I didn't watch the oscars, but

I know all about Angelina Jolie's right leg. Here's how:

gawker

Oh, the wonderfulness of online randoms.
Fancy Angelegging? Head on over here. But oh, the hilarity of Legbombing:

Best.

Update: There's MORE!

And a twitter account:

I'll put up a real post soon. Promise.

gorgeousness

by Brianna McCarthy

for you

The heart cannot physically break. It can pulse, and ache, and bleed; but like a muscle, it only grows stronger. • Tears are a good thing. They rinse out your eyes; clean them out, so that you can see better next time. • Regret teaches you how not to make the same mistakes again. • Time alone is time spent understanding yourself better, even if it's just learning your capacity for grief. • If you had any instincts, now's the time to identify them. That one time you ignored that one thing that happened? Now you know better. • We all make mistakes. Like, overcooking rice or overboiling water. You're only human. • You will be okay, even if you don't want to be; one day you really won't care anymore. • Don't listen to your friends. If they'd known all along they should have done something about it. • Don't listen to your friends. They don't have to deal with your pain. • Call if you want to. When you feel stupid enough times, you'll stop. • Pain has an expiry date, and everything after that is just pride. • Pride has an expiry date, and everything after that is what's called moving on. • I love you, and I will always be there for you. But sometimes I'll be asleep when you need to talk the most. • X

What friends are for:

How to do Woman: Part 1

Eva Fontanelli by the Sartorialist

<3

photo and article here.

music that makes me smile

Let's call this part one, because there are only three songs on my mind this minute.
Listen and enjoy :)

And an oldie:

A mere contributor

...

“Tell me your name.”
 “Only if it comes with a signed autograph from Ajanaku.”
 “What, you’d turn down all this for a mere elephant slayer?”
 “I’ve always had a thing for danger.”
 “Tell you what, we can discuss the terms over dinner.”
 “Mmh, I’ve never had tusk before.”
 “Oh… sorry, we’re all out. Gave out the last piece to another one of Ajanaku’s fans. But Sky Lounge does great sushi?”
 “I suppose I could settle.”
 “Great, I’ll drive. Guess what, I open car doors too!”
 “Handy trick, yes?”
 “I am exceptionally well trained.”

... 

More uncredited dialogue here.

Seven days (no M.I.*)

I haven't been gone very long, but here's what I've been up to anyway:

Saturday/ Sunday.
Whitney Houston.

Monday.
Portfolio deadline.
I stayed up till five am watching the Grammys to celebrate the fact that I'd made it through, and ended up looking like I'd been crying all night when I eventually handed it in.

Tuesday.
Valentine's day.
Started the unsuccessful twitter trending topic, "#IceColdValsTales". I don't know if this is an exclusively Nigerian thing, but we typically shorten the three-syllable word to 'vals'. Not getting any attention on 'Vals Day' is what we call 'roasting'.

It is safe to say I roasted.

Even though, I did get a few packages in the post on that day, and had fun pretending it was the weight of love that was weighing my arms down. (In actuality it was shea butter, aloe vera juice and purchased natural-look hair. <3)

Halfway through my cynical twitter jokes my ex updated his status with his new girlfriend's picture. Ahh, what a day. Cue hours of self reflection. Serious post about this possibly coming up soon. (Where serious = self pitying reflective)

Wednesday:

Oh happy day. I woke up singing Mika and realised Love Today is about crack. It made me smile the entire day long.

Carrie dresses like a kid for fun/ Licks her lips like there's something on 'em/ Tries to tell you life has just begun/ But you know she's getting something other than a love from another 

I might have mixed up the words a bit according to these people, but the sentiment's the same.

Had an amazing class. It was even better than here. Hint: we made inappropriate jokes and laughed until the end of class. The transcript will possibly accompany above hinted self reflective post. Hint: Omotayopia. Yup, awesomeness.

After, hordes of children scared my friends into finding a new place to hang out and I discovered the amazingness that is Bar Fusion. 

And I mean(t) it.

Plus, guess what! I dont have to walk outside to get to the post room or laundry room because the entire block is INTERCONNECTED. Mind.Blown. (How did everyone else figure it out so early on?!)

Thursday:

I took out my weave. It was wonderful. I deep-conditioned and filed away my chipped nails and started to clip off knots and splits before I realised I couldn't see all the way to the back and that the hairs were so springy I could barely separate them long enough to snip. I also finished a Hilary McKay book and got halfway through Will Eaves' new book, "This is Paradise". It was a productive day. (He's also on the faculty of the Warwick Writing Programme. (P.S: read Saffy's Angel, if you appreciate literature for young people. It's amazing.))

Friday:

I read some more and put my hair in two-strand twists. And watched Grey's anatomy. And, I'm pretty certain, at least one episode of 30 Rock. And Gossip Girl. Which is pretty much all I watch. (And How I Met Your Mother.)

Saturday:

Launched my hair (twist-out) on my friends. Words like 'sexy' and 'gorgeous' were thrown around, but I don't like to brag. 

Movie night at Laura's, where her dogs kept sniffing me. We saw The Bronx Warriors, the movie that inspired Evan Calder William's salvagepunk (M for Mieville, remember?). There was trash, there was anarchy, there was a corporation (so, capitalism. Duh.) Phallic symbols and too-tight jeans were recurring symbols. It was deadpan, it was enlightening, and it was... not as awesome as the guy that was obsessed with his elephants.

Somebody found a picture of a charred penis online at some point - you had to have been there to fully understand the context. I still don't know what an uncircumcised one looks like, but someone's dad has one. I don't know why she told us that, but she'd had a lot of wine, as had I. After, there was dancing. Perfection.

Sunday.

I woke up too early and had a shower in a bathroom that was too modern and got scalded by water that was too hot, but that was okay. I got dressed early, waited an hour before getting the bus and ended up late to church. (I blame a certain Indian girl.) After, I tried to buy too many things. Luckily, I didn't succeed. 

I strolled in fashionably late to the Lakeside Quiz and ended up in a group that came second. My contribution included such things as identifying the theme song - and full title - of Lois and Clark (The New Adventures of Superman), informing everyone that Speedy Gonzalez was the fastest mouse, and correcting the erroneous suggestion that Mariah Carey had sang(sung?) 'Listen'. I mean, everyone knows that was Beyonce. It also turns out there are more Atheists than Jews in the UK. (I still don't know if that means England or Britain.)

The prize for second place was chocolate. I know I chose Warwick University for a reason.

M.I. is a Nigerian rapper who recently released a song titled '7 days' to negative reception on the Nigerian corner of twitter. (Which doesn't really mean anything in the context of the offline population of the country, which is, obvs, more significant.) But other than predictable metaphors he's really quite a good rapper. I used to be a huge fan, back when I was twenty two.

Dear Shonda Rhimes, concerning the 'If/Then' episode of Greys:

I do not understand what having braids has to do with the portrayal of Bailey as weak and unable to stand up for herself. In all other episodes, where she is 'the Nazi', she sports a bouncy weave/bob. 

Since when is chemically straightened hair/ false hair a symbol of female empowerment? This goes back to countless good hair-bad hair ideas that more and more women are struggling very hard to fight against.
I know this goes back to the flashback episode in the last season (or two) where she had braids before she made a significant contribution that improved her confidence, bla bla, but my point is still valid for that situation.
Nothing against straight hair, but you could have left her hairstyle the same.

I could also argue against those ridiculous glasses Alex wears and what that stereotype propagates, but I was more amused by that than anything else.

In the spirit of things

The same dear friend from here asked me to write the opening words to a story for a valentine's day blog special. The idea was to provide an introductory paragraph that would be followed up by other writers. Instructed to include 'Pounded Yam' in there somehow, I came up with:

His lips taste like rubber and he needs to shave. Kissing him is like brushing my face with a hairbrush. I wrap my arm around his neck to hold on, the movement brings my hand to the front of my face, and there, sitting on my finger, is the one thing that’s supposed to make this all worth it. I bend my fingers to get a better view, watch as the rock catches the light and I think, my mother would be so proud. A sigh forces itself out of my mouth into his, and as he grunts in response his doughy fingers dig deeper into my back. Ouch.

Believe it or not there was a time my eyes closed when I kissed, when my stomach grew a million tiny wings and my heart spun my head around in dizzying bursts of bliss. Love, I called it, until the day a hungry danfo driver forgot to put his left foot on the brake pedal of his vehicle, as a young man crossed the street.

     I see him still, sometimes, when I close my eyes; he smiles down at me, reaches out his arms, and I hear the strange sound of my own laughter as I run and run and run to hold him. I never get there.

     They said I should move on, so I did; that love was a choice, so I let my mother choose for me. She sat me down and said to me, “Arike, love is like pounded yam, it can go with any kind of soup, you just have to get used to the new taste.”

Read the 'full instructions' and the final stories here.

Diary punk (oneword)

Sometimes there are many answers - all of them correct, but different, fragmented and incomplete on their own - because you haven't asked the right question.
It's like tweezing; if you don't pluck out the root the strand won't die, and it'll sit there half-snipped, hidden but not gone, impossible to hold on to until it grows out again, stronger the second time around.

I am asking a lot of questions these days, about choices and fears. I am getting closer to identifying my fears, but not the reason why I have chosen to handle them in the way I have. I have been working under the idea that knowing why I've made those choices would help me ... find peace? Get over it? Change approach...?
I don't think that's the right question. Perhaps it is because I haven't identified what it is I want from the answer. So here's an experiment:

Why am I a writer?

Because I need to write. 

Why do I need to?

Because if I don't then I have nothing.

What does that mean, 'you have nothing'?

It's the only thing I'm naturally good at.

Is that true?

It's the only thing I know that I can be excellent at, if I work hard at it.

Are you working hard at it?

Not as hard as I should.

Why not?

Why not what?

Why aren't you working at it as hard as you should?

Because I am afraid that if I put in my absolute best, and I am only mediocre, then I'm really no good at anything. So I only put in a little best.

Does that make sense?

It's not about making sense. It's about preservation. If I tell myself i'm above average on my 'little best' then I can pretend that I really have the potential to be amazing.

So... why not use that potential?

I'm afraid that I'm not good enough.

For?

For me.

Is that true?

I don't know.

That's not an acceptable answer.

For my dad, maybe? I only got A's when I tried, and I didn't always try...

You're making excuses and going in circles.

I'm thinking out loud.

That wasn't a question.

What was the question?

Why are you afraid that you're not good enough?

Because no one ever says I am.

Is that true?

Because I never believe it when anyone says I am.

Why not?

Because I don't believe I am.

And so you hide.

Yes.

And you only half try.

Yes.

And you don't commit to anything.

Yes.

Because you think you'll lose it?

Because I think i'll get too attached and it'll get taken away when I need it the most.

But if you don't try you won't have anything.

And if you don't have anything you'll be mediocre.

And you're afraid of being mediocre.

You're asking the wrong questions.

I'm not asking anything.

Ask me something.

Starting things afresh gives me hope.

But you don't end them.

Leaving things unfinished makes me believe that there could have been another outcome.

Here's a question, why are you running?

I'm still asking the wrong questions.

Asking keeps you from living. You can just pretend to be perpetually searching.

I am searching.

You will never have all the answers.

(Thanks George. Excellent prompt question.)

Click. 

baby girl?

I agree with the sentiment [highlighted] but not the justification. 

This subject has been misunderstood, analysed and generally flogged to death here.

Snippets:

My day on the interwebs:

Small Fates

Death by Twitter

Do a barrell roll: (A year late, I know)

Aaaand:

You can buy Teju Cole's "Open City" here.

*click to enlarge images

I almost forgot: 

Handcrafted by my flatmate's girlfriend. Awesome.

Re-interpretation of Oliver Twist

Deep breath:
In August two thousand and eleven, in the wake of their signing with Kanye's Good Music record label, D'banj and Don Jazzy of Mohits - one of Nigeria's biggest record labels - released another single, and with it the Oliver Twist phenomenon was born.

(I apologise for that sentence.)

Moving on. Twitter just uncovered another cover of the song done, not by Estelle or Tinchy Stryder or even Jay-Z (we would just love that!) but by a white band on YouTube called Ryan Parrott & The Rumours.

Please watch:

Background: The Mohits Crew uploaded a home-video to YouTube as part of an online video competition, offering cash prizes as high as $2,500. A flood of booty-shaking entries rolled in, but the top winner was a group of guys who just had fun with it - all over the streets of Lagos.

The Mohits video:

The winning video:

I feel like Linda Ikeji, posting randomness as news, but I wanted this on my blog for easy access. 

And if you hadn't seen it before now, you're welcome ;)

Mia's rant, my reaction

This is a direct response to miafarradaily's post on shadism, and makes no pretence of clarity, research or objectivity. It just grew too long for the comment box.

I think it's simplistic to say "I don't know where it comes from!" and stamp one's feet in righteous indignation. I think it is directly filtered from colonial influence. Nigerians in Nigeria were never slaves, but they were servants and houseboys, and white was still seen as better. It's easy to assume that the further one was away from black the closer he/she was to white, to better. Nigeria has only been independent for fifty years, and as recently as twenty years ago there were still white missionaries in schools and such - I was taught by a couple in primary school. We're not as far away from it as we'd like to think we are.

I strongly disagree about it being an imported mentality. 

Are we less susceptible to racial prejudices because our racial experience was different? Was it somehow less damaging to our psyche? No, that would be some form of perverse superior-victim mentality. 

I'm very light-skinned, with two siblings who are very dark and two who are 'mid tone to light' - whatever that is - a light skinned father and a dark skinned mother. No one could accuse my family of being shadist, purely by definition, and yet among each other we openly joke about our skin. However it is mostly the lighter-skinned ones that are the brunt of the jokes, while the others are seen as 'normal'.

At home in Nigeria I have been made to be very self conscious about my skin. I stick out in the crowd. I'm so yellow, what cream do I use? I'm so yellow I turn red! I'm so yellow, and have such weird tastes - oh goodness, writing? art? No wonder, I'm practically white! Ha ha ha. And also, oh I'm only 'fine' because I'm yellow. If I'd been dark I'd have been ugly. "God saved you oh!"

You are completely right about it being a prejudice, a strong negative, horrible one that has led to people wanting to marry white people so that they could have mixed-race kids, or want to marry yellow people so that they'd have light-skinned children. It is completely self hatred, I agree also. 

Mostly though I think both extremes bear the brunt of this shadism business, as if we chose to be lighter or darker than everyone else. Really, the message is almost that we are wrong for being different, for standing out. That we should strive to blend in, that by being so different we are somehow upsetting the careful balance of things and should either be mocked or pitied for it.

When Mia says, "Would you pray for light skinned children, or bleach your children's skin if your prayer isn't answered? Would you bleach your own skin to become what you prefer? No. You only do that if you're shadist, if your preference is in fact a prejudice." I find that to be a rather dangerous qualification. The distinction between preference and prejudice is so slight that those words should not be thrown around simply to make an argument.

For instance, if I preferred Hermes to H&M I would pray, and save up, and deny myself of the lesser h&m to acquire what I prefer. I would buy the Hermes for H&M collection (if there ever was one), or the cheaper imitations of the design. Would that be the same as being prejudiced? I would think not. 

"light skinned girls like that often attracted too much, or the wrong sort, of attention. Wealthy men, often older and already married, liked having a light skinned girl on their arm. Ministers, senators, businessmen...they all viewed light skinned women as a sort of accessory." I can completely relate to this. 

It is interesting to note however that the piece goes on to say this, "if this was true, and light skinned women had now become the 'dumb blondes' of Nigeria, why were clever, intelligent, beautiful dark women wanting to hop on the bandwagon?" Which does not defend the intelligence of lighter-skinned women, but is merely baffled that darker women would want that. 

There's still something missing in this assessment of shadism that perpetuates dark as ultimately better, since light is the prejudicial preference that has been pitted against it. The effect of this is seen for instance in this comment on the blog:

To be fair I do not think that was the mia's point, but it will be interesting to see how many comments go in this direction.

Use 'heuristic' in a sentence

Lakeside via Heronbank:

The glossy bits are where the lake has frozen over. If you shut one eye and lean way back you can just make out the birds literally walking on water, but Sam has an awesome photo of this on his blog from a few weeks ago.

Today the frost stayed on the grass even after the sun came out. I wore my blue shoes, which was not very practical. As Fela said, "Trouble sleep yanga wake am." and equally apt, "Shakara* Oloje ni."(Shakara oloje ni o!)

They cut into the backs of my feet and my little toe went numb, but looking at my feet with every step I took made me feel really cool. To [mis]quote Blue Ivy's daddy, "I'll show you how to cook up swagger in the winter." But, nothing goes for free, and I had to sacrifice my weekly after-class hangout for the warmth of my room.

The fuzzy image on the right is supposed to show the grass frosted over in patches

In class today I learnt that you can tell a lot about a person from the mistakes they make in their drafts.
The things we omit or gloss over are always more deeply personal than is apparent. It is often fear in the form of insecurity, and being worried about perception. We build larger than life scenes and conjure new worlds to hide these fears in, but then we leave out the things that would actually shield us, because safety - the resolution of our fears - is the one thing we refuse to imagine, to acknowledge, or to work through.
The more guarded a person is, the more emotion they put into the things around them. Do we love pets, things, adventure... because we are scared to love ourselves?

People really worked to step out of their comfort zone in the stories for today, and it reflected positively in the quality of their work. This is something I haven't yet done. I'm scared that if I do I'll burst into tears one day in the middle of class, or solve all my life's problems, and then where would I be? Peter Blegvad says your flaws are the only unique things about you. I couldn't possibly lose that!
I'm up for workshopping next week. I stayed up till five working on my story, but nothing good happens after midnight and I fear my story is going to be absolute shit.

My tutor is funny, eccentric, insightful. You can just tell that she'd like to sit us down individually and probe deep into our lives to fish out all the dirty disgusting stuff, and then help us put it all into a novel.
Today she announced that she writes down funny things that one of my classmates says - to make badges or tee shirts with (he suggested sashes). I write down funny things that she says, for the same heuristic** reason.
Today she said, "Darling I love you I'm going to kill you." It was a slow day. I think they should go into the memorabilia business together.
She ended class by saying how much she enjoyed working with us which made us all go warm and fuzzy inside, even... but I wont name names.

Listen to the music of the late great Fela:

Shakara Oloje

Trouble sleep, Yanga wake am

**I don't really know what this word means. See here.
*Shakara meaning. Yanga is a synonym.

That's a stupid song.

I'm reeeeeeeally excited about this music video! It's called "That Stupid Song" and it's by Nigerian jazz-soul-afro-pop singer Bez :)

Featuring Praiz, the song is a really fun, four-minute dedication to childhood nostalgia. Anyone who went to primary school in Nigeria knows these silly rhymes. We held hands, snapped our fingers and clapped our hands to the words, half the time not even understanding what we were saying!
Made-up songs like, boju boju, ojuju calabar, my personal favourites Amina toro (the lazy girl) and the girly after-school game tinko tinko, make it into this limited edition ode. He even shouts out the 'imported' London Bridge and Yankee Doodle rhymes, saying, "so what's [yankee doodle's pony, feather and macaroni] got to do with anything?"

It doesn't take itself too seriously, it inserts a series of sing-along 'oooooh's into every other line, and it leaves you with a big smile on your face. Plus, great production, great voices and an exclusive BET 106&Park world premiere. Whoop!

Proudly famzing, here's the brand new video!

♫ Sanda Lily/ La la la

If anyone is reading this, you can buy his amazinggggggg debut album "Super Sun" on itunes.