The Orchard.

Snow White found her peace in the orchard. The sweet smell of the fruits and the colors of the flowers all melded in a beautiful way to soothe her senses. The lark would sing songs of her beauty and the lowlier birds’ would chirp panegyrics for her innocence. She’d dance with the animals and they’d tell her stories of the Animal Kingdom and she’d listen with all intent. She was really fond of them all, but she loved the Dove the most. It was so gentle and loving and its tales resonated with the poetry of her soul. In fact, the dove was a subtle reflection of her; meek and innocent. Snow White often wished to be Dove, so she could fly up high, feeling free to go anywhere… even to the Castle

She hadn’t been to the Castle yet. She hadn’t even seen it. She had heard tales however; Fascinating stories from the servants that worked in the Castle. She could only imagine. Since Snow White could remember, she had been in the tower made with clay. It was slightly lower in height than the towers of the servants. The servants’ towers were made of ethereal substances and their walls made sturdy by the tempers of the purest of limestone and gilded by the purest of gold. Snow White didn’t care; she had her orchard, which the servants didn’t. Still she often thought; If the servants lived in such majestic towers, how much more the Queen. She loved her orchard, but she always had a longing to be in the Castle.

Every day was the same for her. She’d leave her tower, where the servants would come provide her the finest of meals, groom her and give her updates on the daily events in the Castle and then she’d come to the orchard to play. She loved it so dearly because within these walls, there were no concerns and all she did was live. There was no Life outside these walls for her.

….So she thought….

The day started off pretty much the same. She had come out to play with the birds and all of them were there …except one.

“Where’s the Dove?” Snow White asked the pigeon?

“We haven’t seen it today” It chirped back as it nestled on Snow White’s shoulders

She frowned. “Hmph”

She cooed softly but the Dove didn’t come. Something was eerily different today. She could feel it. She sat down on a rock to play with the other animals that had gathered around her dainty feet. Then for the first time ever, she saw the shadows. All the animals scurried away and the birds fluttered to the highest nests.

The ground started to rumble and the soils started to part. Seven furrows coming from different angles of the orchard made a confluence at one point, and for the first time, Snow White felt fear. It started as tightness in her chest then she got uneasily dizzy. She heaved in heavy doses of air and ran quickly but softly behind one of the trees, making sure to avoid the ground that was rapidly breaking beneath her. She watched silently as the event unfolded.

With gusto, seven Dwarfs sprung up from beneath the sand in rapid succession

“At last!!” One of them said with a twist in tongue as he brushed off the dust off his well-coiffed hair and neatly ironed jacket. The other 6 dwarfs were around him, removing the soil off their clothes.

“Where is she? You said she was supposed to be here” A dwarf in green impatiently squealed to the apparent leader

“Calm your Hairlocks” the leader retorted grunting as he walked around. He sniffed “I know she’s here, I smell her innocence. I’m never wrong and you know this”

The guy in the green rolled his eyes “Oh the mighty Mindria” he started sarcastically “There’s a first time for everything.”

Mindria stopped his sniffing and turned to face the challenging dwarf “Have you ever considered why the Prince made me the leader? I’m the best of us all. The sharpest, smartest, fastest…”

“I’m just as powerful as you are. You know?” the other barked back.

“You wish”

The other dwarfs were oblivious to the squabble. Then they heard a twig snap.

“Shhh” Mindria ordered “I hear something”

The dwarf hobbled to see where the sound was coming from. He saw Snow white pressed against the bark of a tree, trying to maintain silence. Her foot was still resting on the dried branch that had given her away.

“Who are you?” she said with a voice trembling with fear.

“You see, I told you” Mindria said with a sly smile to the dwarf in green, who just fell shamefully silent. He continued “We’re the esteemed Cardinals of the prince”

“What Pri -”

“I’m Mindria, the leader of the pack” He interrupted . “The first born, the smartest of the bunch. The spawn of the Prince”

“You flatter yourself” The dwarf in green mumbled beneath his breath. Mindria ignored him.

He pointed to the one with neatly coiffed hair “That’s my right hand man Bramare. Sly and cunning with his tongue” Bramare gave a quick bow, and then resumed looking at the polished metal of the watering can to adjust his hair. Mindria rolled his eyes and continued the introductions. He pulled the lethargic one with the slowly closing eyes to himself “This is Perez, the baby of the group” As soon as he let him go, Perez collapsed to the floor and rested his back on a tree and started to sleep.

“Again??? You sleep again??” Mindira Shouted.

“Oh Bite me! I slept for just 9 hours last night. Wake me up when we’re about to leave” Perez retorted. Mindria hissed

He pointed to another one chasing the rodents round a tree, “that’s Fourier”, the strongest of us all, but only in muscle. He’s also the most adventurous of us all”. Snow White could tell. He had burly hands and permanently furrowed brows. Fourier remained oblivious and continued chasing the squirrel round the tree.

“And that’s Cupid, the wealthiest of us all” Mindria pointed to a dwarf dressed in purple colored satin with velvet shoes.

He pointed to the remaining two dwarfs standing under another tree. The corpulent one had fruits in his hand, and he was eating away as if he hadn’t seen anything like those before, The dwarf in green was whispering in his ear. Mindria continued “The fat one is Chu, you’ll get used to him, he’s always eating and the last one is Shaden, you’ll probably hate him, but that’s fine, everyone does.”

“Raca!” Shaden said to Mindria

“Pleased to make your acquaintance, but what do you want from me?” Snow White asked

“We’ve come to save you from the Wrath of the Jealous Queen. You see, we used to be like you. We lived here, walked within these walls and tended to the orchards. Then we discovered her agenda. She didn’t want anyone to be like her, as fair or as wise. If she found out that anyone was close to her or better, she’d cast them out of the kingdom to be eaten by dragons….”

“We have to leave now!” Cupid shouted to Mindria “The Queen will send her guards and you know those bastards. They’re ruthless. Especially the Taxiarchs”

“No! We’re not going to let Snow White suffer the same fate as the Prince”

“Who is this Prince?” Snow White bellowed

“I promise to tell you, if you come with us. We risked our lives to come rescue you. We have to leave now”

Snow White had only known the birds and the other animals and as much as she enjoyed her time with them, the dwarfs seemed to be so much fun. The squabble between Mindria and Shaden, the jovial demeanor of the hungry Chu, the taciturn Fourier, the adorability of Perez, the fatherhood nature of Cupid and the humor and élan of Bramare. She wanted to have as much fun with them as she could.

The servants had told her that she wasn’t allowed to leave the tower or the orchard. Why? The Queen had said so. Ah! The Queen. Could the Dwarfs be right? Was the Queen truly jealous? Snow White remembered that Queen was conspicuously distant and rarely came to visit. Also, whenever the Queen came, she always inspected her, Snow White very carefully. Snow White always thought the Queen was simply admiring her. Until now. Now, she wondered if the Queen wasn’t just making sure that She was fairer than her. She had heard from the servants that brought her daily meal that the Queen was a fiery creature when angered. In fact all of the servants trembled just at the mention of her name. Could the Dwarfs be right? Could this be her last chance of escape?

“Are you coming or not?” Mindria asked her

She bit her lip. What if they were wrong? Their argument was compelling however. A jealous, violent Queen who had imprisoned her within these walls for a grander plan was no one to be toyed with. She looked around at the Orchard. Could there be more than this? Was there life outside these walls for her? There was only one way to find out

“I’m in” Snow White responded.

As soon as she chose to leave, troops of the Taxiarchs started to march down

“Quick! Down through the tunnel”

The Tunnel

Snow White went in first. Immediately, her senses were assaulted by the dank, earthy smell in the tunnel – she had never experienced anything so … base. Her fingers scrabbled over the small pebbles and sand, getting dirty and scratched for the first time in her life. The experience was so exhilaratingly new! She felt a voice in her head – sounding so much like the Dove’s – call out to her, warning, urging, imploring her not to keep going, to turn back now. Danger! it screamed. But she pushed on. Even if she had wanted to turn back, it would have been too late to. The Dwarfs had crammed themselves into the tunnel after her, and it was only small enough for a single file.

“Keep going!” Mindria beseeched her. “Quickly!”

And move she did. There was no light in that tunnel, and she experienced true darkness for the first time, but still she kept moving.

All of a sudden, the tunnel began to rumble ominously. Snow White stopped, confused. The rumbling grew in intensity, until the tunnel itself began to shake, dislodging debris from its low ceiling, and jostling Snow White slightly.

“What’s happening?” she cried out. But almost as soon as she asked it, it was answered in her head. It was like someone turned on a switch on her ears, and she heard the sound for what it truly was. It was a moan, unlike any ever heard before. A moan so inhumanly low and intense that it seemed the earth itself was crying. It continued to grow more and more intense, until Snow White could not bear it anymore. It seemed to lash at her very soul, tearing it, stripping it to its bare minimum. And before she knew it she was crying along with it, tears flowing freely down her face, her chin lifted toward the ceiling. She realized what the sound was now.

It was the Queen. It was her cry, shaking the whole earth. It was her cry of rage. Snow White felt it, and something burst painfully within her. For the briefest moment, and for a reason she could not understand, she felt a horrible sadness, as if all the colors of the world had faded away. As if everything good had been destroyed. But as quickly as it came, it dissipated, to be replaced by a terrible happiness. She had escaped the evil Queen! This cry of anger only proved that the Dwarfs were right. She was free. Free!

All of a sudden a great stone, dislodged by the rumbling, rolled over the entrance to the tunnel, the only source of illumination in that tunnel. All of a sudden everything went black. All of a sudden the thought struck Snow White.

There truly was no turning back now.

“The chariest maid is prodigal enough,if she unmask her beauty to the moon”

Joshua:

I found lost pieces of a ballad, a thousand harps, and a pool of tears. I saw scribbling on black walls, love poems, dedicated to boys she did not know and boys that were not me. I surveyed this new terra-firma, the constructions of a battered soul and a pristine spirit. Her escape, I imagined from an imperfect world and a Jurassic society.
She was all that is and was divine; devoid of blemish and impurity. Everywhere she went, she left little pieces of kaleidoscopic rainbows – for the lucky observant children that went about. She was a rat in the middle ages, spreading the bubonic plague. I followed her home every day, at a distance, just to see that she got home safely, not that I could have been of any defense, should there have been any danger, but it helped me sleep better and keep the monsters under my bed at bay. I wanted to hold her hands, I wanted to trace the lines on her palms and then make my own, I wanted to feel her warmth, and just so I could tell the sun it was doing a terrible job. I wanted to read her Wordsworth Longfellow; I wanted to tell her that just like Dunbar, I knew why the caged birds sang. But I was an anachronism to her, an anomaly. And she was too tired to understand. I left, wearing brown stains of defeat and rejection, I had heard of the thing called love, in my opinion, love was just a nefarious child with no respect for boundaries, I wanted to kill it, then shake its cold body till a piece of its soul was smeared on myself. I sought punishment for my perfidious heart, and refuge from myself. Now, the monsters underneath my bed had free reign. They went about in the night wind, to and fro like mother’s laundry on the clothesline, taunting me. When it seemed that I had overcome my feminine perturbation, thoughts of her broke through the marble walls of my mind like a startled Jack-in-the-box, the poor thing. I and misery chatted the weeks away like long-time comrade-in-arms, most of our conversations bordering on market prices and loud Arabian music. My body ached, burdened with the everyday minutiae of iconoclastic life and loss of purpose, sleep came easy. I no longer stared into the night, crescent moons had lost their magic, and the stars flickered with age, showing grey hairs on their edges.
When I heard news of her death, I cried, slow heavy tears – tears wrapped in hopes and moonlit benedictions. I laid them like flowers on her casket, they made holes in the dark mahogany .I thought of all the children, walking those cold streets searching for their own little rainbows and how they would go to bed and without anything to dream about. I thought of my heart, and how useless it was to me. .life was farcical, and love had taken its misdemeanors somewhere else far away. I thought of the ageing stars and how they would converge later on; to form these words:
‘There are many heavens, and all of them were in her eyes.’

“What’s your story?”

Maze:

She was an Arabian breeze, birthed by the Indian sun and christened by the western world; possessor of pristine pulchritude and precious polish. She soothed my sense with scents of the Middle East, Jasmine, myrrh and the je ne sais quoi woody flavor of the patchouli. Her voice belied a Palestinian accent masked by overtones of an American one. Deep seated, was the vim of a free spirit, trapped behind a pure sense of wonder betrayed by simultaneously enchanted and enchanting eyes. I’d write. 24 love letters, I’ve written; each to commemorate the weeks since when cupid broke down my cordate barbed wires. With love comes a sliver of fear; fear of rejection, fear of not living up to expectation. Fear of the perfection that is her. With poisoned pen on a blank sheet as neurotransmitters Adrenaline Dopamine and Serotonin course through my brain, I write. I remember when I first saw her across the lawn; her iridescent eyes metamorphosing with every ray that hit them were wonders to behold. It was fleeting but glorious; a glimpse of the seventh heaven, if you will. I felt myself drawn to her like metal to magnet. I write. I can’t voice it because I’m shy. My pusillanimous self surfaces and effaces the bravado that I’ve worn all this while. I give excuses for my timidity and answer questions with “What ifs” and other nonsensical probabilities. In the interim of my bout with reticence, I conjure her up in fantasies, and dreams and we share thoughts and hopes, fears and strengths. I knew her and I let her know me. She was anything I wanted her to be. It’s Narcissistic. I created her in my image, gave her a repertoire of what I was and what I wanted her to be. And she became that. She became greater than I. She was no longer human. Time has permitted me to turn her into a stronghold. I have perfected her and now I’m scared of her. With pity, the gods of luck finally shone their light on me, and zephyrs of positive fate blew my way. She left her journal on the desk. I picked it up and prized it as my meal ticket to a lifetime of bliss. I reasoned. I’d return it to her and then she’d fall in love with me. I took it home and stared at the chest of secrets of the woman I loved. I was scared. I wanted to open it, but I was gripped by the fear of the unknown. I didn’t want to know. It gets scary in the light. The darkness, pregnant with ignorance was sufficient, yet I fell to the temptation of my curiosity. I finally understood the innards of her mind. She wasn’t like the caricature I had made her to be. She wasn’t me. She was better. I flipped the white pages with glittering inks, admiring her cursive handwriting. Striations reeked of determination and earnestness. Then I stumbled upon what’ll become a thorn in my flesh. Her heart belonged to another. She had written love letters and poignant poetry, celebrating the Adonis that wasn’t me. I died many times and cried rivers to drown sorrows. I closed her book, ending the chapter in my heart… Twilight of hope, an announcement of a love lost. Still, I fear that when the closing bell peals and a death knell rings in the distance, I would realize that I’ve loved her for a while and sadly forever.

************************

Joshua impresses me. For a guy his age (Trust me, he’s very young). I’m highly impressed.

When he asked this question, I was taken aback and I took a moment to reflect.

I was born with nine fingers.
From what my mom recalls, she didn’t notice this minuscule detail until the next day when she was breastfeeding me. As she relates, I stubbornly stretched my left hand from out of my shawl where it was neatly concealed and then she became agitated. She rubbed her eyes with her still weary palms, wondering if she was hallucinating as a result of the loss of blood from delivery.
She counted my fingers.
Nine!
No left thumb.
She looked for my thumb, tears falling out of her eyes, hoping I had some sort of super power that enabled me to hide my thumb at will from observers. She counted it over and over again, till she was sure her math was right. She screamed for the Nurses. The nurses rushed frantically into the room and carried me out of her reluctant arms for a thorough examination. The doctor came back with “positive” news. Every other part of my body was functioning properly. I was going to be fine.

….But no I wasn’t

In a society that places inordinate value on beauty and outward appearance, I don’t blame my mom for training me to conceal my hand from the public. She wanted me to lead a normal life, so she would tell me to wear my watch on my right wrist and put my left hand in my pocket to discourage people from noticing and asking questions or treating me like a pariah. Till this day, I struggle to break the habit. Some would argue that, that might have been the wrong way to handle it because for a long time, it made me feel like something was wrong with me. I might acquiesce with their view, but I must commend both my parents for killing the idea that I needed special treatment or attention.
I went about doing chores in the house. I wore my own shirts, and buttoned them with intense difficulty. I broke numerous glass cups whenever I carried them in my left hand, especially when doing the dishes. Using the fork and knife was a hassle and it was embarrassing and frustrating to see the fork fall down many times. When my parents weren’t looking, I’d use just a fork on the right hand of course, because it was way easier. Cutting the finger nails of my right hand was hell and I had a lot of blood and ruptured skin to prove it. I mastered the sleight of hand, pun intended, through gesticulations and spirited movements, all a careful chicanery, to distract the public from noticing the four fingers. Inevitably, however, one person would find out and if I was unlucky, it was a blabber mouth. So, to go along with my prestidigitation, I had grown a thick skin to insult, impervious to name-callings of “freak” and I had also grown averse to the people on the other extreme that called my condition “cute”. I was a freak show. People wanted to see how I would shake with my left hand or if I could hold a pen in my left hand (which by the way, I can. I can even write, albeit not legibly and rather slowly). I wanted it all to end. It just had to end. I wanted to be normal.

It was, if I remember correctly, a Friday. I ran up to my parents’ room. I locked the door to the room. Switched on the TV and turned the channel to Trinity Broadcast Network. “Yes!” I had caught the program.
I didn’t even care if it was a re-run, it was Benny Hinn on the big screen (well, not so big, it was just 32 inches). At the end of the preaching, he reached the part I had been waiting for. He started “I know there’s a woman at home that has been barren for a while, God wants you to know that you shall receive the fruit of the womb”. “There’s a man, you lost your job recently…God wants you to know…” and so on and so forth. Honestly, I didn’t care about these people. I had heard that Benny Hinn had performed miracles and I was so sure that since I believed, I was going to be a part of it. He asked for those that were at home to stretch their hands to the screen that he wanted to pray for us and that we would receive our miracles. I put my hand on the screen, and said the prayer with him silently. The John 14:13 scripture came into my mind and I had this reassuring peace. I went to bed with a certain sense of calm. I felt God needed some time to work the miracle. I decided to give Him that night. I woke up many times in the night to see if God had worked His wonders. Nope! I rationalized, He was probably crafting the best thumb there ever was so I decided to let it go. The next morning. I woke up. Looked to my left. And I felt exactly the way Lanre felt at the moment…..

Lanre noticed that I had spaced out, asked me again “Well, why doesn’t He heal amputees?”

I came around again to bask in the lively conversation that had filled the room. Just 5 minutes ago, He had given me the trite atheistic comment popularized by the militant atheist Richard Dawkins that “We are all atheists, I just believe in one less god than you”. I rebutted by saying “That is specious at best. It neglects the whole fundamental concepts of atheism and belief. In fact that statement is similar to a homeless guy saying “We’re all homeless, I just live in one less house than you” Or a bachelor saying to a husband, “we’re all married, I just have one less wife than you”. I hope you can see the stupidity of that statement and if you would like to be taken seriously in any religious debate, don’t ever use it.” A slight ad-hominem to drive home my point. He rebutted with the whole amputees question, then I realized that most of his fodder was obtained from the internet. The petty stones of indignation, non-believers use to pelt belief were what he was using as the foundation of his whole unbelief. Still, I indulged him.

Lanre continued “If you pray for amputees and they don’t get healed, then He certainly doesn’t exist. Answered prayers for cancer and other inconspicuous things are so ambiguous and obscure. For all we know, those were random acts of modern medicine that people inclined to believe will ascribe to God as a miracle.”

“First, are you saying that if you know God has healed an amputee, you would believe?” I asked

“Most likely”

“Miracles failed to convince the Pharisees about who Jesus claimed he was. Like Jesus said about them, “If they do not listen to Moses and the Prophets, neither will they be persuaded if someone rises from the dead”

“Do I look like a Pharisee”

“No, you don’t.” I said with a laugh. I continued “Then would you consider the man whose ear Peter cut off in the garden of Gethsemane to be such a case of an amputee being healed? Or the dried bones that God raised up in the valley in Ezekiel Thirty seven from verse one through to fourteen?

“Those are bible stories. Most likely concocted by men with arguably good intentions to mold the public into behaving in a certain way”

“Oh? If you are not going to accept the God of then as the God of now, then what is the point of this argument? The God we are deliberating on is the God revealed to us by this very same scripture you claim not to regard. If you’re not going to regard the scripture, then why bother arguing?”

Lanre fell silent. I could still feel his uncertainty. I wanted to press on.

“Why does it have to be about amputees? I could boil your argument down to any form of prayer. Replace heal amputees with “A billion dollars tomorrow” or a visit from your favorite artiste tomorrow. Are you saying that if God doesn’t answer those prayers, then he doesn’t exist? God’s failure to perform a miracle or answer my prayer at my request says nothing about His existence. To be logical, the very most we could only conclude is that God does not heal amputees.”

“That is true. So how does the concept of a benevolent God reconcile with unanswered prayer?”

I knew his question was laden not just with choleric concerns but an earnestness that I could not fathom. He had recently lost his mom. And I remember how it all played out. We were by her side all day praying incessantly, asking God to preserve her life and that she beat the cancer. John 14:13 was our mantra day and night. I remember his demeanor changing as his belief seeped away as his mother’s life slipped away. He stood up from her side tearful eyes with such vitriol for God that I couldn’t efface.

I reminded him “Sometimes, people pray amiss , there’s a verse in the bible that says “When you ask, you do not receive, because you ask with wrong motives, that you may spend what you get on your pleasures….”

He interrupted “What of people who do not pray for worldly pleasures, but pray for things that are obviously consistent with the nature of God, things like world peace, cure from diseases, for the life of a loved one?”

This was a delicate matter and I needed wisdom to deal with it properly.

I started “Tough as it may be, we need to realize that the goal of prayer has never been to subject God to our will, but to subject ourselves to His will.” In 1John 5 verse 14, it says ‘This is the confidence we have in approaching God: that if we ask anything according to his will, he hears us’. ‘According to His will’ is the key point. It’ll serve us well to remember Jesus in the Garden at that hour when he prayed the earnest prayer‘ “Abba, Father,” he said, “everything is possible for you. Take this cup from me. Yet not what I will, but what You will.”

This struck a chord with Lanre and he identified with the plea. If Jesus could realize this, and subjected himself to the will of God. How much more, him?

That was what carried me through my own unanswered prayer epoch, and all I could pray was that it would be sufficient for Lanre. I didn’t hope for much. Philosophy is not sufficient for emotion. The logic behind death of a loved one, or unanswered prayer doesn’t alleviate the pain of the unanswered prayer. But I felt a peace and I can never forget the source of that peace. I remembered it was 2 weeks exactly after my Benny Hinn ordeal. I had flung my bible to the bed in indignation, filled with reproach that I was going to live my life with the condition I had. To be the spectacle of a peering, judging public. I was filled with remorse after I had seen the bible I cherished so much, resting at the foot of my bed after being flung with recalcitrant abandon. I picked it up and my eyes fell on this verse. The verse that healed me. It was 2 Corinthians 12:8-9 “Three times I pleaded with the Lord to take it away from me. But he said to me, “My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.” Therefore I will boast all the more gladly about my weaknesses, so that Christ’s power may rest on me.

The last line!!! Oh! The last line. And this is the crux of the matter, the essence of this post. “…boast all the more gladly about my weaknesses, so that Christ’s power may rest on me.”

************************************************************************

Brothers and Sisters in the Lord. This is the first time I’m doing this. I was just on my own and this brother asked me to write an article on Seduction & Power. Bear with me, I may not be thorough, I may not be right, but just understand the basic concepts.

What comes to your mind when you hear the words Seduction and Power? I imagine sex and control? How simple minded. Seduction and Power is so much more. Seduction and Power is present in EVERY Religion, EVERY successful government, EVERY relationship, EVERY institution. Together, they form the backbone of life itself, without seduction and power, humanity will be dull and boring. While you may not understand it, even the All Powerful Being that is God is subject to the Laws of Seduction and Power.

SEDUCTION

Seduction is a form of power. Its Latin meaning is to “Lead Astray”. You lead astray towards evil, but I’m going to use my literary license and say “to Lead Astray” is a neutral (albeit leaning towards the negative) phrase. Anakin Skywalker was seduced towards the dark side by Darth Sidius, his son, Luke, was seduced by the good side of the Force by master Yoda and Obi Wan Kenobi. This is a very practical, albeit fictional, example of seduction. Let’s go back into history and take a look at one of history’s most efficient seducers.

Cleopatra.
Cleopatra really is the ultimate seductress. She is what we would call a Siren. A female able to tune herself to the male’s primal desires and twist it to bend the man to her will. The ultimate desire of a female seducer is supreme control over the man. And by supreme I truly do mean supreme. Cleopatra subjected two of Rome’s most powerful men ever to her will. She is the model for every seductress. She maximized her sexual potential to the fullest. She was the last Pharaoh of Egypt and the first female Pharaoh in the history of the world’s oldest civilization. Mark Anthony and Julius Caesar are just two men that have failed to tame the vicious seductress that is Cleopatra. She is the Siren, the queen, a breed of female that is difficult to understand, impossible to control, and undeniably the one of most powerful of all types of seducers.
Let’s move to someone infinitely more powerful than Cleopatra, someone has captivated minds throughout his existence. He changed the course of history forever. Along with 12 men of purpose and drive, he revolutionized humanity forever. Countless have died because of him, countless more have died in his name. Countless trust him with everything they have, countless more believe he is more or less just a figure that fed on the minds of the ignorant, susceptible humans that lived during his age.

Whatever you may think, Jesus Christ is THE most seductive person that has ever set foot on the face of the earth. Forget the Bible; forget the billions of people that have believed in him, HISTORY puts him at the forefront of human evolution. He had one idea and he changed humanity with that idea. His words were laced with sweet promises. He never misled his people however, their trust was never betrayed, and he completely loved and respected them. His message was simple and he did as much as he could. In just 3 years of living, Jesus Christ impacted the lives of people for more than 2000 years to come. And his impact is not showing any signs of stopping. At just over 2000 years, Christianity is one of the youngest religions but is easily the most influential and the most controversial. The immense power that religions like Christianity have over their followers is nothing short of incredible. Recently, we all saw a video of a respected Pastor slapping a member during a service and more or less condemning her to Hell. While I am not a theologian and I definitely will not defend him simply because I don’t understand what was going on in his head, the uproar is not really about the slap (to be perfectly honest I doubt it hurt her at all, wouldn’t even hurt my baby sister), it’s about the applause that he received. That applause may have gotten people a bit riled but that is absolute power at its finest. Imagine the scope of power Jesus would have if he was alive now? Would you be able to resist him and his seductive power? Along with Mohammed, Jesus Christ’s seductive power is unrivalled.
Have you ever watched a guy hit on a girl? Shit can be painful to watch sometimes. You know the guy is heading for some sweet refusal. Have you ever watched a guy successfully hit on a girl? It is pretty awesome to watch. And sometimes (if you aren’t a pro like me *smiles like a god*) you think “Damn, that was pretty cool”. Right?
Whenever I talk to guys about seduction I use pretty much the ultimate examples. Casanova and Don Juan are history’s most prolific seducers. Casanova is the single greatest seducer history has ever consciously documented. Profilic, intelligent, adventurous, handsome, magnificent with words, creative beyond his time, he was brilliant. He chased women everywhere and more often than not got them. He is in effect what we call a combination of various seductive personalities. While Cleopatra and Jesus have two seductive (albeit intensely powerful) characters, Casanova possesses 4 of the 8 characters. The Rake, the Ideal Lover, the Coquette and the Charismatic. Combined in the right proportions this made him devastatingly irresistible, the kind of guy you don’t introduce to your babe. Let me put it in perspective. Casanova builds a fantasy for women and makes it look like he can do pretty much everything. Casanova had the whole freaking church chasing after him. He was/is a legend. He is credited with being history’s greatest seducer. The power he had over women was nothing short of spectacular.
I have not taught you anything about seduction here simply because I am not an authority on the subject. LOL, Jokes. I’m a freaking G on the subject. So for my last hurrah on Seduction, I’m going to give Basic tips on how to seduce people (for both Male and Female).
Seduction is easy. But, also complicated. When you’ve mastered it, the ease with which it comes can become frightening. All the Nos you get turn to Yeses. You feel almost POWERFUL. It’s intoxicating. Okay, enough with my telling you how you’ll feel. Let me teach you.
In seduction there are different characters, different personalities that you use to get the desired aim. I have seen all, studied all. Before I read Robert Greene’s The Art of Seduction, I tried to categorize the different types of seducers. I was close to what he chose. His list is complete and so for reasons best known to me I shall use his.
There are nine (9) types of seducers, nine characters, nine personalities that are the key to unlimited power. They are;
• The Siren
• The Rake
• The Ideal Lover
• The Dandy
• The Natural
• The Coquette
• The Charmer
• The Charismatic
• The Star
I cannot explain each one fully, not enough time and space but I will briefly explain five and explain how they can be used and manipulated. They are not independent of each other. In fact they build and harmonize each other when used in the correct and adequate proportion.
The Siren
The most powerful seductively. The Siren is a mythical creature of immense beauty that seduced men with their voices. We’ve all seen The Odyssey (you should see it if you haven’t), where Odysseus tied himself to the Ship’s mast just so he could hear the Siren’s voice without dying. That is how powerful the Siren is in reality, an embodiment of supreme confidence and sexiness, the Siren cannot be tamed, and cannot be controlled. To have the power of the Siren you must BECOME the Siren. Goes without saying that the Siren has to be a babe, or at least think he’s a babe. Case Point: Cleopatra

The Rake
The simple one. He picks his victims according to their vulnerability. A rake cannot seduce a Siren. Then again there aren’t many sirens so he has a wide scope of victims. He is a master with words and sows seeds of love and fantasy. He is the female’s dream. Exciting, enchanting, daring, handsome, brilliant. He is also disloyal, dishonest but that adds to his charm. The bad boy that every girl thinks they can change. A brilliant persona.. Case point: Casanova

The Ideal Lover
This is the seduction perfection. He/She thrives on your broken dreams, hopes, expectations and promises to fulfill them. Luring you deeper and deeper into the web. An artist, their charm wears off easily (obviously, they aren’t perfect), but in the space of the time that they’ve been with you, you feel fulfilled and loved. Undeniably effective.

The Coquette
This is the seductive grandmaster. They look totally self sufficient and they understand the underlying principle behind seduction which is, the more obviously you chase a person, the more likely you are to chase them away. Forget all those bloody annoying corny ass movies that you watch. That is the truth.

The Charismatic
This is the one that changes History whether for good or evil. There are soooo many examples of this kind of seducers. They literally litter the pages of History, Gandhi, Mandela, Jesus, Alexander the Great, Martin Luther King Jnr, the list is definitely not exhaustive. They seduce on a grand scale, Jesus, Mohammed, Martin Luther King Jnr have seduced the world on a massive scale.

Seduction, as powerful as it is, is never the end product. It is the long (or short, depending on how awesome you are) process that gets you to an end result. It might be sex, rule, money, fame. Whatever it is, do not get so fixated on the process that you let go of the final prize.

Culled from Robert Greene’s Art of Seduction

Ludwig Feuerbach still has that long beard he wore while he was alive. Albert Camus, is wearing a pea coat, and he has an unlit cigarette in his mouth. They are sitting in the room quibbling over something I can’t decipher. What this place is, I don’t know. Where this place is, I don’t know either. My brain is somewhere ion earth, probably a hospital, trying to recuperate from the damage. Ludwig sees me. He starts speaking…with his German twinge of course.

Ludwig: Ah! Willkommen! What brings you here?

Me: I don’t know. I can’t remember exactly. The car hooted, but I didn’t react quickly. All I remember clearly is that I was sent sprawling a couple feet away from where I was standing. I think I hit my head on a pavement. Then my soul apparently escaped my body and here I am.

Ludwig: Ah! Soul?

Ludwig and Camus are laughing.

Ludwig: Souls don’t exist. You look like a smart chap, you should know that. You probably believe this is the afterlife too right? But let me stop berating your earthly beliefs, for that has left me and Camus stranded here alone for a while. Most soul believers tend to storm off and leave us alone when we start. And right now, we need the company.

I’m contemplating. I drag a seat and pull it to the table. I start

Me: But to confront your criticism, what have I got to lose? If you are right and there is no such thing as a soul? I die, that’s the end. I can’t even regret my decision to have believed while on earth. If I’m right and there is a soul, when you die you will regret. So I am not getting the short end of the stick here. In fact, you are.

Ludwig: Perceptive, a variation of Pascal’s Wager.

Me: I’m standing on the shoulders of giants.

Ludwig: I was fascinated by Pascal, but what Pascal failed to account for is that there are more religions than he could count. What if you pick the wrong one, you are just as doomed as you say I am. In general, I am wary of wagers, they’re too reckless.

Me: Ah! But you see, whilst you do raise a valid point, probability pits me against you. If there are a million religions and only one right one, I have 1 in a million chance of being right. You have zero. If there is an afterlife, I might, emphasis on the might, be wrong in my choice, but you definitely will be wrong in your choice.

Ludwig: Probabilities and Wagers, still too wary.

Me: I’m not a big fan of wagers either. I don’t like to gamble my way out of things, but I felt it pertinent. Also, you accuse me of using a wager, what of the chief atheist, Dawkin’s Wager?

Ludwig: Never heard of it

Me: Well you didn’t because he didn’t explicitly call it that. I saw it on some buses, when I was in England. It goes “There’s probably no God, now stop worrying and enjoy your life”.

Ludwig: He’ll have to defend himself on that one. In my opinion, Dawkins is too “popular atheism” for my liking, mostly rhetoric, no substance. I read his book, God Delusion, and yeah, we are that current down here, it was mostly filled with trite and callow rhetoric and borderline cloying literature, impregnated with vacuous arguments ballasted on a paucity of historical knowledge. This especially comes to light when comparing his works to the rather sonorously enunciated and fervent works of gadflies like David Hume, Nietzsche, Diderot, and the diatribes of Voltaire…

Camus: Wait, hold on a minute. I see a flaw in Pascal’s wager.

Ludwig: Finally!! He speaks

Me: Indulge us.

Camus: Since we’re making propositions, what if there’s a god that harbors animus towards belief, such that a believer is rewarded immensely for not believing in a deity?

Ludwig: Ah! I see where Albert is going with this! This scenario puts the theist in the same apparent disadvantaged position as the atheist was in the first scenario.

Me: Good reasoning, but I still think the theist comes out with the upper hand.

Camus & Ludwig: How?

Me: Well in the second scenario you just presented, the best outcomes are all on par, belief or non-belief and the worst outcomes are all on par too. But in the first scenario I presented, there was no good outcome for the non-believer and there was a good outcome for the believer, hence there is always an advantage for the believer.

Camus: What do you mean when you say ‘on par’?

Me: Well, in the scenario you presented, you just modified Ludwigs earlier objection and included a god that rewards nonbelief. In that scenario, if the atheist is right he gains everything for non belief, the theist loses all. If the theist is right and that god of nonbelief doesn’t exist the atheist loses all and the theist gains everything. In my first scenario however, the atheist loses all if he’s wrong and gains nothing if he’s right. The theist loses nothing if he’s wrong and gains everything if he’s right.

Ludwig: I might have to acquiesce. Combining both scenarios, the theist stands to gain more in the long run

Camus: Ludwig the Pansy, so quick to agree. I have a problem with believing in the existence of a soul, neglecting the wager, because it requires faith to believe in it. Science cannot prove the existence of a soul, and when it comes to using Faith as a means for acquiring knowledge, I am very wary. It is a great cop out, It either flies blatantly and disrespectfully in the face of evidence or it rides on easily and comfortably in the absence of evidence.

Me: I think you confuse faith with Blind faith.

Camus: No I don’t. I imply, all faith. Every knowledge that isn’t obtained from evidential means violates reason, and is worthy of scathing criticism. As W.K Clifford rightly said “It is wrong, always, everywhere, and for any one, to believe anything upon insufficient evidence”

Ludwig: I applaud you on that, we share the same reservations.

Me: I understand your disinclinations, but I highly doubt its cogency. Reason suspends itself, delicately on faith.

Camus: No it doesn’t. Reason is predicated on evidence.

Me: Hold on, I’m sure you can follow my train of thought. I could show the fallibility of Clifford’s assertion, by asking him if he has sufficient evidence for his claim on insufficient evidence. Never mind that now, you are erudites; surely you’ve heard of Munchausen’s Trilemma. It stems from the fact that If we ask of any knowledge: “How do I know that it’s true?” we may provide proof; yet that same question can be asked about the provided proof, and any consequent proof. The Münchhausen Trilemma states that we have only three options when providing proof in this situation. These three are Circular Reasoning in which statements fall back on themselves, the Regressive argument, which appears because of the necessity to go further back, but isn’t practically feasible and doesn’t provide a certain foundation and finally the Axiomatic argument, which indeed appears principally feasible, but would mean a random suspension of the principle of sufficient reason. The first two are logically wanting, but the last is what keeps us sane.

Camus: Sane?

Me: Maybe a stretch of words, but it is the fact that we accept some things on faith that helps us move on and make rational decisions

Ludwig: Pardon me to butt in, but infinite regression might not necessarily be utterly wrong. We could take the infinite series of proof to be merely potential, in the sense that an individual may have indefinitely many reasons available to him, without having consciously thought through all of these reasons when the need arises. In calculus as you know infinite series converge. What if knowledge we have is a convergence of infinite proofs that we do not consciously think about?

Me: Good you brought that up, but the problem is this? Now that you have consciously mentioned that defense, can you consciously give an outline for a certain truth that doesn’t finally rest on an axiom that you simply have to accept? One of such axioms is reality? Can you prove reality? That what you see, is what really is? My second objection to the infinite proofs rebuttal are just for inference.to prove why one proof supports the other, you have to do another set of infinite proofs.

Camus: Explain the latter part of your statement.

Me: If knowledge is an infinite chain each link is tied to another, infinitely. But to prove why one link should support the one ahead of it, you’d have to refer to another infinite chain and ergo infinitely infinite. Too stressful. I am going to cut that chain with Occam’s razor and accept proof to be axiomatic.

Camus: True, Sorry Ludwig, I know you tried to save our case, but even your infinite rejoinder has to be accepted by faith or axiom because we have to accept axiomatically that there is an infinite amount of proofs. You can’t prove it.

Me: Faith is not necessarily a violation of evidence. We undergo faith every day. Trust is faith, hope is faith. In fact…

A sudden bright light appears. I am distracted

For in every small beginning lies a potential for infinite greatness. Ever so often, we observe a perverted turn of events where we suffer the amnesia of where we started. For if, my friends,we do not know from whence we come, how do we fathom the gravity of where we are, and the immensity of where we are headed?

The kids in the playground do not like me. Just yesterday, we did the “Knock, Knock” joke.

Me: Knock, Knock
They: Who’s there?
Me: You are…
They: You are who?

….The straw that broke the camel’s back.

Me: I am the spawn of sultans and the progeny of princes. So it’s no fault of mine that I crave to be crowned the king. I am the dream, that Martin spoke off, the chair that Rosa sat on, what Malcolm X was shot for. I am the freedom for the negro. See my ancestors and relatives were arrested for the sittings, so it’s in my blood to stand out, cause my DNA is different. It’s not in the color of my skin; it’s in the strength of my soul. I am one to go the distance, until I wear out my sole. I am the stone the builders rejected, succeeded when not expected. I am the ugly duckling that turned to the swan.  I am the epitome of a struggle hard to overcome, yet, I’m still the proof that we can overcome. Two phrases my dad told me to erase: “I can’t” and “I don’t know”, they must never come out my face. The first being the defeatist safety grotto, and the second being the ignorance motto.  Of the two, the latter is the worse. Cause if you lack knowledge, your life is a curse. So I was subjected to reading and writing every day and switching off the T.V except on the weekends. I had to learn two new words and use them in a sentence. My duty was to know something about everything and everything about something. My parents set me on this path, so blame them if I excel past boundaries. They set me on this trail, but they made me make my choices. I am not the product of my parent’s preferences.  I am neither the pigment nor the accent that masks the content of what my substance is. I am not a man whose self worth is proportional to the rating of his outward appearances. I walk with the poise of emperors. I know Nostradamus is a phony, cause he didn’t mention me as the future. See, I have a solid definition of who I am as I have just told you. The more pertinent question is who are you?

Nomsky: As he said

Maze: Keeping up with the current events. Someone once said to me that Kim Kardashian is just like her father, they both have a knack for getting N*ggas off. But she brought fear to the hearts of many African American men when she decided to marry Kris Humphries. Now, no black male has been this sad and afraid at the same time, since the neighborhood KFC closed down, or since Maury uttered “You ARE the father of this baby” But yes, our dear Kim managed to bring those emotions to the male black community. It was a sad day in the hood as the idiom “Once you go black you never go back” seemed to be relegated into the gulf of myths: a place where Harold Camping’s predictions and Flat Earth Theory reside. But a flicker of hope arose when 72 days after the fairytale wedding, divorce papers were filed. Now, I am no expert on marriage but isn’t that shorter than the time it takes for a bride to unpack her belongings into her husband’s house? As usual twitter took to its jokes. Apparently the marriage was shorter than the time between Rick Ross’s meals. A trusted source revealed that Kim realized quite late that Kris was half the man she wanted him to be… We at CV news figure that this means Kris was half black. Word on the street is that she made 17 million dollars off the marriage. All I could think of was this: “The sneaky bitch got us back”. We watched her sex-tape for free, now we paid to see her get married. People Magazine paid 1.5 Million dollars for the pictures, I got it for free off Google images though. I can’t wait to hear how much someone will pay for the photocopy of the divorce papers. But on the plus side, the maxim “Once you go black you never go back” has been revived to the status of eternal truth, where Gravity and Theory of Special Relativity are. This reinstatement is thanks to the fact that she was seen dining with Reggie Bush at the Bar Mesa Restaurant two days before the divorce was filed. Could there be something going on there? Maybe, maybe not. You know what, let’s just stop there. Kim Kardashian is a well of stories, just her ass could serve as another topic, but let’s leave that behind.

Nomsky: That ass can make someone thirsty.

*Sule runs to give water to Nomsky*

Maze: Same here o. Can I have some cola?

*Passes Kolanut*

Maze: No Suegbe, pass the coke

*Passes some white powder stuff like this*

Nomsky:….

Maze:…..

Maze: Ode ni bobo yi oo. Pass the cola drink jor.

*Passes Dr Pepper*

Maze: Dr Pepper? In this life? Dr Pepper is the failure of the soft drink class. It’s worse than Pepsi, and Pepsi tastes like coca cola diluted with pure water and failed ambition. Abeg Pass the Coca-Cola jor!

*Sips Coca Cola*

Maze: In fact, that brings me to this headline. Although it tastes like caramel colored piss, Dr Pepper apparently handles pop, better than Dr Conrad Murray handles Pop Stars. So the news is this: Murray was found guilty of involuntary manslaughter on November 7, 2011. Before we continue, did you notice that manslaughter is the same as man’s laughter? What were the originators of English language thinking? Was death a joke to these people? Anyway, back to the case. The jury found it hard to decide whether to let him go scot-free or sentence him to life imprisonment. This was because they were confused as to whether the victim of the manslaughter was black or white, and Michael Jackson’s song “Black or White” playing outside the court by teeming fans only compounded their dilemma. After long deliberation, they settled on four years, however, word from the bench is that Conrad Murray could get off easy if he agrees to lend his services to the Lethal Injection department of the Los Angeles Prison system. But till then he’ll be behind bars for 4 years. A quick question: Would you let Dr. Conrad Murray be your doctor?.

Nomsky: No! God forbid. Did my Father give birth to a mugu?

Maze: That’s a trick question If he doesn’t kill you with Propofol, his prices will, by giving you a heart attack. We all know, it’s easier to kill than to give life, and guess what, he got paid a hundred and fifty thousand dollars a month to kill, I mean “take care” of Michael Jackson. If he got paid that amount, and somehow managed to screw that up, how much do you think you would pay him to treat you and keep you alive? Exactly! So don’t bother

Nomsky: Speaking of Pop Music, The rapper I’m about to talk about has set a record for switching sex from male to female without any form of transplant. His recent moistness has made music slippery to our ears and his real fans may have to change their sexual orientation to what is now called Drisexual…; A situation where you can’t have sex but cry over other immaterial things. As we witness weird happenings in the world, the most being that the toughest member of the Cash Money group is Nicki Minaj or DMX tweeting “#np How to Love – Lil Wayne”; It won’t be long before thugs start to bleed through their penis once every month. Aubrey Graham is a smart person. His second studio album ‘Take Care’ is set to be released on the 15^th of November, 2011 and his fans are already telling him how they love it. The positive album reviews has blinded him to the implications of having your album leaked two weeks before the release date. Very Smart! This album may not hit platinum but it sure will make listeners produce enough tears capable of rusting platinum metals.

Maze: Speaking of unnecessary femininity. An interesting topic that showed on our radar is this. Justin Bieber has been said to have a baby

Nomsky: Oh really, didn’t notice the baby bump at all.

Maze: Justin wasn’t the pregnant one dummy. The mother is one Mariah Yeater woman like this.

Nomsky: Oh? So lesbians can give birth now? Which technology is used to achieve such feat?

Maze: Dummy. He is said to be the FATHER. Justin Bieber is a guy nah.

Nomsky: Ehen?? Well if it sounds like a duck, looks like a duck, it is a duck. If it looks like a chick, sings like a chick then it is a chick. I thought she, I mean he, was a lesbian. But this situation now surely explains the meaning of the song “Baby Baby Baby OH!!!”

Maze: Yes indeed it does. Back to the news. It is reported that the baby looks like Justin, but if you have ever seen Justin Bieber, you’d ask ….”what does that really prove? What baby DOESN’T look like Justin Bieber?” The woman in question Mariah Yeater says Justin copulated with her for 30 seconds. 30 seconds???? That’s how long it takes some people to sneeze. It takes some of us that long to unzip our pants. Premature ejaculation is a big deal people!! But what do you expect from a guy who has barely hit puberty? He probably still gets hard-ons from looking at Little Mermaid

Nomsky: You did?

Maze: Um.. I plead the fifth. Let’s be thankful for Justin. His album Mistletoe has debuted at number one, Mariah on the other hand would argue that her cameltoe debuted as number one for Justin’s penis. But in my opinion, Mariah, I feel is a Belieber. This might be one big scheme for her to meet Justin Bieber. Who knows? Now Justin says that if the paternity tests come back false, he’s going to counter-sue for defamation of character…

Nomsky: Like his music hasn’t done enough damage to his image already.

Maze: Speaking of babies, Beyonce falls under our watch. Recently, a video showed up on the internet. It was a taping of Australia’s “The Sunday Night Show.” As Beyonce sat down to be interviewed, her “baby” folded in half beneath her dress. It appeared her baby bump was dancing azonto. Beyonce has always been a trendsetter. Now, she has finally given a new meaning to the term “Bouncing baby boy”. To make matters worse, her cousin Angie B, who many assume is looking for her 15 minutes of fame claims that Beyonce is using a surrogate. I had my money on Michelle Williams spilling the beans. But it’s whatever. Truth be told, we at CV News don’t really care, our bigger problem is the fact that there is a twitter handle called @beyoncejayzfetus and it has almost 8000 followers. We are not jealous, just concerned about the sanity of the followers. In the end, Bey-Bey might be having no baby of her own accord but after a couple months, we want to see that Destiny’s child….and the deletion of that twitter account @beyoncejayzfetus

Sule nods in approval.

Nomsky: He is undoubtedly the greatest manager alive not because of his ability to chew two sticks of gum in each half of a match, although this should be taken into consideration but because of the unswerving success he has amassed throughout his career. He has more hunger and drive than a Somali kid and his passion for the game cannot be over emphasized.

“What Ferguson sees sitting down, other managers cannot see even if the climb on top of the Iroko tree…”

1,052 managers in the English game have been sacked, resigned or left by mutual consent since he was appointed to replace Ron Atkinson on 6 November 1986. That’s more than the amount of people in my Local Government. The wads and wads of cash he has accumulated over this period is gradually approaching exponential. People say he is responsible for keeping the country of Scotland alive as without his money, they would all have lost their houses. Let’s raise our glass of wine as we celebrate the 25^th Anniversary of a local champion. Yes I said local champion because he is not recognized in other planets. Just in case you are more curious than Okey the Cat and you need to calculate how much our humble servant has spent on chewing gums in his United career, the formula is: T = GPONK
Where:G = Number of games as a Man Utd manager, N = Number of CHEWING gum consumed during a game; usually 4, k = Constant of tooth ache/decay, P = Price of chewing gum, O = other external factors, T = Total Amount spent on Chewing gum

Maze: I’m not a big fan of sports. I am more fascinated with Politics. I asked someone to tell a political joke the other day, and he responded “Herman Cain”. Mr Cain is an African American candidate for the 2012 presidency on the republican ticket. He is not just part of the tea party, but apparently also of the tea-tea party. I say this because he has been accused of various sexual misconducts during his time as CEO of the National Restaurant Association in the late 1990s. He claims these are just accusations to ruin his campaign. I insist that there are positive ways to look at this. One of them is this: Women in general have lower salaries, so I feel the American Business Women’s Association might want him as the United States President given that he always gives advances to women no matter how unwanted these advances are. But neglecting his sexual proclivities, we must give kudos to Herman Cain. He is changing things up a bit; he’s not giving you a piece of the American pie, but a piece of the American Pizza. He can now brag that he’s cognizant of international issues since Pizza is Italian and Swiss cheese is also used in making pizza. We should also remember his 9-9-9 Tax Plan which when turned upside looks like 6-6-6. That’s hell of suspect. Don’t you think? But what do I know about Tax? I was also going to talk extensively about the debt crisis in the Mediterranean, but it is all Greek to me. I’m sure Herman Cain’s solution to the problem of Greece will be to cut down on the Crisco used in making the Pizza. The Greek gods have left their people hanging. I feel Zeus is somewhere fornicating or on the set of “Clash of the Titans 2″. Hermes, the Greek god of finance and trade is now interested in Luxury Fashion and would much rather be on a belt buckle, than waste his time solving Greece’s problems. His major problem is not the debt of the country, but Louis Vuitton another competitive stronghold in Luxury Fashion. Germany however is saving Greece, so there is no Greek Hero but a German Euro coming to the rescue this time around. We’ll see how all this pans out.

Nomsky: Let’s go domestic. The narcotic story of Yoruba comedian Babatunde Omidina a.k.a Baba Suwe has finally subsided. After three weeks of feeding the actor ‘agbo jedi-jedi’, a traditional local laxative to enable him excrete; and the testing of his faeces at different laboratories, he has been found innocent by Justice Yetunde Idowu at the Lagos High Court.The NDLEA proclaimed that not finding anything in his excreta was unusual considering that a scan on his body revealed large amount of drug ingestion in his stomach.

Our readers can take a poll as to wether he
1) Did not ingest drugs
2) Is using high quality Jazz
3) The Testing Machines are faulty
4) The NDLEA officials are just overzealous and may have been listening to a lot of Drake songs lately

Maze: And that concludes our broadcast for (insert your period of the day here). Good-(Insert your period of the day here) Readers. Thanks for staying with us. Remember you heard it here last. Don’t quote us. We will deny you. Until next time. Godspeed.
Eiss!! Sule stop the camera!

My Son, if you’re reading this, two things are for certain: One, I’m dead and two you can read and understand the things I’m about to tell you. There are many things I would have loved to say to you in person, and trust me I tried. Fought dearly, but I lost that battle to cancer. So this was my backup plan, a testament of the advice that will get you through this mad-man-circus called life. Please don’t disregard this as trite “Self-help” advice. These are things, I would have loved to say in person over the course of the years, but thanks to the skeleton with the scythe, I couldn’t.

What better way to start this letter on life than on the living? I, in my stinted dance to the cosmic music called life, have encountered people from various walks of life. This, I have found under the sun: people will be people, despite of how good or bad you are, so don’t let their opinions and behaviors predict yours. Never underestimate anyone, tables turn as fast as the future turns into the past. People are as important as you make them. Listen to everybody’s opinion, but don’t adhere to them all since self-interest is embedded in the very nature of man, and clouds most of his judgments. Don’t judge a book by its cover, helium is what makes the balloon rise, not the color. In fact, don’t judge any one; leave that to God and to the person’s conscience. We can assume that you’ve created God in your own image when it turns out that God hates all the same people that you hate. Don’t deride anyone for attributes or characteristics outside their control, if they can’t change something about themselves and you can’t change that thing either, never comment on it. Love your imperfect neighbor with all your imperfect heart, perfectly.

I don’t think I can fully cover the importance of friendship. It is the most valuable thing you can ever find on earth. Find good friends and never ever let them go. Relish the camaraderie, and never relinquish it. A good friend is never afraid to tell you the truth, no matter how bad it hurts. In fact they will give you the bitter truth with the milk of kindness. One of the proofs of a good friendship is this; you are both comfortable with any ensuing silence when you are together, and you don’t feel the need to fill it with needless and empty words. I have seen that the best friendships are oft started by your similarities but kept going by your differences. Respect those differences, but take heed, never befriend anyone whose character violates your principles. The marshmallow dancing near the fire eventually gets roasted, so watch your company. Misery, it’s said loves company, but it turns out that bad company breeds misery, so take care. I can’t promise that you won’t make enemies, I made quite a handful of them in my lifetime. If you do, don’t be bothered. Sometimes the quality of your enemies tells even more about you than the caliber of your friends.

Admit your mistakes; a covered mistake is very synonymous to a crime. Never fall, get up and keep walking, never fall, get up, look at where you fell and keep walking.  Instead, fall, as you definitely will, get up, look at where you slipped, nod in acknowledgement of your mistake, and keep walking. If you don’t make any mistakes, you are living your life too simply. There is no effort without error. If you offend your friends, ask for God’s forgiveness, their forgiveness, and don’t ever forget to forgive yourself. I wronged one of my best friends in college, wasn’t worth it, he forgave me easily, but i found that the even more difficult thing was forgiving myself. It’s almost never what you do, it matters less how you do it, but what is of immense importance is why you do it. The world might never know why you do anything, but you will. And if you are conscious of your conscience, that’s mostly all that matters. Stay conscious of your conscience.

On girls, if you look anything like your mother, possess her beautiful eyes and smile, her rich and lively hair, her sense of humor and her strong verve, the girls will flock to you. If you however have my average looks, you might have to do a little more work. Let me give you a few tips, smell good, dress good and be genuinely interested in her. Learn how to cook, the ladies love that, that’s how I got your mother. She can testify, no one made a better pasta than I did.  But forgetting all these, only one thing is key, your personality.  Be a gentleman, treat every woman with respect, they do not deserve it, few might earn it, but I implore you to give it to all. Marry a beautiful woman; True beauty is in the character of the beheld. Marry a goal digger not a gold digger. Someone who loves you for who you are and not for what you are. Find someone who complements you, just as well as she compliments you, because everyone needs a personal cheerleader. Marry someone you can live with as well as can’t live without. When you marry a woman, put her above every other, even your mother. Yes, I said it, and I’m sure your mom will agree with it.

Aim High. You can only get as far as you can see. Never be afraid to rise. I have seen that our fear of success is not that we pay with sweat and sore muscles, but that the price of falling after the rise is blood and broken bones. My son, don’t let that deter you. If you rise to the top, you’ll surely stay there if you have good character and that should allay your fears.

Money is very good. Get it if you want. If you want to be rich, remember this maxim by Warren Buffet “…Be fearful when others are greedy. Be greedy when others are fearful”. However, be wary of get rich quick schemes and shady investments. The “easy” way to make money, is the harder way. The hard way to get money is the easier way. Your Granddad, my father, fell for that once. Still, invest as much as you can. I’ll advice that you read this book: “The Intelligent Investor by Benjamin Graham”. Timeless knowledge. Two tidbits on investments: An investor controls his emotions first, before he controls his money and  Invest when there’s blood on the streets. Now, if you amass money, remember, there is a responsibility that comes with it. Give as much as you can, let philanthropy be your philosophy.

Live your life with two opposite tools, one, like every day will be your last, and two, that you’ll live for eternity. The first helps you in making decisions as quickly as possible for every fear of failure, pride, embarrassment all melt away when faced with the notion of death.  The other helps you assess the implications of these decisions, because the first alone could give you the sense of “I’m going to die anyway so screw it” which could lead you to making a lot of bad choices. The other reminds you that everything you do, whether seen or unseen has consequences that you will be remembered for. The two tools help you against complacency and impulsiveness at the same time.

Of all the vices to fear, my son, fear two the most, envy the first and pride the next. There is nothing viler, more despicable and more ignoble than envy, except pride. To envy another man, you must accept that you are less than he is. Envy is going through a man’s balance sheet, instead of filling up your own bank account. Pride goes before and shame comes after. The proud man looks down on people; ironically that is the same stance of shame. Envy is a poison that kills the holder before he kills the target. So guard your heart carefully from these two.

Protect your character, not your reputation. Be courageous. You will need a lot of courage in facing enemies, and a larger dose in confronting friends. Be open to new things, accept them if they are true things. Don’t just accept what you can’t change, change what you can’t accept. Even if you are blind, don’t fail to see people through tough times, even if you are deaf, don’t fail to listen to someone’s cry,  even if you are dumb, don’t fail to speak up for what you believe in and even if you are lame, don’t fail to stand up for those who can’t stand up for themselves. These, my son make you a man. Eat healthy. Listen to music. Laugh as much as you can. Know something about everything and everything about something. Read as much as you can. However, guard your mind carefully, ideas are seeds that grow on their own. Write as much as you can. Sing even if you can’t. Cry if you want. If you want, cry when you’re happy, cry when you’re sad. Jesus cried. I cried when I found out I was going to be your dad. I cried when I saw your mom crying when the doctor said I had cancer. The true measure of a man is not in the emotions he doesn’t show, but he is held accountable for that which he does show. So show what you feel if your judgement tells you it’s needed.

And finally my son, what better way to end this than on the note of death? No one wants to die. But it is a thing common to all men. The Rich, Poor, Sick, Healthy, Wise and Foolish all die. We all die. There is no superiority in the grave. Heroes and Cowards, lie side by side. I can’t gild the fear of death with a promise of eternity, but it should make it easier to face. If you must believe anything about death, believe this: The shutting of a door on earth is the opening of a door to eternity. And if you have lived your life with the tenets your Mom, I trust has taught you, my son, you have nothing to fear. Life is too short not to do what you want, but it is even shorter not to do what you have to. Make your destiny. Find something worth dying for and live for it. In my lifetime, there was a genius called Steve Jobs. In 2005, he gave a speech to a graduating class from Stanford, he made a note of something he had read and always wished for himself. It was this “Stay hungry, stay foolish”. Now, I add my warning beside this not just to give an effect of chiasmus, but for you to know the value of wisdom. So I’ll end this letter with an imploration to you, my son “Stay hungry, stay foolish. Stay foolish, stay hungry.” I hope you have the wisdom to understand this. I loved you before you were born, and if ghosts can feel, know that I love you still. Take care of yourself. Stay conscious of your conscience. Take care of your mother.

Love, Dad.