tHiNkEr’S rOoM

Teacher: Good morning children.
Cabinet: Good morning teacher!
Teacher: Did you have a nice night?
Cabinet: Yes teacher!
Raila: (Indignantly) Teacher, teacher! Someone here has pooped his pants, and on a scale of 1 to 10 a strong 97. Can we get Hans Blix in the house?

{Children turn accusingly to Murungaru}

Murungaru: Waa!! That’s not true! Why do they always pick on me? Waa!
Kituyi: It’s still morning, for crying out loud! Does that boy eat by the kilo?
Teacher: All right, all right, let’s all calm down and get back to the lesson
Nyongo: (Indignantly) Get back to the lesson? It smells like a sweating dead skunk here!!
Teacher: Chris? Can you come with teacher to wipe your bottom?
Kimunya: (Sotto voice) Well teacher, there goes your morning!
Murungaru: (Loudly) Waa! Waa! Did you hear that teacher?
Teacher: Oh be quiet!

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When more than four gather in the name of anything else other than the Son of Man, it is only a matter of time before daggers and drawn in the name of healthy discussion. And as usual before I could quietly extract myself a powerful finger and thumb attached themselves to my ear and I was lead back to the table by a sister anxious to reduce her backlog of words to say for the day.

“Not so fast dude, you’re not sitting by the sidelines on this one!”

The bone of contention was a very simple one. One school of thought (banana) were all for the idea of absolute honesty between partners. This eclectic mix of individuals was of the opinion that there should be nothing but brutal honesty between you and your significant other. Nothing was too small to pass under the radar.

The opposing group (orange) was opposed violently to the very notion of absolute honesty.

“This is not to say that you should lie,” the Chairlady of the Oranges said. “But there are times when the truth will cost you more than keeping it hidden. Some things should either be left unsaid or outright lied about.”

I cast my lot without hesitation with the Oranges. Granted, there are some things you should not lie about but then again there some others to which if you answered truthfully with one hand on the Good Book you will find yourself in the dog house, especially if your chromosomes are inclined to be the XY variety.

Casting aside the obvious ones like “Is she prettier than me” variety, there are other situations where it is imperative you cough loudly, yell fire, and while Jesus and his Father are occupied looking around, to lie through one’s teeth with a perfectly straight face.

Before her untimely demise in 2001, Michelle and I had a very good thing going. I was completely convinced that this was the woman I’d be handing her false teeth in the morning, after she had handed me my two walking sticks and both glass eyes some seventy years down the line.

I won’t enumerate all her qualities here but on a scale of 1 to 10 she scored a strong 45.

However, she could not cook. If she was captured in a world war and told her only salvation was to make the opposing enemy commander a cup of tea she’d be blindfolded and standing before a wall within half an hour. She could cook to save her life.

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No sooner is it quoted that “beauty is only skin deep” than it is just as quickly forgotten. Of contemporary cultural cliches this particular one has got to be one of the more poignant by the very virtue of its ubiquity, because in the hierarchy of statements grounded in reality, it ranks immediately below “Santa Claus is coming to town”. Why? Because much as it is oft repeated, it is never really reflected on, and what’s more it is immediately forgotten.

By virtue of observation alone it is abundantly clear that we fondly believe that of all the adjectives to describe us, superficial is not one of them.  We fondly believe that our judgements are based solely on sound reasoning and objectivity. We refuse to entertain for one second that we do not live by these words that so readily pour from our lips.

A very effective mirror of society is the media. Long before economists got it down on paper the dynamics of supply and demand had long been apparent to Adam and his immediate descendants. If people want to watch dogs biting man newspapers, magazines, television, Hollywood, Bollywood and Nollywood will oblige. If they do not the media fraternity will without a doubt withdraw that particular fare.

The unfortunate truth is that we are a reflection of what we watch and what we read.

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This post may contain ‘French’

Of Language

Picture this if you will. You speak Hottentot, French, Kiswahili, Hindi, Kikuyu, Luo or whatever your mother tongue happens to be. You are seated at a table with a friend and colleague who also speaks the same language, and also present at the table is a third person who does not. However you all speak English, or some common language

Now, if you insist on speaking to your friend and colleague of the same ilk in your language while leaving the helpless third person who does not speak it to sit there helplessly and foolishly you are precisely the kind of ass who needs to have his backbone kicked out of the top of his head and beaten with said backbone.

It is rude, shameless and thoughtless of you to gibber, roar and guffaw with your friend while the third person sits there with that embarrassed half smile of someone who does not know what to do with himself as you two nitwits hold forth amongst yourselves! Your levels of being asses is directly proportional to how long you continue to converse merrily in your secret tongue leaving your hapless third colleague to feel like a sand salesman in the Kalahari.

If you are one of these Oompa Loompas do yourself and the collective gene pool a favour and style the hell up.

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There is Overheard In New York, Overheard In Dublin and Overheard In The Office. There’s no good reason why there is no Overheard In Nairobi. Which is why there is one now!

Go to Overheard In Nairobi, and contribute while you’re at it!

Warren G - Regulate

Perhaps I should have used a smaller font, and possibly a light grey colour, to say that I am considering (note: considering) taking a break from this blogging thing. That this has not been a welcome announcement would be an understatement.

M at blog

After the outrage, threats on my person and pleas  the most common question is why am I considering this and I’d not even a year old. This would be as good a time as any for a step into history.

Back Then

True, this blog was started precisely on January 1st 2005. I uploaded my 120th post last week.

The history has been chequered indeed. Right now am running on wordpress on my own domain.

Homo Sapiens

I used to be on blogger, and besides the annoying URL, flexibility was acutely wanting.

Homo Erectus

What you may or may not know is that Thinker’s Room did not come to life this year, nor was it a blog when it came into existence. It was a webzine of sorts that came to life in mid 2001. Yes, 2001. The first couple of issues are forever lost (didn’t occur to me to archive them) but the first archived issue is me  “Venting on the rain and Kenyans, and a thoroughly unfair look at family ties” in Nov 16 2001. After a run of 4 years I decided to go the blog earlier this year way chiefly because:

• It was a considerable pain to do updates, because I quite literally had to do everything – layout, design, content, etc
• It was rather hard to get feedback

Homo Habilis

What still fewer of you know is that before Thinker’s Room I had something else online in 1999. And no I’m not giving you the URL for love or for money, but here is a doctored screenshot. If you remember it keep it to yourself! This is what actually got my feet wet with regards to this whole online business, in the good old days when there was no Google and the biggest online names were Yahoo and Excite

Australopithecus

What even fewer of you know is that my first online anything was way back in 1997 when I did some work for a company called Form-Net, that now I think is called KenyaWeb.

This means that I have been online in some way or the other for some 9 or so years.

Of Blogging

I’ve been asked repeatedly why I blog. I’ve thought about it myself on occasion, and explored the web a bit to see why people blog. Or rather what they say when asked why they blog.

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