The other day someone asked me "Dude, what happened to your blog?"

"Why nothing," I answered primly. "Why?"

"You don’t write as much as you used to. In fact no one does. There’s not much to read on the blogging scene."

Ouch.

I was about to give some outraged response when I realized what she said was absolutely 100% true. Now that i think about it none of the blogs I used to read are updated anymore, and if they are, its just as irregular as mine.

But the irony is there are MORE Kenyan blogs today than they were a year, two, three, four years ago. Why then is it so difficult to find interesting stuff to read?

For a long time I believed twitter was the culprit. Twitter is just too easy. You open the client, type your half baked thoughts and BAM. Its in the ether. You later notice your spelling mistakes and BAM you update your status again.

Contrast this with writing a blog post. For me writing a blog post was a process. Get an idea. Flesh it out. Edit and re-edit a couple of times. Locate and crop images. Insert images appropriately. Read through the final draft. Upload. This would take as long as a day for particular posts.

No comparison with twitter. You can have anything up literally in seconds. And I do mean literally.

"Taking a dump" I read the other day. Indeed.

Could it be that twitter is sapping our creative juices?

I’ve just read a fascinating piece by Potash that really does not need much commentary.

His assertion is that twitter is not actually to blame — although I have doubts about that. For me I must confess that twitter is a big culprit in chipping away at the mojo. Although he raises a proliferation of content to do with social media (a term i have promoted to join ‘cutting edge technologies’, ‘core competencies’ and ‘leveraging technology and processes’, the triumvirate of flowery language that conveys more irritation than meaning).

He says that there are simply no more stories being told. It is all about cyber activism, social media and citizen journalism.

Go read it. It’s fascinating stuff.

I’m inclined to agree. There is a collective peer pressure pushing blogging towards these cubby holes.

It raises a point that I have personally been finding irritating and that Kenyanpundit has often voiced — must technology in the African context always be only about noble goals — poverty eradication, good governance, etc? Must we keep blogging only as citizen journalism? Technology for Africa?

When all the submarine cables came it all became about developing local content and BPOs. Why wasn’t anyone excited about now how they could finally stream youtube videos and radio stations? Or download MP3s? Or (God forbid!) download porn?

Are we overdoing digital activism and citizen journalism? Have we ceased the simple effort of telling stories?

OK, one FINAL one for the road. I promise.

The look on Jeff Koinange’s face in this particular screenshot is just priceless.

I’ve had my share of 411 fraud letters but this one takes the biscuit.

It is reproduced here in full with all the grammar and typos intact

US DEPARTMENT OF TREASURY

Thanks
Respectfully,
Mr. Timothy Geithner.

Some months ago while watching one of the innumerable series on TV I reached a conclusion that startled even myself.

"This is complete and utter bullshit."

One hour after watching the series I did an audit of how exactly I had benefited and came away with a net loss on the balance sheet, as I had lost an hour of my valuable time and gained absolutely nothing.

As time progressed that echo became an old friend while watching credits scrolling and I started to ponder and reflect: is there any value that many of the TV programs add?

Now, I am not going to say that we should be watching documentaries of isotopic uranium and nuclear fission 24 hours a day, but I KNOW for a fact that there has to be a line between entertainment and nonsense.

The fact of the matter is that we are being flooded with mind numbing fare masquerading as television programming that is slowly but surely doing its bit hand over fist to reduce us to a crowd of balling simpletons.

Look for instance to the proliferation of so called ‘reality series’. One is amazed at their sheer number. Ranging from isolation in remote places (Survivor), to job interviews (The Apprentice) to Cooking (Top Chef) and ultimately the nails across the blackboard, the ‘dating’ (The Bachelor, The Bachelorette, et al). Not to mention the amorphous Big Brother. There are undoubtedly a dozen other of these mind numbing fare i get a headache trying to think of others.

I won’t dignify soaps by addressing them here.

As if they were not enough, there are spin-offs of the same. So there is The Apprentice, the Apprentice UK and Celebrity Apprentice, all of which consume 40-50 minutes of viewing time.

Two years ago in the course of conversation my mother asked me why I watched Big Brother. I can’t remember exactly what I answered but I certainly remember floundering for several seconds trying to find an answer.

Last year I asked myself thus: Big Brother is a program about 20+ people in a house. Do I have 96 minutes, let alone 96 days to keep track of these people who I don’t know from Adam? The answer will come as no surprise and I spend those 96 days in blissful ignorance of the events in the house. I fondly believe I am not worse off.

This Saturday I watched a promotion of a Bachelor type program whose twist was the Bachelor was to select his partner specifically from a series of plus sized women. Er. Yes.

I unfortunately watched one episode of The Apprentice Martha Stewart where the challenge was to design and cook some sort of soup.

How this got approved, much less aired leaves one speechless. I fell into a coma and came to after 48 hours as my brain protested the abuse.

The novelty of series has worn off as well. It is a foregone conclusion that there will always be 5 or so twists of the tale in every episode of Lost.

You no longer need to watch 24 to know that Jack Bauer will kill everybody. Terrorists, bosses, colleagues, criminals.

Not only will there will always be a new quest in Heroes, but at the end everyone will probably either  turn out to have been bad guys all along or related.

I stopped watching Prison Break when after 4 or so series the bloody fellows were still in prison

Are you noticing even after 7 or 8 seasons it’s the same stuff? Absolutely nothing new! Same plots. Same plot devices. And these were for the interesting series. What about absolute corkers like this one? I got a headache just watching the synopsis.

Hollywood has realized that like sheep we’ll watch whatever muppetry they shove down our throats and so were are treated to a constellation of nonsense that leave us unable to mentally hit the water if we fell out of a boat.

We are not spared when it comes to movies.

It seems 9 out of every 10 movies are ‘romantic comedies’ that are neither romantic nor funny. If yon managed to finish watching All About Steve with Sandra Bullock you know what I mean.

Of the remaining 10% of movies, half of these are POORLY, and I do mean poorly, executed remakes of classics. Transformers: Revenge Of The Fallen I’m looking at you! And if anyone watched the original Pink Panther with Peter Sellers, the monstrosity that Steve Martin poorly made with Beyonce, (BEYONCE for Goodness’ sake)! will be quite apparent. And the less said about G.I. Joe the better.

I have simply decided to be more discerning of what I watch. Currently the only series I find worth watching are

Spartacus: Blood & Sand – Gripping stuff. Story, cinematography

Hustle – Geniuses are writing this

Leverage – Not a bad effort at all at imitating Hustle, but the black guy’s comments are just too cliche

Dexter – A bit too dark for many. Definitely an acquired taste.

Top Gear – No explanation necessary

Otherwise I spend my time on History, Discovery Channel & BBC Knowledge.

As a result of these cuts I have noticed availability of time to do other things an increase in my IQ!

Moral: Conserve your few remaining brain cells. Mind what you watch!

PIC OF THE DAY