That said, rather than go into the usual BHH update mode, telling you who was there and who wasn't, I figured we'd switch this up a little.

People have often asked me what goes on at the Blogger Happy Hour, what we discuss and stuff like that. I usually invite them to come over to say hi (and suffer the agony of name calling, ie Well-wishers, posers, twitterers(SIC), gatecrashers and so on), but now, to save you the distance and fuel, here are 10 things that have been flung around during BHH.

In no particular order (and not featuring stuff Rev has said seeing as I have such precious little time and Rev's stuff needs a post of its own, spanning paragraph upon paragraph… anyway, enough of that, here's the meat…

10. Who is going for Comedy Night?

9. I don't give a c**t's hair!

8. Baz, are you praying?

7. He is a trial… a tribulation

6. Who writes like this?

5. You're such a dildo (funny how I can write that word and not the other)

4. Stop saying goodbye to my breasts

3. (response to number 4) sorry, I thought they were your shoulders

2. I won't go down on you again! 

1. (response to number 3) he didn't say goodbye to my breasts, he said goodbye to my armpits!

Catch you later or over at urbanlegendkampala.com

I don’t mean to be way too presumptuous, but I’d like to think you’ve all heard that song…at least Baz has.
To tell the truth, it actually sounds nice, but after a few listens (usually in the company of a beverage of your choice) you start to notice certain things. I’ll assume that you are new to this whole Paul Simon business and reproduce the lyrics. I will also try to embed the video, just to be safe.

In the song ( Call me Al), Paul Simon sings;

If you’ll be my bodyguard
I can be your long lost pal
I can call you betty
And betty when you call me
You can call me Al

I’m fine with him beginning his verses with “A Man Walks Down The Street” like he is going to crack a joke, but what’s the deal with the chorus? I mean. Seriously! What sort of deal is that? You don’t approach a bouncer with that shit. Hell, you don’t approach anyone with an offer like that.
Let’s assume for one second that I’m overreacting. Let’s say, for argument’s sake, that there is in fact someone that is okay with this buddy for bodyguard trade off. In fact, let’s call this person Baz. There is absolutely NO WAY that anyone will agree to be called BETTY. That’s some messed up shit there. What gives? How dare you suggest a name like that? I’m not saying the name Betty is not nice. On the contrary, it’s a wonderful name. It is generally not a name that bodyguards have. It is also not a name that is offered with glee.
Conclusion: Paul Simon has it in for you and won’t stop dissing you any time soon.

Give Us This Day Our Daily Bread

I’ve been meaning to blog about this, but I couldn’t find a way of introducing the subject. Seeing as this is a random  post, I can come right out and say it. I think bakeries are getting lazy. I suppose I should have suspected it after my first encounter with Tip Top bread. Remember the sizes of the slices? Massive things those. If you were in boarding school and you were going through a rough patch, a slice of Tip Top would be enough to get you by for a while. If a girl told you she was trying to lose weight and to that end had limited herself to one slice of bread a day, you needed to ask whether it was Tip Top. No way will anyone lose weight that way. Logic suggests that to avoid the tedious process of slicing the bread into numerous small pieces, the guy with the electric knife made three cuts and called it a loaf.

Then we had Yummy bread. I know what you’re thinking, the guys that come up with these names are just about as creative as a monochromatic abacus. So, yeah, we had Yummy bread where I would assume someone sat down figured “I can make bread” but couldn’t be bothered to read the recipe and dumped as much sugar in the dough as he possibly could. Maybe, just maybe, this guy/ girl would look into the mixture and gleefully pour sugar in whilst gleefully saying, “its snowing! It’s snowing!!”

Anyway, lately it appears bakers are trying to outdo each other as far as messing up the bread experience goes. In two weeks I have successfully purchased bread that had a thread in it, tasted like paraffin and had funny particles of grain I can only hope was rogue sugar that refused to conform to the norm that dictates that sugar in bread is supposed to be had and not seen. The experience with the paraffin flavored bread left me traumatized and now I have a morbid fear of preparing toast lest the slices spontaneously combust and blow up in my face. How the heck do you expect people to feel sorry for you after they find out that the coroner’s report states that the cause of death was explosive bread?

I bet the PR people will release a statement laying the blame on the power company.

Of Public Holidays with Ribbons

It’s world AIDS day, and as you may or may not be aware, it happens to be one of those days that has a ribbon. For a long time ribbons were maligned and nobody seemed to think they’d amount to much, but lately they enjoy widespread popularity and they come in a number of colours and flavours. What does this mean? Well, simply put, ribbons are now a fashion statement. Got no Cuff Links, wear the gold ribbon, Need to draw attention to your body? Wear a neon colored ribbon and place it in a strategic spot. Actually, you can just wear the ribbon and nothing else. Kinda like that fig leaf that covers naked ladies’ bodies in those paintings by dead artists.

In closing. . . .

{Footerwear}

Know how you hate wearing the same shoes as the next guy or girl? Well, there’s a solution. You can PIMP EM! Make ‘em look snazzy!

yeah? If you have a Facebook account look for the group sole addiction customs. If not… a blog will be opened soon and you will be able to see what else is on offer.

But here’s a sneak peak. . .

*Depending on where you are when you are wearing your tweaked shoes, background may vary.

hey, anyone seen the moon and it’s two friends tonight?

On the evening of July 31, a short woman in blue compact jeans chased a beefy man around a bar table as she mirthfully pleaded to have her phone back.

I was there and I honestly can’t remember seeing a beefy man amongst us. It may have been the drugs I was on, but seriously, do we have a beefy blogger? I need to know coz I need to put on some beef.

Patrons raised their eyes from their drinks and watched on mystified, wondering if this "run-and-catch" was part of the entertainment menu.

Those patrons, you can’t really please them. I mean there was this one time I stood in front of the "projector-thingy" and messed up their soccer viewing, but no one seemed to give a shit. Also, I suspect they had already had a look at the menu printed out and displayed near the projector’s screen…
The players were members of the Ugandan blogging community who had just gathered at the Turkish restaurant, Effendys, with the rest of the inner circle for their monthly meet-ups – what they call the "Happy Hour".

There’s loads of "their" and "they" being thrown about. I’ll assume for argument’s sake that you figure you are not one of "them". NEWSFLASH. Someone has been putting up posts over at what was (?) your blog masquerading as you. The impostor has access to your album and stuff. Be afraid…but not too much, he is a friend of Jesus’.

Before arriving here an hour or thereabouts, a debate had raged between two bloggers and a visiting American:

{Word going around suggests that there was no American at this BHH… there was, however, a Canadian. }

Are all Ugandan bloggers okay with taking their meetings to a bar?

Not all of them, just the one’s that attend BHH. There are others that like to keep a low profile and have more pressing issues… doing proper research for articles not being one of those issues.

And what’s the whole essence of having a Happy Hour? Is it just to celebrate life by drinking expensive coffee and beer, fraternising, raising money for an orphanage or engaging intellectually say on the rising food prices?

Allow me to quote Darlyne, a blogger and a friend that I have known for a decade, "To put a face to the blogs we read and love so much. To have a forum where we can discuss, face to face, some of the controversial posts that we have read in the previous month. To have fun and meet new people and make new friends. To engage intellectually on different things including the rising food prices." I really want to call her a clever blogger, because I truly think she is, but we don’t share the same pastor or bible, so that may not be in line with how you do things… Dee, if you are reading this, me I think you are cool! Even if I don’t read verses from your CD insert…I mean, bible.
With Michael Jackson’s Thriller playing in the background, Thomas Smyth literally shouted his order, for that was the only way the waitress was going to hear.

One- Call him Tom.

Two- That can’t be true, I’m sure there are other ways the waitress was going to hear…like by interpretation through song.

That’s about when the two adults pursued themselves around tables. It was the beginning of a shocking evening for the American.

Are you implying that he wasn’t shocked that the only way the waitress was going to hear was through shouting? Yes? Okay then…and again, who is beefy blogger?
Soon, girls were eyeing him surreptitiously (ugh! Migraine! Oh big word! Why hast thou come and claimed a brain cell?! Curse you massive word!) and whispering (possibly about his towering height)

We have bloggers that whisper…at BHH no less? Say it isn’t so! Wait… we have people that attend BHH and check out people in attendance? This is so unheard of, so bizarre… Thank God we have level headed ones like you who come just for…wait, were you drinking coffee?

and taking pictures with their phones.

Disclaimer: my phone refused to take pictures with me. Mbu I am not cool enough. However, I did manage to use my phone to take a few photographs…

Thomas Smyth gulped his drink and left the Happy Hour prematurely.

But Tom says he had 2 beers…which Tom were you observing? And I left the BHH a little after ten and I left Tom there… Perhaps I have this all wrong, coz you did say the Tom that left prematurely was an American Tourist…the one I left at Effendys was a Canadian and he was a student at the university. Great guy actually, he is supposed to send me a tiger cub or something (honest! We discussed this)

He had come with a hypothesis: That this community of erudite bloggers was going to transform the Ugandan society but a few minutes with them and he began to doubt.
"I did not have a rotten time at the happy hour that night. Quite the contrary. True, I had hoped to find a different kind of atmosphere, but when I realized that the meeting was of a more social nature I went with it. – Tom" (Source; Comment section from Darlyne’s blog)
He didn’t know that a clever Ugandan blogger, S.A.G.E, had in August 2007 summed the Ugandan blogging scenario as "the theatre of the absurd" for which he incurred the wrath of the "blogren."

Is that the same Ugandan blogger that you have known for 7 years? And I really can not/ will not go into this.

Blogger Savage had called him "a waste of space on earth and a disgrace to the entire human population" and insulted his parents saying they would have done the "world a huge favour had they decided to have a good night’s sleep instead of engaging in hanky panky the night" S.A.G.E was "conceived."

Ironically, Savage’s attack of S.A.G.E drew a backlash as equally inane. One blogger Keitetsi said Savage sounded like "a menopausal goose" and that if his comments were "on paper, it would be the kind of stuff people in jail use to wipe their butts."

As drama ensued, the personalities of many Ugandan bloggers were exposed to a level where the discerning would no longer find it confounding that a woman would for example upload a picture of her g-string on her blog and ask if the readers like it.

This shouldn’t come as a surprise really, given that when you reported on blogging mania hitting town, you said, bloggers "are not shy to blog (sic) about how tortoises make love to how exciting it is to kiss in the morgue. Introverts turn into instant extroverts -posting anything to see how readers respond. Then there are blogs on ordinary things like the premiership soccer craze, the work experience and getting stuck in a jam." And where is the g-string post where we were asked if we liked it? I feel cheated.

A June 30 ( I love how you can recall the date without going back to check) blog entry boldly titled "Boobs!" by Ugandan blogger Carlo, contained four pictures of women’s cleavage. (In effect, 8 boobs?) Her blog soon jammed with comments from men and women begging with desperation to know to whom the ample busts belonged – Carlo’s or her sisters. Only a few wondered if she was crazy to flash such erotica. (Erotica let me look at her ID once, she looks nothing like the boobs in question)
"My blog is called Carlo’s for a reason; it’s all about me, so I put up what I want," she defended herself. "I put them [cleavage] there to attract attention as a light-hearted beginning of a week so we’re not totally focused on serious issues but can laugh sometimes and be ridiculous, you get?"

While it’s true it’s the blogger’s prerogative to fill their blogs with whatever material, those creating blogs are prompted to restrict their sites to invited readers or to put a disclaimer that the blog contains adult content. (So…seeing as you landed on this blog post…were you invited or just blog-post-crashing?)

From S.A.G.E’s understanding, bloggers are supposed to update their lives and voice their opinions on things they strongly feel about to provoke intellectually stimulating debate.

From YOUR understanding back then in that article, "perhaps they blog because bloggers are a creative lot who paint big pictures with incandescent prose, sheer musicality and urbane vividness by weaving terrific escapades that provide intimate reading for their online fans." Did you share your opinion with him, you know, so you could compare notes with this authority"

"But in Uganda, it’s more of who’s more dirty," he says. "They are not going to be interested if you don’t tickle the bad boy and the bad girl in them; so girls talk about the first time they lost their virginity in the shower room, and boys about how sweet sex in the morgue is and everyone cheers and their egos are massaged. Their superficiality comes to the surface as they smite those that would rather tell them the truth than hype them."

Not really, I was tickled reading about Kirk Franklin asking you to set up a blog for him. And I doubt egos can only be massaged when sexual content is posted on blogs. Otherwise we wouldn’t have people talking about their albums…

Journalist Rodney Muhumuza agrees. "We don’t seem to have a lot of reported blogs in Uganda, which is very disappointing. In America, bloggers investigate and conduct interviews to scoop The New York Times but most Ugandan bloggers that I know care about life at its most basic," said Muhumuza, who writes The Kampala Review blog. "It’s more often about sex, sex and more sex. It’s hardly the stuff that will inspire a sober mind."

In Uganda, some journalists barely investigate, otherwise one (name not mentioned) would have pointed out that there are few blogs that deal with sex, sex and more sex. Come to think of it… Which blogger discusses sex with such frequency? Does The Hyena from the Red Pepper have a blog?

Could it be that they know they write banality that they hide under pseudonyms?

I’m not sure, but a writer with the Sunday Monitor assumes this turns "introverts into instant extroverts" Rather than heroes, you meet unrepentant cynics and provocateurs that spend a bulk of their time venting, fantasising and gibbering about trivialities with unflagging devotion.

Something the writer once described thus, "It’s without doubt a riveting experience reading people’s blogs."

Writing about life in the Internet age, David Kaiza dramatically captured this in the June 30-July 6 issue of The EastAfrican by noting, "The culture (of blogging) puffs out like a hot air balloon; directionless and pointless."

It is this lack of focus that has left Ugandan journalist and blogger Benon Herbert Oluka disappointed: "I would expect people to use their blogs to give more insight into everyday happenings because I tend to get hooked to thought-provoking articles than someone whose blog is about where they hang out last night and blah, blah, blah."

But is not hanging out one of those many everyday happenings? Are you asking us to… to lie?
Plus… there are loads of blogs that do offer thought provocation… see the Node Six aggregator for details. Check out Baz’s blog for links (Yes, Baz, another blogger that I have known for a while and respect like a problem…but because he doesn’t sing or lend me his hymn book, I can not quote him)
One of the most popular and respected Ugandan bloggers, 27th Comrade, thinks many Ugandan bloggers are "simply not interested in serious discourse; it’s not a bad thing; it’s just different."
How dare you? It IS a bad thing! Why else would this journalist be covering it?
Flipping the other side of the coin, there are also purpose-driven bloggers, however few, that command the respect of the intelligent and educated alike. Tumwijuke of the Ugandan Insomniac blog is for example loved for her ability to "poke the social conscience of people".

Writing with zing and flair, she has almost single-handedly cracked into the dominance of traditional media by arousing discussion on issues of national and global importance, for which she was in February this year voted Uganda‘s best blogger by fellow "blogren".

For some however, the uniqueness of blogs is the greatest thing to happen online. Clearly, you are not one of these.

"Bloggers don’t have to follow conventional rules like the newspapers and that’s what I love most," says Jared Ombui an avid reader of blogs. "Writing for them is a heart thing and often you find closet stories; the kind you will never see in our newspapers. I love that they are usually short and funny and also the comments from readers are hilarious."

For blogger Denda, it’s the spirit of comradeship that he loves about blogging. "It’s like neighbours checking on each other," he said. "I knock on your blog anytime and find out what’s going on in your ‘house’. During the Happy Hour we share ideas and swap books and meet some of the bloggers we love to read –that’s the whole beauty about blogging."

Did you read this bit before carrying massive expectations into the whole happy hour thing? Or is it that short term memory thing everyone’s getting into lately?

It’s a positive sign especially in this era where blogs are increasingly being seen as points of reference. Already, there is a heated debate on the Internet that they will soon replace mainstream media which shows the power blogs possess.

Still, if the world’s best comic-strip artist was to invent something that best depicts the Ugandan blogging experience as whole, it would not be the kind patriots would like. It’s only after we have revolutionised the way we think and blog that people like Thomas Smyth will not leave the Happy Hour with inhibitions.

Truth be told, I’d welcome the effort. But that’s only because the world’s best comic strip artist (and I don’t even know who this is) would have an open mind and truly comprehend what blogging is about….

…and call him TOM!

Oh yeah, people in attendance are usually more colorful than this thing.

I can’t manage time. I have tried everything to get rid of this, but it just won’t work. The whole “set your clock fifteen minutes ahead” thing has refused to work for me for two simple reasons;

·        I set the clock so at the back of my mind I know what time it really is.

·        The city clocks are all over the place screaming the right time at me in black and white. At this point I don’t have the heart to glance at my dull and unhappy looking chronometer.

The problem is, my time keeping is not perfectly flawed. There are instances that I find my self right on time for. I may be late for a date, but I will arrive right on time for my Dental appointment.

I’m a beer snob. I don’t know when that started, but it’s there. I seem to have a problem with beers in brown bottles. I have tried to make it seem glamorous by saying stuff like, “I don’t do brown bottles” which in effect makes me sound a lot like those girls back at the university whom I despised for saying they only drank wine. I don’t have a thing against wine drinkers, heck after the events of New Year’s Eve 2006, I respect them…BUT it pisses me off when they say they drink wine in a way that implies they are way cooler than the rest of us! Beer drinkers are more daring, you will not get a wine gut, so don’t think you’re HARDCORE. YOU are NOT taking chances, THEY are!

I have kind of eased up though; I take canned drinks . . . under duress.

 

I have a problem with Authority Figures. I figure this may be because I like to do things my way or because more often than not, they don’t know what they are talking about. This started back in Primary School. Standard Four it was.

I say “standard” because it was not in Uganda, but across the border in Kenya.

We had this exercise in English Class where we had to arrange words in Alphabetical Order. I don’t know why they thought it was vital to learn this seeing as I’ve never been asked at a job interview whether arranging stuff alphabetically is among the skills I intend to bring to the company. Maybe you have had greater success with this.

Sad.

Anyway, so we had this exercise and I got all but one number right. I looked at it and thought it was correct, after all, back then, the letter “S” came before the letter “W”. I told the teacher so and got the thrashing of my life. Then when she got round to showing kids how to do it, in a part of the lesson they called, “Corrections”, she realized her mistake and looked at me with an expression of Horror. Like she’d just discovered she’d dealt with the son of the devil and daddy was coming to talk to her about it after class.

No such luck, after the lesson she asked me to stay behind and she apologized. She said it was her mistake, blah blah PMS blah.

If this had been Tennessee things might have played out a little different. Pamela Rogers, anyone?

Anyway, since then, I don’t like to take shit from higher ups just because they figure they are right and I am wrong…except at work. I respect authority figures in an office environment. If they say a camel is a sea creature I will not question them, but rather ask whether it should be fried or boiled before consumption.

 

I did an ARTS based course at the university. I feel the need to point this out because even the few people that know me well do not really know what I did at the university. I have been thrown occasional, “You did Industrial Arts at the university, yeah?” and “If you have your fine art degree you should be sorted” and my personal favorite, “You studied I.T at campus, yeah”?

It’s gotten so bad, once a pal’s dad was recommending me to someone for employment and I had no idea what the job entailed until I read the note he had asked me to deliver.

“This is (name). He is known to me. He did Information Technology and he is good. Give him something.”

I didn’t deliver this note lest the person on the other end asked me to create software that would allow him to steal Tony Blair’s personality whenever he logged on to check his email.

Then recently I received a call from a friend’s brother (who I suppose by proxy or over-wanting I can refer to as a friend as well) and he asks me whether my I.T skills take into account servicing computers.

I thought I’d go with the flow seeing as it could be easy cash and I could pick some help from Google, so I asked him what exactly he wanted and he says, “Servicing, you know. The kind you I.T people do.”

I didn’t go.

 

I have a sleeping disorder. I don’t know what it is called. It could be insomnia, but seeing as I don’t have a blog to go with that claim, I think I will lose credibility. I will hang out till about 5 in the morning and then wake up at 9am….the same morning. I don’t know why this is. I also have instances where I can not sleep till really late (or early if you’re one for details) and I occupy myself with music and the internet. Its sad really because more often than not I figure that when I’m awake the whole world is awake with me and consequently I call people up and send them messages at what some may call awkward hours.

I’ve contemplated popping pills, but with what happened to Heath Ledger, I am frightened.

This thing wouldn’t have been awful really, but it shows and I have a sympathizer in the form of my brother’s friend.

Not too long ago I met her at two pm and in mid conversation she asked me whether I had trouble sleeping. I was kind of shy about answering this because I figured if she knew about this, she’d surely know about my other dark secret…

Then she says she has the same problem, that she finds it really hard to sort it out and that a slice of cucumber will get read of the bags under my eyes. So much for that plan to milk ‘em…

Then she went on to say that her eyes dry out and at this point I’m thinking, “Close, but no cigar”. The fluid in my eyes stays there for a while, and for all intents and purposes it probably will stay there until I take some ill-advised trip to the sun

I listen to everything but Lingala Music. This type music brings such great displeasure to me and I do not understand why people are crazy about it.

Listening to this shit brings dishonor to my ears.

 I’m sure someone will offer his expert take on the matter with, “Oh, it’s the instruments and the way they are arranged”. Whatever! Seriously, why would anyone want to listen to a song that goes on for thirty minutes?

THIRTY!

Does anyone know what this implies?

It means, in Shoe-terms that One song is enough to wear off some part of the sole on your shoe.

It means that by the time you’re through dancing to say, I don’t know, three songs, you will be BADLY dehydrated.

It means that if you bought a radio cassette like back in the old days, you’d only have two songs on it, with each filling either side.

I don’t care that the words do not make sense, I’m cool with that. I respect artistes. I listen to Ray C don’t I? Well, actually no. I just watch her.

 

For no reason at all other than 7 being a fairly decent number (the kind you’d take for drinks and let your daughter marry), here’s one more thing;

Uganda Waragi is my Kryptonite.

 

This tag made possible by the malicious actions of Carlo-ryn

 

Tag! You’re it;

Mr. B2B, Tandra, Kissyfur, Dark Legend, Tumwi, Dee

 

RULES OF ENGAGEMENT

1. Link back to your tagger
2. Post these rules in your submission
3. Share six things/habits/quirks/whatever about you in your submission
4. Tag six [random] people at the end of it
5. Tell each taggee via comments that he/she done been tagged