My thoughts…on stuff

Today I seem to be suffering from blogger’s block, apparently brought on by the seizure I had last night. This is the second time it has happened to me, and it’s a strange experience. To be conscious one minute, then wake up with bright lights over your head, surrounded by shadowy figures with no clue as to what’s going on. I suppose it must be what an alien abduction must feel like. So while I recover, let me show you the results of a face recognition test I did the other day at MyHeritage.com. The results were surprising, to me at least. And no, there’s no Denzel in there.

Here are my thoughts on the results.

Susan Sarandon: Interesting. She’s the last person I thought would look like me. At least I know know if the worst happens, I can make a living as a Susan Sarandon impersonator. Just kidding. I’m not into the whole drag thing. I feel weird just holding a woman’s purse, much less wearing her clothes.

Bow Wow: Nice. Seems I’ve got a lot of hidden potential.

Raoul Bova: Who?

Brandy Norwood: At least now I know if I was a girl, I’d be a pretty one.

Vin Diesel: I didn’t see it at first, but when I really looked at his facial structure, it was clear. Maybe if I bulk up, shave my head and develop an deeper voice, I’ll have a chance in Hollywood. Who’s to know?

All in all, a reasonable lineup. So, who do you look like?

The Dutty Wine - a dance that has taken the Jamaican dancehall and even some parts overseas by storm. Every freewheeling adolescent girl wants to learn it, many to compete in the highly publicized competitions held islandwide. For those who don’t know what it is, it is a dance in which you rotate your neck and posterior while moving your legs like a butterfly. Here’s a video. And, as is clear by the picture, it can have many shocking variations. But yesterday, it made the news for a different reason, as it took the life of 19 year-old Tanisha Henry. I’ve heard of “moves to kill,” but this is ridiculous.

My family and I were watching TV when the news aired. Apart from her rather unusual death, virtually nothing about it fazed me. The tears, the wails, the kind words had no effect on me. Typical behaviour when someone dies. But then a woman said, “Is like a demon sen’ from de pit a hell dat is taking the lives of the youth even before dem have time to repent.” I grinned. Sure. Now you say that. And its not the first time this has happened. Not long ago, a woman died at the Asylum Night Club while doing the dance. You’d think this would’ve killed its hype, or at least slowed it down. But the opposite has happened. It has grown, fuelled by the “it can’t happen to me” mentality of youth. The dance is obviously not good for your health. And doctors agree, saying it can cause muscle trauma, shifting of bones and ligament damage.

I must admit, when I first saw this dance, I was struck by the acrobatic nature of the dance (among other things.) But now, after these deaths, I think it should be banned or regulated. Dancehall queens would disagree with me, as they say they feel no pain doing it. But these women are experienced, and should realise that the young ladies of the dancehall will emulate them. And to think, this promising young lady’s life was snuffed out because of some dance craze that will die out in about a year. All for some momentary adoration from the audience, consisting of mostly complete strangers and a few of her peers, and a bit of money. What a waste. And the sad thing is, as long as it’s “hype,” these young girls will rack their bodies to attain that eviable title of queen of the dancehall, even if for a brief moment. Pity.

These people have been getting on my nerves for some time now, and I feel that if I don’t vent I will surely strangle one of them. You know who I’m talking about. They’re the people who flood your inbox with chain letters; the people who laugh aloud at the absurd emails their friends send them, and feel the need to nag you to see it, whether you’re interested or not; the people who still think instant messaging is the coolest thing ever; the people who actually click pop-ups expecting to win something. I like to call these people “net n00bs,” and I have encountered a lot of them in the school computer labs, giggling or expressing disgust at the latest serving of crap from their inbox, disturbing myself and others peacefully surfing the Inter Web. The guys spend most of their time ogling hot girls on social networking sites, clamouring to be their “friend,” deluding themselves that those girls will give them the time of day.

It has gotten to such a point that the lab have blocked users from browsing popular social networking sites and instant messaging. But forever devoted to the cause of idleness, they have found ways to circumvent these restrictions, undoubtedly with the help of technophiles, who took pity on the forlorn n00bs and bestowed some of their techspertise on them. Now they infest the labs more than ever, to the detriment of students with assignments to complete.

Just this week, I asked one of them to direct me to the school’s online catalogue, as I didn’t know the path to get there. He and his friend chuckled, and said in a condescending tone, “click on the big blue E.” An amateur response if there ever was one. These two, who I bet couldn’t even construct a decent hyperlink, talk down to me? I opened Firefox, but the fool minimized it and opened IE. About a day before, a classmate of mine excitedly called me to his machine to read one of his emails. It was about a Nigerian princess who blah, blah, blah, you know the rest. I held back the laughter and informed him about the scam, after which he hesitantly deleted it.

This may come off as elitist, but I was once a net n00b. I forwarded chain mails in fear of dying mysteriously or that my account would be deleted, or in the hope that Bill gates would send me a dollar, Nokia or Motorola would give me a phone, or my true love would return my affections. Silly I know. To date, my true love has shacked up with a jerk, I’m still rolling with my beat-up, monochromatic Nokia, broke as ever. But I grew out of it. Nowadays I take a more business like approach to my browsing. I enable spam filter on all my emails, I rarely open attachments, I ignore pop-ups, spend far less time in unproductive activities, and guess what? Now I create my own content, instead of hopelessly relying on others’. If I were Tim Berners-Lee, inventor of the World Wide Web (not Bill Gates or Al Gore retard), I’d ban these obnoxious people from the Internet. But I guess they do serve a purpose. I mean, who would us geeks get rich off of?

If you’re a longtime reader of my blog, then you know of my unnatural love for the world’s best browser, Mozilla Firefox. The latest version, Firefox 2, was released yesterday (obviously a response to IE7), and you know I’ve gotta get my hands on it. But Mozilla is doing something that will make me and my fellow Firefox users love the browser even more. They’re celebrating the launch this weekend, and are encouraging users all over the world to throw their own parties. The response has been great, with 584 parties thus far, with 4777 partygoers in countries worldwide. Here’s the party map.

Even Jamaican users are joining in. “Digerati” plans to throw the “TJ Firefox Bash.” I’m not sure of the venue, but I plan to be there. Wonder how it’ll be like? Surely there’ll be Firefox T-shirts, but what else? Firefox drinks perhaps? “Sex on the Server”, “Flaming Bill Gates”? What about party banter? “I hate IE.” “Really? I hate IE too”. “Man that Fasterfox extension is off the heezy”. “Don’t worry baby, I’ve got anti-phishing protection”. Should be interesting. And strangely enough, the IE team sent the Firefox team a cake to celebrate the release. You know that thing’s laced with poison, right? Kudos to Mozilla for remembering their open source roots, despite all their success.

P.S. This is my 200th post! Thanks to my loyal readers for sticking with me thus far. And to show my appreciation, I will read and comment on the blogs of all those who comment here. It would be a nice gesture if you invited some of your readers to visit my blog.

Two days ago I published a post on Borat. For those who still don’t quite get the appeal of the movie, here’s the trailer. You enjoy, yes?

I’m looking forward to the release of Borat, or to use its full title, Borat: Cultural Learnings of America for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan. I’m not a fan of Sacha Baron Cohen or his work, like “Da Ali G Show”. Not saying that it isn’t good, it just never captured me. Borat however, does. He was a character on “Da Ali G Show,” doing satirical interviews with the unsuspecting. But now he has grown more popular than Ali himself. Once I saw the trailer for the movie, I fell in love with the character. And how could you not? I mean how can you not like Borat? His Marioesque mustache, relentless butchering of the Queen’s English, odd foreign expressions and mannerisms, astounding ignorance, quest to marry Pamela Anderson, not to mention controversial opinions about Jews, the war in Iraq, just to name a few.

And lets not forget the stories of his glorious homeland, where they drink fermented horse urine, eat cheese made from breastmilk, cars have horsepower (as in, they are pulled by horses), prostitutes are aplenty, and anti-Semitism, homophobia and incest are the order of the day. A truly atrocious painting of the country. You’d think the Kazakhs would just dismiss it as untrue and have a good laugh. But they are not amused. They’ve launched a website against Borat (but with the numerous grammatical errors on the site, one has to wonder if Sacha is lampooning the effort against his character), taking down borat.kz, adding a supplement in the New York Times describing Kazakhstan as thriving and industrious, releasing a movie called “Nomad”, which should portray the nation in a different light, and President Nasarbayev inviting Sacha to Kazakhstan to see how they really live. It has reached such a point that it has become a diplomatic issue.

Borat’s response was, “I’d like to state I have no connection with Mr Cohen and fully support my Government’s decision to sue this Jew. Since the 2003 reforms, Kazakhstan is as civilized as any other country in the world. Women can now travel on inside of bus, homosexuals no longer have to wear blue hats, and age of consent has been raised to eight years old.” My words to the people of Kazakhstan, have a sense of humor! If you want Borat to fail, SHUT THE HELL UP! This is the kind of bad publicity that satirists thrive on. Plus it’s giving his movie and character more publicity. Though it may be too late now. It’s being hailed as one of the funniest movies of all time and a potential box office hit. And if it’s any consolation, he has offended Americans too:

Borat gets served by a black guy.
Borat: “He is…your slave??”
American: “Noo…we don’t have slaves anymore.”
Borat: “Oh…is good for him…not so much for you…”
American: “Yeah.”

Borat at a rodeo.
He told the audience, “I hope you kill every man, woman and child in Iraq, down to the lizards!”
“And may George W. Bush drink the blood of every man, woman and child in Iraq!”

In another sad attempt to draw attention to herself…should I even continue? By posting this I’m indirectly supporting her cause. Well, best I continue, you’ve already started reading. Madonna has adopted a 1-year old Malawian boy named David, and his father couldn’t be happier. I’d be happy too, if a rich and famous, not to mention attractive celeb plucked my child from a life where only poverty and sickness are all he’ll ever know. Madonna and hubby Guy Ritchie have been doing good work over there, setting up an education and feeding center, an orphanage, and helping in the fight against AIDS. But I wonder if this is raw altruism or just another publicity stunt. No matter how famous you are, in Hollywood, media defines celebrity, and Madonna no longer dominates it as she once did. Now the media is obsessed with the antics of these upstart celebutantes.

I’m tired of these celebrities acting as if they actually care about the world around them. Maybe Clooney and Jolie can hang around, because they seem to be genuine, but now it seems be vogue. ‘Responsible celebrity,’ I call it. Whatever happened to the decadent days of Humphrey Bogart and Marilyn Munroe, where celebs drugged themselves into an early grave, yet looked fabulous doing it? If Madonna is doing this because she truly cares, then more power to her. If she’s using his poor kid to keep her name in the tabloids, shame on her. “Pulling a Jolie” seems to be the next big Hollywood trend, right after giving children stupid names guaranteed to traumatize like Apple and Pilot Inspektor. Expect to see Paris Hilton carrying a malnourished African boy in her handbag.

The Internet is abuzz with news of the release of IE7, the first update to Internet Explorer in the last five years. Being a Firefox user myself, I pretty much shrugged it off. I said to myself, “Look at those losers. All giddy over a web experience that is no stranger to users of Firefox, Opera, Flock, Safari, and just about any other web browser.” I have used IE7 myself, and I have to tell you, it’s not bad. It has the features of Firefox, like tabbed browsing, a search box, and an RSS reader. It also has a few more, like page magnification.

And Microsoft seems to have learned a little something from the open source movement, with the release of five betas, and their slogan, “we heard you.” Seems like Microsoft no longer sits in its ivory tower, but is now willing to get down in the trenches. It realises that while its was sleeping, its enemies were gaining ground, and now it intends to throw its weight around and crush all that oppose it. But has my original intent changed? Hell no! The first IE7 vulnerability was discovered less than 24 hours after its release. It has trouble with Google websites, PC Magazine gave Firefox a higher rating than IE7, and Firefox 2 is on its heels. Ha! Take that IE! You may be shiny and new, but you’re still as secure as a sieve!

Last Friday while getting my filling of Hollywood happenings via “The Soup,” I saw a clip of CSI guest starring Kevin Federline, making his grand acting debut (God help us) as a menacing teen that harasses Nick and Warwick. His reward? A swift punch in the balls. You can’t imagine how happy that made me. No, wait, of course you can.

That clip made my day, or night rather, and I was cheering along with Joel and the rest of the “Soup” crew. And just when I thought things couldn’t get better, I heard today that he got slammed on WWE Raw by John Cena. That clinched it for me. This was officially one of the happiest days of my life. Despite the fact that I had a test in the morning and another one later that I barely even studied for, nothing could wipe the smile off my face. Oh don’t judge me! You know you wanna punch K-Fed in the balls, or land him on his spine!

Personally, I really don’t know why I hate K-Fed. Ok, maybe hate’s too strong a word. He hasn’t done anything to me, except made me suffer that intolerable Popozao, insult my sensibilities by calling whatever he spews from his mouth rap, riding Britney’s coattails, turning her into trailer trash, and…ok yeah, I hate him. I feel sorry for Sean Preston and Sutton Pierce. Eventually they’ll realise that they have Kevin Federline as a father. Perhaps these were attempts by Kevin to capitalize on people’s hatred of him. Hey Kev. Got an idea for ‘ya. Fear Factor, tightrope over a jet engine. Anyway, I must leave you now and return to my happy place…Oooh, that has got to hurt!

Almost a month ago, Richard Flynn of UsingEnglish.com asked me to write a piece on Jamaican English. He also said he was a regular reader of my blog. I was honoured by the request and the statement, but also nervous, as I had never been asked to write an article before, and certainly not on a difficult subject like this. But after weeks of delay, I have finally written it. I originally intended to call it “My thoughts on…Jamaican English”, but Jamaican patois isn’t really English. It is a fusion of English, African, Amerindian and Spanish, born out of colonialism, as the slaves and the plantation owners needed some way to communicate. The “Africaness” of Jamaican patois can be seen in how the words are pronounced, and the “Englishness” can be seen in how similar the words are to English words, like “yeh” (yes). The term “patois” has negative connotations, so to bring more dignity to the language, linguists term it as “creole,” a language built from a mixture of other languages.

Apart from Jamaica, it is spoken in London, Toronto, Miami, just about anywhere Jamaicans settle in great numbers. It is said to be eating away at native dialects in those places. In Britain for example, it is replacing the traditional Cockney as the accent used by teens, a testament to the infectious nature of the language. Most Jamaicans speak it or have the ability to speak it, yet strangely English is still considered our official language. This is probably because of two reasons. The fact that Jamaican patois is not considered an official languge, despite the efforts of local linguists, or that patois is still considered a language for the lower classes, despite the efforts of Miss Lou and other cultural icons to make the language more socially acceptable.

In recent times, the language has been used as a means of expression and rebellion. Dancehall artistes use it in their songwriting to connect with the underprivileged in the ghettos, who are their biggest fans. Dancehall also adds many terms to the language, terms that are popular with today’s youth. Rastafarians use it to rebel against “Babylon”, the corrupt establishment, since proper English is an import from the days of slavery. They recognize Jamaican Creole as their own, and fully embrace it. Given Jamaica’s small size, one wouldn’t expect variations in the language. But there are. In urban areas, people speak a diluted form of patois, mixed with a lot of standard English. In the inner cities, a much coarser patois is spoken, where a lot of stress is put on the vowels. In the rural areas, patois much like the type Miss Lou promotes is spoken. It is closer to the patois of slavery days, as words such as “Massa” (Master) are still used.

In conclusion, Jamaican patois is not “Bad English,” though it has English origins. It’s not English either, as any first time visitor to Jamaica will tell you. It is a beautiful language with as much variety and richness as our people, and, in my opinion, is one of the most beautiful languages on the planet. And how could I end this piece without giving some examples of Jamaican words? Here are some common ones used. “Deh” (There), “Pickney” (Child), “Gwaan” (Go on), “Nyam” (Eat), “Likkle” (Little), “Weh” (Where). Here are some Jamaican phrases and a dictionary of them if you want to brush up on or learn Jamaican patois.