Friday, January 23, 2004

it's like Virtual Occoquan is on a little teenie weenie very short just a blink if you think of the dinasaurs HIATUS, and people are all pissed off because there is no new Steve Raker. Like we can understand what you like about him to begin with.   I Overslept - Steve Raker Cupla years ago I overslept.  It musta been that morning when the great comet hit the earth and killed all the editors for disposable mystery/detective/lawyer fiction.  Since a stopgap measure is needed, I offer the following helpful hints for writers:   1. Hire somebody, anybody, to proofread your work.  Most of your errors in word choice, minor plot points, etc. can be caught and corrected by a bright high school student.   2. Absolutes are rare.  Please stop your characters from incessantly tripping over them or being them.    ex.  in a recent read, a minor character, an attractive woman, was used as bait in a sexual harassment scam.  Her beauty grew with every mention.  In short order, 'quite attractive' became 'irresistible to any man, dead or alive'.  The freakin' Pope was in line for a shot at this gal.   I was afraid to read further, least her beauty become so intense that the sun should fall from the sky.   3. When you need to speak of things mechanical, don't just throw out a few mechanical sounding words.  Get help.  Please don't have a character get stuck on a lonely road because of a 'bad engine block'.   4. You will be allowed one extraordinary coincidence per book; use it wisely.   ex.  a woman phones her husband who is a jazz musician; he answers his jazz musician cell phone while fishing.  Their baby(named after a jazz musician) is with him in the boat(built from the ribs of dead jazz musicians).  During the wife's ensuing rant about baby safety and jazz musician husband irresponsibility, he notices his fishing rod wobble.  He catches a **5 POUND BASS**.  note: this was not a story about a man catching a 5 POUND BASS, the 5 POUND BASS did not reappear in the story, nor did this extraordinary coincidence lack for company, lots of company.    ps. the woman's husband is a jazz musician.   5. If a character has a distinctive characteristic or job, show some respect for your readers' ability to catch that plot point during the first twelve or fifteen times it's mentioned.  If say, your protagonist's husband is a jazz musician; perhaps you could limit your references to his jazz musicianship to three or four per page.  Maybe then it might be a surprise and a neat literary trick to have the husband (what is his job again?) kill the 100% evil bad guy with a musical instrument (remember now what he does for a living, are you following this?).    Sorry, I must go now.  My incredibly beautiful ex-wife, a ten time Miss Universe, that we all thought had died in the volcano, just stopped by to tell me I won the biggest lottery in the world.  We fall in love again in five minutes.  We almost have sex but, "Oh no, here comes another volcano.  Quick, lets find a helicopter.  Sure, I know how to fly a helicopter.  ..Wow, that was close.  Wait a minute, you're not my ex-wife, you're her identical twin sister.  My real ex-wife would have known all about my helicopter flying from our last adventure.  And where did you catch that 5 POUND BASS?"  Dang, now my car won't start; must be the engine block again.  Ha ha, that's life.        like that's really his life... 7:55:36 PM    on the other hand  []

Tales of Scary Karma: The Battered Professor Probably everyone is familiar with the Stephen Hawking story by now. If not, I'll give you a brief synopsis.            Brief Synopsis Professor Hawking was brought to the hospital a few days ago to be treated for pneumonia. Hawking is the world famous physicist that wrote the short yet impenetrable 'Brief History of Time'. Or if you don't know him from there, he's been a guest voice on the Simpsons. (Bonus link! Click here for the Simpsons Stephen Hawking action figure.) Now the fact that the 62 year old Hawking is a paraplegic who can only speak with a computerized voice box is the main reason he's being treated in a hospital rather than at home. And once they checked him in, they started seeing a lot of extraneous injuries. And they concluded: 'Someone has been whumping on the civilized world's most beloved scientist.           End of brief synopsis. Time for the updates. 'Right!' says the family. They've known it all along that someone has been beating on Stephen. And they're pretty darn sure they know who that someone is: Elaine Hawking. Yeah, they had accused her before, four years prior, but Stephen had refused to spill the beans on Elaine. They figure that this is a classic case of Munchausen Syndrome by Proxy. This is a behavior usually found between mothers and children wherein the mother induces injury/illness in the child in order to get attention for themselves. 'Oh, you poor thing. Look at what you have to deal with.' Because of Hawking's level of dependence upon his wife, this accusation becomes quite plausible. Here's Christian Gysin reports from today's Daily Mail: A nurse who cared for Professor Stephen Hawking claimed last night that she saw his wife abusing and mistreating him. Elaine Hawking called her disabled 62-year-old husband a cripple, bathed him in water that was too hot and allowed him to wet himself, it was alleged. The nurse was reported as saying: "She gets angry and has thrown him on the bed where he kicks his limbs or hurts himself. She allowed him to slip down low in the bath so the water goes in the hole in his throat. She has left him in the garden without his computer mouse so he cannot talk and call for anyone. She gives him lots of verbal abuse and calls him a cripple and an invalid, which depresses him. She would withhold the bottle he used to go to the toilet so he wet himself, which he does not like because he is a very dignified person and a very private person. The verbal abuse is unbelievable. Her mouth is like a sewer. We (his nurses) got so used to it we forgot it was not normal behavior." Whoah! And that's only one nurse, whereas the Hawkings employ round the clock nursing services. The police are interviewing ten more nurses. And they're taking their time with it, too. They've just about had it with this Hawking fellow. Cause like I mentioned earlier, they had dealt with this particular asshole a few years ago. He wouldn't help them then, and he's not being helpful now, claiming all allegations are false (no matter who they're directed against!) and that his privacy is being invaded. You need to know that Hawking has been wasting away from motor neurone disease for around forty years. Forty freaking years is a hell of a long time. And I'll let you in on a little secret. Had Hawking not been blessed with a brilliant mind, which has allowed him to earn a large personal fortune (round the clock nursing ain't cheap), he would sure as shit be dead now instead of popping up in the news whenever they need a quote from a well known physicist. With Carl Sagan long gone, we're just about out of celebrity scientists. Now when Hawking was twenty-two years old and still spry, just a few months after his unfortunate diagnosis, Stephen took himself a wife, girl by the name of Jane Wilde. And even though his health continued to slowly  degenerate, they produced three healthy kids in the first dozen years of their marriage. What sort of woman puts up with this type of shit, you wonder, taking care of an invalid day after day, year after year, and still professing her love. Let me be cruel for a moment. This man is a car wreck. Take a look at this guy! Good Lord! And a sparkling conversationalist, I'm sure. I'm thinking that this Jane Wilde is a regular Mother Theresa. She even got her ex-husband to build him his first voice synthesizer. But it couldn't last. I know what you're thinking, she couldn't take it anymore and left him. Wrong! He left her! No, I'm not kidding. He left her in 1990 for Elaine Mason. How does a paralyzed physicist meet cute girls, anyhow? Uh, when they're emptying your bed pan, of course. He ran off with one of his nurses, leaving two kids still at home, one of them ten years old. And that's the truth. Except for the part about running off. I'm sure that's not right. I have this vision of Woody Allen making an escape from the hospital with Louise Lasser shouting "I'm wheeling as fast as I can." Jane Wilde was reportedly broken-hearted, but she got over it eventually. She remarried in 1996, and in 1998 wrote a book, 'Music to Move the Stars', about her marriage to the Professor. How would you describe it, Jane? "A brittle, empty shell, alone and vulnerable, restrained only by the thought of my children from throwing myself into the river, drowning in a slough of despond, I prayed for help with the desperate insistency of a potential suicide." Damn, girl, why didn't you just pack it in. "I couldn't go off and leave Stephen. Coals of fire would have been heaped on my head if I had." Ah, well, it's all over now. And is little Stephen happy at last? I mean aside from the fact that he keeps showing up at the emergency room with the occasional bruises and cuts and broken bones. Oh yes, and that incident when Elaine left him stranded in the garden on the hottest day of the year, and he suffered sever heat stroke. A different nurse has been talking to The Mirror U.K. the past couple of days. "I remember coming in one day and he had a cut on his throat. She must have shaved him very harshly. It wasn't a shaving nick. It was about three inches long... Another time she slammed his wrist down on his wheelchair and his wrist broke. That actual moment was seen by a nurse but she was given a very hard time. Elaine was very jealous of her, she was attractive. If you were a threat at all, that was her worry." The source also described a special ritual that Elaine would perform for all the new nurses, calling them unexpectedly to the bedroom. "She would often be doing some strange show. She would be naked on top of him. At the time, I thought I had made some terrible mistake. It was afterwards I was told that happened to quite a few people. It was to make it clear that they had a sexual relationship. It was an initiation." Hawking has issued a statement. "There is absolutely no substance to the reports." And ex-wife Jane? She had a statement too. "Stephen is very vulnerable. I don't think he is in control of the situation. I trust the medical authorities will take the situation very seriously and not discharge him before the situation is resolved." But it's really not her problem any more. 12:47:30 PM    on the other hand  []

The Aki and Paw Paw Archives   Ladies and Gentlemen It's Aki and Paw Paw! Searching for Celebrities If you want to do the crime without doing the time, you can't find a much better choice of wrongdoing than rioting. Rioting is a numbers game, the knowledge that 'they got the guns, but you got the numbers'. You have to be pretty wasted (or darn unlucky) to get busted at a mid-sized riot. Also, belonging to a group crime carries a certain social cache, a night with the neighbors as it were. Take Sierra Leone. Please. According to the AP "Thousands of fans rioted at Sierra Leone's national stadium Saturday when authorities substituted two local dwarf comedians for a widely anticipated out-of-town midget duo. Police arrested 30 people, amid damage and dozens of injuries." See, only 30 busted out of thousands of rioters, and most of these were people who were trying to steal the stadium seats. (No details available, but who wants to bet that the seats were concrete?) Now. speaking in defense of the rioters, it would be unfair of me to ignore the fact that the act that was cancelled was the rib-tickling team of Nigerian funnymen Aki and Paw Paw. I would have to guess that these are very funny midgets indeed, for the crowd to have gotten this riled up. What can we learn from this? First, any fool knows that dwarf comedians are nowhere nearly a funny as midget comedians. It's those stubby little fingers - they can be very distracting. Secondly, and more importantly, Sierra Leone is really hurting for celebrities. I mean, really - I googled 'Aki and Paw Paw' and got no hits at all. Then I searched for Sierra Leone celebrities with the same dismal result. This tells me even more - not only does Sierra Leone have no decent celebrities, they have no decent celebrity journalists. Why can I find pictures of neither Aki or Paw Paw? This is wrong. As an American, I am fortunate to live in a land where we have the greatest celebrities in the world. We have more celebrities than we could shake a stick at. I call on the leadership of this country to send some of our fine celebrities to the deprived people of Sierra Leone. What a difference a Baldwin brother could make! Tina Yothers, you could be queen, baby. And Gary Coleman, what can I say? I think they're gonna love you.   The Return of Aki and Paw Paw Aki and Paw Paw first burst into my consciousness about four weeks ago. The miniature Nigerian Funnymen caused a heck of a riot in Sierra Leone by virtue of their absence, and I fully expected to be reading about their exploits for many days to come. Alas, it was not to be. I searched for them, and could never find further information. Not even a picture, and lets face it, when you're writing about Nigerian midget comedians, you really have to have a picture. Was the story of the riot even true? I wrote it off, forgot about it. Until today, that is, when I discovered an amazing fact. The little dudes aren't even named Aki and Paw Paw (why they call them that in Sierra Leone is another question). Granted, this is much easier to pronounce than Osita Iheme and Chinedu Ikedieze, but it really complicates a search. So, are they really famous? I'll say. With 42 features available from Klub Afrika, they're on a pace to surpass even Michael Caine in the churning 'em out club. And hey dude, these films are funny. Listen to this capsule review for 'Awilo Sharp-Sharp': "The added effect of the Comedy Twins Osita Iheme and Chinedu Ikedieze makes this an outstanding comedy... I wouldn't miss this comedy for anything. As if part 1 was not rib-cracking enough, they had to do part 2.... so therefore, rent both parts now." Here's a couple of my favorite covers. 'Lagos Boys', wherein Aki and Paw Paw really get on Dad's nerves with their crazy shenanigans. Dad (James Nelson) tells the boys that if they don't calm down he's going to break their little necks. Uh-oh, looks like the jokes gonna be on Dad! 'House Boys for Sale', wherein Mom gets really put out over Aki and Paw Paw's non-stop mischief. Mom (June Wellington) takes the boys off to town where she attempts to trade them to the local people for a couple of pigs, or even a goat! 'Small Shit'. No synopsis available. All the World's a Stage, and We Are But Aki and Paw Paw: an opinion from Sheka Tarawallie. The Aki and Paw Paw story was one of our very favorites of 2003, and now that we have learned the secret identities of these little guys (Osita Iheme and Chinedu Ikedieze), we will keep out ears finely tuned for all the A&PP news. The following excerpts are from a column by Sheka Tarawallie that was posted in the OpEd section of AllAfrica.com. The piece was taken from Sierra Leone's Concord Times, and is titled 'The Day the Nigerian Midget Comedians Came'. I am not a fan of Nigerian movies - I must state from the outset, unequivocally. Since they started filtering into this country in the early/mid nineties, I have been one of the few journalists that raised a voice in protest for caution. The initial films were, to me, preposterous: full of myth, horror, superstition, and underworld activities. After much criticism, there was a change to films dealing with social issues. Films of intrigue, subterfuge, deception, greed, lust, robbery, twisted love subsequently carried the day. Sheka is so much a fan of Nigerian films, as he approves again and again. Here comes history. So spans the magnificence of the film life of Nigeria. Yes, it took ten years to reach this vaulted state, but art is not speedy. The writer here is apparently a journalist who knows a great bit about cinema. A search for Sheka Tarawallie would suggest that he is probably the editor of Torchlight, an independent Sierra Leone newspaper that has been shut down from time to time by the government. World Press Review puts it like this: The dilemma of a Sierra Leonean journalist is simple: Report for the rebels, and you are a collaborator, and the penalty is treason. Report for the government, and your punishment is summary execution if you are caught by Sankoh's RUF bandits. This goes a long way towards explaining why Sheka is now writing about Aki and Paw Paw instead of human rights issues. Eventually, Nigerian films (to the chagrin of Chinese and Indian or even American films) became a sine qua non in the daily existence of our nation. <Yes, we Americans have made many great films, but we cannot hold a candle to the artistry of Nigeria.> The various posters, scattered around town and even upcountry in mostly makeshift buildings, are often surrounded by on-lookers. In Sierra Leone's various homes, Nigerian actors and actresses have gained extra prominence popularity: Omotola, Ramsey, Emeka, and Genevieve are, to put it mildly, household names. <Omotola, Buster, Cyclops, and Thalideous; these are the names of my closest kin.> And by coming to Sierra Leone, they have now become personal names - as parents name their children after these artists. But two names (perpetually jointly called since we came to know them), Aki and Paw Paw, have risen above the household and the personal to enter into our national life, bringing a whole nation to a state of self-scrutiny and self-penury. You know, I just don't think, at this point, that Sheka is gonna apologize for tearing down the nice stadium that China built for Sierra Leone. You think they're coming back and building it again, Sheka? I dunno... The destruction of our National Stadium last week cannot only be seen as an accident or a well-orchestrated occurrence; but should be viewed from the perspective of corroborative analysis and interpretation. Only recently have the Chinese rebuilt the stadium, why within months should Sierra Leoneans destroy it all of a sudden? Are we really all rebels? Was it a premeditated plan? Or was it spontaneous? I am absolutely positive that I have stated my opinion on this before. I F*ING hate rhetorical questions. Don't hand me a goddamn rhetorical question. I'm liable to rip your head off... Maybe you would like to explain this all as a sports thing. You know, we have riots in this country after sports events. Just look at LA or Philly, after a big loss or a big win. Football <i.e., soccer> suffered a fatal blow, only revived under NPRC rule. Thereafter, apart from the individual excellence of players, Sierra Leonean football dropped, and it became a byword. And then, just recently, we were eliminated by a Congolese side at home, throwing us away from international football for four - four bloody - years. <trashed! tossed away! no longer worthy! Redskins fans should riot too!> We bowed in shame. And the question became: what's the purpose of the stadium now?  Except for entertainment! Vicky Boy's Production came in to bring Nigerian actors - popular as they are - in Sierra Leone. The sensational duo, Aki and Paw Paw were coming to town The city was excited, particularly after the earlier appearance of Genevieve and co. This is starting to look serious, isn't it? The stadium is alive, disastrously overloaded. People want to see the fucking Nigerian midgets. Funny sunofabitches, those two. Goddamn. Even though they're pushing forty, they still look like little kids. So cute in those shorts... Expectations were high to see the live performance of the twin-like diminutive actors. Till twelve midnight - no Aki, no Paw Paw. They were still playing the MC game (like Saddam's Information Minister) when a chair flew from the presidential pavilion. It was the signatory tune. What followed was an outburst of anger and rage: glasses, panes, doors, lights, all breakables bore the brunt. Stadium in shambles. Again. All breakables bore the brunt. Say it three times. Sounds fifty percent better than twice. You just repeat repeat repeat, its a hit baby it's a smash. Did you expect less? I didn't expect less. Had Sierra Leoneans gone to the stadium... and not seeing what they expected, and had just folded their hands and returned home in a docile manner, then I would have concluded that they were no longer human beings. Indeed human character makes room for anger and other emotions. No longer human beings? Damn, that's strong. I kind of feel that you're piling on, you know? If a needle is pierced through a human skin and the body does not react, then it must either be dead or dysfunctional... Anger is a human trait that may lead to disastrous consequences. Anger can make you kill even your loved one - only to regret later... This brings the question of, who led the people to anger to the extent that they would destroy what was - in actual fact - their own? Goddamn, dude... You seem to be getting awfully upset about a couple of, uhh, very talented midgets. You know, we've got midgets over here in the states... Mini Me, and uh, there was Billy Barty, and all those other midgets, shitloads, yeah, Gary Coleman, that's one. And even though you rambled on a bit, I believe that was another rhetorical question. Was it fair to treat a people in the manner that they were treated - hoodwinking them to believe that Aki and Paw Paw were coming, and then all they saw was Kontiki theatre, this theatre, that theatre? <Mmmm...> Our national life needs to be re-examined, but in this whole game of 419 politics and socialization, it is the poor, innocent people that are being led to the slaughter. 40- something of them have now been lined up for prosecution as those that destroyed the stadium. They may be sent to jail, all in the name of setting an example. However, if we want to set an example, I believe, it should be directed at those who say things that they cannot do - who always fool the people. You're an angry guy, aren't you Sheka? I dunno. You guys destroyed a stadium that provided at least a little bit of entertainment for the people. Okay. They tried to fool you with some native midgets. But aren't all midgets equally funny? Aki and Paw Paw are two characters known for their intrigues, and their relish in destroying others' plans. Their preoccupation in virtually all films is to make a normal situation abnormal, in a satirical, ironic way - as it has now happened with the stadium saga. The people had been seeing Aki and Paw Paw play tricks on other people's fortunes over and over. So, on that fateful day, when the two could not come, the people remembered and instead decided to play the two mischievous actors' parts. In a sense, Aki and Paw Paw came - metaphysically: they entered into the people's minds and started acting a film that I can call, "Aki and Paw Paw in Sierra Leone". Metaphysically, huh? I'll bet that everyone in Sierra Leone is pissed as shit at those little guys now. Of course this incident has not dampened Sierra Leoneans love for Nigerian films. It has even aroused the interests of the formerly indifferent and disinterested. Therefore the Aki and Paw Paw show that never was could be the best publicity stunt for Nigerian - and Sierra Leonean - actors and actresses so far. Are you guilty? Did you destroy your stadium? Are you a moron? Do you really think that the people of Sierra Leone should adapt the rambunctious antics of Aki and Paw Paw? Should we tell the DPP? Please tell the DPP that the people were just acting when they destroyed the stadium - and no one should be arrested (in real life) for just playing his/her role in a movie - whether in breaking a chair or taking it away. After all, the government has also played its part as the unwatchful watchman. Thanks for the ganja, Sheka! Look, a little advice. Toss in an incendiary but incomprehensible remark about terrorism. I'll edit it for you - just leave that bag on the counter. Though two of the organizers have now been caught, it still leaves much to be desired from the government that Osama Bin laden could just appear one day in a clean shave proclaiming himself as a John Kamara and then we give him Lumley beach to do his thing. And then at that time more than sixty million leones would be lost! That is truly a lot of leones! Real Cold News Stories: Man Eats Paw Paw!!! Okay, there's nothing new on the midget Nigerian funnymen, so how about this breaking news on a guy named Jaya Dev Orwin who was fined  for eating a paw paw? We get this story from The Age in Australia.   Seems like homeless Jaya Dev Orwin just doesn't know what's good for him. Police decided to teach him a lesson, fining him $25 after he flagrantly stole and consumed a paw paw which had fallen from a tree in a Brisbane backyard. Orwin ain't got no twenty-five dollars. Police cornered Jaya, who was described as a 'starving disability pensioner', as he was finishing the last pieces of the fruit. It gets worse. The 26-year-old, who suffers Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder and dyslexia, emerged barefoot from the watchhouse after his brief court appearance. He pleaded guilty to a charge of being found unlawfully in a yard at Appleby Road, Stafford Heights, on Brisbane's north side. Outside the court, Orwin said that before his arrest he had slept overnight in a nearby park after walking more than 15km from the city.He said he had no money after unsuccessful efforts to get an advanced dole payment from Centrelink. He was found with "remnants" of the paw paw around his mouth. Caught with the meat in his mouth! Ain't no mollycoddling of your ne're do wells in Brisbane. And what sort of lame ass excuse do you think this dyslexic, ADH disorder having, barefoot, broke, disabled, and thieving motherfucker tried to pass off in an effort to gain sympathy from the bleeding hearts?  "I have been really hungry before and you go a bit scattered." Oh boo hoo. I guess we're supposed to feel sorry for someone who would abscond with a paw paw just because it fell out of a tree. "I have been so hungry I have felt like stabbing someone." Violent as well as a bum. I say lock the cell and throw away the key. "Everyone has got to eat because you can't walk around with nothing in your guts. The paw paw really fixed me up and they weren't even ripe." Tell it to the hand.   7:15:54 AM    on the other hand  []