Nine PM Drumrolls

You can hear it every day at prime time,
The world being called to order.

In the twilight, in the back and dark night,
When the deed is already done,
News from the whole world, with the rattle of martial drumbeats.
Trumpet blasts, urgent strains,
calling us to fall in rank, our schedules to surrender.

“Here is the News, pay ye heed!
Hear the latest triviality!
Fear some new alarm!
Sneer today’s politician!
Year lost a working day at sundown;
Peer briefly at rich men’s shares!
Cheer the sports, you ought to care!
Ladies and gentlemen, the News is
Here.”

Forgiveness

People will forgive everything except the truth - A. G. Matos

Humility evades the average human being, me included. Instead, pride easily finds comfortable lodgings in our hearts and distorts our perceptions of reality.

We have more than enough influences today that cultivate pride and nourish it. In our music and movies, lyrical braggadocio and antisocial personas get away with dark evil deeds and statements by the sheer force of bravado and size of balls. It's hard to miss, especially in today's rap, as the rapper insults hearers and praises himself/ herself. You know what it is. Movies appeal to us to take sides with the perpetrator of all sorts of immoral madness simply because they are the star.

I'm not appealing to people to have low self-esteem. In fact I am the first to vouch for the fact that we are beautifully and wonderfully made. Unfortunately we have not always lived and acted beautifully and wonderfully. The point is, pride comes before a fall, and that fall is usually great indeed. Below are facts that pride obscures from sight; facts whose humble recognition are the beginnings of the way of life.

1. No matter how great we think we are, we all have failings and shortcomings whether intended or unintended.
2. Because of out shortcomings, we need forgiveness from one another and from God.
3. None of us deserve to be forgiven our wrongdoing, but if our love for one another can overlook this, then all of us can forgive each other, because each of us know we have done things for which forgiveness is the only way out.
4. Most importantly, GOD loved us enough to send His only begotten Son to die for us while we were still sinners, and Jesus Christ died so that His blood was the purchase of our lives, which by our sins we have proved not to be deserving of (for the wages of sin is death). Having been thus forgiven, what can we not forgive? And how can we reject GOD's forgiveness for free?

This is the true human condition which pride obstructs from view. If we reject the truth let our pride puff us bigger than forgiveness (only in the realm of strong delusion!) then we rightly deserve and get the just punishment for our wrongdoing - death.

"...But the gift of God is eternal life through Jesus Christ his Son."

Communication is the Trick

Apparently, break-ups have anniversaries. This translates to me as one more reason to avoid serial monogamy. The ladies like to have their anniversaries celebrated without prompting. The men would rather remain clueless.

So Pearl called, square on the date of the first anniversary of our break-up. After reminding me of the significance of the date, the conversation went surprisingly well, eventhough I found it odd to have that event in mind let alone to observe it in any way.

I find it hard to say no, which is why I let the conversation stretch for another hour. At least she was forward enough to say she thought a reunion would be a good idea.Eventually I didn't exactly say no but neither did I explicitly say yes (the conversation meandered all over the thematic spectrum and we even agreed that it was important for couples to communicate right seeing how we broke up over faulty communication.)

Over subsequent days, the succession of phonecalls and texts served to reinforce tentatively inferred agreements, at least until I remembered the moral of the story: communication is the trick. Since I was finding it hard to say no for fear of disappointing her, I was implying yes, which was monstrous miscommunication.  So her texts and calls multiplied.

So I communicated effectively at the next opportunity, which was a distasteful affair, albeit a necessary evil.

One-upping Kenny Rogers

Rescued Comic Page, sketchy, photoshopped

Where there is No Answer

So I had a nightmare...

Contra Diction

'Religious' post. Shoot me now.

World politics is a stage. All the marionettes we see thereon dangle off strings which are manipulated by Satan himself.

The devil is a liar and the father of lies. Thus, the reality and the rhetoric of world politics are diametrically opposed to each other. So effective is the deception that many, while swearing by the seductive rhetoric, have their eyes wide shut to reality. Unfortunately, the entire world is structured for serving rhetoric, dogma, a pack of lies. War is on the way because some of the dogma people are ready to fight to protect their deluded fantasies. Politically, economically and socially, lies have gained currency as the blueprint for a global society. Just don't ask UN, IMF, World Bank or any of the secret societies or mainstream religions.

Rhetoric says world politics is benign and progressive, leading towards world peace. The stark reality is that world war will suddenly be upon us. Look to the Middle East. While the talk in international fora is all about unity and everyone getting along, actual practice on today's battlegrounds is eugenics and genocide. According to research, the amount of depleted uranium used in the Middle East (War on Terror and variants) equals 400,000 Hiroshima atomic bombs in terms of radiation. If that's not racist by definition then it is racist by design. To say nothing of the role of the UN as the biggest high profile boot-licking cooperative ever in history, by which such atrocities are excused as victor's justice.

Elsewhere all over the planet, all cadres of leadership hype globalization, depicting it as a cute "global village" type of borderless arrangement. In truth, the whole thing despite all its fancy social networks widens the class rift between rich and poor. Connectivity is just one more thing the poor don't have. Marginalization, in short. This comes at a time when thanks to pop culture, 'swag' is the new black, the whole point in a culturally and morally bleached landscape.

Satan is leading a rebellion against God Almighty, but his stake in the affair is neither to accumulate wealth nor power nor fame. He has no need for such trivialities; come on, he has ruled the world for a while already. Rather, he outsources his labor among the humans, buying out his workers' souls at the incomparable price of coveted earthly perishables, because rebellion is his whole cause. Enough people are so willing to be blinded by such short term gains that today, our music is sacrilege, our entertainment is blasphemy, our economics is politically correct slave trade and our society descends deeper every day into new depths of moral depravity.

By the way, the last time Satan succeeded in uniting the whole world in rebellion to God, the Tower of Babel was thrown into confusion and that was the end of that.

If our "religious leaders" do not sound the alarm, that just indicates what side of the divide they have hedged their bets. Contrary to what some of them might say, God does not exclusively associate Himself with religions, sects or offshoots. His people are individuals of every background who follow Him in spirit and in truth, who desire to fulfil His will in their lives, even to the point of being called 'a peculiar people'. These are the true church of God, no matter their denominations. These are they which Satan seeks to deceive or destroy, for they do not conform to rebellion. He has the whole world's wealth and armaments at his disposal, his time is running out, and so his efforts of late are peaking towards a crescendo of sorts. Consider the darkness we call entertainment, and political instability all over. War is coming. Don't take it from me; watch the news, judge for yourself, check out www.vigilantcitizen.com.

Young Kenya

In Kenya today there are all sorts of efforts to get the youths 'involved'.

Now I'm one to smell a rat every now and then; hell, I might be that rat I'm smelling all the time, but I find it interesting that the older generation is presumed not to need regular shots of civic awareness.

The older generation are excused because ideals do not interfere with their behavior. These Kenyans have dabbled in the system a while and they know how things work. They once had a vision and a dream but that one was burnt out by hard, long and fruitless labor. But the youth, being politically aware (but practically naive), are all over the place thinking they have access to all sorts of levers which need to be pulled for a bright Vision 2030. Thus I strongly suspect that Kenyan youth are targeted for civic education in ways that merely appear to incorporate their ideals. Picture anyone dangling the carrot of so many hundred thousand new jobs a year.

Usually, it's only a matter of time before reality hits - the disillusionment type of reality which accompanies the shock of cognitive disonance while evoking exclamations like "Navumilia kuwa Mkenya" or even "Kazi Kwa Vijana, pesa kwa wazee." Such cynicism is not helped by events like 2007's polls in which the ballot determined nothing. Ballot-counters, um, 'continued counting' long after the tally was complete, if it ever was.

But the fight need not end when reality sinks into the youthful head and banishes pink-tinted representations of Kenya's socioeconomic condition. The fight is usually lost when a young Kenyan, faced with ugly truth, reacts by surrendering his ideals and getting down on all fours. You see, the establishment's agenda is to establish its agenda, but it prefers youths with coached, compromised or completely absent ideals to establish that agenda!


It's a rat race in today's hyper-competitive land of no opportunity, namely the whole world. Any young person who's still a marionette of local politicians who pull tribal strings has been left several centuries behind. That's far behind enough to be totally irrelevant.

Free your mind.

Aluta Continua

Sometimes I can't bear to hear myself defending the truth. God knows I've contradicted myself too many times, drinking other than what I was preaching when my self-interest entered the picture.

Sometimes, even though there is a second chance, I hesitate to take it; self-conscious of past failure, and weak.

Sometimes, a believer comes to that place where they confuse their faith with a heavy burden. Many also are mockers quick to review decisions made in faith with a sneer of contempt.


Still, the truth is such that it demands to be expressed, expounded, lived. It's real. If I keep it quiet in my heart it burns, it pokes at the conscience. I find myself fighting to conceal the truth within. It would be easier to forget it, kill the conscience, move on; except that I would know it was a lie.

It's not every day that the truth wins that battle over my ego. Still, the war continues.

From watching my friends, I know that killing the conscience is the first step down the downward spiral of depravity. A dead conscience opens the door to insensitivity bordering on insanity. Lies pile on lies every day, until truth is entirely lost sight of, and self-destruction looms ever larger.

Unfortunately, today's world seems to require a dead conscience, or one on life support. You can see it in the movies and mass media, where some sort of compromise is aggressively sold.

Stand for truth. Pray for courage to do it.

Between Lines of Blackmail

The lecturer at the only Philosophy class I ever attended was a fan of mind-bending moral dilemmas. "Is it good to look good and be actually bad or is it good to look bad and be actually good?" he asked us with a smirk. As a zealous believer in the straightforwardness of morality, I dismissed the man as a quack, a charlatan who gets a paycheck for screwing with students' heads. But one day, long after graduation, his question became pertinent.

I decided that I wasn't in love with Jennifer but I would pretend to be hopelessly stricken with her. The good or bad in it would become evident later. The thing I didn't know is that with such things, a line can be crossed beyond which no retreat is possible.

So I called her numerously and steered the conversation to intimate waters. At first she railed at me and I took it, but eventually she started opening up. Which scared me. But before long I found myself in an emotional roller-coaster ride with more invested in it than I was aware. Still, the fact that she was terrified that she was actually falling for me was a major thrill factor. I could hear it in her voice.

By the time we met after a week of calls, our body language was a grand spectacle. The chemistry was tangibly electric. We were supposed to be continuing our Sunday swimming routine, but I ended up cornering her in the deep end and working what remained of her psychological defenses at point blank range.

 The moment remains etched in my memory; when I looked in her dark eyes and saw that, at long last, all resistance was dead. Reality sunk into my head and I wondered, Now what. My script didn't have a conclusion, it was more like reality TV - a experiment. It was like, here's blackmail you can use against Jennifer. Will you use it? How? But I had frozen in place with these deep meditations.

"What do you want?" asked Jennifer. This question made me aware that I was right on top of the line which must not be crossed.

I told her the truth - for the first time in a long time. "Nothing. It's all a prank."

Now she hates me all over again.

(Turns out I was right. Morality is straightforward. If you look good and act bad, the good look don't count for much.)

Love is Shapeless and Colorless

Valentine's Day is around the corner and you can already go blind and deaf under the blast of advertising. My input to the charade will be as a bored and slightly irritated observer. They will paint many things red and roll out many white teddy bears with hearts in their paws. Themed nights, bouquets, the works.

Who came up with the idea anyway? It's not the concept of Valentine's that I find reprehensible, even though its full of gaps in logic. It's the inevitable herd mentality which makes the whole world suckers to groupthink. Miss out on Valentine's Day fanfare and you WILL feel like a pariah. Nobody will make you pull moods and mope miserably all week; you will do it of your own volition.

I had the opportunity one day to argue these points with Jennifer. That dull Sunday afternoon I walked all the long way to my favorite pool, only to find it dark green, stagnant and locked. On my way back home, I ran into Jennifer on her way to the pool, told her the bad news, and we headed back to our neighborhood in low spirits. How did Valentine's Day come up for discussion? Search me.

I ended up saying that love is not a rational decision; it is not even a decision a person makes. Falling in love happens first, and then one decides what to do about it after. Not the kind of thing where a cost-benefit analysis qualifies or disqualifies the beloved before Cupid gives the green light. At its foundations, love is irrational like this - it has no motif it must conform to and needs no justification to validate it. All other factors - character, looks, financial stability, age difference, compatibility etc - support or inhibit but never create love. But you wouldn't think so from reading Lonely Hearts columns or practising Valentine's Day in its current dogmatic format.

(There I was, thinking I was enjoying a deep conversation with Jennifer.)

She called me a radical and refuted my claims using maxims extracted straight from the latest chick flicks. Before I could intellectualize the matter again, she quickly changed the subject.

"Reggae's not as bad as I thought," she said.

This was an about-turn to marvel at, coming from Jennifer the proudly self-confessed heavy-metal rock addict, but the part which hit me like a sledgehammer was the utterly irrational look in her eyes as she said it. It made no sense whatsoever, but there it was - live.

I suggested lunch.