Blue Sand

The headline was striking sixty odd years later
The dust was said to be returning to sender
Swirling dervishes on magic carpets, a blanket of fine particles
Radiation straight from the souk, the message in a bottle

A sixties affair held, not in Provence,
   but rather in the Sahara
Uncharted territory
   in what they then called French Algeria
A convenient location,
   just a few Berber nomads around at best
The fruits of settler colonialism,
   a prime spot for a nuclear test

A case of droit de seigneur, this was the desert after all
Proud of his entrée to the nuclear club was General de Gaulle
Still, it's not something that one could sweep under the rug,
   this thing
Indeed, the test rather embodied a literal carpet bombing

First, the sharp flash of the detonation
Then, later, shock waves and the almighty sound
The scientists marveled at the novel reaction
The blueish fire that preceded the mushroom cloud

Ground zero, the impact crater, the hole in the dunes
The military had assigned a codename: Gerboise Bleue
The desert rodent of Reggane would be baptized in blue
The blue of the tricolor harkened to Saint Martin de Tours

In the aftermath, as expected, came the fallout in all its forms
The uproar was swift,
   later tests would have to be moved underground
Expressions of surprise
   that radiation would drift west and south
Significant traces detected
   in Upper Volta, Ghana and even Senegal

Ballistic rockets launched primed for nuclear payloads
The initial fear was of fission and Strontium 90 isotopes
Decay was all, the main byproduct was rather Caesium
It is an ill wind that blows no good, this reckoning

We are all casualties in the torrid zone of this triangle of fire
That, in a new century, nature had decided to share the wealth
Donations of micro doses spreading irony across the land
A radioactive gift to posterity, a legacy of blue sand



After: Irony as Saharan dust returns radiation from French nuclear tests in the 1960s (March 1, 2021)

Blue Sand, a playlist

A soundtrack for this note. (spotify version)

• You Dropped A Bomb On Me by Gap Band
• Ill Wind by Ben Webster
• Midnite Blue by Count Basie
  Taken from The Complete Atomic Basie, the album cover is telling
• Dust by Van Hunt
• Inherit the Wind by Wilton Felder
• Dust in the Wind by Eric Benet
• Ill Wind by Lee Morgan
• Oh Lord Don't Let Them Drop That Atomic Bomb On Me by Charles Mingus
• Ill Wind by Milt Jackson
• Ill Wind (You're Blowin' Me No Good) by Ella Fitzgerald

...

The Wife's history of Atomic Junction dug up lots of interesting material. Here's a 1960 speech by by Tawia Adamafio denouncing French Nuclear Tests in the Sahara. See also a few more clippings from Ghanaian newspapers of the time.

File under: nuclear, France, violence, colonialism, war, environment, Algeria, irony, culture, observation, science, weapons, Africa, politics, power, perception, public health, poetry, Observers are worried, toli

Writing log: December 16, 2021

Workforce Rebalancing

We recorded workforce rebalancing charges in the combined income statement
Structural actions to simplify and optimize the increase in employee exits
The allocation of corporate expenses was not meaningful

...

Structural actions
Simplify and optimize
Employee exits




After The Company's 8-K filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission

See previously: Restructuring Activities and The Annual Report

File under: language, work, life, culture, observation, perception, capitalism, office, job, culture, irony, waste, poetry, humour, The Rough Beast, Observers are worried, toli

Writing log: November 7, 2021

Putting up a Structure

A mantra she often repeated in her time as education minister
Was about the great importance of putting up a structure
For there was a poverty in our development that had to be fought
And so she made the rounds of the donors for the funds we sought

It was hardly conducive to have classes gather under the sun,
   a roof of clear sky
Exposed to the vicissitudes of the elements,
   where it was hard to keep dry
With dust everywhere, tropical rainstorms, and other misfortunes
And the dissonance of so many learning in those outdoor classrooms

She would contrast with the comparatively well-appointed chambers
She beheld in her time at Volta Hall at the University at Legon
Let alone the high tables at Wolfson College in Cambridge
When she would drink port after dining with the dons

Yet this covidious affliction has caused quite the turnaround
Causing upheaval everywhere and making the once sound unsound
Ventilation is the order of the day if you want to avoid viral strife
Classes, as a best practice, would do well to gather outdoors,
   under trees of life

True, an elephant which is lean is still fatter than a cow
But it turns out going al fresco is all the rage everywhere now
I read of many western universities pondering outdoor tents
This upheaval is a rather bewildering turn of events

Still, it wasn't a wasted effort to construct those schools,
   indeed it's a miracle
There's always more to do,
   but I altogether think that we've come full circle
That in our village we now have not just a primary
   but even a secondary school
And the girls have dorms.
   The trees in the village commons keep things cool

A cast of high flyers who believed they were nigh invincible
Now have to abide, as it were, with the mosquito principle
Brought back to the ground to gather under trees of life
As ever, irony is the key register of African life

Putting up a Structure, a playlist

A soundtrack for this note. (spotify version)

• House of Wood by Mandrill
• The House of the Rising Sun by Nina Simone
• To Build A Home by The Cinematic Orchestra
• Play in the Sunshine by Prince
• Putting up Resistance by Beres Hammond
• House of Cards by The Foreign Exchange
• Housequake by Prince
• The House of the Rising Sun by Meshell NdegeOcello

This note is part of a series: In a covidious time

File under: development, infrastructure, education, coronavirus, pandemic, Ghana, Africa, irony, culture, observation, perception, humour, schools, public health, covidious, family, poetry, Observers are worried, toli

Writing log: April 29, 2021

Restructuring Activities

The blue bags were the detail that lingered and that you first noticed
As the security guards escorted the unfortunate souls out of the building
The royal blue of our corporate logo, not quite Ikea blue or Big Blue
Lovely plastic bags filled with personal belongings, photos, wages due

The rumours had been spreading for weeks, it was hard to get any work done
We'd all started to worry about bank balances and the lack of emergency funds
The sword of the corporate Damocles loomed large over our heads
Water cooler conversation circled uneasily around the shape of dread

Some started polishing LinkedIn profiles and resumes
Replying to the recruiters' emails, the curriculum vitae
Truth be told, it could have been you that day, it was a roll of the dice
You'd been on the other side previously, the experience wasn't very nice

A day later, in Skype a number of avatars had "Presence unknown" as their status
Next to the grey offline dot, that naming designation was appropriately callous
The faces of the wounded members of your tribe forcibly ejected into the unknown
The rest of you counted your blessings and continued working in the torrid zone

The corporate communications were full of inspired euphemisms
Uneasy phrases that outlined the process behind these resource actions
The passive voice reigned supreme, in this agitation there were no actors
The dry prose never assigned clear responsibility, only fudge factors

The actions were ongoing, the separations were involuntary
This opacity about the recent events and their inevitability
It was all about "the changes that we've made", those were mandatory
"The decisions we've had to make", on the other hand, were necessary

Tough love was in our future, there could be no promises about tomorrow
Indeed we were to understand that management was tinged with sorrow
And the logistics were tricky, it takes weeks to layoff thousands
When you wanted to present a human face you had to make allowances

Give them a couple of weeks severance, and explain their options
The bottom line was, we had to put this behind us, it was time to move on
A wilful erasure of the cheeriness and all the previous certainties
The stage was set, we'd simply have to endure these restructuring activities

In the aftermath of this round of layoffs, I don't quite know what possessed me
To raise my hand, and indeed, my voice at the all hands meeting with my query
I simply asked the smiling executives if they could give us any guarantees
That those who had so grossly misallocated capital in stock buybacks
Had now adopted the right strategy to put The Company on the right track

There was a stunned silence at my impertinence, who knew?
"That's a very interesting question, you're not holding back, are you?
What was your name again?", he chuckled, that's all she wrote
Uh oh, you and your big mouth, I guess they were taking notes

In the event, the answer he gave was as expected:
"Piffle, paffle, wiffle, waffle"
Said with enough empathy to leave everyone baffled
In the land of concern, we wouldn't feel neglected

"Does that answer your question?"
"Indeed, thank you sir, I've learned a great lesson"
Woe is me, I should have kept my mouth shut
My future prospects had just received a haircut

Come to think of it, I never got a raise after that outburst
Luckily they weren't vindictive, they didn't do their worst
I've had years to recover, I make a good living, I can't say that I'm bitter
These days I keep my rather mild critiques of modern day shell games to Twitter

Restructuring Activities, a playlist

A soundtrack for this pink slip, I must admit I found it difficult to get beyond Gil Scott-Heron who captured this mournful moment with uncanny accuracy. Pieces of a man collected in blue bags. (spotify version)

• Pieces of a Man by Gil Scott-Heron
• Please Don't Make Me Cry by UB40
• C'est La Vie by Robbie Nevil
• In Between Jobs by Lynden David Hall
• I Go To Work by Kool Moe Dee

...

Timing is everything
Observers are worried

File under: work, life, culture, observation, perception, capitalism, office, job, culture, irony, waste, poetry, humour, USA, language, loss, The Rough Beast, Observers are worried, toli

Writing log. Concept: November 15 2018; March 25, 2021

The Shape of Dread

I wrote of The New Epicenter on New Year's Day 2021
In terror of what might befall my family in England
The onset of my sister's covidious symptoms
Came four days after she received her first dose
Of the AstraZeneca vaccine in February
Too late, in other words. 'Tis quite the pity

Up close and personal now, but unemotional, this nurse,
About the implications of this biological curse
"An occupational hazard", she quipped, of her profession,
She'd lost the race despite all of her precautions
Now it's up to medicine, luck, and her immune system
To face up to the struggle against the new variant

I can't describe the shape of my panic and dread
When she disclosed her condition. A shot to the head.
Oh no! My sister. And what about the boys?
Mother Nature, damn her, has dealt us this wild card.
Fear and worry were instantly etched in my heart.
Instead of sharing with her those light words and laughter
All I could offer across the ocean were thoughts and prayers.

Still, my heart also harbors a splinter of ice,
And I've stuck to my publishing schedule, with all that implies
All the while praying, as the days go on, and hoping against hope
That the macabre prophecy - I even mentioned a kind of hearse -
That I mooted in those stanzas of lyric verse
Wouldn't end up being a sort of obituary for my loved ones.
I've been sitting, paralyzed in fear for weeks now, a broken man.
I would gladly tear up these words, if only I could
To return to a different world but I realize that it would be no good.
Try as I can, to cut the Gordian knot of guilt and apply the knife
I'm also mindful that irony is the key register of African life.

The Shape of Dread, a playlist

A soundtrack to leaven this ongoing horrow show (spotify version)

• Not To Worry by Abbey Lincoln
• Livin' in Fear by The Bagdads
• Worries by Robert Glasper (feat. Dwele)
• The Moment I Feared by Slick Rick
• You Scared the Lovin' Outta Me by Funkadelic
• Running in Fear From Imaginary Assailants by Charlie Hunter
• The Moment I Feared by Tricky
  The whole Angels with Dirty Faces album is a harrowing soundscape, Tricky's remake of Slick Rick's cautionary tale is the very sound of dread.
• No Worries by Robert Glasper

See previously: The New Epicenter

This note is part of a series: In a covidious time.

File under: culture, observation, dread, worry, family, life, health, England, disaster, coronavirus, pandemic, poetry, covidious, fear, guilt, irony, personal, Creative Process, Observers are worried, toli

Truth and Reconciliation

The statues have been coming down of late
Their existence is at least contested these days
The shadows of impunity that were proudly erected by History
Are later seen as blind spots, per Auden's Archaeology
The legacies of men reexamined in a crisis's light
A change of perspective that provides newfound insight

That while one's forefathers may have looted and wielded the whip
It's no minor proportion of humanity that is descended from Genghis Khan
One needn't have been bloodthirsty to be a slaver in days of yore
We know foundational framers owned sour property on their sugar farms.
But wilful ignorance of sins past is quite the strange fruit
Turning your nose up at banana republics while forgetting your own crops
'Tis a blissful privilege to live, as the song goes, in unfinished sympathy
And to have to be actively taught about the importance of empathy

Recall that well before Winnie's husband had assumed the mantle,
Long before the ink was dry on South Africa's new constitution
Their spokesmen were already calling apartheid ancient history
And, well, de Klerk would later join Kissinger in the rogues' gallery
Call it, of cold blooded murderers that have won the Nobel Peace Prize
The three musketeers of fate: irony, infamy and goddamn lies

In my own life there was neither truth nor reconciliation
Our philosophy of survival meant that my countrymen rather embraced fictions
True, we always sought consensus and shared humanity
And our preferred political tactic was conversation
Yet this has meant a fraught and enforced civility
So even with my keen outrage - it comes with the territory
They're an open wound: those provisions of that amnesty
The depth of my feelings towards someone I used to call Uncle
The revulsion towards the Flight Lieutenant might prove to be a mistake
So while I view him as a sinner who drips blood in his wake
A living testament to unresolved matters of justice
His every utterance contemptible and scornful in practice,
That he still walks around unencumbered is too hard to handle

Still, I'm minded that my cousin once fell for one his daughters
The heart wills it wants, I heard the news and broke into kotokious laughter
Indeed, how could I even have forgotten? I was once her babysitter
It's just flesh and blood, hell, my mum was the woman's godmother
It just goes to show that social interplay is complicated
This is as it should be, harken back to Tristan and Iseult
Or Montagues and Capulets, wherefore art thou, Oduro
Inconvenient truths, and that modern saying, entanglement
Or rather that uneasy phrase, structural adjustment

The good professor would ask: is democracy of universal application?
The self-appointed general merely laughed at the quaint suggestion
An article of faith in the conqueror's catechism:
Impunity first, we'll loot to demonstrate dominance
The lessons of brute force, our country has learned in spades
We've been treated to imperialism, militarism, and even consciencism
The die was cast, I'll say we earned our lost decades
But those painful interludes were a temporary inconvenience
True, it wasn't easy living under rogue authoritarians
Yet history's arc would shift us away from those blows of providence

It all now falls to the next generation
To enact cultural revival and a quiet revolution
Yes, blood and sin remain at the heart of the matter
As, indeed, do cultural universals and particulars
The perils of greed and opportunism we'll have to suffer
And irony will linger as life's key register
The roots of our conflicts have always proven to be bitter
The search for a blanket of soul, a soothing balm for painful chapters
What profit a man? In this life, we're all political actors
Forgiveness and love, the anthem of Bloodbath, South Carolina

Truth and Reconciliation, a playlist

A soundtrack to this note, a meditation on secrets and lies. (spotify version)

• Truth and Honesty by Mica Paris
• Forgiveness and Love by Meshell NdegeOcello
• Pride and Vanity by Ohio Players
• Strange Fruit by Billie Holiday
• Lies by Jonathan Butler
• Unfinished Sympathy by Massive Attack
• Truth by Dwele
• Strange Fruit by Cassandra Wilson
• I Can See Clearly Now by Johnny Nash
• Forgive Me by Lynden David Hall
• Strange Fruit by Jose James
• I Can See Clearly Now by Jimmy Cliff
• Strange Fruit by Nina Simone
• The Truth by Prince
• Strange Fruit by Jimmy Scott
• A Few Reasons by Dwele
• Peace Piece by Bill Evans
• What Profit by Dwele
• Searching by Roy Ayers

Photo credit: DK Osseo-Asare

I nominate this note for The Things Fall Apart Series under the banner of The Rough Beast, which asks: who is writing the script?

File under: poetry, reconciliation, history, blood, legacy, culture, politics, rogues, irony, observation, perception, Ghana, Africa, USA, South Africa, personal, race, Observers are worried, Things Fall Apart, toli

A Splinter of Ice

There is a splinter of ice in the heart of a writer. I watched and listened. There was something which one day I might need: the woman speaking, uttering the banalities she must have remembered from some woman's magazine, a genuine grief that could communicate only in clichés.

— Graham Greene, A Sort of Life

"All my companions but not myself". Greene observes before arriving at his notorious image of writerly detachment...

This is the retrospective expression of a writer’s ambivalence. The world has come suddenly apart, split in two, into the inhabited and the observed.

— Julian Evans on Graham Greene's worldliness and moral ambiguity

I was reminded of Graham Greene's quote as I found myself mining my own grief this past week, as a kind of exorcism by prose and poetry. There was an initial residue of conflict as I started writing my testimony. But then I acquiesced, and made my peace with it, for I have long been afflicted with the journalistic impulse. The words came easily, and I poured my soul into my tribute; I was told the end result was moving and much appreciated. A few days later, the prescribed ceremonies took place. By necessity, I could only watch from afar, so I simply observed and, while watching, wrote the following...

What more when one could view the spectacle
Of a Ghanaian funeral in a covidious time?
You could escape from your corporate battles,
And join in the trans-Atlantic mourning
Further, it was made so easy for you on that Saturday morning,
A WhatsApp message, one click, and a live stream appeared online.

And so you got a glimpse of what it meant as you had read
"All COVID-19 protocols and directives will be strictly observed"
But if the preacher's wife dies, it can hardly be a small affair,
Let alone for a woman as remarkable as her.

The images came forth.
This was your third zoom funeral
First London, then Philadelphia
This time the service and burial
Would be held at Sakumono in Accra
The previously onerous funeral restrictions that we'd suffered
Had just been lifted throughout Ghana

In the church they observed the dress code, it was quite the sight
The shimmering white lace and other fabrics in black and white
And the masks, you could see the sanitizer stations
Even as you caught the occasional glimpse of your relations

But then you'd notice the occasional few
Whose masks had slipped, sitting in the pews
It's no use wearing face shields and masks, all that money spent
It just takes one infected mourner to make this a superspreading event.

Thankfully they hadn't hired the dancing pallbearers
But this crew seemed like they were working up to it
To the eyes of this exiled chief mourner.
Who knows with this kind of practice, one day they'll catch the holy spirit

You noticed that everyone's natural impulse to touch
Had to be curtailed, it was all too much
And beyond the prevailing masks worn, styled with the church's logo,
The parade of unnatural public mourning wasn't bringing much relief
Perhaps it was best to be 6,000 miles away, offscreen with your private grief.

The only hugs that you observed in the hourlong broadcast
Were of a mother and daughter, your aunt and cousin.
Even then, you could see the pointed eyes on them
Why are they breaching the new normalcy?
Before understanding prevailed,
And the critical mourners saw reason
How you yearned to be there hugging them yourself,
You tried, but the screen held fast.

But then, you couldn't help yourself, you're a writer
And you hearkened back to Graham Greene's splinter
For in your watching, you made sure you snatched a few pearls
These are the scribbled wages of a detached observer
Even as indelible images of grief pierced your retina
There you were thinking that "I might get another stanza":

My aunt, I hadn't realized it was the night of your marriage
31st December 1981
That came the military coup that would cause us all such damage
Could it really be that you, ever since, had to celebrate that strife?
Irony is the key register of African life

See also: Dela

A Spinter of Ice, a playlist

As usual a soundtrack for this note, a musical meditation perhaps on detachment and solitude and the obsessive ironies of the creative process. (spotify version)

• Watching You by Loose Ends
  1988 was quite the year in music, it was hip hop's annus mirabilus, the start of the golden age of hip-hop, it was an astonishing burst of creativity, and yet that was not the only highlight. Prince and Michael Jackson threw down and were on legendary tours, and the soul quotient was strong with the New Jack Swing synthesis (Guy, Al B. Sure, Bobby Brown and more, Teddy Riley changed music), Jam and Lewis were at their creative peaks shepherding New Edition, Karyn White and more, Sade was stronger than pride, Anita Baker was giving you the best that she got. Teddy Pendergrass came back with Joy and even Rick James was Wonderful and took on Roxanne Shanté with Loosey's Rap. Toumani Diabate soothed, Franco was the grand master. And the English contingent also were in the mix. Mica Paris was so good, Derek B, Monie Love, the Cookie Crew and the Pet Shop Boys made moves while Soul II Soul were percolating. And in the middle of all this, Loose Ends brought The Real Chuckeeboo to the table and their presence was fitting, a bonafide classic even in an iconic crowd. Like Mica sang that year, Nothing hits your heart like soul music.
• Watching You by Slave featuring Steve Arrington
• Every Breath You Take by The Police
  The fear and loathing of surveillance capitalism
• I've Been Watching You by Midnight Star
• Somebody's Watching You by Black Uhuru
• Watching You Go Crazy Is Driving Me Insane by Van Hunt
• Watching You by Ayo
• Somebody's Watching Me by Rockwell featuring Michael Jackson
  Changing the perspective
• Watching You by Force M.D.'s

See also: The Joy of Small Things

This note is part of a series: In a covidious time.

File under: creative process, writing, storytelling, solitude, culture, observation, literature, art, irony, grief, funerals, ceremonies, Ghana, Africa, coronavirus, pandemic, poetry, covidious, toli

A Resource Action

You've been surplussed.
That was the word used.

This is a resource action.
That was the phrase used.

Leave. Or find another position.
That was the message.

You have 30 days,
The clock is ticking.

They read the script.
Over the phone.

Out of sight.
Out of mind.

You were checking in the code,
Rushing to meet the deadline.
Heads down, juggling things.
Bugs, emails, instant messages, ideas.
Plans: car, house, family, books.

Then: there was a resource action.

Blindsided.
"12 years of my life"

It's over.
Simple as that.

You're not mad;
You're merely sad.

You thought you were a resource,
But then there was an action.

Unemotional:
The Corporation.

Cold:
The language.

"Rebalancing... efficiencies...
Your responsibility..."

The workings of capital
The theory of surplus value

This is a dark matter.

...

Note the time. Start writing.
Wednesday, May 30, 2007, 12:14:05 PM

You hang up the phone
A fleeting thought:
"No wonder they never sent the new monitor".
And the fuss about that expense report
Hmm

You fire up the browser
"Let's get some more news about this thing... this... this... 'resource action'".
The blog loads and renders.
7,000 words stare at you.
Written the previous day.

Unsolicited: your contribution.
Unrequited: your capital.

Extracted: your labour.
Redundant: your value.

Ironies are many

No matter.
You check in the code.
Respond to the instant message.
Answer the emails.
You are a resource.

You finish.
Break for lunch.

Things fall apart

This is a dark matter.

...

You call The Wife.
You need a comfort suite,
And some soul insurance.

This is a dark matter.

...

So.

The first plank of the web style:
Identify all important resources.

First pass at a resume:
Enumerate skills and experience

Second pass:
Strive for brevity

You can have me in 30 days.
The clock is ticking.

This is a dark matter.

...

You get back to work.

Email arrives. Inbox:
"The Company's Africa work sounds so cool!"

Indeed.
So. Africa. The Company. Work. Sounds. This! Cool?

You have 30 days,
The clock is ticking.

You're still a resource

No.
No!

Enough

You were a resource
But they've taken an action
A judgement of value: surplus.

No.
Yes.
No matter.

It's your turn now.
You'll publish another resource.
Add value to the global surplus.
Your hyperlinked testimony,
Your resource action.

This is a dark matter.

...

Music. Pet Shop Boys:
"There's lots of opportunities.
If there aren't, you can make them"

Resilience

Music. Vesta Williams:
"Once bitten, twice shy"

Adaptability

Music. Gil Scott-Heron.
"She could hardly understand
that she was really sweeping up
pieces of a man."

This is a dark matter.

...

An awful conversation
An untimely disruption
A broken connection

A fractured dislocation
An involuntary termination
An extraordinary rendition

A resource manipulation
An ironic meditation
A redundant representation

A corporate decision
Announced with euphemism:
Call it a resource action

Best to rethink things.
After all: "You have 30 days".
The clock is ticking.

This is a dark matter.

...

Before: they paid you to stay.
Now: they'll pay you to leave?

Ironies are many

Strictly business,
Don't take it personal.
You're not alone.

A full frontal stare,
You dare not flinch.
You're all alone.

A temporary inconvenience
and a matter of soul.
Put your game face on:
"Be humble but be bold"

Timing is everything.
Must be more to the story.

No condition is permanent.
Observers are worried.

This is a dark matter.

...

It's time to save things
Let's see, the folder: web
The filename: resource-action.txt

That's enough.
Don't be precious,
You'll add the links later.

Note the time. Stop. It's all wasted time.
Wednesday, May 30, 2007, 1:45 PM

You get back to work.

[ this space intentionally left blank ]

This is a resource action
This is the school of hard knocks

This is a dark matter.

File under: work, life, IBM, culture, irony, waste, job, loss, USA, personal, language, perception, observation, poetry, The Rough Beast, Things Fall Apart, toli

Strange Days

These are strange days...

• Air Conditioner Season
• Billion Dollar Salary
• ¿Se Habla Español?
• Room 419
• Voodoo outside Bedroom
• Overheard
• Aburi Masks, Toy Story & Frosted Flakes
• Strange Fruit
• Strange Books
• Strange Days
• A Strange Playlist

Air Conditioner Season

The Girlfriend and I were looking at each other Sunday afternoon, the hottest day of the year to date. She, annoyed that I was on the computer, I, a little harried, and both of us getting a little irritated at being inside a hot apartment when it was so nice outside. Plus her family was about to make their presence felt later on the week, our respective apartments were disasters, and we were juggling that state of controlled chaos called marriage preparation. We were just at the point when sharp retorts and reciprocal disgust were about to be exchanged when we heard some insistent bangs from outside. Looking through the window, we saw that someone was trying to install an air conditioner on the window of their second floor apartment. They didn't seem to be proceeding with authority and were struggling, trying to secure it to the wood frame. There was lots of scraping and sounds of amateur handymen at work. Turning back to the computer, I muttered absent-mindedly, "I hope there's more than one person doing this".

From the Girlfriend's vantage point, it looked as if like there were 2 people at work.

I asked, "Do they have a book underneath to support it? Or a piece of wood or something?" We couldn't figure that out but assumed as much.

Anyway we thought no better of it and tried to recapture the thread of our frayed conversation: lists of guests, costs, scheduling tasting sessions, your garden-variety planning minutiae.

Anyway, we then heard a loud crash as the air-conditioner fell from that very second floor of the house under the influence of Newton's gravity. I actually caught the sight of the falling hunk of metal from the corner of my eye.

Silence in the house next door.

The Girlfriend laughed nervously and I quickly hushed her. Who knew how they would react to laughter or ridicule?

No sound in the house, not even a S**t, Damn, M**********, like D'Angelo would have expounded.

Others rushed to their windows at the commotion to inspect the fallout. We all counted our blessings that the little girl who used to live in that house, and play alongside it, had moved out, along with her mum (that last, the story of Cambridge where The Locals were being priced out by The Developers and consequently The Yuppies were moving in like those two in that apartment, but that's fodder for later toli).

Silence.

We speculated that beers were being consumed in the apartment, or the strongest of liquors.

Eventually someone walked down to inspect the damage, apparently it didn't look pretty, judging by the way The Girlfriend gasped.

But still there was not a sound as the mass of cooling metal was probed and prodded. No frustration, anger or shock.

Nada, Niet, Non, No, Nee.

That was the cue for The Girlfriend to leave my sorry apartment...

"We'll talk later."

Postscript:

A day later, she reported that her brother and his roommate had tried installing an air conditioner that same day and had dropped it too. In their case they were on the first floor and luckily it caught on something on the way down and hence there was not as great a scene as we had experienced and it could be patched together for whenever they attempted to re-install it. In that instance too, there was the almost immediate resort to drinking after they rescued the appliance - confirmation of our earlier surmise. I wonder what insurance company actuaries have to say about this time of year. Is there a statistically significant increase in injuries from falling objects? And what about alcohol consumption?

This must be prime beer drinking and air conditioner dropping season.

Billion Dollar Salary

"A US hedge fund manager was personally paid $1.02 billion last year, it was believed... Edward Lampert, founder of ESL investment..."

t is deemed un-American to say that anyone is too rich so there'll be no snarky comment about Gilded Age excess. Also I don't want to get on some list at the Department of Homeland Security (as for example anyone trying to pay cash for a plane ticket to the US, or trying to buy one-way plane tickets in these troubled days).

Still: $1,020,000,000!
In 1 year!

¿Se Habla Español?

We caught the last set of the amazing French Open final between Nadal and Puerta on NBC, one of the best matches I've seen, even better than the Safin/Federer match from a few months ago. What also piqued my interest was the coverage of the speeches afterwards. Both of the players spoke in Spanish, and get this, those Frenchies had the gall to translate their comments into French. I was quite shocked by the fact that NBC, knowing in advance that this was a final between a Spaniard and an Argentinian, couldn't find someone to translate what they said. Indeed it was only after the first speech that they managed to find someone to translate.

Still the Nothing Bad to report Corporation (NBC) surprised me in that

1. They had no spanish translators for an all hispanic match
2. The commentators were audibly shocked that these soon-to-be millionaires spoke in spanish and didn't even attempt english (although at the tail end of the ceremony there were a few phrases)
3. what translation there was was only to French

Eventually they found someone who could translate the second speech but it was clear that it was someone who understood only French thus there was a great delay before we got a sense of what was being said: a triple translation gamut (long spanish rambling, slightly hesitant French and then the briefest of English sentences "He thanks everyone".

No inglés

Room 419

When we walked out of the History of Science department at the Science Center at Harvard after The Girlfriend's dissertation defense (abstract), we were confronted with Room 419 - our Nigerian friends would have something to say about that juxtaposition of scholarship with the mark of former oil officials, sons of General Abacha and scorn of unsuspecting Texas legal secretaries and run-of-the-mill California businessmen everywhere but let's leave that alone.

Voodoo outside Bedroom

Imagine waking up one morning and seeing this Blair Witch when you look out of your bedroom window.

This "thing" is still staring at me a month later as I put on my clothes in the morning and before I go to sleep (it glows a little in the dark). It seems to change position every now and then, I suspect the passing squirrels and skunks run into it as they try to scavenge the nearby garbage bins. (Sidenote: I recently was confronted by a skunk as I was taking the garbage out. It was doing a mighty acrobatic maneuver trying to dig some food out of a slightly open garbage bin that perhaps validated Darwin's theory of evolution and notion of ingenuity born of necessity). I have decided that my voodoo doll it is meant to be a guardian angel. At least I hope so, that's the lesson of Eve's Bayou. I suspect some catholic affiliation in my neighbours thus the voodoo characterization is probably a little unfair. In any case, the "thing" is reminiscent of this scarecrow fetish piece I saw at an artist's retreat at Kokrobite beach a few years ago.

Overheard

Apropos the stories of impending layoffs (the 10,000 to 13,000 close to my Lotus/IBM home, not the 25,000 at GM), overheard at the office yesterday

"It's going to be a bloodbath."

Obviously no work is getting done as people ponder which favoured daughter will be given "opportunities" in other companies (however the undoubted forthcoming "action" is expressed). For my part, I'm basking in family and attending a Harvard graduation today, it's good to be among people who love you in uncertain times such as these.

Aburi Masks, Toy Story & Frosted Flakes

Ponder this collage if you will...

Well I did say this was a piece about odd things... And Toy Story figures collected from Frosted Flakes cereal boxes (I never got much past Corn Flakes and Weetabix), lying alongside some of my Aburi masks (from that long tradition of wood carving in my native Ghana), laid out on top of a "Babablanket', those Adrinkra-decorated patch quilts of lush cotton, make for literal Strange Bedfellows (I have filled up almost every usable inch of my walls with paintings and masks - contributing to the exasperation of The Girlfriend - so these 3 haven't found a home yet). Said Girlfriend was wondering about my sanity when she happened upon these photos. The middle mask is one of my favourites, it should scare everyone. It certainly gave the customs officer who inspected my luggage a little pause (the curse of the hyphen again). It also seemed to blend felicitously into the colours of the reverse side of the blanket.

For more see the Aburi Masks Album

Strange Fruit

Lastly could someone with green thumbs let me know what the name of this fruit is? My aunt grows it in her garden in Ghana and I remember having some of its milky content as a child. It tasted strange but was the kind of thing you need to have to rejuvenate your palate every now and then.

[Update] Various kind souls name it soursup and give playlist suggestions to boot. Bernard Devlin goes one better by providing the obligatory link to a nice page on the soursup and its close cousin, the custard apple. Thanks all. It's been a while since I've tasted that strange confection and now I know the name, I'll be on the lookout for some.

Strange Books

Alienated reading for this piece

• Albert Camus - The Stranger - The apogee of existential angst and anomie
• Robert A. Heinlein - Stranger in a Strange Land - Do you grok science fiction?

Strange Days

The obligatory cinematic reference:

• Strange Days
  
  James Camerons' 1995 exercise in Pre-Millennium Tension and hustle par-excellence (before Titanic hubris set in). Ralph Fiennes and Angela "Tough" Bassett are riveting in this twisted tale of forlorn dreams and dreamers as the Millennium turns. Juliet Lewis purrs suitably and Tom Sizemore is appropriately sleazy. This is what the last two Matrix movies aspired to (and failed to hit).
  
  
  
  
  
  The soundtrack had the ominous Overcome from Tricky's Maxinquaye (I should do a trip hop appreciation piece at some point) but the intent was better expressed in the later Pre-Millennium Tension album

A Strange Playlist

A soundtrack for this note.

• Cameo - She's Strange

  "And I like It"

• Ronnie Laws - Friends and Strangers
  Rare Groove heaven, sampled by everyone worth his salt
• The Jimi Hendrix Experience - Little Miss Strange
  Straight from the basement of Electric Ladyland
• Dave Brubeck Quartet - Strange Meadow Lark
  Paul Desmond's saxophone sounds sublime and oddly comforting
• Kruder & Dorfmeister - Strange Cargo, Million Town
  Mellow trippy madness
• Portishead - Strangers
  Ethereal theremones, zithers and industrial Bristol hip-hop break beats. The live version is wild.

  "Can anybody see the light?"

• Fried - Love is a Stranger
  Lush New Orleans soul meets Fine Young Cannibals aesthetic. Her voice stimulates so many neurons.
• Michael Jackson - Stranger in Moscow
  To my mind, his best song of the 1990s (even better than Remember the Time), that is until he got the Butterflies from Floetry
• Billie Holiday - Strange Fruit
  A few years ago there was a push to move the center of gravity of Lotus away from Cambridge, and many of us Cambridge-types were being encouraged to move, first to the anonymous strip mall that is Westford and then, when that failed, to Raleigh and the great vistas of North Carolina. Young and unattached, I strongly considered it, but as you know I like to take the bus and the Research Triangle is strictly a car affair. Thus it was interesting that I read this past weekend about burning crosses on the lawns of Durham and Klan leaflets being distributed. There is ironic comfort in Lewis Allen's lyrics and Lady Day's haunting voice

  Strange Fruit Hanging From The Poplar Trees
  Pastoral Scene Of The Gallant South

  Now of course The Dirty South has no monopoly on misguided youth or deeply rooted chauvinism, and of course the temperature and people are more congenial for me (I love visiting the South). But I know my place in America (at the intersection of Tenuous St and Hired Immigrant Worker Alley) and accordingly keep a low profile, other than my blogospheric posturing, because the undertones of race are very close to the fabric of this young country. My antecedents wouldn't take kindly to my trans-Atlantic journey ending ala Emmmet Till
• Nina Simone - Strange Fruit
  The notion that someone could add even more pathos and emotion to Lady Day's tune is quite amazing to me, but the High Priestess of Soul does it and with customary verve. It's like hearing the righteous indignation of Mississippi Goddamn. Goddamn.
• Cassandra Wilson - Strange Fruit - the current queen of jazz adds some scratchy acoustic guitar and a melancholy take on this standard and comes off with a great reinvention of the song that maintains all the familiar landmarks but reconceived anew and refreshed. I love what she does.
• Chaka Khan - Don't Talk to Strangers
  Speaking of Divas, Chaka is the best interpreter of Prince's songs in much the same way that Samuel L Jackson delivers the best rendering of Quentin Tarantino's words. There's an affinity and strange empathy between these two artists.

And finally a Prince medley, he is a strange one isn't he?

• Beautiful Strange - download the bootleg. Why oh why didn't he release this joint? It really sounds beautifully strange and is better than most of his recent commercial outings.
• Prince - Strange But True - This is the best track on Rave Un2 the Joy Fantastic which was a welcome return to the strange soundscapes of Linn Drum and one-man-band heroics that characterized the Dirty Mind and 1999 album. Much like "All the Critics Love U in New York".
• Of course we should end with Sign O' The Times's Strange Relationship. At first listen, it seemed like a throwaway demo but after 4 listens you couldn't get it out of your head.

  Baby I Just Can't Stand To See You Happy
  More Than That, I Hate To See You Sad
  
  Honey If You Let My I Just Might Do Something Rash
  What's This Strange Relationship We Hold On To?
  

[Update] Some more obscure suggestions in the comments. Toli readers are indeed a strange breed. I love it.

File under: strange, whimsy, life, odd, music, movies, literature, business, irony, Aburi, Ghana, Cambridge, fruit, IBM, Lotus, work, toli

Zingers

Wherein I feature a few nuggets I came across in my reading - ala Flaubert's Dictionnaire des Idées Reçus (Dictionary of Received Ideas). This time an Anglo-Saxon edition:

As a counterpoint to Malcolm Bradbury's witty turn that I previously pointed out:

I like the English, They have the most rigid code of immorality in the world.

I found this earlier and more caustic outburst from Evelyn Waugh at the height of his powers in Brideshead Revisited:

You must remember that I am not English; I cannot understand this keen zest to be well-bred. English snobbery is more macabre to me even than English morals.

Even bleaker from the same source:

"My dear, of course I'm right. I was right years ago when I warned you... I took you out to dinner to warn you of charm. I warned you expressly and in great detail... Charm is the great English blight. It does not exist outside these damp islands. It spots and kills anything it touches. It kills love, it kills art; I greatly fear, my dear Charles, it has killed you."

---

From Martin Amis who, in the past couple of years, has returned to the kind of groove that made his reputation as one of the most interesting writers alive.

Xan would not publicly agree, but women naturally like to prolong routine departures. It is the obverse of their fondness for keeping people waiting. Men shouldn't mind this. Being kept waiting is a moderate reparation for their five million years in power.

Martin Amis - Yellow Dog

Amis continues to dabble in non-fiction and occasionally a similar incisiveness can be seen. From a column on football (the association kind):

The days when an England player's first touch could often be mistaken for an attempted clearance or a wild shot on goal - those days are over. The deficit is not in individual skill, it is in collective skill; it is in the apparently cultural indifference to possession.

Martin Amis - We have to face it: English football is just no good

See other toli zingers File under: literature, satire, irony, humour, Evelyn Waugh, Martin Amis, zingers, toli

King Leopold Haunts Congo Again

As a son of an African journalist, the BBC World Service tends to act as my alarm clock. And so on Thursday morning, I woke up to the sounds of a bizarre story:

A statue of former Belgian colonial King Leopold II has been re-erected in the centre of the Democratic Republic of Congo capital, Kinshasa.

Now it seemed clear to me that I must have been in the middle of a dream and so I thought nothing better of it. In the afternoon though, my curiosity stirred, I checked their news site and found to my amazement that indeed, it was true: Leopold's statue was back up.

King Leopold II set up the Congo Free State in 1885 as his personal possession and left arguably the worst legacy of all the European colonial regimes... He turned the country into a massive labour camp, made a fortune for himself from the harvest of its wild rubber, and contributed in a large way to the death of perhaps 10 million innocent people.

Culture Minister Christophe Muzungu said people should not just see the negative side of the king - they should also look at the positive aspects.

"We are restoring the history of our country because a people without history is a people without a soul," he said.

I sputtered and struggled to find the appropriate historical analogue to this decision. It was as if the Chechens had decided to put up Stalin's statue in Grozny - he who had decimated their ranks 60 years ago by deporting all of them from their lands in forced marches to Siberia - or perhaps as if the mayor of Gaza took it to his head to erect Ariel Sharon's statue (or a new monument to Saddam in Kurdistan?).

Leopold's depredations were so grotesque and occurred on such a scale that even the other colonial powers had to take pause in their scramble for African loot. The Belgian behavior was the kind of thing that would queer the whole colonial enterprise and indeed the twentieth century's first significant talk about human rights was on the Congo issue. In much the same way, the images from Abu Ghraib prompted a (slight) sense of unease in the recent US empire building. More to the point, the colonial experience under Leopold set Congo on a downward path that it has never been able to escape.

Now I've read King Leopold's Ghost, Adam Hochschild's highly recommended study of that macabre period and was justifiably horrified at the historical record that he laid out: greed, megalomania mixed with atrocious labour camps, summary amputations, decapitations and outright larceny, all covered in the bromides of a missionary humanitarianism. Almost any page of that book would be a rejoinder to that Minister of culture's words. 10 million people died for God's sake, and he stole everything from you!

Perhaps the only decision Mobutu ever took that proved to be in the interest of his country was to tear that statue down early on in his reign, even though this measure did coincide with his self-interest as was the overriding norm for him.

If Mobutu's reign was to be the farcical follow-up of the Leopold's tragedy, one had hoped that whatever followed would begin to restore that country to some sense of sanity. Instead, in the Kabila interludes (first the elder, and now the hereditary son), Congo remains the site of a second Scramble for Africa (see here also).

Congo is so rich in natural resources that even normally sober Texan oilmen or South African diamond monopolists hyperventilate when they talk about it. It has copper, gold, diamonds, tin - you name it. It has uranium (if you wanna go nuclear) and even that rare tantalite that's in your cell phone.

At one point in the past decade, it was said that the armies of 13 countries were on its soil, not to mention Russian mercenaries and the usual cast of malfeasants - Africa's World War it was called. The resultant human cost of the ongoing Congo troubles, 3 million and rising, is approaching Leopoldian dimensions. The notion that a government would make such gestures says everything about the dysfunction of the country and tone-deafness of the opportunists who pass for politicians there.

The next day however, it appeared that the outcry had grown too large and the statue was removed: Leopold reigns for a day in Kinshasa

Residents of Kinshasa could be forgiven for rubbing their eyes in disbelief.

First, a statue of the late Belgian king Leopold II, whose rapacious colonial rule of Congo caused the death of millions of Africans, was reinstated in the heart of the Congolese capital.

Then, less than a day later, it was gone again, mysteriously removed by the same workmen who had erected it.

Officials were at a loss to explain the comings and goings at the end of June 30 Boulevard, the street named in honour of the date of Congo's independence from Belgium.

First indications from the government were that it might be part of a historical restoration. There are plans to erect a statue of Mobutu Sese Seko, the dictator who stole billions from the country during a 30-year rule that ended in 1997.

"We are restoring the history of our country, because a people without history is a people without a soul," said Christophe Muzunge, the minister of culture. He added that the six-metre (20ft) Leopold statue had been brought back to remind the people of their country's colonial past, so that "it never happens again".

But later there was no comment on why Leopold had been removed. Certainly the sudden apparition was not popular with onlookers.

"Look at what they did in Iraq," Mputu Melo said. "They destroyed the statue of Saddam Hussein. This shouldn't be in a public square."

King Leopold, who never set foot in the Congo, controlled the vast country as his personal colony from 1885 to 1908, when it was handed over to Belgian government rule.

During those decades his agents enslaved its people to harvest rubber, beating workers with a hippo-hide whip known as the chicotte and severing the hands of men, women and children who failed to meet their quotas.

As many as 10 million Congolese are estimated to have died as a result of executions, unfamiliar diseases and hunger.

While I am happy to see that this decision was reversed, do note the crucial line I emphasized above: there are plans for a Mobutu statue. Pity the poor Congolese, first King Leopold's ghost returns to haunt them, now they're going to have to endure Mobutu again! File under: Africa, Congo, irony, murder, colonialism, history, memory, toli, Leopold, Mobutu,, rogues, culture, observation, perception, Fallen Angels, Observers are worried