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.