2009 January | where i write my wrongs

Archive for January, 2009

Driving me mad

I have never really considered my vehicular illiteracy (inability to drive) a big deal. The way I saw it, if I learned and there wasn’t a car readily available, I’d probably get pretty frustrated. It’s like my mentor once opined, “…like a kid discovering sex and then having that taken away from him”

Nuff said.

However, lately, I’ve had the words, “I wish you could drive” thrown at me regularly.
At first, i thought nothing of it. Hell, I shrugged and smiled sheepishly. Now? I get pissed. I don’t like that I can’t drive. I find myself rolling up into a ball and screaming, “WHY!!!” and then the answer comes back to me like a torn 1k note. “you didn’t want to learn!”

But now I do. Seriously. I don’t care that the opportunity may not present itself. I am just getting tired of all the wishes. I am also getting particularly pissed off at myself for scrolling through my phone book to find, not a cab driver, but rather a boda boda rider. I need to upgrade me!

As such, this year will be the year I learn how to drive…and with any luck drive even after the lessons. Of course there are a few things about driving that scare me.

Sexism

Have you ever noticed just how sexist drivers are? If the person driving in front of them does something that is a tad wrong, they will instantly say it must be a woman driving. The funny thing is, even women seem to get agitated and express the same opinion. What usually happens is, the driver will then proceed to overtake the car in front of him, and whilst doing so, sneak a peek into the other car. His findings will then go through a gender insensitive process that will have him say either one of these;

I knew it. See. Its a woman
A man? I can’t believe it. he drives like a woman

Sudden Loss Of Solidarity

Smokers have a bond they share. A stranger will walk up to you and ask you to ‘light him up’ and you will because you know what he is going through. There’s a kinship centuries old that you don’t want to mess up. Drivers on the other hand don’t give a shit. A guy behind the wheel will seldom care that you are also behind a wheel and need to get to place X at a certain time. Sure, once in a while (s)he will let you go first, but that won’t be before uttering a silent prayer that little elves wielding nails come to your home late in the night and puncture your tires and while they are at it, turn your number plate wrong side up.

Road Rage

Drivers, as a principle are generally not the happiest people in the world. The smallest things will upset them. A nun crossing the road will inspire feelings of animosity. A child asking for a buck will cause a driver to cast him a look that, in the days of old, would turn you into stone. Now the look makes you pee in your pants and walk away saying you probably deserved it…oh yeah, the road rage. Everyone that is driving is an idiot, moving to slow or should be incarcerated for being too dumb to use an indicator.

Superiority Complex

I’m okay with boda bodas at the moment, however that will likely change as soon as I learn how to drive. I will probably figure (rightly so) that I am too cool to use a boda boda. I will delete all those numbers I have now because I will be above that sort of thing. I too will get agitated with the way they swerve recklessly. I will, in a word, become a SNOB. I will move into Animal Farm mode, declaring to anyone that will make the mistake of listening to me, “To wheels good, Four wheels freakin better!”. I will then be forced to re-evaluate my priorities. When I first evaluated them, i wanted an Ipod and sneakers. The second evaluation will likely slide the need for a car somewhere on my hierarchy of needs.

Dependency Issues

I will want to do everything with my car. What’s that? I’ve run out of credit. Shoot, let me DRIVE down to the shop and buy some. Huh? Supper will take a while to prepare, I will DRIVE down to a fast food joint and get somethin. What? I locked my bedroom keys inside? Dang! Guess I will sleep in the car. I have no date for the prom? Looks like its just me and my wheels! I think I am downplaying this. it will be an addiction.

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Somewhere along the line I will also be elevated to the class of people that know how much gas costs, that are constantly asking pedestrians for ‘proggie’. I will become…a driver…by the end of March!

2009: 01/27
CATEGORY: Random
TAGS: driving lessons
15 comments

Graduated Tasks

Hey, I’m really sorry I haven’t been around for a bit. There was a wedding I was actively involved in (planning, not marrying), then I had to sort out my Graduation.

Yeah, that’s right, I graduated! A day after Barry Hussein got inaugurated. Both of us got congratulated. Any more of this rhyming and I’ma get discombobulated… anyway,the plan was to put something up related to the whole graduation process, but my editor offered me a chance to hate on the institution on a larger scale, so I acquiesced.

Truths about graduation;

No matter when you get through it, you will not be the last of your friends to don the gown and shit. There’s always someone from your year.

You are never the oldest guy in the room. There will always be some other cat with a greyer beard or, if you will, wrinkles around the…mouth.

You may think you are the happiest person during the ceremony. You are not. Your folks will always be happier. Your friends will be happier.

Your folks will be glad that you are closer to leaving the house. Your friends will figure you’re going to throw a party and offer free drinks.

The day will be a bitch in one way or another. Either it will be too hot, or too cold.

There will be traffic.

When you go to the studio, and you probably will. The guy or girl taking pictures will be happier than you are.

Someone, despite of the obvious nature of your clothing will feel the need to ask, “so…you graduated?”

You will not tell that person, “no, sunshine, my laundry doesn’t get back till next week so I just threw some stuff together”

and in case you missed it on Sunday, here’s that grad piece from the Sunday paper.

__________________________________

Education is a cruel beast. A monster even. People say campus is the final frontier. After you are done with that, your life finally begins. Everyone claims that the campus experience is the best you will ever have. Everyone lies.

See, getting through campus is a most tedious process. No one tells you that there will almost always be a lecturer that has it in for you. No matter how hard you try to convince yourself that you are just paranoid, you can’t ignore the fact that it’s only your name on that hideous sheet of paper on the notice board with three letters that
suggest you will be sitting in that lecture theatre for another year. RTK!

The Retake is meant to give you a firmer grasp on a subject that you have already indicated you have no interest in. Case in point;
Humphrey has stressed to his lecturer time and again that he feels nothing for the intricacies involved when the drone gets it on with the queen bee thereby sealing his fate. He has communicated his disdain by flunking his courseworks, tests and finally, in a final act of defiance, his examinations.
His lecturer doesn’t get the message and decides that Humphrey didn’t get the joke the first time round so he gives him another opportunity to grasp it. Humphrey sees that the only way out is to pretend that he does in fact think that bees shagging is a phenomenal concept so he studies and passes. Waiting for his graduation.

The campus process is the offspring of the education system that we already established is a cruel beast. The process of getting round to graduating is, it has been suggested, a nightmare.

And with good reason too.

You see, you don’t just graduate. That would be way too easy, and if there’s anything the university isn’t, that would be it! Okay, that last statement didn’t make sense to me either. Then again, when you are dealing with matters involving campus, nothing does. For instance, why on earth would you have to go and ‘clear’ with the library, knowing full well you’ve never been there?

Is this for someone else’s benefit? I think somewhere in the bowels of the library lives a troll that so badly needs to see everyone’s registration number and will not rest until everybody has been cleared. It’s all well and good, really. I get it. After screwing you over for so long, the university would not appreciate you screwing it over by stealing its books.

That would be pretty messed up. So by all means, go and show the university that you didn’t take their books to Kampala road and sell them off for a rolex.

Granted there are other departments that give you the run around, but these actually have the capacity to mess up my life so I will not be taking cheap shots at the university police or the University Hospital. Those are in the box labeled handle with care IF you must!

So, having ‘cleared’ with the various departments, all you have to do now is saunter into a room over at Senate building and drop off your files. However, as is the practice with everything at the university, you need to make copies of your documents. No institution in the world has as many Xerox machines as campus (it would be a shame if after all these years there I failed to call an educating spoon a spoon; Makerere) and it irks me no end that the prices for ‘making copies’ are never hiked. The economy is doing badly, boda boda charges are going through the roof, Mama Solome is charging more for her food, but the guy at the copy machine still charges shs.50. Where is your
business acumen?

Fine, so you hand in your stuff. Then a couple of weeks later, they announce that the list of guys and gals graduating is out. You go to the university and warily look it over. Is campus that tired of you? Yes it is. You can now buy a gown. And the mortar board and the hood.

D-day is here. You are going to sit in a tent. It will be hot as heck inside there and you will be surrounded by people you will likely never see again. And that’s why you will smile. You will smile because you know, deep down that you will not have to do this ever again. Some other hapless soul will suffer as you have. Through the education system.

Through lecturers of the unfunny persuasion. Through the fumes emitted by ‘photocopy machines’. Smile. You just excelled in graduation tasks!

2009: 01/23
CATEGORY: Uncategorized
9 comments

New Year Thoughts

I promised myself I wouldn’t milk the whole “Happy New Year” message for its worth, but yesterday I found myself telling someone I hadn’t seen him since last year. He thought it was funny. I hated myself for it. It is, in my opinion, in the same place with “Happy Christmas, Merry New Year”…the 70’s.

In these trying times, people still have the gall to deposit coins in the offertory basket. I would know. I’m one of them. How do we expect the priest to do the Lord’s work if we are dropping coins. 500shs won’t buy fuel for his car. What do you think he is driving? A lawn mower? I think some practical steps should be taken to put an end to this sort of behavior. We should have ATMs in the church.

I’ve been down with writer’s block. And you can tell it’s the real thing seeing as I couldn’t even bring myself to write that I had writer’s block. I didn’t know how I’d phrase it.

Isn’t local music the best thing ever? I mean you don’t even have to know what the artist is singing about to enjoy it…that said, when is Bobi Wine going to run out of juice. I’m not being a hater, but dude’s all over the place. Akon did that shit last year and to be honest I was waiting for him to pop up in one of Mesach Ssemakula’s songs, however he has cut down. Bobi is still going strong. It’s gotten to the point that I pray the song I’m listening to and loving is NOT by Mr. Wine. I hate myself for liking that song where he tells his woman he would do all sorts of cool things for her if he had the money. Sell one of your Escalade’s car tyres you jerk!

I’ve got a couple of posters on the walls in the room I type this stuff out from, and my sister figured she’d pitch in. The latest addition to the wall is a ‘Panic At The Disco’ poster. Yes, the thought does count for something, but the poster kills the whole testosterone thing that was going on. I don’t have naked women on the walls, but the collection includes;

A murderous barber (Sweeney Todd)
A pissed off spartan warrior (Kratos: God Of War)
A dead rapper (Tupac)
A basketball player (Shawn Kemp)

Then when you look at the right side of the room, we have a group of lads with eye shadow or eye liner or whatever makeup is used to create the impression that you just left a fight with an opponent whose main focus was dealing damage to your eye. Then again, I suppose it makes the room a little more habitable for members of the fairer sex.

What is it about graduations that gets people so excited. Sure there’s food and drinks en masse, but why should I be dying to wear the gown? Isn’t it like some ugly dress? When did it become cool for guys to wear dresses. And it comes with a sash thingy. And a cute little hat! Come on, you guys (yes, specifically the guys!) why is this super exciting?

I’ve been told it’s the ceremony that is exciting. Let’s think about that for a moment. there’s lots of insane traffic. You need to wake up early. You have to dress to the nines. You have to sit next to some random stranger for about four hours while some old fart goes on and on about how you have achieved the unachievable. How life can be difficult. How he too graduated at some point in his life… and then Mr. Sun graces the occasion knowing full well that your clothing is not conducive for his effort! Why is this supposed to be the best.day.ever?

I was browsing the web the other day and came across “vegetarian shoes”. Go to the skechers site, you’ll see. How did that happen? How did Vegetarians manage to get custom shoes? Did someone walk into a shoe shop one day and say, “I can’t wear that, do you know what they do to the animal so you can get that shoe? Do you care?”

A teacher somewhere is banging his head on the blackboard because he can’t argue with the kid at the back of the class who, when asked what shoes are made out of, answered, “cabbage”

Have a great week. . .