STONE COLD HAVEN

I always figured I was in the wrong profession. Not that I’ll even get away with trying to sell my body. A sell-by date doesn’t even apply in my case. I doubt that I’d ever pass any type of screening that would declare me fit for purpose for what seems to be a very lucrative trade in austere times.

Legend has it that there’s only 2 professions in the world that are recession proof. Being an undertaker and prostitution. You’ll never run out of a ready customer base willing to pay the going rate for services rendered.

But of course once in a while someone just takes the piss and redefines their own rules in the market. Take poor old Dawn. She thought she’d hit the jackpot, but didn’t account for her client being a thief. For the record, whoever pays for sex to the tune of £1.7 million in less than 3 years deserves to be locked up in prison and the keys thrown away. That kind of stupidity endangers the human gene pool.

It’s bad enough that the guy steals over £3 million from his employer, but he should have been executed for the manner in which he spent the proceeds of the heist.

The lady argues that her sexual services were value for money and the guy was prepared to pay the market rate – a rate her accountant estimates at about £20,000 a week. Even the judge in this case hard a problem with that appraisal of the defendants market value as a professional provider of horizontal refreshments. Which makes you really ask the question – is any pussy worth circa £3K a day? The law of the land clearly thinks not.

But then again, what price do you put on someone being a platinum idiot and agreeing to pay that amount. The lady is clearly aggrieved that she’s losing the fruits of her loins, literally – but you really can’t argue about a judge clawing back the proceeds of crime. It’s forbidden fruit.

My take – she should have hired a more savvy accountant to keep her hard earned money away from the long arm of the criminal justice system. There’s nothing that’s more of a bastard than thinking you’ve earned £1.7 million for a judge to tell you “actually, sweet heart – you need to pay that shit back”.

Or maybe she should have opted to become an undertaker. There are no grey areas when it comes to splitting hairs over the prices of the services rendered.

So I’ve also joined this twitter thing. I’m told its safer and more sane than MKZ – but what do I know. You can follow me on twitter and find out whether I get the hang of it.

So a few weeks ago while relaxing with some friends, I was asked to consider talking some sense into a dead beat dad – who for all intents and purposes, had left a poor girl at the traffic lights, literally holding the baby.

I guess I was only asked when it turned out that I actually went to high school with the said dead beat dad. You’ll be surprised how 6 degrees of separation can make the world smaller than it really seems.

I think we were talking about how kids change people’s lives – and one conversation too many ended up with the story of my former schoolmate. The said girl abandoned at the traffic lights is his ex-missus, so you can just picture where this conversation went short of wishing that she had actually been with us at the time.

I’ll plead the 5th amendment right here on going into the specific story of this couple for the simple reason that there’s a very high possibility that they will be directed to read this post.

I don’t consider myself a marriage counsellor, but for what it’s worth, I thought that this once, I’d provide a public service based on my experience and that of my peers. If it helps even one girl to make better choices in men – or convinces even one other guy to take care of responsibilities, then the post is most definitely worth my time.

It’s certainly easier than sitting down to talk sense to – you know who.

Girls, here’s 5 Stone Cold sure fire ways to identify a dead beat dad from a mile off.

1. Follow your instincts

God gave you instinct to protect you from the evil in this world. Use the damn instincts and save yourself from the world.

The best advice you can ever get is not to get yourself into certain situations especially when all your faculties are telling you that it’s plain madness. Your body is wired to be selective and to use any stimuli it can to detect what is inherently dangerous for you.

You have signs all over that only you choose to ignore – habits, what he says, what he does, the choices he makes, the risks he takes – even his scent gives you an indication about how dangerous the proposition is.

Let’s get one thing out of the way – you’re not going to totally avoid danger. There’s no such thing as zero risk. Everything you do is risky.

Even for a guy, looking at a girl’s ass is risky because it presents options not previously available. For a girl, the risks are different. I’m just saying listen to your instincts and minimize that risk.

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When news about the devastating earthquake that hit Haiti started filtering through last week, my first thought was ”watch the vultures ride into town”

Even my wife was confused by my perceived indifference and reference to the aid and humanitarian organisations as vultures, as they geared up for what is turning out to be the biggest peace time humanitarian disaster of our generation, save for the 2004 Tsunami.

The earthquake and its aftershocks have caused untold devastation and suffering to the people of Haiti. Lord knows they need all the help they can get, and in principle, I have absolutely no problem with a coherent humanitarian effort followed by a structural programme to rehabilitate the country’s infrastructure.

Inevitably with such situations, the ugly side of the self righteous aid and development industry bears its teeth. It’s a conversation many people in the aid industry don’t want to have as they bury their heads in the sand.

Watch the news now, and it’s more to do with aid agencies marketing themselves and fund raising than actually doing the bread and butter things that helps stabilize relief issues in Haiti. Every aid agency you can think of are in town from Red Cross to Oxfam, from the Sisters of Guayando to The Pillars of Christian Faith, from Handicap International to Doctors Without Borders.

The question has to be asked though? Are all these people working with a silo mentality really helping? Some of the aid agencies are already being accused of focusing on the marketing opportunities the media coverage is providing. If you work in the aid industry, you’ll be well aware of the potential of fundraising off such a disaster.

Aid agencies are even claiming ownership of the relief efforts by using slogans like ”Spearheading the relief efforts” or ”Leading the relief challenge” – as if it was a job that belonged to that agency.

The blunt reality is that the co-ordination of the relief effort is incompetent at best and tragic at worst. The people of Haiti are already feeling the impact of these uncoordinated efforts. Lives that could have been saved are gone, those who could have been treated have developed permanent disabilities because aid agencies were still haggling on the tarmac at the airport in Port Au Prince.

The worst part is that the agencies will still continue to play territorial games and have the overall relief work hampered by politics and hidden agendas.

Where I live, we’ve even been approached by several people purporting to act for NGOs that are sending relief to Haiti. One of them even left a threatening note demanding that we give something.
See
, I’m one of those people who get pissed right off with such nonsense. For one, the heifer who left that note saying she was coming back to collect anything from money to old clothes has no clue where I stand on this issue – or even what I’ve already done for that matter.

I actually happen to know how the money trail works within the industry so I’ll be well placed to know what to do if and when I decide that my conscience needs to do something.

These same agencies haven’t even cleared up the mess of the bottlenecks they caused after the Asian Tsunami – and believe me when I say too many cooks spoilt that broth.

We’ve got a long way to go with Haiti.

When chatting to a good friend on new year’s day, I asked how her daughter was, and at first, it seemed that the question had dampened her spirits.

“Darius, she’s in secondary school now”, was the subdued answer and it was quickly followed by a resigned “Dude – it’s official, we’re old”.

But even after we both cracked out laughing, the thought lingered and you begin to take stock. I guess that the main change in my life over the last several years is that some things have become more important than others and you tend to prioritize better and focus on what’s important. What hasn’t changed though is the ability for nostalgia to hit you hard enough to make you home sick especially with the sub zero temperatures and snow storms that box you in the house and makes you ask that dreaded “what am I really doing here” question.

It made me think of the good old days growing up and enjoying some of the simplest and most cherishable moments life will ever present.

Don’t know about some readers up in here, but there were times when 5 bob could take you a long long way back in the day. My dad used to give us 5 bob a day and that would cover bus fare to and from school, a soda and a snack of some sort (usually quarter bread bandika) for lunch, and you’d still have left over change to buy roast maize with pili pili or patcos to carry you through the evening.

Long before the advent of satellite TV with over 20 exclusive movie channels, local entertainment back then was fronted by public service open air movie services like Tazama Mobile Cinema pitched up in an open field once a month to bring to you the blockbuster of the day. They had this strange habit though, of commentating the movie as it went on in a manner that was as equally funny as it was annoying.

Speaking of entertainment, there were classic shows that would definitely be in my DVD collection right now – From Vioja Mahakamani and the comical antics of the residents of Matopeni, to Vitimbi and the real celebrities like Othorong’ong’o and Masanduku (forget all these latter day celebs who think they’re celebs because…well, anything makes you a celeb these days). There were shows like Tushauriane that were banned outright because they showed a couple embracing and the chap started unblousing the girl. Or even the days when we didn’t have mobile phones and you had to walk a kilometre to the nearest phone box where there was a massive queue of all manner of people – and you’d be mad when your ‘girlfriend to be’ plays hard to get and pulls that stunt of asking you to call later because she’s watching No One But You or The Rich Also Cry. The ungrateful heifer – after all those hours you’ve waited in line to make that call….LOL!

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Air travel isn’t what it used to be. If I’m really honest, it’s probably the bane of my life (or at least it ranks somewhere out there with the things I hate most). The long stretch of flight time 39K ft up there I can probably handle by watching a movie, listening to music or working. The worst part is most definitely the insulting security and pre-boarding checks that take place in the name of guaranteeing our personal safety.

Abdulmutallab, the Arsenal hating virgin who couldn’t even do a competent job as a suicide bomber has just made things overly complicated for hundreds of thousands of air travellers around the world. It’s bad enough to go to any airport and watch passengers being prodded around like useless cattle while being told to remove shoes and go through the most humiliating security checks that are legally sanctioned. But this 23 year old punk had to go try redefine the meaning of a Christmas cracker.

The removing the shoes thing started after some freak tried to blow up a plane with a device implanted in his sneakers and failed. What are they going to do now? Ask everyone to strip and flap their underwear in front of the security guards to make sure that only remnants of pubic hair drop out?

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