Instigated by.......

2006-06-18T13:16:00.000-07:00

Who says men are insensitive?According to the lastest research, that isn't the case at all!

2006-05-02T10:47:00.000-07:00

From one of my fave blogs...

Bullshit saying of the day!
"It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune, must be in want of a wife."

- rubbish author Jane Austen (1775 – 1817)

Hardly surprising a woman wrote that is it? One who never married and supposedly died a virgin too.

The sad thing is that, although the above was written (in her novel Pride & Prejudice) back in 1797, when women generally were reliant on men for an income, most liberated independent womyn in the 21st Century wander around still believing that. Even career girls seem to think that way, that a rich man needs a wife, and that there is something wrong with such a man if he shuns marriage like a barefoot man shuns dog-shit.

Whether back in the 18th Century or today, women generally don't like to accept their own greed and materialistic shallowness, and go to great lengths to disguise these attributes in veils of self-deception, such as by laughably claiming that it is rich men who need wives, rather than greedy women who want rich men.Or as one KBW girl put it, wealth shows that he is responsible and would make a good partner.

In the 21st Century it is a truth universally acknowledged that a man in posession of a good fortune is single.
A man with a good fortune needs a wife the same way a fish needs a bicycle.All the benefits of marriage can be obtained without it.Wealthy men should marry at their own risk!When wealthy men are single they are called playboys and irresponsible and when wealthy women are single they are called focussed and an example.Screw those double standards!

2006-04-26T12:56:00.000-07:00

For those of you who are telling us folks abroad to come home and build Kenya. Read this and then shut up!A great mind rots away because of patriotism...

2006-04-25T15:41:00.000-07:00

Girls--have a sense of humor....

Culled from one of my favourite blogs....
I never quite figured out why the sexual urge of men and women differ so much. And I never have figured out the whole Venus and Mars thing. I have never figured out why men think with their head and women with their heart.

FOR EXAMPLE: One evening last week, my girlfriend and I were getting into bed.

Well, the passion starts to heat up, we were all over each other and just when I was ready to pound nails through two inch plywood she looks up at me and says "I don't feel like it, I just want you to hold me."

I said "WHAT??!! What was that?!"

So she says the words that every boyfriend on the planet dreads to hear... "You're just not in touch with my emotional needs as a woman enough for me to satisfy your physical needs as a man." She responded to my puzzled look by saying, "Can't you just love me for who I am and not what I do for you in the bedroom?"

Realizing that nothing was going to happen that night, I went to sleep.

The very next day I opted to take the day off of work to spend time with her. We went out to a nice lunch and then went shopping at a big, big unnamed department store. I walked around with her while she tried on several different very expensive outfits. She couldn't decide which one to take so I told her we'd just buy them all. She wanted new shoes to compliment her new clothes, so I said lets get a pair for each outfit. We went onto the jewelry department where she picked out a pair of diamond earrings. Let me tell you...she was so excited. She must have thought I was one wave short of a shipwreck. I started to think she was testing me because she asked for a tennis bracelet when she doesn't even know how to play tennis. I think I threw her for a loop when I said, "That's fine, honey." She was almost nearing sexual satisfaction from all of the excitement. Smiling with excited anticipation she finally said, "I think this is all dear, let's go to the cashier."

I could hardly contain myself when I blurted out, "No honey, I don't feel like it."

Her face just went completely blank as her jaw dropped with a baffled WHAT?"

I then said "Honey! I just want you to HOLD this stuff for a while. You're just not in touch with my financial needs as a man enough for me to satisfy your shopping needs as a woman." And just when she had this look like she was going to kill me, I added, "Why can't you just love me for who I am and not for the things I buy you?"

Apparently I'm not having sex tonight either....but at least that bitch knows I'm smarter than her

2006-04-15T11:19:00.000-07:00

Most serial killer are men.But the interesting thing is that most serial killers are people who suffered abuse of sorts mostly from their mothers.It seems that the hand that rocks the cradle not only rules the world but can lead to it's destruction.Mothers of the world, you have great power; please use it for good!
But Duncan Idaho doesn't have an opinion as benign as mine!

Serial killers and the matriarchy

Feminists often love to mention serial killers and serial rapists as examples of men being horrid misogynists, forgetting that murderers and rapists make up a tiny fraction of a percentage of all men. Furthermore, they seem to forget that most serial killers suffer abuse from the hands of violent mothers and/or rarely have fathers present. At the very least they invariably have a dominant mother and weak father. If feminists want to start throwing about anecdotes of serial killers and rapists to criticize men, then I think we can do the same to criticize them back.

For example, Edmund Kemper was belittled and abused by his thrice-divorced mother and not allowed to see his father. Pissed off at getting regularly locked in the basement for disobeying his mother, Ed blew his grandparents away at the age of 15 and, after six-years in a mental asylum, he was released, albeit back into the custody of his shrewish nagging mother. He subsequently chopped up a load of college girls before decapitating his mother then turning himself in to the police.

Ed Gein - the model for Norman Bates in Psycho - was raised by a mother who told him women were all evil whores (except herself of course) and after mummy died he proceeded to dig up dead women and make lampshades and vests out of them. He got nabbed after turning a couple of living women into dead ones.

Then there was Eddie Cole, whose mother dressed him as a girl, beat him and threatened to kill him if he ever uttered a word about her adulterous escapades with local bad-boys when her husband was busy being shot at by the Japanese during World War II. Cole spent his adult life drifting around bars, picking up women and killing them if they turned out to be sluts just like his mum. He once throttled to death a woman during sex when she happened to admit she was married.

These are just three examples of killers whose tortured psychopathology's roots lies with their mothers.

In his book Serial Killers, Joel Norris highlights the strong link between serial killers and other violent individuals with the breakdown of the family which, in turn, leads to children being abused more often (children are more at risk from abuse when their father is removed) and with more unstable home lives. He doesn't explicitly mention feminism, but certainly feminism is the leading reason for the rise in single-mother households, the rise in divorce, children being dumped in childcare and having multiple 'fathers' as mummy goes from one thug-lover to the next:

Over the course of the twentieth century, families have been getting smaller, they have become highly unstable, with children going through serial families of pseudo fathers as a result of multiple marriages. Now, in the middle of the final quarter of the century, families are in danger of breaking down and the very concept of parental responsibilities is undergoing redefinition in the courts as a result of surrogate parenting. Children are routinely placed in child-care programmes at age two, often under instense pressure to qualify, and the parents themselves are more often than not involved in serial sexual relationships with multiple partners even while they are married. There are now more children living in homes with divorced parents than there are children living in the same home with both biological parents. In other words, the family structure is undergoing a massive restructuring, especiallyi n the postwar period...
In single-parent [read: single-mother] homes, the situation can be even more devestating for the child. An entire generation of children will shortly emerge for whom there are no normal, supportive parental relationships...they represent the largest area of population growth of our society, and they will in turn give birth to a succeeding generation of children out of control, who will carry the disease of generational violence well into the next century and well beyond the borders of the United States.

The above was written in 1988 and the spiralling rise in violence in Western societies by alienated youngsters from broken homes can be seen in events like the Jamie Bulger killing or the Columbine shootings.

In the early 1980s the FBI conducted a study of convicted sex-murderers and thrill-killers and found that 47% did not have a father present throughout most or all of their childhood, and of those that did have fathers present, 71% reported that their mother was the dominant parent.

In his 1997 book, Of Men and Monsters, Richard Tithecott explains how female-dominated or female-only households are more likely to produce violent criminals because the matriarchy, on any scale, is chaos and non-logic, compared to the patriarchy, which is order and rules. Tithecott does use the terms "perceived" and "according to common wisdom" which may imply he may not accept the ideas he is putting down here (although this may be simply a way of distancing himself from such criticism of women to avoid being condemned for being 'sexist') but he makes some fine points. After all, you don't have to study serial killers to see that the matriarchy and feminism are as far from logic, fairness and order as you can get.

The dysfunctional family unit is largely figured as a place lacking the father. With patriarchy absent, matriarchy rules, and the results are perceived as monstrous: "Serial killers are almost invariably found to have experienced environmental problems in their early years. In many cases they stem from a broken home in which the parents are divorced or separated, a home with a weak or absent father-figure and dominant female, sometimes a home-life marked by a lack of consistent discipline." (Wilson & Seaman, The Serial Killers, 1990)
With the family figured as the originator of the meaning of our lives, the amount of structure in our lives depends on the type of family from which we come. And we have come to expect that to defy the law of the father is to disperse meaning, that martiarchally produced narrative is inevitably chaotic. Like Jeffrey Dahmer, whose life, in the words of Oprah Winfrey "spun out of control" (Oprah, 4 September 1991), the individual growing up in a female-dominated family (Dahmer lived with his grandmother after his parents were divorced) is commonly perceived as an unpredictable figure whose actions appear motiveless.

Jefrfrey Dahmer's father, a chemist, spent a lot of time at work, leaving Jeffrey and his brother with their mother. She was a hysterical hypochondriac who spent most of her life in bed popping pills. She divorced her husband because he dared to work long hours and practically cleaned him out. She fought for custody of her youngest son, but not Jeffrey, who was eighteen at the time of his parent's split and who committed his first murder not long afterwards.

Tithecott continues:.

Do we fathers or potential fathers-to-be feel anxious about the possibility of father a monster? According to common wisdom, if we do, it should be because of our absence [from our child's life], not our active participation. While Lional Dahmer [Jeffrey's dad] feels guilty for not spending enough time with his son, masculinity's involvmenet in the "creation" of Jeffrey is represented negatively, as a "good" force not implemented. From the perspective which sees men as the originators of structure, of a sense of place, of visibility, the serial killer, the archetypal purveyor of meaninglessness, can only be the product of femaleness.
The struggle between our law-enforcers is represented as the struggle between the law of the father and the disorder of the mother, between post-Oedipal language spoken by the police and heard nightly on crime shows, and pre-Oedipal language spoken by the killers, by "mummy's boys" who never grew up to be real men. Our policing discourses, implied to be valorized as masculine, conflict with feminine discourse, discourse lacking motive and logic.

Tell that to a feminist next time she starts banging on about how women are the nurturing sex from which comes all civilized behaviour.

2006-04-10T09:53:00.000-07:00

Hello people!Guess who's back!When I tried to die they dragged my corpse through the mud and tried to dismember me but guess what?You only re-energised me!I'm back to stay!Stay tuned!

2006-04-03T20:22:00.000-07:00

2006-04-01T09:45:00.000-08:00

The Instigator is dead!
Long live The Instigator!
I have reached the next stage of my development.I will return under a different name but for the discerning ones shall know it is I.It has been a blast!And for my detractors that doesnt mean you can celebrate, I will not be gone for long!

2006-03-29T19:31:00.000-08:00

I have decided that today I will not be spewing bile on anyone but instead I would like to get your opinions.
First I would like all of you who pass through here to give me a list of 5 things that your dislike.This can range from things that make you discomfortable to things that make your blood boil!
Second, I am opening this blog to topics that you would like me to blog about.1 topic per person please!

2006-03-28T19:18:00.000-08:00

Don't mess with gold diggers!

The gold digger is a dangerous breed that will turn feral once it's expected feeding habits are not met.Men who have trouble obtaining beautiful and viable mates are encouraged to stay away from them and embrace singlehood as the consequences are not worth the scant and short term pleasure as the poor geezer in the story found out!

2006-03-27T18:16:00.000-08:00

To My American friends and Workmates: Pets Are Not Children!
I love animals and you can find me watching the National Geographic and Discovery channel many times if you came to my apartment.Other then the last year which I have spent here with no time or space for a pet I have had dogs since I was six years old.Pets especially dogs rock but at the end of that let them be just that..pets.
One of my work mates goes on and on about her dog and the way it thinks that it's human and the neurotic relationship it has with the cat.That’s strike one for Americans (women in particular), who will begin a show-and-tell tale at any random point over their pet’s lifeline and finish no one knows the f@ck where because there’s no point to any of it anyway. No one gives a shit if the cat turns purple in the winter time or the hamster likes the raisins more than the sunflower seeds. Leave that kind of life sucking bullsh8t in the diary or the equally horsesh8t LiveJournal.
Here’s strike two. Pets are not babies. No matter how much my workmate wants everyone to think the pup in her lap has been brewing inside of her for nine months, it f8cking hasn’t. It was a few hundred bucks and there’s like a billion of them. That means no one wants to see pictures of the ugly thing, no one wants to hear about baby’s first poop, and no agency is going to come haul anyone away if the pup misses a few meals. It’s not a big deal.
How many times have you seen a dog in a sweater or in a purse? Probably not a lot, but when you did, you can bet your ass that most probably it is one of those American mamas ie paris hilton or the irritating lady in the apartment next door. No self respecting man should ever had a bunch of pictures of his pets in his wallet or his Man Bag that he’s ready to whip out on the unsuspecting at a moment’s notice.
Please oh please get a life!
ps:Distribute to your workmates!

2006-03-23T09:07:00.000-08:00

A short tour of KBW blogs has shown me that many if not all bloggers seem to be pro gay no fanatically pro gay which I as the Instigator have no problem with as I believe that we are all entitled to our own beliefs no matter how misguided they are.I for one do not approve of the gay lifestye on bit but I am not homophobic, the word phobic connotes fear.I do not fear gays in fact I know some and they don't make a single hair rise on my forearm.But you know how it is with the rainbow brigade, once you disapprove you are the next Hitler.But to clear up this whole issue I sat down for an interview with a reporter from the gay magazine unzipped about my sexual status and how it made me who I am today and the challenges I face as a straight black man in an increasingly gay friendly society.

1. What do you think caused your heterosexuality? Society, with a bit of help from genetics.

2. When and how did you first decide you were a heterosexual? Kindergarten, when I became scared to death of girls. How little things change...

3. Is it possible that your heterosexuality is just a phase you may grow out of? Possible, but highly unlikely, it's just so much more fun. Plus take a moment to consider this: Girl offering pussy = GOOD. Guy giving head (or asshole) = BAD.

4. Is it possible that your heterosexuality stems from a neurotic fear of the same sex? Oh yes, this is the main cause of heterosexuality. If I didn't run screaming at even the mere thought of a dick up my ass, there's no way I could keep my life in order. A good homophobia is the best thing really. Nothing quite like it for keepin' you in line.

5. Isn't it possible that all you need is a good gay lover? Eh, probably not. See, there'd be the penis/butt envy thing. If I'm bigger and/or better he'll just feel jealous, and it'll never work. If he's bigger and/or better, well I'd just lie in a corner sobbing for an hour--it could just never work.

6. Heterosexuals have histories of failure in gay relationships. Do you think you may have turned to heterosexuality out of fear or rejection? Yes, I think this is what it is. Men are so much easier to approach then women, and you never have to guess what they're thinking the way you do with women. Yes, men are much easier to figure out and avoid rejection with. Sure.

7. If you've never slept with a person of the same sex, how do you know you wouldn't prefer that? Because it's disgusting. Next question.

8. If heterosexuality is normal, why are a disproportionate number of mental patients heterosexual? I blame that on repressed homosexuality. See, these people really aren't hetero, they're just so messed up that they have no idea. The problem is that they've gone crazy due to all the repressed gay inside.

9. To whom have you disclosed your heterosexual tendencies? How did they react? Shock. "INSTIGATOR?! Likes women?? OMG I HAD NO IDEA!!" is a common response. Shocking, I know.

10. Your heterosexuality doesn't offend me as long as you don't try to force it on me. Why do you feel compelled to seduce others into your sexual orientation? See, I don't really. I'm not going to seduce a gay guy--into anything really (especially not my bed), and why would I want to seduce a lesbian into becoming straight? Lesbians can make the best friends especially the butch ones whom you can go to the gym with.

11. If you chose to nurture children, would you want them to be heterosexual, knowing the problems they would face? Well, I would try my best to raise them right, and if they turn out hetero, well, I'll try not to think of myself as a failure.

12. The great majority of child molesters are heterosexuals. Do you really consider it safe to expose your children to heterosexual teachers? Not at all. This is why priests are so much safer. With all the gay men driven to the priesthood to avoid discrimination and sin, I feel much safer sending little Jimmy off with Father Pedophile than I do having him learn from some old lady--who I just know lusts after him.

13. Why do you insist on making a public spectacle of your heterosexuality? Can't you just be what you are and keep it quiet? Not really. See, I am a man. Everytime one of us men gets a woman into a heterosexual relationship with us, we really can't believe that it's actually happened. This is why we must take every oppurtunity available to flaunt it in public. Gays are dime a dozen, nothing to be proud of there.

14. How can you ever hope to become a whole person if you limit yourself to compulsive, exclusive heterosexual object choice, and remain unwilling to explore and develop your normal, healthy, God-given homosexual potential? Another man's penis and/or anus is disgusting.Next question!

15. Heterosexuals are noted for assigning themselves and each other to narrowly restricted, stereotyped sex-roles. Why do you cling to such unhealthy role-playing? Because as a man, it's my role is to work hard for my woman as she goes out to shop at Victoria's secret and goes home to get ready for some hot Instigator love!

16. How can you enjoy a fully satisfying sexual experience or deep emotinal rapport with a person of the opposite sex, when the obvious physical, biological, and tempermental differences between you are so vast? How can a man understand what pleases a woman and vice versa? We don't have to. With men, it's simple, there's an on/off button. And women have the parts that trigger the on. Namely, boobs.

17. Why do heterosexuals place such emphasis on sex? Because we're afraid of it/need it desperately and it feels so damn good!

18. How could the human race survive if everyone were heterosexual, considering the menace of overpopulation? Simple. We'd just kill each other off systematically.

19. A disproportionate number of criminals, welfare recipients and other irresponsible anti-social types are heterosexual. Why would anyone want to hire a heterosexual for a responsible position?They dont know how to dress, are so untidy and they dont like bright colors!

20. Do heterosexuals hate and/or distrust others of their own sex? Is that what makes them heterosexual? Very much so! Subconsciously, all men desire to kill other men for their women, and all women desire to kill other women for their shoes.

21. Why are heterosexuals so promiscuous? Now I feel like your stereotyping. Heteros are people too you know! There are promiscuous heteros and monogomous heteros and loser heteros who just can't get any. We're all different. Your hate makes me hate. It's the circle of life. Elton John's hair frightens and confuses me. But I still love him dearly.

22. Why do you make the point of attributing heterosexuality to famous people? Is it to justify your own heterosexuality? Oh yes. That and, if I knew some great gorgeous actress was gay, well, the temptation of switching sides--I just don't want to face that.

23. Could you really trust a heterosexual therapist/counselor to be objective and unbiased? Don't you fear he/she might be inclined to influence you in the direction of his/her own leanings? I trust no one. They're all out to get me. Especially unamed KBW bloggers. You heard me, I'm on to you! You'll never get away with it!!

2006-03-20T19:55:00.000-08:00

Same-Sex Married Couples Divorcing at High Rates in Scandinavia

(March 2006) While legalizing same-sex marriage continues to be a political lightning rod in the United States, a new study in the journal Demography says such marriages have scant participation and high rates of divorce in Sweden and Norway, where they have been legal for at least a decade.

The study is the first in-depth look at the demographics of same-sex marriages in these countries, where gay and lesbian couples may enter into registered partnerships that are legally identical to heterosexual marriages—including divorce procedures. But most gay couples aren't taking advantage of the right to marry: There were 1,293 same-sex partnerships in Norway between 1993 and 2001, compared with 196,000 heterosexual marriages during the same period (a ratio of 7 to every 1,000). In Sweden, the ratio was even lower—about 5 same-sex marriages for every 1,000 straight ones.

And those gays and lesbians who did get married were far more likely to get divorced. The risk of male partnerships splitting up was 50 percent more than for heterosexual marriages, and lesbian partnerships dissolved at twice the rate of male ones. The authors say that these figures are not surprising given that gay people have felt far less normative pressure to marry. As for why female couples split up more than male ones, the authors speculate that women in these partnerships are more sociodemographically similar, which means less-clear relational power structures, and generally more sensitive to the quality of relationships than men.

–Robert Lalasz, PRB Senior Editor

Reference

Gunnar Andersson et al., "The Demographics of Same-Sex Marriages in Norway and Sweden," Demography 43, no. 1 (2006): 79-98.

So what does this article say to me?I think that same sex marriages should be legalised as from the situation in Scandinavia we can see that gays/lesbians can't handle marriage at all.The norms of homosexual relationships (short term commitment and promiscuity are not compatible with the long term goals of marriage) add to this the lack of predefined roles and you have the recipe for trouble.In hetero relationships roles are clear cut and lately with the coming of things like feminism that blurred traditional roles did we begin to see the high divorce rates that we see today.In gay relationships who is the head and who is the tail?At times the dominant party in the bedroom is not the dominant party when it comes to decision making or in many cases the roles constantly shift thus setting the relationship on a sandy foundation.We now know that even in an environment with no pressure like Scandinavia gays/lesbians dont want to marry and even when they do they are not going to last.So let's stop panicking and give them what they want besides which marriage isn't that great for straight people anymore...

2006-03-20T07:41:00.000-08:00

I am a staunch anti-self help books and motivational sermons person especially when they are used as a crutch and a substitute for action.I found an article that sums up my feelings about them...

Beware of Self-Help Gurus

Marty Nemko

Imagine a doctor urged you to undergo a treatment and encouraged you with tales of successful patients. He failed, however, to mention that the treatment fails with 90 percent of patients like you. You’d sue and win in any court in the land.

Yet self-help gurus routinely make similar recommendations without reprisal. For example, haven’t you heard a guru intone that the secret of success is self-esteem, affirmations, or meditation? Or urge you to “dream it and you can do it.”? Or even “Don’t push. When it’s meant to be, it’ll be.” You’re skeptical but gurus seduce you with tales of how they or an acolyte, with a dream and some effort, went from depressed to delighted, rags to riches, dung shoveler to star.

What the gurus don’t tell you are the odds. Sure, it worked for their cherry-picked exemplar or for themselves. After all, they were smart, driven, and/or lucky enough to get a book published or to appear on Oprah. The problem is that the typical consumer of their nostrums isn’t as smart, driven, and lucky. The gurus don’t tell you that for every Million-Dollar-Baby success story, there are countless people who bought Guru’s exhortations yet are still mumbling in their beer.

I’m tempted to attend some guru’s introductory workshop designed to up-sell attendees a long (read “expensive”) workshop and ask, “What percentage of your workshop attendees significantly improved their life as a result?” If the guru were honest, he’d probably say he doesn’t know—few gurus are brave enough to validly evaluate their exhortations’ and incantations’ efficacy. Or if she were professional enough to do so, based on my discussions with hundreds of career coaching clients and with my friends and colleagues, I know the efficacy rate would be low. Barbara Sher, one of the few self-help experts I respect, author of Wishcraft and the nugget-filled Barbara Sher’s Idea Book (www.geniuspress.com) agrees. “I ask my audiences, ‘How many of you have been actually helped by positive thinking?’ No one raises their hand.”

What has more often helped my clients increase their career and personal satisfaction?

· Get a family member or close friend to hire or refer you for a better job than you could land in the open market.

· Rather than a career change, consider a career tweak: delegate or outsource your job’s yucky parts, become an expert in a niche within your field, or change bosses or workplaces.

· Accept, at long last, that you’re paying too big a price for your laziness. Become aware of each moment you’re deciding whether to work or shirk, and more often choose to work.

· If you are, or suspect you have an emotional problem such as depression, bipolar or attention deficit disorder, consider having an expert evaluate whether you should try or change medication.

· Stop analyzing and start acting: take a low-risk step. An object at rest tends to stay at rest—the slacker syndrome.

· Develop a plan broken down into baby steps. Yes, I know that’s a cliché, but it works. Sher urges her clients to constantly ask themselves, “Does this get me closer to my goal or not?”

· Look better: lose weight, get nicer clothes, haircut, or makeup.

· Consider going back to school. I hate to recommend that because, if you’re self-motivated, mentorships and self-study can teach you more of value, faster, less expensively, and more conveniently, but most of my clients need school’s structure and the threat of a bad grade to motivate them.

· Run a simple business, perhaps one (or more!) you can run from home such as editing, tax preparing, tutoring, agenting, brokering, virtual assisting, or coaching. That too is a favorite Sher recommendation. She knows people who have become coaches specializing in: charisma, fashion, dinner parties, performance anxiety, writing, caring for newborns, decorating, organizing, and small business. Or make dolls and offer them at craft fairs, sell your to-die-for fudge to restaurants and caterers, sell gift baskets, flowers, and kids’ toys in the halls of corporations to busy workers who don’t have time to shop.

· Another recommendation Sher and I agree on: consider getting support. Many but not all people attain goals faster and more pleasurably with a buddy or “success team” to brainstorm with and report to weekly or even daily. Each session, after you get help, help the other person(s).

· We’re all capable of behaving better or worse. Decide to be your best self.

2006-03-16T17:46:00.000-08:00

Sometimes I wish I lived in Ancient Rome.Why?So that I could feed christians to the lions and watch them get torn to shreds as I sip on a cold beer in the summer sun.Most (note the word most) christians make my blood boil.
The first offending party are Jesus Jacket wearers?You know how when you go see your favourite football/soccer team play you would wear your team's strip so that people would know where you your allegiences lay.Well there are many christians who treat salvation like a weekend game and wear their salvation on Sundays.On that day they are the most spiritual exhuberant people that you meet but at the end of the day when they get home that's the end of that.These are the kind of people who do the same things that non-christians do, be it gossiping,lust,cheating,fornicating or stealing they do it.The only difference between you and them is that they go to church on Sunday.I am not being judgemental but the new testament says that you will know them by their fruit and in their cases I see nothing at all.GO JESUS TEAM WOO HOO!!!!
Next come what I call the shpiri folk coz they say the word spirit as shhhhhpirit.They do that with their eyes scrunched up in some sort of ecstatic stupor.These are the people who cry on the drop of a hat.They are also known for doing things like rolling on the ground and speaking in tongues.BTW quick Bible lesson for you out there, the tongues that people speak nowadays are counterfeit.When the Holy Spirit first came down in book of Acts to be specific Acts 2:6-12 Now when this was noised abroad, the multitude came together, and were confounded, because that every man heard them speak in his own language.And they were all amazed and marvelled, saying one to another, Behold, are not all these which speak Galilaeans?And how hear we every man in our own tongue, wherein we were born?Parthians, and Medes, and Elamites, and the dwellers in Mesopotamia, and in Judaea, and Cappadocia, in Pontus, and Asia,Phrygia, and Pamphylia, in Egypt, and in the parts of Libya about Cyrene, and strangers of Rome, Jews and proselytes,Cretes and Arabians, we do hear them speak in our tongues the wonderful works of God.And they were all amazed, and were in doubt, saying one to another, What meaneth this? KJV.
Let me add a little to this lesson about tongues, Corinthians 13:8 Charity never faileth: but whether there be prophecies, they shall fail; whether there be tongues, they shall cease; whether there be knowledge, it shall vanish away.
So point one if someone is speaking in tongues it should be a human tongue and how come there are loads of people who can speak them yet there is rarely someone to translate yet translation of tongues is one of the gifts?So any tongue speakers out there are on their own trip if you ask me.Anyway I haven't finished beating on this group because they always seem to be aware of what the devil is doing and how he is doing it.They will spew cow piss like, "the demons are being spread by clothes made by that company with that symbol,the devil is behind all these road accidents nowadays and the music that is on the radio is by devil worshippers."These are the kind of people who spend every moment looking out for attacks by the devil instead of being aware of what God is doing and what part they can play.Come to think of it these are the people who always have some sort of spiritual excuse for not doing something, they are so spiritually minded that they are of no earthly good.
The third group are those who think God is some cosmic atm,health dispenser and dream validator.They believe in what is known as the "health and wealth" gospel also known as the "name it and claim it" doctrine.The basic premise of this load of grade A manure is, believe with all your heart and soul, they tell the faithful. And give, give, give until you can't give any more.God, they say, loves a cheerful giver.They claim that the true Christian has only to ask for these things and they will be granted to them. By contrast if a Christian is not enjoying these benefits then it is because they either have not asked for them (thus denying themselves for no reason) or because they have some sin in their lives which is preventing God from blessing them (That is so so so so full of crap that I dont even know where to start in refuting it).Their churches tend to be big,have hundreds/thousands of followers, have a young/attractive congregation, engaging sermons and charismatic leaders.The present day flag bearers of this travesty are people like Creflo Dollar, Juanita Bynum, Joel Osteen and Joyce Meyer. Joyce Meyer spends most of her three-day conferences on lessons in giving, and she is blunt when she addresses what the critics say about her seed-faith interpretation of the Bible. She says that those preachers who believe that to be godly is to be poor are the ones who have it wrong.( In my opinion one can be rich or poor and still be fulfiling God's purpose for their life ). Looking at a list of sermons by the golden boy Joel Osteen:
ENLARGE YOUR VISION
HOLDING ONTO YOUR DREAMS
FINANCIAL PROSPERITY
HOW VALUABLE YOU ARE IN GOD'S EYES
OVERCOMING THE GREATEST HINDRANCE TO HEALING
DEVELOPING MIRACLE-WORKING FAITH
FAITH TO CHANGE YOUR WORLD
BELIEVE GOD FOR THE GREATER WORKS
DO ALL YOU CAN DO TO MAKE YOUR DREAMS COME TRUE
LIVING A LIFE OF EXCELLENCE
DEVELOPING YOUR POTENTIAL
I see little their about getting rooted in the word, providing for your neighbour,fogiveness,getting closer to God,resisting temptation and other issues relevant to christians in their everyday walk with Christ.The book of Timothy puts it best,For the love of money is the root of all evil: which while some coveted after, they have erred from the faith, and pierced themselves through with many sorrows. (1 Timothy 6:10).In contrast to prosperity theology, sound biblical theology teaches that God does not have to do anything. God, the Creator of all things, is sovereign in all things, not the creature. God is not obligated to heal or prosper anyone, yet He graciously does, and neither is deserved. Someone has said: "healing is not a divine obligation, it is a divine gift". The receiver of the gift can make no demands. God can be trusted to do all things well.The unfortunate thing is that many people both abroad and in Kenya are falling for the teachings of these charlatans and think by giving till it hurts as Juanita Bynum says they will reap the riches of heaven on earth.When in reality they are concentrating on wealth at the expense of a relationship with God.Sometimes I stop being angry at the believers of this heresy and just pity them, don't fall for it God has a plan for your life and even though it may not involve Bill Gates' kind of money God still has your best interests at heart.
The third group is what I like to call the seals and parrots.These are the people who take everything that their pastor says as gospel truth and go ahead to repeat it like circus parrots.They come with the seals, these are those who like seals at the aquarium clap enthusiastically at everything the pastor says nodding their heads.Since the man/woman is on the podium according to them, they must be of God and all that they are saying is right and good.These people rarely ever compare what they are told against what the word says, they are the ones whom if you argue with tell you "My pastor said......" What your pastor said shouldnt come first, it's what the word says that should come first.Even in the New Testament Paul himself was impressed by the Bereans who studied all that he told them against the word to see if he was on the right path.That is how cults begin, when people do not have the sense to check what they are told against the best spiritual litmus paper on the market.....the Bible.It has been said that the Bible is the most bought but least read book.
The other people who make me sick are those christians who feel that it is their responsibility to drop sermons on you like anvils anytime and all the time so you can accept the Lord, and if you dont they consign you to burn in hell.First of all I find "pestimonies" that's what I call their long winded testimonies which are more like stories to me ; very tiring.The Bible talks of salvation shining like a lamp and not like a 6000W light bulb in the face at 4am.I think as a christian your lifestyle should be enough of a testimony.
Oh this just came to me!Why is it that christianity seems to be the least holistic religion?It seems to start and end in church.Muslims fast,try to feed the poor,give their bretheren interest free loans and most avoid alcohol (their religion is part of everyday life), jain hindus dont eat any food with animal products and do not kill any living thing whatsoever, most of them also practice yoga which is why many of them have good health,less stress and longer lives.Christianity in itself is a holistic religion but isnt practiced that way at all!God placed us to be stewards of the earth but it seems that most conservationists are new agers and not christians.Christians also seem to be poor stewards of on of the greatest resources that God gave them....the human body.But anyway like I said, so many christians are so spiritually minded that they are of no earthly good.
Don't get me wrong I don't expect christians to be perfect I know they are human like us and make mistakes.But there are those who act like they have halos and walk on air when in reality some of them are more sleazy then the rest of us Jimmy Swaggart anyone?The christians whom I respect are the ones who live their walk with Christ one day at a time, read their bibles everyday, pray, work and let their life be the best testimony possible.
GOD PLEASE SAVE ME FROM YOUR FOLLOWERS!

2006-03-15T21:39:00.000-08:00

Dear readers.I had a spectacular post prepared but since some idiot did not pay the electricity bill in time the power was disconnected as I was putting my finishing touches on it.So the post has been lost, I have also learned the hard lesson that I must be saving my post after every few minutes.
Also, I believe that you can act the fool and skip on as many bills as possible and pay them late but never rent,power,gas and cable.When you can't handle those neccesities then you are beyond help!
Regular programming will resume tommorrow!

2006-03-07T17:41:00.000-08:00

Sorry. But methinks that race relations are a far bigger issue then philandering cowboys.Better luck next time....

2006-02-27T15:58:00.000-08:00

From the East African Standard...
And if you thought that only women fall victim to rape, you are wrong. Some 102 male sexual violence survivors were treated at the Nairobi Women’s Hospital alone in the last three years, while 2,329 female survivors were treated at the same hospital in the same period.
I wouldn't be surprised if the figure for men is actually 4 or 5 times that.Due to the fact that anal sex in Africa is viewed as distasteful and it would be a body blow for a heterosexual African man to be sodomised.Being butt f*cked for a man would be tantamount to great humiliation due to the helplessness and pain involved, men do not handle helplessness very well.Men do not bounce back from trauma as well as women do.It is not unknown for men who have been raped to lapse into deep depression,become drug addicts,alcoholics and even commit suicide.Alot of a man's value comes from his identity and strength as a man.Take a look and you will indeed notice that the men who have lots of ego problems have the roots in issues that define them as men.This can include and is not defined to, power,height,strength, wealth and virility.So to rape a man and make him your "bitch" would be to make him feel like a lesser being.
I remember when gays began to become more open in Nairobi's night life.Friends of mine became hesitant about accepting free drinks from men in the fear that those drinks would be spiked and they would get up being ridden like a horse in a texas rodeo by a 7 foot mandingo and his 4 friends waiting in tow.Stories have been told about a young man who goes to a popular Nairobi night spot and meets a pretty girl who seems open to his attention.He gets seated next to her and they get to talking.Later on he accepts her offer to spend the night at her place.She shows him to the bedroom and he begins to address.He hears some male voices in the house but dismisses it as the affects of alcohol.It is when the door bursts open and a mob of 4 men enter the room that he knows he is in problems.Of course as the story goes the mob have their way with him with the girl filming proceedings.The girl and her crew then go ahead to leave him several thousand shillings for his trouble as they depart leaving him battered and broken.please note the authenticity of this account is yet to be established!
Another hot spot for male rape is the flyover linking Uhuru Highway and the City Centre.Thugs have been known to hide in the bushes waiting for blissfully ignorant passers by, pulling them into the bushes or even to the tunnels under the bridge and gang raping them for hours or even days on end.I can attest to the authenticity of this black spot after having met two women who were raped there.I hear the same has happened to men but there is no way they would ever come out and admit that it happened.I always remember whenever we would go clubbing with pals and would be on our way back we would always hit that bridge at 100km/h so in case the car stalled, the momentum would carry us over and then we would open the doors and run like the devil himself was chasing us!Odeon Cinema in Nairobi downtown and Ngai Ndeithya(sic) in Dagoretti (I think) are also other well known spots where rape is indiscriminate!
So the next time you hear about rape please keep it in mind that men too can be raped !
ps:I am in no way saying that all gay men are man rapists!Au contraire they are not just as not all straight men are women rapists!
pps:Like the Virgins of yore who would prefer to be burned at the stake then sully their godly honor, is the same way I will die before a man rapes me.Death before dishonor!

2006-02-27T15:36:00.000-08:00

Why this blog is not going mainstream!

Someone asked me why my blog is not on KBW?An interesting question I must admit.One of the main reasons is that this blog is for me first and others second.With blogging as your audience grows larger you begin to write more for them (so as to keep their attention) and less for yourself.You have seen the rise of the tag, Ask Mr/Ms X and other limelight grabbing shenanigans.I have blogged for a long time with a minimal audience and I don't mind doing it as long as the few who read my blog learn something and we can take part in meaningful discourse.
Secondly KBW is in many ways turning out to be the polar opposite of Kenyan forums like Mashada and Kenyaniyetu.Whereas people in Mashada et al are tearing each other into shredds for any reason whatsoever, bloggers in KBW bend over to please and approve of each other.Disagreement is rare on blogs in KBW even when contentious issues are brought up.Someone told me that this is because dissenting voices rarely speak and those who support do so to keep the blogger in question coming to their blog.I on the other hand do not hesitate to voice my opinion instead of clapping like a seal awaiting a fish from the ring master in the circus.Conflict and criticism can be constructive ; that is something that people need to learn in KBW and indulge in it more.
Finally some of the opionions here do not go with the progressive liberal flow and are bound to ruffle feathers.As evinced by the blogger whom I clashed with some people get all heated up and don't address the issue at hand and instead come at you with all guns blazing.Much as I can give as good as I get I don't have the time to deal with fanatics.
So please don't look for this blog on a KBW listing anytime soon but thanks for visiting!

2006-02-26T12:52:00.000-08:00

A certain blogger took exception to this comment that I made in response to her post that insulting of women by bloggers must stop.Please not that these insults were 2 posts out of the hundreds that go up from the 120 plus KBW blogs!Yes women are under a deluge of insults!This is what I said!

Comment by instigator

February 25, 2006 @ 5:56 pm

Why don’t you start your own blogosphere then where all the posts can meet your standards?The fact is that there is freedom of expression on the net and as a result people will say what they feel, it doesnt make it right but it will happen.As for that blogger who called a woman a bitch here is the definition:
The word bitch — originally used for the female members of the canid species, specially dogs — is more often employed in a figurative sense as an insult for a promiscuous woman, or a malicious, spiteful, domineering, intrusive, and/or mean person
If the coat fits then put it on the person who should wear it as the terminology did suit the situation.
I have read many blogs by women with men being described as dogs,snakes,slime and no-one says anything.People should not dish it out if they can’t take it!
As for the comments about lesbians, like I said this isnt utopia.There are some people who do not like lesbians and think they have some sort of mental disorder that can be fixed by a “dick whipping”.It doesn’t make it right but that blog is the author’s venting ground and even if they don’t write it; they are thinking it.Free speech can be a bitch!(ooops I mean a bother!)

…

Her response:

I find it interesting that you do not dare show your identity while posting this comment. Are you scared/ashamed or so lacking in self-esteem? In any case, I know who you are. I know your blog where you write derogatory posts on women. I will only ever engage with you when you dare show your identity. In the meantime, go hide under a rock.

First of all if I was hiding my identity I would not have used my handle and instead left that blank or used anonymous. Anyone who has locked horns with me should know that low self-esteem is the last of my problems. As for my posts none of them are derogatory about women. Women in this case being all human beings that are female. I may have taken exception at how Nini Wacera was dressed and what followed was a discussion with a lady KBW member about what was attractive and what was not.My post was not about how all Kenyan women are unattractive now that would have been derogatory!

All my other posts poke fun at Western style feminism ie Sex and the City lifestyle, gold-digging. There are also articles about the negative fallback from the crusade for same sex marriage that may lead to polygamy becoming reality, how the free sex lifestyle is harming women more then they think it is, how Brokeback mountain did little to help gay causes overall and change peoples' opinions.In fact my first post was denigrating men who have children out of wedlock and leave the mother in limbo.Hmmmmm it seems that our dear blogger decided to ignore all that and focus on one post, anyway as long as it met her alarmist ends.

ps: This blogger's profile reads thus-

I am a Kenyan poet living in the UK with dreaming of a time when the cultural, legal and political obstacles that prevent African women attaining economic independence and equality are eradicated. I would like to see the development of gender-sensitive ICT policies leading to more African women accessing and using these technologies.

I on the other hand spent many years working for an AIDS ngo in Kenya that was focussed on low income women and later on men. I worked in HIV/ AIDS education, income generating projects, publicity and even peer counselling. So I have done far more for African women as compared to your dreaming in the U.K and writing blog round-ups; I intend to do even more that is why I am in grad school now.Some people dream and some people work!
ps:Don't land on my rock as you fall off your high horse!

2006-02-24T06:36:00.000-08:00

A new generation of idiots.....
http://www.nationmedia.com/dailynation/nmgcontententry.asp?category_id=31&newsid=67797
So it seems that a new generation of Kenyans has discovered the jet-set lifestyle!Woo
Hoo!Good for them!
Ogembo is a 27-year-old public relations officer with a marketing firm. He earns Sh80,000 a month and lives with two friends in a three bedroomed house, where he occupies the bedroom ensuite, forking out Sh20, 000 a month for it.

Ogembo would rather die than be seen in a matatu and drives a Mitsubishi Gallant, courtesy of a Sh750,000 company loan. "This is the life, and I'm not dreaming of living it small,"

Firstly seems this lad doesn't seem to know those company loans do add up!If you must buy a car at least raise half of the cash then take the loan.I wouldn't be surprised if he counts his car as an asset when in reality no asset should deppreciate in value that fast.Also the last time I was in Kenya one could rent a whole house for 20k in a good neighbourhood instead of spending all that on renting a house with pals.But if I know Kenyans the way I do it must be due to the fact that the 60k house is in a nice neighbourhood like Lavington or Runda.

Later on this Sunday night, he takes me to his digs in Sirikwa Estate. A flight of stairs past the sitting room, which they all share, opens to his bedroom.It's an all white, but expensively furnished affair—there is a king size sleeping couch bought in Egypt, a 29-inch plasma TV, a leather rocking chair and a home theatre system. And that’s it.

Of course it's all white because there is nothing hanging on the walls!Sleeping couch?I think a bed would be in better taste!Seems no recreational reading goes on in this lad's life as it seems he has no desk in his room.And why the hell did he have to buy a bed ooops I mean sleeping couch made in Egypt?I have seen some very unique and tasteful furniture made locally.

"Living here means no relatives ... I care only about my lifestyle, friends and career," he says, fishing out a bottle of Famous Grouse brandy from a section of the wardrobe that he has turned into a cellar.
Yes freedom does rock but the fact that you now keep a bottle of brandy under your coats and jackets does not turn it into a cellar, just a wadrobe that you keep alcohol in.I used to do the same thing in my room when I was 18.Buy a wine rack if you want to look classy!

The yuppies were chauffeured to schools that were previously whites-only such as St Mary’s unlike their parents — the proud Alliance, Mangu and Machakos School types.
Stop playa hating on Saints you loser!Saints has as much pride and heritage as those other schools.Damn seems some people just can't let shit go!

"Ours is a generation of movers," says John Kiarie, (KJ) an art director at Ogilvy and Mather advertising, "and most of us would rather park a Range Rover outside a servant's quarters in Hurlingham, than live in Buru Buru or anywhere East of Uhuru Highway. Some have to fake it, till they make it."
Someone please, please explain the logic of that to me!First of all I have explained to you how a car isn't an asset!In fact the more expensive it is the more of a liability it is!Then again better an SQ in Lavington then a house in South B.

Fake or real, there are unwritten rules of membership to the yuppie set. You have to earn a salary the length of a KRA Pin Number, live in a leafy suburb, run a fuel guzzler or one or two showy souped-up cars, banish any traces of your mother tongue in your English and have a reputation for free-wheeling spending. A sharp fashion sense completes the requisite image that ensures steady invitation to Nairobi's A-list parties.

Does Kabete count as a leafy suburb?My jalopy used to drink fuel like a fish and had loads of unique add ons aka pirated spare parts (am I in?).I don't have any traces of my mother tongue in my speech not out of choice and not because I fake it. I am eloquent but will by no means fake a weng; I used to laugh my head off because so many Kenyans suck at this.Keep it real!As for free wheeling spending why should I pay more if I can get it cheaper elsewhere?Only pay top dollar if you can't get it elsewhere!Fashion sense is relative...please refer to earlier post.

In Nairobi, you are defined by where you work, your knowledge and whether you are progressive.
This may be the case for many but I am not defined by what I do, where I live and what I know.Those should be a small part of who you are and not the grand total!As for progressive, free wheeling consumerism with no regard for tommorow really isn't if you ask me.

If you treat your feet to Sh20,000 Remron or Clarks shoes you are doing badly.Socks at Sh2,500 and a shirt for Sh5,000 are considered a fair deal.
A simple rule of thumb I follow.Unless you are buying a one off pair of dress shoes for a big occasion,a pair of shoes should never be more then 5-10% of what you make at the end of the month.So if you make 200k buy shoes for 20k at the very most.Shoes are not neccesities and shouldn't make a dent in your budget.Besides trends come and go, so you dont want to be left with some expensive duds in your wadrobe!If the shirt is by a company like Arrow then that is allowable in terms of cost but socks for 2,500?!WTF do they walk for me?They look no difference from those I bought for 20/= at the bus-stop on the way home!

According to Teddy, you will hardly find them in discos or open-air concerts. They also go out of Nairobi to, say Naivasha or Olepolos in Kajiado, for a "loose-mbuzi-thing," meaning, a goat eating party out of town.
Out of town plans do rock!I remember going to Olepolos on many weekends!

Tamasha, which was heaved out of the larger Buffet Park bar and restaurant, is one such joint.Save for the music, service and somewhat classy clientele; there is nothing out of this planet about this members-only pub.
My point exactly so where do these clowns get off charging membership fees!Asshats!

We drive to Alfajiri in Kilimani (you can't reach it by public means), which, alongside The Hood and Casablanca in Hurlingham, Choices on Baricho Road, Club Qatika, Mercury Lounge, Thesaurus, Sohos in Westlands, Havana, Club Sikiliza, Kengeles, Cafe Creame, and Chillers are for the well-heeled.
The only joints in that list I never experienced were Thesaurus and Mercury lounge; some are too over hyped if you ask me!But for some of these joints you do have to be well heeled!I recall paying 80/= to buy a soda for a date, let's just say her aspirations to being a teetolater ended with that round!

And when a little broke, in-house bottle parties, come in handy. And when bonding, they mostly discuss themselves, the sexes, where they will party next, their careers and international sports like Formula One racing and the English Premier League, with a fleeting mention of Kenyan politics.
Is it just me or if you are young and are making money you become more andmore apathetic to the political situation in Kenya?

Aren't women ingredients in this veritable cocktail?

"They are," says, Esther Mumbi, 25, director of Touch Up, a wedding and events management company, "and they prefer hanging out in pricey places with men who have made it. They also seem to have warped priorities. Some live in a Sh40,000 apartment yet they earn Sh60,000. So even for them, it's an image package of who you are and where you live and whether you are part of the MBA movement."
So men no money, no company!Another rule of thumb!Rent should never be more then 25% of your total earnings!Otherwise how will you meet your other expenses and save.Talk about literally working to pay the rent!

Does this mean they don't invest?

Lutta says bright ones are risk takers who invest at the Stock Exchange and in real estate. But if you talk of investing in a matatu or a shamba, you are considered a "zack" (old fashioned).

"Men invest in mutual funds, unit trusts, investment clubs or a plot in Kitengela or Athi River. The same applies to the women".

Mumbi thinks not: "Most of them hardly save. I know some who casually blow away their Sh150,000 salaries and are heavily in debt. While their parents were content with a Sh600 Sanyo radio, these ones spend Sh90,000 on home theatres just to impress their peers. The wise women don't need men to bankroll their lifestyle. While their spending is conspicuous, they also invest in shares, treasury bills, offshore trading, or have money saved in a fixed deposit account.
The jury seems to be out on this one.But as far as I know most of them don't save.I know many cases of people who had to move back home when the companies they were working for downsized.On the other hand I do have some friends who are making a killing in the stock market, so I guess only time will tell.

Being city people, yuppie weddings are not communal affairs. These invitation-only parties are preceded, not by old fashioned bachelor parties, where the bridegroom and his bosom friends cleared crates of Tusker in a smoke-filled bar with matronly bar maids, streetwise ruffians and drab music.

Yuppies do them in stag night parties, where the stag service providers are hired for Sh30,000, with a Sh5,000 non-refundable booking fee. Now these stag parties are held in exclusive villas for that last beer blast with the boys.
I have attended one or two of those weddings and I must say they are a blast!But as for those stag parties I really have to track some down when I go back on vacation!

"Money," says Mumbi, "is what matters to most of them. They are go-getters who want the best cars, clothes and jobs. They want to get a name in society and be the best in what they do. Their jobs define them too, which is why they flash out their business cards before they have told you their second names."
Money is a good thing but it is not everything!And as I said earlier, I will not let my job define me!

Wannabes aspire to be in the league of the high rollers but their ambitions are cut short courtesy of insufficient income and responsibilities from the extended family.

"A wannabe says Kiarie," is that fellow who hangs around this lot, but his bills are mostly taken care of. He is also given a lift to his parents’ home where he lives in the extension."

A wannabe could be paying for his siblings’ school fees, so he mostly hangs out at the end of the month.

Wannabe women, I learn from Mumbi, spot common perfume scent and in their creased attempt at fashion, they buy clothes from Moi Avenue stalls.
Question is when the "wannabe" makes it will he/she still support their extended family or become as selfish as most of the "yuppies"?

Anyway all barbed comments aside, what am I getting at?It's all well and good to make lots of money and enjoy it.But if you're spending it just as fast as you make it, then that's just setting yourself up for disaster!Also it does help to give a little back to the society past your family.Many well to do Kenyans ignore the plight of the poor not knowing that ignoring the elephant in the room doesn't make it go away!
On the flip side if you have lots of cash in Kenya, their is so much you can do!The rift between the middle class and the upper class isn't as wide in Kenya as it is abroad.So the middle class in Kenya can afford to take more then one vacation a year in exotic locales, while on the other hand abroad finding the time and money is very difficult!I met an American girl who took her first flight at the age of 23 while I took my first flight at the age of 9, so people shouldn't assume that people abroad neccesarily have better lives!

All in all enjoy today but don't forget to plan for tommorrow because as Kanye said it best, no-one is promised tommorrow today!

2006-02-20T10:23:00.000-08:00

AWWWWWWW HELL NOOOOOOO!!!!!!!!

This chic isnt looking sexy at all, she's just plain scary!

2006-02-19T17:38:00.000-08:00

A classic.......

The Recurring Pattern, Of Modern History.

The Recurring Pattern, Of Modern History by NiceGuy ...

Step 1: Men invent a new industry or technology.

Step 2: As soon as the new industry or technology becomes super-safe to use and/or glamorous enough to be trendy, small numbers of women (brave "pioneers"!) become interested in it.

Step 3: Brave pioneering women start to discover the new field isn't a bowl of cherries.

Step 4: Brave pioneering women get their feelings hurt and complain that men have developed the industry/field to suit themselves and have unfairly shut women out of their private little boy's club.

Step 5: After court papers are filed, men start to create special programs to lower standards and advance the number of women to top positions in the field while paying less attention to such irrelevant things as qualifications and ability.

Step 6: After women achieve a number of high-level positions in the field, they begin gloating that men have lost their edge and no longer have what it takes to compete in this brave, new world of 'ekwalitee'.

Step 7: Repeat.

2006-02-14T10:42:00.000-08:00

I saw this and it was so funny that I had to put it up.If you don't like it sod off!

2006-02-09T10:48:00.000-08:00

From one of my all time favorite blogs.If you follow every social trend that is going on you're bound to find yourself in a rut...............

Friends with Benefits

Two years ago, the New York Times ran an article on "Friends with Benefits" which seems to be the preferred form of relationship with young singles. Key points:
Myth: Women felt empowered by this casual non-committal sex relationship. Fact: In these relationships, the women were only performing sex acts for the men and getting nothing in return. Instead of meeting as equals, the women were completely capitulating to the man's terms.
Myth: It is a real relationship. Fact: The women consider the "friends with benefits" situation to be a pseudo-relationship if not a real one. The men consider the woman to be a stupid whore. Getting free sex with no commitment to a man is like getting away with stealing. It's a thrill as long as it goes on, but they never care anything for the woman beyond the fun she offers. The trick is to always pretend to be the woman's friend. A woman stupid enough to go along with this type of set-up will believe anything.
Myth: When the woman realizes she has been used - often for many years - she accepts this and tries to maintain the "friendship". Fact: Women are always hurt when love is not returned for sex. When the pseudo-relationship ends, the women react with tears and intense emotional pain or develop a false bravado around having sex detached from emotion.
I've met several women who were in "friends with benefits" relationships for a year or more. Usually, they stay "best friends" with the men who used them and moved on - laughing at the used-up and stupid victim they left behind.Obviously, these relationships are better for men. The women are used and treated like free hookers, but they seem to want this kind of relationship much more than a traditional, loving and respectful marriage. In reality, only the worst kind of man becomes involved with a woman in this way. Sadly, it's really what women want. Even worse, the women who are used in this way become incapable of loving men who are good for them. Instead, they fixate on the players and the users - forever wondering why they cannot be happy, always stuck on a jerk while good men are turned away.Still, it is a good situation for men. Bravo feminism!

2006-02-06T20:32:00.000-08:00

From one of my favourite blogs....
Sure Sign of Misery

If you see this in your dates DVD player, get your friggin shoes on and run out the door. Don't have sex, don't hang around, just GO.

Women who live the Sex & The City life expect things to work themselves out like they do on the TV show. However, since you aren't a gay man and your date isn't either, nothing will ever work out the way it does on Sex & The City. Run away young man!

In short if you meet someone and a good portion of their life and thought process is dictated by a program (Sex in The City,Desparate Housewives) or a personality (That God-awful Oprah woman) you are going to be stuck with a woman whose life runs on trends and no pre-established thought process.Run and run fast as the author says!

2006-02-05T12:38:00.000-08:00

As I have said earlier on when I began this blog, this blog will be more about social issues and less about me.Anyway for a long long time feminists have touted marriage as a patriachal device to subjugate women ignoring the benefits that it offers to women.The war on marriage began with the process of getting divorce being made easier ie no fault divorce.Don't get me wrong in the case of an abusive marriage that is great but it also leads to people throwing in the towel anytime they don't feel the marriage is working or when they feel that the romance is gone; it seems people forgot that marriage is hard work and not just peaches and cream.Add to this the State replacing fathers with child support; fathers and husbands have been replaced by checks courtesy of the state.
Lately feminists have joined forces with gays to press for same sex marriage.Good for them but what they didn't realise is the slippery slope they are going down.When you widen the definition of what marriage is soon you have no marriage as this article shows......

Dissolving Marriage

If everything is marriage, then nothing is.

Canada, you don’t know the half of it. In mid-January, Canada was rocked by news that a Justice Department study had called for the decriminalization and regulation of polygamy. Actually, two government studies recommended decriminalizing polygamy. (Only one has been reported on.) And even that is only part of the story. Canadians, let me be brutally frank. You are being played for a bunch of fools by your legal-political elite. Your elites mumble a confusing jargon to your face to keep you from understanding what they really have in mind.

Language Exam

Let’s try a little test. Translate the following phrases into English:

1) Canada needs to move “beyond conjugality.”

2) Canada needs to “reconsider the continuing legal privileging of marriage and other conjugal relationships.”

3) Once gay marriage is legalized, Canada will be able to “consider whether the legal privileges and burdens now assigned to marriage and other conjugal relationships can be justified.”
4) Canada needs to question “whether conjugality is an appropriate marker for determining legal rights and obligations.”

[Answers: The English translation of #1,# 2, and #4 is: “Canada should abolish marriage.” The translation of #3 is: “Once we legalize gay marriage, we can move on to the task of abolishing marriage itself.”]

This argument was very publicly made to Canadians in 2001, when the Law Commission of Canada published its report, “Beyond Conjugality.” But nobody got it. Everyone noticed that a government commission had backed same-sex marriage. But few recognized, grasped, or could bring themselves to take seriously, the central thrust of Beyond Conjugality: that after the legalization of same-sex marriage, Canadian marriage itself ought to be abolished. (For more on this, see my article “Beyond Gay Marriage”)

Martha Bailey, Queens University law professor and chief author of the now infamous report advocating the decriminalization of polygamy, played an important organizing role in the Beyond Conjugality project (translation: the “Abolish Marriage” project). In 2004, Bailey published an article, “Regulation of Cohabitation and Marriage in Canada,” arguing that, after the legalization of same-sex marriage, Canadians would be able to turn their attention to the more urgent business of abolishing marriage itself. (That article is the source of items #2, #3, and #4 above.) So it is hardly surprising that Bailey has now called for the decriminalization of polygamy. What’s that you say? How does legalizing polygamous marriage advance the cause of abolishing marriage? Canadians, I’m going to have to spell it out for you in a way that Martha Bailey and her friends on the Law Commission of Canada will not.

The Plan

It’s like this. The way to abolish marriage, without seeming to abolish it, is to redefine the institution out of existence. If everything can be marriage, pretty soon nothing will be marriage. Legalize gay marriage, followed by multi-partner marriage, and pretty soon the whole idea of marriage will be meaningless. At that point, Canada can move to what Bailey and her friends really want: an infinitely flexible relationship system that validates any conceivable family arrangement, regardless of the number or gender of partners.

The Canadian public cannot bring itself to believe that the abolition of marriage is the real agenda of the country’s liberal legal-political elite. That is why everyone was surprised by Bailey’s polygamy report, even though the judicial elite’s intentions had been completely public for five years. (Granted, these intentions were telegraphed in a semi-incomprehensible intellectual gibberish, with the really scary stuff hidden in footnotes.)

If it were merely a matter of a few thousand so-called “Mormon fundamentalists,” legalized polygamy wouldn’t stand a chance in Canada. Even the addition of Canada’s rapidly growing Muslim immigrant population wouldn’t create a winning pro-polygamy coalition (although pressure from Canada’s Muslims does matter). It’s the many and powerful legal elites (including judges) — the ones who see marriage itself as an outdated and oppressive patriarchal institution — who make decriminalizing polygamy something to worry about.

What’s that you say? You still don’t understand how a bunch of liberal-feminist elites could even think about supporting an “oppressively patriarchal” institution like polygamy? I guess you still just don’t get it. Read Bailey’s report and you will see that she does not endorse traditional “patriarchal” polygamy. Bailey’s whole point is that Canada can decriminalize polygamy without endorsing what “fundamentalist Mormons” or Islamic immigrants actually do.

But why would Bailey favor that? Simple. Canada’s anti-polygamy laws stand in the way of Bailey’s true goal: the creation of a modern, secular, “non-patriarchal” relationship system that would allow for marriage-like unions in any combination of number or gender. That would mean the effective abolition of marriage. But to get to the postmodern version of multi-partner unions, Canada’s old-fashioned anti-polygamy laws have got to go.

The Coalition

Don’t you get it? Canada’s socially liberal legal elites are just using the gay marriage movement, fundamentalist Mormons, and Muslim immigrants to get what they’re truly after: the slow-motion abolition of marriage. (According to Bailey, even many same-sex marriage advocates actually want to “reform” marriage out of existence.) And radical as that goal may seem, Canada is a whole lot closer to abolishing marriage than you realize. Canada’s liberal courts have already knocked down most of the legal distinctions between marriage and unmarried cohabitation. Bailey’s notorious report highlights that fact. “The legal significance of marital status has declined substantially in Canada,” says Bailey, so why make a fuss about polygamy?

Martha Bailey isn’t shy about making slippery slope arguments (to encourage the slip, not to fight it). Canadians have been told, openly and persistently, by their own legal experts, that the slippery slope is real. Yet Canadians simply refused to believe it, until Bailey’s polygamy report came out.

Actually, Bailey’s report is only one of four separate polygamy studies sponsored by Canada’s Justice Department, two of which advocate decriminalization. The third study’s arguments apply to traditional “patriarchal” polygamy alone, and would carry little or no weight against modern “polyamorous” unions (of the kind I wrote about in “Here Come the Brides”). Only one of the four government-sponsored polygamy reports offered arguments that might invalidate modern forms of multi-partner unions. Yet this fourth study omits key arguments against multi-partner unions, and would clearly have a difficult time overcoming the case made by the two pro-decriminalization studies.

In other words, to the extent that it’s up to the sort of judges and legal experts favored by Canada’s long-reigning Liberal party, long-term prospects for some sort of legalized multi-partner unions in Canada are pretty decent. To be sure, Canada’s Conservatives now have a (tenuous) hold on power, and the Canadian public did not react well to the Bailey report. Yet Canada’s left-leaning legal-political elite is a patient lot. In 2003, a survey conducted by Canada’s Vanier Institute found that 20 percent of Canadians (25 percent of younger adults, and 33 percent of secularists) were willing to accept some form of polygamy, even if only 4 percent of Canadians personally approved of such unions. Given time, growing public tolerance, increased pressure from Muslim immigrants, incremental court decisions, continued growth in Canada’s already burgeoning polyamory movement, and the return of a Liberal government, Martha Bailey and friends may yet achieve their goal.

Tactical Multiculturalism

Bailey’s clever tactic is to appeal to Canada’s powerful multicultural sensibility by allying herself with Muslim immigrants. Even though Bailey’s proposal would decriminalize polygamy for Mormon patriarchs and postmodern polyamorists, she has almost nothing to say about those groups. Instead, Bailey focuses almost exclusively on the issue of Muslim immigration. Mark Steyn predicted this some time ago when he said that Canadian polygamy would “slip through under the guise of multiculturalism.”

Stressing “the multicultural nature of Canadian society,” Bailey claims that Canada has an urgent practical need for more Muslim immigrants. If Canada can just “expand the pool of applicants,” says Bailey, it just may win “the global competition for highly skilled immigrants.”

It’s an odd argument. For one thing, rates of polygamy in the Third World tend to be lower among the highly educated. And Bailey herself claims that the number of polygamists who would actually immigrate under a liberalized law would “presumably” be “very small.” So how can a minuscule number of polygamists boost Canada’s pool of “highly skilled immigrants?” Bailey resolves the contradiction by claiming that all Muslims would be attracted to a country that proved its commitment to multiculturalism by welcoming polygamy. Still, it’s tough not to suspect that Bailey is less interested in importing polygamous computer scientists from Africa than in using the Muslim community to achieve her ultimate goal of defining marriage out of existence.

Bailey is probably wrong on both counts. Instead of getting only a few polygamous immigrants but a lot of Muslim computer scientists, Bailey’s plan would likely result in only a few computer scientists and a lot of polygamists. That’s because Bailey would not only decriminalize polygamy, she would also allow all parties to intact polygamous marriages to immigrate to Canada. Big mistake.

After the Second World War, France expanded its labor force by allowing intact polygamous families to immigrate from Africa and the Middle East. By the 1990s, there were upwards of 200,000 polygamous family members living in France’s impoverished suburbs. Since 1993, France has been torn by conflict over these polygamous families, sometimes trying to break them up, sometimes looking the other way. Many believe that boys from large and poor polygamous families with little fatherly supervision helped cause the recent riots in France.

Canada’s Muslims seem interested in joining Bailey’s slide down the slippery slope. While denying that Muslims were about to push for polygamy, Canadian Islamic Congress president Mohamed Elmasry caused a stir in 2005 when he publicly defended polygamy as “a positive family force.” Sayd Mumtaz Ali, president of the Canadian Society of Muslims, was more forward when he said last year that if same-sex marriage were legalized in Canada, Muslim polygamists would be within their rights to push for legalization of their own way of life.

The Slope Slips

Of course, Ali is drawing a direct link between same-sex marriage and the push for legalized polygamy. Yet just last year, then Canadian Justice Minister Irwin Cotler famously said, “We don’t see any connection, I repeat, any connection between the issue of polygamy and the issue of same-sex marriage.” Calling such slippery-slope fears “alarmist,” Cotler authorized the four just-released polygamy studies, in part to put an end to the claim that polygamy would follow same-sex marriage.

Apparently Martha Bailey missed the memo. Not only does Bailey call for decriminalizing polygamy, she directly links her legal argument on polygamy to same-sex marriage. This happens when Bailey confronts the barrier that adultery law poses to her plan to decriminalize polygamy. Although adultery is not a criminal offense in Canada, it serves as a way of proving the key ground of divorce, “marital breakdown.” So if Canadian law recognizes adultery as a cause of marital breakdown, how can Canada accept polygamy? Easy, says Bailey. Why not just redefine adultery to mean, not sex with a third party, but sex with someone outside of a marriage of however many partners? To validate this reinterpretation of the meaning of adultery, Bailey points to the precedent of same-sex marriage, which forced a legal redefinition of adultery away from an opposite-sex dalliance. Hey, if we can redefine adultery for the sake of same-sex couples, why not redefine it to please polygamists?

Ultimate Goal

Bailey may not openly flog her ultimate goal of abolishing marriage in this report. Yet what Bailey’s up to is clear enough when she carefully describes a 1998 report by the British Columbia Law Institute in which a “significant minority” of members favored a “multiple domestic partnership” system detached from the patriarchal “baggage” of traditional polygamy. This is exactly what Bailey is hoping to establish. Yet she brackets the proposal by saying that at the moment there is “no demand” for such a system.

Not so, as this 2005 Macleans article on Canadian polyamory explains. According to Macleans, polyamory “seems increasingly common” in Canada. And as organized polyamory groups proliferate, there has already been discussion “about creating a system of legal contracts around issues such as child custody and family rights.”

Since polyamory is free of the “patriarchal baggage” attached to traditional polygamy, most of the arguments against multi-partner unions in the four just-released polygamy reports would not apply. Of course there are arguments against polyamory, it’s just that liberal law professors don’t know how to make them. In any case, Bailey is shrewd enough to see that, if she can only get Canada to set aside its laws against polygamy, the goal of supplementing (and eventually replacing) marriage with a modern domestic partnership system (allowing any combination of number or gender) would be achievable.

I’ve focused on Bailey, while touching only lightly on the three other polygamy reports. Yet taken together, these four extraordinary documents launch a serious public debate about polygamy. (I’ll have more to say about the other reports in time.) The four Canadian polygamy studies are a time-capsule from the future, a preview of the argument we’ll be having should same-sex marriage be fully established here in the United States. Once we’re there, we’ll be well on our way toward “removing conjugality as a marker for determining legal rights and obligations.” Translation? By now I think you get it.

Beware of what you ask for, it may come with strings attached.........

2006-01-30T19:11:00.000-08:00

I was talking to a friend of mine and she was telling me how much she hates her job especially her workmates.So I thought that she worked with men who were hassling her, alas I was wrong.She works in an office that is predominantly female when it comes to the gender of the workforce.So as I was trollling the net I came across this interesting article:

Secrets of the single sex workplace

By Darren Blacksmith

Go into a British bank, library, shop, hospital department or office these days and you may find yourself playing a game called ‘spot the male’. Vast swathes of working environments are now practically all female, and they can be pretty hostile for a man to enter.

I’ve worked in places where I was the only man, and I’ve worked in places where there were no women. The male-only workplaces were far more productive and pleasant.

I worked in an office where I was the only male. I found it a very revealing experience because as I sat quietly at my desk working away I sometimes just blended into the environment and the women often forgot I was there. So I got the chance to observe an all female environment. Kind of like the fantasy of putting on an invisibility suit and hanging out in the women’s changing rooms, only a lot less fun.

The first thing that hit me about the all-female office was the sheer amount of time it took them to get anything done. Their productivity was awful. At the time I was self-employed. Sometimes I worked at home in my study and sometimes I worked in offices. A little job that took me an hour to do at home in my study turned into a major project that would take a day or more for one of these women. The main reason for this was talking. The group of women talked nonstop, and less than half of it was about work. Mostly it was vicious and petty gossiping.

But more surprising than the talking was the way they would routinely leave the office to do a little bit of shopping, buying a new dress or even to entertain a friend who stopped by the office to see them. And if they weren’t talking to one another, shopping or enjoying a visit from a friend then they were talking on the phone. And talking. And talking.

Of course, women would claim this is the fabled ‘multitasking’ which they allegedly excel at. The argument goes that it takes a woman to do more than one thing at once. Of course, this begs the question that if a woman is occupied doing several things at once is she doing them to a standard and quality as good as if she’d focused on each one at a time. Also, the type of tasks that these women were doing in the office were not rocket science, so doing several things at once was hardly the achievement of the Century.

Not only did I find them shockingly unproductive, I also found them incredibly sexist. In the office there were several soft-porn postcards and a calendar of naked and near-naked men. And often there would be a sign up with some man-bashing comment or joke. The women would also make anti-male jokes and pepper their conversations with pronouncements on the inadequacies of their menfolk. Men would never get away with this in an office these days, but for women it seems its fine. After all, whose going to challenge them?

Ten or twenty years ago all-male workplaces where women rarely ventured (such as workshops and garages) often had a female ‘glamor’ calendar on the wall featuring topless or bikini clad women. Today you never see this in these all-male workplaces, but you do see calendars and postcards of naked men in offices and workplaces where both men and women work. Presumably its okay to make a man feel uncomfortable at work, but not a woman. God, there was even a postcard of a naked man up in the barbers where I have my hair cut! Now, there were two women working there and two men, but all the customers are men. Do we really want to see this? Most men don’t.

What makes the men-bashing of the female office so hypocritical is that while they put down men, belittled them, gossiped about them and judged them behind their backs, they were utterly and pathetically dependent on men for emotional and technical support throughout their working week.

They would frequently let their moods, periods, or other minor incidents upset them and that would require them to talk to their boyfriends or husbands on the phone to put them back on track.

Computers and technical equipment presented numerous problems for them that continually required either my assistance, or a phone call to summon a tech-support man. Of course, men in offices also sometimes need help with technical problems - although not as often I suspect as women do - but the difference is that we don’t gossip and bitch about the tech-support man’s shoes and hairstyle five minutes after he’s left.

To witness a woman flirting with a male delivery man to get what she wants, then making bitchy comments about him just after he’s gone is to understand how much crueler and duplicitous women can be than men.

The constant phone-calls, bitching, emotional upsets, sexism and un-productiveness were, thankfully, not present in the all-male working environment. The all-male workplace I worked at was a building site. A range of professional tradesmen - bricklayers, plasters, painters, carpenters, electricians and plumbers - collaborating to build 24 new houses. Counter to what you might think about a building site, or how building sites are portrayed on TV and films, not once did a poster or calendar of a babe appear anywhere, and not once did any worker whistle at any passing woman. I never heard any vicious sexist jokes or comments and on the rare occasion a woman came on site, she was treated with good manners and often shown special treatment. Girlfriends and wives when mentioned were talked about fondly, and if they were the butt of any humour it was more kind than callous.

It’s hard to explain how refreshing the all-male environment is in comparison to the all-female one. It is the combination of professionally getting on with the job, the lack of bitching and histrionics, and the fact that if you need to ask for something or talk to someone you can do so in a straightforward, logical way and not have them take everything you say as a personal affront to them.

If you ever get the choice, I recommend working in the all male workplace. You’ll probably have a longer working day, less breaks and chatting, but the pride in a productive working week and the sense of self-respect in treating others and being treated in a fair, respectful, non-bitching way will more than make up for it.

2006-01-21T14:33:00.000-08:00

Brokeback Mountain

I rarely get to watch movies because most movies made nowadays are crap and I just don't have the time to do so.What I do most of the time is read reviews and If what I read resonates with me I get hold of the dvd.Anyway people have been bubbling about 'brokeback mountain' so I got hold of a review.I do intend to read other reviews but this is what this review said about the movie.

Review by David Laza
Jan 4, 2006

Love story or tragedy, heart-rending or stomach-turning, Ang Lee’s gay cowboy epic Brokeback Mountain could do for Prozac prescriptions what Titanic did for life preservers.

As cinema, it showcases Lee’s trademark gusto for fine performances, dazzling cinematography, and intriguing, often weighty storylines.

As social commentary, however, it does less to advance the ball in the alternative lifestyle debate than advocates and media elites would like to believe.

Because at its root, Brokeback Mountain is a film less about the courage acolytes ascribe to it than about choices. And those choices are almost uniformly squandered throughout by central figures Jack Twist (Jake Gyllenhaal) and Ennis Del Mar (Heath Ledger).

The resulting melancholy with which many moviegoers will exit may have less to do with the plight of those chief characters than with the scrap heap of broken lives each leaves behind.

Beautifully shot, with the same eye for setting and mood as the clinically cold 1970s New England he depicted in Rick Moody’s The Ice Storm, Lee’s take on Anne Proulx’s short story captures both the breathtaking majesty and desolate loneliness of Wyoming’s Tetons.

And like the swinging, me-generation postmodernism of The Ice Storm, Brokeback takes on moral ambiguity, selfishness and infidelity in matter-of-fact, you-be-the-judge fashion. This is reality. It is what it is. And it’s up to the audience to decide whether it’s right or wrong.

Brokeback tells the story of Jack and Ennis, two presumably straight Marlboro Man types who fall in love during the summer of 1963 while tending sheep on the movie’s eponymous mass of rock – a love quickly consummated in a holster-your-popcorn, Rolaids-inducing sequence played out one cold night in a pup tent.

When the summer ends, and the job is over, the two must make a choice: try to make a go of it together and continue their relationship (which Jack wants), or bow to the inhospitable climate of that era and try to lead straight lives. They choose the latter, and to paraphrase Robert Frost, that makes all the difference.

Each marries and starts a family – Jack in Texas, Ennis in Wyoming. But their longing for one another can’t be abated and so begins a 20-plus-year affair, punctuated by long “fishing trips” on Brokeback during which (amazingly) no fish are actually caught. There’s little doubt these two men love each other. The way the pair ravenously attack one another in the parking lot of Ennis’s apartment complex after a four-year cool-down – while long-suffering wife Alma (Michelle Williams) helplessly watches through a window – conveys nothing less.

The fallout, of course, is calamitous. Ennis’s marriage ends in divorce, his kids are left fatherless, and he becomes an alcoholic, hopping from job to job and passing his days in a dilapidated single-wide trailer. Jack, meanwhile, takes on his demons by hiring male prostitutes and carrying on affairs with other men when he can’t see Ennis. His marriage somehow stays intact, but his life takes a similarly southbound spiral.

Depending on one’s outlook going in, Brokeback Mountain viewers are likely to leave with different impressions.

Those who laud it, like the Human Rights Campaign, which will give Lee its annual Equality Award next February, are calling it an eye-opener, with the power to change hearts and minds about the tenderness, and often pain, of the gay experience.

“Through his moving directorial work, Ang Lee proves the old adage, ‘Love is love is love,’” the gay rights group’s president Joe Solmonese said recently.

But is this the kind of love that should be celebrated? The kind of love that spawns infidelity, breaks up families, and creates almost suicidal depression?

Three years ago, gay filmmaker Todd Haynes took on a similar theme in his 1950s era Douglas Sirk send-up, Far From Heaven. In that film, long-closeted Dennis Quaid succumbs to his urges and leaves long-suffering wife Julianne Moore for another man. Advocates were almost nowhere to be found when that film was released, perhaps because Quaid’s character was implicitly shamed as a louse. Not for being gay, but for being dishonest from the outset and for ruining lives, for starting a family and ultimately sacrificing it for physical desire.

Man is inherently flawed. All of us have yearnings, demons, and temptations we struggle with each day. But our choices have consequences. It’s one’s ability to be honest with himself and others, how he chooses to act on those weaknesses and his ability to reason and control impulses, that helps define his character.

The challenges homosexuals face each day about coming out, creating lives for themselves, coming to terms, and fighting intolerance and escalating suicide rates are too important to be ignored or swept under a rug.

But Jack and Ennis are not heroes, nor are they courageous. They’re selfish. And at a time when Americans remain uneasy about issues of acceptance and gay marriage, Brokeback Mountain does not advance discussion the way films like Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner? and Gentleman’s Agreement did two and three generations ago, when it came to the shame of racism and anti-Semitism.

Instead, it risks trivializing and leaves questions. Questions about whether these two men would have led the kind of lives they did had they never met; about whether much of the hurt they caused could have been avoided had they chosen the other path.

And about whether viewers will be moved to sympathize, or to hit their nearest pharmacy.

2006-01-14T18:03:00.000-08:00

Anyone who knows me knows that despite all the flack and demonisation of everyday straight men that goes on I refuse to be swayed and remain very proud to be a man and will never apologise for the sins of other men past or present.But that does not mean that in my eyes there is no wrong that men can do, au contraire I think that men once occupied a priviledged place in society and even though that position has been eroded with time and social change they should still act like it is.
One thing that gets to me is that lack of personal responsibility and accountability by many men today.Not to say that in the past that all men were bastions of virtue but men in those days were raised to be accountable and be accountable for the results of their indiscretions.One reason way back there were few single mothers as compared to now with all the sex education that people have is that when a man made a girl pregnant he had to do the right thing (can you say shotgun wedding?).Nowadays that is no longer the case.I know a case where a Kenyan guy here in the states made his room-mate pregnant (what happened to the good old saying? - "don't shit where you eat").After she gives birth the pal somehow brainswashes the girl into telling curious people that the dad has gone back to Kenya.Seeing as which she is a pretty homely girl and has a very small circle of friends people knew that a yearn was being spun.It was after some intense pressure from my aunt that she told him who the father was.Despite the fact that they live in the same house this guy gives minimal support both physically and financially.He once told the girl to take the kid to social services and tells her to have the kid sent to her parents in Kenya.This same guy goes to the extent of when a gal pal of the mum comes over, of telling her how much the kid looks like the mother's ex boyfriend who is the current boyfriend of this girl who is visiting.I mean talk about shitting on someone's representation.I hear that when the other guy heard that he was not very amused.I would have gone one better and given him an ass whupping.I don't suffer people who drag other people's reputation in the mud lightly.
I am a simple man who lives a simple life, so if you're going to have some hanky panky for fuck's sake use a condom.I mean this dude was in his own house so he has no excuses.This is States and I have no intention of being put into indentured servitude for 18 years for a few minutes of fun.Life, love and sex are a war, and a soldier who intends to live another day always enters the battlefield with an exit strategy that has the lowest body count.
All in all if you are going to do something be ready to face the consequences and remember that the same people that you stamped on as you climbed the mountain of fun are the same people you will face on the way down.All that being said I am 110% proud to be an African man and yes there are some despicable men out there but that does not mean all of us are evil,also I will not apologise or be shamed for their actions; I will keep on stating this all day!If you dont believe me you can go live in a gay or lesbian commune because I cant fix what doesnt want to be fixed and men will always be here!

2006-01-13T06:53:00.000-08:00

Welcome to my blog.The main reason for this blog is to comment about social issues.I am not p.c and will say alot of things that people know but don't want to hear.If you don't like what you hear browse to a site more appropriate to you like this.