Significations

Just past the circumlocution office
Working in the obfuscation quarter
Dogon turanci as the Hausa say
Long-winded sentences, empty phrases

For when the content of one's thought is blanketed by evasion
Comes the turn to bureaucratese and the many uses of euphemism
Couched as higher learning such is the defense mechanism
Leading with this badge proudly proffered to escape derision

Sesquipedalian in intent and strategy
Winding down with a touch of verbosity
A facility with words intended to obscure
Prolix pronouncements and significations

Significations, a playlist

A soundtrack for this note (spotify version)

• Don't Say Nuthin' by The Roots
• Empty Talk by Alvin Robinson
• So Watcha Sayin' by EPMD
• Long Winded by Blahzay Blahzay
• What'd I Say by Ray Charles
• Don't Say Nuthin' (remix) by The Roots
• Blah Blah Blah by Blahzay Blahzay

File under: humour, language, hatchet job, misdirection, culture, observation, perception, absurd, poetry, toli

Writing log. May 9, 2023

Attrition Curve

Voluntary separation
Consider it an opportunity
If it fits with your plans
Might as well take the money

Take the offer, for sure, it's a tough call
For, who knows, the next time will be involuntary
It isn't pretty, you know, when the ax falls
Firings, unemployment, turmoil, redundancies

Take the buyout, it's relatively generous too
Just surprising that they'd pay you to leave
Pitching it as early retirement or the chance for something new
Ignoring entirely all the tales they were spinning just last week

To their credit, they aren't handling it like others in the industry
The fashion of layoffs is catching, albeit their choices are arbitrary
Impersonal, the casual cruelty of what they call restructuring activities
But no doubt it still hurts to have them talk of performance calibration
Empty phrases: managing the attrition curve, structural costs reduction

Voluntary Separation, a playlist

A soundtrack for this note (spotify)

• Buyout by The Floozies
• Can't Afford You Mad Cobra
• All I Have to offer you (is me) by Charley Pride
• Buyout by Esham
  Imagining what one would do with the proceeds of the Chrysler buyout. Cautionary tales have their own soundtrack
• Your Mess by Omar
• I'm a Mess by Anthony Hamilton
• Dog Days are Over by Florence and the Machine
• All Good Things (Come to an End) by Nelly Furtado
• Unexpected Things by Hohzo
• Severance by Street Fever

Bonus beats Get Rid Ah Dem by Sizzla

...

Previously, in the same vein:

• Restructuring Activities
• A Resource Action
• Workforce Rebalancing
• A Message from our Leader
• Involuntary Termination

File under: language, bureaucracy, work, economics, corporation, culture, job, USA, observation, poetry, perception, capitalism, humour, satire, The Rough Beast, toli

Writing log: May 12, 2023

Recidivist

I murdered a metaphor
Crushed it after a long delay
I'll admit upfront, I was a repeat offender
And yes, my parole officer cautioned me about the terms of my probation
Severe he was, he reminded me about the restrictions on carrying weapons
And further advised me to not associate with writers wielding puns

But it was hard to resist the temptation
The twelve step program hardly had time to have an effect
Euphemism lingers in the body, I wondered if I would pass the drug test
Albeit irony works best at close quarters, I was afraid to use a gun
In the end it was appalling, I strangled it with my bare hands

I remember an earlier time when I didn't hesitate to plunge the knife
Trigger happy, I was especially fond of vicious verbal sallies
Flesh wounds, back then I was addicted to biting satire
The sting in the tail after lobbing hand grenades, double entendres
Or poisoning the well with exaggeration born of my misspent youth
After such lampooning, my many victims came to bloody ends

The teasing was drawn out in this case, it couldn't stand the torture
Begged me to put it out of its misery, I laughed while it murmured
As you know, in the torrid zone, many prefer the water treatment
I kept up the pressure, continued drip feeding wit for days on end
Believe me, with a steady diet of blood and sin, you get results
I tell you, the vivid scenarios I enacted, it was a veritable mess
You’ve, no doubt, heard in these parts of the heart of darkness

The ban on assault weapons had been revoked, I lived then in modern America
I'd sought refuge in wordplay, word fugitive, for such is my asylum
My predicament, internally displaced, it was a strange kind of life
I purchased soul insurance, prepaid the premiums due for the coffin
Literature only, funeral minded, it overwhelmed the senses

This, then, is my confession, it was not written under any duress
Mind you, I traffic in tall tales, I daresay I'm a recidivist
By the time you read this I'll have turned myself in to the authorities
To wit: yes, it was a dark and stormy night, in a far, faraway land
Something was in the water, when I murdered a metaphor again
At length I hammered away with my point and paid attention to the details
For when it comes down to it, to a writer, every story is a nail

Murder, a playlist

A soundtrack for this note (spotify version)

• Murder She Wrote by Chaka Demus
• I've Committed Murder Macy Gray
• 10 Minutes of Murder - Black Thought Freestyle
• Out in the Street they call it Murder by Ini Kamoze
• Murderer by Barrington Levy
• I Can't Help It by Michael Jackson
• Lyrics of Fury by Eric B & Rakim
• Ain't No Half-Steppin' by Big Daddy Kane
• Irresistible by Miles Jaye
• Word Play by A Tribe Called Quest

See previously: Soul Inspiration and The Early Bird Catches the Poem

File under: language, whimsy, humour, metaphor, culture, observation, wit, poetry, toli

Writing log: February 5, 2023

Free-For-All

It was a question of nerve
  and, when it came down to it, the Wan blinked first
After their scribes threw in the towel,
  they succumbed to humanity's curse
In a moment, it seemed, they upended all their previous mitigations
Pivoting to the new normal, they said, they lifted all restrictions

That it was time to return to normalcy was the considered feeling
Truth be told, there was, in this, a large element of wishful thinking
And the evidence was clear, they'd been inadequate with this change of plans
The toll quickly showed they'd chosen a lower tier of soul insurance

For, beyond emotional vaccination, one needed inoculation effectiveness
Herd immunity was indeed a chimera,
  for now the whole land was a mess
It was every man for themselves, whiplash throughout the populace
Who would bear the heavy burden of the good scribes's mistakes

The historians would later ask, did they consider the alternatives?
The way these academics do, making hay at length about what ifs
They could have at least waited until after their lunar new year
What did they gain by so precipitously succumbing to fear?

And the optics weren't good, the whole world would be disbelieving
Any statistics now profferred would be taken as those Wan deceiving
All we know was that they were finally going through their second wave
Although, with the kind of numbers affected,
  fortune would only favor the brave

Hastily abandoned, previous certainties were now summarily dismissed
Yet saving face meant that no one could admit that anything was amiss
A confusion of discarded policies that were no longer compelling
The official silence that reigned in those ghastly few months was telling

Leveling up - or down as the case really proved to be
Now there was no sanctuary on hand for the catastrophe
The whole world placed as it were in the thick of it
Global narrative collapse with its striking deficits

Ananse hankered down with his family,
  best to keep quiet and watch what would unfold
In the aftermath, there would be more opportunity,
  of this he didn't need to be told
The Wan, it seemed, had calculated
 and decided on what amounted to acceptable loss
As the old proverb went: one cannot separate fighting horses with millet stalks

Weary times would follow, the toll of those days was rather harrowing
When all around everyone in the grip of the gods' cauldron was suffering
Ananse beheld so many that were complaining of these significations and wonders
Perplexing given that they'd had the opportunity to prevent the earlier blunders

It was the inconvenience that was the prime bone of contention
The notion that it was no longer worth favoring prevention
The change of policy had scuppered any goodwill, crossing the spider
He never forgot a grudge,
 in good time they would have something to remember

And so zero tolerance would be a thing of the past
It was surely inevitable that they couldn't hold fast
Now that caution was foregone, in its place came laissez faire
We would have no more examples of humanity's strategic savoir faire

The last sanctuary, then, swiftly descended into upheaval
A return to the worst of plague living, echoes of the medieval
The Gods had put all to the test, even those without the wherewithal
And with no place to hide on earth. We would all face this free-for-all

Free For All, a playlist

A soundtrack for this note (spotify version)

• Free For All by Art Blakey & the Jazz Messengers
• Every Man For Himself by Coleman Hawkins
• Upside Down by Diana Ross
• Topsy Turvy by Earl Hines
• No Rules by Trini Baby & Robelto
• Topsy Turvy by Bud Powell
• Back at One by Brian McKnight

See previously: Shakedown

File under: humour, satire, culture, observation, folktale, Ananse, storytelling, whimsy, myth, coronavirus, pandemic, Social Living, Things Fall Apart, Observers are worried, Buyer's Remorse, hatchet job, covidious, poetry, toli

Writing log: May 27, 2023

Visitation Day

The headmaster and the chaplain were suitably bemused
As I strode up the dais to collect my Divinity Prize
I guess it was the sight of the book I had chosen
With its cover of Fidel Castro and Ayatollah Khomeni
A touch incongruous, it would seem, for a fifteen year old
But they were consummate professionals and the mask didn't slip
They maintained typical English reserve, as they say, stiff upper lip

"Interesting cover." Mr Higginbottom harrumphed in his diplomatic way
The essay on Catholicism and African modernity that I had penned
Gave no indication about this curious direction of my reading
Modern Dictators, the bold red of the English edition, stared at me
Not your usual Visitation Day fare, it was creating quite a palaver
The chaplain was very intrigued, I think, by the sight of the Ayatollah
He couldn't but ask if I was trying to make some kind of statement
No sir, I'm simply fascinated by their brand of malevolence

On the right side, my crowd was making noise, disturbing tranquility
It seemed as if all of Ghana were attending, not just my family
Proper bright clothing, wax prints, boubous, that was my posse
Head wraps - gele, and loud whoops while gesticulating wildly
Mum had also invited her BBC African service folks, slightly more sober
But still enthusiastic, I could almost taste the feast we'd be having later

...

Afterwards, we gathered under the Eros statue, the replica of the original
They'd seen the Stanley Spencer painting earlier during their tour of the chapel
Grim viewing, truth be told, the scene set out the crucifixion
If you paused, you could almost hear Blake's sly intonation
Setting out at the sanctuary, the fair hills of our new Jerusalem
If this was our Babylon we could handle the ruler's burden
For visitation day at least, we could forget this blighted exile

...

So she works at the BBC, huh? That must be a blast
Indeed, it was rubbing off, the prestige quotient
Yeah, all this despite our previous precarity,
We were not your average desperate immigrant
Journalists remain firmly in the middle class
In my school blazer - black, double-breasted - I'd managed individuality
We all know our place, the sorting hat of this society.
Still, how very English to be so finely attuned to these hierarchies

...

Stu was also there, the first of his family to go to secondary school
His parents beaming at the thought of university looming
Stolid tradesmen of Hertfordshire still disbelieving
"Entrance exams for Oxford and Cambridge, imagine that
Instead of builder's hands, it'll be wine and port with the dons"
Stu gave a sharp look. "Next you'll be counting chickens"

...

This was a country entirely suffused with historical settings
Like this school, barely aspirational yet dating back to 1597
Boasting those courts where we'd play Eton Fives
Arcane traditions, bewildering to these young eyes

We made a joyful noise, turning the place into a slice of Africa
It struck me that any achievement on my part didn't really matter
It was about finding our way out of ourselves, this exuberant celebration
For a few moments at least, forgetting the journey and praising the destination

...

Some things are long gestating, simmering in the psyche, becoming a part of you
Thirty years later, I came across chapter 11 of that selfsame visitation day book
And realized I'd just published a poem with the same title: The Ruler's Rules

Soundtrack for this note

• Old School by Lucky Mensah

File under: humour, memory, culture, England, observation, perception, immigration, school, class, poetry, toli

Writing log: June 17, 2023

African Travel Narratives

I've been thinking of The Traveler's Africa; the view from the Torrid Zone. Some readings beyond Equiano's Travels taken from my bookshelf (oh, and a playlist...)

Classics of the Genre

• The Modern Traveller by Hilaire Belloc
• Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad
• Travels in West Africa by Mary Kingsley
• Black Mischief by Evelyn Waugh
• Travels with my Aunt by Graham Greene

From savage satire to the impressionistic to the documentary.

Hilaire Belloc's satirical eye is sublime. Nothing escapes his immaculate rendering of the essence of thousands of travel narratives. From antiquity to, say, the great explorers tomes (Mungo Park's travels in the interior) to near-contemporaries like Stanley and Livingstone. All that and more are highlighted in The Modern Traveller.

He dismantles the kind of writing lionized in the prose of empire by Kipling and others. Where we'd now say God, Gold and Glory, Belloc straightforwardly put it as Blood and Sin in vicious light verse. The cover by Basil Blackwood is apt. All the tropes of travel writing about Africa are outlined, the mystery at its heart, and all that made it evocative. Writing at the height of empire in the wake of the British victory at the battle of Omdurman in 1898, there is much to deflate in Victorian triumphalism and he sets about it avidly. The Modern Traveller is his early masterpiece.

The Journalistic Impulse

The journalistic impulse weighs heavily on travel narratives and Africa gives great material for the genre.

The travel writer ofen emerges jaded from the encounter with Africa despite the initial optimism. The people steal your heart but also destroy you. You might start to merely document but hallucinations often follow, such is the burden of the heart of darkness. Joseph Conrad, of course, had great influence on popular perceptions of Africa, and for good reasons: metaphors and urgent storytelling will always strike a chord.

It would take more than half a century and Chinua Achebe's own urgent storytelling to begin to change the perspective and to show that African voices need not be drowned out in the travel narratives and treated as mere backdrop. Indeed, they can lead the way.

A Burnt Out Case is probably Graham Greene's most focused entry, a lush hatchet job of the Conrad template, but Travels with my Aunt is his purest distillation of travel writing. An entertainment, perhaps, it captures the fecklessness and the roving eye. The kind of observed behavior that Evelyn Waugh savages with vicious fun in Black Mischief.

Contrast with the relatively sober yet similarly roving eye of Mary Kingsley. Hers is rooted in her search for botanical specimens but there is a richness to what she uncovers in the process. She was genuinely interested in the place she traveled to and the culture of the people she encountered. Her observations make for a treasure trove for historians and sociologists alike.

In a more literary bent in the 1920s, consider André Gide's Travels in the Congo and a delightful memoir Then I Saw the Congo by Grace Flandrau. The book covers tend to follow a distinct pattern.

• The Shadow of the Sun by Ryszard Kapuściński
• Report in Africa by Oden Meeker
• Call Africa 999 by John Peer Nugent
• Stringer by Anjan Sundaram

(I hesitate to brand Kapuściński as a journalist, he was so much more. The journalistic impulse is, rather, what I'm getting at when it comes to the tenor of his writings. Denis Johnson in Seek treads much of the same terrain as Kapuściński but with a stronger punch).

How to take to the tropics is a delicious survey of travel writing in Africa by Oden Meeker. His and John Peer Nugent books are recent discoveries, wide ranging as befits these restless souls. Anjan Sundaram's Stringer follows Conrad by way of investigative journalism, archetypal of the mold of journalists that have had to report on conflict (e.g Fergal Keane).

African Perspectives

The Wife has long taught an African Travel Narratives course; we, each, have our favorites and trade new finds as we discover them. Our modern canon:

• An African in Greenland by Tété-Michel Kpomassie
• By the Sea, Desertion and Paradise by Abdulrazak Gurnah
• Everyday is for the thief by Teju Cole
• A Stranger's Pose by Emmanuel Iduma

A semester length course will cover readings in many styles and from many perspectives. The ones we tend to find most engaging highlight the African perspective. And things do change once African voices are in the mix.

An African in Greenland is revelatory, Tété-Michel Kpomassie's story is so engaging, he grabs you with the force of his personality, his curiousity and his drive.

Abdulrazak Gurnah, of course, in his brilliant body of work inverts the perspective and the frame that Conrad may have set and, with this freedom, makes it his own. I've lost count of how many copies of By the Sea I've had to buy as I keep recommending and gifting it to others. I'm thankful that the academy have rightly rewarded him and I no longer need to be on the street team.

A novel like Tayeb Salih's Season of Migration to the North contains a lot travel observations but doesn't read as a traditional travel narrative and indeed there is far more sophistication in it.

Our blog era has produced two perfect little books in the genre. Teju Cole aims for close observation in Everyday is for the Thief while Emmanuel Iduma goes for the poetic in A Stranger's Pose. They are both lyrical writers with dauntingly sharp eyes.

It's fun exercise to contrast, say, The Moor's Account by Laila Lalami with Mimi and Toutou's Big Adventure: The Bizarre Battle of Lake Tanganyika by Giles Foden. The one written from the ground up and periphery, the other taken with main character energy.

And the narratives ripped from archival material carry a heavier burden that the typical travel dispatch, I'm thinking of The Two Hearts of Kwasi Boachi by Arthur Japin or say Ama: A Story of the Atlantic Slave Trade by Manu Herbstein - there's no lightness to be found in the slave trade or the earlier patterns of exchange in the colonial era.

I never quite got into the former Peace Corps memoirs although I keep reading them for what they reveal despite themselves (and George Packer's clear-eyed Village of Waiting - and Central Square which I loved, doesn't excuse his later hubris see: Iraq war).

Still I much prefer Packer over Paul Theroux's Dark Star Safari. And in the same vein, I favor Graham Greene over V.S. Naipaul.

I also can't resist missionary and explorer narratives, even as I read them in the same vein, mostly for what is left unsaid or for the people that linger in the background. Sometimes, however, you find gems in second hand bookstores: Cowboy Boots in Darkest Africa by Dr Bill Rice is an all-time favorite. But that one, like Belloc's Modern Traveller, deserves its own tale.

There's all that and more in The Traveler's Africa. And to close, a cautionary note to the would-be readers of travel narratives; not all is as it seems:

T
for the Genial Tourist, who resides
In Peckham where he writes Italian Guides

Moral
Learn from this information not to cavil
At slight mistakes on books on foreign travel

— A Moral Alphabet by Hilaire Belloc

What are your favorite Africa travel narratives?

African Travel Narratives, a playlist

A soundtrack for this note (spotify version)

• Traveling by Burning Spear
• Africa by D'Angelo
• Traveling Miles by Cassandra Wilson
• Vasco Da Gama by Hugh Masekala
  The chorus goes "He was no friend of mine"
• Congo by Amel Larrieux
• Torrid zone by Nucleus
• River Niger by War
• Explorations by Lonnie Liston Smith
• Africa by Toto
• The natives are restless tonight by Horace Silver
• Afrodisia by Kenny Dorham
• Africa by Abbey Lincoln & Max Roach
• Travelin' light by Shirley Horn
• River Niger by Roy Ayers
• Tropical zone by Angel David Mattos
• Columbus by Burning Spear
  Cheating here perhaps, but one can never have enough Burning Spear
• Torrid zone by The Afro Soul-Tet
• Great explorer by Louis Smith
• Torrid zone by Andre King
• Dr Livingstone, I presume by Moody Blues
• Torrid zone by Timmy Thomas
• Great explorers by David Burns

Bonus beats: Searching by Roy Ayers

See also Types and Faces and The Stereotype

File under: travel, writing, storytelling, literature, review, appreciation, culture, observation, perception, Africa, history, Observers are worried, toli

Writing log: November 2, 2025

Fumes

"The streets of Berkeley are paved with weed"
The Wife's wry rejoinder to a friend's laconic quip:
"The streets of Harlem are paved with weave"
Indeed, gentrification hasn't affected the surfeit of wigs

The Senegalese and Gambian vendors proffer the hair products
Essential oils - massage, incense and herbs with vital aromas
Nighttime potency assured, all that is missing is the candles
Spoil yourself, pomade, scent of argan oil
What strange brews, mystical even, we throw on our hair
Fake Rolexes and Gucci knockoffs - Versace misspelled on the label
Don't look too closely, fast talkers on 125th Street make their pitch
"Boss, we can make a deal, okay, tell you what, tell me your last price.."

But back to Berkeley, we lived around the block from Wavy Gravy's commune
He, the MC of Woodstock fame, the Summer of Love,
Hippie consciences, sustainability pledges
Farm to table, organic everything, ecological awareness
More conscious than thou, earnest as kettle oatmeal
Puff then, fumes, scent of marijuana
What strange fruit of the progressives
Goody Two Shoes, home of the gluten free
Righteous living, just a few miles north of Fruitvale Station

Fumes, a playlist

A soundtrack for this note (spotify version)

• Wavy Gravy by Kenny Burrell
• Freedom Jazz Dance by Eddie Harris
• The Hustler by Stanley Turrentine
• Hair by Graham Central Station
• Street Corner Hustler Blues by Lou Rawls

File under: culture, observation, perception, Berkeley, New York, city, humour, sensory, Observers are worried, poetry, toli

Writing log: January 15, 2023

The Drunken Toddler

A cautionary tale perhaps, my earliest memory is of being drunk
At the Christmas party, this almost 3 year old had been quite industrious
Drinking the bottom of the various glasses that the guests were imbibing
A cocktail of sharp tasting liquids, the base materials of my experiment
Until my vision blurred and the alcohol had its effect.

"My head is round"

Apparently my declaration of inhibition
   Caused alarm among the partygoers
Spoiled the festivities frankly
   The adventures of the drunken toddler

Parents, never rest on your laurels,
   Keep a close watch on your offspring
In the event, a wellspring of visions, promptly hung over,
   I counted the cost
Mum's red mini loomed large in the driveway,
   Its googly eyes staring at me
Spinning, eyes wide open, walls expanding,
   the whole world was collapsing

That'll teach you right

I've found virtue in moderation ever since
Those fever dreams and hallucinations
An early lesson in buyer's remorse
Staggered straight to bed
Never to be repeated
   The case of the drunken toddler

Punch Drunk, a playlist

A playlist on a loss of inhibition. (spotify version)

• Only When I'm Drunk by Tha Alkaholiks
• One More Drink by Jaguar Wright
• Punch Drunk by Sade
• Drunk As Cooter Brown by Cassandra Wilson
• This World is Drunk by Raphael Saadiq
• I Want to Take You Higher by Sly & The Family Stone

File under: life, observation, culture, perception, alcohol, memory, humour, Observers are worried, poetry, toli

Writing log: December 30, 2022

Drone Operator

20/20 vision is a minimum, the requirement is nigh perfect eyesight
Also an ability to forget mistakes, perfection is a matter of hindsight
Twitchy sharp reactions, prior experience required with video games
Competitive and driven, a team player who is willing to inflict pain

The best candidates are baby faced, call them bloodless assassins
On-the-job training provides numerous opportunities to crash weddings
With major flexibility in working hours, you can embrace the impromptu
And enforce the home truth: "Visit America before America visits you"

A tapestry of pixels pored over for distinctive signals
A keen test of reflexes as you launch the predator missile
GPS-directed, with spotter verification to paint the target
Like the Brimstone missile, the system is designed for "fire-and-forget"

Working at a remove from the ground action
Remote control, pushing buttons with abandon
The bearer holds to the belief in things unseen
Detachment of spirit, signature strikes, this is the American dream

Classified findings laid out the executive decrees
Gave the benefit of the shadows, the veil of secrecy
Thus protected by covering memos providing limited liability
A free reign, then, to sow the seeds of excess mortality

Someone who takes pride in their tools, a skilled master
Nicknamed their vessel the mobile widow maker
An early recruit, adept at the drudge of targeted killing
Televised slaughter, quiet as it's kept, can be so thrilling

Yet it's not all fun and games, even with precision munition
This daily front seat, private viewing of target acquisition
Spheres of influence, inventive vehicle for force projection
Delivery platform, artisanal even, for heat-seeking execution

Gamer heroes
Beast mode
Player ratings
Cheat codes

The new warfare, defense authorization for collateral damage
Our benefits package leaves you anesthetized from the foreign carnage
Sharp maneuvers, joystick exertions that satisfy
Pax Americana, raining vengeance out of the sky

Top Secret. The role calls for security clearance with polygraph
Mentoring skills are sought after, you'll be managing junior staff
Pinpoint expertise wrought from a distance while wearing a headset
An exciting workplace, with only the occasional regret

Burn out is a possibility, but is cast as acceptable loss
For this kind of wet work, even at a remove, has its costs
Conscience optional, foot soldier of the war on terror
The clean and delicate hands of the drone operator

Drone Operator, a playlist

A soundtrack for this note (spotify version)

• Remote Control by Loose Ends
• Out of the sky by Van Hunt
• Cold Blooded by Rick James
• I've Committed Murder by Macy Gray
• Cold Blooded by Common
• Remote Control by Beastie Boys
• Cold Blooded by Gary Clark Jr.
• From a Distance by Bette Midler
• Kill Screen by Shadow Shadow
• Automaton by Jamiroquai
• Drone Operator's Lament by Radarcave

Bonus beats albeit very destabilizing: The Loneliness of the Long Distance Killer by The Meteors

File under: humour, satire, hatchet job, blood, war, alienation, modernity, USA, politics, culture, outrage, observation, perception, Observers are worried, poetry, toli

Writing log: December 18, 2022

The Kangaroo Problem

The test fleet had been taken to Australia the previous week
My colleagues, two cubes over, were all aflutter, I asked, "What gives?"
It was the kangaroo problem, I was told. I was rather bemused
For it seems that the autonomous vehicles were rather confused

You see, they had come across some of those long eared creatures
Beasts of burden, sporting those unmistakable features
But they were a new breed in their eyes, the term of art, unknown objects
Simply put, the recognition engine wasn't able to easily detect
Something about the gait and motion of the kangaroos they encountered
The road less traveled, in other words, had left the cars flustered

So now the data scientists were looking for more training data
In a bid to augment the intelligence of the onboard sensors
Scouring National Geographic and YouTube
  to update their detection algorithms
Loading up hours of videos of marsupials
  to finetune the classification schemes

Why did the chicken cross the road?
 Are you blind? It was a kangaroo
Consider, if you will, when a large object starts moving towards you
It seemed to me that the nature of the calculation was rather clear
That it shouldn't matter whether it was a kangaroo or a drunken deer

That any human driver out of caution would seek to avoid collision
Evasive action was clearly called for in this kind of situation
No matter how loping its gait, I'd hope, or how eccentric its motion
Avoid impact and ask questions later, was surely the solution

In this fraught scenario of exigency
 there'd be no time for semantics
Boffins, instead, were bent on reducing things
  down to matters of semiotics
When ontologies raise their specter,
 I rather fear you might be losing the plot
Meanwhile, over their shoulders,
  I saw the visualizations, the bounding boxes
True, they spoke at some length about the determinants
 of stopping distance
At the back of my mind, I recalled the wisdom
 of buying collision insurance

As to the tangible limitations of this artificial intelligence
How to teach the ghost in the machine to learn how to sense
To move beyond the basics of calculating velocity and acceleration
Plotting feasible trajectories while being mindful of sensor calibration
Lessons in obstacle avoidance, the perils of synthesized perception
A panoply of newfangled electronic equipment: cameras, radar, lidar
A catalog of known objects: car, truck, pedestrian, guardrail or barrier
Even in this hostile environment, prudence, protect the least of us
Rodent or marsupial was beside the point, let alone a desert fox
Surely a safety policy would be that you shouldn't hit the bus

The real world is highly unstructured,
  one can hardly play fast and loose
Object identity is rather academic,
 whether horse, camel, donkey or moose
On a grand tour of Mongolia,
 you might run into a herd of cashmere goats
The prime imperative of driving on the road:
  active safety foremost

The state of the art, then, of machine learning is no great panacea
Expect the unexpected, deal gracefully with chaos and disorder
What with near misses or close encounters in Peru with errant llama
Let alone the outrageous daily scenes you meet on an African street
Routine maintenance, force majeure, life is a veritable bestiary
A human marketplace replete with vibrant textures and shapes
The kangaroo problem was the tip of an iceberg of category mistakes

...


Activity, aflutter, what strange creature is this?
Elliptical motion, elusive, proudly prominent proboscis
Apt to be misconstrued, roaming, bounding without effort
Near collision, operator intervention, he filed the incident report
In the aftermath, then, the root cause analysis
Prompting among the boffins an identity crisis

Kangaroo Problem, a playlist

A autonomous soundtrack for this note. Drive safely. (spotify version)

• Can't you see me? by Roy Ayers
• He miss road by Fela
• You don't see me by Amel Larrieux
• Make the road by walking by Menahan Street Band
• Drive by The Cars
• Road Safety by Tony Allen
• (I'm a) Road Runner by Junior Walker
• Sensitivity by Ralph Tresvant
• Drive my car by The Beatles
• Chicken trying to cross the road by Buddhafunk
• Road runner by Bo Diddley

...

This entry on failure modes is part of the Toli Technology Series

...

Cultural Sensitivity in Technology is my perennial theme; everything is local and sensor calibration is paramount...

File under: humour, technology, culture, observation, perception, classification, robocars, software, algorithms, sensitivity, best practices, Observers are worried, poetry, toli

Writing log. Concept March 2018. December 14, 2022

The Early Bird Catches the Poem

I woke up hearing your brain buzzing,
   It sounded like a lawnmower
Or perhaps it was like a landscape crew
   Deploying their leaf blowers
Disturbing tranquility in the neighborhood,
   I could hear all your thoughts
Clearly, you were lining something up
   Troubling and mischievous

Oh, I hear you say, it must have been a dream,
   You were still sleeping
But lying next to you,
   I could tell from the way you were breathing
The gears were starting to shift,
   As if you were deciphering a puzzle
Leaving me to wonder
   What a girl has to do these days to get a cuddle

What is it this time? Another poem? Really!
     Or is it that godforsaken novel?
That you seduced me with all those years ago.
     I always knew that you were trouble
Now I see you, lost in thought, contemplating,
     Long before the crack of dawn
With sleep in your eye, yet acting
     As if you want to catch the morning sun

You're having an affair with the muse.
     That's right, I know your shady ways
Don't smile at me. I'm the other woman,
     Who's lost her man to constant wordplay
You'd best shape up, you know
     If you want to keep me in the marital home
Don't laugh now, how dare you. What's that?

"The early bird catches the poem"

Early Bird, a playlist

A soundtrack for this note (spotify version)

• Body and Mind by Heavy D

  Your body's here with me
  But your mind is on the other side of town

• Early in the Morning The Gap Band
• You Can't Turn Me Away by Sylvia Striplin
• In the Morning by Omar
• Earn my Affection by Amel Larrieux

  Put your back into it

• The Other Part of Town by Horace Parlan & Grant Green
• Soul Inspiration by Anita Baker
• Good Morning by Gregory Isaacs
• Conception by Black Thought
• Love from a Distance by Beres Hammond

Or alternatively Close to You by Maxi Priest

In my defense, it was the excitement of the winter solstice that stirred the mind that morning but it seems I was misconstrued.

See previously in a similar vein: Quality of Life and The Stereotype

File under: humour, life, culture, observation, perception, Creative Process, language, whimsy, marriage, poetry, toli

Writing log: December 21, 2022

Category Mistake

I must say it was quite gracious
The reception to my latest mistake
Indulgent and polite, they were, my family gave me a break
Tolerant, that time, in the face of yet another faux pas

For that morning, I noticed that the oats weren't at all popular
Huh? Was it another case of the princess and the brown sugar?
I wondered quizzically what the subtle difference was in the flavor
Worried, perhaps, that my taste buds had been afflicted by the Corona

But it was a more mundane class of category error
A substitution - for the spice bottles looked so similar
Oops, instead of cinnamon I had picked up the paprika
Aha, that explained those curious flecks of red powder

...

A class of category error that I should really avoid
Stems from keeping my bottle of eye drops
And hand sanitizer in the same bag

When you're tired and your eyes are watery,
You reach for the small bottle, and you apply the drops and...
Well, you get the picture

...

A kettle is not an iron
- size, shape and steam to the contrary,
It is unwise to mistake the one for the other

#ModernProverbs

...

Error is a poor friend but an excellent teacher

Category Errors, a playlist

Call it poetic licence that I branded a garden variety mistake as a category mistake in one of the examples above, truth be told there is a full spectrum of mistakes. In any case, a soundtrack for this note (spotify version)

• Mistake - Gregory Isaacs
• Full Attention - Beres Hammond
• Distracted - Al Jarreau
• Mistake - Fela Kuti
• Uh Oh, I made a mistake - Pennye Ford
• Faites Attention - Pompon Kuleta
• Mr Magoo - Bunny Lee Allstars
• Mister Magoo - Rich Willey & Boptism Funk Band
• Mr. Magoo - Tana

File under: life, error, humour, failure, culture, observation, perception, experience, best practices, Small Things, poetry, toli

Writing log. October 26, 2022

A DJ's Duty

Seeing friends in the East Coast digging out from their winter storm put me in mind of the Nor'easter of 1995 when I did an 18 hour stint DJing on WHRB in the basement of Memorial Hall. A duty of care, I didn't want to shut the radio station down.

It all started so innocently, I was set to do the Street Beat hip hop show from 4 to 6 pm on Saturday. I showed up 90 minutes early, having paid no attention to the weather forecast. Albeit I did notice a few flakes of snow as I exited the shuttle bus with my crate of records. Who knew?

Almost immediately, I got the sense that something was up. As I poked my head in the studio, the DJ who was on air signaled to me and pointedly asked me if I wanted to go on early. I didn't know any better and so said "Sure, why not" and ran to pick out a few more records from our stacks.

The Street Beat credo, if there was one, was simply that we didn't play commercial stuff. If you did play a club banger, it had to be a rare white label remix. The founders of The Source magazine were Street Beat alums. We had standards. We did vinyl. We mixed. We were underground.

I had my work cut out because I hadn't been keeping up with the latest releases so I was half expecting some irate caller from Roxbury complaining about the lack of Ed O.G. & Da Bulldogs. Anyway, I started my set off with Dip Dip Divin' by Justin Warfield and got more esoteric from there.

At 5 pm, I got a call that the next DJ wasn't going to be able to make it for the 6 pm show. Hey, I thought, more airtime and, well, I wanted to play some soul. The Boston hip hop audience is unusually demanding whereas the soul crew are far more forgiving. I threw on Rainbow by Shinehead.

Anyway 6 pm came and I switched to spinning club classics. Grooving really, everything was beat-matched; not a bad mix. I was feeling it and getting lots of requests. Callers did mention that the snow was really coming down but my music was giving them soul comfort.

I suddenly realized that I was getting hungry. Ah right, I'd missed dinner. But, well, I could pass by the Hong Kong at 8 pm and grab something. The red leather furniture of the restaurant, the ambiance of disrepute and the strangely comforting food. Salivating. Bruce Lee would approve

Of course, I'd forgotten Francis Bacon's adage:

Hope is a good breakfast, but it is a bad supper.

7:45 pm came and the next DJ hadn't shown up. I went to the front door and saw a pile of snow. It was coming down hard. Blizzard conditions really. I checked the schedule but didn't see a phone number or who to call for backup. Ooooh trouble.

I decided to not just put on a cd, it's a point of pride to always be mixing vinyl. So I dug more records from the vault and I mixed, blended and matched beats.

8 pm came.

For You To Love was our quiet storm show. DJ Zik had heavy boots to fill but I thought I'd be up to the task for the next two hours. Where his signature was the titular Luther Vandross song, I went with Crying Overtime by Alexander O'Neal, the king of ad libs.

10 pm came. I now had to read a Public Service Announcement, something about a storm advisory, how you should avoid leaving home if at all possible. As I read the script, the penny dropped. Stay off the roads. No wonder no one was coming to give me relief.

Midnight came. No replacement. I continued with a set of torch songs. Again it would have been easy to throw on an Isaac Hayes half hour lament but that would feel too much like cheating. I dug deep: Luther Ingram, The O'Jays, Eddie Kendricks etc.

2 am. Despair set in.

Burning Spear came to my rescue (Mi gi dem was the joint). I turned to roots reggae. Then decided to explore the falsetto singers in reggae. The phone calls to the studio blew up at this point. I must have struck a nerve.

Also: scavenging around the studios, I managed to find a Twix bar. I didn't query its vintage, I just ate it up. Where there's a snack gap...

4 am. This was getting ridiculous. UK soul then - I put on Loose Ends, Omar, Mica Paris and some acid jazz, Young Disciples, Galliano, Jamiroquai. Also I started to think of drastic measures...

When you comped, you had to learn how to turn the station on and off. FCC regulations or something. But no one really paid attention to that part of the training. I certainly couldn't remember how to turn the station on if I came in cold in the morning. In any case, who ever heard of shutting it down?

I grew up in newsrooms and the BBC World Service formed the backdrop of my teenage years. Dead air was anathema to me. I wasn't going to be the one to let the side down. So I kept spinning, running back and forth to pull more records. Mixing on the turntable decks always, I refused to play cds.

At 6 am the woman who normally did the Sunday gospel show called apologetically to say that she couldn't make it, commiserating about the snow drifts, danger and all that jazz. Sigh...

I threw on some divas. Aretha, Brenda, Mavis, Chaka and Rachelle Ferrell. Know what I mean?

8 am came, and it seemed as if relief beckoned. Some poor soul called and said that he hoped to be there soon to do the folk show. The storm had abated somewhat. I started playing songs that mentioned Heaven. Bebe and CeCe Winans, Miles Jaye and so forth.

9 am and the guy hadn't showed up. I was tempted to Shut 'em down c/o Public Enemy - the Pete Rock Remix of course (still the best remix of all time).

I cheated and decided to throw on Freedom Suite by The Young Disciples. A good 15 minutes of respite. Isaac Hayes's By the time I get to Phoenix was another option considered (18:45 minutes for those in the know) but I couldn't find Hot Buttered Soul in the stacks.

10:15 am. He arrived. Another human being in the flesh. He said that it was rough outside. Of course he needed some time to pull some records together for his set but by this stage I didn't care anymore, blending and beat matching almost like an automaton.

I couldn't find Keep the Beat by Eric B & Rakim so I closed my set out with And the beat goes on by The Whispers. I was fully committed to the task.

The studio was an almighty mess when I handed over and I started reshelving the hundreds of records I'd pulled and deliberated over. 18 hours worth. It was tough going.

I walked back to the dorm through the 14 inches of snow with my crate of records. No shuttle bus obviously. I didn't have boots on, no gloves and, well, I wasn't appropriately dressed. It was a long, treacherous walk but, at length, I made it to the Quad. The Cabot House dining room was just opening for brunch.

...

There's no moral to the story, just the abiding memory of holding down the fort in that basement, at one with the music and the radio audience.

DJs may be a strange breed but we have a keen sense of duty.

- The basement entrance to the old WHRB studios

A DJ's Duty, a playlist

A soundtrack for this note. Some of what I played that weekend (spotify version)

• The Basement by Pete Rock & C.L. Smooth
• Dip Dip Divin' by Justin Warfield
• Rainbow by Shinehead
• Got To Keep On by The Cookie Crew
• Last Night a DJ saved my Life by Indeep
• Mi gi dem by Burning Spear
• Burrup by Nardo Ranks
• Shut em down (Pete Rock mix) by Public Enemy
• Can't Stop a Man by Beres Hammond
• Crying overtime by Alexander O'Neal
• I get the job done by Big Daddy Kane
• And the beat goes on by The Whispers

Bonus beats: a tape of a Club Classics set I did circa 1993 that I digitized when I found time during the early covidious lockdowns


File under: music, obsession, memory, humour, life, youth, culture, observation, perception, WHRB, whimsy, Social Living, toli

Writing log: January 5, 2022

Chasmaphobia

Mind the gap, the train operator's message over the intercom
Murphy's law. Or was it nervousness that caused the fumble?
The black rectangular shape shuffled out of the breast pocket
Its curvilinear flight path deftly avoiding the outstretched hands
The rainbow's end right in the gap destined for the tracks
Parabolic trajectory congruent with the laws of physics
Serene, but all you could do was watch and bear witness
That sinking feeling, well none of you were able to react
Superfluous, the message you should have heeded: mind the gap

Chasmaphobia n. the fear of dropping one's keys, badge, wedding ring or equivalent into a gap (say between the elevator and floor)

Mind the Gap, a Playlist

A soundtrack for this note (spotify version)

File under: life, accident, improbable, whimsy, humour, observation, perception, poetry, toli

Writing log. Concept: February 10, 2006; April 18, 2022

Dark Milestones

A dark milestone, they said, and a "terrible toll"
A profound loss repeated so many times is awful
Easy words out of the mouth of these opportunists
Spewed in profusion as a shield for their mistakes

Their blather rather underscored the lack of concern
As if one could be saved by platitudinous laments
What was once unthinkable became the norm,
 we heard of incalculable loss
Mass extinction on a regular basis, so many were paying the cost

The unending daily tallies were duly consigned to the middle pages
We heard of fatigue and, after false starts, a return to normalcy
Time to move on, they said, we should resign ourselves to mass death
Fatalistic even when the evidence showed that things could be mitigated

The brief moment of solidarity had passed,
 the clapping and shared sacrifice
It was all up to individual choice,
 people should be left to their own devices
The previous narratives reasserted themselves
 in this renewed torrid zone
The rest is history, all that remained was to mark the dark milestones

After a dark milestone (January 2022)

See previously A Panoply of Mistakes a year earlier

Wrong, a playlist

I might as well recycle the previous playlist, nothing changed in the interim, only the body count. (spotify version)

This internal displacement is part of a series: In a covidious time.

File under: failure, coronavirus, pandemic, hypocrisy, outrage, hatchet job, culture, observation, England, incompetence, politics, language, humour, Observers are worried, Buyer's Remorse, covidious, poetry, toli

Writing log. Concept: January 10, 2022. June 1, 2022

High Wire Act

It takes considerable effort to appear effortless performing a complex task; we all applaud the display of excellence.

It takes no considerable effort for a high flyer or leader to fail miserably; we all laugh at the display of incompetence.

The walk of life is a tightrope.

High Wire Act, a playlist

A funky playlist for this note. (spotify version)

• Live Wire by The Meters
• So Tight by Rick James
• Tightrope by Junie Morrison
• Tightrope by Janalle Monae and Big Boi

File under: life, culture, observation, perception, aphorisms, zingers, humour, failure, Observers are worried, toli,

Writing log: February 22, 2021