Pub Brawl

As would be expected of a pub brawl, this one started unexpectedly. And like any decent pub brawl, it was nasty, brutish and lasted only a few seconds before security intervened and violently threw us out.



Elvis wasn't with us when the brawl went down. Being a family man, he doesn't have as many free evenings as the rest of us do. And considering that Allan and I aren't particularly violent people, you should by now have guessed the brawl was all Moses' fault.



"So tell me," Allan asked him as he rubbed at a rapidly developing bruise on his forehead, "why the hell am I standing here nursing a head injury that I'm certain I didn't have a few minutes ago, instead of being seated inside there," he pointed at the pub from where we had just been ejected, "nursing a bottle of beer I'm sure I did have a few minutes ago and I'm certain I paid for?"



"You people didn't have to come to my aid. I had everything under control." Moses said and I couldn't help the smirk that crossed my swollen lips. If having things under control meant soaking up massive blows to the head from the massive Mr. Big Allan and I had saved him from, [and led to us being kicked out ourselves,] I shuddered to think of would have happened if he DIDN'T have things under control.



"Where I come from, it is considered good manners to thank people who have just saved your life from an angry Mr. Big, especially when those people were forced to leave behind perfectly good alcohol in the process." Allan snapped at him. "Anyway, are you injured? I think we should all get ourselves checked by a doctor. My head feels like it wants to explode!"



I agreed that the cut on my lower lip and a few loose teeth courtesy of a bouncer's fist did warrant professional medical opinion, and Moses admitted that indeed, several of Mr. Big's harder jabs had landed on his cranium.



"Well, there is a private clinic a few blocks from here." Allan said. "As we walk there to have our injuries checked, why don't you explain to us why the hell we got injured in the first place?"


We set off as Moses started narrating. "There was this girl..." he said, and Allan and I sighed in unison. of course it had to be a girl. Moses seldom picked fights over anything else.



Moses shot both of us cross glares. "As I was saying, there was this girl I found seated next to an empty seat, and when I made to sit on it, she said she had reserved the seat for her husband." He said.



"And being the gentleman you are, you bade her good evening and went to find a seat elsewhere." I said.



Moses ignored my sarcasm. "I told her this is a free country and I could sit where I damn well pleased. She said something rude and I expressed my sympathies for the man stupid enough to have gotten trapped in holy matrimony with her, the man she was apparently saving the seat for. She then shouted at someone and next thing I know, I am being assaulted by the evil Nubian offspring from the unholy copulation of Shrek and Godzilla."


By then, we had reached the clinic and we went in, where we found only two nurses and a security guard. "Please do come in ans sit down. The doctor will be back shortly." The female nurse told us. "His sister-in-law just called him about his brother being attacked and he rushed over...in fact here he is now." She finished as a car roared to a stop outside.



A few moments later, a diminutive lady walked in, speaking animatedly to two people behind her, and on seeing her, Moses, who was in the middle of saying something, froze in mid-sentence.



Allan and I were puzzled, but not for long. The lady was followed by two men, and although we didn't recognize the short, stout, bespectacled man in a lab coat that entered first, it was obvious he was the doctor. His brother we however did recognize.



Huge, menacing and every bit as ugly as before, Mr. Big was a pretty hard person to forget.

For the love of drink...

"This is unbelievable." Moses was saying. "Inexcusable. I've heard of countries where people get executed for much less than that."

"Such as?" Allan asked. The very question I would have asked myself had I been so inclined.

"Easy." Moses replied. "Just take a map of Asia and North Africa, knock off China and India, and Voila! You can take your pick."

Elvis and I didn't say a word. When Moses is in such a mood, it is criminally impractical to try and sway his perspective on whatever issue it is that had brought it about. Allan was the only one foolhardy enough to argue with him, but then again, Allan is our resident philosopher. And that is what philosophers do; Argue.

The argument today had to do with what transpired that afternoon at Moses' workplace.
Dude had been pulling all the stops for the past month to land a new secretary who had just been hired by his organisation, and the girl, while remaining suitably demure as any self-respecting damsel would, had nevertheless given our poor friend enough reason to believe that she was available.

Thus encouraged, Moses had gone on to buy a weekend getaway package for two at the Coast in the hope that it would impress the living daylights out of her, but when he sprung the surprise on her that afternoon after a lunch date, she had apologetically informed him she was sorry, but she had family commitments that weekend.

No problemo, Moses had replied. The package, although non-refundable, was open-ended and could be deferred to a different date. I'm really sorry, the girl had replied, but you don't understand. The family commitment I mentioned I have to attend to is actually my husband's family.

"I was incredibly humiliated." Moses explained to us when we'd met earlier that evening, and then gone on to elaborate. "It was as if someone had hauled me to the very top of the Tower of Humiliation, erected a mast, hauled me to the top of the mast and then mercilessly shoved me down to the forbidding ground far, far below."

When he is emotional, Moses sometimes tends to get wonderfully descriptive.

And now, he was considering suing the girl. He hadn't quite decided what for yet, but he figured he had a decent shot at compensation if he proved the girl had deceived him and caused him both emotional and financial distress.

When he said this, Elvis and I had each taken a single look at his face, ascertained that he indeed was serious, and then proceeded to fixedly concentrate on our drinks in a determined effort not to burst out laughing. Allan, however, held no such reservations. He spluttered on his drink and shot Moses a look that cast the concept of incredulous to a whole new level.

"Assuming she is even guilty in the first place, which she isn't by anyone's stretch of the imagination except, of course, yours," he wondered, "what makes you think there is a clerk in any Kenyan court that would file such an incredibly stupid lawsuit, let alone a judge or magistrate that would hear it?"

A perfectly obvious consideration for any sane person privy to the details of this whole absurd saga. But you see, Moses and the obvious don't exactly live up the same street.
"Just because there isn't any law against it doesn't mean it is right." He insisted. "No woman should treat a man like that and expect to get away scot free. I will make her pay, you just wait and see."

Even philosophers have their limits, and Allan signified he'd reached his by making a grunting noise of resignation that sounded remarkably like a Somali about to spit out a gob of Khat. A waiter had just reached our table, and our bottles were almost empty.

"More rounds on my bill, please." Moses told him. "Get all of us two bottles of what we are having...except this guy." He pointed at Allan, and that explains why Elvis and I hadn't raised our voices against Moses' incredulities that entire evening.

You see, when you go drinking, it is never a good idea to get on the wrong side of the guy buying the drinks.

And we're off!

BANG! BANG! BANG!

I didn't link you to that song because I have a deal with the copyright owners of Femi Kuti's music to promote his songs. Neither did I link you to there because I want to blog about the human pre-occupation with the act of copulation, which is what the song is all about.

Actually, the only reason I linked you to that song is so that in future, I can be able to say that my blog literally started with a bang.


Anyway, hello everyone. Thank you for coming. And without any further ado, let's begin.

Lights will guide you home
And ignite your bones
And I will try to fix you...

Some of you didn't know that those are lyrics from part of the song 'Fix You' by Coldplay. Well, now you know.


And all of you didn't know that those are the words I wake up to every morning because Fix You is actually the designated wake-up alarm tune on my Samsung E250.











Well, now you know!

So, I hear someone ask, what minuscule interest to them or singular relevance to society is information about what I like listening to when I wake up supposed to have?

Well, that's just it. I DON'T like Coldplay. I don't think Coldplay are a very talented singing group. In fact, it is my very honest opinion that Coldplay should be requested, nay, COMPELLED to desist from exploring their talent (or lack thereof) in music any further, and all the howls they have recorded so far confined to a single faulty CD and given to someone I don't particularly like who lives very, very far away from me.

So, I hear that voice ask again, why would I make a song by a group I don't like the first thing I listen to when I wake up every morning?

Well, first of all because unlike me, there are people out there whose taste in music leaves as much to be desired as an Amish grandmother's Sunday outfit. Some of these people, however, unfortunately happen to be people I care deeply about, and I would very much like them to know that despite such undesirable preferences, or even when they posses much more irritating ones in addition such as being fans of Liverpool F.C, I still hold them in the highest esteem.

Secondly, it has a little to do with a lesson my mother once taught me.

One day once upon a time, Mrs. Cornelia Akumu Omwango opened the door to her kitchen and by doing so, broke her beloved carved wood Sugar-dish. This wasn't because her beloved but very mischievous son had balanced it on top of the door hoping it would land on his irritating elder sister's head and instead got his mother.Rather, it was because by opening the door, she surprised the aforementioned elder son who at that very moment had his hand inside the aforementioned carved wood sugar dish.

Sons have this habit of going into uncontrollable panic when surprised by their mothers, and panic never augurs well for fragile objects in the hands of such panic-stricken sons, so in a nutshell, that was the last time Mrs. Omwango's beloved carved wood sugar dish ever held any sugar.

Naturally, the son wasn't going to get away scot-free. Mrs. Omwango's reputation as a tough disciplinarian was because one, she came down on indiscipline hard and two, she came down on indiscipline fast. Thus the echo from the shattering sugar dish had barely cleared from the son's ears before they were dealing with a totally new sound, a zinging sound normally felt by people who have just been slapped. "And you are taking Ndufya* for one full week!" She snarled.

(*If you don't know what Ndufya is, it means you probably didn't grow up in Nairobi. If this is the case, kindly get in touch with someone who did and be educated.)

Taking Ndufya for one week is the stuff foul moods are made of, and from then onwards, any thought of illicit maneuvers towards the new sugar dish would immediately trigger that absolutely excruciating memory, and I would immediately kill it.

Now, let's fit Coldplay into this scheme of things.

You see, what I learnt from my misadventure is that nothing inspires discipline better than a disagreeable sensation or the threat of a disagreeable sensation. And the way I needed the disagreeable sensation that was the memory of taking Ndufya for a week in order to be disciplined around Mom's sugar is the same way I need a disagreeable sensation in order to be disciplined about something else.

Waking Up.

Thing is, when you love to sleep the way I do, you can get into lots of trouble if you are not disciplined about waking up. And that is where alarms come in. But not just any alarm. You can't put alarms of sounds you like listening to, such as Serj Tankian, Green Day or Elephant Man. (All of which, I'll have you know, I have in my Samsung E250) Those are in no way disagreeable sensations, and designating them as my wake up alarm would actually be giving myself a lullaby, instead of a wake-up alarm.

The reason it is called an alarm is because it is meant to ALARM you into waking up, and in my opinion, they don't come more disagreeably alarming than Coldplay.

AND FINALLY, THE ROCK, THE BLUES AND THE KAPUKA.

The Rock.

On Saturday evening, about an hour after Arsenal had made the easy job of putting four past Wigan look like uberadvanced Quantum Physics, Mufti Sheikh Ramadhan Mubajje, who has jurisdiction over the Jummat I currently belong to, announced that the moon had been sighted and the month-long Ramadhan fast was at end.

Saum is by far the most physically and psychologically taxing of the Five Pillars of Islam, and observing it to the end with the dedication it demands is the mark of a true believer. So to all my Moslem brethren, mko juu tu sana. May Allah's blessings find you and uplift you. La ilaha ilallah.

Staying with football, we now know who is the real boss of Manchester!!!!

The Blues.

When I met Sammy during the Bell Lager-sponsored UTAKE nite at Steak-Out two Saturdays ago, he was screaming, "Huyo Dj aishi milele!" with a bottle of Bell Lager in his hand and looking like someone who could easily force a breatherlyser into early retirement.

The reason for my friend's exuberance was because he had benefited from a number of free Bell Lagers that a guest Radio Dj at the party had earlier thrown his way, and it was this Dj that Sammy was now wishing a very long life.

Sadly, this wish was never to be as four days later, Ronald Ssempagi,a.k.a Dj Roni of Capital fm Uganda, succumbed to multiple organ failure at Kadic clinic in Bukoto, Kampala.

May his soul rest in eternal peace.

The Kapuka

As President of the Federal Republic of the United States of America, my clansman has to choose even the words he uses in his dreams because every syllable that comes through his lips automatically becomes a lightning rod for often emotional, always polarized American opinion.

But even he couldn't hold back his stupefication at Kanye West's absolute lack of class during the VMAs last Sunday, and he very un-presidentially called the Grammy award-winning rapper 'a Jackass' following Kanye's obviously inebriate shenanigans at the awards.

I know quite a number of people who agreed with Kanye's view that Beyonce was more deserving of the best Female Award that Taylor Swift got, and one of Kanye's most endearing attributes is his forthrightness which often borders on, and sometimes goes beyond, arrogance.

But even they wouldn't fault my cousin the president's contention that this time, Kanye did indeed behave like a class A jackass.