#UgBloggers7Days Blog Post Numero Cinq: Dear Miss Rhimes.

Dear Miss Rhimes,

Sher here, avid (more like slightly obsessed) watcher of your shows ; Scandal and How To Get Away With Murder (Chile, that title is a mouthful! Why not something super short and sexy like Murder Inc?! No? Moving on then). I just finished watching the 3rd episode of that last one and now that my blood pressure has returned to normal, I have questions! Ohh so many! But you're a busy woman, producing 3 primetime shows is no mean feat so  I'mma let you finish but I have 3 questions that I gotta ask. (See what I did there?) Then I can live.


Question one: The HAIR. Olivia Pope and Michaela Pratt hair (Annalise is wearing a wig. Nobody got time for that). How do they get that hair? It is not fair for you to send  perfectly laid hair our way without telling us how it got that way. Yet you are fully aware that the black woman's number one struggle is hair! Miss Rhimes,Where is the Olivia Pope hair blog? We need tutorials. We need product reviews. We need Olivia Pope and Michaela Pratt hair!! Perfectly layed like goddess hair.

I need this magic spell! I have suspicions that the secret ingredient is newborn tears. That hair is coiffed!! Damn!!

Question two:Side Piece Activity! Why Miss Rhimes?! Why this bad behaviour?! Miss Pope is a side chick and Ms.Analisse has nookie on the side. Why? We black women are not about that life, are we? That can't be the co-curricular activity that the ONLY black female leads in a primetime show can do. How about psycho serial killer? I see Annalise pulling that off superbly. She's the pro at getting away with murder. Something for you to think about.

Annalise,Ms.Pope,Enough!

Question three: The Oreo Situation. Miss Rhimes,I love that you are bringing diversity to our screens daily. Love it. Absolutely. But (very big but) there's such a thing as diversity overkill *side eye at Glee*

Olivia's first love interest was white. We said OK, lovely, how cute, very fresh. Then you threw in a black dude who didn't last 2 seconds (Poor Edison. Didn't have chance with his big Ole ring. Olivia's a fool.) Then came another white dude. Ahh more diversity. We're cool. It's alright. Then came Annalise and you gave her a white husband?! Why Shonda?! Why?! Is this a theme? Am I missing something here? 

Hmmmnn

And then you went and made Michaela's fiance a down-low dude! Why Miss Rhimes?Why don't you let these women prosper in the love Olympics struggle? We can't win in real life and you're taking it away on TV too. No. We can't have this. Look into your heart and have a storyline where a black woman is happily married. She may kill people for fun in her spare time, have a gambling addiction, be a pimp. But for God's sake let her win at love!  

Miss Rhimes

Bisous.

Lessons from the world's greatest Boss!

Hey dolls,

Missed you. Between being a mom, girlfriend, sister, friend, mentor and boss lady there was simply no time for the blog. But don't worry, will pop in once in a while. I aint dead.

I believe I have the world’s greatest boss. He has helped me grow from a simple naive intern from the university to a fully fledged confident IT engineer leading a team of 6. I have worked with him for close to 3 years now and the amount and quality of knowledge I have gained is too much and too good to not be shared. Here are the most valuable lessons I have picked from him.

1. Attitude: In most cases, attitude beats both experience and skill. When you have an employee who has a hunger to learn, a thirst to grow and extremely good at following instructions, this is someone invaluable. They will most likely go further than a highly skilled experienced worker.

2. Punctuality: You can never go wrong with this. Always be early to work, early to meetings. (Please note that I said early not on time) For my entire internship (up to date) I always arrived an hour before the official starting time. He has never been more impressed.

3. Dress to impress: Always stand out. Shabby clothes never helped anyone. This man has 500 dollar shades!

4. Know where and when: Always praise in public, rebuke in private.

5. Patience: Give people as many chances as you can, the more rope to hang themselves.

6. Mentor: Make sure each and every employee you are in charge of grows.

7. Have a sense of humour: It’s never that serious. Always have a good laugh. It makes you approachable.

8. Respect: Give it regardless of public stature. He treats the cleaning lady the same way he does the CEO. Respect is very different from being feared. Respect is commanded not demanded. Respect yourself and others will.


9. Motivate: We work for a really good company. The motivational benefits are already many but he always has the mind to treat the entire team to breakfast or lunch or even the odd pizza. Be generous, it doesn’t hurt.

10. Fair: Always be fair. Give everyone an opportunity to explain themselves. Listen to both sides of the story.

Aspire to inspire before you expire.

Of stretch marks and crazy brides...

Hiya Dolls,

Being preggo has brought on a few perks but it has also come with an avalanche of problems. My biggest is the stretch marks(am vain so sue me!). Anyhow, I knew the damage was bad but it didn't really sink in till the boy(I think we should start calling him the dad/baby daddy? Yes? No?) decided to make me stand in front of a lamp and scrutinize me for minutes on end. He was amazed at how much my body has transformed in such a short period of time but he was really shocked by the stretch marks. Understatement of the year-he was more in horror than shock!but am still in denial so i can't admit it. Weeps silently! Am all for loving your body,faults and all but lately when I look in the mirror I see an alien and this frightens me. I am worried about how I will look when it's all done, will I still love me. Too much to think about(sigh!!). But apparently when I see my little bundle of joy, it wont matter. But I want her(I don't know the sex but am rooting for a girl so we'll call it a she) to have a pretty confident mummy. So I went online to hunt for a cheap practical solution to my dilemma. Well, all I can tell you is that short of laser skin resurfacing(which is both quite expensive and unavailable in Uganda) there's not much I can do. I know most of you are screaming bio-oil..but trust me dolls. It doesn't work. But I wonder, will I at some point outgrow them. HELP!!

In other news, there's this show starting on the style network about brides competing for their dream plastic surgery procedures. Crazy,ain't it! Check it out here. Which begs the question, Would you? I wanna know what you dolls think. Me, I'd never. Am a big fat chicken! Too scared of going under the knife just for looks.

Feels good to be back.
xoxo

Lets talk about sex..Part 2 (Advanced Masturbation!)

Ola dolls,

So I have been asking around about sex and I landed on this hot cake of a topic.

What do you guys think about sex without a condom? According to one of my friends (male, I need to specify) thinks you have not had sex until it is without a condom. Apparently, sex with a condom is advanced masturbation! Then I remembered an advert that was on TV awhile ago about a man who had refused to use condoms. His reason was why would one eat a sweet while the wrapper is still on. I was baffled. Do people no longer fear AIDS and other STI's? Unplanned pregnancies? Have we gotten so comfortable with the idea of ARV's and cocktails of other drugs as well as abortions?

And whose responsibility is that the there is a condom during proceedings? Is it the girl, the boy? It's a jungle out here. Am thinking we as women should make it our duty that there's an "umbrella" cause am sure the effects of unprotected sex affect us the worst. But then the story of the girl who was dumped because her fiance thought she was promiscuous for having condoms in her bag comes to mind. What to do? Am going to ask the boy about this.

xoxo

On homosexuality...

Ola loves,

For all my being informed and being online each day, I only just recently saw Ssempa's (the "Pastor") eat da poo poo YouTube video (am not including a link for you dolls, I will not add to the virality of that video). I was first amused..then horrified. Why,why,why is this man so ignorant so much so that he wants to advertise the fact. I have always stayed away from this topic because this blog is not a social commentary, it's just a log of my life. But this has finally infuriated me enough to write about it because this affects my life.

One of my closest friends is gay. He came out to me about 2 years ago. His reason, apparently am liberal thinking(according to him). I was appalled. I was shocked. I was in denial. But as I took a taxi home that night, I thought who am I to judge him, am not God. I read the Bible and it clearly condemns homosexuality but this is the same Bible in which the same God killed thousands upon thousands of Egyptian first born CHILDREN!(Discussion for another day) So I choose not to judge him. He is a wonderful person and the fact that he's gay does not affect his personality in any way.

But on to the real reason for this post. When he came out to me,he was dating a lovely young unsuspecting girl. I couldn't have this. Of course I understood why he was doing this, he is straight acting. But if he was going to lead a certain lifestyle, he was not allowed to use anyone to cover for him as long as he was my friend. So I managed to convince him to leave her. Am sure this was a kinder fate than finding out her dear beloved was screwing dudes on the side.

Before he came out to me , I thought they were like 10 gay men in kampala(Yes loves,am naive like that sometimes) But since then I have found out that no,they are not 10...they are not 100 either, they are thousands. They are my friends,my acquaintances,my relatives, my workmates. They are all around me. From all walks of life,the very rich to the dirt poor, the expatriate to the school teacher. And no, they are not deviants,they are normal people like me and you.

But what frightened me the most, is that alarmingly a good number of them are boyfriends to women, husbands to women and fiances to women. Yes, am talking to you wife out there. African americans have a term for this, they are men on the down low! Yes people, men(and such a big number of them you would not sleep well if you found out how many) are on the down low. And I don't blame them, I would also do the same in their position. But then when I think about my friends, my sister, my aunts, even my unconceived girls...am horrified of the thought that one of them might end up with men like this. And who do I blame for this..the Martin Ssempa's of this world.

So to Mr Ssempa (am hoping he reads this someday) I ask, one day your daughter(am assuming he has one) will bring a man home as her husband, and funny enough this man will be a closeted homosexual(yes, those people who eat da poo poo albeit in hiding). Who will you blame? The people you have stupidly brain washed to hate him so much so he has to hide what he truly is, the cruel government policies that you supported so vibrantly that have forced him into acting like he has a disease he should be ashamed of, the God you serve for playing such a cruel and nasty joke on you, or you for your sheer and plain ignorance and stupidity?

Mr Ssempa, whatever your doing now is going to come back to bite you in the ass. (Pun seriously not intended!)

The way of the Spiritual Warrior!!!!!

Hi dolls,

Recently, I found out that one of friends is clinically deppressed. I was in awe which quickly progressed to shock then to sadness. Am familiar with deppression(Hell, I was deppressed for most of my teenage life) but for it to get to a state where one needs medication is beyond me. And I always believed it was a hollywood fad anyway. But seemingly it's real.And though am strongly against it,if my friend doesn't take her medication she will not be able to live a normal life! But I still believe that this is not the solution. Am not asking her to wear rose tinted spectacles like I do to evade the harshness of life, am asking her to take the bull by its horns and face it. To face whatever she is going through and conquer it as opposed to sitting in a corner and being deppressed about it.

I believe she needs to take time off and speak to inner demons and make peace with them. Because,I believe that in order to walk through grief, fear, loneliness, despair, confusion and anger without recourse to drugs, alcohol, over-eating, over-sexing, or the endless mind-numbing distractions provided by Western culture, one must become a spiritual warrior.

I further believe that the pay-off for enduring suffering, for soberly embracing the inevitable bouts of emotional pain that life brings, is wisdom and serenity in the face of calamity.

But make no mistake here, the path of the warrior is treacherous and cannot be walked alone. To survive, she must have brothers and sisters-in-arms to carry her when she buckles. When we lived and died in small tribes, this principle of mutually supporting one another through the trials of life was deeply woven into the fabric of the group mind. With the advent of towns and cities we were forced to live with the daily dilemma of being desperately alone and yet desperately needing one another. Which is why we are, by design, always seeking new tribes.

With that in mind,dolls, I humbly offer a simple guideline to evaluate the efficacy of any tribe you might encounter on your path to becoming a spiritual warrior: if they ask for your money or access to your crotch, run away. If they ask for your money, smile unceasingly, never blink, and guarantee to make you a demi-god, running away will not suffice. Change your mailing address and briefly reconsider drugs, alcohol, food, sex and TV. Can I get an Amen?!

The Racism of King Kong

"In all three film versions of the basic story, we are led to believe that Kong regularly feasts on native girls. Female human sacrifice is how the locals appease him. Then, in each re-telling, he is transformed from mindless, blood-thirsty carnivore to smitten, suicidal love monkey by a skinny, blonde-haired white girl (Fay Wray, Jessica Lange, Naomi Watts). Given this behavioral trend, it is my contention that King Kong would eat Halle Berry. This troubles me deeply and I wanted to share it with you."

From one of my favorite writers,Chuck Lorre.