The tale of the tail.

So goes an old fable, One day an old dog came across a younger dog running in circles. "Hello, young one." He asked. "What are you doing?"


"Yo! W'zzup old dog" The younger dog replied. "I just discovered some bangin lil' secret that you ol timers probably didn't know. You see, I've just discovered that the secret of my happiness lies inside my tail, and I'm tynna catch it so that I can be happy forever!" and he went on running after his tail for all the world like he was a turbo-charged windmill.


The old dog regarded the younger dog for some time, and then he tapped him. "Excuse me, kiddo, but I got news for you. " He said, sagely. "You see, that happiness lies inside my tail is, to use your words, a 'bangin lil' secret' I discovered way back before your momma was a pup. But with time, I realised that running after it wasn't going to get me anywhere near it because the harder I chased it, the more it kept running away from me. But I also saw that when I stopped running after it and instead walked away and went about my business, it followed me!

I'm sure an overwhelming proportion of our esteemed readers must be conversant with the concept of reciprocity, that basis of social relations whereby everything we do for others is with the expectation that the person will give back, or 'reciprocate' in kind. For example when you go to the supermarket and you give the teller your cash, you expect that teller to clear you the goods you just picked from the supermarket shelves, or when you throw a dog your leftovers, you expect it to wag its tail and bark at shady-looking personalities that may venture near your premises from dusk till dawn.

This reciprocity exists in each and every aspect of human relationship. When your parents take care of you, they expect you to take care of them in their twilight years when the more muscular parts of their anatomy don't respond to instructions from the brain as readily as they used to. When your friend borrows your blouse, you'd hardly expect her to throw a tantrum when you inexplicably try to squeeze your substantial behind into that mini of hers you've always had your eyes on.

With relationships, reciprocity is even more pronounced. How many times have you ever heard the statement "After all I've done for him..." spoken by some damsel in distress after a breakup? Or the guy who believes that his Porsche, six figure paycheck and above average looks should get him the best female-world has to offer? It's all about reciprocity, and it is all natural thanks to the historical process of socialization to its values that humanity has been subjected to since the day Esau made a deal with Jacob over a bowl of bean soup.

However, the essence of reciprocity that most women are only too eager to miss by a solar system that includes Pluto is that this reciprocity ought to be balanced. Balanced reciprocity means, to use an economic perspective, expectation an equitable return for input in a venture. [Note: I said Equitable. NOT Equal.] So when I show the lady in my life some serious TLC, it is because I appreciate something that she has actually done for me, and I do it because I actually want to.

In the good old days of chivalry when moving mountains and crossing seas for love was not the product of soppy RnB howls and gutter Mills& Boon paperbacks but real honest-to-God actual stuff, men were ready to kill for a lady's handkerchief because they believed it was a worthy cause. This was because the ladies reciprocated by acting their station and never trying to usurp the natural order of things. They never demanded, but expected men to be chivalrous because they in turn didn't wait to be reminded to acted like ladies as men expected them to. Balanced reciprocity and everyone's happy.

But now ladies claim that we are all equal, [equal. Not equitable,] demanding for a place on top of the heirearchy, and yet still expect us to behave like we did when they had their rightful place a few notches down! Honestly, what else have they been smoking apart from good old Marijuana?

If you want me to be chivalrous and romantic, make me want to be chivalrous and romantic. And the best way of accomplishing this is by acting all vulnerable and in-need-of-protection. You see, nothing tugs at a guy's heartstrings more than the feeling of being in charge. The women of old knew this, and that's why men were willing to pander to their every whim.

So women, stop being aggressive and running after what you want like the little dog. Stop demanding equality. Likw the big dog, walk away and act nonchalant. The result, I promise you, will be beyond your wildest dreams.

Of women and touts.

You know she likes them lights at night on the neon Broadway signs.

She don't really mind; it's only love she hoped to find...

That above line should be familiar to all Generation X dudes who grew up with me during the Reagan era and the first Bush error of global politics. It is from one of my favorite hits by Bon Jovi, 'Runaway', and the reason I have used it here is because it aptly captures a malady peculiar to females: The Bad Boy syndrome.

No, I am not talking about an incomprehensible addiction to noise produced, directed, sung or otherwise concocted from a record label owned by Puffy or Piddy or Duddley or whatever it is that idiot calls himself nowadays. Rather, I am referring to that affliction in females whose symptoms include, among other disorders, adeptness at dismissing issues that matter in favor of mediocrity, propensity to frivolity and, most of all, attraction to form rather than substance.

As proof of this, for example,  lot of women, it has been established, just can't get enough of reprobates that make a living from stuffing living human beings into contraptions whose sole purpose of existence seems to be cramming as much noise as possible into the smallest space imaginable and then going on to cram even more people into whatever little space the noise has left. Women really think that a guy who earns his daily bread [or in this case, his daily Mbachu, Bale, Ngale and other unhealthy substances] from telling people who know where they are going where they are going is actually cool, and they believe that the degenerate act of swinging precariously from the door of a Matatu is the most macho thing since Schwarzenegger's role in 'Commando.'

Some things you look at and wish you could grab the silly girl who believes this nonsense and thoroughly thrash some sense into her head, especially if this female happens to be your daughter, sister or equally close relation. But feminism seems to be the official ideology in the halls of justice nowadays and such a physical explanation might get you sued faster than one Arunga's psychological meltdown, so you are left to simply shake your head in frustration and watch the madness.

And this syndrome, believe it or not, has a biological explanation.

If my memory serves me right, I remember Mr. Samson Silenje once talking about something to do with Binomial Nomenclature in one of the very few Biology classes I managed to attend back in high school. This, according to him, is the system of naming that gives every living thing a botanical name, for example Feminista degenerata [for feminists] or Idiota cabineta [for Grand coalition governments] and it is based on seven categories.

You will have to forgive me, it's been quite some time since I last opened a Biology textbook, so my memory is a bit rusty and I can't remember all the seven categories. [Plus I really wasn't that good in Biology...actually, I was quite bad...OK. I sucked in biology. Happy?] I however remember the first category in this taxonomy [There! I did remember a biological term!] was Kingdom, and that human beings belong to Kingdom Animalia. For those of you with extra inches of skull, that means we are actually animals.

Now, animals depend mainly on instinct for survival, and man is no exception. Most of our very basic behavioural norms are purely instinctive, as are the most fundamental decisions we make, and we normally refer to it as 'gut feeling' or 'sixth sense.'  But What separates  man from the rest of the creatures in Kingdom Animalia, however, is support for this instinct by the ability to reason. Our reaction to stimuli is at first instinctive, but the actual action we take more often than not is guided by reason. So we see the pouty, kissable lips or the smooth, loooong legs and are filled with lust,[instinct] but we don't commit our hearts until we are sure about what we are getting ourselves into.[reason.]

My reference to man in the preceding two paragraphs was in the masculine sense of the world, since this quality unfortunately seems to be lacking in most women. For them, it is almost as if they are all instinct and zero reason, which results in an incredibly poor sense of judgement and the natural affinity to bad decisions that comes with it. They always go for the outer trappings rather than the inner substance which really matters. If it is posh and exciting, let's go for it and worry about whether or not it is sustainable in the long run later. Classic signs of the bad boy syndrome.

An attraction to touts is simply the tip of the ice-berg. Fizzle Dogg, Sugar Daddies, fake Rastafarians, shady preachers, wannabe gangsters and anyone with a fake American accent are among a myraid of other suitors who also stand a good chance of scoring with these impressionable, less mentally developed members of our society.

Promises

When this lady I'm acquainted with declared that men have a problem with keeping promises, my first reaction was "And what the hell is the problem with that?" If I give you a promise, it is yours, as in for you. What business then do I have keeping something I have made for you? But that didn't wash with her, so I set off for the KNLS library at Community to come up with something that would hopefully be more in line with her perspective but still convince her of the fallacy of her assertion.

I was unable to get hold of an Oxford dictionary that I would have preffered for my purposes, and so I had to make do with a very huge publication of a dictionary I found in there to look up the word 'Promise.' [By the way on a somewhat unrelated issue, I noticed that 80% of the readers in the library at that time were men. Still wondering how it was that the first girl in this year's KCSE rankings was at position 11?]

Anyway, the publication defined a promise as "A declaration or assurance, expressed of one's free will, that one will guarantee or refrain from guaranteeing the happening of a specified act." It also went on to add that "This gives the person to whom it is given an implied right to expect or claim the performance or forbearance of that act."

So there we have it. A most comprehensive definition, if there ever was one, to help us mount an effective defense against the charge this lady, and later Eve, have leveled against us about our presumed incapability to keep promises.

First of all, a promise is a declaration or an assurance. But in many cases, the promises ladies accuse us of failing to keep aren't even declarations or assurances in the first place! Women are experts at taking miles whenever you mention a centimeter, so a smile in her direction and she is all a-yakking with 'the girls' about how you promised to call her for a date, or a passing comment about how warm Mombasa is in August and she takes it that you have promised her a holiday at Whitesands. My dear ladies, the defining feature of a declaration is actual expression, not vague implication!

And speaking of expression, the definition asserts that it should be of one's free will. So if I finally agree to get you that atrociously expensive microwave we saw last year at KitchenPoint in order to put a stop to your constant nagging, that is not free will, and therefore it is not a promise. If you know about my almost religious adoration for Wayne Rooney but somehow manage to have me agreeing to spending 'Quality Time' with you on weekend afternoons even when Manchester United is playing, free will doesn't feature anywhere there and it is therefore definitely not a promise!

The definition also allows for the implied right by the recipient to expect or claim the performance or forbearance of that act, which is where the ladies have us by the neckties. But Great expectations, like the great Ethiopian philosopher and writer Hama Tuma once said, make frustrated men. [or, in this case, women.] My dear ladies, once again I stress, this right is implied. Constitutions the world over grasped something  you always seem to have a problem understanding: That the space between the making of a promise and it's actual execution is subject to factors that lie outside the control of the promise-maker, and this is the very reason why legal obligation is seldom placed on the execution of promises!

However, the main reason men are reluctant to keep promises is because women have this despicable, horrible habit of using their promises against them. The major example of this is where women use pregnancy to trap men they have their hooks trained on into unwanted marriages or child support for children who may not even be theirs!

And it is not as if the ladies themselves are altogether prudent about the promises they make. As a matter of fact, ladies on average fail to keep promises more than men, and the only reason we never notice is because of how vocal they are about the promises we break, which deflects our attention from their own inadequacies in the department of promise-keeping.

But all in all, promises do not have to precisely fit within the confines of our definition. What matters is the spirit of the promise, i.e what the maker of the promise intended when he made it. But that said, it is very few men that would deliberately break a promise. For a man, pride is everything, and the mark of a man's pride is how consistent he is in keeping his word.

Miss Mboch

First of all, I'd like to make one thing clear. Cheating is bad, and if you feel you need to have sex with more than one person, then you should either not have a romantic attachment to both of them, or you should be married to both of them.

That said, let me now begin by apologizing for one apology I'm never going to make: I'll never ever apologize for behaving like a man and holding the attitudes, values and perspectives of a man, for the simple reason that I am a man. But then again, I highly doubt I'd change my behavior, attitudes, values and perspectives even if I had the power to do so, and any female that has a problem with that can go take a running jump.

So being the man that I am and conforming to the dynamics of Society and Biology, I have a pretty clear idea about what I'd expect from a marital relationship. Society tuned me to demand respect, deference, commitment and responsibility from my spouse and in return, I was supposed to reciprocate by availing to her corresponding amounts of the same. Biology on its part put in me the desire and expectation for good, fulfilling and regular sex.

Should these two dynamics strike a balance in a marital union, harmony reigns and a stable relationship is virtually guaranteed. We succeed in building a solid, functional entity that gives both of us a sense of fulfillment and a desire to protect and maintain such a precious gem.

But thanks to W omen's Lib, Affirmative Action, Gender Balance and other equally disastrous concepts of the feminist catastrophe`, this balance is in society is facing a kind of threat it has never encountered before. Women are now demanding equality in the distribution of duties instead of stressing equitability where responsibility is appropriated basing on ability. They forget that all the responsibilities they had before, all the activities relations and interplays within the home that they have been involved in since time immemorial, are vital bonds that hold the basic unit if society, ie the family, together.

Instead, they develop this strange notion that a fat payslip at the end of the month would compensate their forbearance of these very necessary responsibilities and even grant them a few extra liberties, such as the re-arrangement of the power structure of society with them at the top. They choose to spend all their time strategizing on how to consolidate their new-found position and delegate more and more of their household duties to house-helps.

And this creates a problem. Two problems, as a matter of fact. One, instead of a marital union being a strong, vibrant arrangement that is mutually beneficial and an object of pride, it instead becomes an unstable, non-functioning entity that is more disgusting than alluring. And two, the needs that the marital union was supposed to fulfill in the first place don't simply disappear. They are still there, and they still need to be fulfilled.

I still need to experience the respect, commitment and deference from the person I love, even if only for my ego's sake, but now that I'm seeing less and less of my spouse, I begin to associate my well-cooked and timely-served food, well-kept house, neat, well-pressed clothes and good-mannered children more and more with my house-help than my wife, and along with it goes the gratitude for these small pleasures of life that really matter.

And I still need sex. Good, fulfilling and regular sex. But I can hardly count on my wife to be in the mood nowadays because her activities are taking a heavy to on her, and worse still, she starts to have sex only to indulge me. Now, let me tell you, no man except a very desperate one, appreciates sympathy sex. Sex should be both mutual and consensual, I will doubtless start feeling short-changed and cast my attentions elsewhere. One guess whom I'd likely go for!

Women make the mistake of viewing house-helps as lesser human beings, working machines who come in, work, get paid and leave. They forget that these are actually flesh-and-bone humans with feelings, desires and ambitions. So instead of CSWs who are dangerous, illegal and could go through my reputation like a tornado through a shack, or female workmates who carry more baggage than a Cucu at Karatina and are, if anything, more strung up than my wife, it's only natural that I'd be drawn to the timid, bashful and reserved house-help like a sailor to a siren.

In conclusion,I reiterate. My personal views towards cheats aren't exactly charitable. But just because something is bad doesn't mean its justifications should be dismissed offhand. And until women learn to take their marriages seriously, then they shouldn't keep asking why men stray.

Parenting

One morning, Mr. Holloway, a teacher at Brooksfield High, caught two boys, Scott Miller and Owusu Abezuka, smoking pot in the boys' restroom. He sent them to the principal, who immediately called the boys' parents and notified them of their sons' transgressions before sending the boys home.

***************

Scott's father, Herman Miller, was a wealthy Wall Street stockbroker. He was stunned when he received the principal's call, and he promptly called his wife, a counselor at a nearby hospital, to tell her the disappointing news. They agreed to speak to Scott about his behavior as soon as they got home that evening.

During dinner, they gently broached the subject with their son, asking him when, how and why he had started smoking Marijuana. They listened earnestly as Scott revealed he had been smoking for about a month, he had started doing so after he and his friend Owusu had been persuaded to by some cool-looking seniors, and that he actually liked the fix smoking the drug gave him.

Scott's revelations shocked his parents, and after a lengthy lecture on the ills of smoking Marijuana, they made him promise he would try to kick the habit before sending him to bed. Then when they themselves retired to bed, they had a long discussion on the matter before finally agreeing to pay more attention to their son.

***************

Owusu's father, Yunnus Abezuka, was an immigrant from Cameroon. He owned a small hotel which specialized in Cameroonian cuisine, and he was busy pounding yam for the lunch-time rush when the call from the principal informing him of his son's Marijuana use came through.

Immediately, he called his wife, who had just finished making the Egusi soup, and asked her to finish pounding the yams as he had some important business to take care of. Then taking off his apron, he quickly mounted his bike and pedaled furiously home, arriving just as Owusu timidly walked in.

"Young man, why aren't you at school?" He shouted.

"The principal asked me and another boy to go home and bring our parents." Owusu replied in a tiny voice.

"Why? Has the school introduced compulsory classes for parents?"

"No, father. Me and the other boy were smoking..."

One second he was having problems explaining himself to his father, the next second he was having problems clearing the several billion stars that his father's thunderclap of a slap had produced inside his head.

"I send you to school to fill your head with lessons your teachers and your books give you inside the classroom, not with queer substances your friends give you inside the toilet. Do you understand?" Mr. Abezuka thundered.

"Yes sir!" Owusu sobbed.

"Stop crying like a woman!" Mr. Abezuka roared and Owusu instantly stopped sniffling. "Now listen very carefully. You will never, ever from now onwards touch anything that even vaguely resembles Marijuana. Do I make myself clear?"

"Yes sir!"

"Good. Now run along and help your mother with the lunch time crowd before I bash your pot-smoking mouth in!"

***************

The next day, Mrs.Miller, Mr.Abezuka, Scott and Owusu met with the principal at his officce. The boys apologized for their behavior and after assurances from the parents that they would be closely monitored, the principal doled out appropriate punishment rotas and everyone was dismissed.

Mr.and Mrs.Miller paid more attention to their son after the incident, and when he succumbed to pot smoking a few months later, they took him to rehab until he kicked the habit. He still smokes from time to time, but not in harmful quantities.

In the Abezuka household, the incident was never mentioned again. Nobody needed to, for Owusu never touched Marijuana again.

Miss Independent.

Faults with women sometimes tends to jump out at me so readily, it would actually be boring if it weren't so frustrating. All I have to do at times is randomly pick out any woman and observe her, and in five seconds flat I'm guaranteed to have spotted a quirk or two that puts a slip of sandpaper on my nerve endings.

Recently, a nephew of mine was celebrating his Birthday, and I took him out for a treat at a nearby restaurant. There, we ran into a lady friend of mine I haven't seen in ages and naturally, we started to catch upon each other's lives, kids, spouses and all.  I happen to share a couple of family features with my nephew and so she assumed that he was my son, an assumption I made no attempt to correct.

But when I asked her about herself and whether she had already started her family, Her response might have come straight from a basic feminist operational handbook. No, she told me, she did not have a hubby or kids because she was an 'Independent' career woman with her own car, fully mortgaged house and loads of cash in the bank. She didn't see the need to curtail her independence with some demanding hubby or a squealing toddler and besides, men according to her share several characteristics with that creature which has devout Moslems contemplating murder.

Instantly, whatever pleasantness that might have come from bumping into her evaporated and I wished I had resisted my nephew's heart warming pleas to take him out that morning. With the alacrity of a late intern, I hastily mumbled something about the lateness of the hour and said goodbye, hoping never to see her again in this lifetime.

Could somebody please tell me what exactly is the naturally occurring hallucinogen in women that makes them associate financial stability with a right to bash men, all in the name of being 'independent'? If you get around enough, you must have come across the type. Those who just because their presence anywhere is announced by the hoot of a Prado, expect society to always hold them in awe and deference; those ones who believe they are the most independent thing since December 12th just because the figures in their bank balances are followed by more zeroes than I ever accumulated in mathematics tests back in high school. 

But then again, what else would you expect from minds at such an elementary stage of evolution?

Independence, as far as I know, is the ability and appreciation of the ability to do things for oneself, borne out of freedom from control by another entity. Now, basing on this definition, do we really have anything like a truly 'Independent' woman?

Indeed, there are very many women who wouldn't mind doing things for themselves. But nevertheless, I am extremely confident in my assertion that more often than not, women would much rather we did things for them. Have you ever noticed that despite their bleats about being subjugated, it is always the authoritative, assertive alpha males that women are always falling over for? Shout all you like, but deep inside every woman revels in being dominated by a figure of authority, financial stability notwithstanding.

This independence is borne out of freedom of control by another entity. On this count, how well do our ladies fare? For a man, financial stability is indeed a source of a considerable amount of pride, but a man mostly seeks wealth so that he can be comfortable. Power, respect and authority may be the more manifest goals, but ultimately, a man wants his money to work for him. But for women, wealth is a means to prove that they too can be like men. It is their way of getting back to a male-dominated society that they feel is to pay for their bitterness from life's frustrations.

In this case, the 'independence' they so much brag about is not independence in the truest sense of the word since it is controlled by another entity: a drive to prove themselves. They can get what they want, yes, but mostly what they crave for is acknowledgment of their capabilities, and they would be prepared to give up anything if such acknowledgment were to be obtained. To this end, it means this 'independence' is simply a figment of their imagination; they are still shackled by a need to be acknowledged by, ironically, men.

So a piece of advice, my dear ladies, from a quote by the great Lebanese poet and philosopher, Kahlil Gibran. "Doing what you like is freedom. Liking what you do is happiness. If you want true independence, remove male bashing from the equation and do something because you actually like doing it. That way, your independence is pure, and anything else such as financial stability is simply a bonus.

Lunchtime

It's a few minutes past One, and I'm seated on a plank of wood suspended between two other wooden stumps embedded to the ground inside a long tin-walled shack. The location is along Lunga Lunga road in Industrial area, and judging by the frantic pace at which the waiters are rushing, these people are hungry

"Teargas!" The waiter who has just taken my order suddenly shouts, and I have to physically restrain myself from racing for the door and clearing the place as fast as I can. This is, after all, one of the seedier parts of town where riots are not altogether uncommon.

But I need not worry for my safety. The purpose of the waiter's blood-curdling yell, it turns out, is not to warn the assembly of eaters in the food kiosk of the presence of riot-busting fumes. Rather, he simply wishes to inform the harried-looking waitress behind the small kitchen window to include some pepper in the Karanga I have just ordered.

Welcome to the world of low-end dining.

Beware: Tenacious Bitches.

We men have always prided ourselves as the hunters in the dating and relationship wilderness, with the women as our prey. But very quietly, the tables are being turned, and the women are now the hunters. And this is happening so subtly, most men don't even notice it and probably never will.

So you feel like bragging to your pals about how you had that lass at the party eating out of your hand only hours after you two met? Hold up, man! Chances are she actually saw you first, decided she liked you, found a way of getting your attention, [which probably wasn't too hard,] and then sat back and pretended submission to your charms.

Simply put, the man does the courting, but it is the woman that chooses the man who will do the courting. Sorry guys, but that is the new reality in the dating field.

However, now that we have ourselves a fundamental circumstance of life where women are for once actually on the driving seat, something just has to go wrong somewhere. That is as inevitable as another trophy-less season at Ainfield. And the problem in this circumstance is tenacity.

There are women out there, (and their numbers are quite disturbing,) who quite simply won't get the hint that a guy is not that into them. Even when you make it plain as day that instead of dating them you would rather find more interesting things to do with your time such as root canal surgery or supporting Liverpool F.C , they simply refuse to get it.

And the saddest bit is, there isn't anything men can do about it. It is said that men can't live with women and at the same time can't live without them, but on the other hand, women simply can't live without us, period. So since we are a basic female need, the female hunter aggression is something we as men need to learn how to live with because there is no alternative.

But women also need to understand that some prey just can't be had. If a man is not into you, I swear it will be much easier to compute the microphysical dynamics of thermal disambiguation in a cubic decimeter of condensed compounds from Neptune's ionosphere (without a calculator) than to get him interested in you.

To help you know when this is the case, dear sisters, I will now give you three main ways of knowing that pictures of romantic bliss don't pop into a guy's head when he thinks of you.

One, a guy that's not into you will spend as little time with you as possible, despite there being plenty of time and close enough proximity between the two of you. So if you live in plot 917 Umoja 2 and he lives in plot 918 Umoja 2, yet he spends as much time with you as a trophy in the general location of Liverpool, then it is time, like Jesus would say, to cast your nets elsewhere.

A man who is not into you will also not exhibit any signs of jealousy when there is evidence of another man in the picture. Men are naturally very competitive, and more so when striving for a woman's affections. He will get very jealous if he even suspects someone else might be on your speed dial, so if you detect no such apprehension from your prey when he sees you in the company of Biko Adema's cute twin, then sorry sis. Wrong number.

And then there is the fallacy that men always forget important dates, and the truth behind it carries the potential for any woman to know whether or not a man really likes her as much as she hopes he does. Indeed, we do pay scant attention to birthdays and anniversaries, but that is because we don't think they are as important as the things we prioritize.

However, if a girl means that much to me, I will do my best to remember the most minute details about her. The reverse, as you can imagine, is also very true. So if your birthday is on Christmas day but he still forgets despite the fact that your name is Christmastine, then allow me and all of us at ITHSU? this opportunity to offer you and your chances with him our sincerest apologies.

But all these hints and signs are nothing compared to straight up honesty. Thus if you really want to know whether or not a guy is into you, the best thing to do is to go straight up to him and express yourself. Trust me, no guy that is into a girl will even dare to think about not giving you a straight answer, so forget your fear and go for it. After all, In this age of Women's Lib, such things no longer shock us and you will not be considered a brazen lass.