P-B-S

(Your Public Broadcast Service...)


When is it okay to tell someone that you are leaving them? Does anything like the perfect moment to break up with someone exist? Yes, I think it does. I believe in moments because all the most important events of my life have hinged on fortuitous moments when I did something else instead of another and that moment unveiled yet another chapter in the life I was going to live.

Like a day, a morning when I woke up, my traveling bags packed, notice of intent to travel to all I knew already served, got back into bed and decided I was not traveling that Friday morning. I would travel on a Monday. In that moment, saving my life because the people I was supposed to travel with would all be dead by that Monday and when I got to see them, it was helping to arrange road and plane travel of their corpses. So yes, I believe in moments and that perfect moments exist.

I have been in the inside of perfect moments. Like when an awed girl tells you, “I didn’t know this could happen to me too,” saying it not for your benefit, but more to herself. I have been on the inside of perfect moments, stone-drunk on Smirnoff Triple Distilled, barechest on a stool outside a green tent on a Friday afternoon, talking politics with a man who turned out to be a president and had been living in the next tent. So yes, I believe in perfect moments.

But still…when and what is the perfect moment to tell without unnecessary drama (because I was so over that 2 years ago), or false humility (you’ll never appreciate your own worth if you are always talking yourself down), that you are through. This is your last ride, and like many things that you have been so sure of lately, you know for definite this is your last blogging year. Everything you are writing and putting on is but leading to that grand finale post you have been planning to write for four years since you started blogging. Your grand encore to this space and invention that got you back into the writing, rekindled loves you had become estranged from, sustained you in the haphazard madness of dealing with furious betrayals, downsizing to blow up again.

A lot of things have prompted this out and out confession instead of my preferred muted twilight vanishing. Ambrose Bierce’s way of going out still the legend in my mind. It’s you, this blog’s loyal reader, who I don’t want one day wondering, “Whatever happened to that Iwaya dude?” somehow I owe you this. Nothing haunts me more than false expectations and disappointed hopes and I expect it’s the same for you. Iwaya was a phase for me and after this year I’ll be done with Iwaya and go back to who I’ve always been-JM. Who I was even when I did not how to be. This is no Kid Fox-King Fox metamorphosis, a laser skin graft that can be reverted, a mirage smoke and mirrors play- it’s just a statement of fact. Laced with thank you’s for emails received over the past, verbal loving comments that often left me in stuttering gratefulness for all the happiness your notice often gave me—and an early notice that the end is nigh. Every post this year brings me closer to the last post I’ll ever write here.

Windows 7 & Vista-the battlers.

Warily cautious does not even begin to describe my gingerly advances towards the new Windows 7 operating system. Ecstatic techy reviews I have read indicate that Windows 7 is a marvel, Microsoft’s first real challenge to the little tested wonderous experiences I have had of Steve Job’s Apple system. It is not mentioned by Microsoft but it seems that Windows 7 is the new Vista and that is creepy for me.

Vista was my first love and it broke my heart, badly. Tore it into shreds and sent the pieces floating in the planetary ether like rocket debris. I still have strong feelings about my first experiences and encounters with Vista which happened toward the end of 2006. When I used my first work laptop that was to be my work station for the next two years, that bulky Dell laptop on which I blogged some of my best Iwaya pieces when the love for blogging was as pure as a Scottish Christian missionary’s zeal, penned yahoo messenger messages that nearly came back to haunt me.

Ha! How I experienced the first joys of Windows 11 Media Player, learning from Pete’s Mama first that as my windows system was genuine, all I had to do was upgrade. For many months delighting, like a child seeing the phone coloured screen, in the shiftable templates on offer. The yahoo messenger free over the internet phone calls that began a continuing interest in hunting for the perfect headphones. Damn, those beautiful desktop tricks. I loved Vista!

Until the disappointments. The endless ‘hanging’ while processing multiple requests. The endless start-up wait that got me addicted to sauntering out to begin an addiction to coffee, learning the art of making a cappuccino, the foamy mountain reward half consumed before my Dell Vista would let me access my documents. The extinction of some beloved programmes Vista declared beyond the pale and not worthy of use while it was on that Dell. But always, the intolerable slowness like I was waiting on never arriving royalty that anyway turned up with nothing especially spectacular. I was sick of Vista by the time we two parted, several time close to hurling that blames Dell at the wall that survived with me dangerous voyages, journeys on which things happened I have ever yet been able to come to terms with.

Excuse me therefore I’m still underwhelmed by all so far I have read and heard of Windows 7. I have been listening to and following the Windows 7 gospel since July this year and I’m still far from conversion. Chrome Google, Explorer failed to convert me and Firefox has remained my legitimate lover. I’m a lover of snappy beauty but Mormon functionality operates the everyday and this is what I need the most above all. In the chaos of my many universes, I create order in the world of my laptop. Windows XP is not about to be usurped until I know Windows 7 is not just another Microsoft flash in the pan.

Crushing without a guilt...again!...on Tracey Chapman

"Telling Stories"

There is fiction in the space between
The lines on your page of memories
Write it down but it doesnt mean
Youre not just telling stories
There is fiction in the space between
You and me

There is fiction in the space between
You and reality
You will do and say anything
To make your everyday life
Seem less mundane
There is fiction in the space between
You and me

Theres a science fiction in the space between
You and me
A fabrication of a grand scheme
Where I am the scary monster
I eat the city and as I leave the scene
In my spaceship I am laughing
In your remembrance of your bad dream
Theres no one but you standing

Leave the pity and the blame
For the ones who do not speak
You write the words to get respect and compassion
And for posterity
You write the words and make believe
There is truth in the space between

There is fiction in the space between
You and everybody
Give us all what we need
Give us one more sad sordid story
But in the fiction of the space between
Sometimes a lie is the best thing
Sometimes a lie is the best thing

Tracey Chapman

Eminef-My Rant, My Defence, My Love-letter

You may know me as that Biggie freak, you know. The guy has a Biggie Smalls quote for nearly every situation that I will mumble under my breath, who jumped onto a taxi from Entebbe on a Friday evening, traveling against the grain of heavy evening traffic back into Kampala because my video girl at Eddie Soft had texted me that they had finally got Notorious and I could not wait until Monday. When usually not even the promises of money will get back into Kampala after I have left the city on Thursday evening.

I have fallen out of seeing so many good, old friends because they live in Kampala and I live in Entebbe and they think the best days to meet are over the weekends—Saturdays and Sundays. I will not make the pilgrimage but for Biggie, for The Notorious B.I.G…tell me that Lil’ Kim has made a secret personal visit to Kampala and is on her way to one of our numerous game parks. I will visit my first national game park if that is what it will take to meet the woman who probably, after his mother, knew B.I.G in ways few other people ever got to know him—to meet her and ask her what he was like, what did he sound like in his everyday conversation, what did he like watching on TV, well, I will just about do anything.

But that is about the closest I can ever hope to get to Biggie, apart from the endless versions of playlists of his music that I have made. Finding even songs worth listening to in Duets: The Final Chapter, and damn Biggie fans if you have never listened to Biggie and Pac collabo in the House of Pain song, way, way better than that other celebrated collabo-the Jay-Z Biggie Brooklyn’s Finest—House of Pain is guttural, raw, cutting to the bone like intimations you get from Cadillac Records what it must have felt like to first hear Muddy Waters, Howlin’ Wolf and the originals wringing art and song from terrible circumstances that had seen their mothers and fathers leave the South, go stark raving mad in trying to prove I’m also a man.

I’m that Biggie nut. But I also used to be an Eminem fan. Okay, you know I can never just be a fan. Because I just don’t listen to the music. Once I get into some song, some artist, it is all consuming and I got to watch every documentary, every movie they have been in, I got to have the photos and know the lifeline curve and where these songs were recorded and where possible, what was on the brain---genius coruscating, ideas sizzling, like corn popping. That is why I find it hard why some people think music is like polite chatter, something you can put in elevators and pay not much mind to. Music is like the literature I read, life saving. Eminem was and is a life saver.

This is for you who was told that your generation is shallow because you think Eminem is just as important as Shakespeare. For daring to say you think Eminem is the greatest poet of his generation. For trying to articulate how like Malcolm X and Stokely Carmichael, Eminem gets your pain, rage, outrage and desire to survive and overcome. Refuse to be broken and that raised middle finger is not just an obscene gesture for you.

Have they not listened to Rock Bottom, If I Had, Guilty Conscience from the Slim Shady LP? Kim, Stan, Drug Ballad from the Mathers LP? I mean don’t Mocking Bird, One Shot 2 Shot, Like Toy Soldiers from Encore speak for themselves? Norm Mailer was right that obscenity and its sanity saving blessedness and you intuitively got it though they are trying to tell you that Eminem is a misogynist bastard, gay-basher, intolerant KK white, and you could not believe it. You have to go through the darkness to get to the light and for you Em was the only one holding the light like no one else could--- so no need to apologise for idolizing him---for the musical hand that got you to bite your lip through a barrage of virulent verbal opposition but hang onto your ideas, put that vodka sachet down and instead outline that business plan you carried around in your head for nearly half a decade, turn away from the betrayal of a brother and the impending one of a lover without rancour and continue climbing instead of letting it drag you down and embitter you age you. How many people can claim to have saved even one life? Em saved yours. It’s enough.

Apparently I Used To Love This Song...

Baz Luhrmann Lyrics - Everybody's Free (To Wear Sunscreen)

Ladies and Gentlemen of the class of ’99
If I could offer you only one tip for the future, sunscreen would be
it. The long term benefits of sunscreen have been proved by
scientists whereas the rest of my advice has no basis more reliable
than my own meandering experience…I will dispense this advice now.

Enjoy the power and beauty of your youth; oh nevermind; you will not
understand the power and beauty of your youth until they have faded.
But trust me, in 20 years you’ll look back at photos of yourself and
recall in a way you can’t grasp now how much possibility lay before
you and how fabulous you really looked….
You’re not as fat as you imagine. Don’t worry about the future; or worry, but know that worrying is as effective as trying to solve an algebra equation by chewing
bubblegum.

The real troubles in your life are apt to be things that never crossed your worried mind; the kind that blindside you at 4pm on some idle Tuesday.

Do one thing everyday that scares you Sing Don’t be reckless with other people’s hearts, don’t put up with people who are reckless with yours.

Floss Don’t waste your time on jealousy; sometimes you’re ahead, sometimes you’re behind…the race is long, and in the end, it’s only with yourself.

Remember the compliments you receive, forget the insults; if you succeed in doing this, tell me how.

Keep your old love letters, throw away your old bank statements. Stretch Don’t feel guilty if you don’t know what you want to do with your life…the most interesting people I know didn’t know at 22 what they wanted to do with their lives, some of the most interesting 40 year olds I know still don’t.

Get plenty of calcium. Be kind to your knees, you’ll miss them when they’re gone.

Maybe you’ll marry, maybe you won’t, maybe you’ll have children,maybe you won’t, maybe you’ll divorce at 40, maybe you’ll dance the funky chicken on your 75th wedding anniversary…what ever you do, don’t congratulate yourself too much or berate yourself either – your choices are half chance, so are everybody else’s.

Enjoy your body, use it every way you can…don’t be afraid of it, or what other people think of it, it’s the greatest instrument you’ll ever own..

Dance…even if you have nowhere to do it but in your own living room.

Read the directions, even if you don’t follow them.

Do NOT read beauty magazines, they will only make you feel ugly.

Get to know your parents, you never know when they’ll be gone for good. Be nice to your siblings; they are the best link to your past and the people most likely to stick with you in the future.

Understand that friends come and go,but for the precious few you should hold on. Work hard to bridge the gaps in geography and lifestyle because the older you get, the more you need the people you knew when you were young.

Live in New York City once, but leave before it makes you hard; live in Northern California once, but leave before it makes you soft.

Travel.

Accept certain inalienable truths, prices will rise, politicians will philander, you too will get old, and when you do you’ll fantasize that when you were young prices were reasonable, politicians were noble and children respected their elders. Respect your elders.

Don’t expect anyone else to support you. Maybe you have a trust fund, maybe you have a wealthy spouse; but you never know when either one might run out.

Don’t mess too much with your hair, or by the time you're 40, it will
look 85.

Be careful whose advice you buy, but, be patient with those who supply it. Advice is a form of nostalgia, dispensing it is a way of fishing the past from the disposal, wiping it off, painting over the ugly parts and recycling it for more than
it’s worth.

But trust me on the sunscreen…