Friday, February 27, 2009

THE BBC BOOKLIST AND A MEANINGLESS YES/NO QUIZ

There are these interesting blogs I've been following lately, and I got these two pieces that have come a long way. You can post on your blog too, with your own answers. On the quiz, you are supposed to strictly answer yes or no, but what are rules for, I broke it in some questions. Enjoy.

(1) The Yes/No

Have you...Kissed any one of your Facebook friends?
No.

Kissed someone you didn't like?
Yes

Ran a red light?
No.

Totalled your car/motorbike in an accident?
No. I don't own any of those. Been in a mild accident though. By mild I mean not serious.

Been fired from a job?
No.

Sang karaoke?
No. But I do sing along to music alone in the living room.

Laughed until something you were drinking came out your nose?
Yes.

Sang in the shower?
Yes. Everyday.

Sat on a rooftop?
Yeah, cool.

Been pushed into a pool with all your clothes on?
Nope

Broken a bone?
No.

Shaved your head?
I'm a guy.

Felt like killing someone?
Way back in my teen years, yeah.

Made your girlfriend/boyfriend cry?
No. I'm a nice guy.

Had Mexican jumping beans for pets?
I don't know what those are.

Been in a band?
No, but I wish I was.

Shot a gun?
No. One of the things I hope to do before I die.

Tripped on mushrooms?
What! NO.

Donated Blood?
No.

Eaten alligator meat?
No.

Eaten cheesecake?
Yes.

Still love someone you shouldn't?
No. But does anyone who shouldn't still love me?

Think about the future?
Sometimes. Yes.

Believe in love?
Yes.


(2) The Booklist

The BBC believes most people will have only read 6 of the 100 books here. Although that also means you are an uncivilised git, you will be part of the masses. Less than 6, be ashamed. Read anything above 20 and you are a star.

Instructions:

Look at the list and mark those you have read.Red = Read it.Green = Read it, remember it.Blue = Own it, haven't read yet.Orange = Reading these days.

1 Pride and Prejudice - Jane Austen
2 The Lord of the Rings - JRR Tolkien (only the first one though)
3 Jane Eyre - Charlotte Bronte
4 Harry Potter series - JK Rowling
5 To Kill a Mockingbird - Harper Lee
6 The Bible
7 Withering Heights - Emily Bronte
8 Nineteen Eighty Four - George Orwell
9 His Dark Materials - Philip Pullman
10 Great Expectations - Charles Dickens
11 Little Women - Louisa M Alcott
12 Tess of the D’Urbervilles - Thomas Hardy
13 Catch 22 - Joseph Heller
14 Complete Works of Shakespeare
15 Rebecca - Daphne Du Maurier
16 The Hobbit - JRR Tolkien
17 Birdsong - Sebastian Faulk
18 Catcher in the Rye - JD Salinger
19 The Time Traveller’s Wife - Audrey Niffenegger
20 Middlemarch - George Eliot
21 Gone With The Wind - Margaret Mitchell
22 The Great Gatsby - F Scott Fitzgerald
23 Bleak House - Charles Dickens
24 War and Peace - Leo Tolstoy
25 The Hitch Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy - Douglas Adams
26 Brideshead Revisited - Evelyn Waugh
27 Crime and Punishment - Fyodor Dostoyevsky
28 Grapes of Wrath - John Steinbeck
29 Alice in Wonderland - Lewis Carroll
30 The Wind in the Willows - Kenneth Grahame
31 Anna Karenina - Leo Tolstoy
32 David Copperfield - Charles Dickens
33 Chronicles of Narnia - CS Lewis
34 Emma - Jane Austen
35 Persuasion - Jane Austen
36 The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe - CS Lewis
37 The Kite Runner - Khaled Hosseini
38 Captain Corelli’s Mandolin - Louis De Bernieres
39 Memoirs of a Geisha - Arthur Golden
40 Winnie the Pooh - AA Milne
41 Animal Farm - George Orwell
42 The Da Vinci Code - Dan Brown
43 One Hundred Years of Solitude - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
44 A Prayer for Owen Meaney - John Irving
45 The Woman in White - Wilkie Collins
46 Anne of Green Gables - LM Montgomery
47 Far From The Madding Crowd - Thomas Hardy
48 The Handmaid’s Tale - Margaret Atwood
49 Lord of the Flies - William Golding
50 Atonement - Ian McEwan
51 Life of Pi - Yann Martel
52 Dune - Frank Herbert
53 Cold Comfort Farm - Stella Gibbons
54 Sense and Sensibility - Jane Austen
55 A Suitable Boy - Vikram Seth
56 The Shadow of the Wind - Carlos Ruiz Zafon
57 A Tale Of Two Cities - Charles Dickens
58 Brave New World - Aldous Huxley
59 The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time - Mark Haddon
60 Love In The Time Of Cholera - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
61 Of Mice and Men - John Steinbeck
62 Lolita - Vladimir Nabokov
63 The Secret History - Donna Tartt
64 The Lovely Bones - Alice Sebold
65 Count of Monte Cristo - Alexandre Dumas
66 On The Road - Jack Kerouac
67 Jude the Obscure - Thomas Hardy
68 Bridget Jones’s Diary - Helen Fielding
69 Midnight’s Children - Salman Rushdie
70 Moby Dick - Herman Melville
71 Oliver Twist - Charles Dickens
72 Dracula - Bram Stoker
73 The Secret Garden - Frances Hodgson Burnett
74 Notes From A Small Island - Bill Bryson
75 Ulysses - James Joyce
76 The Inferno - Dante
77 Swallows and Amazons - Arthur Ransome
78 Germinal - Emile Zola
79 Vanity Fair - William Makepeace Thackeray
80 Possession - AS Byatt
81 A Christmas Carol - Charles Dickens
82 Cloud Atlas - David Mitchell
83 The Color Purple - Alice Walker
84 The Remains of the Day - Kazuo Ishiguro
85 Madame Bovary - Gustave Flaubert
86 A Fine Balance - Rohinton Mistry
87 Charlotte’s Web - EB White
88 The Five People You Meet In Heaven - Mitch Albom
89 Adventures of Sherlock Holmes - Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
90 The Faraway Tree Collection - Enid Blyton
91 Heart of Darkness - Joseph Conrad
92 The Little Prince - Antoine De Saint-Exupery
93 The Wasp Factory - Iain Banks
94 Watership Down - Richard Adams
95 A Confederacy of Dunces - John Kennedy Toole
96 A Town Like Alice - Nevil Shute
97 The Three Musketeers - Alexandre Dumas
98 Hamlet - William Shakespeare
99 Charlie and the Chocolate Factory - Roald Dahl
100 Les Miserables - Victor Hugo


As you can see, I'm not so fond of books. But just these particular ones, thanks to the bible I made it to six.

I got the list and the yes/no quiz from this blog.

Thursday, February 26, 2009

I DON'T LIKE THE MEDIA WHEN IT COMES TO NEWS

I was reading a book yesterday, I can't remember the title but it was about pacifism (before I say more, it's funny because in the preface it asked "...what if Saddam Hussein turns monstrous?" and I had to go back to the front page and check the year in which it was printed and published, 1994. I smiled, that ain't so way back. Also, who am I to say who is a monster nad who is not? But I smiled because I thought, human beings, we'll always face the same challenges.)


The only word I remember in the title of the book is non-violence. But the most interesting thing he said that I liked was that in the proffesion of journalism, which he is or was in, has individuals with world-class skill of telling it how the world is a mess but will never offer to be part of a solution either by proposing ideas or suggesting the way forward through a predicament. Now, I'm not a journalist but I know there are clauses somewhere that binds them to be neutral when it comes to such stuff.. I don't know, I didn't say it! another journalist did, I just concur.


You know when I don't like journalists? When they are all up in your face, flash lights, tiny recorders and all the noise from moving there lips like they are saying something, trying to ask something but you don't hear them. It's okay for those who like it, they can follow them. Here's an example; a wedding ceremony goes wrong and the bride runs off because another woman came to disrupt the whole thing with a baby in her arms claiming child support from the groom. Question is, how the hell do the the news cameras arrive at such scenes, a simple wedding in the hood? The groom and his people understandably trying to block the camera, but they just keep on, why!


"I'm just doing my job"- Their favourite line.


Well, go do your job at some other f***kin place! It's just sick, disgusting. I don't want to be embarrassed on behalf of anyone. Isn't there a law about invasion of privacy? Like when they caught that Cabinet Minister minding his business exiting a fancy hotel with a mistress, he did well wrestling that camera guy, but I'da killed him! Because that's snitching and unacceptable!


I hate the media for that. I HATE you! Passionately.

Lock up the snitches, only the snitches!

About the pacifism book, it was nice. Another interesting thing it said; there is nothing radical about thinking that the world can solve its problem without violence, that it was not radical to think that poverty can be eradicated and hunger taken care of. Think about that.

Tuesday, February 24, 2009

OBAMA READS COMIC BOOKS, HOW COOL!

That's right, the American President has time for comic books and was very dissapointed at his cabinet when they failed to recognize his illusion of the comic series Savage Sword Of Conan!

According to the president,

"If my inner circle of advisers can't even communicate about the most basic issues, how are we going to tackle the massive problems our nation faces?"

He went ahead to say,

"When I tell my cabinet that getting bipartisan support is exactly like the time Conan got Taurus to help him steal Yara's jewel, they need to understand what I mean."


The Newest Gospel, Obama version.

Well, Mr. President, if i need to read Savage Sword Of Conan to understand my problems and how to solve them, who the hell am I to refute! I'm running to the stores right now to get my copy. Like you I'll become. And here I waste time reading a book titled The Principles Of Power Systems. Thanks for the hint, I hope other leaders will follow suit. Like Mugabe.


Read the whole story here.

Monday, February 23, 2009

THE 'FACT' I JUST WON'T ACCEPT!

This thought has been lingering in my mind for a long time now, but the Hague issue just couldn't let it just rest in my head anymore. To cut to the chase, I don't think the Hague was a good idea, but my reasons are purely non-political but moral and inspired by the dignity that I do so much to protect.

Much has already been said but allow me to add my voice to it. I wasn't there but let me take you back in time during the colonial days. Not all black Africans were opposed to the whiteman's regime, some actually wanted them to stay. And they were accused as traitors and haters of their own. Some were put to death, killed in cold blood. Those men and women who wanted the whiteman to stay had predicted the demise of 'organised' society with the deperture of the whiteman. They said an African couldn't lead. They said atleast they ate while the white man came up with blue prints of new buildings and new agriculture techniques. They said their fellow Africans would be divided along tribal lines (which they already were before the whiteman was kicked out the country, and don't even blame the whiteman for that) and that they would be corrupt, the wise men of that time predicted it. Why are we proving them right today?

It's like those same people died and came back, I hear them screaming saying "let the whiteman judge our criminals!" because Africans, us, we are divided along tribal lines. We have corrupt leaders, it's not our fault they are corrupt! I say its not them its us. Many of us would rather see the whole government disbanded and in its place a group of white foreigners be put. Let the whiteman come govern us, they are just trying to help.

It is our problem, its root cause has to be tackled, we cannot dodge our responsiblities. I just can't and won't accept the fact that we can't. That we can never be able. I can't accept that the problems we are facing are bigger than us. If Africans are foolish, I'm NOT. I know, for a fact, that a significant portion of our population is ignorant, but not because of the fact that they are Africans. Big things have to be done. Let's clean up our institutions. Let's educate our people and make our system work for us and for the generations to come rather than rejoicing the downfall of one our own by sending them abroad for foreigners to punish them on our behalf. It's just not right.

Wednesday, February 18, 2009

I'M DYING!

I'm trying to think what else I haven't done and CAN do 'cause these days you have to pay even for a good time, but I can't stop living... because I'm dying. So much to do in so little time. When I'm bored and have nothing to do and CAN'T invite my friends over because they are far I think to myself, time's passing. Time wasted. I can't have friends come over for sleep overs, I'm too old for that. I should have known. I should have known sooner how precious time is!

Has it ever occurred to you, when someone mentions a date, say, 1998... and someone says "yea, that's 10 years ago" and you think to yourself, "it's been that long?" That year when some coward terrorist bombed the American Embassy in Nairobi, that was ten years ago? Then it dawns on you that you are dying slow.

No, I'm not dying of a chronic disease, stupid. We are all dying... slowly. And we'll be forgotten, unless if you are B. Obama. When you find yourself with nothing to do, something fun or non-fun.. be afraid.

I do not want to live with fear, fear of dying. When it comes, I want to embrace it rather than fight it. I want to take my last breath thinking; I lived a good life.

I want to die living.

Wednesday, February 11, 2009

SORRY FOR NOT POSTING

I jut want to apologize that this blog could not be updated as frequently as desired due to unavoidable circumstances. I'll continue to be off air for a little longer. Love you guys though.