the best in the developing World only last year is now regarded as one of the worst in Africa while corruption continues to rise giving Ghana a bad rating by the Transparency International. Some serious minded party members are growing wary of the presidents leadership and are criticizing the partys leaders from within as having become too arrogant, insensitive, self satisfied, and lost their way. This is likely to spell doom for the party in 2008.
... (read more)
Spin The Globe playlist
(artist - song - album)
hour 1
Mynta - First Summer - First Summer
Reem Kelani - A Baker’s Dozen - Sprinting Gazelle
Reem Kelani interview
Reem Kelani - Yearning - Sprinting Gazelle
Dadawa (China) - Zhouma of Zhoumas - Sister Drum
Xu Pingxin (China) - Festival in the Tianshan - Master of the Chinese Dulcimer
Kim Sinh (Vietnam) - Three songs - The Artistry of Kim Sinh – Music from Vietnam 4
hour 2
Dengue Fever (Cambodia) - Tiger Phone Card - Venus on Earth
Unknown artist (Bhutan) - Ritual Music Part 3 - Bhutan-Fortress of the Gods
Okna Tsahan Zam (Mongolia) - Sibir / In the Village - Shaman Voices
Nai Htaw Paing Ensemble (Burma/ Myanmar) - Gwet-htub - Mon Music of Burma
Chaan Siang Phin (Thailand) - Wasana Gam Par / Could You Love Me? - Molam: Thai Country Groove from Isan
Tokyo Chutie-iki (Japan)- Otome Sankanbi - Sound of the World
Mamadou Diabate et al - Sigui Dyarra - Strings Tradition
Forro in the Dark - Nonsensical - Dia de Roda
Radio Tarifa - La Molinera - Cruzando El Rio
La India Canela - Aprietame Asi / Squeeze me Like That - Merenge Tipico from the Dominican Republic
Maurice El Medioni - Ahla Ouassala - Rough Guide to Arabic Café
Afrissippi - Singha - Alliance
Eljuri - Tierras - En Paz
Etran Finatawa - Asistan - Desert Crossroads
According to an email from Chris Anderson, the curator of the TED Conference, TEDAfrica due to be held in Cape Town at the end of September 2008 has been suspended. This news has also been posted on the TED Blog where I have already posted a comment and I encourage you to do so as [...] ... (read more)
This month US citizens get a second windfall cheque from President George W. Bush as economic stimulus cheques arrive in their mailboxes of at least $300 (~Kshs. 19,000) per person, and more for parents and guardians with children. (The first was after he pipped Al Gore to the presidency and came through with one his main campaign promises). But they are being rewarded and banks cushioned ... (read more)
An amazing story of a Father’s relationship with his son. As of January 31, 2008, Team Hoyt had participated in a total of 958 events, including 224 Triathlons (6 of which were Ironman competitions), 20 Duathlons, and 65 Marathons, including 25 Boston Marathons. They have also biked and run across the USA, in 1992 [...] ... (read more)
It's ten after midnight.
I'm still at my desk.
I've just finished working on a project that has a deadline of tomorrow, noon. I had ample time, really, but I procrastinated.
And so, here I am. It will not do.
I'm hungry and tired. My eyes are red from staring at the screen.
So I'm posting this stick-it note here to remind myself how I feel right now.
How faint I felt when I tried to convert the final document into PDF half an hour ago and Word said it couldn't open it. Twice.
And how all this needn't have happened this way. Really.
I know better. I'm annoyed with myself mostly. And disappointed.
Have an organised weekend.
“Brown says about 10,000 people have read “The Da Vinci Code” before its release, including Catholic priests, religious scholars and art historians.
“There has not been one negative comment about the book. And I think that when people read the book they understand it’s presented in a historical light - it’s not taking sides. I worked hard to paint everyone - including Opus Dei - in a very fair and balanced light and the book is meticulously researched and very accurate and I think people know that.”
Not ONE negative comment! Not one!
Remarkable!
— Lewis Perdue, March 25, 2005
And en Francais:
Le “brun indique qu’environ 10.000 personnes ont lu” le code de Da Vinci “avant sa version, y compris les prĂŞtres catholiques, disciples religieux et historiens d’art.
“il n’y a pas eu un commentaire nĂ©gatif au sujet du livre. Et je pense que quand les gens lisent le livre ils comprennent qu’il est prĂ©sentĂ© dans une lumière historique - il ne prend pas des cĂ´tĂ©s.
J’ai travaillĂ© dur pour peindre chacun - comprenant l’opus Dei - dans très un juste et la lumière Ă©quilibrĂ©e et le livre est mĂ©ticuleusement recherchĂ©e et très prĂ©cis et moi pensez que les gens savent cela.”
Non UN commentaire négatif! Non un!
Remarquable!
... (read more)AfricaNews is reporting that Ethiopia, the birthplace of the coffee bean is planning on launching a new coffee brand.
