Of Writing, Sex Tapes and Elections

 Twitter was atwitter with this news: 400 s*xtapes of an Equatorial Guinea business man released

 Every man on there was quite admiring of Baltasar and his ability to sleep with everyone from his brother's wife to the president's sister. (Do you notice how the women are referenced by whatever man they're adjacent to?)

Anyways it got me thinking about sex tapes and sex in general. 

I write romance for a living and so, I know how boring it can be...to write about. You have the same things happening. Lots of canting hips, moaning, groaning, the occasional kissing, flesh slapping together...by the third book you've seen it all.

As a writer, I know that what jazzes up the sex scene is the emotion behind it. Is it angry sex? They're scratching and biting, he's telling her how he wants to split her in two, she's digging her nails into his shoulders while thinking about him going so deep inside of her that she can taste him in her mouth...Is it tender sex? Do they cry as the hold each other, softly, warmly, gently. Their kisses painful in intensity, their hearts, beating in sync...

You get my drift right?

But watching a sex tape  has none of that. It's just sitting there watching a man stick his dick continuously into a woman. They might not even be that attractive to you. If you're the man or woman in question, you were there, why do you need to watch the playback?

So, my question is, what is the point of a sex tape? 

Is it like when an athlete records themselves at work so they can go home, re-watch and see what they did wrong? Or is it like a memory you get to relive? Your idea of home videos or such.

Also, if this guy and his various sex mates were not ready for the tapes to be made public - so much so that one of the women killed herself - why consent to be taped in the first place? This man was a government official, slept with the wives, sisters, daughters and girlfriends of basically his whole family and fellow government officials. 

And put it on tape. 

Why?

What was the reason?

I sometimes wonder if people subconsciously wish to embarrass themselves because that's the only thing that makes sense.

Anyway, y'all be crazy. 

It's difficult to write fiction these days because competing with reality is just hard.

In other news, Presidential election this week in the US. These last four years have been eye opening on who people really are and these last two years have been especially illuminating about who is valued and who is not by imperialism.

It started with Ukraine. No actually it started with the politicizing of COVID and the proliferation of misinformation. People who I assumed knew how to reason like adults turned out to be...disappointing. Then the war in Ukraine happened and Africans fleeing that same war were STILL discriminated against. We were forced to fund raise to get them out and even then, a simple thing like getting on a train or across a border was harder for Africans than the Caucasians. 

It boggled my mind that even in extreme duress, white people always have time and space for racism. But not as much as it boggles my mind today that there are African supporters of Imperialism. We truly are colonized. 

Anyway, Ukraine happened and they were afforded all and any kind of help available from Westerners. Then October 7th 2023 happened and Palestine was back in the news - as the villains of course. Even when Israeli lies were debunked, Palestinians remained the villains. Even when Palestinian babies died, the babies were blamed for providing 'human shields' for khhhamas. 

Even the darkest cloud has a silver lining. The eyes of the world were opened to what constitutes a "terrorist". 

American propaganda came crashing down.

So, as people go into voting for the next US president, for me, as the grass underneath which elephants are fighting, I don't care which elephant wins, we'll still continue to be crushed. 

Whoever wins, I only know one thing: Ruto Must Go.

Annemarie lives in Nairobi Kenya. Find out more on her work here. And visit her author page here.

The Poison of Fear

Hi. How are you today? I hope you are well. I am too; it's hot and bright as fuck and my eyes have had it. They demand less sunlight and laptop time or they're giving me a headache. Well, I ain't trying to leave the house but there's only so much I can do about the laptop time. So I'm resigned to a constant ache in my temples.
Yay.
Life is great.

No, really it is. Cadbury's has a chocolate that contains rum and raisin. Proteins, vitamins and minerals y'all. Also, I'm working on my porch because it's the coolest room in or adjacent to the house AND it has the best view. I wish you could see it; it's quiet and breezy, the sky is blue, the hot sun is out there, the grass is not so green. It could use some water but the view is still great. I live on a hill so I can see real far.
You don't care.
Okay, let's get to it. I've just seen the CNN townhall with the students from the latest school shooting in the USA. Even as tears were running down my eyes as I watched these children the same age as my son talking about their dead friends, I was also, in the back of my mind wondering; where was the town hall for Black Lives Matter?
I didn't want to but I couldn't help it.

It didn't help that the audience and the participants were a sea of white, repeating many of the things same things people marching for Tamir Rice, Trayvon Martin and Philando Castile were saying. But while the latter were labeled as terrorists, the former were given a town hall broadcast worldwide. And I'm not even trying to hate or diminish their loss. I support their efforts 100%. CNN handled the death of Philando Castile with extensive coverage.
I'm more disillusioned at Obama. I mean even this buffoon in the White House met with the parents and the students even though or probably because of the conspiracy theories about them. Why didn't Obama meet BLM people? Because he didn't want to appear partisan? It just emphasized so much how little those lives really mattered. It didn't help that Oprah showed open support for these students after her loud silence about BLM. I felt the slap in the face and I'm not even personally involved.
You know things are really bad though because white people are on the streets. The white people are the ones shouting, "Stop Killing Our Children!"
I did tell you so.
I TOLD YOU it would come to this.

You cannot let people take lives with impunity and not expect that that impunity won't touch you one day. You cannot let hatred permeate society and not expect that hatred to turn on you and yours. And I mean that worldwide.
Chadwick Boseman said an interesting thing on the view. He said that slavery (and colonialism) does not just enslave the African. It enslaves everyone who is involved in it because you are imprisoned in a certain paradigm unable to step out of whatever role the situation has given you. The results are racism and misogyny which are just symptoms of the problem. Not of hate, but of fear. Fear of taking a step away from the paradigm and having to face who you are and what you have done and been without the protections of those paradigms.
I used to follow Mark Pellegrino on twitter before I watched Black Panther and realized such people are a waste of time. Anyway, the last "discussion" me and him and his followers got into had me thinking about what the reluctance is to ban assault weapons. It seems such a no-brainer that it's difficult to understand why anyone would oppose it. But speaking to these people trying to promote Islamophobia in the guise of intellectual discourse and then trying to support the perpetuation of assault rifles to 'defend themselves' I realized one thing.
These people are mortally afraid.
Of black people.

They're stockpiling for whatever revolution they're expecting to not be televised.
And my initial reaction was burst out laughing at how ridiculous they are. But then it just hit me about how impossible the situation is. You cannot reason with fear. You cannot discuss with fear. These people will say whatever they have to or do whatever they have to, to keep their guns.
These are the fruits of slavery. This is what happens when you try to subjugate a people. Your legacy is a constant fear of them rising up and destroying you.
The hope though is that the new generation is free of the burden of fear. And if they are, they can begin to heal the nation. That is if they don't grow up to be their parents.
Speaking of fearless, fierce forces of nature...my Queen, Rihanna had her birthday yesterday. Let us all wish her many happy returns of the day and remember;

In other worse news, two hundred people have been killed in Ghouta in Syria in just the last week. There is a twitter campaign to raise awareness today, 22/2/2018 at 7pm GMT. Tweet #saveGhouta at that time.
People are so focused on the buffoon in Washington that they ignore the real threat to peace, freedom and democracy around the world. Vladimir Putin. He's Adolf Hitler in the making. Just more stealthy about it. You heard it here first.

There Are Various Ways To Be Sick

I feel like somebody gave me a severe beating. My neck muscles hurt, my arms hurt, my back hurts and my ribs hurt. My non-six pack feels...uncompromising. You'll never guess what brought me to this low.
See day before yesterday I got some craving for some iron in my system so I went out and bought some liver, fried it up and ate it with some Ugali and Sukuma Wiki. Sounds delish huh? I thought so. Ate too much. I know I did. I was still hangover cooking for two from my son being home on Sunday. Anyway...

So I continue with my work, watching CNN which has somehow become the default channel in my house; when I start to feel nauseous. Now my usual M.O for dealing with sickness is to ignore it and hope that by doing so, I can trick it into going away. Don't look at me like that. Sometimes it works.
This time though, it didn't. When I started throwing up, I didn't stop until morning. It was just on and on and on until there was nothing left to throw up but bile. I experienced mass reflex. Liver is banned from my menu forever.

When I woke up next morning I didn't eat, didn't drink, didn't do shit but lie in my bed all day to make sure that shit was gone.I hate vomiting. I loathe nausea. It's one of them main reasons I want to punch people in the throat when they tell me to have another child. You have another child. I have a puppy. A puppy doesn't make you throw up for nine months, or keep you up for the next two years all night breastfeeding, or bite your breasts, or cry, or talk. Basically all you have to do with a puppy is feed it once a day and wash it fortnightly. There. is. no. contest. Puppy wins by a landslide. Love you Chris.

Speaking of things that are nauseous, how about that +Donald Trump guy huh? Hail Hydra! Some vapid blonde was trying to argue his case with me on +Facebook. Here's a tip for free, if you have to twist what a guy is doing to make it seem palatable to normal people, you're the one with the huge problem. Still, the man has no shortage of supporters. +Piers Morgan for one. God it hurts to even say his name. He's such a fool. Like seriously, all the lights are off. How dare he put +Muhammad Ali  and Donald Trump in the same sentence? How dare he compare them? Seriously? Muhammad Ali said more inflammatory things? Yeah he did; he lived in the sixties. When segregation was still a thing. He was trying to set his people free. How dare anyone compare that to the hate Donald Trump spews? To his racism? God, it makes me so mad; I could punch him. That man is such an attention whore that it really doesn't matter what kind of attention he gets. He'll eat it up. That's why the only way to deal with him is to turn your back on his stupid, retarded ass and ignore him. That's what I'm gonna do. My blood pressure demands it.

Oh yeah, Muhammad Ali died. I'm happy for him because I do believe that he went to a better place. A place where his voice is loud again and he can trash talk everyone, come up with new rhymes and just all round continue to slay. I'm sure seventy two virgins are waiting and the original Mohamed will be on hand to give him a high five for a job well done.
It's also +Prince Rogers Nelson's birthday this week. Happy 58th birthday to you! Did you see that +Madonna . tribute? I mean...

So I went to the pharmacy today to get some pain killers for my muscles so I can at least function halfway to normal. The guy gave me a pack of ten. I asked if I need all of them. He said yes. I'm a pharm tech. I know that unless one has chronic pain one does not need to take ten tablets of a pain killer for temporary muscle pain. I will be better tomorrow, with or without painkillers. But these days it's all about the money money money and how much you can sell to people and next thing you know; Prince is dead.
People, take some time, educate yourself about everything that goes in your body. Or do like the townspeople of Le Marais do and let Mya's grandma help you out.